Board 8 > Scarlet Ranks 225 User-Nominated Super-Villains

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What's the most 90s redesign of an existing character?

Rob Liefeld drawing anything.
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#218 - Krang PS2_4Life
First Appearance: "Enter the Shredder" (Dec. 15, 1987)
Created by: David Wise

Fundamentals: 3/10
Track Record: 5/10
Scarlet Factor: 1/10

I have a personal distaste for Krang. But I understand that he is a major player in the TMNT world and featured in a lot of the better TMNT stories. Of course, TMNT stories have a ceiling at what I would call the basement of DC stories or Marvel stories, so saying he's the best of the batch is really like saying he's the nicest member of the SS. Krang is so utterly simple in his motivations, but those motivations don't have real reasons backing them up. There's this charade that there's something to the character, but in reality, Krang is no different from a MODOK or a Brain. Ultimately, Krang is just ripped from other places and given worse writers.

Is it wrong of me to look down on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Transformers, and other properties that fail to truly capitalize on the medium of comics? No. When you treat comics as a kids' medium, you will insult your readership nine times out of ten. And trying to do a throwback or retro character always results in an insult to the readership of earlier eras. Simplicity does not mean stupidity. But Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles believes it is.
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#217 - Ma Gnucci Nominated by: Great_Paul
First Appearance: Punisher #4 (July 2000)
Created by: Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

Fundamentals: 2/10
Track Record: 5/10
Scarlet Factor: 2/10
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I have a weird relationship with Garth Ennis characters. When Garth Ennis wants to design a serious, layered character, he does a phenomenal job. But when Garth Ennis wants to make a humorous joke character, it is so utterly chilidish and stupid that I can barely wrap my head around it. And with that in mind, let's talk about Ma Gnucci.

Ennis did two Punisher series after his phenomenal Welcome Back, Frank storyline. The first one is Punisher Max, the seminal classic, the defining Punisher series. The big one. What was the second one? Well, that's the rub. The second one is Ennis doing what he THOUGHT people wanted. Comedy and gross-out humor. But people didn't want comedy and gross-out humor. Ma Gnucci is a terrible character because she exists as a punchline.

Ma Gnucci was a punchline, a mastermind villain of sorts who consistently was physically brutalized over and over again to the supposed delight of fans. But for someone like me who has a more refined palette, when Ennis' adolescence kicks in, it detracts from the overall narrative. Ennis paints a the story of a multiple amputee as if it is hilarious. It isn't. It really isn't. Remember, I hardly ever find things cute or funny. And that applies doubly to Ennis' sense of humor, because it is so played out and one-note.

When Ennis brought back Ma Gnucci in his War Zone mini-series years later, it was phenomenally bad. It was straight up comedy (in Ennis' mind), and, like oil and water, it didn't mix at all with the Punisher. It felt so forced. In fact, everything with Ma Gnucci feels so forced and therefore unfunny. Let's be over-the-top and gratuitous some more! That's where the humor is! No, it's not.
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#216 - Ventriloquist (Shauna Belzer) Nominated by: Snake
First Appearance: Batgirl #20 (Jul. 2013)
Created by: Gail Simone, Fernando Pasarin

Fundamentals: 4/10
Track Record: 3/10
Scarlet Factor: 2/10

Shauna Belzer is very much a character that is utterly superfluous. The idea of creating a legacy for the Ventriloquist is admirable, but the problem is in the execution. First of all, timing is everything. Only a couple years earlier, the Ventriloquist popularized by Batman: The Animated Series had been replaced by a phenomenal creation of Paul Dini. This legacy Ventriloquist, a beautiful, broken young lady, was exactly what the Ventriloquist legacy needed. She was a tragic character, a villain designed in the vein of a Shelley character. A monster out-of-control and at the same time childlike and innocent. It also lent credence to the Scarface doll as a sort-of totem for hatred and violence.

However, with the advent of DC's New52, the mandate went out that new characters needed to be created. So Gail Simone's pitch for a Ventriloquist (which had been trashed once during her Secret Six run) was given a second chance in Batgirl.

Timing is everything though, and Simone's run on Batgirl was fairly uninteresting. Gone from her writing was the spark that made her madcap storylines so fun. And that was the problem with Shauna. In terms of her origin it was only slightly below average; the concept of an angry ballerina had been done to death in the past, and Gail wasn't playing her A-Game, so this story never stood a chance. Furthermore, clashing with Batgirl proved to be a very bland opponent. Had this been Oracle, a unique voice and character in comics, maybe things would have been different. But this was the Barbara Gordon that was utterly superfluous in the Bat-Family. Everyone is better at everything than Batgirl Babs. Oracle Babs has a role. But a functionally useless character fighting a functionally redundant character proves to be dull.

It was too little and too soon. I have a standard rule I always use to judge comics: you either do it first, or you do it best. Gail did neither. And that's why Shauna Belzer is a completely disinterestedness and forgettable character.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

Krang is so utterly simple in his motivations, but those motivations don't have real reasons backing them up.

This... is why I could never like Krang back when I partially liked TMNT, and I liked it as a cartoon. I expected nothing more. He just feels like he's trying to accomplish... nothing.
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I agree that the War Zone follow-up was extremely unnecessary but I did like Ma in Welcome Back, Frank, she served a humorous role well there I thought. I generally like Ennis' humor though, it gives his books distinct character in my opinion.

Also, for clarification do you count Welcome Back, Frank's Marvel Knights follow-up as the 2nd series or were you just counting War Zone? I know not all of the issues in that series were written by Ennis but I love some of the individual moments in that Knights series. Punisher flattening Wolverine with the streamroller, oh yes.

As for Shauna, I agree completely there. Peyton Riley was the perfect take on the character.
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Snake5555555555 posted...

I agree that the War Zone follow-up was extremely unnecessary but I did like Ma in Welcome Back, Frank, she served a humorous role well there I thought. I generally like Ennis' humor though, it gives his books distinct character in my opinion.

Also, for clarification do you count Welcome Back, Frank's Marvel Knights follow-up as the 2nd series or were you just counting War Zone? I know not all of the issues in that series were written by Ennis but I love some of the individual moments in that Knights series. Punisher flattening Wolverine with the streamroller, oh yes.

As for Shauna, I agree completely there. Peyton Riley was the perfect take on the character.

I don't really count Marvel Knights as an Ennis solo series personally, but there is some good stuff in it.
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Snake5555555555 posted...

I generally like Ennis' humor though, it gives his books distinct character in my opinion.

Same here, with the exception of The Boys.

Don't get me wrong, there are times where I like his humor. But Ennis is a guy who needs an editor.
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What the hell does Ma Gnucci do as a threat?
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Nevermind, I just found the answer
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Wish I'd have seen the nomination topic, would have liked to see where Nicodemus from Dresden Files would sit.
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Wedge Antilles posted...

Wish I'd have seen the nomination topic, would have liked to see where Nicodemus from Dresden Files would sit.

Nowhere. Not a comics character.
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#215 - Amatsu-Mikaboshi Nominated by: Murphiroth
First Appearance: Thor: Blood Oath #6 (Feb. 2006)
Created by: Michael Oeming, Scott Kolins

Fundamentals: 5/10
Track Record: 2/10
Scarlet Factor: 2/10

I need to talk about the balance between perceived depth and actual depth. And the perfect example for this is Amatsu-Mikaboshi, a fake god created by Marvel for really no practical purpose. The concept of gods fighting one another is meant to seem like a proportionally Brobdingnagian concept, but without motivation and any emotional attachment to the characters involved, the story ultimately feels like Someone Else's Problem.

And, for the rest of his career, that's exactly the feeling I got as reader for virtually everything involving Marvel's Gods. Unlike the Greek pantheon in DC (which is, for the most part, the only pantheon that interacts with the DC characters), the pantheons outside of Marvel's Norse gods seem to be there primarily to serve as plot points rather than as nuanced characters. The battles feel far away, detached from existence.

If I'm supposed to dislike Mikaboshi because he is a "god of evil", I do not. I have no reason to have preconceived notions about him because I don't know him. If I'm supposed to think he's cool looking, I do. But that's where my interest starts and ends. Stakes only matter if they matter. In Marvel, stakes hardly ever matter because there's always an out, a resurrection, a retroactive change. Mikaboshi being a threat to gods everywhere doesn't matter because the gods themselves don't matter, in large part because of the next thing I'm going to talk about.

The height of Mikaboshi's career is also the end of his career: Chaos War. What is Chaos War? An event comic. And event comics are hardly ever good. The idea of wrapping hundreds of characters together under the guise of one or a few common threats is appealing, but Chaos War was a mess of ideas that didn't have any heart behind them. Big threats are often the worst threats for this reason. I would much rather have an intimate one-on-one fight than a grand battle, so long as the battle is good.
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Amatsu-Mikaboshi always reminded me of some abandoned giant planet-eating symbiote story.
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#214 - NKVDemon Nominated by: Snake
First Appearance: Batman #445 (Mar. 1990)
Created by: Marv Wolfman and Jim Aparo

Fundamentals: 2/10
Track Record: 4/10
Scarlet Factor: 3/10

Here's an interesting factoid. Did you know that there are THREE NKVDemons? You didn't? Neither did anyone else. That's because no one really gives a shit about NKVDemon.

NKVDemon was immediately a relic on his debut, and that means we're going to talk about timing again in this write-up. The name itself - built on the acronym NKVD - tells you that this is a Cold War character, obviously from Soviet Russia. And let's keep that in mind as we go and look at the year of debut for this character. 1990.

So yeah, the fall of Communism happened and apparently no one informed Jim Aparo and friends because then this fucking guy happened. You almost have to laugh at the ineptitude here. Anyways, NKVDemon is a student of KGBeast (obviously all he learned was how to craft a codename), and he goes apeshit about the fall of the USSR. Then he fails at killing Gorbachev. Then another NKVDemon debuts and loses. Then another one debuts and loses later.

Quite the storied legacy for a character that should never have been created.
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I'll be honest with you, I completely forgot about the 2 when nominating him XD What a pointless character to have multiple of.
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I really gotta wonder who in editorial saw legacy versions of a one-shot Z-Lister and thought, "Yeah, that'll draw in the money."
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I also find it hilarious that anyone in-universe would wanna be a 3rd NKVDemon after the past 2 failed completely.
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Maybe he's like David Hasselhoff and very popular in certain foreign countries.
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#213 - Omega Red (Arkady Rossovich) Nominated by: MarquessLess
First Appearance: X-Men #4 (Jan. 1992)
Created by: Jim Lee and John Byrne

Fundamentals: 4/10
Track Record: 5/10
Scarlet Factor: 1/10

On the surface, Omega Red is just sort of an average villain. But that is exactly why I have such disdain for him as a character. While it seems like he's a simple former Communist with tentacles, what is simplicity is in actuality stupidity. This is bad design at its finest, something with which X-Men titles seem to get away constantly. Consider that his abilities are meant to be defined by his lashes; instead of only having the lashes, he has to have heightened strength, reflexes, etc. etc. etc. This is the 90s X-Men at its worst - feeling the need to take a gimmick and make it SUPER STRONG SO KIDS THINK HE'S COOL. A gimmick should be a gimmick. Cable doesn't need 55 powers. He needs a small set of abilities that gel well together. Omega Red is a big ugly mess of "STRONG MUTANT".

While this serves to endear characters to the children of the 90s, it actually dumbs down the comic book medium. Every character is dealt with in the same way; blunt force trauma. Omega Red is really an example of the laziness that is endemic to comic bookery as a whole, and as a result, you probably can't name a story that was great because Omega Red appeared in it.
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He's like Wolverine, but with TENTACLES! The amount of air time Omega Red got kind of baffles me for being such an average villain. Animated series appearances, the Capcom/Marvel titles, then he just dropped off the face of the earth like he should.
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Well, he DID die.
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Still hyped to see which of my characters will be the first to fall.
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The answer is Spoilers
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I'm surprised they never tried to bring him back again, aside from Hell.
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I don't remember nominating Spoilers, besides, Spoiler isn't even a Super-Villain.
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Snake5555555555 posted...

I'm surprised they never tried to bring him back again, aside from Hell.

I think, and this is just me, but where can you even take him? It's clear that the X-Men franchise has been pretty well and truly lost for the last 8 years or so, sort of just wandering around looking for a point to its existence. But at the same time, Omega Red doesn't fit into the world-building (or lack thereof) going on anymore. Given the subject matter, you might find use for him in a Captain America series, but he's passe at this point. Kind of the same problem I think Apocalypse has; he was a product of his time and that time has passed.
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WickIebee posted...

I don't remember nominating Spoilers, besides, Spoiler isn't even a Super-Villain.

Fine I will admit the truth. Your lowest ranking villain is Triple H
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You're right, he would just be a villain with no real purpose at this point. If he was brought back he would just be another face to punch.
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#212 - Jody Nominated by: Jesse
First Appearance: Preacher #8 (Nov. 1995)
Created by: Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

Fundamentals: 4/10
Track Record: 5/10
Scarlet Factor: 1/10

Jesse's first elimination comes here as his namesake's blood relation falls on this list. Given how much I rave about the TV show Preacher, it probably comes as a surprise to see a character from that comic fall so early. But for me, it very rarely is about the villains in Preacher. It's all about the relationships between the three main characters. Jody is just an obstacle really. While he is featured prominently in the story that is often cited as the best Preacher story, what is he really to the tale on a larger scale? He's a ghost of a past Jesse puts behind his boots as he ambles his way to a much more interesting present.

Now, yes! There are certain superficial qualities to Jody (and T.C.) that make me have an instant disinterest in reading about them. Ennis writes rednecks so poorly that it quite honestly is a chore to slog through the dialogue, even when it's at a bare minimum for someone like Jody. And I never really liked the old stereotypes that the story propagates. In fact, they are a complete turn-off for me. So on a personal level, I don't want to read about Jody or T.C. In fact, when Jody finally dies, it is a welcome relief for me. Let's get back to the good stuff. Let's get back to Herr Starr. Let's get back to Cassidy. Let's get back to Jesse and Tulip and their bizarre, intriguing quest.

Jody, for me, is part of a great story that is dragged down to just being an extremely good story due to exactly what I don't like about Ennis. His excess and his disdain for very cultural subsets he decides to portray in his tales.

But, that said, go read Preacher anyways. Or better yet, watch it.
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So I researched as it reminded me of the fact that there's at least three people in the Marvel universe with dual whips. Constrictor (debuted in 1977), Whiplash (first one to do so was the one that debuted in 1990), and then Omega Red in 1992.

Shall I also say that the second Whiplash was a mutant? ... Omega Red was useless the moment he was thought up.
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WickIebee posted...

So I researched as it reminded me of the fact that there's at least three people in the Marvel universe with dual whips. Constrictor (debuted in 1977), Whiplash (first one to do so was the one that debuted in 1990), and then Omega Red in 1992.

Shall I also say that the second Whiplash was a mutant? ... Omega Red was useless the moment he was thought up.

It's true but also a little unfair. She showed up in a totally different corner of the MU (Spider-Man side), and she didn't really do anything and disappeared pretty quickly.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

But, that said, go read Preacher anyways. Or better yet, watch it.

Isn't it pretty brutal, so someone squeamish like me wouldn't be able to handle some of it? Thought I heard about that at some point.
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Yeah you would hate it. Go read Fables instead.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

While he is featured prominently in the story that is often cited as the best Preacher story, what is he really to the tale on a larger scale?

The representation of what Jesse's father was talking about when he said there are way too many bad people in the world. In my view, Jody is a believable character, even when he does horrifying things. It is true that he functions more as a plot device than an independent character, but so do many villains in all medium honestly.

There's a fair point of view, but at best it would only affect his fundamentals score.
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Speedsters still outrunning the gun.
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That's what they do though! Don't worry, there's one coming up relatively soon.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

#213 - Omega Red (Arkady Rossovich) Nominated by: MarquessLess
First Appearance: X-Men #4 (Jan. 1992)
Created by: Jim Lee and John Byrne

Fundamentals: 4/10
Track Record: 5/10
Scarlet Factor: 1/10

On the surface, Omega Red is just sort of an average villain. But that is exactly why I have such disdain for him as a character. While it seems like he's a simple former Communist with tentacles, what is simplicity is in actuality stupidity. This is bad design at its finest, something with which X-Men titles seem to get away constantly. Consider that his abilities are meant to be defined by his lashes; instead of only having the lashes, he has to have heightened strength, reflexes, etc. etc. etc. This is the 90s X-Men at its worst - feeling the need to take a gimmick and make it SUPER STRONG SO KIDS THINK HE'S COOL. A gimmick should be a gimmick. Cable doesn't need 55 powers. He needs a small set of abilities that gel well together. Omega Red is a big ugly mess of "STRONG MUTANT".

While this serves to endear characters to the children of the 90s, it actually dumbs down the comic book medium. Every character is dealt with in the same way; blunt force trauma. Omega Red is really an example of the laziness that is endemic to comic bookery as a whole, and as a result, you probably can't name a story that was great because Omega Red appeared in it.

Man, say what you want about Omega Red, his action figure was the shit back in the day.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

That's what they do though! Don't worry, there's one coming up relatively soon.

Poor Quick. = (
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#211 - God Nominated: Simoun
First Appearance: Preacher #11 (Feb. 1996)
Created by: Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon

Fundamentals: 3/10
Track Record: 5/10
Scarlet Factor: 2/10

I feel like I need to apologize to Garth Ennis at this point.

Really, seriously, I like a lot of his comics a lot. If you were to look at my top 100 comic runs of all time, he's got a heaping handful of them. But, these nominations, man. These fucking nominations.

Let's talk about God for a minute. The role God played in Preacher is actually not that pivotal at all; the perceived relationships that virtually every character struggles with God on are all one-sided. God himself is virtually absent from the story, and his entry into the story confirms once again all of Ennis' prejudices without a deeper introspection that causes other stories to succeed where IN THIS ONE INSTANCE Preacher fails.

I point to the God of Lucifer. Now that is a god that explores baggage well. The Judeo-Christian doctrines and dogmas are given time to unfold and be considered, as well as the familial bond all Christians feel towards their god. It is acted out in beautiful Shakespearean form. Here, Ennis just hammers his hatred for a deity with sledgehammer rather than crafting artfully with a brush and pen. And, ultimately, God comes off as a joke. Not as a threat. And not as a particularly intelligent or interesting joke either. It's the same personality ascribed to God for years from various sources, just given a visual accompaniment this time around. At best, God's role in the story is to provide a false sense of victory for the Saint of Killers, and nothing else.

Ennis has made a handful of truly interesting characters that as villains would rank highly on this list. Everyone from Stillwell to the characters in Punisher MAX... these are fantastic villains, truly interesting depictions of evil on various levels.

God just ain't that bad.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

At best, God's role in the story is to provide a false sense of victory for the Saint of Killers, and nothing else.

I don't really agree with this, he's such an important aspect of the story almost from the beginning (before he even appears). That being said, I don't have any issue with this placement because he's not a true villain. And I think that's what you were getting at with saying he's not a threat. He is, in fact, capable of being a threat as that picture shows, but he had his reasons for keeping Jesse alive, as you know.

lol. I knew this was coming after Jesse's nom.

But let's say you grew up under a rock all these years and knew nothing about Christiantiy. Would God in this comic have rated higher then?
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No, probably lower. God is such a nonentity in the comic.
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I haven't tagged this yet
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#210 - Judas Traveller Nominated by: Simoun
First Appearance: Web of Spider-Man #117 (Oct. 1994)
Created by: Terry Kavanagh and Steve Butler

Fundamentals: 5/10
Track Record: 3/10
Scarlet Factor: 2/10

God, the 90s were bad. A quasi-mystical being trying to learn and understand the true nature of evil while he himself becomes evil is, on paper, actually a decent design. But the execution was so damned flawed because at Marvel when someone creates a character, they don't actually have any real plans for the character. Marvel editorial, already in the midst of the truly heinous Clone Saga at that point, threw Traveller in for little to no additional effect, forcing Parker and his loser body double Ben Reilly to do battle with nonsense that had no actual impact on the Marvel Universe or the Clone Saga.

Of course, Clone Saga was the Marvel response to DC's Death of Superman and Knightfall. The concept of these large-scale events being concentrated to a small group of titles was too good for them to pass up. And it's understandable; marketing would suggest that tie-ins sell better than standalone titles. But when the concept for the entire event is simply built on the premise of being "shocking" and "game-changing," it's doomed to fail every time. So what difference does it make when you shove a wannabe Phantom Stranger into the mix? The answer is nothing. It makes no difference at all.
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hes the one I expected to go down first. Maybe if Judas wasn't an enemy of SPIDER-MAN, I would actually think he was pretty cool even with the 90s cliche
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#209 - Condiment King (Mitchell Mayo) Nominated by: bullhogderbaxer
First Appearance: "Make 'Em Laugh" (Nov. 1994)
Created by: Paul Dini and Randy Rogel

Fundamentals: 5/10
Track Record: 3/10
Scarlet Factor: 2/10

I'll keep this write-up short because there's really nothing of substantive value to say. I don't find goofy villains funny, but at least Condiment King is original and his design contributes to making one streamlined, understandable package. He does nothing in comics hardly ever and exists as a joke for the most part. Nominations like this one are jokes and they don't deserve any actual time or effort in write-ups. Next!
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I didn't realize they even bothered to use Condiment King in the comics. Surprised he placed this high.