AAaA Best
Sorry-not-sorry, Valtteri… there was no way Phil and I were going to spoil this one. Although I’m always glad to get correspondence from places like Finland.
We always knew that Best would be back eventually, and by the time this letter ran we had decided on the manner of his return, just a couple of chapters away. But Phil and I weren’t in agreement about how much the readers wanted to see him back. I know comics fans want to see the same things over and over in general (see, like, anything DC published this week), but Best was far and away our most controversial character overall, so I didn’t get the sense people were anticipating his return so much as dreading it.
Probably some of each, but Phil was glad to point to this letter as clear and irrefutable evidence that I was wrongity-wrongo-wrong. As per usual.
One thing I always loved about this comic was that Best was actually as good as his bloat ego believed himself to be.
He was the picture-perfect candidate for the kind of narcissistic character who gets take down a peg when his skills don’t match the hype—except that his skills *did* match the hype. He never failed to perform. He won and kept on winning because he really was *that* good.
His undoing didn’t come from him not being good enough — it came from him finding out that the universe didn’t revolve around him the way he thought it did.
I feel like this is better than how most fiction deals with braggarts, where they just talk the talk but can’t walk the walk. Because the implied message (intended or not) is that being full of yourself is only bad if your opinion of yourself is over-inflated.
In Guilded Age, it doesn’t *matter* that Best really is as good as he claims — he’s still despicable even though his plans always succeed. His narcissism is seen as bad *because it is narcissism,* rather than because he’s overrated.
I never thought about that but I think you’re actually right
It’s an interesting aspect of his character. In a lot of ways, being just as capable as he believes he is only makes him that much more intolerable.
I absolutely agree with your assessment. And it’s even what makes Best all the more infuriating to me – that he really was as good as his ego believed, but he was STILL so narcissistic. I thought it made him a more interesting character because it wasn’t the typical trope, and it was great with the basin thing and with the Winter Elves.
It wouldn’t have done his ego any good to know that by the time he returned, I’d completely forgotten who he was, and that Bandit wasn’t always one of the original five.
Not sure if I’d call him that good. He was about as competent as any of the other five. Also, the amount of “good” you can be is limited if you keep pushing the people around you into harm’s way because you don’t care about them.
Suomi mainittu. Torille!
I mean, we are rather well known these days, but there are still conspiracies whether we even exist and it’s not helped by us being always surprised somebody has heard of us…
That being said when me and pals were in Germany and people asked from where were we, everyone just laughed when we said Finland… We even asked once what’s so funny about it, but never got an answer… Maybe it was our proud chorus that made it funny…
Wow, sorry you went through that. A sad commentary on the state of education in … Germany?
Oh, nothing to it. We thought it was hilarious too, but we were just puzzled on why. Still made a bunch of good memories there. :D
If I ever get a chance, I’ll definitely visit again.
I’ve known two Fins (Finns?) in my first semester at uni, even went to a small celebration of the national day hosted by the local Finnish student society at my (German) uni. There /is/ some comedic effect to mention of Finland, though, at least with some part of the student population who, like me, had Monty Python posters on their walls. Still gets a childish grin out of me every once in a while.
I kinda liked Wav. I was a bit disappointed when I realized who he was, and even more so when he himself remembered.