[REVIEW] End of Month Reviews #32 - August 2006 [spoilers]

[Saxon Brenton]

On Saturday 2 Sept 2006 Jesse Willey <cabbagewielder at yahoo.com> replied:

>>Electra, and rather than face an ignominious defeat
>>Dr Killfile flees into hyperspace.
>
>   And winds up at post-Apocalyptic Epcot.

Is that where it was?  Okay then.

>>and in the end being justifiably terrified of the return of Dr Killfile 
>>himself - basically being a build up to justify and illustrate the 
>>fearsome reputation of Dr Killfile as a truly major villain.
>
>     Okay... to me Doctor Killfile has REALLY gotten the
>short end of the stick.  He kicked everyone's butt for
>most of Cosmic Plot Caper-- and then in every
>subsequent appearance he just got easier and easier to
>beat.
[...]
>     I wanted to return to Killfile to a state where you
>could contain him.  You couldn't really stop him or
>kill him.

<nods>  That's a common problem with comic book villains.
It's hard to get a balance between having the hero stop
the villain and the villain managing to do enough damage to
be a credible threat, especailly when factoring in concerns
like the fact that the most popular villains will keep being
used again and again and again over the course of decades.
Peter David once wrote a good article on how the best
villains get away with 'it' collected in his _But I Digress_ book.
It was also a factor in the mechanics of the Flame Wars 4
miniseries that Jamie and myself wrote: Flipseid never
appeared as a direct anatagonist - but he managed to put
the Legion through Hell just by sending one of his minions
to Earth to run amok.
   (In retrospect that makes me a little ambivalent about what
happened to Flipseid and all the aliens in the 'Maximum Insecurity'
story that led into FW4: on a META level it was absolutely
logical and right that a human be able to turn up and tell
all those aliens and gods, 'no, you're not real, you're just
bogeymen that we created to entertain ourselves' and zap
them all.  But on a STORYTELLING level it undermines Flipseid's
granduer. Oh well.)
   (Further thought brings up the fact that - depending on
whether Barkseid is a different entity from Flipseid, or just some
type of hypostasis - the mainstream Legion's never fought
Flipseid.  The one in the 'Kinda Big Darkness Saga' was a imposter,
the Legion wasn't involved directly in 'Maximum Insecurity' (and
in any case Splashpage was packing uber-cosmic), and he toyed
with the Legion from behind the scenes in FW4.  Only Fearless
Leader's alt.universe LNH has fought Flipseid directly - and they
died for their victory.)

---
Saxon Brenton   Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia
   saxon.brenton at uts.edu.au

_________________________________________________________________
Search for local singles online @ Lavalife 
http://a.ninemsn.com.au/b.aspx?URL=http%3A%2F%2Flavalife9%2Eninemsn%2Ecom%2Eau%2Fclickthru%2Fclickthru%2Eact%3Fid%3Dninemsn%26context%3Dan99%26locale%3Den%5FAU%26a%3D23198&_t=751140432&_r=emailtaglines_search_aug06&_m=EXT