One of the Biggest Sluggy Mysteries...
No, not "what does 'sluggy' mean"
...though, that's up there.


In a typical serial, whether it is high adventure or a slowly unravelling mystery, it is always garaunteed that the major plot will be enveloped by either a man v. man Conflict, or a man v. Force-of-nature-type-man-thing Conflict. Man v. Nature, Man v. Himself, and Man v. Society Conflicts can all be nice set pieces or diversions, but they're tough to pull off as the main plot of a serial. So what we can assume about a typical serial is: There is always a primary villain. Hence the term 'supervillain' - a villain above all others, designed to remain intact throughout all of the story's long, long, looong run.

Sluggy, I suggest, is a typical serial.

It may not have begun that way (as a thread somewhere below this has put forward) and many of the plots can seem isolated, or even total throw-aways (I.E. Torg Potter), but the bulk of what we're reading is essentially one long story.

So, Sluggy, I also suggest, probably has its own supervillian. That's what I'd assume, at least. The evidence seems to point in this direction, and that evidence is relatively straightforward. Even if it was atypical, few if any of the fundament rules would be broken. It's far more likely, therefore, that Sluggy has a primary villian, than that it does not.


So...uh...who the heck is it?

There do seem to be plenty of candidates, but I don't think any evidence for one specific Sluggy bad guy is strong enough to convict him. Hereti Corp or KZK would be the most obvious choices, though many others (some, it's possible, are not even yet known) could just as easily take the prize.

So, who do you think Sluggy's primary villain is? Or is the overall story atypical enough to not need one?

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Note: a primary villain does not necessarily mean the 'strongest' per se. Merely, it is the nemesis whom the main characters consider most important above all others, or who is their greatest adversary (which can be more complicated than just 'enemy').

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CURRENT TOPIC - K'Z'Ks true name. Does he have one? Would it help or hinder the gang? What's your interpretation of his title as 'The End'?

I don't know this, but it seems to me that each aspect of the mystery has its own villain set. Torg and Zoe's relationship? Zoe the Stormbringer left to her own devices to burn soon enough? Riff losing his way while running from his history? Torg's semi-oblivious strides into his destiny? There's sort of HeretiCorp and KZK at some point, and Horribus before he was discarded, and then there's Bun Bun.
It could all boil to a single point, but Pete doesn't do that in anything resembling a hurry, does he?
Smart boy.

Oh, note, I think I know what Sluggy means.
: )

Okay, you threw out a bunch of stuff...hm.
Torg and Zoe's relationship - bit abstract for a villian...and we run dangerously close to soap opera territory. If Sluggy Freelance starts getting into storylines that include lines like, "Oasis just had Torg's baby!..but it wasn't his!! (dun dun duuh)" then we'll come back to this. Otherwise, I'm not touching it.

Zoe as Stormbringer - in this case, I assume you mean she becomes the unwitting accomplice to the very enemy she once vanquished. Plausible, very plausible. Buuuut, Zoe wouldn't be the villain, KZK would. Zoe would just be the...erm...gatekeeper, I guess. *cough*

Riff losing his way - bold move. You propose here that Torg's best friend is in fact Sluggy's biggest villian. that would be one HELL of a plot twist, there. Although...we already had a twist that revealed something similar for him in Dangerous Days. Plus, the 'fall from grace' subplot has been multiplying like rabbits on viagra in this universe. I don't know if I'd be willing to accept yet another one. Even a crazy one like this. We'll keep it on the Big Board though.

Torg's obliviousness - Bing a man v. himself, we can almost instantly skip this. Though I'll point out that it would be very likely that something Torg does will jump-start the endgame storyline. We can almost garantee it, I'll bet. But it doesn't help reveal the mastermind, I'm afraid.

Hereticrop, KZK, yeah yeah...
Horribus - strange you chose him over Terribus, whom I'd consider far more motivated and intelligent. Though you say 'before he was discarded.' Well, I'd put my money on that too...uh, you know...if this was a 'what if' thread where we pitted bad guys against eachother :p

And then there's Bun Bun - ah. Yeah. And then there is Bun Bun. You know, written as a sympathetic character, it's hard to remember that he's a terrible, terrible little being. There's almost nothing redeemable about the critter. Every nice thing he's ever done, he's done to serve some alterior purpose. Say 'altruism' in front of him, and he'd say "gesundheit" He's vindictive, he's spiteful, he's over-principled, he treats friends as comodites, and he always has a bigger plan. But why? What do we really know about him? After all these years, after all of Oceans...what do we really know about him??
You may have hit something here..

And yeah, Pete's good at holding off. I respect him for that too. Keeps us on our toes.

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I think I know what sluggy means - a strange villain. Well...it has been our nemesis for going on nine years. Would Pete be clever enough to have a metavillain? Hm. I'll buy it.
So there it is! The word "Sluggy" is the villian! Okay! Well, that was easier than I made it out to be.
Back to bed for me.

Is that really true? You can have continuity without there being a main plot. Heck, look at life - people develop, situations change, and you get interested in what's going to happen, but it rarely focuses around a single conflict. Serials from Spiderman to Star Trek seem to have a whole bunch of supervillains surviving from story to story, some developing and some getting phased out, but usually without any one becoming the main bad guy - or at least, the focus of attention for more than an issue or two at a time.

I think SF is typical in not having a main villain. If I had to write an apocalyptic finish, I could go with K'Z'K, Hereti-corp, or Psyk, because their stories were extra-epic. But the strip doesn't revolve around them, and it could end it just as well with a new villain, or even something less good-evil oriented. (Of course, if I wrote any major story for SF, it would probably suck. You get my point, though.)

Personally I think that the clear line between bad guy and good guy will begin to blur on all fronts.Half our cast is already tainted in some way. Gwenn periodically channels otherworldly horrors that have a good chance of consuming her. Torg wields an instrument of death itself that feeds on the blood of innocents and wants to unleash his ultimate destructive potential. Riff is, well, Riff with his closet full of WMDs and a complete disassociation from the rest of mankind. Aylee is a creature with almost limitless potential, driven purely by evolutionary imperitive. And the Bun is basically a small, furry antichrist. Zoe is the most normal one there and now she is apparently entangled with a ragnarok prophesy, threatening to unleash the destruction of the world.

There soon won't be any good guys here. Occasionally we might have the vaguely well intentioned... but these aren't heros. At least not outside the greek sense. Hell... some of the supposed badguys are probably safer to be around.

BlankSlate, that was one of the funniest things I've read in ages. Thanks, man!

Back to work...

no serial sticks witht he same bad guy forever. sluggy has been running how long? i mean take farscape or stargate, they all swich off big bads after a while. the heros make headway and then they find a new big bad.

season 1 sluggy was bunbun

season 2 sluggy was aylee

season 3 sluggy was K'Z'K

note that as in all good serials, the villians leave a bit of themselvs behind forever altering the characters. in he 1st to cases they become main characters that we love. K'Z'K permantly taints gwyn

then we have the vampire story i there somwhere, and i get a bit foggier on a lot of he specifics, but every season has a new and bigger bad. the biggest yet seems to be herti corp, but we all know we haven't een the last of santa, or of kizzky

I think Joss Wheadon really explored the seasonal "Big Bad" in Buffy, but in the end, her nemisis was her own fate that she was trapped in. She was able to defeat her fate by having the "vampire slayer" power released to all the potentials.

So, I'd say that fate/ prophecy/ time is the ultimate bad guy for Sluggy. As stated above, a lot of our main characters end up struggling with their own roles.

The ultimate sluggy bad guy? The pant-less fate spider.

I've kinda always figured that it was Daedalus that was the "Big Bad." I mean, he's got that whole shadowy-villain-behind-the-scenes thing going on which is popular with the kids these days. It seems wholely possible that he could be pulling the strings to almost anything. Doesn't it?

Then again, I'm not even really sure if this could be the "biggest mystery of Sluggy." I don't even really think it's that important. There are important villains here in this universe whose stories don't necessarily intersect and there doesn't seem to be any kind of umbrella character that's like the big boss or something. Unless you want to consider the Demon King, considering he'd be the embodiment of evil, right? But he's got a pretty glaring weakness though: that sword. Despite him being all ancient and powerful, Chaz seems to trump him.

Maybe Chaz is the Big Bad...

Personally I always thought that the main conflict in this series was concerning more internal and personal social issues between the characters with themes like trust and betrayal... Apocalyptic battles between Good and Evil are kinda like the "B plot."

I think Blank Slate's right, the heroes are bigger threats than any demon or vampire could ever be.

Well, yes, I wouldn't call this the biggest by any stretch. But it does bug me, so I consider it up there. Hence the "One of the" I added to the front bit.

But it looks like even agreement on the overall conflict is in, um, in conflict. So maybe I should widen the scope and ask what what everyone thinks the Primary Man Vs. - is.

And now, to clear things up a little, I don't mean the day-to-day, chapter-to-chapter conflicts. If we allow ourselves to be mired in the details, we'll get all jumbled up. That wouldn't do. Sluggy does have an overarcing storyline. Somewhere. It's up above everything, and it's kinda hard to make out, but it is there in the noise. We all have impressions and suspicions about what this Storyline may be, and it colors our assumptions about the Primary conflict.

For me, as an example, I believe the conflict is between a set of beings. One of the main characters is our true hero waiting to break out of his/her shell (metaphorically speaking, save in Aylee's case), and one of the main villains is their antithesis waiting to make his/her/its move. Hence my assumption that we were dealing with the typical Man v. Man conflict which set this thread up. More specifically, I lean toward bun bun as the Primary Villain; Quixoto appears to lean toward Daedalus. Others, I'm sure, lean toward KZK and so on.

But I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts on the subject of Sluggy's Primary Conflict.

Bun-Bun's a bastard, but he's always been more anti-hero than villain ("On the Run" being the only extended storyline I can think of in which he's in direct opposition to the gang). Daedalus is hands down my favorite villain, and the hC storylines have consistantly been among Sluggy's best, but I don't quite think his influence over the gang has been quite all-pervasive enough to qualify him as the primary antagonist.

If I were to choose a primary antagonist, I'd have to go with the Book of E-ville. It's been around since almost the beginning, subtly influencing events, its power and influence ever increasing. It has its pages in the most pies, and it doesn't look to be going away any time soon. The completion of its story, I think, would be a nice way to wrap up the comic, bringing together as it would so many diverse plot strands.

I don't think Sluggy has an overall mega villian. Its had several hyper villians, but no mega villians. Check back through the comics, all the villians have blurred together. K'Z'K, Evil Aylee, the demons, oasis, hC. The villians all lead onto one another, one dies another takes their place, the first one comes back. Remember, StarTrek and co have teams of writers, i doubt one writer could constantly sustain just one villian without it getting old.

And where does the stuff about Ragnarok come from? Wasnt the storm breaker the one destined to destroy kizkie?

FOUL!!!

No vowels!!! tsk!!!

and what is Sluggy's archenemy???

Monotany.

If you want an overarching villian, I think Daedalus is an interesting choice. First of all, he's way way way in the background (and has been for the entire comic; we've only seen him a couple of times, and then in shadow). Second of all, through his control of HC he's got connections to most of the other big baddies (Oasis/Kusari, Aylee/Cloney, K'Z'K [through the "recent" development at the end of 28 Geeks Later], and even kinda to the DOP [after all, Riff was their employee when he invented the DFA]).
Daedalus seems poised to control EVERYTHING that's against the gang.

Bunbun is not a villain for the important reason that he is chaotic evil. He can (almost) always be counted on to act in his own best interests, but at heart he's not a conqueror (remember how quickly he got bored of being Lord of Holidays?). Rather, he is merely ruthless when it comes to his own comforts--women, booze, good food, amusement, etc. Anytime he actually makes a major effort on his own to get something, it's going to be money, not power. (All the way down to making the gang help him look for pirate gold when they were on vacation.)

The Book of Eville is another interesting choice; but note the DOL, in which it is a mostly benevolent force in Gwynn's life. I think, like any magic book (or weapon, or tool), it is the user who ultimately guides whether it will be used for good or evil(le).

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But my main choice for the thematic conflict Sluggy revolves around is not Man v. Man, because there's no way Pete's waited 10 years to finally reveal what his comic's been about.

No, the way to find out what the conflict is, is to look at ALL parts of Sluggy. What powers the day-to-day drama, sure, seems to be Man v. Man--there's always a villain or three popping up. I think, however, especially for a piece of art that's essentially still a comic strip, to find the thematic conflict you must look at the comedy.

I believe that the essential conflict is Man v. Self.

Most of the comedy, I'd say, is about that--people indulging or resisting their baser natures. That's why Bunbun, for example, is such a funny character, because he never resists his basic nature. Kiki is funny because she tries but can't; Riff is funny because he doesn't really try; Torg is usually too dumb to try; etc. Baser natures, going all the way back to not resisting the urge to spam Satan.

This is mirrored in the dramatic passages. Every single major character struggles with themselves over whether to be good, noble, sacrificing, selfless human beings or evil, lazy, cowardly, selfish people. Look at Torg's struggle during the DOL saga, wherein he grew to become more of the selfless hero (the same thing that happened to Riff during DDA). Look at the pairs I named up at the top of this post--Oasis/Kusari, Aylee/Cloney--these can be seen as externalizations of the good/evil sides of these characters. I think it doesn't belabor the point to cough and nudge you to the even more obvious tactic of the shoulder angels/demons Pete has used from time to time.

Name any major character, and I can show you how their plot-arcs have and are taking them on a journey from lazy-ass, selfish normals to selfless heroes.

Man v. Self. If "Freelance" is the free indulgence of one's baser instincts, perhaps "Sluggy" is that plane to which we all aspire?

Jinkies. I solved a mystery.

i think the big bad is love