I watched the Mighty Max episode "Norman's Conquest" and have come to the conclusion that the one-shot villain in it does not quite qualify as Pure Evil. Hence, I'm proposing him to be cut in my first ever Pure Evil removal proposal.
The Work[]
Mighty Max is an animated TV series that aired beginning in 1993, and is based off of the toyline of the same name. The series follows Max, an adventure-seeking boy who is in possession of a magical cap that can create portals. With his cap, Max and his allies, an anthropomorphic fowl (or specifically Lemurian) named Virgil and a warrior named Norman, go on adventures, and Max is destined to defeat the Big Bad of the series, the Skullmaster.
The Candidate and Their Actions[]
Today's removal candidate is Spike, a deranged warrior and the main one-shot antagonist of "Norman's Conquest". Ten-thousand years ago, he and his minions approached Norman's tribe, when the latter was still a child. The leader of the tribe, Norman's father, stood up against Spike, and the two duelled. Eventually, Spike got the upper hand and prepared to kill Norman's father; after the latter told Norman to retrieve his axe, Norman's father temporarily fended off Spike by rolling a log in his direction. However, despite the injuries Spike sustained from the broken twigs getting lodged into his face, he ultimately delivered a fatal blow to Norman's father. He then attempts to kill Norman, but is unsuccessful and ends up falling from a cliff into an abyss. From that day forth, Norman felt immense guilt for his father's death, and developed insecurities about his skills as a warrior.
In the present, Spike becomes awakened from his frozen fate when a British archaeological team retrieved Norman's axe. He emerges from the ice, and binds one of the archaeologists upside-down from the tree, before heading off to find and kill Norman.
Eventually, Spike finds Norman and Virgil in a car junkyard and attempts to kill the two. Virgil summons Max to come to them, and tells him about their situation. The three try to defeat Spike by taking advantage of the machinery in the junkyard, but their attempts are futile and they instead decide to flee. After being chased by Spike, the three hop onto a train, and Spike grabs onto the rear of the train.
While on the train, Norman explains his relationship with Spike and how he feels he failed his father. After finishing his story, Spike climbs atop the train and once again tries to murder the trio. However, they escape in time by jumping from a bridge into a portal that leads them to a sewage dump. The portal closes in time, and Spike ends up falling into the river below.
At home, Max and Virgil convince Norman to defeat Spike and avenge his father; Norman eventually musters up enough courage to do so. Norman leads Max and Virgil to where his father's fateful duel occurred, and they eventually find Spike preparing to kill the archaeologist he had bound. Norman attracts Spike's attention and challenges him to a duel (albeit with slight reluctance), while Max and Virgil free the archaeologist. They ask where Norman father's axe was, and the archaeologist replies that it had already been sent to a British museum. The three teleport to the museum and covertly infiltrate it by crawling through the museum's vents. Eventually, they manage to retrieve Norman's axe, and after trapping the alerted guards by trapping them under the debris of a large fossil, they teleport back to Norman.
As Norman and Spike are still fighting, Max hands Norman's father's axe to him. Norman, now no longer afraid, easily gets the upper hand against Spike. Eventually, he throws Spike off a cliff, seemingly defeating the psychotic warrior. However, whether Spike is truly dead is up for debate, given his immense durability.
Why Spike Does Not Qualify as Pure Evil[]
While Spike lacks any redeeming qualities, he is too generic to qualify as Pure Evil. He murders Norman's father, binds an archaeologist and later attempts to kill him, pursues Norman and his allies to try to kill them, and ultimately duels his archenemy Norman so that he could defeat him like he defeated his father. Even for a kids' show, let alone a darker one like Mighty Max, Spike isn't a villain that strikes me as particularly odious. He is not shown to kill any members of Norman's tribe, any of the archaeologists, or any innocent civilians, and when you really look at him he's just a kill-the-heroes type villain who could have definitely done worse. He does claim that he wants to rip Norman's heart out, but even this supposedly brutal method of wanting to murder Norman does not give him enough oomph for him to stand out as a truly vile villain.
It doesn't help that Mighty Max already has two particularly depraved villains, dwarving Spike's heinousness even further:
- The first villain is the aforementioned Skullmaster, who is responsible for wiping out the Lemurian and Atlantian civilizations (trapping the souls of the latter community), overthrowing the Lava Lord and enslaving his lava beasts, attempting to end the world on a couple of occasions, enslaving a tribe by transforming them into reptilian creatures, pushing a monk off a cliff, strong-arming a child to be his minion by brainwashing him, and ultimately attempting to become a god and reshape history to his own tastes. Skullmaster also undoubtedly has the highest body count of all the villains in Mighty Max, as he kills many innocents and heroes, and is ultimately responsible for the deaths of Norman and Virgil.
- The second villain, like Spike, is a one-shot. Professor MacDougal is only a mere human, not even having the weaponry or strength that Spike possesses (well, at least in her human form). However, she still stands out by using all of her resources to commit some reprehensible atrocities. Her worst crime is committing very unethical experiments on werewolves by forcibly draining their blood, making for a very unpleasant experience. To add to that, she has mauled at least five victims to death, and when she drinks a serum to transform into a three-headed werewolf, she attempts to maul Max and says she will maul more innocents to terrify the Scottish population.
Spike by himself was already fairly generic, but Skullmaster and MacDougal serve as the final nail in the coffin for Spike's qualifications as Pure Evil. Spike ultimately does not go above and beyond in his villainy, especially considering he could have done worse, and he certainly fails to stand out against Skullmaster and MacDougal.
Final Verdict[]
An assertive cut.