Painful Villain #3

We're coming into the home stretch, and the villians are just reeking with boredom.

If you've been reading this, one theme that we've seen a few times is "one trick ponies." Those are the villians that can make a good storyline. Sometimes, with good writing, you can drag a couple of more stories out of them. After that, their abilities, or motivations, or nature just make them absolutely redundant.

What's even worse, is when you get "one trick ponies" who are stupid to boot. I mean, if a guy who only has one gimmick in his bag is at least a bit clever, you can put a little variation in that way (we're talking about you) . However, when you start getting into the characters that even Gilligan thinks are idiots, there's only so much you can do with them.

That's where you end up with Number three on our list To find this schmoe, you have to go hunting in the rogue file of the Big Blue Boyscout himself. I'll be honest, it's got to be pretty tough to come up with decent Superman villains. Sure, Lex is top shelf, and Brainiac isn't bad either. It's after that when things get a bit tetchy. So, why not come up with a villain that can suck the power/life/knowledge out of our hero? Sounds like an idea, right? Well, it might have, except that they also made him an utter idiot. On the one hand, that makes him beatable, but it also making him boring. Yep, our exercise in tedium today is the Parasite.

It's not that the idea is bad. It really isn't. It's that, once you've told the story, what else is there to do with him? Sure, you can then send him off to do the superhero circuit. "Ok, I couldn't beat Superman... I'll try Wonder Woman... er Flash...er Black Lighting, er, Green Arrow, er Speedy!", but even that would get old.

So, someone give the DCU a nice deworming and put this parasite out of my misery.

Tomorrow, #2, and we're dipping into Spiderman's rogues gallery. A group I've always found to be sadly overrated. I'd live to make Kraven #2, but frankly, I get violently ill every time I even see that character, so it's another one. Bring the drammamine!