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Post by masterofquackfu on Jul 11, 2016 9:22:11 GMT -5
I always wondered why villain teams books never were really considered by any of the big companies. I don't count the Thunderbolts because they were pretending to be "good." Even if you did a few trial runs..or a limited series..why not give the villains a chance. All we ever know about them are tidbits whenever they are randomly chosen by the artists/writers who give us brief glimpses of their history. I thin you could get the same drama, pathos, action as much as any super-hero title. We know everything about the heroes, but the villains are treated as merely as jobber for the most part. All designed to make the heroes look good. "But people won't buy books about villains?" Why not? Most people would be curious to know about the extended history of these characters and also see how they live and commit their crimes. I know I would definitely have bought these type of books. I mean, I'd love to see some adventures of the Headmen? I'd love to know more about the U-Foes. How about the Circus of Crime? And, of course, the Wrecking Crew..would love to see them undertake adventures and develop depth for each of the characters. It is really irritating to know that the Human Fly and even freaking NFL Super pro got their books and had more adventures, have more history, than most teams that are older than they are. Anyhow, it would be nice if we could see more depth..history for the villains and the villain teams.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2016 9:44:34 GMT -5
I know exactly what you think here and I feel very much the same way as you do and I don't think that any company wants to do one because it's may cause negative vibes here and that's can be a turn off for many readers that think that villains should not have their own team books.
It's really sad that most of the readers don't think about these days ...
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 11, 2016 9:48:31 GMT -5
Well, Marvel's Super-Villains Team-up ran long enough to warrant its own Essential... It might not have been an A-lister, but it had a few cool stories (including seeing Adolf Hitler's soul trapped in a defective cosmic cube!)
DC published its own Secret Society of super-villains too, if I'm not mistaken?
And after the way they treated Cyclops after the AvX event, I see Captain America and Wolverine as super-villains. Hmph!!!
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Post by hondobrode on Jul 11, 2016 9:51:06 GMT -5
Yeah, it would be cool.
We've had team books in the past, like Secret Society of Super-Villains or Super-Villain Team-Up, or mini-series like Books of Doom or Magneto or even regular ongoings like Kobra or The Joker.
I'm not sure how to classify Harley Quinn exactly, but she might be the best current example of a villainess carrying her own title, and quite successfully too.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 11, 2016 9:55:12 GMT -5
Is Lucifer considered a bad guy?  |
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 11, 2016 10:11:54 GMT -5
DC published its own Secret Society of super-villains too, if I'm not mistaken? I loved that book! Still got the full run.  |
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Post by The Captain on Jul 11, 2016 11:16:07 GMT -5
I see the reasons there are not more villain team books as three-fold.
1. If you have villains as protagonists, then by extension, the heroes are the antagonists. Crafting a paradigm like that requires that the reader must, at least subconsciously, root for the villains. Otherwise, the villains should have just appeared in the heroes' books and there would be no need for this.
2. Delving into villains' backstories only serves to humanize them, making them more sympathetic. It's how the movie that showed Hannibal Lecter as a kid damaged the character, because the viewer was shown the circumstances as to why he became a cannibal, and knowing that it was something horrific made him less scary rather than the prior belief that he either chose to be a cannibal or he was just totally messed up. Someone or something else was to blame, making him less evil.
3. Villains don't tend to play nice together. Each has his/her own agenda and reason for their actions, so when those are at odds with their teammates, a logical response would be violence, because that is what they would do if a hero tried to stop them. However, that would cast one character as sympathetic if the reader felt that position was justified, making the other one the actual villainous position and thus creating a weird dynamic within the team.
I'm not saying it can't be done, but there is a lot to overcome to make it work.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 11, 2016 12:42:49 GMT -5
Superior Foes of Spider-Man was a recent book in this vein. It got all kinds of critical love, but just didn't sell well to keep going. It's why Super-Villain Team-Up kept getting put on hiatus and cancelled, why Secret Society of Super-Villains didn't last long, why the Joker series was so short lived, etc. The bottom line is villain books haven't sold well enough when they have been tried to give companies reason to do more of them. Comics is and has always been a copycat business where if something does well, you will see tons more things just like it. The fact you haven't seen tons of villain books even though some have been tried tells you they weren't successful enough for publishers to jump on the bandwagon and do more. The most successful of these ventures was the 80's Suicide Squad book by Ostrander-it ran for about 60 or so issues, and even that had some heroes and anti-heroes mixed into the cast rather than be a straight villain book.
When Marvel was first entering the book market with the Fireside books-Origins and Son of Origins did gangbusters in sales, the third volume-Bring on the Bad Guys...not so much.
So it's not that villain books weren't considered by the big companies, they were, and even green lit, and published and promoted, it's that they weren't considered something worth buying in enough numbers to be successful by the customer base.
-M
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Post by tingramretro on Jul 11, 2016 13:31:19 GMT -5
Delving into villains' backstories only serves to humanize them, making them more sympathetic. But that's exactly why I like villain books ... |
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Post by Rob Allen on Jul 11, 2016 13:41:08 GMT -5
When it was published, Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up was the only comic book title ever with three hyphens in its name.
Have there been any others since then?
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 11, 2016 15:28:39 GMT -5
I consider Suicide Squad from the 80's to be villain book. They were mostly scum.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Jul 11, 2016 16:40:26 GMT -5
Well, Marvel's Super-Villains Team-up ran long enough to warrant its own Essential... It might not have been an A-lister, but it had a few cool stories (including seeing Adolf Hitler's soul trapped in a defective cosmic cube!) DC published its own Secret Society of super-villains too, if I'm not mistaken? And after the way they treated Cyclops after the AvX event, I see Captain America and Wolverine as a super-villain. Hmph!!! Super-Villain Team up isn't really a team book though, it's really mostly the continuation of Namor's book.. with his on and off team up/hatred of Doom the focus. Later, it becomes Doom and X villain, but it's never a team book. SSoSV definitely qualifies, from what people have said.. I gotta read that one of these days. |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Jul 11, 2016 17:25:08 GMT -5
Superior Foes of Spider-Man was a recent book in this vein. It got all kinds of critical love, but just didn't sell well to keep going. I bought the first two issues of that title and thought that it was pretty uninteresting and really forgettable. That's only my personal opinion, of course, so take it for what it's worth. I think the number one reason super-villain team-up titles are rare is because comic books function as a kind of wish fulfilment or power fantasy for readers and, deep down, most readers want to be heroic themselves. Therefore they want to read about a hero and root for that hero, even if it's an anti-hero, a la Jonah Hex or Judge Dredd. Not many people want to be the villain, not really. I do think it's as simple as that. |
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Jul 11, 2016 17:35:28 GMT -5
When it was published, Giant-Size Super-Villain Team-Up was the only comic book title ever with three hyphens in its name. Have there been any others since then? Unfortunately, Arms-fall-off-boy team-up was never given a fair chance. |
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Post by foxley on Jul 11, 2016 18:46:37 GMT -5
Secret Six is a recent, highly successful villain team-up book.
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