So like many folks, growing up in addition to the usual Marvel and DC heroes I had my own stable of heroes and villains I'd doodle during school hours and what not. Unlike most folks, I've kept them around in the back of my head, expanding their personalities and motivations and backstories.

Chief among these are my "premiere" Superhero and his Archnemesis Night Raider and Whipslash.

Now Night Raider started out as a amalgam of Batman and Spiderman (Dark, broody costume and emphasis on gadgets with Spidey's dry wit and humor), but over time I've transformed him into a man working to undermine the criminal aspect from the inside. His alter ego is that of a wetworks freelancer - a runner in everything from guns to people. Night Raider then has to decide which are the "lesser evils" in his crusade and uses the intel he gathers while participating in illegal operations to break them up eventually. It's a balancing act of maintaining his credibility in the underworld while acting as best he can to stop crime - going so far as to severely injure himself with his own weaponry in order to maintain his cover.


Whipslash, meanwhile, is actually the mayor (now a House Representative) of the fictional city my heroes and villains inhabit. Simply a greedy individual, Whipslash ended up creating his villainous alter ego out of self-preservation, in order to deflect attention away from him and onto a costumed super villain. Ultimately, that's all Whipslash is - a cover for a corrupt politician.


Now these two have been each others archnemesis since I was seven. But as the years have gone on, I've come to understand a lot more on the writing process, and just how archnemesis are played between one another. And ultimately, I've found Whipslash and Night Raider aren't connected in any way, really.


Meanwhile, I've recently come up with a new 'villain' - a man by the name of Canis Dirus, who runs Canis Contracting - a paramilitary organization. Canis has a reputation of being a honest mercenary. He'll work loyally to a employer until the contract expires, and then he'll hire to the highest bidder (He does not allow himself to be put on retainer with any one faction - though they're welcome to rehire him in the future). This means he can work for a evil terrorist organization determined to rule the world one week, and then next week he'll be hired by the United States Military to clean out the same terrorist organization. He'll use patrol patterns, door codes, anything and everything he learned in his time with the organization to break them, but he will not betray intelligence. If he's sent to obtain some intelligence, that's one thing, but he will not outright grant that intelligence to anyone - no matter what it is. Canis has had himself and the men and women in his employ undergo procedures that make them highly resistant to downright immune to all forms of extracting any information by force. Telepaths can't scan them, they're immune to truth serums, and if any official decided to put them in a torture chamber then they'd best have all their affairs in order. Canis Contracting doesn't leave any member of the outfit under duress, and they have a knack for finding out who authorized it to begin with and...deal with the problem.


Thus, Canis Dirus has more resonance with Night Raider then Whipslash does, really. While Night Raider is intellectually dishonest about his goals (He uses his place in the underworld to take it down), Canis Dirus is honest and transparent in his dealings with the underworld and actually takes steps to protect former employers from abuse (It also makes him one of the few mercenaries villains can trust to bring into their plans, knowing he's not going to betray them).


So I dunno. Night Raider and Whipslash both have that dishonest quality about them, but Whipslash is a "high roller" in terms of criminal ambition, and realistically wouldn't cross paths with Night Raider all that often. Yet, I developed Whipslash to be Night Raider's nemesis...so it's kinda hard to say whether or not Whipslash should be 'shelved' (Take on more of a Kingpin aspect in my universe) in favor to the new guy, or if I should just keep the dichotomy I've got.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Nemeses.

Pedantic semantics corrections aside, I don't see why not. It's certainly possible for a hero to have more than one nemesis. Superman, for example, has Lex Luthor, Darkseid, General Zod, Brainiac, Metallo... and that's not counting his half-dozen or so evil twins like Bizarro, Hank Henshaw, The Eradicator, etc. At one point Spider-man had Doctor Octopus, Doctor Doom, The Green Goblin, Venom, and Chameleon all on his plate at once, and each had claim to the "archenemy" title at the time.

Both villain concepts make good arch-foes for Night Raider but in different ways. With Whipslash, the flip-flopping of both characters' alignments as they change between their civilian and costumed identities creates dual incongruous scenarios where the two can be both working with and against each other simultaneously, an interesting reversal of the Green Goblin model where the friend/foe relationship is mirrored based on being in-costume. On the other hand, as a true neutral Canis can be alternately opposed to either of Night Raider's identities, and certainly opposed to his malleable and disingenuous alignment in his civilian guise. Keeping both also affords you the opportunity to do both "unlikely alliance (in which Canis and Night Raider join forces)" and "double villain (in which Canis and Whipslash join forces)" team-ups.

I echo Dante's ideas: it seems any major character ends up with multiple baddies claiming the role of arch-nemesis. Perhaps its as simple as such characters often have multiple monthly titles and as such, it ends up being the simplest solution: writer #1 uses Villain A while writer #2 uses Villain B, and of course with villains being as popular as the heroes, having multiple "big bads" allowed the company to use them elsewhere (not an issue for you, I know).

I am not really sure if either character makes for a good "arch-nemesis", though. They both sound like solid character ideas, don't get me wrong. Perhaps I am just too used to the archfoe that really has a connection to the hero. The way you describe Whiplash, he's a good reverse of your hero character, but as such they aren't that apt to encounter each other. Canis Dirus functions as a villain-bordering-on-anti-hero in that this is his career: he hurts/helps people for the money, pure and simple. With both characters, how often are they going to run afoul of Night Raider in either of his roles?

I think you have room for one or two more characters in this "relationship": probably a more traditional super-hero (optionally government sponsored) who gets in Night Rraider's way a lot (especially when he's doing the "lesser evil" thing). If the Night Raider persona is usually viewed as a heroic character while his alter-ego is recognized as a criminal, then wouldn't it be interesting for Night Raider's biggest headache to be another hero who merely acts as a "rival" while a good guy and a true nemesis while Night Raider is trying to accumulate his street cred? Either as an alternative or in addition, you could have a villain who views Night Raider's alter ego as competition and Night Raider as "the real enemy". Given the gun running aspect, both identities could easily be threatened by the same villain, an idea both of your current villains also can function as... but with the set-up, just not as well. It is a simple matter of league: for Night Raider to hang with Canis or Whiplash, he has to be Batman. Has Batman infiltrated other criminal organizations? Yes. Problem is that he is so well established it ends up making for poor story-telling: he's the Batman, after all. Infiltrating seems... beneath him. Nightraider sounds much more interesting if he has not already "made it", as a super-hero.