This started with me thinking about Spider-Girl. Or Spider-Man. I can't recall which lead into which. I think I was trying to remember how many of Spider-Girl's foes have actually turned over a new leaf. The reason being, in my early comic reading years, Spider-Man had a host of former enemies who had reformed, or were trying to reform, that would pop-up semi-regularly when Spidey needed an assist. Black Cat is the obvious one, but there was the Prowler, Rocket Racer, Will O' Wisp, the Sandman, and the Puma. I think Gerry Conway was the one writing most of those stories, either in Web of Spider-Man or Spectacular Spider-Man.
So I thought to myself, that's pretty impressive, a half-dozen of Spidey's enemies that started helping him fight crime. It must be something about Spider-Man. Then I remembered that the Flash villain Pied Piper went legit for awhile, Two-Face has tried to play hero at least once, Catwoman, Harley Quinn apparently reformed enough that Bruce Wayne endorsed her release from Arkham. About every other week, some old foe of the X-Men shows up, claiming they've changed their ways, from Rogue, to Magneto, Mystique, Emma Frost, Juggernaut, so on and so forth.
OK, so the redemptive arc is a time-tested writer's friend, used throughout the decades. Question this raises with me is, does it mean something different, depending on whose villain it is? With Spider-Man, it's probably related to the whole "power and responsibility" ideal that permeates his story. They have power, use it irresponsibly, but Spider-Man, through word or deed, convinces them to try something different, to use their power to help others. And in what is perhaps also a reflection of his story, they struggle. Sandman, for example, had a less than superb stint with the Avengers. The Puma, who was really only helping out of a sense of owing a debt of honor to Spider-Man, eventually lost control to his animalistic side, and returned to a life of murder. Prowler's personal life, Rocket Racer has to find some new leit way to pay his loans now. Nothing is ever easy.
Is it any different with Batman, or the X-Men, or the Flash? Actually, Flash is the one I'm most curious about, how Piper's dropping the evil shtick would fit in with Wally's story.
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Good question, and I think you're right that the villains redeem in theme with their hero.
Flash is sort of the "traditional" redeemer in the sense that Piper just started to like the guy. Wally's shtick is that he's a normal joe without any of the superheroic pretenses (though he does have his fair share of regular pretenses), the kinda guy who's just as willing to have a conversation with a rogue as punch him (Jay and Barry were sorta like this too, but to lesser effect). So it makes sense that at least one of his villains would just start chillin' with him and eventually stop committing crimes because he doesn't want to fight his chillin'-buddy anymore.
Spidey's thing is that he's this geeky, responsible kid who most civilians think is this Flash Thompson-type jock or a villainous freak or a glory-hound or whatever, because he's so aloof in public. But because of that public aloofness, he overcompensates by underscoring his virtuous traits in private -- and "private" for Spidey means when he's in battle with his villains. So there's this weird situation where the people who most clearly and often see Spidey's virtue are the Sandmans and Black Cats of the world. They see this guy who gets crap all day from the Jameson-inspired public and clearly has his own weighty issues at home, but still puts on whatever half-sewn Spider-costume he has and does this amazing heroing, and they think, "Gee, maybe I oughta give this kid a break. If he can remain legit, I might as well give it a shot."
With the X-Men, I think a lot of their villains go for the mansion because it's not that big a leap -- the X-Men are often almost villains themselves. Plus, many of the villains aren't criminals in the traditional sense -- they aren't bank robbers -- they're action-junkies and power-hungerers, and they can get that just as easily with an X on their shirt. And then there's the political players like Mystique and Magneto who either join to influence the X-Men (as Mystique does) or to further their political education (as Magneto did), and not really out of any moral repentance. Oh, and everyone's related to Scott Summers now, so it's not "reforming" so much as "mooching off the family."
Batman's reformers are easy: the craziest thing to do in Gotham is be sane. In Batman's psychological mileu, normalcy is dangerous, the sort of thing that leads people to being shot in alleys. I mean, in the normal redemption arc, there's the rising line of hope, then either a squggle of doubt/fallback/resolve towards a baseline redemption or a sheer drop of morality back to villainy; but with Gotham's redemptive arc, there's NEVER a question of redemption -- they're always going to be sucked back into Gotham's black hole and they're the only ones who don't know it. I'd say it's noir, but even noir supposes triumph SOMEWHERE in the arc (Sam Spade wisecracking to a cop in the final reel or something). Gotham is an even bleaker "tragedy-noir," where the final reel is usually Batman crying at someone's grave or Joker laughing in Arkham, a horror movie where the undead win.
Makes me wonder...has Superman ever reformed anyone?
I think that Pied Piper is still trying to stay on the side of the angels, but is having a tough time convincing the cops, not to mention the Rogues.
I have to admit that I love the Rogues. They're not evil, they're just trying to make a living.
Spidergirl's actual enemies never really seem to redeem themselves, it's just that most of the folks she fights were misunderstood originally.
Raptor and Normie being the main exceptions of course. They both underwent redemption and paid prices for it.
I guess Kaine did as well, but his redemption really took place back during Peter's day.
cove west: I have to agree with all of that, especially the Batman one. I had sort of been thinking of the redemption as being similar to batman's war on crime: he can temporarily beat the darkness back, but it always returns, thus his foes can like you said, try and be good for awhile, but they always succumb to those darker impulses.
sallyp: I thought he might still be a good guy, but i remembered him being on the run in Countdown and maybe being involved with Bart Allen's death, so I wasn't certain whether he had backslid. It'd be nice if he hadn't.
seangreyson: That's basically what I came up with. A lot of her enemies end up in that Suicide Squad-lite group, but they aren't redeeming themselves, just trying to get out of jail.
Maybe we could count the symbiont, though Normie probably deserves more credit for that than Spider-Girl, since he convinced it to work with him, and to stop with the killing and eating.
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