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Venus in Scorpio

Scorpio's energy will make the native a rather possessive owner of what he loves, receiving tremendous pleasure through control of the desired object or person. Scorpio is the eighth sign of the zodiac and the planet Pluto is its dominant planet. The old ruler of the sign, before the discovery of Pluto, was the planet Mars. Even today, astrologers consider Mars as the co-governor of the sign. Scorpio is also the natural ruler of the eighth house, which regulates the sex, death, transformation and money of others. This will make Venus in Scorpio reach its maximum sexuality, even breaking boundaries and transforming through this act. In addition, the secret traits of Scorpio will make the love life of the native rather clandestine, and the individual will focus on breaking the taboos of him and his lovers. They will prefer not to talk about their business, keeping all the details to themselves. These details are usually quite spicy, including fetishes, mind games, and control struggles. When it comes to relationships, they will never rush to get into one and it is always considered a subject separate from the sex itself. A person from Venus in Scorpio is very, very suspicious and paranoid, and therefore needs a lot of time to trust someone. They need loyalty from their partners, and it will not enter into a stable relationship unless they are sure it is provided. Even then, jealousy will continue to exist, and in case of difficult aspects of the native Venus it will appear even for no apparent reason. Such individuals can become so obsessed with a certain lover, that they can transform their lives just to be with him.

If Superman inspires us to be good, then wouldn't Ultraman inspire us to be bad? Like Gordon Gekko, the selfish magnate, who proves that you can own everything? Or a pirate king, who leads the world's supervillains to plunder and villainy?

That could definitely be a component, but the problem is, that’s also Darkseid’s deal. That’s the issue with Ultraman: he’s not a perverse reflection of anything that Superman stands for. He’s just anti-Superman, period, and that has less potential than one might think.

Not to say he isn’t a good villain. Like your Metallos, Toymen and Livewires, there’s rarely if ever any great theme to his battles with Superman, but he’s still a more than decent antagonist to contend with. Morrison, Waid and Busiek have all shown him as entertainingly incapable of managing his own sadistic tendencies, which makes it easy for him to provoke an emotional reaction from Superman. As part of a villain ensemble with the Crime Syndicate, he’s terrific. But in spite of appearing in a number of great stories (JLA: Earth 2, Mark Waid’s The Brave And The Bold, Kurt Busiek’s Justice League run, Final Crisis), he ranks pretty low on the grand list of comic book evil opposites.

The thing is, as great as any other evil opposite may be, there’s something specific that either connects them thematically to the hero or parallels it in a particularly telling way, same as any other villain. Zoom is a fan, same as Flash. Black Adam is a perfect rival to Captain Marvel because Adam is a conflicted, unrelentingly violent and tormented man toeing the line between hero and villain in a morally gray world, and Captain Marvel is Captain Marvel. Bizarro reverses everything, and therefore reflects Superman’s alien-ness. Even the Wrath, who seemingly just flipped Batman in his one appearance in much the same way as Ultraman mirrors Superman, at least shared the common tragedy of losing his parents. Ultraman, meanwhile, is just bad. Baddy bad bad bad bad. He flash-fries kittens in trees, his wife hates his guts, he gets antsy if he has to go a full day without killing, he’s selfish, deep down he’s cowardly, he’s just a big ‘ol creep. He’s everything Superman’s not, but not in a way that says anything about either of them. The only fundamental drive of Superman’s that he reflects is that Superman is good, and pure, plain, simple, uncomplicated evil such as Ultraman’s is just banal.

How to fix it then, if you want to move him beyond stock JLA villain? Well, aside from fleshing his world out further (what are his Smallville, Metropolis and Fortress like? What’s his rogues gallery like? What kinds of adventures does he go on? What are his possible futures?), the first step is to make him as intimidating and frightening as Superman is comforting and uplifting. Along with the bit in Earth 2 where he throws counterfeit money to the public for the amusement of destroying the economy, my favorite Ultraman moment would probably be by Mark Waid in his aforementioned B&TB run:

That dude? That dude is genuinely creepy, and I imagine Waid’s work with Ultraman here served as something of a basis for how he wrote Plutonian in Irredeemable. Tony’s demeanor throughout most of that book is in my opinion the ideal model for Ultraman’s general behavior - unflappable, untouchable, reveling in his work and less interested in mass destruction for its own sake so much as destroying individual people. Still, the story above ultimately shows him to be a coward at heart, which is a consistent enough detail that I figure it needs to be maintained in some form to keep him from being a totally different character. As do the implications of his one moment of righteousness in the first issue of the original Crisis, where he takes some satisfaction in fighting to the end of what he knows is an impossible battle.

So here’s where I’d take it: the moment in All-Star where Lex looks through Superman’s eyes and realizes how wrong he’s been all these years, that the universe’s inherent worth is in each other? That’s because he lives in the DC Universe. Ultraman lives on Earth 3, where that is manifestly not the case; on that Earth, no matter how inviting the prospect of good may seem or how many give in to such foolishness, deep down mankind’s most awful, self-destructive instincts will always overwhelm that, and no flickering light can shine forever in the face of the power of darkness, with the authority of the Crime Syndicate being a proper and necessary thing to retain some semblance of order. And on that world, a young alien (I’d keep the New 52 origin where he was sent to Earth from a cruel Krypton where the strong dominate the weak, and his parents slaughtered dozens of other Kryptonians to make sure only their child reached an escape pod) looked up into the sky, into the depths of things with his growing senses, and realized absolutely none of it mattered. And unlike his ‘brother’ a universe away, he didn’t take comfort in those around him, either. That’s not how his world works. If the only worth of the world is in the people, and the people are fundamentally awful, then the only way to win is to conquer them.

That’s how I’d position him: the ultimate nihilist compared to Superman’s ultimate idealist. Not in the same sense of Darkseid, who believes he is the one thing that has purpose and it’s his duty to subsume everything into himself, or Luthor, who also believes he uniquely matters but really crushes those beneath him to conquer his own insecurities and assuage his ego, but as in nothing having any inherent meaning, including himself. Everything is fundamentally worthless unless it overcomes its inherent patheticness to achieve something of significance, generally by way of domination; he keeps the people around so that there will be something in the universe to experience his success besides himself, and he needs there to be someone to crush (though there are a few he can respect). He conquers for the same reason Superman cares: it’s the only thing that matters to each of them in the face of the universe. Superman aids those around him to improve the general state of things, Ultraman empowers himself and ruins those around him in ever-escalating acts of Randian self-aggrandization because that’s how he improves things; after all, he can be important, while the wretches around him could never aspire to such things. Why, he even poses as one of them from time to time as Clark Kent, just so he can experience first-hand their sorry state in life, so that his life as Ultraman may be all the sweeter in understanding how much they deserve what he does to them for their weakness. And that’s why, deep down, he’s a coward: if he dies, he never mattered either, and it really is all pointless.

And that underlying terror would be what unites him with Superman, in the same way his inability to perceive inherent worth is what divides them beyond just good/evil. Both are aiming for a dream they’ll likely never achieve - at least, not anytime soon - and that scares both of them. Superman will never save everyone. Ultraman will never put everything under his bootheel and matter as much as he wants to. Both of them face constant threats to their worldview in not being able to fully succeed, and both are therefore locked into missions that will never end.

I got bored and decided to render emory

Blondes have more fun?