Love-40

From the beginning of time, one storytelling cliche has infected every form of art: show the piece's villain doing something completely, gratuitously evil--for no reason whatsoever--as a cheap way to establish how evil he is, before the hero wipes up the room with him. Call it the Darth Vader Principle, or the Bond Villain Establishing Scene Theorem.

And, of course, comic books wallow in this cliche, too. Here, for example, we have evil Japanese industrialist Inoshiro Kondo demonstrating the Guy Whom Bruce Willis Is Going To Kill Hard Later In The Movie Axiom, as he plays a game of tennis against someone:






Just so we're clear:

*The other tennis guy was just an innocent civilian, not part of the story at all--never referred to again, never part of the plot earlier.
*Kondo was winning the match, so there was no reason, not even a bad one like "I'm competitive and evil," to kill him
*Kondo has super powers from a deal with a demon...so using an explosive in a tennis ball is a fairly prosaic and silly way to kill the guy

Check, check and check. Complete, total, gratuitous dickweedery.

So, lesson? Don't play tennis with evil villains. Or chess. Or fictional video games. And don't ever tell Lord Vader that the Death Star canteen is out of tapioca. Or...

Hack storytelling 101 brought to you by Len Kaminski (script) and David Kraft and Keith Pollard (plot) in the Iron Man story--because Tony Stark at that point could only fight evil industrialists-- in Marvel Super-Heroes #15 (1993). And aren't you proud of me for not making an exploding balls joke?