The Surgical Strike
Just because a statement is brief, doesn’t mean it isn’t powerful. If all you wish to do is swoop in, drain a septic tank into the DMV, and get out of there (more on how to get out of there shortly), that’s your prerogative. I know I said last chapter that you should be playing the long game, and I still hold to that, but playing the long game doesn’t always necessitate that every gambit include 1,000 moving pieces. A quick strike may be all you need to do at this juncture. You handle this in one devastating move, but just as long as it coincides with a larger scheme down the road. Not everything has to be a symphony. Sometimes a catchy pop song will suffice; especially if those pop songs pile up over the years. People may want to murder you for putting that earworm in their ears, but you’ll already be gone . . . until you come back and do it again.
Making It Personal
Much of what I’ve discussed to this point aims more toward a general property damage and loss-of-life type of scenario, but just as effective is a plan of attack that looks to wear down one target—preferably your arch-nemesis—until everything that they have in the world is reduced to nothing; or driven so far away that the hero can no longer see it. Sure, the price tag will be smaller, but the damage you can do to one particularly difficult individual may make the disparity worth it. Consider this less a pop song than a ballad . . . a hate ballad.
A Prolonged Offensive
With that said, it does often feel more satisfying to really draw out your composition; to see the looks on the faces of your shocked audience as you not only drain the reservoir and flood the DMV, but also destroy all the cars in the city over a matter of weeks and revoke everyone’s driver’s licenses through a specialized computer virus. Imagine the chaos and helplessness people will experience during that lengthy offensive, worried about what will come next as you gracefully segue into your next movement. You should note, however, that there’s a solid chance someone will locate you and try to pound you into jelly as your campaign progresses. If you want to avoid that very likely consequence, go for something faster.
WORST PRACTICE IN ACTION: Doc Ock Goes for the Ultimate Defense
Without even being aware of it, Doctor Octopus almost had the best possible defense; one that would have insulated him from Spider-Man’s attacks for years: He nearly married Peter Parker’s Aunt May. Sure, he was only doing it so he could get access to a secret island with a nuclear reactor on it, which Aunt May had inexplicably inherited for some reason. But Hammerhead ruined it all by busting in on the wedding, although it was a valiant effort while it lasted.
Teaching Moment: Randomly courting and/or marrying senior citizens could lead you toward conveniently marrying a parental figure of your arch-nemesis, which severely limits their options when it comes to dealing with you. Though it may seem you’re blindly reaching for an unlikely coincidence, remember the Law of Coincidences. They’re the rule.
Your Location
Leading the Charge
• Are you a rough-and-tumble brawler?
• Is your destructive plan entirely dependent on your superpowers, e.g., you’re an electricity-based supervillain trying to overload the electrical system so no one can watch the newest Homeland, which means they’ll all be an episode behind and extremely frustrated when they see everyone else talking about it online the next day?
• Do you feel a compulsion to be seen, and not just on screens all around the city, but in person?
• Do you have some sort of power that requires you to feed off the fear of people directly in front of you?
• Are you a centaur of some kind?
• Do you have a death wish?
These are all valid reasons for wishing to lead your henchmen into the fray. Otherwise, why in the hell would you want to do that?
Observing from Behind
Like the military generals of old, you could stay back along the edge of the battlefield and look on from your tent as the decimation plays out in front of you. You may say, “That’s cowardly,” but as I’ve stated before, what’s so improper about being cowardly? You didn’t get to this position just so you could go get stabbed with energy blades all afternoon. You have people to do that for you. Let them put on a show for you. Of course, you will need to be in constant contact with your henchman leader on the ground to ensure that they do everything correctly. I mean, you don’t want them accidentally summoning the wrong demons, do you?
Taking a Bird’s-Eye View
Same as observing from behind, but this you get to do from a blimp or a hot-air balloon. Communication may be a bit tougher, and there’s always the chance of being shot down, but I’d say those risks are worth the fun.
Behind the Curtain
If I haven’t already made this abundantly clear, theatrics play a big role in our lives as bad guys. So you may want to consider sending surrogates into the fray early on; even potentially obfuscating the notion that you’re behind any of this until exactly the right dramatic moment in which you spring out from your hiding spot and reveal to your archnemesis and anyone else who might be around that, yes, it was indeed you who plan out this whole series of attacks aimed at snuffing out everything your targets hold dear. As such, this makes for an especially impactful moment when your focus is on a single individual’s personal sanity and/or happiness.
Watching on Monitors from a Bunker
Again, cowardice is not actually a problem. Hunkering down in a secure bunker located forty stories under the earth’s surface is a perfectly reasonable response to being a person responsible for replacing all the bricks in the city with ferrets.
Exit Strategies
As the famous supervillain, The Gambler (who managed to keep his identity secret under the guise of singer Kenny Rogers for decades), sang so succinctly, “you’ve got to know when to fold em.” But once you’re finished bending your enemies in half, you also have to know when to pull up stakes and get out of there before you’re overwhelmed by the authorities’ opposing forces. As I said in Chapter 2, it’s always worthwhile to have an escape route. Here are a few specific methods to have at the ready:
• Helicopter with convenient rope ladder that comes straight to you
• Giant drill
• Teleportation device and/or powers
• Giant whale that swallows you and takes you elsewhere
• Turns out you were impressionist Rich Little all along
• Wildly flap your arms and see what happens
• Smoke pellets, hundreds of them
• Rocket pack and/or boots
• Pneumatic tubes (these takes some planning)
• Hire a band to “play you off”; according to decorum, no one can stop you
• Pick some rube to switch bodies with
• Have the artist who drew you erase you and draw you somewhere else
• Pay everyone off to just clam up about it.*
Dish It Out but Don’t Take It: Avoiding Harm
We live in a world blindly and unnecessarily obsessed with the concept of fairness. When you roll into town and smash up a bunch of people’s stuff (and also their organs), all of a sudden there will be all these other people—particularly the superpowered and caped ones; some of them monsters who are literally made out of rocks— who will want to similarly smash you up out of some sense of getting retribution or payback.
It’s so unfair.
This is why you have to make every effort you can to protect yourself from the dangerous fists and other offensive maneuvers of superheroic attackers. Consider the following defensive measures:
Wearing a Helmet
Yes, you might think these look dorky or cover up your lustrous hair, but let me tell you something. If it’s good (bad) enough for Magneto, it’s good (bad) enough for you.**
Use Decoys (again)
I discussed these in Chapter 2 as a way of throwing enemies off your scent. But what about when somebody is already on your scent? It doesn’t matter if it’s a hologra
m or a robot; anything that looks like you that isn’t you and that can take a 10-megaton punch in your place is worth having.
Generate a Protective Force Field
Not only do they keep out punches, but they also look pretty damn cool if you’re floating around in one that’s got all sorts of crackling electrical energy surrounding it.
Smoke
Most heroes are avid, obnoxious non-smokers, who will throw themselves into a shockingly dramatic coughing fit the second they catch a whiff of any second-hand smoke you blow their way. This can offer you a window of reprieve.
Body Armor
Won’t do you a ton of good to fend off hand-to-hand assaults, which is the method most superheroes prefer, but you’ll feel safer.
Surround Yourself with Other People
Not for camaraderie or human feeling; just so you can throw someone else to the wolves when they tear down your door.
Trap Doors
Try to only go places where you know that you have at least six to ten trap doors surrounding the spot where you’re standing at any given time, and that you have access to those trap doors’ latches.
Learn How to Increase or Decrease Your Size at Will
Punches won’t mean much—even from the strongest heroes—if you’re 1,000 feet tall. (Unless, of course, they are also that size. Best to check into that.) Likewise, being insanely tiny means they won’t be able to find you in order to punch you. Either one could work.
Just Plain Be a Slippery Son of a Bitch
This will really be the thing that gets you out of more scrapes than anything else.
* You should note that there are literally thousands of wrong ways to go about this.
** Bonus: This is also hilarious.
** And anyway, helmets can serve as a worthy substitute for hair. I said so myself back in Chapter 1, which means it must be true.
* More on this in the next chapter.
Chapter 12
Money
In The Supervillain Handbook, I briefly discussed how important financial planning is in the world of professional super-evil. And, quite obviously, I was fully justified in doing so. Properly managing your funds could mean the difference between leading your malevolent empire from a skyscraper you own and planning out a plot to hold up a Sonic while trying not to make too much noise in your uncle’s garage.
Of course, there’s more to supervillainous finances than acquiring funds and making sure you don’t spend too much of it on stupid crap like bobble heads of yourself. (Incidentally, King Oblivion, Ph.D. bobble heads remain available at bargain basement prices.) How you display your affluence and/or avarice is a key component of building your reputation as a shining bastion of reckless professional evil. Don’t spend your funds on one kind of stupid crap. Spend it on entirely different stupid crap.
Supervillain FAQ: So what if I die?
They say the only two sure things in life are death and taxes. Of course, most people pay their taxes once a year and only die once. As a supervillain, you’ll do something in the area of the exact opposite (if you pay taxes, ever). Dying is something you have to expect and accept when you enter this business. You get used to it after a while. Because you always come back. Every time.
In case you don’t believe me (and my monitoring of your thoughts indicates that some of you remain doubters even now, and you can rest assured some laser drones are coming to your home imminently), listen to this compelling testimony from Grieveless, the Woman Who Resurrects.
Some of you guys, you’re lucky. You only die maybe three, four times in your career. I die just about every week. It’s my superpower. I have to do it.
I know, it sounds like a weird gig. But I actually get a solid amount of work; jobbing for the bigger-name mastermind types, you know? They need to fool some caped jerk into thinking a lady got blasted with a cannon, I’m there. Human shield? That’s me. Sometimes I step in to make it look like one of them got offed when it was really me in that plane crashing into a river of lava. It’s why they never find a body.
It pays pretty well. But that’s not what you want to know, right? You want to know what it’s like when the lights go out. Well. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
So the first thing is that there’s a lot of pain. Like, searing pain in the back of your eyeballs. The death itself, where you take it, may not even have anything to do with your eyeballs, but that’s where you feel it. I guess ‘cause that’s where you really live your life, there in your head. Look, I’m not a biologist. I’m just telling you how it all feels.
Is this what you’re lookin’ for? Seems awfully morbid to talk about this kind of stuff, and I live it every day. Anyways . . .
The next thing is pure darkness for a while. Just black. I’d tell you how long it lasts, but it’s sort of this feeling of there being no time. It’s entirely black and there’s no time. Until there is.
That’s when you sort of wake up as this consciousness. No body, no real sense of space, just this thing in this place, and you may recognize other things in that place. Like, last time I was down there, I saw The Comptroller. Remember that guy? He was yelling some stuff about . . . you know, maybe it was you! What a weird coincidence, right? Anyway, it’s stuffy in there. It’s not hell. I’ve been to hell and they’ve got some great buffets there. This place is just some place where your consciousness gets jammed in with other consciousnesses, like some kid put you all in a mason jar.
And then, after a while, you come back to your body; at a morgue, or buried in a shallow grave, or still floating in a lake somewhere. If your body got all burned up or melted? You usually wake up in a garbage bin behind T.G.I. Friday’s. Don’t ask me to explain that one.
So that’s about it on how things go when you die and come back. Is that all you needed? Can I go back to my apartment now? I was just finishing up a real cool watercolor of some dogs eating at a diner like they’re people. You really got to see it; it’s a hoot and a half—
Oh, so I guess you’ve already decided to crush me with these spikes then. Well, okay then. It’s been a swell time. See you around, King.
For the record, that painting was trash.
Let me put it to you as a rhetorical question, because that’s the way I most like to convey things: What’s the point of stealing, counterfeiting, scamming, printing, conjuring, inheriting, or, ugh, as much as I hate to include it, earning money if you can’t flaunt it?
There isn’t one.
Go big. Every time.
To pose another rhetorical question: What’s more evil than using money that could go toward helping others for entirely frivolous displays of status? Again: Not a thing. So put that paper to bad use in one of the following ways:
Build an Impossible Lair
In my previous book, I listed the various types of lairs one might consider. But really, that choice is all about personal preference and comfort. If you want a lair that really goads your evil rep, what you absolutely need is something that is basically impossible:
• An ice palace in the center of the Earth;
• A space fortress with bay windows you can open;
• An underwater lab made out of fish food.
Whatever it is, make it incredibly huge and insanely impractical. The more you spend on this confounding artifact, the more astonished anyone who meets you will be.
Obtain Precious Material-Related Scars and Injuries
While this is more the purview of James Bond-style spy villains rather than superhero-fighting supervillains, it’s a worthy page to steal from their playbook. Some diamonds embedded in your left eye socket, a giant scar down your arm made out of platinum, or a colostomy bag full of Cristal Champagne lets everyone know that you don’t just buy the most expensive stuff. You are the most expensive stuff.
Buy More Vehicles than You Can Possibly Use
In Chapter 3, I listed the numerous options you have when it comes to getting around town and told you to pick the one that best suits you. But here
’s a little secret: If you have enough power and money, you can travel in all those ways . . . and more. Make your lair its own vehicle. Pay some people to let you ride around on them like horses (or worse yet, don’t pay them). Buy a helicopter. Then buy a jumbo jet for your helicopter. Then put those in a blimp. Make a turducken of vehicles. Then crash them whenever you feel like it. People who can barely afford the payments on their 1997 Honda Civic will despise and fear you in ways you can’t even imagine.
Wear a New Pair of Socks Every Day
There’s nothing particularly evil about doing this, other than the wastefulness (I advise you to burn each pair as soon as you take them off to ensure no one else can be blessed by wearing socks that have adorned your almighty feet), but wouldn’t it just be the coolest thing ever to wear new socks every day? Let me tell you: It is.
Start or Invest in Legitimate Businesses
One of the ways to really cheese off people who have nothing is to do that thing all rich people do: Earn money by having money. So shove your privilege in their faces by dumping loads of cash into businesses and reaping the reward of their profits. Of course, the one downside to this is that most businesses would prefer to keep their distance from outright evil causes, since the consumers who buy their products aren’t always totally into that stuff. That’s why you’ve got to make sure to brand everything you get involved in so that it has a sheen of “goodness,” or whatever that is. Consider these examples next time you want to christen a business and make it more palatable to the masses:
The Supervillain Field Manual Page 12
