So. I’ve been thinking about some things recently–most of them involving comic books since that’s pretty much all I think about it seems. Today we’re going to talk, specifically, about comic book villains. I’m going to talk about my top five favorites, from everything I’ve read over the years. You don’t have to agree with me, in fact I pretty much figure you won’t on most of them. There are a few that seem to be universal, but that’s another story.
The Joker
Definitely has to be on the list. Batman’s antithesis and easily one of the greatest villains in both style and execution. He can be written so many ways that it was even suggested in Arkham Asylum: Serious House On Serious Earth that Joker recreated himself every day–somehow beyond the concepts of conventional sanity and insanity into something wholly different and infinitely more frightening. Joker’s range seems to be from malicious, white-faced murderer to the campy prankster of the Silver Age.
I’ve established, multiple times, that I prefer the more methodical Joker. The Joker who is more a sociopath than he is a giggling fool. He still makes his jokes, he still is clearly insane, but he’s also throwing puppies into fires or something.
He’s a character that’s easily used and abused by a writer who
doesn’t know what he’s doing, and merely wants to use a mainstream
villain for his story arc. Which is, in itself, a shame, because the
character can be written as a rather complex character (see The Killing Joke).
Nero
I know what you may be thinking: “Who in the blue hell is Nero?”. Nero is a villain created in the third run of the Green Lantern series. The series that featured the wonderful event Emerald Twilight where Hal went completely bonkers and decided the best course of action would be to kill everyone in the Green Lantern Corps before jumping into the Central Battery and becoming a man with a really cool set of armor and cape and calling himself Parallax–only to have the root of all of this completely retconned in Green Lantern: Rebirth but that’s something else entirely.
Nero was a villain designed for Kyle Rayner. Nero was a completely insane man given a Qwardian ring (I don’t remember how, exactly) and was basically set loose on Kyle. The constructs created by Nero, alone, are enough for me to like this man. They were all amazing, and gave more than enough evidence of the man’s mental instability.
It’s been a while since I’ve read the stuff he was involved in, so I can’t comment a whole lot. But I did find it enjoyable to see him again during the Ion miniseries that took place after Infinite Crisis (which I’m bolding because I was referring to the event, and not the books).
The Kindly Ones
Represented, usually, as a young woman, a middle aged woman, and an old woman, these three-who-are-one are the central villain of sorts of the Sandman series written by Neil Gaiman. The Kindly Ones are the one villain who aren’t really a villain at all. They are both within and outside the rules of all things–rules and order being of the key points of Sandman, but that’s something else entirely (seems to be a running gag in my writing, but that’s so–). The Kindly Ones–because you don’t want to call them the Furies. They aren’t furious. They’re nice ladies.– seek vengeance and suchlike from spilled family blood and other related things.
They are powerful. Very powerful. Gods and mortals and Endless all fear The Kindly Ones. They will get the job done, no matter what.
They don’t have much of an overall appearance in the series as this form, but that’s actually one of things I like about them. They are a presence that is feared as the ultimate consequence.
Mister Sinister
I’m gonna swallow my pride a bit and point out that I really only remember this guy from the animated series that aired during the 90s. But at the same time I thought, even then, that he was a cool bastard. Just that “Mister” is part of his villain name makes it much more awesome. Mister Sinister was Nathaniel Essex, a man from Victorian times, who got into some bad shit and became the guy he is now. Sinister is involved with various cloning things, notably all of the attempts to generate a baby from Scott Summers and Jean Grey, who would be more than enough to kill Apocalypse (because Apocalypse is some kind of bastard).
I don’t have as much on him as the others, being Marvel and all. But I do love what I remember. Everything about him. From the voice he had on the show, to the look, to that he seemed, oddly, like a gentleman while he was engaged in horrific acts that would otherwise cause many problems for someone claiming to be a gentleman.
I was really disappointed in the Ultimate variation, though. I understand that it’s Ultimate and, thus, not 616, but I’m allowed to be disappointed. Something about him being so…thug-like…kind of took away from the charm that I enjoy from the 616 Sinister.
Superman/boy-Prime
A villain who really didn’t start out that way, Superman-Prime takes my number-five spot because of the tragedy that really is associated with him. Superman-Prime started off as Superboy-Prime and was introduced during the whole first Crisis of the 80s. After that, he kind of faded out until Infinite Crisis whenever we learned that him punching reality was the cause of a lot of fuckups in continuity–like Jason Todd.
Prime was upset because of the way the Universe had become corrupted, and he sought to fix that as best he could. Specifically, he meant to restore the multiverse. But, this was a problem, so everyone started fighting him. Prime didn’t really like this whole thing and became more and more of a darker personality. Even going so far as to get himself some armor fashioned after the anti-matter Monitor and eventually he became part of the Sinestro Corps and started blowing shit up because he was pissed about the multiverse.
But he learned, eventually, that there was a new multiverse, and he’s been out trying to find his own world again.
I mentioned tragedy, though. Prime’s main tragedy is that he was a young boy, who is the only survivor of his world. He’s Superman two-fold. The last son of a dead world, and a world that never existed. And he faces that, much like Kal-L and Luthor, but he becomes corrupted by his own grief and anger at the worlds he sees unfold before him. This wasn’t supposed to happen, he thinks, and he can’t cope.
This was originally going to be a longer piece. But I couldn’t think of more than five that I really liked and had a good reason why.
