10 Worst Comics Villains, Ranked

Villains are a very important part of the superhero comic. It’s often said that a hero is only as good as their villains, and the greatest superheroes of all time — Batman, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Superman — have a coterie of the greatest villains ever. Everyone knows what it takes to be a great villain — a great personality, a killer look, fun powers, and a unique aspect to them that sets them apart.

However, what makes a bad villain is a little hard to quantify. What is a bad villain? What makes a villain into someone that readers groan when they see them? It’s a confluence of factors. Right now, there are some villains who are rather popular, but there’s really no reason for it.



Sometimes, it’s because they have bad costumes or bad powers. Some of them are cliche, and some of them have been pushed far beyond where they should be in the supervillain pecking order. Sometimes, they had potential that they’ve never been able to meet.

As with most things, lists like these are quite subjective, but these ten villains are the one I groan about most when they show up.CarnageCarnage is a super popular villain, and has been since just about the moment he debuted. However, let’s be real — Carnage is not an interesting villain by any stretch of the imagination.

Carnage has only one story where the character actually works — the times when he’s gone on rampages, killing everyone in his way, like “Maximum Carnage” or Absolute Carnage. Carnage was lucky in that he came around at the right time in the symbiote craze of the early ’90s and had a uniquely terrifying look. Carnage is the biggest cliche of them all — the serial killer given great power.

This is fine for superhero comics at times, but whenever Marvel dusts off the symbiotes for the next couple of years of symbiote event comics, Carnage is always front and center, and he always does the exact same things he always does. Carnage is boring, and hopefully making Eddie Brock into the new Carnage will lead somewhere interesting.The OwlDaredevil has some greatest of all time villains contenders, and then there’s the Owl.

The Owl has been around since Daredevil #3 in 1964 and has all of the mutant powers of a owl. He can fly for limited periods, and has superhuman physical attributes, as well as super vision and superhearing. He has the Wolverine haircut, which means that he has a healing factor and claws, well talons, as well.

For a while, he was just a costume wearing solo baddie getting dunked on by Daredevil on a pretty regular basis. At some point, it was decided that he would become Penguin, and that’s where he’s been ever since, a crime boss that never really fits the role honestly. Somehow, the Owl has even been able to dethrone Kingpin.

No one really remembers how and no one ever thinks about it. It was weird having not read Daredevil in years, and then seeing the Owl as some kind of crime boss villain. It just never felt right, and he’s been strictly D-list ever since.

Kanjar RoKanjar Ro is one of many evil alien conquerors that the Justice League has fought for decades. Kanjar Ro’s old gimmick was that he had a “Gamma Gong”, which could take control of people, but would trade that in for the Energi-Rod and the Scepter, which would have various energy powers. Kanjar Ro is one of those villains that seems cool in theory, but then just never really panned out.

Unlike Despero, the more well-known alien conqueror the League fought, he never got a cool evolution, and has stayed mid forever. DC did try to go the Despero route with him — giving him a makeover — but they forgot to actually make him more powerful, like they did with Despero. Kanjar Ro can’t escape the smell of generic any time he comes in the room.

There’s just nothing special about him, and the less said about him the better. Maxwell LordAs someone who loves the run-up to Infinite Crisis, I have to say that I loved the original Maxwell Lord villain arc. It was a huge shock to learn that he had always been such an evil mastermind and his original scheme was even super smart and unique.

His death was important, and made a lot of sense. If he had stayed dead, it would be one of the coolest villain turns in comic history. However, DC decided to go back to the well, or try to, and they resurrected him.

Since then, he’s been a villain in several stories, each time trying to use his mind control powers to pull off some nefarious plans that he believes for some reason will save the world. It’s gotten dull and predictable and it’s honestly made sacrificing Lord as a comedic gold mine feel like something of a waste. Maxwell Lord is one of many characters who meant more dead than he ever does alive, which is a sad state of affairs for such an important part of the DC Universe.

StryfeStryfe was introduced by Fabian Nicieza and Rob Liefeld as the big bad of X-Force. Like many aspects of things co-created by Rob Liefeld in the early ’90s, Stryfe was considered “cool”, his chromed, spiky costume making an impression on the fans of the day. Stryfe was the mystery bad guy, always trying to destroy Cable, and then it was revealed that he was a clone of Cable created by Apocalypse to destroy his “brother”.

On the one hand, it’s sort of a standard villain story, using a clone to create a villainous opposite character, but Stryfe is just so lame that it never made him into an actual good villain. Stryfe is just another of the legion of Liefeld co-creations that was all style and little substance. Nicieza did his best with Liefeld’s ideas, but Stryfe has always been a lame villain.

His single-minded obsession with Cable wore out rather quickly, and now he’s just a relic of another time, popping back up to get the nostalgia pop, and then fading away again.RELATED: Marvel Teases Doom’s Dark Secret (and a Fantastic Four Member Knows It)RomulusRomulus is a character who just stinks of the question, “Why?” That’s pretty much the only thing that goes through anyone’s mind when it comes to Romulus. Wolverine actually has a pretty good core of villains — Cyber, Omega Red, Bloodscream, Roughhouse, Ogun, Silver Samurai, Viper, Mystique — and on top of those he has the best villainous opposite in comics, Sabretooth.

So, what was the point of introducing yet another long-lived feral healing factor having mutant? Romulus was just a mystery box villain that never really gained any fans but that Marvel was able to keep fans hooked to with the steady drip feed of answers that kept them buying the comics he was in. And you know what? If Romulus’s story had been something original, it would have been fine, but nope, it was the umpteenth shadowy manipulator with links to Weapon X messes with Wolverine’s mind for a couple of years. Sabretooth already exists and does these kinds of stories better than anyone; Romulus was always surplus to requirements.

DoomsdayDoomsday is the monster that killed Superman, which should be a reason to respect him, but Doomsday is the example of a rather distressing trope. Now, as far as it goes, Doomsday is a somewhat useful character in theory, but for some reason it never really works out like that (the current story with Doomsday as the Time Trapper is actually pretty interesting though, but that’s more of a standard Time Trapper story than a Doomsday story). The problem is that Doomsday is only good for one thing — beating up on characters in general and Superman in particular.

Doomsday just doesn’t have a lot of utility as a villain and until recently, no steps were made to evolve the character past anything other than a berserker. Doomsday has always been more of a plot element than an actual character, but take him out of his original story, and there’s really not much else that can be done with him.Yuga KhanDarkseid is one of the greatest villains in comics, a perfect idea for a supervillain.

He’s the God of Evil. It’s simple, it’s effective, it tells a reader everything they need to know about the character in three words. It’s basically impossible to improve upon this in any way, but DC tried, and so was born Yuga Khan.

Yuga Khan was Darkseid’s father and the previous lord of Apokolips, but Darkseid usurped him, banishing him to Source Wall. He returned at some point to take back his throne, but he was just constantly overshadowed by the far superior Darkseid. That’s the problem with trying to up the ante on an already perfect villain — there’s nowhere else to go.

Yuga Khan was meant to be an enemy for both the New Gods and Darkseid and his forces, yet he was never really good at being either. In a world where Darkseid already exists, there’s no need to make a second rate Darkseid. Yuga Khan is a perfect example of a villain that just doesn’t need to exist.

White RabbitMarvel and DC both have a White Rabbit. DC’s White Rabbit was last seen as a lingerie wearing sexpot drawn by David Finch in Batman: The Dark Knight, which is much better than whatever Marvel’s White Rabbit is. Now, on the one hand, White Rabbit was created to be a kind of lame villain.

Lorina Dodson is a bored rich girl who decided to become a criminal and was terrible at it, using her fortune to buy high tech weapons and thugs. She constantly loses — that’s obviously what she’s meant for — but there’s nothing really fun about the character. Other than Mad Hatter, the Alice in Wonderland character pastiches just don’t work in comics as well as creators seem to think.

White Rabbit could have been an interesting, fun idea, but it’s so one-note that it never managed to catch on the way Marvel wanted it to.KnullKnull is what happens when ’90s comics fans are allowed to create the edgiest villain imaginable. Knull is basically Carnage with the power of an eldritch god and that’s just as boring as it sounds.

Knull was kind of a big deal for a while, but let’s be real — no one really ever liked Knull. I’m not even convinced that Knull’s creators Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman even actually liked Knull. Look, there’s nothing wrong with edgy ’90s pastiches, and there’s nothing wrong with villains that take an old concept and spruce it up.

That’s part of the fun of comics. However, Knull was never anything except something we’d seen a million times before — a wannabe universal conqueror — but he just wasn’t cool enough for that job. The sad thing is, on a smaller scale, like as somebody who showed up and fought the Guardians of the Galaxy or something, Knull could be built into something cool, at the very least a C-list baddie for a C-list team.

Pushing him as a major character right away, when there was actually very little character, was a huge mistake.The post 10 Worst Comics Villains, Ranked appeared first on ComicBook.com.

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