may · contain · language

Going on with reading about DC comics characters on Wikipedia - I'm looking at them all in alphabetical order, a wonderfully useful long-term project (sort of) mentioned previously here and before that here - I find this beautiful, beautiful thing. This makes it so worth it, and anyone who can't see it I just feel sorry for.
 
Double Down
"Jeremy Tell was a con artist and compulsive gambler. One night, after losing all his money in a game, Tell murdered the high winning gambler. A mystically "cursed deck of cards" the murdered man owned animated and flew at Tell, cleaving and bonding to his skin. They have replaced most of his flesh, and cover most of his body. Tell can, either mentally or mystically, control these cards, detaching them from his body and directing their movement. He can use a card's razor edges to cut through things, or to encase someone with his cards. He often uses puns related to gambling, in much the same manner a Silver Age gimmick villain would."

Just seeing the picture,
 
I knew it was going to be good, and I so wasn't disappointed. Reading as many superhero comics as I can really isn't a big life goal for me right now, but... I think I have to try and get my hands on something where this guy appears.

So, this is where a lot of intelligent commentary - the little essay on what is so great about a good supervillain, the story ideas, the defense of silver age puns etc - should go, but I must confess I don't have that much. Well, I will try a story idea: Flashback story where tell learns all his techniques from a white haired cardistry expert by the name of... "Flourish" would probably be the best bet, who I would really like to be female - perhaps with a backstory as an assistant to a nasty and actually rather unskilled stage magician called... the Great Gerotello?... whom she skillfully doublecrossed and... but anyway, the problem will be avoiding making it just another example of "women in refrigerators", as of course Tell has to kill this person, saying something like "talk about a dead man's hand..." - perhaps he can just try and seem to succeed, but then have the whole situation turned on him on only just get out of it alive as Flourish is just That Much Better, even without superpowers (which Tell perhaps just got, thus thinking he could take her)? Something like that? No?

Oh, and here's The Great Index of Villains! (until I get around to moving it from Geocities)