The Supervillain Field Manual

by King Oblivion, Ph. D.

  * In case you were curious, this is the only reason anyone has ever opted to work with FutureFop.

  ** You son of a bitch, Explosia is real, and I have a crown to prove it!

  * They’re both wrong, by the way. It’s giant, irradiated apes or nothing.

  * Unless I’m starting it, then you’ll be totally fine. I promise.

  ** They also knew exactly what all their genitals looked like.

  * I should have mentioned that it’s important to have everyone meet in some sort of conference room. Not because you’re trying to make it businessy, but more so you can pull off this authority-asserting maneuver.

  † Oh yeah, right. Make sure it’s a conference room with some big windows.

  ** More on this in the next chapter.

  Chapter 5

  Dissolving Alliances

  Unless you experienced a memory wipe in the time since you’ve read the previous chapter—and look, I know that shit happens; you point the brain scrambler the wrong way and accidentally fire, I’m not judging*—you’ll recall that I said we supervillains often do not get along. I just looked over your thoughts, which I remind you that I own, and those of you who still have memories are curious about how I have managed to keep the International Society of Supervillains together for so long.

  Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret.† I am the only perpetual member of the ISS. I’m like Lemmy from Motörhead.‡ I am the band . . . and the brand.

  If other members of your group aren’t recognizing your authority or trying to write their own songs or get a cut of the money, kick them out. Get a new drummer and bass player and replace them with guys that have brains inside of glass skulls. Who cares who’s filling those positions? As long as the front man sings “Ace of Spades” the way he’s been singing it for thirty years, they’ll keep buying. (My equivalent of “Ace of Spades” is turning continents upside-down.)

  Like me and Lemmy, you have to know when to kick the other members of the band out and find some new faceless nobodies to take their place. Or, if you’re like, I don’t know, Phil Collins,* you can branch out and go solo after shedding the husk that is your Genesis.

  Supervillain FAQ: Can bad guys fall in love?

  While we’re sort of on the topic of love. . . . Around holidays like Valentine’s Day, when balloons and packages of candy and Sarin gas pellets all come in heart shapes, it’s difficult, even for the blackest hearted among us, not to think of loves lost, never found, or accidentally disintegrated.

  Many among our ranks often wonder whether it’s possible, outside a few notable exceptions— The Joker and Harley Quinn, The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend, The Absorbing Man and Titania, Bebop and Rocksteady, The Ventriloquist and Scarface—many villains are unlucky when it comes to finding that lifelong alliance we call love.

  But is that the way it has to be? Not necessarily. Follow these basic guidelines, and you may beat the odds:

  Present Yourself Well

  Walking straight out of your state-of-the-art laboratory for mad science experiments smelling like an attack gator and covered in hypno-gel is no way to attract a mate (unless you plan is to frighten them with attack gators, then subdue your potential mate with hypno-gel). Take a shower. Comb your hair. Put on some nice clothes. Change your appearance using a portable hologram projector. De-age yourself with a Youth Beam. This is simple, basic hygiene.

  Find Someone with Common Interests

  Lots of cities have supervillain hangouts. Go to one sometime. Chat up a looker with some banter about how this guy you know with the powers of a spider was mean to you at your job once and now you spend every minute of the day trying to kill him. You’ll find someone who’s interested.

  Be Confident

  You’re a person who spends most of the week making lengthy speeches about how everyone will pay for not respecting you enough. You can ask another human being to go eat food with you sometime.

  Be Willing to Open Yourself Up, Emotionally

  To develop a lasting relationship, you need to get past your prickly exterior and show the true, sensitive supervillain underneath. The one who acts out just because they want to feel wanted.*

  Try to Become Capable of Love

  If your first instinct when you’re around someone is to give them everything they could want in life, that’s pretty close to love. If your first instinct is to swarm them with MurderBots, it isn’t.**

  Do NOT Kill Your Mate

  That’s pretty counterproductive, at least in this particular case.

  But when do you know it’s time for them to head out the door, likely into a phalanx of robots ready to slice them up with laser nets? There are numerous circumstances in which it’s just prudent to tell them not to let the door hit them in the ass (then tear the door off the hinges and beat them severely with it). Here’s a smattering of scenarios in which you should get to firin’:

  • Anyone, at any time, suggests someone other than you is in charge of the operation.

  • Members of the group suddenly demanding their “fair share,” or “a cut,” or “meals.”

  • Disagreements over what to call your association. For example, you want “brotherhood of mayhem,” while they want “fraternity of devastation,” and those are very important distinctions.

  • They insist on matching uniforms, thereby cramping your style and everyone else’s.

  • They insist on wearing their own special outfit when you have created specific uniforms for everyone.

  • They don’t show up on time for meetings.

  • They show up for meetings too early.

  • They show up for meetings on time, but are all whiny about them.

  • They ask too many questions.

  • They don’t ask any questions, thereby showing a lack of interest in the project.

  • One of them scrapes your foot with theirs and scuffs your kicks.

  • Annoying tongue clicking.

  • Annoying pen clicking.

  • Perceptions that the other members of the group like someone more than they like you, warranted or not.

  • Unsanctioned swagger.

  • Sanctioned swagger that goes too far.

  • Suspiciously heroic behavior.

  • Won’t shut up about last night’s Top Chef episode, when you clearly stated that you haven’t seen it yet.

  Every last one of these reasons is 100 percent valid justifications for bringing an end to a partnership. But once you have decided to dissolve the agreement, what are the most forceful and authoritative ways to make it happen? It can be a bit of a sticky situation, especially if you have contracts or blood oaths or pacts with demon broods binding you together.*

  Even with those binding agreements tying you together, you do have a handful of valid options when you’re looking to sever them. Try one of these:

  Kill ’Em All

  Sometimes, the titles of Metallica albums are places to find the best advice.† As I said in the previous chapter, you’ll find that occasionally, the cleanest way to get rid of your problems is also the messiest. Odds are you aren’t ever going to need these people again, and even if you need their types, B-list villains with energy powers are literally everywhere nowadays because they’ve all read my previous book and think they have a chance to actually get somewhere in this business. Also note that supervillains notoriously don’t shut up about perceived wrongs other people have done to them. Best to just shut them up permanently (or at least until they’re all revived in some big event in which some idiot superhero accidentally raises their corpses from the grave by hitting a wrong button in some old temple).

  Always come armed.

  Kill Yourself (Or Fake It)

  Say you’re committing several murders of people with beyond-human intellects and powers that seem like something beyond your capabilities. Maybe you get squeamish at the thought of ripping your friend’s heart out. Or perhaps you made the mistake of teaming up with a supervillain who is a ghost.* Y
ou may have to suck it up and take the coward’s way out, which is fine. In fact, I have the utmost respect for cowards. Cowards are people who are just smart. When presented with situations that might mean an incredibly painful and squishy demise, they run away from them instead of running towards them. That’s simply common sense. Bravery is for suckers, and we’ll let the superheroes keep that, thank you very much. I’m not sure why cowardice got such a bad rep . . . aren’t cowards the survivors, after all? Anyway, I’m getting away from the point here. You can pretty much put an end to your own contract if you figure out a way to off yourself (don’t worry, you’ll come back . . . you always will), or conveniently make it look like you accidentally got eaten by that T. Rex you were planning to terrorize Venice Beach with. Lay low for a few months and everyone will be so busy with new stuff they probably won’t even bring it up next time you cross paths at a meeting. These guys all have short memories.*

  WORST PRACTICE IN ACTION: Magneto and the Red Skull

  Things weren’t going so great in the Red Skull’s Consortium of Masterminds, but they got even worse when Magneto, who spent time during his youth in a concentration camp, confronted the Skull about his time working with one Adolf Hitler. Skull said that it was all in the past, but Magneto wouldn’t have it, so Skull tried to off the master of magnetism with some dust and scurried away. Magneto’s a tough old villain, though. He tracked down the Skull (by bending some escape train tracks) and locked him up in an old fallout shelter to rot, with nothing but some water.

  Teaching Moment: When you’re forming a team, it’s smart to make sure you don’t recruit anyone with a blood vendetta against you. If you have a blood vendetta against someone who has recruited you to a team (because you failed to take my advice, you ignorant pustule), going the “Cask of Amontillado” route is pretty clever. Poe’s always a good resource.

  Trick Everyone into Turning on Each Other

  If you’ve set everything up correctly, this shouldn’t be all that difficult to pull off. Just let the one member of the group who obeys your every word to tell another member that another member said he was going to be sure she doesn’t get her share of the loot. That’s basically the only seed you need to plant before everyone starts shooting beams at one another and the whole thing’s down the crapper.

  Create a Bigger Threat

  If you can somehow distract everyone by creating a threat so huge that your team of villains has to team up with your sworn enemies—the heroes—to defeat you, the alliance is basically finito. So call up one of the space gods you know, ask them to alter reality so that everything is just slightly different, and then tell it to make everyone fight in a big war game or threaten to take a big dump on the planet. That ought to do it. And you’ve got some nigh-omnipotent space gods you can call up for favors, right? Sure. We all do.

  Be Direct

  Tell the group straight-up, “It’s over. We’re splitting.” There will probably be a huge fight, and almost everyone will try to maul you for insisting that they won’t get any of the loot or notoriety you spent weeks or months or years planning to obtain, but it’ll give you the opportunity to feel like a really big deal for a couple hours, and what’s the point of supervillainy if you can’t feel like a King Shit every now and again?

  Brainwash and Convince Them You are the Greatest Possible Threat to Their Safety

  I know I keep going back to this well, but that’s only because it’s a plainly useful way to do things. It’s just as convenient to have your fellow supervillains think you’re a huge threat as it is to make superheroes or the general populaces feel the same way. A reputation as a destructive terror among your peers can yield big rewards and tons of respect. Buy up a lot of industrial-grade brainwash and keep it on-hand for basically any scenario. It’ll come in so, so handy. (As dictated by the Metallica album title, Master of Puppets.)

  Irreconcilable Differences: Publicizing the Divorce

  One thing we like to say around the offices and death traps here at the ISS HQ is that nothing is really worth doing if you can’t seize a few satellite dishes and radio antennas to announce it. That goes for your various and sundry announcements of how you’re severing ties with your fellow supervillains just as much as it does proclaiming the city of Brussels is 98 percent liquid.

  The thing is, it can be difficult to get the media— with their well-known hero bias—interested in the inside-baseball beltway politics of intravillain relations. All it takes is for a superhero to fart the wrong way toward another superhero and they’re all over it like a toppling Saddam Hussein statue. Superheroes fight one another all the time, too; not so much because they dislike each other—like we do—but because they’re always mistaking each other for supervillains, like it’s anything but obvious that a guy in a big red cape or with tiny little wings on his temples is anything but a hero type. With us supervillains, we can straight-up strangle a dozen of our co-conspirators to death and grill their insides, and get little more than one line in the police blotter on page D7 of the Shitburg Craprag.

  So if your breakup isn’t going to set any reporters’ hearts on fire, how can you ensure anyone pays attention? Try these techniques:

  Threaten to Set a Reporter’s Heart on Fire

  That’ll get those fourth estate rat-bastards’ attention.

  Do That Whole TV Network Takeover Thing I Mentioned Earlier

  Just keep taking over the same one. They’ll get used to you. Won’t even put up a fight after a while. They may even take some initiative and tie themselves up.

  Pull a Fake Face Turn

  This isn’t a well you can go to very often, but every once in a while it’s likely to fool a rookie reporter or two. Announce that you’re leaving your consortium of supervillainy because you’ve given up your life of crime—being around other supervillains has shown you how bad they truly are—and want to fight evil from now on (this is also a decent last-resort way to quit your team, though the other members may try to tie you to the fiery end of a rocket once you break the news to them, because it’s in their natures). Like I said, superheroes get way more attention, so becoming one, even for a few days, and even if it’s quite transparently a ploy to get noticed, will get you noticed. And as a bonus, you might even gain access to some idiot superhero’s inner circle where you can steal some important secret information about them and all their friends’ secret identities and whatnot.

  Break up the Team in August

  There’s no news anyway in August.

  Make It Political

  If you can somehow frame the end of the partnership as some sort of political disagreement or scandal, or better yet, one of the members of your team holds some nominal elected office, you can eat it up. Just use these key words: “back-biting,” “greased palms,” “Blagojevichy,” “Petraeus,” “backroom dealings,” “redacted records,” and “intel.” Talk all kinds of talk about your special intel. Someone will bite.

  Celebritize It

  You’re a supervillain. You’re something of a celebrity. And you know what people love to read about celebrities doing? Getting divorced. So make your team breakup an actual romantic breakup. Marry one of the members of your squad, and then divorce them. The media may not give two shits about your business relationship shredding to pieces, but they can’t get enough of horrible people’s romances ending. Use it.

  * This is a lie. Of course I’m judging. I’m always judging.

  † But I’ll have to kill you as soon as you read it. Mwa-ha-ha! I’m only jokin’, I’ll only have to kill some of you.

  ‡ In case you didn’t know, Lemmy is a supervillain (his supervillain name is quite literally, The Motör Head) and a friend of mine. He is also really amazing to party with.

  * Also a supervillain (code name: Sussudior), he’s less amazing to party with, but his confusion and drumming powers are pretty useful.

  * Important Note: PorcuPete, this one is impossible for you.

  ** But it’s a lot like marriage, am I r
ight, folks?

  * It’s always risky business to work with demon broods. You’d do yourself a favor by opting to avoid them in any situation that doesn’t involve fighting a war with some angels; a situation you may be surprised to find yourself in every few years. It happens.

  † For example, Load and Reload are the perfect shorthand way to remember how to use a handgun on an oncoming wave of superheroes. . . . And Justice For All doesn’t tell you much, though. Screw justice.

  * Listen, I have nothing against our ghost colleagues. They can be useful in all kinds of situations that require haunting or not touching things. But it’s really hard to threaten them with anything but containment, and that’s not nearly as fun as being able to say you’re going to kick their spleens out. Bastards don’t even have spleens. They’ve got ecto-spleens or something . . . that you can’t kick.

  * Except for me. Pull that shit on me and I’ll feed you to six T. Rexes!

  Chapter 6

  Accusations

  According to your thoughts, which I am looking over because I own them, most of you share the same number-one fear: Being brutally and painfully punished for your crimes for the rest of eternity in some sort of forever-torture chamber. I can tell you that those are indeed valid concerns. I personally have about eight forever-torture chambers here at the HQ, just in case one of you really, really pisses me off.*

  But what you aren’t taking into consideration is that that you may end up being pretty severely punished for something you never did at all. You’re an evil person, that’s the path you’ve chosen. (Though we’ve got some scientists working at ray gun-point on some breakthroughs that are probably going to prove at there’s an Evil Gene, so stay tuned on that!) Don’t get me wrong, virtually everyone else in the world has some level of evil in them, too, but they want to believe that they’re good. So there’s a reasonable chance you’re going to get some undeserved fingers pointed your way during your career.