[Meeting…] Vandal Savage

«I am not a caveman, I am a visionary, a veteran who has orchestrated every insignificant war that humanity has ever had. And I will continue to change the world for tomorrow's war. My morning.»

These words come from the character we are going to meet today, a villain who was born in the time of caves (although he is nothing like other cavemen discussed in this section such as Hug The Troglodyte or to Laghu) and that has corroded human society since its beginnings so that the world revolves around its ideals, the ideals of a man as intelligent as he is dangerous and believe me, Vandal Savage is very dangerous.

He may not be as famous as other comic book villains like Lex Luthor or the Joker, but there is no doubt that Vandal Savage is a much more dangerous being and has done more damage to humanity than the two of them together could do in their entire lives.

From the caves

A long time ago, in the year 50,000 B.C. A Cro-Magnon named Vandar Adg, leader of the Blood Tribe, found what appeared to be a strange meteorite. Contact with the meteorite not only caused a physical and mental evolution in Vandar, making him more intelligent and stronger than the rest of his peers, but also granted him the gift of immortality.

Renamed Vandal Savage, this character did not have much mercy with his enemies (he is considered the inventor of cannibalism) but we cannot expect a caveman to be pious or peaceful either, and if he could be, it is clear that this does not enter into Savage's plans.

His privileged position as the only intelligent and immortal being who sees the history of man pass with a more lucid perspective than the rest of the species, has led him to modify the course of history and the progress of man in society according to his own criteria, since Vandal has not hesitated to participate in wars or influence, help and embody important people in the history of humanity such as Blackbeard, Napoleon, Hitler, Julius Caesar, Erik the Red, Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan among many. others. In other words, Half of the tyrants the world has known have actually been Vandal Savage using other identities and the other half have been his allies..

Savage could have exerted a good influence among his fellow human beings and helped the human species to evolve mentally and socially faster, but instead he preferred to collaborate in the creation of a world of crime, hatred and cruelty, where humans step on each other and have no empathy for other people who suffer the consequences of our actions, directly or indirectly.

Clashes against superheroes (and supervillains)

Vandal Savage's attitude and age mean that he has made a very long list of enemies, among which superheroes stand out. His first enemy and rival was Immortal Man, another man who received powers from the same meteorite as Vandal Savage, although instead of receiving "normal" immortality his power is based on resurrecting with different abilities and forms each time he dies, this character was later upgraded to Resurrection Man.

However, most of Vandal Savage's battles have been fought against classic superheroes, especially with the JSA (Justice Society of America), which is the first group of DC Comics superheroes, where the first versions of Flash, Green Lantern and many other heroes from the company's early years joined forces, which led Vandal to participate in the Injustice Society, a group of villains formed to fight against the aforementioned heroes.

Vandal's rivalry with the group of veterans was focused especially on the first Green Lantern (Alan Scott) and the first Flash (Jay Garrick) These are the ones that have had the most visits of the character in their collections.

Although this veteran Cro-Magnon has never hesitated to wander through the pages of any of the company's collections, helping or boycotting groups (both villains and heroes) according to his own criteria, Savage always has a "superior" plan to make the world rotate as he pleases, the result of his centuries of life and his enormous experience in seeing the different societies of human history grow, die and manipulate. Vandal always knows perfectly well who to ally with, who to betray and who to help, depending on the situation and the context in which he finds himself.

Family comes first

In his long life through human civilizations, Savage has had plenty of time to interact with other people (especially of the opposite sex), which causes him to be the father of many descendants, some of whom have variably inherited some of his abilities. However, among the list of Savage offspring there is a clear favorite, Scandal Savage, who has inherited strength and resistance from his father, but not his desire for world domination or his point of view of the world, causing a very complicated relationship between the two.

Savage knows how different his daughter is from him, however (and despite knowing that his daughter is a lesbian) he hopes that she will one day give him a natural grandson to continue the family line, going so far as to look for "suitable donors" to create an offspring who will obtain more powers than he himself has. Obviously Scandal does not agree with his father's plans that involve her sexually with crazy and not very attractive characters like the deranged Dr. Psycho.

On the other hand, Vandal never misses the opportunity to form his own Kingdoms and civilizations, as he demonstrated in the comic Salvation Run, where most of the villains of the DC universe were sent to a desert planet to live (or kill) each other, which caused a huge war between the Joker's side and Lex Luthor's side, while Savage "selected the most suitable females" and took them to a tropical paradise to start his new Kingdom on said planet.

After that stage, Savage had a change in his powers, becoming Cain, a being with magical abilities, but currently the character returns to be more similar to what he originally was, as demonstrated in his appearances in the new DC comics, where his story has been slightly reinvented, as well as some of the characters related to him.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Vandal Savage is a very interesting character who hasn't been exploited too often, but he always ends up appearing in some collection or event, even if he isn't the main focus, becoming "that guy is everywhere and we don't know why." His actions are not limited only to comics, as he has appeared in the television series Justice League (in the Savage Times chapter) or in Young Justice, as well as in the animated film Justice League: Doom (Justice League: Doom in Spanish).

Because its presence in comics is very constant and not always significant, I will try to recommend comics where it has a notable presence:

Demon Knights (2012)

Esta serie de 12 números está situada siglos atrás en el pasado, tras la caída de Camelot, y está protagonizada por varios personajes inmortales de DC Cómics, entre los cuales encontramos a un “joven” Vandal Savage que pese a ser tan rudo y directo como siempre, se muestra bastante jocoso e incluso amistoso con los otros protagonistas, que se ven inmersos en una despiadada guerra.

JSA Classified: Fall and Rise of Vandal Savage (2006)

En estos cómics veremos a un moribundo Vandal Savage (si, a veces, por algún motivo su poder de inmortalidad tiende a fallar) de manera que el cromañón recuerda diferentes etapas de su pasado y centra sus últimos días de vida en destruir al Green Lantern original.

DC 1 Million, miniserie de 5 números  (1998)

DC 1 Million fue un evento que afectó durante un mes a varias colecciones de DC Cómics, además de contar con sus propios números. Dicho evento nos mostraba personajes que provenían del futuro y como su aparición afectaba al presente. Vandal Savage es uno de los villanos principales de la historia.

DC Universe presents SAVAGE

Una de las colecciones más actuales centradas en Vandal Savage y su familia, en lo que parece ser su re-introducción en el nuevo universo DC.

Si os quedáis con ganas de ver a Savage, siempre podéis consultar las colecciones del Flash y el Green Lantern de la JSA (Justice Society of America), o revisar las páginas de DC Universe present Villains United, Salvation Run, Trinity of Sin either Final Crisis.