Above: Villain Bryian Drexel faces off against hero Jamie Valentine in a scene from a proposed graphic novel based on Minute Men: Execute & Run.
Villains. Where would heroes be without them?
Try to imagine Buffy without Vampires. Bond without Goldfinger. Batman without Joker. No way, right? One can’t exist without the other.
“You complete me!” the Joker tells Batman in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008). “You and I are destined to do this forever!”
Above: Artwork from ihasankazi.psd depicts Christian Bale’s Batman and Heath Ledger’s Joker as mirror images facing off across a precarious divide.
But the hero/villain duality is even more complex than that, according to Joseph Campbell, the mythologist whose writings inspired the hero/villain dynamic in George Lucas’s Star Wars.
Campbell writes:
Within every journey, there is a villain waiting to be born. It is the choice to strive against the inner desolation that creates a hero, just as it is the choice to accept subsummation to our destructive instincts that bears a villain into the world.
And then, of course, there’s Walt Kelly’s Pogo, who famously opined to his colleague Porkypine:
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
Preliminary concept art shows an early version of the Minute Men team beneath the malevolent gaze of Execute & Run villain Bryian Drexel. Painting by Jeffrey Harris.
In our early discussions about the Minute Men project, Chris and I were determined to make antagonist Bryian Drexel a true 21st-century villain—a digital-age Howard Hughes with wealth, influence, and power. Ethereal as a digital cloud. Ubiquitous as a meme. Mysterious as our own subconscious minds.
We can’t tell you much more about him without unspooling the string of surprises that awaits you in Minute Men: Execute & Run. Fortunately, you’ll soon be able to discover those surprises for yourself.
The book comes out October 14.
Some folks won’t have to.
Previous installments of this newsletter have offered readers chances to win copies of Minute Men: Execute & Run.
Initially, we planned to send those copies out on the book’s release date. However, we’ve been informed that advance copies of the novel will be available sooner. As a result, challenge winners will likely be uncovering the mystery of the mercurial Bryian Drexel before October 14.
And if you didn’t win one of those copies, here’s another chance to claim one….
Recognize any of them?
Hint: one is from a comic series we mentioned back in May.
As always, you are free to research if you like; just be sure to let us know where you went to determine each villain’s identity.
And … as an alternate challenge, make up a name and backstory for one or more of the characters.
The first person to correctly identify two or more villains, or concoct an original name and backstory for at least one of them, gets an advance copy of Minute Men: Execute & Run.
Our September 2 installment took a look at (and a listen to) the amazing Ebow, which was used in recording the instrumental theme featured in several of our Minute Men promo videos.
The six bands/performers pictured above also recorded with Ebows. How many can you identify? For the answers and more about how the Ebow revolutionized guitar music, click the button below:
Pre-Order Minute Men: Execute & Run
We’ll meet you there!
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