Annoying as a Character Trait

*Originally published on 9/21/09



I read an online article about aspects from the old series that could manage to make their way into J.J. Abrams' re-imagining of the trek-verse. I suggested Q, as he is a godlike being who isn't restricted to one timeline. Also, Kirk is the one Trek captain who hasn't faced Q yet (maybe the captain from Enterprise as well, but I don't know as I never watched it). I'm rather curious to see how the original crew interacts with the omnipotent entity.

The author of the article politely pointed out that Q was annoying. I could kind of see what she was saying. I, for one, always enjoyed the character's appearances in The Next Generation. It was in no small part due to DeLancie's performance. You could tell that he was having a blast playing the character, whether it be as comic relief or in a more menacing capacity. Either way, the character worked extremely well.

Another thing that I took into consideration was that Q is supposed to be annoying. Usually when he showed up it was to pester Picard over some issue. So, I find it hard to condemn Q for being annoying when that's kind of the point.

It's not just Q who suffers this. While my roommate enjoyed Superman: The Animated Series well enough, he always hated Mxyzptlk, specifically, the fact that he was voiced by Gilbert Gottfried. Yes, Gottfried has a grating voice, but that's exactly the point. Mxyzptlk isn't a villain so much as a pain in Superman's rear end. So, having him voiced by Gottfried was really a stroke of genius.

A lot of times the nuisance factor makes for some great comedy as the pain acts as a great foil for whoever their annoying, Q and PIcard as well as Supes and Mxy are great examples of an annoying character paired with a straight man done right.

Sadly, they all don't work out so well. A prime example of an annoying character who is flat out annoying is, aptly enough, Super-boy Prime. His back story is rather complicated, but basically he's a Superboy from another world that was destroyed. He came back in Infinite Crisis after seeing how the heroes weren't acting the way he thought they should. A lot of people saw this as a back handed attack against fan boys, while that was probably the case, I also saw it as a comment on the darker turn the heroes had taken in recent years.

That was fine on it's own, but then he was brought back. Any sympathy you might have had for him gets wiped away when you discover that Superboy Prime is a whiny brat who thinks that everyone else is out to get him and that he's the true Superman. Somehow he's able to defeat anyone he fights, even if it's the entire Justice League and Society or an army of Green Lanterns.

There's no redeeming quality. With Q, you had an entertaining character who did have some redeeming qualities. He was a character you wanted to see more of. The same goes for Mxy, yeah he's not Brainiac or Zod, but stories with Mxy also tend to have that element of fun that comic stories nowadays lack.

It's a thin line, but annoying characters don't have to be annoying, not to the viewer or reader anyway. The key seems to be comedy. Superboy-Prime tries with such "classic" lines as "I'll kill you to death!" Ultimately though, Prime is a character who is beyond redeeming, try as the writers might, he's not a villain who works, unless by "works" you mean annoys the readers beyond words.