Superheroes continue to dominate popular culture. By the end of the year, movie theaters will have shown “Justice League: Part One,’’ “LEGO Batman,’’ “Logan,’’ “Thor: Ragnarok,’’ “Spider-Man: Homecoming,’’ and “Wonder Woman.’’ TV is almost as super-centric.
Spandex-clad heroes always squash the bad guys, except in one area: comparisons. The word “supervillain’’ is the nexus of two forces: comic-book properties taking over the world and exaggerations dominating the Internet. Vilifying isn’t enough anymore. We need to super-villify.
Supervillain comparisons don’t range all over the map: They cluster around the powerful. The Golden State Warriors, who have set a record for most wins in a three-year period, are an NBA dynasty in the making, and their dominance spawns questions like a recent headline from The Guardian: “Was Steph Curry’s transformation into an NBA supervillain inevitable?’’ A Newsweek article takes a poke at one of the world’s most notorious authoritarians: “Putin’s Supervillain Adventures Have Cost Him Dear.’’ Financial magazine Benzinga gives “6 Examples of Billionaires Acting Like Supervillains.’’ Whether you’re dominant due to your bank account, repressive regime, or 3-point shot, you’re apt to be compared to the likes of Dr. Doom.
Donald Trump is a magnet for such comparisons. An AV Club headline proclaims, “Chris Evans won’t stop fighting real-life supervillain Donald Trump.’’ Mark Hamill amused the Internet by reading Trump’s tweets in the voice of the Joker, and cartoonist R. Sikoryak drew Trump into classic comic-book covers accompanied by real Trump quotes. Similarly, Twitter account Pres. Supervillain (@PresVillain) photoshops Trump quotes into comic-book panels featuring Captain America’s Nazi nemesis, the Red Skull.
Elon Musk is also a top magnet for supervillain comparisons. A BGR post makes a droll observation: “Elon Musk, very normal non-supervillain, starts company to implant electrodes in your brain.’’ Tweeter @camolution echoed a common thought: “I feel like Elon Musk is one science experiment gone wrong away from becoming a supervillain.’’ These jokes and references play on the preponderance of supervillains who are scientific geniuses. The primordial predecessor of such scientific scumbags is Dr. Frankenstein — a pre-supervillain of sorts.
“Supervillain’’ predates comics, originally meaning an extra-evil person who didn’t necessarily have strange powers or super genius. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word back to at least 1912, quoting a description in Life magazine of the “heir apparent to an English dukedom, maniac in the making, and all around super-villain and arch fiend.’’ Then as now, the word was used to describe someone important — and take them down a peg or two.
Supervillain-spotting is propelled by the exaggeration-prone, hyberbolic, clickbaity world of the Internet, where Doomsday is always tomorrow. Jon Morris — author of the recently published “The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains’’ — says, “‘Supervillain’ is such an easy zinger for unlikable public personalities because it encapsulates the extreme of evil without tying it to a specific ideology of brutality, oppression, mendacity or what-have-you.’’ Morris said such language cartoonizes the target, making them “a campy two-dimensional figure lacking any real depth except what’s necessary to perpetuate their brand of evil deeds.’’
Supervillains like General Zod and Lex Luthor will probably be fighting Superman forever. The feeling that some real people are a mixture of evil and ridiculous is also timeless, so “supervillain’’ is a word with a promising future. Even Superman can’t save us from exaggeration.
Mark Peters is the author of the “Bull[expletive]: A Lexicon.’’ Follow him on Twitter @wordlust.
