Supervillainy: I Like To Do Bad Things

In 1971 Philip Zimbardo conducted a psychological experiment where he divided up a group of 24 volunteers consisting of undergraduate students into 2 groups: the guards and the prisoners.  The students were chosen from a larger group of 70 due to the fact that they were the most psychologically sound.  Although the volunteers were never trained in any way the students performed their roles very well, especially the guards.  As the guards became more and more accustomed to their roles they began to abuse and demoralize the prisoners.  The experiment had to be shut down after only 6 days because of the disturbing reality of the situation.  After witnessing these normal citizens become into monsters Zimbardo came to the conclusion that although none of us are inherently “evil,” we are capable of committing atrocious acts when we are placed in certain situations via the “Lucifer effect.”

There are 2 sides to human beings just as there are in coins.  Every single one of us lives with this duality while some of us make the unconscious decision to embrace a certain side.  Depending on our lives and environments we are all capable of becoming Mother Teresas or Hitlers.

In the new Marvel comics series Nemesis Millar answers the question thats been on everyone’s mind: What if Bruce Wayne became twisted and insane after the sudden death of his parents?  In Millar’s world the smartest caped bad ass is a psychotic supervillain who has been breaking down and killing public figures of the law.  Nemesis is the anti-Batman of Marvel that highlights Wayne’s intensity, but with different motives and targets (This would be such a sick movie. Time to bring back the Christian Bale from “American Psycho”).  Essentially Nemesis will explore the flip side of Wayne’s psyche (Keep in mind that these are merely similarities and concepts, the story has nothing to do with Bruce Wayne).  The devilish game of cat and mouse begins Wednesday the 24th as Nemesis looks towards Washington D.C. as a possible target of his torments.

Heres a promotional poster for Nemesis with the caped villain posing like the joker, scary.