Think of any villain/antagonist from a cartoon or comic. Got one?
Are you sure?
You've been put in charge of writing a spin-off series or ongoing featuring them as the main character. But there's a catch: you HAVE to reform them, and focus on their character development without just lazily having them go wildly out of character for the sake of plot convenience. How do you do it?
Bullseye
He falls madly and bizarrely in love with a girl and turns into a good guy in order to get on her good side. Then she dies and he unreforms. I'll try and come up with something better.
This was already done.
Doctor Doom
"That Day" scenario from old man logan universe comes true but Doom and Latveria remain untouched because they were "part of the bad guys"
After a couple of months of anarchy, Doom has decided that this system does not work and has taken it upon himself to bring back order to the world and become the one true ruler.
I'd like to see him leave Team Rocket behind him. Maybe even [/spoiler] make amends with his son [/spoiler]
I thought of Clarissa's Dad. I'm not sure where to begin or how to go about this...
Aku
In an alternate reality where he wins, he becomes so tired of ruling over his evil empire, he begins to try and make good in the world so he can conquer over it again. Over time, he gets better at firing both good and evil, eventually being a sort of god of balance
>Toiletnator
After failing his last mission, he is ridiculed and humiliated by his peers more than usual. He falls into a deep depression and attempts to drown himself in a public restroom. As he kneels before a loo, a deity appears -- the Almighty Protector of Potty, who bestowed upon him his toilet powers in he first place. The Protector is disappointed in the Toiletnator, and gives Gina glimpse of an alternate universe where he was loathed and feared by both the KND and the Adults. Angered by this revelation, he vows to take vengeance on any individual that have treated him with any sort of malice. As he murders one of his peers in cold blood by filling up their lungs with toilet paper, his wild expression turns into a twisted grin. As he kills each person that wrong him, each murder becomes increasingly gruesome and daring, as he finally realizes his full potential in his toilet-based powers. At one point in the series, he slays Mr. Boss by hurling a toilet at him on a live broadcast. All Adults and KND Operatives witness this and put a bounty on his head for $5 million. The rest of the series just turns into John Wick 2 but with the Toiletnator. It would be called Operation: H.A.T.R.E.D -- Having Alternate Truth, Relentless Endless Death
>The rest of the series just turns into John Wick 2 but with the Toiletnator
What the fuck?
The Top.
He'd simply grow tired of the supervillain life, and retire to become an inventor-for-hire. He'd be more morally grey than truly reformed, though.
>The Riddler
He was always one of the more harmless members of Batman's Rogues Gallery. Sure, things would occasionally get serious, but ultimately, he was just a sick man who needed help, not someone who genuinely wanted to hurt anyone. For that reason, when Batman learns that Edward Nygma suffered brain damage in their latest altercation, he spares no expense in ensuring that Nygma receives the finest care.. Including the best therapy money can buy.
For Nygma himself, the incident is a wakeup call. The injury has left him without long-term memory, and more distressingly, he's finding that, increasingly, he's also forgetting things he KNOWS he used to know. For Edward Nygma, losing his mind is a fate worse than death. He complies. He cooperates with his therapist. Gradually, very gradually... He begins to heal. He can't shake his obsession with riddles and brain teasers, but as long as the injury prevents him from being able to pursue complex ones, the obsession is almost manageable.
When he decides to leave Gotham City and seek a fresh start elsewhere, Batman doesn't try to stop him. He feels he owes Edward that much, at the very least. Edward settles into his new life away from Gotham with some difficulty at first, but gradually begins to appreciate his new way of living. With the assistance of his therapist, he writes a book detailing his personal journey and the challenges he faced. "Riddle Me This" goes on to be a national best-seller, and earns the personal endorsement of Bruce Wayne ("I had my butler listen to the book-on-tape, he assures me it's a fabulous novel.").
His newly regained notoriety earns him the attention of an unscrupulous TV agent, who approaches him with an offer to star as the host of a brand new quiz program banking off the infamy of his former identity as the Riddler. Queue Edward's slow, Breaking Bad-style backslide into the Riddler persona as the quiz show format allows him to overcome his memory difficulties.
How is that a catch?
I'd just do old Logan but with Sabretooth where he's grown so old and decrepit in the future that he just can be arsed to hurt people because he's too cranky and is completely disillusioned with violence from murdering people in every conceivable way so he just lives in the mountains and dicks around his cottage scaring away kids all day.
Fuck me, there's just no way I can make those bricks with this clay.
Doctor Doom.
He realizes that his magic won't keep him alive forever due to some problem or other and adopts a kid to succeed him, straightening out his eternally fucked-up life and approach to life for the kid's sake, and so he can go out with a clean conscience.
Snowflame, the cocaine-powered pyrokinetic cartel villain from the terrible New Guardians series.
Since DC's rebooted, can scrap any associations with the series he first showed up in. Snowflame's a cartel head who one day gets terrible news: a combination of his powers and his addictions are killing him, and to survive he had to swear off coke. He tries other drugs, but finds that it was the power it granted him that drove him to drug abuse more their addictive properties, and eventually goes clean.
Unfortunately, without his powers and the exhilaration they provided, he's nothing but a burnout. He loses respect and standing in his cartel, eventually being lowered to the humiliating position of just being a street pusher. While back on the ground-level, he witnesses the sort of conditions addicts tend to live in, why they seek to escape their lives, what the predation of drug-peddling can do to further ruin them, etc., and this forces him to think back to and revisit his own conditions growing up.
We get an issue of him ruminating on the circumstances of how he discovered his powers and how he came to power in the drug trade, it ultimately being an escape from the very conditions he is perpetrating. Back in the present, he sees a rape, or a mugging, or a robbery, and finds himself faced with a decision.
Snowflame uses his own supply to reignite his powers, intervene, and save a life, and the rest of the run is about him trying to make a lasting positive impact before his addiction and powers kill him, even as he revels in the grandstanding his powers allow him. Maybe conclude it with an arc of him teaming up with Batman to smoke out a branch of his former cartel in Gotham before finally dying, leaving Batman the only one to mourn him and his warped sense of nobility.
Joker.
He decides that the best way to one up Batman once and for all is to be a better Batman. He stops crimes and stuff, but he's more "friendly neighborhood Spider-man" than "Dark Knight of vengeance." He'll catch you, but he won't break your femur.
People of Gotham start respecting him as the new hero of Gotham, while they start reviling Batman as a psychopath who gets his jollies by beating the living shit out of purse snatchers.
Meanwhile Batman is just getting more and more pissed that he can't do shit to the Joker. The story then slowly evolves to become not about Batman being glad someone has reformed, but angry and bitter that his former foe is no longer fight-able. Batman devolves further and further into anti-gero territory, finally culminating in him beating the Joker into hospiialization.
It's then revealed this whole time that it was The Joker's plan all along
A malaise has plagued the Joker recently: nothing makes him laugh anymore. The humor of life has been bled dry. On the brink of hanging up his coat and going out with a bang, he thinks of the ultimate joke. On himself, on Gotham, and of course, on Batman: be a hero. It'll take some convincing, but Bats isn't one to pass up a good laugh? Right?....Right?
Mysterio
Due to a misunderstanding/oversight on the part of one of the Octessence Mysterio is selected as part of a team of seven other Earth based champions who all actually have magical abilities. They have been called upon to combat a threat from the edge of the multiverse that seeks to erase all of existence. Before anyone can speak up they are transported away to a realm outside the influence of the Octessence. Only once the threat has been halted may they return to their Earth. So from then on Quentin Beck who has a reputation for being a criminal con-artist has to hang with some of Earth's most powerful sorcerers and otherworldly beings while helping to combat extradimensional threats far out of his league. But with his combination of hypnogens hallucinogens, and holographic projectors he manages to hold his own among a team of individuals that neither trust nor respect him. As time goes on he becomes more confident regarding his place on the team and the others (some more slowly than others) are won over by Mysterio's perseverance and commitment to the mission despite his sordid past. This is put to the test when it's discovered by the team that the being from the Octessence that selected Mysterio did so as a way to intentionally put an albatross on the team's neck and have them fail. However Mysterio proves his place on the team by saving them all from an entity that absorbs magical/supernatural energies despite being abandoned by them. At the end of the series Mysterio sacrifices himself to save the others and the multiverse but is restored to life by the Octessence as thanks. While his memory of the events in the series is erased the other members do remember his bravery and determination against the odds. It changes their views on mortals, criminals, and humanity in general. Mysterio just goes back to being Mysterio.
>Ultimate Prowler
Through Secret Wars shenanigans, Davis is in the 616 with his memories of the Ultimate Universe. He knows that he should be dead and he sees that Miles is around still out being a hero. So he sees this as a better chance to be a better person. Though he still has slips, like he'd stop a someone from stealing a bunch of shit but he keeps some of it for himself
>Emperor Zombie
He gets sick of getting foiled again and again by screw-on head as well as all the incompetence of his associates, that he just gets burnt out on villainy.
He attempts to find a cure for his condition and live a normal life.
>Reforming.
>Intellectron
Not gonna happen in a quintillion years user.
Dr Eggman from Sonic Boom. Besides realizing he wants to be Sonic's buddy nothing changes.
Syndrome. RIP Syndrome and RIP me.