Working Too Hard For Their Money: 3 Easy Business Venture Villains

Welcome to Funding the Kryptonite, where we will look at the plans of comic book super villains and discuss them from a business perspective.

Today's post will spotlight a list of 3 super villains who, as they are usually portrayed, are in it for the money and the easy life and maybe some revenge against their chosen superhero for foiling all their plots so often. However, if we remove the revenge aspect, their choice of a life of crime seems kind of foolish given their ability to make a huge buck legitly. In no particular order, my top three are:

Doing in the Doctor: Using the VRIN Framework

Welcome back to Funding The Kryptonite, a blog that will take a look at comic book super villains and discuss them from a business perspective.

Today’s blog post will discuss an important business framework called VRIN, which is used by companies to evaluate the strength of their competitive advantages in the marketplace and determine what sort of edge it gives them against their competitors. In this particular example, I am going to draw on a one-off Doctor Strange villain named Nico West and the pharmaceutical company he worked for and how their decision to go up against Strange was founded from a use of this framework.

Leadership, Like Lightning: Norman Osborn's Thunderbolts Management

Welcome back to Funding the Kryptonite, a blog that will take a look at comic book super villains and discuss them from a business perspective.

Before getting started, I wanted to put out an open call to other bloggers, comic or otherwise. I would love to increase my own exposure to the community by doing a guest post for you on a mutually agreed upon topic. I’ve got an MBA and an undergrad in Sociology, plus some diverse work experiences, so I can pen a piece on a number of different topics. Please contact me through the email link in my profile and let me know what we can set up. I’ll also happily offer you the same guest post opportunity, and a link from here.

Today’s blog post is going to touch on Norman Osborn, popularly known as Marvel’s first Green Goblin. Best known for killing Spider-man’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy, Norman was given control of the Thunderbolts (a government sponsored team of supervillains who were charged with enforcing the Super Human Registration Act after the Civil War crossover event). Team leadership is never an easy task to start with, and Norman is amazingly poorly suited to that. Let’s talk about why.

Reliability, Relationships, and Responsibility: Three Failings of Doom

Welcome back to Funding the Kryptonite, a blog that will take a look at comic book super villains and discuss them from a business perspective.

Today’s post will focus on one Victor Von Doom, better known to the Marvel Universe as Doctor Doom. Famed arch nemesis of the Fantastic Four, and Reed Richards in particular, his rise to power was chronicled in an excellent miniseries titled Books of Doom. I’m going to discuss some of his decisions and their outcomes in his early career path, and why I believe they were bad.

A Literal Deal with the Literal Devil: Interests in Negotiating for Marriage

Welcome back to Funding the Kryptonite, a blog that will take a look at comic book super villains and discuss them from a business perspective.

First off, a quick shout out and thank you to the reddit community and others who have linked to my blog and made positive comments about my writing. I’m glad it’s being enjoyed and I hope you will like future content.

Today’s blog post is going to center around a negotiation in one of the most controversial storylines in Spider-man publishing history, One More Day. While I am not personally a fan of the storyline and how it played out on the pages or backstage in editorial, I do appreciate Mephisto and how he bargained for the marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Parker.

Prideful Planning

Welcome back to Funding the Kryptonite, a blog that will take a look at comic book super villains and discuss them from a business perspective.

Today, I am going to examine the case of Marvel Comic’s super villain group The Pride (found primarily in the series Runaways). This group was formed when six individual young couples, each with their own unique specialization (aliens, criminals, time travelers, magicians, mutants, and technologists) were summoned by an ancient power known as the Gibborim. In exchange for performing an annual ritual (murdering a young woman and sacrificing her soul) to empower the Gibborim, the group that became the Pride would have their powers and abilities enhanced. The downside? After 25 years, the Gibborim would wipe the Earth clean except for six members of the Pride who served them most faithfully who would then gain eternal life.

Welcome! and Risk Management

Welcome to the inaugural post of Funding the Kryptonite, a blog that will take a look at the plans of comic book super villains and discuss them from a business perspective.

To kick off on a good business idea, we take one of Marvel’s most well known business villains: Wilson Fisk, A.K.A. The Kingpin. An overview of this character in his many different incarnations can be found here, but I’ll be examining one of his best business decisions from the Ultimate Universe version of him. 

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The summary: 

The Kingpin discovers that Spider-Man, noted superhero and general thorn in his side, never registered his likeness or name as trademarks and that a subsidiary company of his legitimate business empire purchased the company that did register those trademarks. In short, the Kingpin owns the merchandising/film/TV/book rights to Spider-Man. He floods the market with products based on that likeness, generating significant revenues for himself and reaping the benefits of Spider-Man’s increasing popularity and fame as Spider-Man attempts to stop Fisk, and other villains, from their villainy.