Chris D’Amico (Red Mist): The boy who decided to be the supervillain

Chris D’Amico is a rich, neglected kid who dreams of being a superhero like Kick-Ass, the young masked man who has gone viral. But he can’t pull it off: he’s clumsy, cowardly, a fraud. Then he makes a revealing decision —if he can’t be the hero, he’ll be the villain—. He puts on a costume, renames himself («Red Mist», and later something even cruder) and identifies, quite intentionally, with the comic-book supervillains he has devoured all his life. For Glaser’s differential identification, it is the most literal case: someone who chooses a fictional model and builds himself in its image.

// The theoryBuilding yourself from a catalogue of models

Glaser said we offend by identifying with figures —real or imaginary— from whose perspective the crime seems acceptable. Chris does so consciously and almost programmatically: comics have given him a catalogue of possible identities —heroes and villains— and he, after failing as a hero, deliberately picks the villain’s box. He doesn’t imitate a single loose behavior; he adopts a whole role, with its aesthetic, its name and its logic. Criminal conduct comes afterwards, as a natural consequence of the chosen identity: if I’m a supervillain, I do what supervillains do.

The film, which is a satire, makes the mechanics clear: Chris doesn’t offend out of need or out of some grand ideology, but because the villain’s role finally offers him an identity and a power that his life as an invisible rich kid never gave him. The comic didn’t make him bad; it gave him a mold into which to pour a rage and an emptiness he already had.

// The subjectPrivilege as fuel

Unlike other files, Chris’s emptiness doesn’t come from poverty but from privilege: an absent criminal father, limitless money, no demands, no purpose. That indulged boredom is his version of the void that seeks an identity. Glaser reminds us that toxic identification isn’t only a matter of the marginalized; the spoiled, aimless son also looks for a borrowed self, and sometimes finds it in the comic-book villain who promises him the power and relevance that his comfortable life, paradoxically, doesn’t give him. Chris’s rage is that of someone who has everything but meaning.

// The crackNeither "it’s just a comic" nor fiction as the accused

Red Mist’s crack is the one Kick-Ass satirizes: the old accusation that comics and superheroes «teach violence». Glaser gives the same nuanced answer as always. No: millions read the same comics and don’t dress up to kill; the genre doesn’t manufacture villains. But it isn’t entirely neutral either: it offers very powerful identity models, and for an empty boy with no limits, «being the supervillain» can be the mold that was missing. And, as always, identifying with a villain from the panels does not excuse: Chris is responsible for what he does with his costume, however much he lives it as a role. Fiction is not the accused; it’s the mirror in which Chris chose, among many, the worst reflection.

The film’s satire is precisely that: in a world saturated with superheroes and supervillains as models, it was only a matter of time before someone decided to cosplay evil for real. Chris is not a warning about comics; he’s a warning about the voids that seek, in any catalogue, an identity to merge with.

«As a supervillain I can do whatever I want», Chris says, delighted with his role. His story is that of differential identification in its most pop form: a boy who, able to choose any identity from the enormous catalogue he consumed, chose to be the bad guy —because being the bad guy, at least, was being someone—.