Success Quote by Len Wein

Calling yourself the Brotherhood of Evil is the kind of branding that only works if you think villains are born with a merch table. Len Wein is poking at a basic narrative cheat in superhero comics: the shortcut where moral complexity gets replaced by a label, and the label does the storytelling. His target isnt darkness in fiction; its laziness in motivation.

Weins point lands because it treats evil as a self-concept, not just an action list. Real antagonists rarely wake up thinking, Im the bad guy. They think theyre the realist, the liberator, the injured party finally taking whats owed, or the one willing to do what others wont. Even the cartoonishly power-hungry types usually cast themselves as rightful rulers restoring order. The moment a character embraces evil as an identity, the story stops being about competing visions of the world and starts being about costumed target practice.

Theres also an industry-specific wink here. Silver and Bronze Age comics loved clear moral signage: heroes gleam, villains sneer, and team names telegraph the fight on the cover. Wein, who helped shape modern Marvel and DC storytelling, is arguing for antagonists whose self-justifications feel internally coherent. Its not a plea to make villains sympathetic; its a demand that they be believable to themselves.

The subtext is craft: if you want stakes, dont tell readers who to boo. Let the villain explain, convincingly, why the heroes are the ones standing in the way.