Necessary Evil: Super-Villains of DC Comics

00:00:13 NARRATOR: Evil has many faces.

00:04:46 He's that guy that, because he's human, needs to be smarter than anybody else...

00:08:54 JOHNS: Now, there are villains like the Joker or Black Hand...

00:12:48 By the time they were doing the Superman show, I was an adult.

00:16:45 ...and asks him to draw up his alter ego.

00:21:03 ...they created these manhunters, androids...

00:25:22 What are they gonna do with, you know, a billion dollars?

00:29:41 NARRATOR: Consider this.

00:34:02 All I've ever wanted to do is kill him.

00:37:47 Allow me to introduce myself.

00:41:37 You have Johnny Quick and Power Ring. Power Ring is this Green Lantern...

00:45:39 If I have the powers of the gods, then am I not a god myself?

00:50:05 ...you put them at risk.

00:53:59 And then Dan Jurgens and Mike Carlin, all those guys created Reign of the Supermen...

00:57:45 And he was responsible continually for the near demise of Shazam.

01:01:31 They wanna be the distorted, hideous, grotesque face of Gotham City.

01:05:08 ...what their motive is, what their goals are, what their methods are.

01:09:18 So we kept coming up with new guys, you know.

01:13:11 ...they're just falling apart.

01:17:02 For the reader, you're just like:

01:21:00 ...to their own power, like when Hal Jordan became Parallax.

01:25:05 ...can the villain ever be forgiven?

01:29:19 I think that's because we live in a very, sort of, fearful time.

01:32:57 And then that's right before Sinestro wipes them out.