When I think cartoon supervillain my mind turns to Marilyn Manson.

When I saw the title of the new album… when I saw the first video… well. I mentioned The Holy Mountain recently, its appearance here is just one of the synchronicities of late.

Then we have its Heraclitian refrain:

become become
become become
be be be become

As he told Vanity Fair:

I’ve been thinking about the transition I had to go through to start making music. [Before starting the band] I went to Kinko’s with a drawing I did of myself. I printed [it] up myself and put the flyers on cars. I did not even have music created. But that confidence, or arrogance, led me to end up having to make music.

Reminding us that you never meet the same villain twice.

Especially when he takes the form of the Evil Magician:

As he told CNN:

In any story, the villain is the catalyst. The hero’s not a person who will bend the rules or show the cracks in his armor. He’s one-dimensional intentionally, but the villain is the person who owns up to what he is and stands by it. He’ll do the things that are sometimes morally questionable, but he does it because it’s his nature to do it and it doesn’t fluctuate. It’s the fable of the frog and the scorpion, all those stories that just say, whatever you’re going to be, stick to it in confidence. Don’t waver or life will f*** you over.

Finally, what better than an image of the man by the villain himself: