Comic Cliche of the Day: Overloading the Villain

February 9th, 2005

Filed under: Comics

How many times have we seen this? A hero or group of heroes is fighting a super-villain, usually one with some sort of energy draining or absorbing power.

“If we can just overload him, we’ll win” the lead hero declares confidently.
Following his lead, all the heroes max out their powers on the villain. There’s Super Nova flares, Gekigan punches and Screams that shatter glass. It’s too much to handle, and the villain collapses, defeated.

If you think about it, that’s a pretty risky move. Almost always, it’s a villain the heroes have never seen before and certainly one they’ve never had time to study. Still, they’er confident enough to risk everything. If they’re wrong, they’re going to be totally depleted while the bad guy will be stronger than ever. Yet the trick never fails and seems to turn up in comics and cartoons at least once a month.

Just once, I’d like to see the villain shrug it off, laugh, and wipe the floor with the good guys.

3 Responses to “ Comic Cliche of the Day: Overloading the Villain ”

  1. Alex Scott
    February 10th, 2005 at 12:33 am

    You should play Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest. In that game, you can kill the last boss with only a few cure spells.

  2. Chris Brown
    February 10th, 2005 at 11:34 am

    You shold also include in your comic cliche the “combining powers at the same time to defeat the villain” cliche. Oh and the “superhero’s love interest is only interested in the superhero and not the alter-ego.”

  3. Zoot Koomie
    February 10th, 2005 at 11:50 am

    The glory days of this cliche were the Autumn of 1984. In October, in a flashback issue, a pre-FF Reed Richards did this trick with a Kirby Monster named Gormuu. In December, in the double-sized Avengers 250, both Avengers teams came together to overload Maelstrom. Even better, both villians were getting bigger, but not more massive when they absorbed energy and both, when overloaded, evaporated. I even think the heroes caught on by noticing that the badguy’s footprints were getting shallower in both books. I guess it must have scarred me for life because here I am 20 years later, I still knew how to spell Gormuu without looking it up. (I did have to look up the dates of the books though.)

    Anyway, here’s a lovely critique of this cliche I saw a long while back:
    Hero 1: I know! Let’s overload him!
    Hero 2: Wait, have you fought this guy before?
    Hero 1: Well, no.
    Hero 2: But you know how his powers work, right?
    Hero 1: Not as such.
    Hero 2: O.K., let’s just call that Plan Z for now. Anyone else have any ideas?

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