Istock Credit:Aswin-d

Another common villain is the friend, mentor, lifelong guide and guardian who smiles and pats, and helps but is doing really bad stuff behind the scenes.  We have another Marvel villain as our example.  Obadiah Stane, also known as Iron Monger.  Played by Jeff Bridges in Iron Man (the first movie). He is Tony’s proxy dad, since Tony lost his parents.  He’s also the one who ordered the hit on Tony’s  life, the act that gave us Iron Man, ultimately.

Too often the villain is the person closest to us, so we don’t see it coming. We see what they’ve wanted us to see, what we needed to see.  A great villain masters manipulation, and he or she is so successful because some of those feelings were probably real.

In this case, Obadiah’s ambitions and passions and pains mattered more than his relationship with Tony. Is it any wonder Tony is a messed up kinda of hero–but that’s also the best kind.

I also must confess, O was a hard letter for villains. The only other ones I could think of were the Osbornes from Spider-Man.  Any good ones I missed?

Visit the other A to Z Bloggers here.

 

 

2 Replies to “E Tu Obadiah #AtoZChallenge”

  • I’m not sure if Doctor Octopus would count. Would he technically fall under ‘D’ or would he be ‘Octopus, Dr.’? You could just go for his alter ego, Otto Octavius, and remove all doubt. There’s also Owlman, an evil alternate universe counterpart of Batman, and Orca, a minor Batman villain.

    Hmm…that’s about all I’ve got just off the top of my head.

    • I thought about Doc Oc, too, but I liked the mentor angle in Obadia, even though he’s not on my fave villain list.

Comments are closed.