Somnopolis

I recently watched the Nostalgia Critic’s Top 11 Villains songs piece and found it disappointing. I think in the main it’s because I agree with his statement that the villain generally gets the best tunes. To me though they should be show-stoppers, or slyly humourous, letting audiences in on the secret that sometimes it’s good to be bad.

Disney has come up with some classic villains and I note that the Nostalgic Critic has focused on them. I have chosen more life-action examples. Also I have stuck to songs from films, which rules out The Mighty Boosh’s Hitcher and Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog.  So while any of these lists are subjective, the songs below are in my opinion some of the more enjoyable examples of vilainous ditties.

Why did I choose only nine? Because I just couldn’t be bothered

The Return of Captain Invincible is a superhero film with a difference. Starring Alan Arkin as an alcoholic superman and Christopher Lee as the villain (of course), this is also a musical in the vein of Rocky Horror. In this scene Lee sings Choose Your Poison, breaking the morale of the vulnerable hero at the climax of the film.

Gremlins 2 is Joe Dante’s lovesong to Warner Brothers cartoons,  a life-action pastiche of Chuck Jones inspired mayhem. The director was given carte blanche to reinvent his own original movie, as the studio in question were unable to produce a suitable sequel. And he returned to them a script that featured this little number.

Baz Luhrman’s Moulin Rouge is more than a musical. It’s a camp pop medley that segues from one ballad to another from moment to moment. What makes it for me is the evident commitment from the performers on screen. Who knew Jim Broadbent could look so good wrapped in a shawl pouting at the camera? Ok…maybe not, but it was a surprise! This take on Madonna’s Like A Virgin moves from Broadbent wildly improvising to mollify the Duke, to a full-blown song and dance number that ends with the villain morphing into Bela Lugosi right before our eyes. Great fun.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast owes a lot to Jean Cocteau’s original film. Yet the surrealist classic doesn’t feature crowd pleasing songs. Here the villain Gaston, loosely modelled on Jean Marais, whips up a mob with fear of the Beast.

Could this be the best David Bowie music video? Well it’s better than Absolute Beginners anyway. Also a neat tribute to M. C. Escher.

Now as I’m avoiding the Nostalgia Critic’s choices, it seems odd to choose the same film. But honestly while Steve Martin gets the laughs as the dentist, Audrey II’s cry of ‘Feed Me Seymour’ beats it hands down. The Little Shop of Horrors – It’s just as much fun as you remember.

Matt Stone and Trey Parker have joked that their inspiration for this song from Team America was the hope that it would get an Oscar nomination and maybe inspire reclusive dictator and film fanatic Kim Jong Il to sing it himself at the ceremony. Not bloody likely.

The Southpark boys once more. Doing what Milton couldn’t do for people who were unable to finish Paradise Lost…make Satan sympathetic.

Ron Moody’s Fagin in the 1968 film production of Oliver! also gives us a sympathetic villain. A man who uses child pick-pockets and lives off the proceeds of their crimes. And yet you still like him somehow.

The debut novel of Austin Grossman is a strange beast. It’s a novel that at its heart is a love letter to comic books, the bastard cousin of the more refined print-based artform, criticised in the past as a childish interest suitable only for illiterates. Grossman himself is feted as a newcomer to genre fiction, although a quick wiki reveals his father is a poet, his mother a novelist, his twin brother also a writer, his sister a scultor – and Grossman himself well-known in the computer game industry for his involvement in

• Ultima Underworld II
• System Shock
• Deus Ex
• Thief: Deadly Shadows
• Tomb Raider: Legend

Plot based Role-Playing Games for the most part, hardly the usual first-time author juvenalia. He’s even written for the New York Times! Then there’s the promotional artwork of Bryan Hitch that features in the book, the comic-book artist credited with inventing the ‘widescreen’, aesthetic that has allowed comics to further ape the visual excesses of big budget summer blockbuster movies. Not the typical amateur cover art then.

Thankfully Soon I Will Be Invincible carries the weight of expectation ably. Its knowing title is a clue to the awareness Grossman brings to the comic book tropes on show. The story focuses on two first-person narratives. Doctor Impossible, a twelve-time imprisoned supervillain who has a horrible habit of blurting his secret plans and blames his villainous behaviour on a personality disorder; and Fatale, a new superheroine plagued by self-doubt in the typical Modern Age fashion, whose tragic origin allows for that other great trope of contemporary comics, the fetishizing of the female body courtesy of her cybernetic implants. Star Trek: Voyager’s Seven-of-Nine meets Brian Michael Bendis’ Alias.

Doctor Impossible, the arch supervillain who just will not quit trying to take over the world, is the stronger character of the two. Given the title I suspect the original draft may have solely focused on his attempts to defeat the hero team The Champions. Perhaps Grossman felt this was too narrow. In any case courtesy of the two POV characters we follow the progression of the plot, with the heroes attempting to stop Doctor Impossible following his latest jailbreak and solve the mystery of their colleague CoreFire’s disappearance.

We are invited to sympathize with the villainous Doc, despite his continued efforts to takeover the world. Even he is unable to explain exactly why he acts as he does. He appears to be of the opinion that his vast intellect actually drives him to be evil, that to see the world as he does predestines supervillainy. In that he follows the Stan Lee tradition of villains who are at times misunderstood, occasionally even noble. Doctor Doom may be a totalitarian dictator whose hatred of Reed Richards is spurred on by vanity – but he also is a bereft son, whose study of the occult was undertaken to rescue his gypsy mother from demons. In Kevin Smith’s Mallrats Lee makes a cameo appearance and delivers dialogue he wrote for the Spider-Man villain the Vulture, which revealed a vulnerable side to the costumed criminal another writer may have ignored.

Grossman’s Doctor Impossible is also not a world away from Joss Whedon’s Dr Horrible, or The Venture Brothers’ The Monarch – both ultimately delusional romantics who have been left disillusioned by the world. The heroes to them are merely the next stage in development of the schoolyard bullies they grew up with. CoreFire’s invulnerability lends him a smugness that’s similar to Whedon’s Captain Hammer: Everyone’s a hero in their own way / Everyone’s got villains they must face / They’re not as cool as mine / But folks you know it’s fine to know your place

The post-Marvel Age, post-Watchmen deconstruction trend allowed writers to re-examine superheroes with regard to their motivations and true intent. Batman became a psychopath, the X-Men child soldiers in a battle of ideologies, Superman a fascist boyscout and the Incredible Hulk a victim of abuse. Grossman plays with this exaggerated comic book ‘realism’, but undercuts it with genuine affection for supers.

At one point Fatale even wonders self-consciously if we have entered a ‘Rust Age’, in keeping with the classifying of different comic book periods as Golden Age, Silver Age etc. The general rule of thumb is that the earlier comic books represent a more hopeful era. Comic book historians have to turn a blind eye to the prevalent racism and misogyny to maintain such a claim, but it’s one that still holds some currency. Fatale herself, with her badgirl look and militarised powers is firmly in keeping with the modern era’s blending of sex and violence. Grossman has her repeatedly question her origins though, obscured by a convenient bout of amnesia and in that query the treatment of characters like Fatale, who are oftentimes designed to titillate rather than exist as independent female superheroes. That this all becomes a function of the plot itself displays just how much Grossman intended the book to be both a critique and a homage to the comics he loves.

Soon I Will Be Invincible I was gratified to discover is much more than a printed version of some gamer’s Champion’s campaign. It’s quite possibly the most entertaining book about comics since Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.