Trade Paperbacks/Graphic Novels – Like I just got done saying above, this is probably not for the comic book fan, they are going to have a number of these, but there are plenty of options for people who like the shows or the movies to get them a trade paperback or two. I’d recommend sticking to some big storylines that the person might be a bit more familiar with, or the start of an authors run with a character. If you want to get a Thor trade paperback, don’t grab Thor volume 12, that might be confusing. But there are a lot of great options, volume ones for characters, or compendiums, as often those cherry pick out a few of the bigger story arcs for a character. But then there are bigger stories that you can look at as well. Infinity Gauntlet, Civil War, or Secret Invasion would all be good Marvel comics to get a fan of the movies. The DC shows are currently doing or starting soon Crisis on Infinite Earths, that’s a TPB you could grab, or an iconic Batman story, like The Killing Joke.

Funko Figures – You’re familiar with them, the big headed toys that are for a million different types of characters. I currently have two Stranger Things and Alice Cooper with me at work. But there are a ton of Marvel and DC ones for this. And you can even get it in game form if you want with the DC Funkoverse game. But you can also find unique ones to give as well, there was a whole run for Marvel Funko figures where they were all gold, so if someone already has some, it’s a unique different one. There is also Deadpool dressed up as Bob Ross. There are so many unique ones that it would take a while to list them all, and there can be rarer ones that, if you want, you can track down on eBay. I personally like them as something to put up in my cube at work, because they are pretty small.

Action Figures – Slightly different from Funko figures. Those are more of a caricature of the characters they are. Action figures are going to be closer to the comics and often tied directly into a storyline from the comics. I had a Magneto standing over a destroyed Xavier’s School for Gifted Children. Or Cat Woman stealing a gem from a safe in a Spiderman scene. These figures are also articulated so that you can pose them. Depending on what you get, they can run a little bit more than a Funko figure would. I personally really like the Diamond Select Marvel figures, which may or may not be made anymore, but I have been able to find on Amazon. DC has some nice ones as well. With these, since they can tie into a story as well, you can sometimes tailor it to a big event in the comics that is the person’s favorite.

Disney+/HBOMax – Give the joy of streaming this Christmas and give someone a few months of Disney+ or HBOMax, I could say, give the person a movie or a season of a TV show, but that is something they might already have. With Disney+ or when it comes out the new HBO streaming service (I believe it’s HBOMax) will have Marvel and DC respectively. If someone has been curious about the DC shows like Titans or Doom Patrol, that’s going to be a spot for them to check it out. Or if someone has been a Marvel fan for a long time, they can go back and watch classic episodes of the 1990’s animated Spider-Man or X-Men on Disney+. Plus, Disney+ has more streaming, like the majority of the MCU movies.

Marvel Legendary/Champions – I found a way to fit board games onto this list, and this is for someone who already likes board games. If they are a Marvel fan, both Marvel Legendary and Marvel Champions would be enjoyable for them. The games are two different types of deck builders where the players are trying to take out a villain and stop their evil schemes before it’s too late. Marvel Legendary is later in it’s life cycle where it has a million expansions, which aren’t needed. But if someone already has the game, you can probably find an expansion that they don’t have. Marvel Champions will be getting more expansions over time. The other good thing about Marvel Legendary is that you can tailor it, with the expansions, to make sure the person is getting their favorite character in the game.

Five Minute Marvel/DC Spyfall – Now, if you want lighter games, these are a couple of other options for board games. DC Spyfall is a social deduction game with the DC characters. You are trying to figure out who the bad guy is, but each character has their own unique powers as well that you can use. In Five Minute Marvel, it’s a very fast card driven game that plays, as the name says, in five minutes. It’s also where I got the name for my podcast #10MinMarvel. Especially Five Minute Marvel is going to be good to play with kids as well, because it is a fast paced game and the theme works while being a simple game. Both of these will work well with adults also, so it’s not just for kids, in fact, DC Spyfall, while being fairly simple, might be a concept that is a bit trickier for younger kids.

Artwork – I don’t think that you need to do commissioned superhero pieces, but there are plenty of cool art pieces out there. You can find unique ones on Etsy, or official ones, such as movie posters or even frame some comic books. In our house, we have a couple of pictures that are framed comic books. I have generally used a slightly larger frame with double glass, so no back cardboard on it, and then you just center up a comic in it. I also like using older comics as it gives the look a coop retro vibe. And while there are certainly very expensive older comics out there for beloved stories, you can find a lot of cheap ones that also have cool covers. This is a good option for someone who likes the comics and the movies, and has a lot of those things, but maybe is moving out on their own or needs someone to hang up.

There are going to be more options to give to that superhero fan in your life. Lego, for example, does awesome superhero sets, or there are video games, other board games, RPG’s (though not specific to Marvel or DC currently) and more. I think what I’ve listed out is going to do well for a good age range of superhero fans and you’ll be able to tailor it to them a little bit more. They are also not extremely expensive whereas some things, like Lego, can be quite expensive for larger sets. Hopefully there is some idea for that superhero fan in your life.

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I think one of the strongest ways you can create an effective villain is to have a character who doesn’t think what they are doing is wrong or to have some more motivation than just being a villainous character. This will be one of the biggest points for Killmonger versus Ares. Ares, as a villain, is the god of war. As a villain, that isn’t that strong a motivator other than that is literally who he is. He wants there to be war. Compare that to Killmonger. Killmonger is also trying to set-up war, but he’s doing it for more reasons than just wanting war. Killmonger is seeking out war as a way of revenge, but also to change the world. There is a piece of him that knows how he’s going about stuff is wrong, but he doesn’t care, as the ends justify the means. He wants to create a world where those he views as oppressed can now rule and likely be the oppressor, but he doesn’t think about it that way, he thinks that he is doing something good.

The best villains often believe that they are doing something good. It’s hard to see a lot of the time, but when twisting it from their perspective, they see something as good. Even the right to rule for a villain is often them seeing it as the good and right thing to do. They’d do better than who is there right now. Granted, it would be worse for everyone else, but they don’t see it that way, they are thinking about what is good for themselves and don’t see what they are doing as evil. It’s an interesting way to look at things, but going back to Killmonger and Ares, it is something that gives Killmonger a lot more depth than Ares.

I’ll give DC some credit though with Ares. I think he’s one of the first DC villains that they could have had an interesting take on and made him someone who really manipulates from the background and only does that. Instead, they tried to make it that first, and then turn him into whom he is in the comics, with his armor and the big battle and basically made him an ineffective villain. Killmonger is instead of a villain who is trying to create some sort of change because they think it will be better and the ends justify the means, and there is also a large piece of hatred and revenge thrown in.

But, beyond those, why does it matter so much to have a villain that thinks they are doing good? I’ve already talked about it some, but it really is the crux to having a great villain. Sure, you can have memorable traits for a villain, like the Joker from The Dark Knight, but when it comes down to it, the Joker is a character who is crazy who does crazy things. His motivations aren’t that strong, but when you have a villain who has strong motivations from a place where they are seeking for something, that makes a great villain. They don’t have to be the muscle, they don’t have to always be on the scene, but someone who has a plan and is looking to complete it for the betterment of themselves or a select group of people or for revenge is a lot of fun to see or read about.

What else is important for a villain? I think one thing that often gets overlooked is having a backstory for the villain. Now, this is something that a lot of writers do well at, but there are a number of times where the villain doesn’t seem to have the background that they should. Even if the whole thing isn’t laid out, as a writer or dungeon master, you should know something about who the villain is. This can tie into them thinking that they are doing the right thing, but another way to look at it is it determines how they do things. A villain who grew up on the streets and is leading their own personal army to get into power might be looking at power as a way to say, I told you so or for riches, versus control over people, because they had nothing, and now they want things and everyone to see that they have things. Other characters might seek power for the ability to rule because they believe they can rule better or deserve to rule.

Keeping with the example of wanting power, it can be broken down in different ways besides the end goal. How someone gets to that end goal can also vary a lot. From the backstory of the villain, you are going to know if they are leading the charge, controlling things from the back of the battlefield, waging a war of mind games, or seeking all the attention that they can get. All of these things make your villain feel unique. Unique is probably the word that I should have started with in terms of backstory and why it  matters. You don’t want your bad guy to feel like just another bad guy.

A great example of someone who creates unique villains is Stephen King. In Under the Dome, the villain is truly horrible in terms of what he does. It’s still probable that he sees himself as a good guy, though it’s hard to know how. He does so many just horrible things to the other people in the town all with his desire to have power and rule and be right. You feel dirty in many ways after reading his character. That character is unique to It where it’s a much greater being that almost toys with people. However, there’s the human villain in It, who is again a horrible character, but he’s driven as a kid as being a bully, and as an adult as trying to relive his glory years in many ways. You can see how the character grows over time.

I do want to talk about one last type of villain. I don’t know how to describe it and it’s a character who is so heavily steeped in doing the right thing that they lose focus but seem like they can regain focus on it. It is really the antihero character, where you’re watching the hero be a villain. In Code Geass, Lelouch is trying to make a safer world for his sister and get revenge on his father, the Emperor of Britannia. His methods can at best be described as suspect and his power to control other people ends up causing as much trouble as you’d expect. His power ends up with characters you like way more than him being killed, and he keeps on going further and further down the villainous pathway. While I have issues with the show, and I’ll likely write a review on that soon, it’s interesting to see someone become a villain and have a level of awareness at times that they are a villain and how that can create an interesting story.

The above example is probably  harder to pull off. By the time Lelouch is really headed down the villainous path, I was too far in to stop watching, I might have. There are certainly plenty of shows, books, and movies with anti-heroes or no clear cut good character, but there’s a balance of weight that you have to go with when making a villainous main character as it’s very easy to drift into something that is too dark or only depressing. I think you could make an argument with the book The Magicians, that the main character is practically a villain and he really doesn’t have redeeming qualities or ever get redeemed, the book ends up just being negativity piled on top of negativity and is a weak book because of that whereas Code Geass does a better job balancing out that weight with some levity and not just having the main character be bad.

What are some examples that you love of a character who is unique and believes that they are doing the right thing? Who are your favorite villains in books/tv shows/movies?

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Robin: Yes, this is Batman’s Robin, Dick Grayson. He is the leader of the team, and generally quite serious about that what they do as a team. He is probably better known as Batman’s sidekick, but through Teen Titans and other iterations, he has started to make a name of himself.

Cyborg: Cyborg is a genius, being made that way by his parents. However, when things break down in a laboratory experiment that his parents are doing, and his mother dies and he is injured, he becomes the man/teen that is part human and part machine. He joined up with the Teen Titans because like him, they weren’t normal, and they didn’t have a normal existence.

Starfire: An alien that has come to earth, Starfire, was a princess on her home planet and set to take over as a ruler, passing up her older sister. Her powers are based around the fact that she can absorb energy and then use that to fly. She is extremely friendly, too a fault, which makes for interesting situations for the Teen Titans since she does not fully understand human interactions.

Raven: Raven is the daughter of the demon Trigon, her mother was not a demon, however. This gives Raven an unique set of abilities.  Her father wanted to convince her to join him, and as she understood that was happening, she fled to Earth and joined the Teen Titans. Her abilities are magical in nature, and she can open doors between dimensions, realities, and perform many other forms of magic.

Beast Boy: Beast Boy can turn into many different creatures. He is, I would say, similar to Spiderman, in that he falls into the category of characters who are often relied upon for comic relief. Like Cyborg his parents kind of screwed him over, he was traveling with his parents while they were studying a type of green monkey, he was bitten, and gained the ability to transform.

This seems very short to touch on each of the characters, and while they do have arcs and stories of their own that you can check out, I wanted to focus on the aspect of the Teen Titans and the different iterations that come. Currently the television version of the show is very chibi and cute, that teaches you lessons that you should never learn. However, they had an animated series earlier in the 2000’s that was quite serious.

Also, there is a difference in the comics now and what I listed above for members of the Teen Titans. The ones that I have listed are the classic members of the Titans, but now Nightwing, Donna Troy, Flash, Tempest, and Omen are members of the Titans. Like any super hero group, they change who is in them fairly often, however, there are always some who are considered to be the classic members. They have a number of different bad guys whom the fight out of their tower in Jump City.

PS. Here’s us as Beast Boy and Raven.
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Flash/Barry Allen: The fastest man alive, The Flash — not to be mistaken with Flash Gordon — can run faster than the human eye can see. Barry Allen started out as a police scientist until one day he was given super speed thanks to some lightning and chemicals that spilled on him. It’s kind of the normal superhero beginning, someone who sees what is wrong with the world is given powers in a freak accident. The Flash is in many ways comic relief in the comics. He is often given the one-liners, and in the Justice League with Superman and Batman being two very serious characters, he brings in some levity.

Green Arrow/Oliver Queen: Son of a rich mogul, he was very much the drunken playboy. Fancying himself a Robin Hood-type figure, he went after the corruption in Star City and those who would seek to bring the city down, after his parents were killed when he wasn’t brave enough to kill the lions mauling them (we’ll give him a pass since he was a kid with a bow and arrow and they were lions). He, in many ways, follows the Batman trope. His parents were killed in front of him, and he has taken on a city as his own, to fight for it and to kick the bad guys out of it. However, Queen’s playboy past is something that can still show up in his comics, and he is a much lighter character than Batman.

Firestorm: Another laboratory accident (it is a serious issue of safety in both Marvel and DC), Firestorm is not one person, but two people whose powers work together. One part is the physical person, who controls the powers, and the other, often smarter person acts as a voice in the physical person’s head, and gives advice as to what they could do and how they could win the situation. The voice in the head doesn’t have power. Firestorm is very much a side character who shows up in different versions of the Justice League.

Martian Manhunter/J’onn J’onzz: J’onn J’onzz is a Martian from Mars. However, he came around to the good side. Now as a shape shifting alien with telepathic abilities and a few other things that he can do, he works along side the Justice League. After being brought to Earth in a teleportation accident, he decided that he would fight crime. No real reason for it, but it seemed like the right thing to do. I really enjoy his stories, but definitely is a bit more of a side character.

Aquaman/Arthur Curry: He is one of my personal favorite DC characters. Why you might ask? Because he has interesting powers, and if they are used correctly, it can create interesting stories. Plus he is from Atlantis, and the ruler. They have struggled to tell really good stories with him, and he gets used as a punchline in the same way that Cyclops does with the X-Men. But when written well, Aquaman, Mera, and the enemies that they face off against have some interesting stories to tell. And just be adding in the land of Atlantis, they are able to tell stories around him with some more fantastical elements.

How much do you like Aquaman or have you not even read any of his comics? If so, let me know, and I can help you figure out where to start.

 
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Superman: The Son of Krypton, and for much of his time, he thought that the last of his race. Sent to earth as a young child, Superman was raised by two human parents before finding out how truly different he was. Superman lives up to his name, in that he is about as powerful as any hero out there. He is the Man of Steel, he can fly, he has X-Ray vision, and is generally pretty immune to most things. So, how do you make an interesting story off of that? I would argue that is where the movies have struggled greatly, it is hard to make that interesting a story when you hero is basically all powerful, but where good Superman stories work isn’t about something being stronger or tougher than him, but someone being able to manipulate him and put him into a situation that isn’t nearly as favorable as he tries to keep make himself appear. As an alien, he just isn’t completely sure of his place in humanity and often anointing himself the protector of humanity he gets himself into troubles because he can’t live up to the level of good that he and society hold him to.

Batman: Probably more famous than Superman, Batman is the terror that flaps in the night… wait, that’s Darkwing Duck, but Batman is the Dark Knight, he considers himself outside the law, seeing governments become corrupt, and he brings justice to the bad guys, often by sending them off to jail, but he is able to operate outside the law. In the real world he is rich kid Bruce Wayne whose parents were killed in front of him as a young kid. He has used that to fuel his desire to clean up the streets of his Gotham and turn it the great city that his father wanted it to be. However, Batman seems to attract villains (it would be boring if he didn’t), and he attracts the real crazy villains. Batman, at times, can be a fairly straightforward character, but his villains are unparalleled in either DC or Marvel.

Wonder Woman: She is a princess on her own island and part of the race of Amazonians. Her race and lineage are based off of that of Greek mythology. She leaves her island after an airplane pilot crashes there and needs help to be taken back to civilization. Once in humanity as a whole, she realizes that she can do good with her lasso of truth and bracelets that can deflect bullets. She strives to provide justice not as much through violence and destruction but through reconciliation, or at least she did originally. My experience with Wonder Woman is primarily based out off Justice League and most interesting when she is part of the group. I’m sure that she has some very good solo adventures, but many of her villains are Justice League villains, or not that great in terms of villains.

Green Lantern/Hal Jordan: I’m specifying which Green Lantern, because there are several of them. Hal Jordan was an airplane pilot and a bit of a thrill junky. His life was a struggle though as he followed in his father’s footsteps as a pilot, facing the demons that came along with that since his father has passed away in a plane crash. That didn’t stop Hal Jordan, but his life changed when an alien crashed onto Earth and was dying. He passed on a green ring to Hal which turned him into the Green Lantern. The Green Lantern is a major player in the whole DC Universe, going far beyond Earth, fighting other alien races, and struggling the skirmishes between the different lantern colors. His stories often are the Earth or Universe shattering events, and a lot of the time in the larger cosmic and DC Universe events that involve all the characters, the Green Lantern is one of the main players.

That is just a start on superheroes from DC. Are you looking forward to the Wonder Woman movie?

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