Introduction: Getting started as a villain

First impressions are a must. That's why you should study everything in this guide before pulling your first caper. I know you might get bored waiting, but if there's anything that working in food service taught me before I made it big (ha ha), it's that presentation is half the meal.

Alright, down to business!

First, pick a major city, but not too major. Everyone goes to New York or Los Angeles. Don't be that guy. Those places are saturated. You want somewhere with a lot of opportunity for crime, but not a huge installed base of competitors. Heroes may go easy on you, but the established villains know the score and will not hesitate to rub out small fry that muscle onto their turf. Worse, you could get taken over by a big-name player and made into a lieutenant or something. This is absolutely the worst thing that can happen! You're going to live for the rest of your life - and that's a long time - in someone else's shadow. You don't want that, do you?

Second, try your best to latch onto an existing superhero, preferably a nice, civic-minded do-gooder. You want someone who'll escort you in handcuffs onto the paddy wagon, not rip your head off with his bare hands. Yes, capture and imprisonment is always a possibility, so plan for it! Don't get cocky.

The absolute best villains, the one who show they've got brains and creativity, are the ones who can make their chosen hero seem like the person who led to their empowerment. If you can fabricate a backstory that makes Captain Shinyass look responsible for your creation, other heroes will generally leave you to him to take care of. Nobody likes cleaning up someone else's mess. That's good, because you want to work with a known quantity instead of facing every hero in your city.

Third, get yourself a safe-house. This is not your lair. You don't bring kidnapped reporters here. You don't build your bombs here. You don't do anything here except live. When everything goes south, this is where you go to rest up, figure out what went wrong, and plan for the future. Lairs blow up or burn down. Hidden headquarters get filled with water or concrete. The cops dismantle floating fortresses. Your safe-house shouldn't be any of these things.

Fourth, come up with a few stock capers you can easily pull off with your powers. These are your go-to sources of fun (or funds) when you can't be more creative. Everyone hits dry spells. Everyone runs into a wall coming up with new ideas for villainy. That's fine! Don't let those get you down. Just go back to your stock capers list and pull off one of those. A successful crime does wonders for your confidence level.

Introduction: Why villainy?

So you’ve got superhuman powers, but you don't know what to do with yourself. If you’re reading this guide, maybe you’re considering self-gratification. No, not that kind, you sicko. I mean villainy.

As a super, your physical needs will diminish. Eating, sleeping, maybe even breathing! Many of you won’t need a shelter from the elements. And this is great, because it means you never have to work again.

I know, I know - society has conditioned you to believe that you need to fit yourself in somewhere, like a cog in a machine. Well you aren’t a cog anymore. You’re a spanner in the works, and society has no idea what to do about you. It’s only been fifty years or so since supers emerged. We can't even keep up with all the changes to Facebook's timeline feature. You think solving the problem of demigods is going to be fast? You can't wait around for them to decide who and what you are.

So, forget society! Supervillainy is actually a pretty good thing to take up. Here’s why.

1. You work for yourself and make your own hours. I can’t stress how liberating this is.
2. Nobody else is using your powers in ways you don’t agree with.
3. The good guys will play by some rules - and make allowances you'd never get if you were a conventional terrorist.

I’m not advocating that you turn into a mass-murdering psychopath or mercenary or something here. If you want to play this game, you'll have to play by some rules too. But within those rules, if it feels good, do it!

For example, my power as Mr. Big is control over the weak nuclear force, with some overlap with the electroweak force, in certain specific patterns. In plain English, I can grow and shrink. Well, what am I going to do with that?

I saw a video on Youtube called "Straight Ahead", by Tube & Berger, featuring singer Chrissie Hynde. It had a giant figure in a diving suit dancing around the city, towering over skyscrapers and so forth. So I thought, what the hell. Sure, I had to kidnap Chrissie Hynde and steal a sound system to make it all work, but it was perfect. Just perfect. Nobody got hurt, and people downtown got to take a lot of really neat pictures. It sure had the tourists going, let me tell you.

Next we'll talk about how to get started as a villain!

Plus: I'll be doing the video for "Love is Strong" by the Stones. Chicago. July 4th. Be there. It's going to be epic.