Comments on: What’s your childhood trauma?

By: The Four Color Media Monitor

The Four Color Media Monitor — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 17:21:08 +0000

Supervillains as drug addicts?…

There were two storylines in the past year or so that struck me as rather contrived, and considering that these are rogues gallery villains I’m talking about here, that’s one more reason why I don’t see what it adds to them. From Spyder-25, here’s …

By: Kelson

Kelson — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 16:19:23 +0000

Batman doesn't really fit the pattern, unless you're looking at the Batman Begins version. While his parents' murder is what drove him to fight crime, it isn't what drove him to dress like a bat. The canonical version of his origin involves the adult Bruce Wayne, having decided to become a vigilante, trying to decide how to disguise himself, when a bat flies through the window. The childhood fall into the future Batcave is (AFAIK) unique to Batman Begins. (P.S. It's scapegoat. An "escape goat" would be like a getaway car for Hobbits.)

By: threemileisland

threemileisland — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 15:20:45 +0000

and how not to mention batman, speaking of heroes? you’re right, seems that the childhood trauma is always a good escape goat.

By: Omar Karindu

Omar Karindu — Sun, 29 May 2005 23:48:57 +0000

Flash v.2 #215 established the Top’s claim that toy tops were his only escape from a childhood in which his parents unreasonably demanded that he be the best at everything — which he now insanely puns on using the double meaning of “top.”

Golden Glider’s ice-skating would seem to spring from the same source as Cold’s…cold.

Captain Boomerang was shown, in Suicide Squad v.1 #44, to have been hated by his own father because he was illegitemate (though Digger didn’t know so at the time). He also created a boomerang as a child in that story.

Magenta is the poster girl for bad childhoods, of course; much of her original mental problems stem from her parents’ Carrie-like belief that her magentic powers were evidence of demonic possession.

Hunter Zolomon became a profiler after his father, revealed as a serial killer, murdered his mother. His parents’ silence and seeming indifference towards him also seem to have fueled the identity issues that led him to become a new Reverse-Flash/Zoom.

Second-generation Trickster Axel Walker is still a youngster, a rich kid gone bad.

And then there’s Inertia….