Or, to put it down
with a few names: Professor Moriarty vs. Dr. Fu-Manchu. This can be seen as a
companion piece of sorts to last week’s post about Fu-Manchu. I think I might
have given the impression that Moriarty simply wasn’t a mould of any kind, but he
was - just not for future Bond or comic book villains. He is the one characters
like Fantomas or Dr. Mabuse were based on, though - a criminal mastermind.
Fu-Manchu on the other hand is an evil mastermind. And, yes, as the post title
proposes, there is a difference. So, if you’re about to create a villain for a
pulp story or suchlike, this post could prove helpful.
Even with the little
information Arthur Conan Doyle gives us about Professor Moriarty, it’s clear
the man is dangerous. If Sherlock Holmes himself takes a holiday to get away
from London until everything has blown over, he’s not dealing with some petty
thief, that much is for sure. Moriarty is the ‘Napoleon of Crime’ - he rules
the underworld of London and, probably, at least the British Isles, if not
more. So what is the difference between him and Dr. Fu-Manchu (especially as
the professor holds the higher academic rank)? Scope. The difference between a
criminal genius and an evil genius is scope.
To Moriarty, the
crimes he commits or, rather, has his people commit, are the end goal. They
bring him something he wants: money, power, the removal of people who threaten
his life or wealth. Moriarty sits in his web like a spider, or so Holmes tells
Watson who tells the audience, and whenever a crime is committed in London, he
gets his share. He eliminates threats to his way of life or, rather, has
Colonel Moran and others eliminate them. Make no mistake, in a time before the
telephone and fast travel, it’s hard enough to control such a criminal empire
and it takes a very strong mind to keep all the threads under control.
Plotting, planning, controlling, intimidating - Moriarty’s days sure are full
of work (especially as he also holds down a regular job, as not to arouse
suspicion).
But it’s no surprise
that Dr. Fu-Manchu doesn’t hold down a regular job as well - he wouldn’t have
the time for it. His scope is larger than Moriarty’s, because the crimes are
not his end goal. His end goal is world domination and the crimes only serve as
a means to that end. Fu-Manchu’s whole organisation is much bigger than Moriarty’s
would ever be. Fu-Manchu orders a theft, a robbery, a kidnapping, a murder not
to just profit from them, but because they bring him closer to his goal. He
removes people not just because they threaten him, but because they stand in
the way of his long-term goals, even if they don’t know it. He has no scruples
whatsoever to kill even his loyal henches (or send them to their doom), if they
have failed or the situation demands it.
For your regular
story, a villain of Moriarty’s scope is the right one. A crime lord or mafia
boss or a shadowy businessman who has more business than just that which he
officially owns. He’s a dangerous adversary for your regular hero, has a lot of
shady people under his control, and can do a lot of damage.
For a comic book, an
espionage story, or a pulp one, though, you might want to raise the stakes a
little and that is when people like Fu-Manchu come in. Villains who pose much
more of a threat than a crime lord ever would, because they threaten people’s very
way of life.
When you’re writing a
villain of the Moriarty type, you’re staying in the realm of realism. You can
draw inspiration from real life, read up on drug lords, mafia bosses, gangsters
from the prohibition era - there’s a lot of sources you can milk to make your
villain better. You can, of course, go slightly above that with them. They’ll
be better at being bad than most of their real-life counterparts were. They’ll
be less prone to making mistakes - unless it serves the plot, of course. They’ll
have a better grip on their men and be less likely to be overthrown during
internal struggles. But they’ll still be the kind of people the police (perhaps
a federal branch) will deal with in the end.
When, however, you’re
writing a villain of the Fu-Manchu type, you have to go far above realism. You
need to look at espionage movies (Bond or Kingsman should work well), at
comics, at pulp stories, at the kind of action movies which are far above
realism, too. Or you can look at the realistic villains and push all about them
to eleven. As I said: it’s a question of scope. An evil genius isn’t going for
a simple theft or even a complicated plan to get to a well-guarded vault. They
won’t spend time on things which don’t further their own plan for world
domination - and for some reason, they’re never really out of cash, although
that could be a nice hook for your story. They have everything to oppose even a
government or two: manpower, wealth, technology, knowledge. They’ll have some
genetically modified sharks in a tank for the occasional secret agent. They’ll
be building an army of robots for the big takeover. They’ll have henchmen
galore (could I be wrong and there are henchmen trees?). They’ll have at least
one secret lair where they plan everything and set it in motion - most have
several, just in case. And they’ll always have backup plans for their backup
plans. Evil geniuses don’t play chess, because it’s a kid’s game to them.
There is a place for both types of villains and it depends very much on
the kind of story you want to write whether you’ll choose a criminal mastermind
or an evil one. You can go a lot further with the evil mastermind, because the
scope is much bigger, but for a realistic story, they’ll be too much over the
top to use.
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