So go watch Superman Returns and shut up.:roll:
Lex is exactly what you're describing, and he sucked in SR. You're clamoring for something that would have this whole board screaming "OH NOES ONE-DIMENSIONAL!!!".
I agree with Wade, and I've already argued in favor of the jerk-villain before.
We're not saying sympathetic villains are bad. We're not saying the jerk-villain is BETTER than the sympathetic villain either. But not ALL villains HAVE to be sympathetic.
But just because you TAKE AWAY the sympathetic angle when you design or conceive or create a villain, it doesnt MEAN that the villain is ONE-DIMENSIONAL. There's such a thing as a bad villain-jerk and a good villain-jerk.
The bad villain-jerk is the one that just dances around and is bad for the sake of being bad with no real rhyme or reason, like
Superman Returns' Lex Luthor. The good villain-jerk is the one who takes the circumstances handed to him and instead of transcending base desires and petty motivations, decides to kowtow to them.
I believe Brian Michael Bendis --- one of a pantheon of writers, good or bad, who tend to specialize in jerk villains (another noteable jerk-villain creator is Warren Ellis) --- wrote a scene in the very first issue of
Powers saying that "Anybody can keep their **** together on the good days. But it's the bad days that you really show people what you're made of."
This to me is the core essence of jerk-villains like Movie Eddie Brock and Ultimate Goblin and Planetary's "Four".
Eddie Brock was humiliated, supposedly orphaned, brought up by lousy foster parents --- He COULD'VE been sympathetic because of all thsoe things, but he acted in a manner to NOT invite sympathy. It's like okay, fine, you had a ****ty childhood, but you know what, that doesn't excuse you being a jerk. A ****ty childhood is not an excuse because thousands of famous, rich, powerful, noble, courageous people TRANSCENDED that kind of crap, so acting like a jerk doesn't make you deserving of ANY better.
Ultimate Goblin, Doom and Annihilus? They had large amounts of money, status and/or power, but instead of using that stuff to do better for people --- to make the world around them a BETTER place --- they decided to just act like asstards by trying to accumulate more money status and power, just CAUSE. Because "crazy and greedy is always looking for reasons to be crazy and greedy."
The superhero is defined by TWO things: a) transcending tragedy to rise above it, to keep his **** together in spite of the horrible circumstances thrown at him, and b) using the fortune bestowed upon him --- wealth, superpower, ancient artifacts, intelligence, mystical talent --- to make the world a better place. For finer worlds, and all that.
Supervillains are the opposite because they take their tragedy, and use it as a license to act like jerks because they're telling themselves they 'deserve better' and when fortune gives them power, they go ah, this is what i deserve and now they have license to act like elitist SUPER-jerks as retribution for the tragedies and indignities they may have suffered.
Being a jerk is not one-dimensional, inferior or shallower than the sophisticated super-villain.
And on that note,
Superman Returns' Lex Luthor FAILED not only as the sophisticate super villain, but as a jerk villain because he had no motivation. Singer almost sounded like he wanted to give him one, as there're hints of the Luthor psychology from Azzarello's
Lex Luthor: Man of Stee --- Luthor as secular humanist --- but it's all teases that don't go anywhere.
