My first conception for Lacerator was as a Hispanic tough guy.  When he appeared in issue six, though, Benita gave him surfer-dude language, and for me the character came together.  So, he’s a southern California surfer dude, complete with the lingo.  He’s also one of Tactical’s original four supporters, which includes Alaric, Skorn, and Warmonger, and this makes him very high in the Iron Brigade’s command structure.  As originally conceived, Lacerator’s power blade was a monstrous clawed hand, but luckily I saw the light and updated him.

Recently, I requested a critique for “Johnny Saturn” on a certain forum, and several of my webcartooning peers were kind enough to offer their opinions.  One such critique set me to thinking, though: It stated that many of our “Johnny Saturn” villains were evil for evil’s sake, and that we didn’t offer good reasons for them to be this way.  This criticism centered on Tactical and Dr. Wissenschaft.

As much as I welcomed the critique, I have to respectfully disagree with this assessment.  There is that old Stan Lee adage, that “there are no villains, just fallen heroes.”  That same line of reasoning goes on the express that everyone is the hero in their own story, and every villain believes he’s on the side of the angels no matter how awful their deeds.

I don’t buy it.

Josef Mengele, the so called Angel of Death, is a loose inspiration for Dr. Wissenschaft.  This should be pretty obvious to those of you who know anything about 20^th century history.  Did Mengele feel he was walking a moral high ground in doing the things he did?  I doubt it.  My guess is that he was all about the science, and that he was a total sociopath, devoid of any empathy for his victims.

Tactical, in his origin as a Balkan war criminal, is loosely based on any number of similar war criminals, both those that have been brought to trial in the Hague, and those that have yet to be apprehended.  Did these men relish the slaughter they ordered and oversaw?  Did they feel terrible about the massacres and rape camps?  I doubt it.  I think they performed their deeds in a misguided sense of nationalism.

Does every villain have some defining moment in their life when they become evil?  An “origin,” you might say.  Or, are they all sociopaths and psychopaths?  This is the standard comic book way, but I don’t think it’s the real way.  I think many of these people grow up in hell holes, and they grow up with cruelty.  It’s what they know.  They become inured to the suffering of others by their environment, and they learned cruelty as a second nature.

To put a point on it, many of the “Johnny Saturn” villains are simply those who put the ends before the means.  If they want something, they will do anything to make it happen.

In the real world, we know some people are bad, and we neither know (nor usually care) what made them bad.  The same rule applies to the “Johnny Saturn” villains.

Scott.<-->