I Guess Playing For Fun Gets Stale

It's been a month since I received my copy of Avengers Arena #7, and I'm still trying to decide if I like the slant Dennis Hopeless put on Arcade.

It makes sense that Arcade would get frustrated by the constant defeats. Given that, it also makes sense he might either give in to despair or try to prove something.

Even so, part of Arcade's appeal to me (and he's my favorite comic book villain), is that winning really doesn't matter much to him. Sure, he'd like to win, kill Spider-Man or whoever. That's how he earns his bread (though I've always assumed he paid the bills off-panel with those boring, ordinary people assignments he complained of the first time he went after the X-Men). But at the end of the day, he's a showman, not a hired gun. He's not Tombstone, where it's business. He wants to enjoy himself, test the limits of his creativity (and sadism). The line of his that sticks with me is (from that first tussle with the X-Men), 'You see, ladies, any fool can kill. I wanted to do it with style.' If he was able to do that, it didn't matter so much if he lost.

In some ways, Arcade is the writer and artist placed inside the book. He's there to be an entertaining threat to the hero, create some nice visuals, some dramatic tension, and ultimately, lose. But so long as he accomplishes the first three things, the last one isn't such a big deal. As a reader, I don't mind that Arcade fails to kill Deadpool and Hercules in Deadpool Team-Up #899. I care that with an assist from Nightmare, he gave Deadpool's caption boxes physical form so they could try and kill him. That's creepy, but also cool.

This attitude put Arcade ahead of a lot of other villains. A dope like Constrictor thinks he's supposed to win, and so he keeps committing crimes, thinking this time it'll be different. When in reality he's a loser there to get swiftly pummeled and probably left for the cops hog-tied with his own coils. So he's always frustrated, while Arcade can enjoy the competition, even as he loses.

Of course lately, Arcade's been getting frustrated himself. Even before Avengers Arena, or his humiliating birthday party, there was Avengers Academy Giant Size, where he went after them and the Young Allies, trying to prove to prospective employers that he still had it. That Deadpool Team-Up issue had some of as well, since he was trying to eliminate a rival in the job market. I don't know what that shift is about. Some move towards greater realism, perhaps. Most people couldn't retain such an upbeat attitude in the face of constant defeat. I'd think that would apply even more so to someone who kills people with no qualms whatsoever, because they are, at best temporary sources of entertainment.

Or it could be the idea that for villains to be interesting, they have to be threatening, and for them to be threatening, they have to be killers. Which is how the Joker got whatever ridiculous body count he has by now. It isn't sufficient to be a taxing mental challenge, or simply a persistent nuisance, there has to be a possibility the villain will skip rope with your spinal cord, or otherwise destroy your life. Which, if you agree with Ms. Coriander's assessment of Arcade, would explain some of this. He's demonstrated he can snatch away heroes and drive them to kill each other, when he chooses. Which is certainly control, since he would dictate when that happens.

You can certainly see some of that in his past schemes. He delights in putting the heroes in situations where they have to risk their lives, or get them to jump through his hoops. He forced Captain Britain to sit in a small box and risk drowning, because otherwise his lady (Courtney Ross) would die, and the controls to save her were in said box. He tricked Colossus into believing he'd betrayed Mother Russia and turned him against the X-Men. He got Kitty and Colossus to protect him from Miss Locke on his birthday. It's why he likes using robot duplicates of the people he's killing, to mess with their heads about who they're fighting. It's part of the show, turn their strengths against him, see if they can overcome it and win. It's how he gets his kicks, and I guess that's still in effect. I'm still not sure I like the increased emphasis on winning, though.