Villain that works: Dr. Sivana

Celebrating what's good in villains (now that I evicerated my 10 Painful ones), we come to the gleefully evil Dr. Sivana.

At first, I wasn't that deeply impressed with him. After all, ho hum, if you've seen one mad scientist, you've seen them all. Yeah, Dr. S has roots that go back to the Golden Age, so you can't exactly call him a copycat, but even so, whoop de do.

Then I started reading him in the Power of Shazam books, and then his recent appearances in Outsiders. Color me much more impressed.

The story in Power of Shazam that really impressed me wasn't his first appearance, or even when he helped (sort of) defeat the mindworm swarm on Venus. No, it was clearly the story of what he did when he finally got a chance to mess around in the time stream.

Now, most villains, you dump them into the time stream, and give them a chance to pull a Biff Tanner, they'll be glaringly obvious. You see, the good Doctor went back and gave his past self a message about Billy Batson. Most mad scientists would have gone back and said "Make sure that Theo tracks down the Batson brat too. Oh, kill the girl to be sure." Not our good doctor. Even though it would be a couple of years before the Wizard gave the powers to Billy, Dr. S had another idea. His message to his past self? "Whatever you do... DON'T TOUCH THE BATSONS!" Even though the adult Batsons became Capt. Marvels in their own right (interesting timeshift story), he manages to coexist with them, and leave them alone. Because of that, he doesn't lose his wealth, his prestige or his business. A bit wimpy, to just say "hide from your foe," but it worked. Too bad the wizard decided to fix the timeline *L*

Then, his gleefully evil run in Outsiders. This is the way an evil mastermind should work. He's got a team that has given a decent challenge to the Titans in the past, and he's 3 steps ahead of them all. He's blocked Psimon from trying to control him, and the first time the team gets at all restive, he has a remote control laser give Gizmo a fatal lobotomy. His plan? He was having "the boys" attack Lexcorp holdings so he could manipulate the stock. With that, he bought his own tropical island, for his official mad scientist hangout. I could only laugh. Now, that's how a Supervillain is supposed to act.

In a way, I'd like to see the good Doctor as a member of the six, in place of Deathstroke (I like Slade, just think he's misplaced there.) On the other hand, not sure how well he and Lex would coexist.