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Underground > Comic Books >

The Villain Workshop

  
  

Page: 123(4)5678

 
 
Mario
15:02 / 16.03.06
According to the site, Mike Baron created him, but William Messner-Loebs did the most to develop him.
 
 
Hieronymus
16:41 / 16.03.06
Here's another sub-par candidate in need of a decent rogue or two:



Ragman. Given the revamp that Keith Giffen gave him in 92, this character's now ripe with Kabbalistic potential (I've always felt his costume and its patches of many colors was perfectly reflective of the either the Tree of Life or, given that they're evil souls, the Tree of Death).

So what sort of villains would a Jewish mystic/ superhero tackle?
 
 
Aertho
16:56 / 16.03.06
Oh man. He's one of those early nineties characters, right? You gotta give me a link; tell me a bit more about him. I was building a series of in-story villains for Guardian, but this guy might be more fun.
 
 
Mario
16:56 / 16.03.06
Well, his recent incarnation is as a sort of walking Purgatory. Each patch is an evil soul who, willingly or otherwise, grants his spiritual strength to Ragman as a form of punishment/penance.

So, based on the "opposite number" thesis, we have a couple of possibilities.

1. Someone who, by nature or accident, doesn't HAVE a soul, and is hence immune to the rags' effects. For example, an undead sorceror like Faust (but without the heroic streak), or some sort of android.

2. Blaze (or, if she's unavailble, another succubus). Someone who feeds on GOOD souls, without even a shred of guilt. By making her female, we have an additional opposition, and if she's the sort of high-class demoness who goes to nightclubs and hip parties, so much the better.
 
 
Mario
17:03 / 16.03.06
Cass: Ragman is a member of the Shadowpact, and was therefore a major part of the Day of Vengeance miniseries.
 
 
Hieronymus
17:57 / 16.03.06
I figured this one would be right up your alley, Cassandra. There's a bit more info on him here and here

I was thinking more of an epic dark figure, equally steeped in Kabbalic lore. Faust is a great idea, Mario (you did mean the literary character Faust and not Felix Faust, right?), a soulless villain who can't be touched by the rags and who is obsessed with gaining a greater connection to the spiritual arrogance and pride of Thaumiel, the anti-Kether. Always striving to climb the ladder of greater and greater magical power.

Or there's The Hinderers (Oghiel). Man in complete shadow, with snakes wrapped around them who work to entice the rags to abandon Ragman and who seduce their victims with illusions and lies.

Or his major opponents... Lilith and Samael.
 
 
Mario
18:24 / 16.03.06
Actually, I was referring to Felix's son Sebastian, who was in the Outsiders for a while.
 
 
DavidXBrunt
09:35 / 17.03.06
Kilg%re hasn't, to the best of my knowledge, faced off against Oracle though it could be fun. Kilgore was the proncipal threat in Messner-Loebs run on the Flash and though it was never explicitly stated Kilg%re was also the computer mind that granted Max Lord his powers and started the ball rolling for the J.L.I. stories. Wally fought the main brain, and Max eventually took an axe to the back up memory.
 
 
Aertho
13:58 / 17.03.06
Okay, from what I can tell, Ragman is just another Crow type character, who uses the unexplainable realities to strike fear in otherwise human badguys. Basically emphasizes the imaginative "fates worse than death" versus the bastard complex that motivates his gangaster badguys. So almost exactly like Crow, only with more of a color palette and a history of ethnocentricity.

There's some juice in exploring what ethnocentric limits are, and how they relate to his "magic origins"... but BOOORING. I'm tired of heroes for certian types of people, and finding dignity and purpose in cultural distinction.

Are you asking me to push the limits of how he's a user of magick? Explore Kabbalah? I'm not sure that's what Rory wants to do. He runs a rag shop and fights organized crime. He's a Robin Hood powered by darke magix. He's not an explorer or daredevil like Dr. Strange or a student like Sophie Bangs...

There may be some juice in his distrust. He doesn't trust his team, and that may stem from a sense of not trusting anyone he doesn't "protect". He's a protector... What if The Crow was expected to join the JLA? Culture Shock.

I guess I'm asking for collaboration on this one. Help!
 
 
Elijah, Freelance Rabbi
15:49 / 17.03.06
Ragman shouldn't even know he has an arch nemesis.

This enemy should be an evil wizard type, devoid of a soul of his own because he has bartered away parts of himself for more power over the years. When he senses where the Ragman's power comes from he begins working to steal that power.

Rory can't figure out why he doesn't feel as strong in the suit anymore, and it starts getting worse, until he starts noticing holes in the thing. The souls are being drawn by this evil guy and so the partches begin vanishing from the suit.

I figure an issue would end with Rory making a jump between buildings and the suit totally vanishes from his body, causing him some serious harm.

Rory wakes up in the hospital with some broken bones and catches a news story about the Ragman killing a bunch of people in a tenement building or something equally bad.

Somehow Rory finds out that his powers were not generated by the tainted souls, but by something else, and uses his powers to confront the bad guy, who would either be destroyed in a miniseries or escape in an ongoing one.

I am kind of picturing Rory with אמת writen on his forehead .

and now this seems really silly...
 
 
Mario
16:15 / 17.03.06
I think the "losing control of the rags" thing was done in one of his minis. Otherwise, I like the basic idea.

The thing is, Rory isn't really an uber-magical spirit... he's the protector of a small neighborhood, a la Daredevil. The rags are just his gimmick. So his opposition should either be personal (because of the rags) or of a similarly small scale. How about an undead gangster?

(Yes, I know it's been done. Most recently in 7S. But the imagery fits. )

Oh, and there's already a Golem in the DCU... I think he's in the Hayoth, the Israeli superteam.
 
 
Aertho
16:38 / 17.03.06
I don't know... "stealing soul-energy" ? Really?

That's another thing I'm wary about. I'm not much of a Temple regular anymore, and this character warrants a respect to both cultural senstivity and awareness of how Jewish mysticism - with regards to Golems and rag-creatures - actually "works".

Still, I'm wondering if the whole inside "Rory's bubble of protection" versus "outsider" can be explored... especially if he's got to run off on supernatural capers with the Shadowpact and leave Gotham's ghettos for stretches of time. Is he confronted with "evil" inside his bubble? Exposed to nobility and "protection" from outside, or made aware of a bubble of protection that surrounds his sphere of influence?

Is Bruce Wayne an enemy?

I think the first storyline would be Rory trying to find a Ragperson replacement for Gotham while he's out working with Shadowpact. But fails horrbily, because Gothamites are not "outside" the city system, the way the Regans were...
 
 
Hieronymus
16:53 / 17.03.06
Explore Kabbalah? I'm not sure that's what Rory wants to do. He runs a rag shop and fights organized crime. He's a Robin Hood powered by darke magix. He's not an explorer or daredevil like Dr. Strange or a student like Sophie Bangs...

I'm not arguing that Ragman hasn't been poorly handled in his various treatments. That whole 'costumed Robin Hood who fights crime' schtick from the original series in the 70s was spliced into the retcon of the 90s mini and yeah it was pretty sloppy Crow-lite. A LOT of the dialogue and plotting and the art in the 91 Ragman stinks to high heaven (the rabbi who trains Rory is nauseatingly caricatured). There's a lot to dislike about those comics.

But there were a lot of interesting gems and untapped revamps tossed into the pile of manure that was the 1991 minseries. The costume of souls (when initally the costume had just been a junkman vigilante's attempt at disguise and not much else). That the costume had been passed down to various wielders since the 16th century. That the costume was created to replace the first defender of the ghettos of Prague, The Golem, who is evolving into humanity but who cannot exist while the Ragman lives. And that Rory's father had fought in the Warsaw uprising as Ragman.

The following miniseries by Elaine Lee, Cry of the Dead, delved more powerfully into the mysticism aspect of the costume than any of the previous Ragman treatments as Rory's encounters Nawlins voodoo magick. Cry of the Dead remains the most solid Ragman treatment I've read yet. So yeah, the religious strings are there, waiting to be tied together properly by someone.

Basically what I'm saying is that while Ragman needs a bit of polish as a character, part of that is a gallery of substantial villains with which he can oppose, villains based in the magick most writers have hinted at or only flirted with.
 
 
Hieronymus
16:58 / 17.03.06
And I agree, keeping him nailed to Gotham, which is already filled to bursting with its own interesting characters, has done more disservice to the character than anything else.
 
 
Mr Tricks
17:26 / 17.03.06
Well what if the Gothom factor was turned around. Have Ra's Algul notice him after a particularly spectacular showdown with a "Pulp Fiction" styled gangster; he's sold his soul and moved to Gothom make a name for himself. Ra's recognizes the suit from years past and desided he could be used to make Batman more available on the world stage. He doesn't want to overtly use Ragman against Batman but instead force Ragman to become a bigger player in Gothom, something BATMAN may not be comfortable with.

Ra's may well assign an underling who is adept enough in the mystic arts to move into the area, have stay outside of Gothom and commute to work. His or her job would be to assign foes and challanges that have Ragman running into more & more Batman level threats.

Meanwhile let's have a new getto forming in that neighborhood. Make it a very small community of runaway androids and robots. DC probably has enough to spare.
 
 
Aertho
17:32 / 17.03.06
I acutally think the Gotham saturation is funny and quirky... in that Ragman, in his lonely attempt to safeguard his neighborhood, constantly rubs up against other Gotham heroes, other protected neighborhoods. His hatred of organized crime and his apprehension about organized police leads him to avoid working with organized vigilantes - making him something of a third path. The Batfolk are constantly asking him to check in and report his operations, but he thinks they should mind their own business... He's a bastard, in the ways that matter. He's like a brooding Guy Gardner.

But then you have his magickal alignment, something that's constantly wacky and not necessarily easy to understand. So of course he has to hang out with these people becasue he's got skills they require, and if something goes wrong with his suit, they can help. What kind of magick does he perform? Random forceblast type magic? Eeeugh.

This is a hell of a challenge, Heiro. I'm gald though, because it's fun. I think the easy road is to explore magic or the notion of "evil souls"... but that's my other question: Isn't this character developed solely to explore those easy paths? He's like spooky costume Batman, so that Bats doesn't get all spiritual or magic-laden. What's our audience? Am I trying to make a "fun" superhero? Am I telling an obtuse Vertigo story? Is this like an Eighth Soldier with subtext and commentary on super-comics?

It's easy to get to the heart of Jake Jordan, because everything's power struggle, all day every day. But Rory's more complex, and less so as well...
 
 
Mario
17:37 / 17.03.06
Ragman cannot perform _any_ magic. The rags protect him, allow him to fly, and boost his physical attributes. That's it.

If anything, he's closer to Starman than Doctor Strange. Perhaps that's the best approach. Rather than be embarassed by his fixed area of effect, _explore_ it.
 
 
Aertho
17:50 / 17.03.06
Cool. I was afraid he'd be another deus ex machina. So he seems like Spiderman a little. I'm so not the guy for this project. I mean, I get the human struggle that might be hidden there, but I don't know enough about comics characters, or what they do.

I suppose I would start by having Ragman look for a replacement, stalking cops and stuff.
 
 
Mario
17:54 / 17.03.06
Nah, he's a local boy done... well, not good, but certainly weird. He's got elements of Ghost Rider in him, but without the muddled backstory.

I'm definitely warming to the Starman comparison.....
 
 
Aertho
18:03 / 17.03.06
And that's what I'm talking about. I have no idea what you mean by the Starman comparison. In what way?
 
 
Jack Denfeld
18:25 / 17.03.06
Starman was kind of a regular joe, who liked collecting things, thought superhero culture was cool, started off with a cliche' motivation but eventually did it because it was fun, and he loved his city and wanted to be it's protector.
 
 
Aertho
18:30 / 17.03.06
Well right, but if he's in Miami fighting Santeria demons with Devil and Chimp, who's gonna watch his liitle corner of Gotham? He needs an understudy.
 
 
Mario
21:00 / 17.03.06
Not to mention the fact that both Jack Knight and Rory Regan inherited their duties as protectors of their region from their fathers.
 
 
Feverfew
17:35 / 18.03.06
It may just be an idle thought, but what about retro-active cross-fertilisation?

For instance, the X-men's traditional villains have been fundamentally their warped-mirror-aspect counterparts, but the speculation on an ideal foe for Wolverine made me think about what could work there, and I got to thinking... drum roll...

What if Norman Osbourne had been an X-Men villain instead of a Spider-Man villain?

He has the drive, power and business acumen so that he's well-respected within the industrial community; but he also has a dirty little secret in that he himself is a mutant, capable at will of changing into a Green, scaly, superstrong but slightly insane humanoid who can carry out his agenda without being linked. (I know that's a change many would be unhappy with, but this is, hey, strictly hypothetical.)

Norman is currently quite happily wandering along, making business deals here, attacking the competition with pumpkin-bombs there, a sort of unknown malign Tony-Stark figure. However, his calm is disturbed when suddenly two competing groups of mutants threaten to bring the public eye onto the Mutant Menace(tm) and he is forced to bring his financial and intellectual powers onto keeping attention from the Green Scaly monster that, now people are looking for scapegoats, seems to follow the OsCorp agenda...

So, what does he do? He starts to financially undermine Charles Xavier, and sends minions to distract Erik Lensherr, and suddenly these so-called "X-Men" are without a home, or any funding, and are forced to live a nomadic life travelling in order to avoid the attentions of the press, constantly tipped off as to their whereabouts, the mutant-hating public, likewise, and other mutants, now incensed by the bad reputation they're being given by proxy.

Why, do you ask, is this necessarily so bad? I think, because the X-men are so predisposed to wanting to help and save a humanity that fears and dispises it, that to take away their one course of action and drive them underground would deprive them of the ability to defend themselves, remove any good-doing power they might have, and the wheels of hatred, constantly fed by Osbourne and his entire complex, would start to grind them down, until...

Well.

Meanwhile, Osbourne is happily masterminding this behind a rack of deniable associates, masterminding their lives without giving them any clues as to why they're being jerked around like puppets, and enjoying a nice cigar at the same time.

(I think this is enough for a two-year arc of X-men travelling the world, trying to find clues as to what's going on... Exotic Locations, Conspiracy Theories, Brandy and Cigars - what more can you ask for?)
 
 
Mario
20:07 / 18.03.06
You could tell almost the exact same story with someone like Shinobi Shaw, or Gideon.
 
 
Evil Scientist
20:26 / 18.03.06
I always thought WW should be fighting an evil scientist. Someone who dismisses divinity and magick completely out of hand, but at the same time is a bit infatuated with her and hates himself for it.

The problem is she never returns my calls. Plus there's that whole restraining order thing (and when the League's using Zatanna to enforce those things you CAN'T get within 20ft of them).
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
15:28 / 19.03.06
Of possible relevance: The religious affliations of various comic book characters, to help out with the Ragman thing. (Also, I never knew The Thing was Jewish, or that Jaime Madrox was Buddhist)
 
 
Nakkurusu
16:49 / 19.03.06
To befair, Jamie Madrox is a lot of things.
 
 
grant
11:52 / 21.03.06
I saw that database, thought it was awesome, but had quibbles with some of the categorizing. Roma/Gypsy is a religion? Lisa Simpson is a Buddhist?

I liked Green Arrow's denomination: "Liberal Marxist Communist."

And, of course, The Spectre: "agent of God's wrath."

There sure are a lot of Sikh sidekicks, too.
 
 
Mario
12:06 / 21.03.06
They do have certain religious traditions independent of the Judeo-Christian-Moslem continuum, but I'd hesitate to call it a full-fledged religion.
 
 
grant
13:23 / 22.03.06
Has The Spectre ever crossed paths with Ragman?

Who are The Spectre's primary villains? Do they work?
 
 
Mario
13:33 / 22.03.06
Only in Day of Vengeance, when Speccy was nuts. Speccy pwned him.

Spectre's arch enemies tend to be evil spirits, like Asmodeus, Neron, or Eclipso. They work well enough, but the best Spectre stories tend not to be about external conflicts but internal ones.
 
 
Aertho
14:07 / 22.03.06
Eh. I feel like I let Hiero down... Ragman, Ragman, Ragman. Personally, I'd stay away from exploring magick in the Promethea sense and instead go for more the oblique Zatanna and creepy Crow atmosphere.

I'd have his archenemy be a crooked Gotham cop, with neonazi ties. Basic versus mobster Crow-like stories... I'd have Ragman tangle with Papa Midnight and his entourage, maybe Barbara Minerva, and an Israeli assassin who wants to steal a few rags and be a Ragman against Palestine. ...I'd have Huntress be his Black Cat. Scarecrow might work for him too. Trying hard not to borrow from Arkham too much, so maybe a HellBoyish Rasputiny Dr. Mengele, seeking revenge?

As for more oblique magicks: A broken Boom Tube cutting its way through his part of Gotham might shunt him to Urgrund, at the time of the Da'athian Crisis, and he has to "save it somehow" by helping JLA Forever engineer the split of Apokolips and New Genesis. Kind of a reverse Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix, in the wacky Kirby ancient past. Ragman would get an even weirder supersuit by absorbing souls of Old New Gods.

Hmmm...
 
 
Mario
14:43 / 22.03.06
"shunt him to Urgrund, at the time of the Da'athian Crisis, and he has to "save it somehow" by helping JLA Forever engineer the split of Apokolips and New Genesis."

I want to write this comic, although not with Ragman. Maybe Buddy Baker, or Dan Cassidy
 
 
Aertho
14:44 / 22.03.06
So is Spectre the next challenge?

If it's still going, how about... Moondragon

  
  

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