A To Z Blogging Challenge 2024 - Villains! - Z Is For Zod, Zola and Zeus

Zeus. Public domain.

And now for my last villains post! First, General Zod, a villain from the DC film universe. I’ve only seen him in one film, Superman 2, though I believe he has a much longer background, and appeared in Smallville, a TV series about Clark Kent’s teenage years. I have only seen a few episodes of that show, so missed him there.

However, I prefer to stick to films, shows and books I’m familiar with, hope you don’t mind. Z is not an easy letter; there was one year in which I used it as Zzz, the sound of sleeping! 

So, General Zod turns up in Superman 2, along with his girlfriend Ursa and a henchman, Non. Actually, they appear briefly in the first Superman movie, with Christopher Reeve, in which they are sentenced, by Jor-El, Superman’s father, to life imprisonment in the Phantom Zone for their crimes. They vow vengeance. Of course they do! Villains do that. The Phantom Zone is a glassy thing that can be sent into space. Some years later, when Superman has sent a nuclear bomb out into space, it breaks open the Phantom Zone, allowing the super villains to escape. Somehow, of all the planets they might reach, Earth is it. 

Ironically, these are the only other Kryptonians to survive their planet’s destruction, and, once on Earth, they have the same powers as Superman, which certainly does make things hard on him!  

Deciding to conquer Earth, they combine forces with local villain Lex Luthor. When asked what he wants in return for his help, he remarks that he has always liked beach front property and asks for Australia! I saw this film with friends on the opening night here and we voted for Lex Luthor as Prime Minister to replace Malcolm Fraser…

In my favourite scene, the US President is forced to kneel to Zod. 

He groans, “Oh, God!”

“Zod,” corrects that villain.

Needless to say, Superman defeats them, using his quick wits, not merely his brawn.

Arnim Zola is a villain in the MCU, as well as comics, though I haven’t read those. To give you a blurb, with all the information, here is a link to his Wikipedia entry. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnim_Zola

He appears in two Captain America films, The First Avenger and The Winter Soldier. He had worked with Red Skull and the evil organisation HYDRA during the war, and later placed his mind into a computer. 

He appears in a first season What If …? episode, “What if…Ultron Won?” Clint Barton, Hawkeye, and Natasha Romanoff, the last surviving Avengers, after Ultron has wiped out pretty much everyone, find him in his computer in Moscow, and make him help. As it happens, he can’t, for various reasons, leading to the final episode of Season 1. 

Finally, I’ll do a short entry on the Greek god Zeus. Okay, a god. The king of the gods, no less, and father to most of those on Olympus. But not a nice person.

Mostly, it’s rape, all those nymphs and mortal women he finds and rapes, some in the form of an animal or bird. The only woman he respected enough to appear to her as her husband was Alcmene, the mother of Heracles. 

Often, his wife Hera punishes his victims and he does nothing to help them.

And it’s not only women. He carries off Ganymede, a young Trojan prince, who becomes his cup bearer, but it’s not for his skill at handling a jug of wine that Zeus wants him. 

Zeus, upon hearing a prophecy that he will eventually be overthrown by a son  with his first wife, Metis, swallows his pregnant wife to make sure it doesn’t happen. (Her first baby is Athena, the son was supposed to be her second)

He also condemns Prometheus, who has stolen fire for humankind, to be chained forever on a mountaintop, having his liver torn out and eaten by an eagle daily. Because he is, after all, a god and an immortal, it grows back overnight so it can be eaten again.

Prometheus is eventually rescued by Heracles, the son of Zeus, but not before he has suffered a lot. 

No, definitely not a nice person, if not considered an outright villain.

And that’s it for 2024, except my thoughts on this year. Hope you have enjoyed it.