Time for our first batch of villains; the baddies to make any superhero run.
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Now that we have our introduction out of the way, let's get into the Top 20 for real this time.
As I was writing this section, the one thing that I couldn't get out of my head was the fact that so many villains couldn't appear on this list just because of how many comic book villains actually exist. If I could, I would make this a Top 100 list, but that just wouldn't be practical. And again, these are the villains that I think are the best comic book villains, so your opinion is just as valid. That being said, I may have included a villain or two that may not be quite as villainous as the others, but deserve to be mentioned for one reason or another. I promise you, it'll make sense once you get to their entry. So let's start the dive with...
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#20: Poison Ivy (DC Comics)
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Poison Ivy is a unique character on this list mostly
because she’s a woman. As shocking as it is to me, I would have expected more
female villains to appear on this list, but to be perfectly honest, most of
them would I would call anti-heroes. Usually they team up with other heroes,
unite for a common cause, or fall in love with a male hero. Not only that, but most female super villains just exist because of their sex appeal. If you were to take a look at a list of one-off female super villains, you would see that they all have one thing in common; revealing costumes, and... revealing costumes.
But Poison Ivy? She’s a bit different. Yes, she can have
benevolent moments, but for every instance she’s team up with a hero like
Batman for a mega event, there’s usually a story or two of her being evil and
fighting against Batman. Whether it’s her teaming up with Braniac to create a
new world order or to introduce drugs into Gotham City, Poison Ivy has a
legitimate evil streak going on. Plus, her powers are pretty unique, being able
to control plants and nature at will tot he point where she can actually convince other humans to do her bidding, even heroes like Superman and Green Lantern!
Also, and this goes without saying, Poison Ivy has a…
striking appearance to say the least. I’ll be frank when I say that the most noteworthy
thing about Poison Ivy may just be her appearance. I know that that's a bit hypocritical because of how I just said that most lame female villains get by on their sex appeal, but Poison Ivy is pretty much the symbol of sex appeal in comics, if not THE sexiest super villain in comic books. I don’t know
whether or not that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but if a cool design is
enough to put a villain on the board, then it should work for Poison Ivy. So
female representation! Even though she’s half naked… you win some, you lose some, right?
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#19: Gideon Graves (Oni Press)
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See? It’s a Canadian villain! Or at least, the series he’s
from was made in Canada… Gideon is actually from New York so… representation?
Anyway, Gideon is the final evil ex that Scott Pilgrim had
to fight against in his struggle to be Ramona’s boyfriend, and what a doozy
Gideon is. He organized the League of Evil Exes and he’s as maniacal as a Kingdom Hearts villain, going so far as to kidnap his seven ex girlfriends to freeze them until he wants to love them again. He’s able to manipulate subspace (long story short, he can warp and manipulate emotions) and can actually pose a
threat to Scott on multiple levels. He steals Ramona, controls her mind, creates
a weapon that effects everyone else’s mind, and actually kills Scott! Scott had an
extra life though, so he's able to kick Gideon's ass.
Outside of a fantastic final fight, the biggest strike
against Gideon is how little he’s actually in the series. He’s referenced a handful of times before the final volume, and even in the final volume we see him maybe
once or twice before the final fight. To be fair, the final fight takes up the
majority of the final volume, but when the big bad is reserved for only the end
of a series, he loses a bit of his impact as a villain. Still, just for his
feats alone, Gideon Graves deserves a spot on this list.
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#18: Mr. Mxyzptlk (DC Comics)
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Unpronounceable name aside, Mr. Mxyzptlk is a special villain on this
list. For all intents and purposes, he's relatively omnipotent. He’s an imp from the fifth dimension
whose powers are pretty much unmatched by any other villain. Depending on the
story, Mr. Mxyzptlk can have powers that bend the fabric of reality itself and
can easily beat a being like Superman. Hell, the only reason that Superman is
able to defeat him time and time again is because Mr. Mxyzptlk doesn’t actually
want to fight Superman. He just wants to play games with him and seeing as how Superman is pretty much a God among men, who else would be a perfect fit for him?
Mr. Mxyzptlk stands out because while he is a villain, he’s never truly malicious. He never wants to end all life in the
third dimension, but rather just have fun with the only person that could play
with him. And even when he does get malicious, like when he
rewrites reality so that Superman’s son is erased from existence, he only does
so because he believes that Superman forgot about him and wanted to play with him
like old times. Granted, play for Mr. Mxyzptlk means to slowly erode the space
time continuum, but usually reality goes back to normal after he leaves.
So no, Mr. Mxyzptlk isn’t a traditional mustache twirling
villain that wants to rule the world. He’s an imp that just wants to have fun
at the expense of others. He’s about as villainous as a Bugs Bunny, but his
power makes him a dangerous foe if he even got serious.
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#16: Mystique (Marvel Comics)
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Oh look! It’s the other female villain of this list!
Mystique doesn’t have the sex appeal (or the same level of it) as Poison Ivy,
but Mystique gets by mostly due to her ruthlessness. She’s a shapeshifter who can change her
appearance to anyone whenever she wants, and her skills as a fighter are
deadly. That being said, her ability as a shapeshifter isn’t just limited to
her looking like another person. She can completely alter her cells in order to
change her appearance, meaning that biologically she can perfectly impersonate a person. You wouldn't even be able to tell if a person was Mystique unless she revealed herself to you. She also has the full ability to rejuvenate her cells to make
her look younger, effectively making her immortal.
I’m not going to lie, trying to do a complete look at
Mystique and her history as a villain was a bad idea. Her backstory is so
incredibly complex, whether it’s looking at the organizations she’s belonged
too, heroes she’s fought, and even people she’s mothered. Yeah, she’s Rogue’s
and Nightcrawler’s mother. Don’t ask why. I’m not a big X-Men fan, so trying to
unravel the history of the X-Men means unraveling the history of Mystique and
her history as a villain, and while I do think she's a good villain, I wasn't prepared to delve into nearly 40 years of character history and story arcs for her.
Still, I can at least acknowledge a successful villain when
I see one. I may not be the biggest Marvel fan, or even X-Men fan, but I can at
least see a good villain from a mile away. It’s not every day you get a female
villain as destructive and intelligent as Mystique, so even if it’s just a low
ranking mention, I’ll give it to her.
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#15: Sinestro (DC Comics)
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Fun fact; I was originally going to put The Purple Man on
this list. His appearance in Jessica Jones was phenomenal and I loved seeing
him twist and bend people’s minds. But after I came up with my rule to remove
TV shows and movies and focus solely on comics, I decided that he needed to
come off. And who should come in and fill the void but our good ol’ ex Green
Lantern friend Sinestro?
Sinestro is the leader of the Yellow Lantern Corps and has
the power of fear. He’s intelligent and very aware of the power of fear that he
can create. Some of the best Sinestro stories just involve him using his power
and fear to try and take over the world, but Sinestro is only truly good
whenever he’s interacting with Hal Jordan, his former trainee. Sinestro and Hal
have a complex relationship, but Sinestro displays that a villain can transcend
from being simply okay to being truly special thanks to their arch rival. If it
wasn’t for his relationship with Hal Jordan, he’d just be a Space Scarecrow.
All of Sinestro’s greatest moments, the creation of the Yellow Lanterns,
becoming the White Lantern of Life, and killing all of the Guardians of the
Universe were in direct conflict with Hal (yes, even the White Lantern, cause he shoved Hal Jordan out of the way so he could get it first). Whenever Sinestro was being a
villain on his own, he never had the same notoriety as he did when he was
fighting against Hal.
Geoff Johns does a fantastic job of fleshing out Sinestro as
a villain and as a sympathetic one. Not only that, but Johns actually turns
Sinestro into a tragic villain by the end of his run by having Sinestro say to
Hal Jordan “That’s the funny thing Jordan. We were always friends.” Complex,
maniacal, and too arrogant for his own good, Sinestro was one villain that had a great role as being Hal Jordan's foil.
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#15: Negan (Image Comics)
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Our other independent villain makes his appearance, and
Negan is certainly one to remember. The best villains are usually the polar
opposite of their respective heroes, and Negan is definitely Rick Grime’s
counterpoint. Negan is the incredibly violent leader of the Saviors, a group of
humans that have survived under Negan’s control since the start of the zombie apocalypse and oftens leads them through increasingly violent behaviors.
For a lot of people, myself included, the first time I saw
Negan was for The Waling Dead’s Season
6 finale. Man, what a finale that was! It was then that I really got into "The Walking Dead" and when I reached that scene in the comics, that scene alone cemented Negan as something special; a violent monster,
but one with a fierce moral code. Negan acts in a very particular way and keep
people alive as long as they are useful to him or can be useful. And for anyone
that acts cowardly towards him or anyone else that wants to take people by
surprise, Negan will kill them in cold blood. Negan also detests rape and
claims that all of his wives (he has multiple wives by the way) are all with him because
they want to be with him.
But yeah, Negan is on this list mostly for his dark sense of
humor, his brutal displays of violence, and how he is constantly at wits with
Rick about nearly everything. Besides, Negan is one of only a handful of
villains that actually debuted in the last decade or so, so that’s something
that I personally enjoy, that great villains don’t have to be established
characters with years of backstories and story arcs. Sometimes you just need a
bat and a sadistic grin to be a great villain.
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#14: The Red Skull (Marvel Comics)
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Because of course there would be a Nazi on this list.
I almost feel like I don't need to give a reason for why Red Skull appears on this list. He's the head of Hydra, a villainous group of people worse than the Nazis that want to take over the world. So instead of telling you why comic Hitler is on this list, let's talk about the goofier things about him! Because if you're a villain with a giant red head who is meant to be taken seriously, of course I'm going to poke fun at him.
Remember that time when he took out Professor X's brain and combined with it to become a giant monster called Red Onslaught? Or that time when he was in a dream world with Steve Rogers and pretty much acted like Negan, spiked baseball bat and all? Or how's about the fact that he was a clone and his mind also possessed another man for several years that he sued as the guise of Red Skull? And of course, the time when the Joker and him teamed up to rule the world, but when the Joker found out that he was a Nazi, the Joker got ready to fight him to the death because sure that Joker is a monster, but he's an AMERICAN MONSTER!
Good times, good times... so yeah, goofy red Hitler gets the Number 14 slot.
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#13: Odin Quincannon (Vertigo)
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I actually read “Preacher” for the first time over this
summer. For those of you who don’t know, “Preacher” is a series about a
preacher named Jesse Custer that gains “The Word of God”, a power that allows
him to force people to do whatever he says. Jesse decides to take this power
and find God, who abdicated the throne of Heaven and went… somewhere. Where exactly? Well that's what Jesse wants to find out. Now “Preacher” is known for its wild cast of characters, and there are plenty of
great villains in the series like Herr Starr, a German member of religious organization The Grail that
wants to introduce Jesse as the Messiah in their own engineered Armageddon, but
the best villain, for me at least, is the little old man Odin Quincannon.
Odin is a racist, 75-year old midget that lives in the town
of Anvil, Texas. Odin owns a meat packing plant and gives his employees free
range to do whatever he wants to the civilians of Anvil, like sexually assaulting women and beating up guys that piss them off, and Jesse Custer won’t
have any of that, especially since he became the new sheriff of Anvil. So Jesse
spends most of his time in Anvil stopping Quincannon’s efforts to stop Jesse such as sending his
goons to beat up Jesse… calling the KKK to kill Jesse… planting explosives all
across the town to kill Jesse… yeah Odin has some problems.
Odin is just memorable for being an evil little man, but
still somewhat of a hilarious figure. What’s not to love about seeing a man
less than 5 feet tall getting struck by lightning while spouting rhetoric about
meat and money? But that in and of itself isn’t enough to get Odin on this
list. What pushes Odin above and beyond is honestly one of the most disturbing
pages I’ve ever seen in a comic book. I won’t spoil it for those that are
interested, but it’s a scene that makes Jesse say “If this isn’t a mercy
killin, then I don’t know what is.” Odin Quincannon is probably the least well
known villain on this list, but he certainly is one of the most depraved.
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#12: Brainiac (DC Comics)
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Brainiac is, on the surface, a pretty simple villain. He's a supercomputer from Krypton that gained sentience... except when he was just a scientist fascinated with bottling cities and planets... except when he was actually a being from outside the Multiverse that wanted to conduct a Battle Royale style of world elimination to see which world was the best.
See, Brainiac is difficult to explain his origins because it gets rewritten ever decade or so. Sometimes he's a robot, sometimes he's a scientist, sometimes he's a robot scientist, and sometimes he's a giant monster who controlled all of those other Brainiacs over several realities. So trying to explain who Brainiac is is pretty difficult. All you need to know is that he's a super intelligent villain that fights Superman and the Justice League and it usually takes a ton of effort just to overcome him.
While Brainiac is best known for bottling the Krpytonian city of Kandor and keeping it hostage for decades and fighting Superman in the story arc "New Krypton", the best story he's a part of is a maxi series called "Justice". In it, he manipulates several villains into believing that the world is going to end, so the villains come to together to solve humanity's problems to stave off the apocalypse. He has the villains make ideal societies that are directly controlled by Braniac and Lex Luthor while Brainiac plans on destroying Earth anyway because he can. He's a deeply manipulative villain in it and his plan very nearly succeeds.
But really, Braniac has a really cool design, and multiple designs at that. There's the classic scientist Braniac, robot Braniac, doctor Brainiac, overlord Brainiac, weird insectoid Brainiac, God Brainiac, there are just a plethora of awesome designs that scream creativity. I personally love his more humanoid appearance in the picture above, but please feel free to sound off what your favorite Brainiac designs are. He looks cool, he's intelligent, and has several good stories under his belt. He's a perfect villain for this list.
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#11: The Anti-Monitor (DC Comics)
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And the villain that just missed the Top 10 is none other
than the Anti-Monitor, a being from the Anti-Matter universe with the simple
goal of eradicating all life in the DCU. He’s massive, intelligent, and is so
strong it takes pretty much the entire DCU to kill him, and even then he didn’t
really die! The Anti-Monitor is so evil that it pretty much corrupts the fabric
of reality itself, and yet that is the biggest reason why he’s not on this
list.
The Anti-Monitor, for all intents and purposes, is just a
giant bad guy. He doesn’t have much of a personality besides being a big bad
monster. When you look at most villains that originated pre-Crisis (the event
that introduced the Anti-Monitor was “Crisis on Infinite Earths”), they usually
were very one dimensional and were evil because… because. And that was fine for
the Anti-Monitor because of how significant and importan “Crisis on Infinite
Earths” was. However, whenever he was used for any other story, his impact was
okay at best, insulting at worst. He was fine as a big bad in the “Sinestro
Corps War”, but when he became one of the main protagonists in “The Darkseid
War”, he really just devolved into a God that didn’t want to be a God and he
became evil because of the Anti-Life Equation, but he was still pretty evil the
whole time, and he just became a confusing mess.
The Anti-Monitor is the villain of “Crisis on Infinite
Earths”. He killed Supergirl. He destroyed several universes in the Multiverse.
At the end of the day, that’s all we remember him for, and it’s perfectly fine
for his high point to be that story. He doesn’t need to be any more complex
than that. He was the villain in one of the greatest comic book stories every
told, and that’s a good enough qualification to make this list… but not the Top
10.
And that;s the first half of this list! Tune in on Halloween for the Top 10 Villains. See you then!
You are a clown and a sexist pig also the anti monitor is the most overrated dc comic book villian the anti monitor got his ass kicked by supergirl the only reason the anti monitor made it out alive in his battle with supergirl is Because the anti monitor threw a sucker punch on a distracted supergirl then afterwards the anti monitor ran away like a coward thats a fact the anti monitor is and always Will be the most overrated dc comic book villian and you will never convince me otherwise you are an idiot you dont know shit about comic books thats a fact
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