September Q & A: Brett Favre and supervillainy

We finally move away from my friends’ questions for a bit, as reader BalladeersBlog asks, “If you were a super villain, how would you ‘get rid of this Bret Favre problem…permanently?’”

Well, this is really a multi-part question, as we first need to establish what kind of super villain I would be. Now, there’s three major types of super villains, the mad scientist type, the super powered bruisers, and the magic based villains. Now, while I suppose it could be fun to just have actual super powers, the bruiser category has probably the highest risk of the three of me having some retarded power and becoming some lame villain that Favre would easily overcome with an unexpected team-up with a super-hero. Consider; the mad scientist type contains such villains as Dr. Doom, Lex Luthor, and Brainiac. The magic-based category features names like Baron Mordo, Diablo, and Dr. Alchemy. The general super powered crowd, though? You might wind up as the Green Goblin or Darkseid, but you’re a great deal more likely to end up as the Kangaroo or Killer Croc. It’s far too much of a crapshoot to seriously entertain.

Now, that leaves us with science vs. magic, and while both categories have their general allure, I think I’m going to have to view this as follows: when you screw up as a mad scientist, you normally wind up in jail. When you screw up as an evil wizard, though, you can easily find yourself in Hell, or caught in the Dark Dimension, or some other horrible nightmare dimension. Simply put, science villains get the same rewards with much less risk, and if there’s one thing I like in life it’s a lack of risk.

Next we’d have to determine where I would locate my secret lair, and while I’d love to have it on Oolong Island, it suffers from a combined factor of being owned by the Chinese government and being somewhat fictional. Neither of those prospects really does it for me, sadly, and since I’m currently stuck living it up in Jersey, I think I’m going to just go ahead and build my base deep with the Pine Barrens. That way, any time I need to capture someone to run experiments on, it can easily be explained away as someone having just gotten lost in the swamps, or even being taken by the Jersey Devil (Note: so far as I know, there isn’t a super-powered character from any comic book company named the Jersey Devil. Definitely a strong consideration for the name of my top henchman).

Now we get to my grudge match with Favre. I don’t follow football all that well, though I did just join my first ever fantasy football league, and he is on a rival team, so I suppose that does indeed countermand whatever enjoyment I got from his cameo in There’s Something About Mary. I can’t even hate him for being a jock, because despite my having been an overt nerd back in high scho--well, from birth to the present, I was never really bullied, and had several jock friends, because I never figured out how cliques worked. However, while I have no real stake in football, I am aware that the general backlash against Favre right now is coming from his staunch refusal to retire despite being well past his sell-by date, much like Chuck Liddell’s staunch refusal to retire from the UFC, so I can find a way to sympathize here. Nobody likes seeing one of their old heroes embarrassing himself out there. Therefore, in the interests of helping out the world in my super villainy, I’m going to go ahead and do away with the entire Minnesota Vikings. This is partially so that I don’t have to worry about splash damage, and partially because none of them are on my fantasy football team, so fuck ‘em.

There are a few different ways to wipe out the entire team. A bomb or guns or something are right out, just for being too mundane for my tastes. One idea that I quite like is that of fellow science villain Swarm, a Nazi scientist whose body is made out of bees. Bill Mantlo was firing on all cylinders when he came up with that guy, let me tell you. Animal attacks tend to be a bit unreliable, however, what with the possibility that they might just turn on me, or simply not finish off the whole team. By the same token, attempting to de-evolve the team, or transform them into animals is also out, as there’s a high risk of a more heroic scientist countering my efforts. No, I think the best possible plan here is simply some good old-fashioned time travel, say, back to the age of the dinosaurs. It’s a time when all diseases and viruses are completely foreign to a modern day human immune system, the wildlife is large and eager to eat mid-sized mammals with little to no wilderness survival skills, and there is nothing approaching civilization to offer any kind of aid whatsoever as they’re rapidly wiped out by the harsh environment. Not even the great longevity of Brett Favre could survive such a thing.