10 Comics Villains Who Secretly Mirrored The Hero
7. Emperor Zombie / Screw-On Head
The Amazing Screw-On Head is, in many ways, Mike Mignola's magnum opus. A short one-shot telling a singular story, it is a masterclass in efficient storytelling, use of shadows in art, and absurdist sensibilities.
The freewheeling nature of the bare-bones plot makes it seem like Mignola is making up the whole thing as he goes along. However, when we compare the heroic Screw-On Head to the villainous Emperor Zombie, we see that Mignola put a lot more thought into this gloriously silly story than any other writer would have thought necessary.
Screw-On Head is a mechanical head that can screw into a number of different bodies: a manmade machine, an inanimate object given life. Meanwhile, Emperor Zombie is the very inverse of that.
Although he was once a living, breathing professor of linguistics, he now represents death. Even his choice of sidekick, a vampire countess, only furthers his deathly aesthetic.
The two characters even look similar, with small, round heads, protruding ears, and large holes where their eyes should be - the key difference being that one is made of stainless steel while the other is decaying flesh.
They say that every great story contains three elements: Head, Heart, and Groin. Screw-On Head's sidekick is literally named Mr. Groin, which leaves Emperor Zombie to be the heart of the story. He is, after all, the only character following his own dreams, striving for world domination, while Screw-On Head only acts only under the orders of Abraham Lincoln.
It's a really good comic.