LUCID FORGE

With the coming release of Hancock, about a drunken, acerbic, super-powered man that reluctantly fights the forces of evil (usually while inebriated), it seems like a good time to look at other heroes and comic characters with personal difficulties. Whether it’s battling alcohol and drug dependency or their own personal demons, these characters have to balance doing the greater good while avoiding doing inner harm. Some manage to overcome, while others wallow. Here are their stories…

Iron Man

In actuality, so much of Tony Stark’s drunken escapades were used to influence Hancock that Iron Man movie director Jon Favreau has to come up with new material for his sequel to the hit film. Basically, with the misuse of his Iron Man technology by the U.S. government, Stark starts hitting the sauce, eventually driving him to lose his Iron Man identity and his company before forcing him to live as a drunken vagabond on the street. He eventually claws his way back to the top, but alcoholism is a burden that Stark continues to live with to this day. Also, he may or may not be a Skrull.

Green Lantern In the Emerald Dawn mini-series, we meet Hal Jordan as a hot shot pilot, who’s given a ring of power by a dying alien because Jordan is “a man without fear.” But Jordan was also head strong and a bit immature, using the ring for his own personal amusement until the alien Legion attacked. The series ends with Jordan surrendering himself to human authorities for a drunk driving charge, a development since retconned out of continuity after Emerald Dawn.

Hank Pym He may have been one of the founders of the Avengers, but Pym is possibly its most controversial member. After years as a superhero, the stress seemed to be getting to Hank as he became more and more unstable being verbally abusive to his wife, The Wasp, while once attacking a surrendered villain in custody. This little stunt got him suspended and court-martialed from the team, which resulted in a complete mental collapse. Pym came up with a plan to have robots he designed attack the court martial hearing where he would know its weakness and save the day. When his wife found out about the plan, he beat her, securing his disgrace.

Spawn

Al Simmons was an American hero; in the Marines, as a Secret Service agent and than as a CIA assassin. Disenfranchised with his work and the cost of too many civilian lives, Simmons becomes increasingly angered and embittered and ends up beating his wife leading her to miscarriage. Of course, the day after Simmons is killed on orders from his CIA boss, he goes to Hell and makes a deal with the Devil to join his army and return to Earth as Spawn. Hard to believe that was only the beginning of Al’s troubles.

The Shadow The man who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men has had a new origin for just about every iteration he’s shown up in. For these purposes, we’ll look at the most recent (and the darkest), Alec Baldwin from 1994’s The Shadow. He’s still 30s millionaire playboy Lamont Cranston, who by night thwarts the petty crimes in New York’s seedy underbelly. But before that, he was a disenchanted World War I veteran that spent years in Tibet as a warlord and opium grower before being taught to use his mind as a weapon by a local monk.

Speedy “My ward is a junkie!” said Green Arrow on the front of Green Lantern #85 when it was revealed that the Emerald Archer’s teen sidekick was addicted to heroin. The award-winning story was one of the first to tackle the growing drug problem head on, and in a realistic manner. Feeling abandoned by Arrow and left without a team after the disbanding of the Teen Titans when he was also dumped by his girlfriend Donna Troy, Speedy started hitting the needle. He has since gotten better and has become a member of the Justice League.

Harry Osborn Thought Harry Osborn was messed up in Spider-Man 3? Well that’s nothing as compared to his comic book biography. Harry, affected by his father’s indifference, frequently experimented with drugs, which eventual lead to experimentation with even harder drugs and a cocaine overdose. Between the stress of knowing his father was the Green Goblin and a bitter break-up with his girlfriend of the time, Mary Jane Watson, Harry went self-destructive and turned to LSD. Eventually Harry got better, but not for long as he took up the mantle of the Goblin after his father’s death.

 

Hulk

One thing’s for certain: the Hulk is the ultimate anger management poster child.




Darkman

While not technically a comic book hero, Sam Raimi’s Darkman was no doubt inspired by them. Darkman is scientist Peyton Westlake, who’s horribly disfigured and left for dead by mobsters. Westlake becomes reclusive; his only human connection is his self-invented artificial skin which only lasts 99 minutes before disintegrating. But driven half-mad, Westlake finds that his anger increases his strength, especially given the fact that his nerves are fried and he can’t feel pain. At the end of the movie, Westlake decides to stay a hideously-twisted avenger for justice, shunning humanity and his still caring girlfriend.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen The film based on the Alan Moore’s graphic novel kind of whitewashed the team’s, shall we say, foibles. On the page, the League is made up of an opium addict, a sociopath, an anti-British terrorist, a scientist with chemically-induced dual personalities and a woman obviously suffering from post-traumatic stress. In the second series, the Invisible Man sold out Earth to the Martians and then raped Mina Murray who earlier seduced Alan Quatermain. Later, Mr. Hyde kills and eats the Invisible Man for his attack on Murray, Captain Nemo becomes enraged when Britain uses bio-weapons against the Martians and Murray leaves Quatermain alone in the end. Talk about dysfunctional.

Just about any Batman villains

Let’s see: Joker – a narcissistic sociopath. Penguin – inferiority complex. Catwoman – kleptomaniac. Two-Face – Paranoid personality disorder. Harley Quinn – dementia. Mr. Freeze – Adjustment disorder. The Ventriloquist – dissociative personality disorder. Scarecrow – sadomasochist tendencies. The Riddler – obsessive compulsive disorder. Firefly – pyromaniac. And let’s not forget that Batman himself has issues related to trust, paranoia and control, which probably stem from an anxiety disorder as the result of seeing his parents shot to death in front of him.