I’ve recently become obsessed with ghost stories. I've been reading a lot of "true" scary stories on reddit and thought catalog. Horror stories fascinate me but horror movies tend to make me roll my eyes. Remember how comic book movies were once considered low-brow and people didn't take them seriously?
Look what you did!
It got me thinking, why are horror movies always treated this way? One of my favorite movies is Scream. That movie is genuinely scary but also has a great story. The actors are cast very well and they make their characters likable to the point where you are worried for them when the killer attacks them.
Don't answer the phone!
I read one scary story about a man that was following someone during a late night walk and the description the writer gave sounded a lot like the Joker. This got me thinking, what comic book villains could EASILY translate into a horror movie? There are demons, aliens, robots, and psycho killers causing our heroes grief, but what if they existed in a world without those heroes? Would we stand a chance against them? There are quite a few but I’ve picked my top five.
BLACK HAND:
Do yourself a favor and read “Green Lantern #43” by Geoff Johns and Doug Mahnke. It’s honestly one of the creepiest things you’ll ever get your hands on. Johns took a character like Black Hand and made him into a formidable opponent not only for Hal Jordan but for LIFE itself. His name was William Hand and his father worked in a funeral home and did embalming on site. This led to an odd obsession with death for William. He sees death as an absolute. We’re all going there so we might as well embrace it. He takes necrophilia to a whole new level of creepy!
What makes him so scary? What’s really scary about him is that his viewpoint makes perfect sense. Death is the ending to all of our stories. He’s missing the whole point of living life to the fullest and all that garbage. But he doesn't care about that. Also, he has power over the dead! He can create zombies! If he was around we'd be living in The Walking Dead universe in no time!
CARNAGE:
If you were a Spider-Man fan in the 90s you know who Carnage is. He started off as Cletus Kasady, deranged serial killer that had a few run ins with Spider-Man.
Yeah there he is!
Then he was granted the power of the symbiote and became Carnage, blood thirsty monster! The Venom symbiote was drawn to Eddie Brock due to a mutual hatred of Spider-Man. It went to Cletus because . . . well . . . I dunno . . . the writers felt like it? This symbiote was the offspring of Venom and bonded with Cletus through his bloodstream. Gross . . . Either way, he’s a powerful enemy and often it takes more than just Spider-Man to defeat him.
What makes him so scary? He’s scary because he’s evil and he knows he’s evil. He just loves being the bad guy and having all this power to do harm. To him, life is a big joke and he’d rather just kill everyone and get us all in on the joke. He believes that the law is just words and chaos is the only thing that makes sense. A psychopathic killer is scary enough but one with Carnage's power? That's a terrifying evil that we couldn't outrun if we tried.
.jpg)
GRANNY GOODNESS:
To me there is nothing scarier than a person who is supposed to represent pure good but is actually pure evil. Granny Goodness is a prime example of that. She seems benevolent and is extremely inviting. Just about everyone has fond memories of their grandma, meemaw, nana, grams, etc.
No! I call no meemaws!
What makes her so scary? It’s scary to think that there is a woman out there that teaches her "grandchildren" not to be little angels but to be little devils. Instead of spoiling them she tortures them. The best example of Granny’s evil came from Smallville. In the final season, Tess and Clark look into Tess’s past and discover a sinister plot in the orphanage that Tess grew up in. Despite the fantastical elements involved (namely Darkseid and aliens and all that jazz) it’s scary to think that this could be happening in real life. A woman takes children under her wing only to twist them into dark versions of themselves and release them out into the world to do evil.
ULTRON:
You can’t tell me that the Avengers: Age of Ultron preview didn’t send shivers down your spine. It’s one thing to corrupt your childhood with a creepy version of a classic Pinocchio song but it’s quite another when the voice saying it is James Spader.
Hello. My name is Robert California.
Like the Terminator before him, Ultron is a great example of technology turned against us. We all have moments where technology fails us, whether it’s the wi fi running slow, Netflix “buffering”, a cell phone dropping a call, or a car not starting up. We face it at least once a day and let’s not kid ourselves, deep down we all wonder if the technology in question is just routinely malfunctioning or screwing with us. Ultron was created to be an AI to aid the Avengers but it eventually becomes smarter than that and decides that the worst part of mankind is mankind itself and the only solution is to wipe us off the face of the Earth.
What makes him scary? It’s scary because I think we all worry about an over dependence on technology. Hell, you are probably not even reading this on a computer! You’re probably on your phone or tablet or your Google glasses! Or maybe your car is dictating it to you while you drive! Or maybe your robot butler is reading it to you while another robot butler feeds you grapes! Technology is becoming more advanced every day and who knows how long it will be before it no longer needs us . . . *cue Terminator 2 theme song*
THE JOKER:
This one was pretty obvious right?
What makes him so scary? As if I really needed to ask! Well, the Joker is scary enough on his own for several reasons. He’s a psychotic murderer, he’s a clown, he laughs at all his crimes, but worst of all he’s pretty much invincible. In almost every episode of Batman: the Animated Series Joker would always be thrown off of some building or train or something really high up. Yet somehow he’s back in a future episode. It’s pretty common in the comics too. The recent “Endgame” storyline is actually making the Joker out to be the embodiment of the Devil. The evidence so far is pretty damning too and that’s just the way Mr. J likes it! He'll kill you without a second thought and laugh about it for hours. Or maybe he'll let you live and just torture you by following you around for the rest of your life. Just like Batman has a way of popping up where the criminals least expect him, the Joker shows up where the heroes least expect him. Whether he's laughing, telling you a "scars" story, or just staring at you, Joker definitely takes the cake for the scariest comic book villain ever!
Sleep well tonight!
Till next time!
JJ - The Comic Junkie
No comments:
Post a Comment