Hinckle Von Vampton is a Cartoon Villain
As stated in the title, Hinckle Von Vampton is barely even an attempt at impersonating a real human. With his immortality, his ludicrous plans, and his overly-emotive expressions, he truly is more of a children's cartoon villain than a real person. This starts in the second chapter in which he appears where, upon being fired for putting the invasion of Haiti in the Atonist newspaper, calmly starts insulting the manager before suddenly reaching for a bronze dagger and attempting to stab him.
Hinckle Von Vampton examines the man. Jowly. A gin-inspired pallor. He glances at the cuff links. A Knight in armor wearing the Red Cross on his breast. 'Where did you find those cuff links?' 'I found them around the corner on 42nd Street, why?' 'Not only are you a louse but you are a desecrater as well. Death to defilers' Hinckle Von Vampton reaches for a short bronze dagger and is about to plunge it into the managing editor's chest when other employees rush into the office [...]
After the other employees hold him back, he goes back to being strangely calm, which makes no sense. Furthermore, in the very next chapter, Hinckle is walking through the streets when he suddenly starts to loudly and evilly laugh in front of all the passerby, who probably think of him as a crazy homeless person given the way he looks and acts.
Heh heh. He laughed. Heh heh, Hinckle laughed. Passerby stopping to watch this man double up on the street. HEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEEHHEHEHEHEHEH
In the next chapter, Hinckle is kidnapped by the Wallflower Order and brought to their headquarters. Here he is interrogated by Hierophant 1, who wants to know where Hinckle has hidden the sacred text that Jes Grew seeks. Of course, Hinckle, instead of simply hiding it, has made an overly-complicated plan where the text is scattered between fourteen different people throughout Harlem. and yet, in his mind, he can easily just call back the book from its current owners and do whatever he wants with it, which in this case is burn it Obviously this plan later fails because no book ever would have this plan work without a problem. While this is ridiculous already, the even more cartoonish element comes later, when Hinckle uses a submarine as his form of transport, something which I think only fictional villains have ever used to get around. He even gets to his destination with fictional trope timing.
A talented grave-robber and 2nd-story man, Hinckle Von Vamptonarrives for his assignment 1 moonlit night in an old rusty World War 1 surplus submarine, part of an arsenal the Wallflower Order keeps on hand in case its underlings kick up
Hinckle Von Vampton's cartoon adventures continue near the end of the book when he has run out of candidates for the Talking Android. His first solution is to lighten W. W. Jefferson's skin with skin cream, but then, in typical Hinckle cartoon villain style, W. W.'s dad and his deacons randomly show up for the first and last time in the book to steal his son away back to Mississippi.
'Well, it's a pleasure to meet you' Hinckle says, slithering over to where the quartet stand, menacing and strong in the doorway. 'O no you don't. You wants to make 1 of them things out of me as well; I'm not going to stand for it.' Rev. Jefferson slugs Hinckle Von Vampton with a fist that has toted many a grain sack and tamed many a horse. Hinckle kind of floats to the rug, out cold.
Rev. Jefferson also steals his son back in a very comdedic fashion, shoving him into a sack while his deacons chase "Safecracker" Gould around the house, eventually landing him facedown in the mud behind the house. This leads to Hinckle's second bad plan, where he decides that the solution to his need for a black person to be his Talking Android can be solved by just making Gould, a white person, appear black by smearing mud on his face before delivering an extremely racit poem while presenting as a black person, which somehow passes over the audience's heads, showing that Hinckle somehow isn't the most out of this world character (or maybe the fact that the audience is so oblivious is the most realistic part of the book).
I agree. His plots are very Looney Toons. The line "Hinckle kind of floats to the rug, out cold" particularly evokes a cartoon to me. It makes me think of Wile. E Coyote chasing the Road Runner off a cliff, hovering for a moment in space, looking down, then plummeting like a stone.
ReplyDeleteThese are great examples of "cartoon" HVV. He literally says things like "Oh no you don't!" and "You'll never get away with this!" His whole verbal repertoire is drawn from Scooby-Doo villains, it seems! And yet there's the scary underside that despite this guy's bungling incoherence, he is part of a vastly powerful organization that holds sway over a lot of politics and culture.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely, Hinckle is a cartoon villain through and through. His appearance, his actions, and his diabolical and overly complicated plan all fit the bill for a classic caricatured villain. Its interesting and refreshing to see this 2-dimensional depiction of a white person, rather than the demeaning villainization or unflattering portrayals of black people in narratives. Its also interesting to me that Hinckle has been around for centuries prior to this event (i might be getting this wrong, but my impression was that he started his work against Jes Grew very early on), and in a way, is the continuing and constant representative of Atonists.
ReplyDeleteYeah I definitely agree with you. It's definitely a funny way to portray him in this book, but I think it actually kind of works. I think it was a good choice to depict him that way and really solidifies the comical antagonistic character that's trying to tear down Jes Grew. I also really liked how you incorporated quotes. Good post!
ReplyDeleteI agree, Hinkle Von Vampton is totally a cartoon character (side note, would love to see a spinoff series called "Hinckle Von Vampton's cartoon adventures"). It works as comic relief, as a way to make the Wallflower Order seem ridiculous, and as a kind of ironic point about institutional racism, since it's typically the white characters portrayed as heroes while the Black characters are two-dimensional villains.
ReplyDeleteHi, I agree that not just his actions but even just his portrayal totaly turns him into a cartoon character and he's almost a comic relief device. I don't think any readers take him too seriously and his portrayal undermines whatever bit of purpose the Wallflower order has. I guess this is Reed switching the typical narrative where African-American characters are portrayed as comical or two-dimensional and in this novel, that's how white characters are portrayed.
ReplyDeleteSome other comments said this, but Hinckle just feels like such a Looney Toons villain, or the Coyote in Road Runner. He comes up with these huge, elaborate schemes, and is soundly knocked on his ass with very little trouble by his opponents - and sometimes, not even opponents, but just casual bystanders. Hinckle was first introduced to the reader as a scheming, intelligent man, who was able to reveal the Haiti occupation and trick the Wallflower Order into restoring the Knights of Templar. Yet, his character just devolves into idiotic madness and cartoon villainy as the novel goes on, and it becomes clear that he really isn't all that clever or intelligent. The Atonists aren't carried forward by people like Hinckle, as much as he wants to believe himself crucial and the most important piece of the battle - the Atonist cause is furthered by people like Biff Musclewhite, or indirectly by people like Abdul Hamid, Irene Castle, Thor Wintergreen, etc. Hinckle is the super obvious "face" of the operation who isn't actually doing much, but more distracting the attention from the truly dangerous people and plots.
ReplyDelete