I have been a great follower of superhero series', not always, but now certainly. Unlike a lot of people who start with comic books and then move on to movies about superheroes, my real exposure started with the movies (discounting the light doses of Spiderman, He-man and Aladdin on Doordarshan) and I don't think I will go back to comic books.
However, I don't intend to talk about superheroes (not in this post at least), but about super villains. Superheroes is what people think they go to watch, but, the reason why people wait for the next movie or the comic book is because of the uniqueness of the villains. So, I think in sustaining a series it is equally, if not more, important to have good super villains.
To draw an analogy, there is this concept of Freebie marketing where you sell a product for marginal profit or even loss to generate sustained revenues in long run on the basis of re-fills. Gillette is an excellent example of this. The super villains, I believe should be counted as the real bread-earners for their respective superhero franchise.
Talking of the villains, one of the most famous villains of all time, Joker, will be seen in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" this July. I wouldn't miss it for anything, would recommend you the same.
However, I don't intend to talk about superheroes (not in this post at least), but about super villains. Superheroes is what people think they go to watch, but, the reason why people wait for the next movie or the comic book is because of the uniqueness of the villains. So, I think in sustaining a series it is equally, if not more, important to have good super villains.
To draw an analogy, there is this concept of Freebie marketing where you sell a product for marginal profit or even loss to generate sustained revenues in long run on the basis of re-fills. Gillette is an excellent example of this. The super villains, I believe should be counted as the real bread-earners for their respective superhero franchise.
Talking of the villains, one of the most famous villains of all time, Joker, will be seen in Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" this July. I wouldn't miss it for anything, would recommend you the same.
This makes me remind of the fact that 'Without 'bad', there's nothing called 'good', without 'sorrow' there's nothing called 'joy' and so on... So you've rightly said that without 'super villains' there can't be any 'super heroes'.
Also, since I am reading some philosophy these days :-), the same idea forms the basis of Chinese concept of 'Yin' and 'Yang' which signify 'two mutually correlated opposites'
I think super-villainous characters are easier to co-relate with people we come across everyday, real life, and we crave to see super-heros, which we are guaranteed to see in these movies/comics -- and of course, super-villains are what make super-hero out of the hero.