My Greatest Failure: Difference between revisions

From a philosophical standpoint, this makes sense--if someone wins almost all the time, as most comic book heroes do, they would be more defined by their failures than their successes. In [[Marvel Comics]], this is sometimes a consistent psychological flaw (the "Marvel Flaw") which occasionally even prevents a hero from succeeding.

 

 

The hero may recover from this. When they do, it's usually a sign they have grown, although [[Retcon|retcons]] can cause an [[Status Quo Is God|unpleasant return to status quo]].

 

See [[Dead Little Sister]] and [[I Let Gwen Stacy Die]] for two of the more common failures. Might result in [[We Used to Be Friends]]. Often happens to heroes who fail to [[Must Make Amends|make amends]]. Can be a [[Career Building Blunder]]. When the failure is what put the character on the path to being the current (better) person s/he is now, it's [[Necessary Fail]]. If the plot brings about an opportunity to correct or make up for their failure, you have [[My Greatest Second Chance]].

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Shinichi Kudo of ''[[Detective Conan (Manga)|Detective Conan]]'' treated his greatest failure to be [[Driven to Suicide|driving one villain of the day to death]] in ''Moonlight Sonata''.

* In ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'', Setsuna's [[Failure Knight]] nature has its roots in an incident where she tried to save Konoka from drowning, fell in herself, and both were rescued by someone else. As a result, she constantly tries to train harder so it won't happen again. Of course, Konoka doesn't hold it against her, as they were both young children when this occurred.

*** Also subverted in an awesome way in the same scene; when a very large ball-and-chain comes flying towards them, she [[Offhand Backhand|slices it in half and doesn't even notice it...]] because she's beating herself up for getting ''weaker''.

* In ''[[Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha (Anime)|Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha]] A's'', Admiral Graham blames himself for Admiral Clyde's death, as he was forced to destroy the Hestia with Clyde on board, at Clyde's insistence, rather than let the Book of Darkness take over the ship and use the [[Wave Motion Gun|Arc-en-ciel]] on the other ships.

* One of the third [[Flash]]'s allies-turned-enemies, Zoom, acknowledged this in a twisted way. He felt the speedster required a tragic failure to be a great superhero -- even if Zoom had to make one for him. {{spoiler|He later made good on his promise by causing the Flash's wife to miscarry the couple's unborn twins, right in front of the hero's eyes. The twins were later restored to life by the miracle of [[Time Travel]], but the Flash still blames himself for Zoom becoming a villain in the first place.}}

* Hal Jordan, the [[Silver Age]] [[Green Lantern]], was away in space when his home city of Coast City was destroyed. He went crazy and became a villain, Parallax, dedicated to undoing the destruction through gaining cosmic power, time travel, or just rebooting the universe itself. (It was [[Retcon|later revealed]] that the great failure had let an ancient evil trapped in the Central Power Battery of the Green Lantern Corps get a foothold on his mind.)

** Another Green Lantern, Kyle Rayner, had his mother die of an unknown fatal disease. Even when Kyle, with God-like power, tries to resurrect her, she asks to be allowed to die. During the "Sinestro Corps War" [[Arc]] {{spoiler|Sinestro reveals to a captive Kyle that her death was the work of an sentient alien virus working for the Sinestro Corps, and was all part of a plan to make him vulnerable to possession by Parallax}}.

*** That was Kyle's second [[My Greatest Failure]]. The first came early in his career when his girlfriend Alex was killed and quite literally [[Stuffed Into the Fridge]]. Up until then he thought having a super-powered ring would be fun and a lot of laughs, but when that happened, Kyle grew up pretty fast.

* In the [[Fantastic Four]], Reed Richards' own miscalculation and arrogance are what led to the titular team being hit by gamma rays and given superpowers. In the case of Reed, Sue, and Johnny, this is no big deal. But Ben's powers leave him a freakish rock monster, and being trapped like that put a huge barrier between the two of them for years, in spite of being best friends. It wouldn't have been so bad if Ben could just change back from being The Thing, but [[Status Quo Is God]] so any changes back to a human are doomed to be short-lived.

** Also from the [[Fantastic Four]] is the supervillain [[Dr. Doom]]. Doom built a machine that would allow him to communicate with the spirit of his dead mother, and was told beforehand by Richards that it would critically fail. But when he ignored this, that's exactly what wound up happening and left his face scarred. [[Never My Fault|Years later he still can't accept that it was his fault it happened]], and [[Disproportionate Retribution|devotes his life to killing Richards after convincing himself he must have tampered with the machine.]]

*** [[Disproportionate Retribution]] indeed. In the original telling at least (Lord knows how many retcons may have flip-flopped since then) Doom didn't create the mask to hide a hideously mauled hamburger-face; he did it because the explosion left a ''thin, barely noticeable'' mar on his supposedly "perfect" facade. A man that vain, you could almost understand making some sort of covering... unfortunately in his haste, he didn't wait for the mask to cool before putting it on, which ([[Depending On the Writer]]) either DID hideously scar his face, or ''permanently bonded the mask to his skin''. He might not admit the accident itself, but he DOES (very rarely) admit to the fact that putting the mask on so fast wasn't his smartest idea.

**** Actually all this was based on John Byrne's retcon of the Lee/Kirby origin, based on an idea by Kirby that either [[Stan Lee]] had discarded or [[Jack Kirby]] only had it after the original version was published in ''Fantastic Four Annual'' #2 (1964). There, Doom's head is completely bound up and hidden beneath bandages and in the caption Stan Lee unequivocally states: "As for Victor Von Doom... his face was hopelessly disfigured!" Also note that on the page after that, even though the mask is not completely cooled when it is put on Doom's face, it is cool enough for the monk to hold it in his bare hands (you can easily discern his fingernails etc.) By the evidence of that Annual, all the mask likely did was singe Victor's eyebrows.

** Ratchet greatly regrets {{spoiler|not being able to save Bumblebee's voicebox}} along with his life.

* Lao Shi, Jake's grandfather and trainer in ''[[American Dragon Jake Long]]'', became much more focused and wise when he nearly got killed by [[Big Bad|the Dark Dragon]].

 

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