What Would Comic Book Villains Do? (WWCBVD?) Week 9

It's Black Friday in the United States so what better day to explore the dark side of super-powered entities than to present a new addition of What Would Comic Book Villains Do?  So without further ado we will explore how some of our favorite bad guys would handle a particular social situation...

Scenario: A friend of yours comes to you for advice about a big decision in their life.  What they have in mind is not a good idea in the least.  You don’t want to hurt your friend’s feelings but at the same time you see nothing but disaster coming from their plans.  What do you do?

Dr. Psycho:  In cases like this one it is always best to fall back on the old ways.  Some people we encounter in our lives simply lack the capacity to realize their dreams, or in this case, realize how foolish those dreams are in reality.  What is best for them in the long run is to have me administer some targeted reordering of their thought processes.  I am a doctor after all.  I live to help people, especially if they may help me in the process advance the ends of my own dreams.  After all, my dreams are the only ones worth dreaming! 

So once I’ve managed to erase any vestiges of such pointless notions from his mind I would then help make sure he puts his time and energy to a more useful purpose as one of my mindless henchmen.  After all, even if he gets caught aiding and abetting me, no court in the land would convict someone under the unnatural influences of a master manipulator of the mental capacity of others.  It is a win-win situation really.

Mesmero:  You know if I had a dollar for every time one of my friends or colleagues came to me with some half-baked scheme asking for advice I would never have had to turn to a life of crime!  Be it my old college buddies or that guy from two doors down at my apartment complex or worse still other super-villains, everyone has an angle on something!  And for some reason I seem to have this big flashing sign around my neck that everyone but me can see that says, “The Life Advisor Is In”!  I learned  a long time ago to just hypnotize any such notions right out of their noggins so I don’t have to suffer through giving my sage advice only to have it flatly ignored!

Saturn Queen:  As a would-be, and bear in mind I don’t intend to remain so for much longer, conqueror of the galaxy I have little time for such trivialities.  Who has time to cultivate friendships when there are planets to subjugate and the Legion of Super-Heroes to thwart?  Mere mortals simply do not understand what we villains go through on a day to day basis!  Do you know what it is like to spend months or years hatching a scheme alone or with my colleagues only to have the whole thing undermined in a heartbeat by some do-gooder?!  Of course you don’t!

And the worst thing is that we villains don’t tend to socialize much.  Sure we get together to plan, to scheme, to work out the minutia of our next caper, but that is strictly business.  I don’t even know Lightning Lord’s real name!  How sad is that? 

You know this feels really good, opening up like this and all.  I spend so much of my time exerting my mental will on others to open bank vaults or decide not to arrest me that after all that I never get a chance to share my true self.  Is this the kind of thing friends do?  I believe I would like to have this friend after all.  Someone I could tell about my day over the vidphone and just get a lot off my chest.  Especially that “grand plan” my friend has in mind!  If anyone ever needed a notion willed out of their head by someone it is my friend!  What a moron!  In fact I find myself questioning why I ever decided to have a friend in the first place!  I wonder if I can self-hypnotize that notion out of my own head. 

Hmmmm….

Hi.  Who are you?

Controller:  Who am I to stand in the way of someone else’s plans?  Have all of my own schemes gone forward as hoped?  Not even close!  Sometimes I sit in my jail cell or at my headquarters depending on my present state of personal liberty and contemplate the aspects of my schemes I should have recognized as detrimental.  Hindsight is 20/20 as they say! 

Sure I could always take over his mind and extract such thoughts and ambitions as I deem impossible, couldn’t I?  Now you tell me how that is a responsible use of my powers!  This is my buddy we are talking about here!  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find people you can just pal around with when you look like this?!  There is no way I would do anything to jeopardize that friendship.  Besides, he’s a grown man, he can choose his own way, right or wrong.  You never know, he might just pull it off!  

Starro the Conqueror:  There is only one way.  THE way!  There is only Starro!  Starro must rule all!  The Way of Starro is the way of all life!  All must bow before the might of Starro the Conqueror!   

 So what I am getting at here is that I would use one of my countless spores to take him over and make him my slave for all time or until the Justice League again manages to thwart my deviltry, whichever comes first.  Sorry about all that “Starro must rule!” garbage.  When you’ve been conquering as long as I have, and you look to all the world like a harmless, if colossal, starfish then you have to really pump up the drama to be taken seriously.  Since I’ve never really been one for friends or camaraderie I think a good spore to the face is the way to go here.  

Puppet Master:  Oooooh!  I just realized that this would be an ideal opportunity to utilize my special mind control clay to create a puppet of this hapless friend!  Imagine his confusion as I, behind the scenes, manipulate his every action, silently guiding him to make the kind of decisions I would make to keep his plan on track.  Naturally I want him to succeed where otherwise he would have failed. The best case is that he would become filthy rich with my guidance and then I could simply force him to divert much of his new wealth to me!  What a great plan!  If only I had such a friend…

But wait!  I just realized something else!  I could engineer this whole scenario by using my special clay to make a puppet of some random individual, forcing him to be my friend and later to ask my advice about his hare-brained scheme.  I could feign support while secretly putting my plan of manipulation into effect and in the end making myself rich!  You know I don’t usually respond to these surveys but in this case I am really glad I did!