The Geek Beat: Crazy Comic Stories

With any luck, you're going "Who? What? That sounds terrible! Granny Goodness? Already it sounds like the worst comic character in existence!" But Granny Goodness was created for DC Comics by none other than Jack Kirby himself, who created so many good characters that he was allowed some really weird ones once and awhile, especially in the 1970s. If he wanted to base a supervillainess on Phyllis Diller, who was going to stop him?

Granny Goodness wasn't always an elderly woman dressed in a Thor-ish costume. Like all women in all universes on paper or off, she was once young, and simply called Goodness. She was born on a rather miserable planet called Apokolips (with a name like that, it ain't sunshine and roses) which was ruled by the evil lord Darkseid. Granny didn't even have the good fortune to be born into the upper class, but into Apokolips' peasant class. Think of something akin to the Spartan helots, and you're close. At a tender age, Goodness was removed from her parents and forcibly enlisted into Darkseid's personal army to be trained into one of his elite "Hound" soldiers.

Now, each Hound soldier is given a dog to love and train. It's a sign of Goodness' once kind nature that she was very fond of hers, and named it Mercy in a Purtanical desire to guide its nature. But if you're being brutally trained to become the elite soldier of an evil overlord, you're probably not going to be allowed a fuzzy friend and, sure enough, the final test of a Hound is to kill their canine companion. Goodness refused. A girl after my own heart and yours, she killed her trainer instead. When forced to account for the murder to Darkseid himself, Goodness shrugged and told Darkseid that Mercy would be an awesome battle dog. She insisted Mercy would listen to Darkseid before her and that's not exactly the challenge you want to put before your lord and master. He ordered Mercy to kill Goodness, and Goodness accordingly killed Mercy. Some of us do big research projects to graduate with honors, Goodness killed her dog. It's not clear whether all kindness died in her at that point, but I think we can safely assume it did.

Goodness was given the assignment of running Darkseid's training program, where she revels in using brainwashing and torture to develop troops of mean and hungry guards. She gains her motherly name because she started hanging around on Earth, where she had the great idea of running Earth orphanages in order to find potential warriors for Darkseid. Voldemort must have been one that slipped through her fingers.

Now, there's a lot of elaborate backstory and mythology to Darkseid and Apokolips, and it crosses over into Green Lantern, Miracle Man, Justice League, Birds of Prey, and gosh knows what else. But all you have to do is paint Apokolips as a planet where all hope is lost, a whole world ruled by a power hungry tyrant, and just go from there. Goodness can be an honest and noble woman, a gentle flower crushed under the heels of a military-industrial-brainwashing complex. Perhaps she cherishes hope of changing the world from within the system, and thought if she could just get Mercy past Darkseid, she could begin subverting him in other ways. But when forced to choose between her life and her dog's, her choice was clear, and a moment of selfishness blackened her soul forever. For decades, she revels in cruelty, inflicting pain on others because she can't forgive herself.

I think this story could be Harry Potter or Star Wars in reverse and be the supervillain story that stars someone utterly wretched and unsympathetic. In the comics, Miracle Man is the first child who escapes her clutches and goes on to be a hero. That could still happen, and you could even go the tried and true route of attaching a prophecy to it. But don't focus on his story! Focus on Granny's! The final scene of this film could be Miracle Man popping back up to bring her down as the first step to bringing down Darkseid. You could either have Miracle defeat Granny without her displaying a shred of remorse, or have her spark one last flicker of mercy, and sacrifice herself. Either way would be interesting, and either way sets up a path to create Miracle Man and Darkseid sequels should you chose to follow them.

But most important is this: You would have a movie starring Granny Goodness. You could pitch it to Judi Dench. It would be the craziest concept this side of Lobo befriending a teenage girl. It would be something the world has never seen before, and might want to unsee once they had.