What OS Villian Archetypes are needed?

Oh yeah, Punchline works!

For my own OS universe I'm pretty much building up an Illuminati/Supremacy style Council of the Wicked and Manipulative, and I need to make/find profiles to fit each of the following archetypes:

Twisted Sorcerer
Alien Manipulator
Mad Scientist
Ruthless Businessperson
Corrupt Politician
Mob Boss
Demonic Being
Tyrant Overlord
Former Hero
Fanatical Cultist
Military Officer
Inscrutable Oriental
Mysterious Mastermind/Cosmic Ruler

I have some ideas for each of these, really not sure whether to find and dramatically enhance PD characters or just go for some completely new OS villains for each Archetype. I already have some characters that would fit particular roles, but most of my villains are more street-level/thug/minion types rather than the actual heads of organizations, so this will probably be a big project for me.

Well, if you were going to use PD characters, here are my suggestions (if they're not found on PDSH wiki, i'll let u know where to find them)...

Twisted Sorcerer - The Black Dragon (Cap Battle), Green Sorceress, Lurani, Merciless, Morgan le Fey or Vultor (a powerful enemy of Nelvana of the Northern Lights)
Alien Manipulator - Super Brain, Droon, Mr. Mind (Captain Marvel)
Mad Scientist - Dr. Sivana, Dr. Doom, Marto (there are dozens of others)
Ruthless Businessperson - Mr. Twist (Atoman...almost identical to Lex or Kingpin in every way)
Corrupt Politician - Jaspar Crow, Big Shot (Mayor Kozer)
Mob Boss - Octopus, Satana, The Fang (Black Fury), there are hundreds...
Demonic Being - Baba Yaga, The Claw, The Green Ghoul, Mr. Skeleton (Minute Man)
Tyrant Overlord - Kroll Mull, She, Camilla, Neptina, Sorceress of Zoom, Black Dragon, Claw, Vultor
Former Hero - pick anyone...
Fanatical Cultist - Zarro: The Zombie Master (Jackpot Comics), Black Hand (MLJ), The Cobra (MLJ), Professor Bixby
Military Officer - Iron Jaw, The Vulture (Magno), The Toad (Lash Lightning), The Hun (Shield), The Crane (Boy King), Captain Nippo
Inscrutable Oriental - Fu Manchu (why bother with imitations of the original?), Ah Ku, The Great Question, Green Dragon
Mysterious Mastermind/Cosmic Ruler - Mr. Mind (Captain Marvel), Golden Mane, Kalthaer, Zog

argosail wrote:

Twisted Sorcerer - Vultor (a powerful enemy of Nelvana of the Northern Lights)
Alien Manipulator - Mr. Mind (Captain Marvel)
Mad Scientist - Dr. Sivana
Ruthless Businessperson - Mr. Twist (Atoman...almost identical to Lex or Kingpin in every way)
Mob Boss - The Fang (Black Fury)
Demonic Being - Mr. Skeleton (Minute Man)
Fanatical Cultist - Zarro: The Zombie Master (Jackpot Comics), Black Hand (MLJ), The Cobra (MLJ)
Military Officer - The Vulture (Magno), The Toad (Lash Lightning), The Hun (Shield), The Crane (Boy King)
Mysterious Mastermind/Cosmic Ruler - Golden Mane

Thanks for the suggestions, it certainly makes a great starting point for forming the association up. The one's I've left in the above quote are the ones I'm unable to find on PDSH, for the most part. The only ones there I can find plenty of info on are Mr. Mind and Dr. Sivana, but those ones I want to check if they're definitely PD, given that some of the issues were registered, and if they are PD then which aspects of those characters? I'm having a hard time separating the PD material from things that may have been added later in copyrighted stories.

This also raises another interesting question, which is just how many of the MLJ villains are in the public domain? I once found a list of Golden Age MLJ villains and there were a hell of a lot of them.

Yeah, I've been reading through the non-renewed issues featuring Captain Marvel and I've also had a chance to look at the renewed issues in between. You do have to be careful, but Sivana and Mr. Mind both appeared first in non-renewed issues, and a lot of other info about them appeared for the first time in non-renewed issues. One important thing u can't do with Sivana is reference his daughter Beautia or inventions that appeared in renewed issues. But his origin and many other inventions appear to be PD. All of Mr. Mind's early appearances are PD. Ibelieve you can also use Ibac, Sabbac, Magnificus, Mr. Banjo, Nippo, Captain Nazi and Jeepers, not to mention the team name "The Monster Society."

My understanding is that most early MLJ comics were not renewed. PDSH wiki has gotten to many of the heroes, but yeah, there are a ton of great villians still missing, like The Mist, The Crawler, The Hunter and The Hun (who looks like a Nazi version of Cap America, complete with shield).

The Crane is basically a gustapo officer with Inspector Gadget's abilities, who fought Boy King in several issues.

Vultor is a persistent enemy of Nelvana who first appears in Triumph Comics....he's bald and has a unique cobra hooded green robe. At first he controls the Mammoth people (giant mammoth-humanoids) and later, he demonstrated mind control powers among other things. He also appears in Tripple threat.

Mr. Twist IS lex luthor in Atoman #1. He is a rich guy seeking technological weapons who uses mafia thugs and in the end he escapes in a helicopter off the roof of his building (i don't think they even had helicopters at the time).

Golden Mane is mostly just a name and an upper body drawing right now. He only appears at the end of the Outworlder web comic. We know he is a cosmic mastermind orchestrating earth's doom.

Mr. Skeleton is a freakish looking demon about 20 feet tall that is bulletproof and loves to kill. Appears in America's Greatest Comics.

The Toad is on the wiki. Vulture is a nazi agent in a semi-bird/semi-goblin outfit...no special abilities.

The Fang is a bald mafia dude...he's big and bad and he can turn invisible. Good fighter. Fights the black Fury for about 3-4 issues....i think in Fantastic Comics....

Hrm, I think I'd definitely want a good mix of powered and non-powered people on the council, so it doesn't seem like you need to have powers to be politically or economically viable. All you need is smarts.

Oh crud. I totally forgot about the Synthetic Intelligence archetype. Every council of big evil villains needs at least 1 robot/AI/supercomputer, in my opinion. Not sure which of the other 13 categories I would cut out. You've given plenty of good ideas though, so all is well.

There is a PD Italian sci-fi movie from 1977 called "Cosmos: War of the Planets" which is about a planet ruled by a super computer and when it learns of earth, it seeks to take over our planet as well. This particular computer could take over people, robots, etc. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if it actually had a name. There was also a 1966 novel called Colossus, about Skynet's grand daddy, Colossus, but I don't think that goes PD until 2051.

Hrm, interesting... I shall have to check out Cosmos then. Worst comes to worst, I call the computer COSMOS (Civil Order & Service Management Operating System) Or I just use my own open-source character Syntel for the same effect.

I like the COSMOS accronym...very clever.

There's also Merlin, the legendary supercomputer in Cosmic Computer AKA Junkyard Planet. It was supposed to be a central strategic netowrking computer for all the computers on the planet, and highly intelligent, but the secret base it was in had been lost track of in a war. I didn't finish the story so I don't know if it was real or not, but another possibility. I'd call it the Military Enforcement & Research Linked Instructive Network So it seems I have plenty of choices for computers/robots, was just wondering if there are any particularly famous ones that jump out at people.

What about HAL9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey

There's also generic "robots" from Karl Capec's "RUR".

Colossus: The Forbin Project was kinda cool (slow paced by today's standards but still entertaining)

Robert Heinlein (or was it Asimove) had that computer that could predict entire societal trends deep into the future. Utter nonsense, but still cool.

Is that what you meant, I just scanned the thread...

Vagrant wrote:

There's also Merlin, the legendary supercomputer in Cosmic Computer AKA Junkyard Planet. It was supposed to be a central strategic netowrking computer for all the computers on the planet, and highly intelligent, but the secret base it was in had been lost track of in a war. I didn't finish the story so I don't know if it was real or not, but another possibility. I'd call it the Military Enforcement & Research Linked Instructive Network So it seems I have plenty of choices for computers/robots, was just wondering if there are any particularly famous ones that jump out at people.

We're looking for PD stuff. I've seen 2001 listed on a PD movie site, but even if it was, the book isn't. I've looked into Forbin Project, and there's no indication it's PD. I doubt anything by Asimov or Heinlein is PD. I'm not sure what RUR is.

Okilie-dokilie, neighboreno, PD only it is.

R.U.R. is a science fiction play in the Czech language by Karel Čapek. R.U.R. stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, an English phrase used as the subtitle in the Czech original. It premiered in 1921 and introduced the word "robot" to the English language and to science fiction as a whole.

Apparently the Czech version is on Project Gutenberg, so it seems likely PD.

But in terms of archtypes, non-PD sources can be used as a jumping off point.

There's also Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" and the robot Maria. Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and owners inherent in capitalism, as expressed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. I'm not sure if it's PD or not though.

argosail wrote:

We're looking for PD stuff. I've seen 2001 listed on a PD movie site, but even if it was, the book isn't. I've looked into Forbin Project, and there's no indication it's PD. I doubt anything by Asimov or Heinlein is PD. I'm not sure what RUR is.

Oh, right...yeah, that RUR thing is PD then, since it's pre 1923. I read about that, but as I understand it the "robots" in that were actually more biological, like clones.

Metropolis was briefly PD, but won't be again until 2023, as I understand it...it's very complicated...

"A Logic Named Joe" is a science fiction short story by Murray Leinster that was first published in the March 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The story actually appeared under Leinster's real name, Will F. Jenkins, since that issue of Astounding also included a story under the Leinster pseudonym called "Adapter". The story is particularly noteworthy as a prediction of massively networked personal computers and their drawbacks, written at a time when computing was in its infancy.

Not sure if that's PD, it's not listed under the Copyright Renewal website I checked. It's not on Project Gutenberg, but I've seen online versions of it.