Villains

        There are several villains in the novel, some are more obvious villains than others and some are more evil than others. The most obvious villain is Hitler and the Nazi regime. Joe categorizes every German as a villain and looks to fight them in the streets of New York. When Thomas is killed on the boat, Joe seeks revenge in the best way he knows and understands at the time, killing Germans. Previously his only way to cope with his hatred for Germans was to write about fighting them in his comics. This causes Joe to view every German as a villain even though this is far from true. For example, when he goes to Antarctica, he intercepts a transmission from a German scientist. Clearly this German is also a villain in Joes eyes, and he devises a plan to go and kill him, but when he follows through with it he finds himself oddly unsatisfied because he realizes that the scientist isn't really his enemy and is just another human being. Even though the scientist supported the Nazis, Joe finds that the scientist was not truly a villain and in the end, he ended up trying to save him. During his time of reflection, it is possible that he understood that every German he encountered was not his enemy simply because of their race. Carl Ebling however is truly a villain, he plotted to kill Joe at one of his shows while he was performing at a bar mitzvah.  Most of the fights in the novel were provoked by Joe, however this fateful fight between the two nemesis was started by Ebling. Even though Ebling started their final fight, he would not have done so if it wasn’t for Joe snooping around his office. Additionally, It was Carl Ebling's wife who got Sammy and Tracy Bacon in trouble with the police. Joe portrays every German as a villain, but in reality, the main villains in the story are Carl Ebling, and the Nazi regime.