How To Write An Evil Counterpart
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Greetings! TienSwitch is out of commission for a while, courtesy of me. I have disposed of him and now have taken over this website in the first part of my plan to destroy the world of superhero fiction and replace it with supervillain fiction.
Who am I? It’s quite simple. I am the evil counterpart of TienSwitch. You may call me SwitchTien.
Hello, boys and girls!
But what is the secret to my creation and my victory over my loathsome good twin? Well, it comes from the knowledge of how to write an evil counterpart.
The evil counterpart in all its forms–from the alternative universe version of the hero to the identical twin to the clone gone horrifically wrong–has been a mainstay in fiction for a long time. From the 1886 novella Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson to the famous episode of Star Trek, “Mirror, Mirror”, the evil version of a story’s protagonist lurking within–or without–has been a mainstay of the fictional world forever.
And for good reason. Heroes stand for something. Superheroes stand for something. Superman stood for the virtue of defending your country and your fellow man. Batman stood for fighting back against those who hurt others. Spider-Man represented the moral responsibility to help those in need. The X-Men stand for equality in the face of intolerance and hate.
It’s common to see these themes challenged by the villains.
It’s another thing to see villains that resemble the heroes–or the heroes themselves–represent their thematic and ideological opposites.
It’s why the evil counterpart is especially prevalent in superhero fiction. Nothing hits as hard as an evil version of your favorite superhero. After all, a superhero beats the bad guys because of their unique abilities. What if the bad guy had the same abilities, but was evil?
With this prevalence, you would expect writing an evil counterpart to be easy. Have a supervillain that has the same look and powers as your superhero, only stronger. And evil. Or, if you want to really hammer it home, a literal alternate version of your superhero themself, but evil.
But that’s not really all that goes into it. There are certain aesthetic, power/ability, and ideological/thematic elements that can make an evil counterpart either shine brightly in a superhero’s mythos or crash and burn in a mistaken attempt at chasing trends.
So let’s take a few moments and learn how to write an evil counterpart, be it a paranormal doppelganger, an evil twin, a genetically enhanced clone, or a visitor from an alternate timeline. This way, you’ll all be experts at writing evil counterparts like me and will know how to make more.
Muah-ha-ha!
1) Establish What Your Superhero Stands For
In order to write an evil counterpart to your superhero, we first need to know about your superhero. Which can be harder than you think if you don’t know how to ensure your audience understands your characters. But why do we need to do this?
Because a well constructed evil counterpart should be more than just another supervillain who happens to have the same abilities as your hero. The sharing of powers should be a cosmetic spotlight, if you will, working to highlight their more fundamental differences in morality and philosophy.
What does your superhero stand for? What are their goals? What are their underlying principles?
And how could you get them to have the opposite values? Or opposite moral conclusions from the same underlying values?
This is why it’s important to know your characters, and to ensure your audience does as well. None of a superhero’s supporting cast or Rogue’s Gallery is on accident. They revolve around your superhero in ways that aren’t always noticeable at the surface level. The roles each member of the supporting cast play and the goals and motivations of your villains.
There’s a reason why the Joker, Lex Luthor, and Magneto are some of the most compelling villains in all of fiction. Certainly in all of superhero fiction. There’s a reason why Batman’s villains are the world’s most iconic. It’s because they’re all a natural extension from the protagonist superhero.
This applies to an evil counterpart villain more than anyone else.
2) Give Your Evil Counterpart Opposite Moral Foundations, But the Same Methods of Drawing Moral Conclusions
It’s a good idea for your superhero to have a set of moral first principles. Or something as close to it as possible.
Moral first principles are best defined here as “A first principle is a foundational proposition or assumption that stands alone. We cannot deduce first principles from any other proposition or assumption.” Note: Please ignore the Elon Musk fanboying that comes later on in that article. It’s still a good read.
Anyhoo, in order to simplify that simple definition, it’s when a moral position is so basic that it cannot be logically deduced from a broader position.
For example, why is the Holocaust bad? Obviously, the answer is a bit deeper than “Because it, y’know, the Holocaust, man!”. One could say it’s bad because it was a genocide. Why is that bad? Because it involved the killing of six million Jews and millions of others. Why is that bad? Because killing people is bad. Why is that–And so on and so forth until you get something along the lines of “Because human suffering is bad” and you can’t answer any more Why’s. Human suffering is bad because it is, and that’s that. And that would be a first principle.
Now, of course, you shouldn’t specifically list a character’s first principles as “Superhero-Man’s First Principles”. You shouldn’t have them specifically say “My moral first principles are XYZ”. The vast majority of people couldn’t even name their own first principles.
But they have them. And all their other beliefs and ideas–from their political views to the types of people they would agree with in a dispute–spring forth from these first principles. And everyone has their own way of developing their more reasoned views and acting on them.
A well written evil counterpart should share the same method of reasoning out their beliefs, but have the opposite first principles to reason them from.
We can see this in the character of Owlman, especially when contrasted with The Batman Who Laughs. Both evil counterparts of Batman are nihilists, but Owlman is generally accepted as the superior counterpart. Because, along with actually looking like Batman, Owlman has the opposite first principles and formative experiences. His parents weren’t good people like Batman’s; they were criminal bosses, and realizing that made him understand that his entire life’s work to fight for justice was a lie. So nothing matters anymore. Whereas Batman believes that everything we do matters, as evidenced by what a single mugger with a gun could do to a boy, Owlman believes that nothing at all matters.
But rather than turn into an edgy, laughing madman like The Batman Who Laughs, who only operates on the principle of “Batman always wins” while cooking up grand schemes on a multiversal scale, Owlman operates like Batman. He helps the Crime Syndicate of America, an alternate Justice League, rule the world and does so in the same practical, well reasoned manner that Batman employs to ensure Gotham City is free from corruption.
The Batman Who Laughs is a raving lunatic, a cosmic threat that looks and acts nothing like Batman and operates entirely on “A special Joker toxin rewrote his moral code to be evil”.
Owlman is Batman, but if Batman believed that individual rights and choices were meaningless.
Owlman is a beloved villain in the DC fandom. No one can stand The Batman Who Laughs (except me, but I’m an edgy 90s kid who can still see his flaws).
Owlman stands as the superior evil counterpart to Batman, because the writers of that character understood how to write an evil counterpart. Take the same character and give them opposite moral first principles.
3) Give Your Evil Counterpart The Same Moral Foundations, But Change the Way They Draw Moral Conclusions
Now, I feel all that works best when your evil counterpart is a dark reflection of your superhero, but there is one approach that works perfectly when your evil counterpart is your superhero.
Think of this as the evil counterpart as the prior approach. Instead of having your evil counterpart be the same character but draw his values and actions from the opposite moral foundations as your hero, have them share the same first principles but take them to completely different conclusions.
Again, I feel like this works best in alternate or “What If” stories where the evil counterpart is your superhero.
For example, Superman from the Injustice universe. Rather than some alternate formative experience, the villain of this series is just Superman. Clark Kent. No different from the mainline Superman, until a horrific tragedy causes him to go down the dark path to becoming a dictator with no regard for the freedom and lives of the mere mortals of Earth.
But this Superman isn’t evil. Not in the strictest sense, at least. He’s still Earth’s protector. He still fights the Neverending Battle for Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow. He still does everything in his power to ensure that humanity lives in peace.
The thing is, that battle looks different to him after a tragedy “opened his eyes”. When his old ways of protecting humanity fail to save Metropolis or Lois Lane, he draws new conclusions from the same first principles. To protect innocent lives, he reasons, a heavier hand and more direct involvement is necessary. Direct intervention into state violence around the globe. The replacement of human governments with his enlightened rule. And the death of anyone that impedes his ability to achieve his goals.
Again, compare that to The Batman Who Laughs. Both he and Injustice Superman are Batman and Superman in an alternate universe where they got pushed too far. But The Batman Who Laughs, due to the fact that he was infected by Joker Toxin, is so far removed from Batman’s morals that he is literally unrecognizable as the hero in any capacity. In Injustice, Superman is still Superman. He slowly descends into petty madness and megalomania over time, but he is still recognizably Superman. He doesn’t just become, like, Homelander or something.
A great thing about this version of the evil counterpart is that they aren’t truly evil. They want to do what’s right, but are achieving that end through means most of us would agree are wrong.
The result isn’t some supervillain that needs to be stopped, but a moral dilemma to be solved. And that always makes for powerful conflict.
4) Fix/Reverse a Flaw In Their Powers
Of course, your superhero and their evil counterpart aren’t just going to sit around all day and argue philosophy.
They’re going to fight!
Now, one approach to the superhero vs evil counterpart fight is to just give the two the same powers.
This works well if the characters are moral/ideological reflections of the other. Batman vs Owlman. Mainline Superman vs Injustice Superman.
But you can take your counterpart to the next level by souping up their powers. Or even better: Take a flaw or weakness that your superhero has and either reverse it or fix it entirely.
This is crucial if your evil counterpart is only so in physical terms. Venom to Spider-Man, for example. Sure, they have different ideologies, but Venom isn’t truly an evil counterpart to Spider-Man in the same way Owlman is to Batman, as Eddie Brock was originally just a disgraced journalist who received his powers from merging with the Venom symbiote (the actual Venom) after it had been used by Peter Parker. He’s not an alternate version of Peter or someone else that got bit by a radioactive spider and got the same powers. He’s an evil counterpart purely in the physical sense.
But Venom has a major advantage over Spider-Man. Well, two. Along with far greater strength than Spider-Man, he also is invisible to Peter’s Spider-Sense. Unlike other villains, Venom can sneak up on Spider-Man. The ability to sense and avoid danger is Spidey’s greatest advantage, and Venom negates it completely.
Another example to emulate is Ultraman. At least, the Ultraman from the New 52. He’s an evil counterpart to Superman and the leader of the Crime Syndicate, itself an evil counterpart to the Justice League. This version of Ultraman has the same powers as Superman, but their strengths and weaknesses are reversed; Ultraman is strengthened by Kryptonite, unaffected by magic, and weakened by the rays of the yellow sun.
The trick is to always put your superhero in a situation where they are on the backfoot. If they are fighting an evil counterpart with the exact same powers as them, put some additional complication in there. A hostage they have to rescue, or a bomb they need to diffuse. Otherwise, give your evil counterpart an increase in power over the hero. Nothing that makes them look like the final boss of a Final Fantasy game, but something that gives them an innate advantage over the superhero.
Even if they are technically equals, their encounters should never feel equal. The evil counterpart should always be in a position of superiority.
Final Thoughts (or Opening Feelings, which would be the evil counterpart????)
There is an art and a science in figuring out how to write an evil counterpart. It’s more than just putting an identical version of your hero in a goatee and claiming them to be evil.
An evil counterpart should stand for the opposite of what your hero does. And since your hero should stand for more than just “good”, their counterpart should be more than just “evil”. So establish the deeper ideological differences between them. Order vs chaos? A sense of obligation to a community vs a glorification of individualism or isolation? Do deontology and utilitarianism lead to two very different worldviews?
Or if they stand for the same things fundamentally, then perhaps they have different ideas on how to achieve these goals. Instilling good morals by example vs by fear. Advocating for peace vs enforcing peace. Standing with the law only insofar as it serves the greater good vs their law is itself the greater good.
Whichever route you go, make sure you put your hero on the backfoot during their eventual physical clashes. Don’t be afraid to soup up your evil counterpart’s powers by taking away their weaknesses or canceling out a strength the hero has.
There are so many ways to write a great evil counterpart for your villain that this barely scratches the surface. And don’t feel like you have to stick to any of this as an unbreakable script. Every idea is only as good as its execution, and there are plenty of exceptions to everything written in this article.If you think you can do something different, then go for it!
But if you want to know how to write an evil counterpart but you don’t know where to start, then these tips should help you get things off the ground.
And now that you know how to write evil counterparts, I expect you all to create an army of diabolical twins that I can use to take over the Internet!
For exciting superhero fiction written by me, be sure to check out the BLUE EAGLE Universe!