Once upon a time, I was fortunate enough to get to write the Green Arrow. Not the young, refurbished, goggled Green Arrow, but the older one, with the silly facial hair and a list of failures that stretched out over his entire life, including drug-use, infidelity, abandonment of children, and a general unwillingness to compromise.
Curiously, while roleplaying as Ollie, I was also writing as Captain Cold, a supervillain/antihero who, though not of the Emerald Archer’s rogues gallery, easily reflects an opposite number in the hero.
Both men have a deep resentment for authority and those in power, Ollie’s coming from memories of his past, spoiled rich ways as well as daddy issues, and Lenny’s coming from the drunken, physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his cop dad.
Both men represent an angle on liberal politics, Ollie with social welfare and Justice as Fairness, and Lenny with Union representation and a Jesse James “I’m only taking what’s mine” mindset
Both lives are tragic. Both lives are sinful. So, why is one the hero while the other the villain?
The obvious answer is their goals. Captain Cold leads the Rogues in robbing banks. All the Rogues come from similarly unfortunate lives, lacking in opportunity just as they were lacking in charisma, wealth, beauty, and intelligence, and had largely grown up to be old, out-of-touch, and unskilled. The world would have had them become factory workers, slaving long hours under dangerous conditions for little pay and no upward mobility until the day they were inevitably outsourced and pinkslipped with no benefits and nowhere else to go. They saw this, figured eff that, and all became bank robbers, stealing cash not for fancy houses or platinum watches, but for beer and stripper money – the essentials. They leave generous tips and occupy a morally grey area within the Twin Cities. So grey, that bars let the Rogues drink in full costume without issue. In DC Comics, all the great heroes and villains tend to be a reflection of their cities. With the Twin Cities being largely Blue-Collar, the idea that the Rogues express is the “Darkside of Unions.” They have a “Rogue Code” that asserts they will never kill women or children, and they’ll only kill cops if the cops shoot first. The Rogue Code is essentially a contract they have with the Flash that says, “If you walk the line, so will we,” with Captain Cold playing Union Leader/Enforcer. They are not expressly bad people, but look at what they’ve established here – a conditional agreement that allows them to act criminally with the same impunity as the corporate masters that would have exploited them until they were empty then tossed them aside as nothing.
Green Arrow, however, lives in Star City, a caricature of L.A. In Star City, the police are corrupt, the justice system wanting, the poverty and homelessness levels through the roof, and there are tons of rich people who either benefit because of it or couldn’t care less about it. Green Arrow, superhero-as-Robin Hood, confronts the unjust authorities, redistributes wealth, and rights social inequities. Typically he doesn’t kill anybody, but he’s done it before, and really, since when is a bow and arrow a nonlethal weapon? When you put a boxing glove at the end of it, I guess.
But really, what makes these two characters different? They’re both rebelling against an unjust status-quo, they’re both breaking the law to do it, and they’re both accepted by the Flash with a shrug and a “Eh, it could be worse.”
The difference lies in the fact that Green Arrow aligns with something that is transcendent, whereas Captain Cold aligns with the material, the temporary.
Green Arrow goes out and does what he does because there is something fundamentally wrong with a system that exploits people and ignores the suffering of others. Captain Cold does what he does because he feels he is owed something by society and he’s not about to live miserably. Captain Cold’s concerned only with personal satisfaction and survival. Green Arrow’s motivation is a concept of Fairness and Justice – transcendent ideas – and because Green Arrows aligns with the transcendent, though he had died, he came back. He always will.
This is a similar idea expressed in Star Wars. The Sith, through the worship of the temporary, the material (Power, control, mortality), they only understand Immortality as becoming a cyborg; basic mechanical processes maintained perpetually (Oil changes, battery recharging, eating, sleeping,etc)
There was an analogy the late, great Joe Campbell used to give in his lectures. Paraphrased:
You can say the lights are on. Now, in saying that, you can be either referring to the electricity powering the bulbs in the ceiling, or you can simply be referring to being able to see in the room. When a bulb burns out and the janitor comes to replace it, he doesn’t unscrew the bulb and say, “Well, that was my particularly favorite bulb.” He simply replaces it and, tada, the light is back. What we are discussing is a confusion between the light itself, and the vehicle for its manifestation.
Are you the vessel, or are you the Light?
The villain is just a vessel. The Hero is the Light.
But the story, the myth, isn’t just the Hero already knowing he’s the light. It’s his journey to recognizing it.
It’s rare that I actually get to write good guys, which is sad, because I definitely prefer it. I’m better at it. But frequently, I wind up playing villains because I feel the ones present are substantially lacking – primarily because there’s this “I don’t do Black and White” thinking, yadda yadda yadda, which paradoxically will cast Good Guys into this Absolute PARAGON OF VIRTUE and MORALITY role that everyone likes to collectively agree is unattainable, and thus, resign from rather than rise to the challenge to. This way of thinking tends to generate more Passively-Selfish Bad Guys, rather than actual Villains. These sorta Spikes from Buffy.
To say that George Lucas wrote in this “Good Guys wear White” and “Bad Guys Wear Black” binary is to have not seen the movie. I mean, one of the primary protagonists is a Kind Kid turned “Obviously Satan” turned Rad Dad. Another protagonist shot Greedo in cold blood in the middle of a bar when he came to collect on stolen merchandise and unpaid debts (Yes, this is debatable). And Luke is not without his own moral struggles (Darth Vader in the cave on Dagobah? Yoda tells him not to bring a lightsaber, as he won’t need it. Luke brings it anyway, then draws it on Vader before Vader even demonstrates aggression, decapitates Vade, then looks into the mask to find “OMG. THAT’S ME. IN MY FEAR OF DEATH, I HAVE A CAPACITY FOR WICKEDNESS TOO”)
I think the confusion occurs from our Godlike perspective outside of story. We name the hero “the hero” while aware of the ending, understanding the story as a complete entity outside of its own sense of Time. The fact of the matter is that Luke wasn’t the hero of the story when he blew up the Death Star. He wasn’t the hero as he trained to fight Darth Vader and battled the Empire over various terrain, suffered Lando’s treachery, or rescued Han from Jabba. Luke wasn’t even the hero when he battled Darth Vader and bested him in lightsaber combat. What made Luke the hero and at no point before is when he looked upon Vader’s shriveled, wormy face, reflected on all the aforementioned suffering, and rather than striking him down, forgave him.
In myth, all conflicts are Internal Conflicts, regardless of how much they look to be coming from without. Good and Evil has no place in the actual world – it is a measure of the individual and their closeness to their “ishta devata;” their personal Jesus; their true self. In Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzifal, Percy only failed not when he held to his duty, but when he ignored his heart to do it. Evil is something you inflict upon yourself.
Writing a good guy is about being tested, it's about being flawed, and it's about failure. In the end, however, the Good Guy rises to the challenge of making his or her self better. And this is meant in a very personal sense.
