How to be a Better Super Villian?

I’m sure you’ve heard that a great protagonist in a story must have an equally great antagonist. Well cooking up a great bad guy is important and I  wanted to add some elements that help make up a truly relatable but deliciously evil super villain.

In our tale, our main bad guy is Kanu Umbekwi. A super smart, technologist and revolutionary from the hi-tech tribe of Alkebulahn in Rumundiland, Africa. To add to his appeal and mystery he has lost his memory and been ostracized from his home to the Outerlands – a name given to the outside world by the Alkebulites. No one knows him by his real name, only as a symbol.

Kanu is a slick dresser and his African roots mean he loves colors and bold designs. As he regains more of his memory, his attire will become more flamboyant, like his peers in Alkebulahn.

Kanu loves stories. Telling them and being told them. If you don’t know the rules of his favorite art form, he gets very angry indeed. Trying reporting to him without an inciting incident and characters his usual calm could transform into a storm. Staff members have been known to disappear for less.

Ebon and Ivor are Kanu’s bodyguards and they rarely leave his side. They have been modified using alien technology and are physically better than any Outlander human. They do Kanu’s bidding without question.

Being a multi-billionaire Kanu has Lairs around the world in Switzerland, the UK, USA, and Africa. He even has a mobile man-made island. His favorite and not quite a traditional lair is his Airship Accordance. It’s two football fields big, cloaked and can fly at 15,000 feet with labs and testing facilities manned by fifty staff. It can take him anywhere in the world.

It’s a sign of his genius and creativity that he will devise these traps against his adversaries, proving to them that he can outwit and destroy them at every corner. He may have met his match in young Joshua N’Gon.

That would be telling. What I can say Kanu does have big plans, that will become clear as the books progress.

He doesn’t know the full story but Kanu is beginning to understand that Joshua N’Gon could be the only adversary standing in his way to world dominance.