In a recent post on Twitter, I posted a venn diagram saying that Tal-Var should be considered one of Superman’s biggest foes alongside the likes of Lex Luthor, General Zod, and Brainiac.

The joke here is that I’d chosen an obscure villain who had appeared in a single issue of Jimmy Olsen’s comic and tried to elevate him to iconic with specious reasoning. Nothing in there actual comments on the quality of any of the villains, it just says stuff about them. If I wanted to declare a fourth-most important villain to Superman, I’d put the work into making the Ultra-Humanite the one. (It has even been pointed out by a friend that if you take the diagram I’ve made and replace Tal-Var’s name with Mr. Mxyzptlk’s almost all of it still applies, though I’d not call him a “villain” traditionally.)

So that diagram is just me being stupidly obscure for what could almost be called a joke, but just barely. But it did occur to me that over here on the ol’ Book of PDR I try to regularly put together my “Superman Thoughts” so why waste the thing on a Twitter post? I do have actual ideas for how I’d use Tal-Var.

The deal is that he is an otherdimensional baddie who likes to come to our dimension and be a jerk. Okay, working with that, I say posit that Tal-Var’s natural form might be some strange unknowable dark god kinda thing and that the Kryptonian-looking shell is merely adopted for coming to this realm and fighting the likes of Superman. Then I’d go a little more controversial: I’d keep Tal-Var as a Jimmy Olsen villain, rather than moving him directly into Superman’s gallery. That’s right, I think Jimmy Olsen should have his own villains. Superman can still fight them and stuff, but let Jimmy have some fun for a change.