I Believe The Tech Bro Will Be The New Dominant Supervillain Archetype
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I’m gonna admit, I think I kinda laid my cards out on the table with that title, but I really do believe the tech bro will be the new dominant supervillain archetype for the foreseeable future.
I know what you’re thinking. “Of course you do. You’re just some lefty that hates Elon Musk with a fiery passion because he’s a billionaire tech entrepreneur. Can’t you lay off the politics for one second and talk about superhero fiction on your superhero fiction website?”
First off, you are mostly correct. I am some lefty that hates Elon Musk with a fiery passion because he’s a billionaire tech entrepreneur. And also one other reason that I can’t quite put my outstretched hand on.
Ah well, I’m sure my heart will go out to whatever the other reason is.
But understand that I am talking about superhero fiction on my superhero fiction website.
I believe that–yes, because of Elon Musk and DOGE–the tech bro entrepreneur will be the dominant supervillain archetype for at least the next decade.
And I believe that the history of supervillains supports me on this.
Politics Creates Supervillains
I know that statement seems strange at a surface level. Politics creates supervillains? Aren’t supervillains just cackling megalomaniacs who want to put a giant laser on the moon to melt the ice caps so they can take over the world or something?
But look back through the history of superhero fiction and you will find Americans’ greatest fears and challenges personified in the enemies that popular characters like Batman and Spider-Man have faced.
When Superman exploded onto the scene in 1938, America was nearly a decade into the Great Depression. Robber barons and the corrupt politicians in their pocket were the primary enemies of impoverished Americans shuffling between bread lines and coal mines. There was a massive resentment toward the excess of the wealthy as the country suffered a 25% unemployment rate and people lived in shantytowns called “Hoovervilles”, disparagingly named after President Herbert Hoover who was perceived to have left them all out to rot. Wages were cut and workers made to suffer through terrible conditions, all in the name of maximizing profits for the employers.
And so, during those very early years, Superman found himself up against mining operators forcing their workers to toil in unsafe mines, corrupt lobbyists looking to drag America into war all over the world so they could sell weapons, and prison wardens unjustly taking advantage of inmates and their families. Other heroes went up against vicious racketeers, corrupt building safety inspectors paid to look the other way, and the like.
Of course, December 7, 1941 marked the attack on Pearl Harbor, and every superhero was all in on fighting the Nazis. This wasn’t a few patriotic themed superheroes either, like Captain America or the fervently pro-America Nedor Comics line. No, every superhero, regardless of what company owned the rights, was protecting America from German saboteurs and spies.
Forget Thanos. The biggest supervillain to get a major intercompany crisis crossover story arc was Adolf Hitler. No Infinity Gauntlet required.
And, as far as fictional characters go, HYDRA super-Nazi Red Skull, archnemesis of Captain America, is still an enduring villain even today.
Moving onward a decade and two, we get to the Red Scare, the Cold War, and the Space Race. But it was also a time where America was becoming more wholesome, at least in terms of optics. Not so much in its underbelly, but in appearance. That Americana image of the nuclear family was front and center (the Bat-Family has its roots in this time period). And so was science fiction. The 1960s was when Star Trek entered the scene, after all.
What did the villains of the time look like? Batman’s entire Rogues Gallery was essentially defanged, with the Joker–madness incarnate today–throwing pies and playing pranks. Lex Luthor was a mad scientist who looked like a Martian. Braniac debuted here.
And pop quiz: Who was Spider-Man’s very first supervillain? The Chameleon, a Soviet spy who sabotaged John Jameson’s space capsule.
Heck, the entire Spider-Man Rogues Gallery was essentially a series of sci-fi themed accidents.
After that, there was an increased level of social awareness and activism. America stopped hiding behind the perfect image of the unblemished nuclear family as if trying to pretend Leave It to Beaver was real and people began to protest the Vietnam War, and sound the alarm on climate change. Meanwhile, the 1980s came and Reagan conservatism became a social, political, and economic force that both sides of the political aisle would steadfastly refuse to move from for decades, valuing corporate profits and the needs of businessmen over those of ordinary people.
There was socioeconomic strife and wealth inequality (the highly political Green Arrow / Green Lantern comics came in at this time), and America went through a period of great mistrust with its leadership due to the Watergate scandal.
And it was during that time that Lex Luthor was reimagined as a ruthless wealthy businessman, inspired by Donald Trump, Ted Turner, and Howard Hughes. Captain America discovered a plot by HYDRA to take over America for the Nazis was spearheaded by President Richard Nixon in Secret Empire. The Kingpin became one of Marvel’s biggest villains, including the main adversary of Daredevil. Another one of Marvel’s top villains, Magneto, came into his own as a Holocaust survivor who saw the anti-mutant sentiment as mirroring the anti-Semitism of the Nazis as support, in real life, for Civil Rights was firmly cemented and other groups, such as the gay community, began to fight for their own.
Also, you all remember Death In The Family for the death of Jason Todd. But do you remember it as the time that the Joker became the Iranian ambassador to the United States?
Later on, in a period of our nation’s history where filth and crime and drugs ran rampant through the streets of cities and towns all over, Venom, Carnage, and Bane quickly ascended to the top of the supervillain hierarchy.
I can go on, and there’s nuances, exceptions, and all that, but I think you get my point. Politics creates supervillains. Our collective fears, threats, and dangers become the template for the next supervillain. The next archetype.
And I believe the tech bro will be the new dominant supervillain archetype.
Elon Musk and Other Assorted Supervillains
Let me make two things clear.
First, I’m aware that the bombastic technology business owner who makes everything a show has already been done. Justin Hammer from Iron Man, especially in the film Iron Man 2 is a perfect example of this type of character from over a decade ago, and Parasite in My Adventures With Superman was literally this in his first appearance.
And second, it’s absolutely Elon Musk that’s driving my belief that the tech bro will be the new dominant supervillain archetype.
But is that without reason?
To be clear, it’s not just Elon. There’s just something odious about tech bros in general.
They are off-putting people. They start as entrepreneurs and have lived their lives as unlikeable nerds with no social skills. But then they get the power that comes with being unfathomable success, and they want to distance themselves from those stuffy boardroom suits while being seen as cool and hip. In comes their obnoxious frat bro personality.
And none of that masks the fact that none of these guys are that smart. Not really. They believe their wacky ideas to be genius when 99 out of 100 of them are just stupid. They never consider the human impact of their ideas as they are blinded by their own inability to see past their obsession with #disrupting something that doesn’t need to be #disrupted, more interested in the technology they are developing than the people and communities that will be affected by them.
Remember Bodega? It was “America’s Most Hated Startup” back in 2017 after introducing their product–a vending machine (I’m sorry, an “unmanned pantry box”)--with the goal to “make corner stores obsolete”. Pretty evil to go into your big tech project with the idea of destroying local immigrant-started businesses en masse.
Figures they just changed their name and have been raising millions since then.
But you’ve gotta admit that this wealthy, out of touch, offputtingly awkward, obnoxiously self-promoting “visionary” who is so obsessed with reducing the world to an engineering challenge that they forget that it is populated by actual humans is a great template to build a supervillain from.
And current Real-President Elon Musk takes all this up to eleven.
As I write this, Musk is currently the head of DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, a non-government agency that falsely poses as a real one. Despite his claim that its purpose is to find government waste, fraud, and abuse, its actual purpose has been invade vital government agencies and fire federal employees en masse to ultimately be replaced by Trump loyalists, destroy vital government services Americans rely on, and reroute government contract money toward businesses he owns.
The results have been disastrous. Over 200,000 federal employees have been fired for no legitimate reason–oftentimes, the reason of “performance issues” will be given to employees with glowing performance reviews–and 70,000 have been tricked into taking the buyouts that will not be paid to them. Besides destroying the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands and the horrible economic and job market effects that mass firings have, this will gut vital services people rely on, such as Social Security, the IRS (tax refund processing and general customer service), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (regulating and addressing complaints by consumers against banks and other companies).
1,000 workers from the National Park Service, so no more park rangers for all you hikers out there. Massive cuts to the Department of Education, for those of you who prefer your kids get a real education and not be taught creationism and Confederate Lost Cause mythology. Cuts to FEMA, as well as the NWS and NOAA, the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, means we’re going to get no warning when hurricanes and tornadoes tear through the country and no disaster relief for those affected.
DOGE workers tried to physically break into USAID’s headquarters and steal information, and the security workers who stopped them were placed on leave before Musk eventually managed to get in. Now they’ve gutted that agency and destroyed US goodwill and soft power abroad. People who celebrate this are not allowed to be Spider-Man fans.
Musk has also falsely claimed that Social Security is rife with fraud (he believes people who died before it was even created are getting benefit payments….because he’s stupid). Now that DOGE and its army of teen hackers has taken it over and has access to your personal information, their inability to understand how to use its software threatens to cause an interruption of Social Security benefits for the first time in history. Hope no one reading has elderly parents!
And these are just some of the most talked about consequences of a Musk presidency. There’s so much more, and this is all at the time of writing. By the time you read this, I imagine things will be much worse. It hasn’t even been six weeks since Inauguration Day at the time of this writing.
Of course, presentation is also important for having a great supervillain, not just their actions. The Joker isn’t just a serial killer. He’s also a psychotic clown with a penchant for over the top theatrics.
Elon Musk is just a really weird person. In a way, he seems to be constantly trying to cycle through looking like Lex Luthor and looking like the Joker. He’ll stand in the Oval Office with a pretentious look on his face and his fingers clasped together one moment (while his four year old son wipes his boogers on Vice President Trump’s desk), and then start jumping around with a chainsaw and proudly showing off his “Tech Support” shirt next.
To say nothing of the Nazi salutes.
This is off-putting behavior. Normal people don’t act like this. This is the behavior of a Nazi-supporting, Apartheid South African-born, Zambian emerald mine-owning ketamine-addled, tech bro billionaire who doesn’t understand that human beings aren’t code lines to manipulate.
Think I’m being harsh or unfair? He literally named one of his twelve children with as many mothers “X Æ A-12”. No, neither your monitor nor my keyboard glitched out. Elon Musk actually named his son X Æ A-12, which has to violate child abuse laws somewhere in the world.
At this point, I don’t think it’s worth even bothering to talk about anyone else.
Final Thoughts Before I’m Forced-Neuralinked
Elon Musk is not the only off-putting tech bro in the world, and there are already tech bro supervillains in comics.
But his uncontrollable Nazi saluting at his Inauguration Day speech coupled by the near monarchical power he’s usurped and the clear, identifiable harm he’s inflicted upon thousands of ordinary Americans makes me believe that the tech bro will be the new dominant supervillain archetype.
There’s a way to properly inject politics into your story if you’re writing superhero fiction. Since the beginning, the creators have taken the greatest plagues to our society and created a template of villains from them. Nazis were practically the only villains superheroes fought from 1941 to 1945.
There’s always something that creates that dominant villain template. Superheroes were fighting Nazis before Pearl Harbor, but after that day, they only fought Nazis. Lex Luthor was not the first mad scientist villain or wealthy capitalist villain, but after the culture of the 1960s space race or 1980s corporate conservatism took hold, the man who was arguably the top supervillain of all supervillains was now those things, and other villains followed suit.
There may have been other tech bro supervillains before.
But the tech bro is going to be the supervillain for at least the next ten years.
I could be wrong, but I do believe this. I believe the tech bro will be the new dominant supervillain archetype for a decade.
And it will be all due to Elon Musk.
Your mileage may vary on whether it’s the worst thing he’s done since allying with Trump or the one good thing.
For exciting superhero fiction written by me, be sure to check out the BLUE EAGLE Universe!