The Top 20 Comic Book Villains: Introduction

Let's get into the spirit of the season, shall we?


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If there's one thing that nearly everyone knows nowadays, it's about superheroes. With Hollywood pretty much being dominated by the MCU and DC trying to get into the game, slowly but surely, comic books are becoming the forefront of an entire medium. If your film isn't based on a comic book or inspired by a comic book, it can be pretty hard for it to gain any attention. And let's be perfectly honest with ourselves here, comic books are known for two things; their heroes, and their villains.

The problem that I see with comic book movies is that while studios are totally nailing what it's like to make a superhero, they're all but failing at making memorable screen versions of bad guys. If you look at comic book movies in the last decade, think about how many of them have actually memorable villains. You have The Dark Knight, The Avengers, and arguably Age of Ultron. But for every Loki or Joker, we get a Ronan, General Ludendorff, or even disappointing villains like Ultron or the Mandarin. That shouldn't be the case. A hero can only be as good as their villain, and if comic books are known for one thing, it's making extremely compelling villains to fight against our heroes. And we're going to spotlight them for the rest of the month.

As is tradition her at The Critical Order, I celebrate Halloween by setting aside every planned review to write about the villains that we remember. The bad guys that we love to hate and hate to love. And to be perfectly honest, this was the one list that I felt pretty concerned about writing, mostly because of the sheer scope of it. There are so many villains to choose from that it's a bit ridiculous. This isn't like a standard movie where you have one, maybe two villains for a hero to fight. Instead, there can be up to a dozen, sometimes even more, villains for one hero to fight. It's kind of insane to keep track of how many villains there are.

However, I tried my damndest and cut these villains down to 20. As always, I'm grading my villains on a ranking system between five categories: Style, how distinct the villain's appearance is, Power, how strong the villain physically, Intelligence, how smart they are, Fear, how imposing their presence is, and Feats, how successful the villain actually is. Each villain can earn up to 10 points from each category and needed to have over 35 points to qualify for this list. Not only that, but I decided to put a few extra limitations this time because of how imposing this list is. I'm only judging a character's placement based on their actions in the actual books, not in their movies. The same goes for TV shows and video games. I can mention a few great games that the villain featured in, but that has nothing to do with how I placed them. It also goes without saying that a comic book villain NEEDS to have appeared in the comics. So TV or movie or game exclusive villains are out. Also, since it kind of goes without saying, but I'm only looking at American (or in one instance Canadian) comic books. Manga villains will get their justice next year with anime villains. These are the American (and Canadian) villain's time to shine! So as is always the case, here are just a few honorable mentions of the ones that were good, but not good enough.

Two Face from "Batman"

Two Face is a character that has a fantastic origin behind him, right up there with Mr. Freeze. Harvey Dent was Bruce Wayne's friend, but after getting into an accident that Batman couldn't prevent, he became Two Face and hunts down Batman as one of his more popular rogues. Two Face is a constant reminder of Batman's failure to save everyone. He let one of his closest friends become one of his worst enemies, and it kills him every time he has to fight Two Face because all Bruce wants to do is save him.

Brilliant concept aside, what kept Two Face off of the list is really that he doesn't have too many classic stories. You can look at the Joker, Catwoman, Scarecrow, and Mr. Freeze and find some fantastic stories relating around them, but there are really only a handful of Two Face stories that the average comic book fan remembers, and even then, there are still plenty of stories featuring him that are... subpar at best. Remember in the New 52 when he decided to dub himself One Face? Still, he's a solid Batman villain that would rank on this list if more people actually decided to write about him.

Superboy Prime (or is it Superman Prime?) from "Infinite Crisis"

Name confusion aside, Superboy Prime is easily one of the most hated villains in all of the DCU. He's responsible for genocide, murdering a plethora of Green Lanterns, and for being a psychotic brat that screams how everything was better on his Earth and how every other Earth deserves to die because it's not his Earth. He's grating, but there's no denying the fact that he's at least a good villain based on how much everyone hates him.

He's actually been a pretty prominent villain too, appearing in "Infinite Crisis" and "The Sinestro Core War" and being a major villain in both stories. That being said, he was also one of the main villains in "Countdown", a 52 issue series that ruined several characters and is regarded as being one of the worst series of the past decade. And his writing is just insufferable to the point where he just acts like a bully. I know that his hateability is what made him so good in other stories, but at least he had humanity to him. In "Countdown" he was just unpleasant to read about, and I wouldn't be surprised if he was regarded as being one of the big reasons why so many people hated that story. Hatred aside, he was at least good for a short time.

The Violater from "Spawn"

Here's a villain that I can get behind! An archdemon from Hell that ranks as one of the strongest beings there that aims to sew chaos on Earth and just cause general mayhem for Spawn? What's not to love?

While he does have a great design as The Clown, where he's a fat overweight man, his actual demon form is... okay? It doesn't really strike fear into the hearts of men, and while his powers are impressive with super strength, regeneration, and teleportation among others, he's down here mostly because he's a bit too complicated. And I don't mean that his motivations are hard to understand, but I mean that there is so much history with this guy that I don't fully understand it all. I'm not an avid "Spawn" reader, so I only know the bits of pieces of the overarching story, but the Violator plays a big part in it and even though I don't understand it all, I had to give him some mention on here for all of the "Spawn" lovers out there. 

The Batman Who Laughs from "Batman"

Behold, the most recent villain to appear on this list! The Batman Who Laughs is a version of Batman from the Dark Multiverse, a multiverse of worlds that were deemed to be failures, who has become the Joker of his world as well. He works for an Elder God named Barbatos, who enters the main DC Universe in order to conquer it with a squad of evil Batmen led by The Batman Who Laughs. He's malicious, intelligent, ruthless, and sews seeds of destruction wherever he goes. The killer though? He has a herd of Robins on chain leashes that attack anyone he says while they scream "CROW!" at people, but will only stop when The Batman Who Laughs says "Bar". How is that not terrifying and awesome at the same time!

Well as much as I love him and the story that he's in "Dark Nights: Metal", he's a bit too recent to actually place on the list. First off, his origin hasn't even been introduced yet, and with only the third issue out of six being released, there's still plenty of time for him to fissile out. I'm just not comfortable putting him on after only being introduced to him for a little under two months. But man, what a first impression it's been. 

Harley Quinn from "Batman"

 Look, it isn't that I don't like Harley Quinn because of how popular she is, or because she has a bad costume, or because of any other stupid reason like that. No, the reason why Harley Quinn isn't on this list is just because as a villain, she's hit or miss. 

In her early days she was a fantastic sidekick! When have you ever heard of an character from an animated show becoming so popular that they become integrated completely into comic continuity. Hell, it took Batman Beyond 15 years in order to appear in a in continuity story! But over time, Harley Quinn has become less of a villain and more of an antihero. And that's not too bad since she's still a pleasant character to read, but this is a list of villains. She's occasionally allies herself with Batman, Nightwing, and the Suicide Squad, which is pretty much the literal definition for a group of antiheroes!

Now to be completely fair to her, "Mad Love" is a great comic, and I love to read about Harley's misadventures with Poison Ivy. And I love her various one-shots that let artists just have fun with telling funny stories with her. But a villain? Can anyone legitimately say that Harley Quinn is a villain anymore? Like, can anyone say the last time she worked with a villain to beat Batman? I can't remember any story in the past 5 years outside of the Arkham games. Good character? Yes. Over exposed? Potentially. Villain? I don't think so. 

And there we have the honorable mentions of comic book villainy! I'll see you all next Sunday for 20-11!