Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Not after they hold you down and take it away from you...
I attended a reading some time back by Gahan Wilson. He's a good writer as well as a brilliant cartoonist. He read a piece in which the author of a "Fu Manchu" like series decides to kill off his long-time protagonist and replace him with a new here, maybe Hungarian like he is. He confidently expects his new hero to handily defeat the villain and end the series. It doesn't work out that way. What he does do is remove the only obstacle that was presenting his villain from escaping from the series and affecting the real world. 
(IIRC, in the Last Fu Manchu novel, Nayland Smith decides he's just delaying the inevitable. Fu Manchu is too smart, too powerful, and too rich. Sooner or later, he will succeed in taking over the world. But once he has, he'll probably do a decent job of running it, and certainly a better job that those he displaced.)
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Dennis |
This reminds me of the comic book series "Empire," where the main character is a villain who defeats all of his enemies, wipes out any opposition in the world to his rule, and now controls the entire world. With his technology he is able to immediately wipe any opposition as soon as it becomes known.
The problem is, he hates the job, he's ill suited to it, and he can't quit. There's no one he can trust, he's continually having to watch his back, and he has to ruthlessly deal with any one who might be a threat. Ironically, when he became the ruler of the world he also became the least free person in the world.