Know Your Super Villains - Dr. Nikola

 

Guy Boothby's Dr. Nikola is the prototypical super villain, complete with henchmen. Before Fu Manchu or Dr. Moriarty, Venice-born mad genius was portrayed as a master of science and the occult (although his abilities in the latter department may be more psychological than magical), who is financed by his vast criminal operations and seeks mystical powers and immortality with the help of his ruthlessness and his charm. He's pursued by more heroic figures, namely Richard Hatteras, who narrates the Dr. Nikola books, but after Boothby's 1895 novel A Bid for Fortune: or, Dr Nikola's Vendetta, interest in the cultivated, unscrupulous antihero was what inspired Boothby to write four more Dr. Nikola books.

 

 

Nikola is also a progenitor of the trope of the criminal mastermind who always travels with a cat. Dr. Nikola's is a black cat named Apollyon who always sits on his shoulder. Even the likes of Dr. Claw and Dr. Evil owe a debt to Dr. Nikola.