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Just a thought, but following Buffy's popularizing of the Big Bad in long-form storytelling, it spread to other media like wildfire. I seem to recall that in the 90s, you had a lot of big comic events that weren't so much about villains as they were events... Gotham getting hit by an earthquake, Gotham catching the plague, yadda yadda. Nowadays it seems like each crisis crossover boils down to a villain--Alexander Luthor, Darkseid, Norman Osborn, Black Mask, whatever. This has even gotten into TV shows like Fringe, to its detriment, but that's another article.
The thing is, though this thinking makes storytelling easy to compartmentalize (it's basically just saying that if you're telling one big story over the course of several stories, that story should have a clear antagonist), it's really not the only way to do things. Justified, for instance, has never quite had a Big Bad. They had Bo and Boyd Crowder in the first season, but the plot was driven more by father and son turning on each other than someone going after Raylan. The second season, you have the more clear-cut villain in Mags, but the story is more about the jockeying for position between her, Boyd, and even a corrupt corporate executive than her enacting a master plan. Third season, there really hasn't been a Big Bad, although the show does give us its most conventional villain in Quarles, who has it in for Raylan personally. Even there, he doesn't become more and more powerful and get closer and closer to fulfilling his plan--he gets more and more frustrated by his failures (with some very good writing, these reflect less on him than on just how good his opponents are), driving him to become ever more desperate and dangerous.
The other "Big Bad" of the season is Limehouse, who is barely a villain. He just wants to be left alone. He's trying to protect his black community in the middle of Racismland, but aside from being a scary crime boss, he acts decently. He's fair in his business dealings, although always looking after his own best interests, and when one of his subordinates fails him, he doesn't Admiral Needa them, but gives a lecture on what they did wrong--which is still intimidating as all hell.
It strikes me that this would be a good school of thought to apply to superhero comics. Especially Batman comics. You could have crazed vigilantes like S1!Boyd Crowder/Two-Face, psycho loose cannons like Quarles/the Joker, and self-interested crimelords like Mags/Penguin. In addition to those criminals who are actually just trying to steal shit, like the Riddler and Catwoman.
Insert transition! The Batman films are always limited because there are few villains in his rogue's gallery who can convincingly want to destroy the city/world/humanity, which is what these plots are always about. It never really rung true to have Penguin or the Riddler being megalomaniacs, did it? At least rocket penguins kinda fits with Cobblepot going all Quarles there at the end--Riddler sucking up people's brain waves was just stupid. Ra's al Ghul and Joker work as antagonists who want stuff to blow up good, and Bane you can strip-mine for wherever Nolan is going, but could you picture Deadshot trying to take over the world? Why would he even want that? Is it the only way to bring back the moustache?
The thinking that the stakes have to be just that high just ends up limiting the stories. Justified is about who runs the crime in Harland County, and because we're emotionally invested in the characters, we care what happens, even as the conflict never escalates beyond small-scale gunfights. So why not do Batman stories where Rogues A, B, and C are competing for control, with Rogues D, E, and F as soldiers and Rogues G and H as spoilers? There's a lot more direction to take that plot than just "which C-list character is going to die for Batman's tears this time?"
You could make a pretty good Gotham Central show out of that. Big villains who the team is trying to bring down on a seasonal basis, only every time they take a Big Bad out another one can step into the power vacuum. Plus case-of-the-week baddies like Killer Croc or Firefly. Michelle Rodriguez as Montoya, Donal Logue as Bullock--how many cops do we need? I'm going with Castle numbers. Crispus Allen and Sarah Essen as our B-listers, with a name actor playing Gordon. Maybe have Dick Grayson on the force as a uniform. You could do the M thing with the Joker escaping and the cops and crooks both wanting to catch him. I'd watch it.
The thing is, though this thinking makes storytelling easy to compartmentalize (it's basically just saying that if you're telling one big story over the course of several stories, that story should have a clear antagonist), it's really not the only way to do things. Justified, for instance, has never quite had a Big Bad. They had Bo and Boyd Crowder in the first season, but the plot was driven more by father and son turning on each other than someone going after Raylan. The second season, you have the more clear-cut villain in Mags, but the story is more about the jockeying for position between her, Boyd, and even a corrupt corporate executive than her enacting a master plan. Third season, there really hasn't been a Big Bad, although the show does give us its most conventional villain in Quarles, who has it in for Raylan personally. Even there, he doesn't become more and more powerful and get closer and closer to fulfilling his plan--he gets more and more frustrated by his failures (with some very good writing, these reflect less on him than on just how good his opponents are), driving him to become ever more desperate and dangerous.
The other "Big Bad" of the season is Limehouse, who is barely a villain. He just wants to be left alone. He's trying to protect his black community in the middle of Racismland, but aside from being a scary crime boss, he acts decently. He's fair in his business dealings, although always looking after his own best interests, and when one of his subordinates fails him, he doesn't Admiral Needa them, but gives a lecture on what they did wrong--which is still intimidating as all hell.
It strikes me that this would be a good school of thought to apply to superhero comics. Especially Batman comics. You could have crazed vigilantes like S1!Boyd Crowder/Two-Face, psycho loose cannons like Quarles/the Joker, and self-interested crimelords like Mags/Penguin. In addition to those criminals who are actually just trying to steal shit, like the Riddler and Catwoman.
Insert transition! The Batman films are always limited because there are few villains in his rogue's gallery who can convincingly want to destroy the city/world/humanity, which is what these plots are always about. It never really rung true to have Penguin or the Riddler being megalomaniacs, did it? At least rocket penguins kinda fits with Cobblepot going all Quarles there at the end--Riddler sucking up people's brain waves was just stupid. Ra's al Ghul and Joker work as antagonists who want stuff to blow up good, and Bane you can strip-mine for wherever Nolan is going, but could you picture Deadshot trying to take over the world? Why would he even want that? Is it the only way to bring back the moustache?
The thinking that the stakes have to be just that high just ends up limiting the stories. Justified is about who runs the crime in Harland County, and because we're emotionally invested in the characters, we care what happens, even as the conflict never escalates beyond small-scale gunfights. So why not do Batman stories where Rogues A, B, and C are competing for control, with Rogues D, E, and F as soldiers and Rogues G and H as spoilers? There's a lot more direction to take that plot than just "which C-list character is going to die for Batman's tears this time?"
You could make a pretty good Gotham Central show out of that. Big villains who the team is trying to bring down on a seasonal basis, only every time they take a Big Bad out another one can step into the power vacuum. Plus case-of-the-week baddies like Killer Croc or Firefly. Michelle Rodriguez as Montoya, Donal Logue as Bullock--how many cops do we need? I'm going with Castle numbers. Crispus Allen and Sarah Essen as our B-listers, with a name actor playing Gordon. Maybe have Dick Grayson on the force as a uniform. You could do the M thing with the Joker escaping and the cops and crooks both wanting to catch him. I'd watch it.
