Villains

When I was a little kid, I always wondered why Tom the cat never killed Jerry the mouse. Unlike Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote, who were pretty evenly matched pound for pound, Tom was a HUGE cat compared to Jerry. Intricate schemes aside, there were plenty of times that Tom had Jerry under the claw, but that crafty mouse would always turn the tables around somehow. My advice has always been, to both Tom and Wile E., to look to Elmer Fudd, who never altered from plan A.: kill the wabbit....with a shot-gun. Although equally unsuccessful, Elmer NEVER tried anything different, he didn't set up traps with bowling balls or spring-loaded knives, and he didn't mail order anything from an unreliable resource like Acme. He knew that if he kept on doing plan A. over and over and over, eventually he would catch that God damn rabbit sleeping and blast him to Kingdom Come.

My advice to the super-villain would be the same. Yes, the hero is going to turn the tables on you 99.9% of the time: they are usually too well-trained, or they're part of a larger, well-organized team, or they just get flat out lucky every single time. As a villain, super or not, you're going to get busted...a lot. However, every now again, not very often, but sometimes...the good guy will slip. Remember when Bane broke the Batman? How about when Captain America was assassinated? Ahh, good times, am I right? But I would definitely compare Wile E. Coyote to the Joker and I would compare Tom the cat to the Marvel character Apocalypse: both of them may look and talk scary, and they might cause a lot of collateral damage, but they fail to achieve their ultimate goal because they both consistently stray from whatever their original plan of action was. While the Joker is at least evenly matched with the Bat, Apocalypse dominates the majority of his heroic foes and yet he, like Tom, has a zero in the kills category because his schemes are too sketchy and he is too proud to learn from his mistakes.

I would also compare Elmer Fudd to Galactus: sshhh, I'm eating pwanets. Works EVERY time.

Racial diversity

Similar to the recent casts of Saturday Night Live, main-stream comics do not have enough prominent black women.  This is especially noticeable in the film versions, which are growing more and more popular every year; however, other than Halle Berry as Storm in the X-Men films, there seems to be no other black female super-heroines. In the upcoming and overlauded Superman vs.Batman, we will be treated to 3 of the whitest comic book heroes ever known: would it have been that much of a stretch or sacrilege to make Wonder Woman black? She is an Amazon, right? We've seen a black Kingpin in the Daredevil flick and a black Perry White in Superman (Samuel Jackson's Nick Fury used to be a white guy back in the day, also), so the transition is possible for ANY character, if the all powerful fans would allow it.  Of course, the die-hard fan-base wants to see the EXACT version of the comic character on the big screen, which is understandable, but it brings the argument back around to the fact that almost none of the major female characters in the DC or Marvel universe are black. While there has been development of Muslim, Latino, and Asian characters, both female and male, it seems that black super-heroines are stuck in the '70's as two-dimensional stereotypes for the occasional story arc that happens to occur in a lower urban setting.

Shape-shifting is the sexiest Super power

Do you think a transvestite character could be viable in a major comic-book, or is The Martian Manhunter (for D.C.) and Mystique (for Marvel) as close as it gets? Since Batwoman and Northstar both came out of the closet and were well-received, I think the world is ready for a she-male super-hero.

What are you?

If you could have any super power, what would it be? More specifically, what LEVEL would it be? Do you honestly believe that you have the moral responsibility necessary to control the unlimited power of a god, or would you be more satisfied with lesser abilities? And as far as moral responsibility goes, would you be a hero or a villain, or just use these powers in your everyday life?