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

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#208 - Blackheart Nominated by: bullhogderbaxer
First Appearance: Daredevil #270 (Dec. 1989)
Created by: Ann Nocenti and John Romita, Jr.

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

Truly one of the most insulting and pointless characters in the 90s era of Marvel, Blackheart is that special brand of stupid that only Marvel would think is a good idea. The concept of Mephisto putting a son together out of "accumulated evil" is so utterly moronic that it just leaves me to wonder what in the flying blue hell Nocenti was smoking when she put this together. You could maybe fly a character like this in a Vertigo title, but there is a certain grounded logic to the accumulated years of Marvel continuity you need to at least pretend to prop up in your comics. Instead, Blackheart is presented as this angry child of a being who really knows better than to sire children in the first place. It feels forced and fake, and the design is mucked with by every creator under the sun (especially in the 90s).

Blackheart, child of Satan, really was a completely redundant character. After all, Hellstorm could provide the exact same character but with actual internal conflict and development. Blackheart is just a "bad guy" in the vein of Carnage's host Cletus Kasady, but Kasady had a different gimmick that allowed development. Blackheart is really a one-note character that fit into the "EXTREME" 90s and not much else.

Ghost Rider villains can be very interesting, but Blackheart is pretty worthless on the grand stage, not able to develop, grow or change at all.
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Is Mephisto actually Satan? I thought he just pretends to be. Does DC have a Satan?
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Anagram posted...

Is Mephisto actually Satan? I thought he just pretends to be. Does DC have a Satan?

DC has a Lucifer. Marvel has a Mephisto. There have been stories that claim Marvel's Satan is many different beings (including Mephisto) under different guises. Then there are stories that claim Mephisto is just a powerful demon.

Point is, he's the Father of Lies and of course you can't get a direct answer.
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I've only even heard of Blackheart because he was in Marvel vs Capcom
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scarletspeed7 posted...

Anagram posted...

Is Mephisto actually Satan? I thought he just pretends to be. Does DC have a Satan?

DC has a Lucifer. Marvel has a Mephisto. There have been stories that claim Marvel's Satan is many different beings (including Mephisto) under different guises. Then there are stories that claim Mephisto is just a powerful demon.

Point is, he's the Father of Lies and of course you can't get a direct answer.

Thanks
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#207 - Flintheart Glomgold (Nominated by: Raka)
First Appearance: Uncle Scrooge #15 (1956)
Created by: Carl Barks

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

Having read Disney comics here and there, I can say quite decisively that they are not my cup of tea at all. They cater to an audience much younger than myself, and the few stories often pointed to as examples of great storytelling usually fall flat with me. As for Flintheart, he is the definition of a two-dimensional villain with a weird, vaguely racist anti-Scottish air to his character.

I don't feel to equipped to discuss the character in Scrooge McDuck comics - after all, the only story I've ever enjoyed from Scrooge is The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck. But I guess if you are into stories that are "all-ages friendly" (read: stories solely created for children), then you might enjoy reading about two old white ducks fighting over who has more money.

So yeah, it's kind of like modern corporate America in a lot of ways. I guess I take back the accusation of a lack of any real subtext or message to these stories.
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#206 - Granny Goodness (Nominated by: Raka)
First Appearance: Mister Miracle #2 (May 1971)
Created by: Jack Kirby

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

As you can see, Granny Goodness is really an average villain. She has a unique personality, but it's so one-note that despite being unique, it really is grating and wears its welcome out by page 2. Her machinations are always in service of a much more interesting villain, and despite the often Shakespearean tone of comics featuring the New Gods, she comes across as a bad vaudevillian waste of time in my opinion.

Henchmen can really bring a villain down, and Granny is the perfect example of this. With almost drag queen-like dialogue, Granny is a farce in a franchise that is otherwise a crown jewel of 70s storytelling. And if you don't believe me, seek out Amazons Attack, the crossover series featuring Granny as the main antagonist. It is far and away DC's worst crossover event ever.
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Oh huh, being someone I knew from MAA seeing Blackheart already is like... wow. So he's a boring shit.
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Well, he's an example of bad storytelling to me. But that's just my opinion.
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I've heard of Amazons Attack from Linkara. It's terrible
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#205 - Doctor Doom (Victor von Doom) Nominated by: trdl
First Appearance: Fantastic Four #5 (Jul. 1961)
Created by: Stan Lee and Jack Kirby

Fundamentals: 6/10
Track Record: 4/10
Scarlet Factor: 1/10

The reason that comic fans of Doctor Doom always lament the terrible portrayals of their favorite villain on the silver screen is simple: Doctor Doom is in fact not a good villain. His dialogue, meant to convey nobility with a streak of Shakespeare, is written by people who have no experience speaking like that. And if you ever read it out loud, it doesn't pass the laugh test. It's absurd and stupid, making little to no sense in actual operation. Doom's costume, which functions so well in the comic, is fundamentally flawed in so many ways when inserted into the real world. Doom's goals are elementary school depictions of super-villains. Let's just accept that Doom's actual motivations change all the time, each writer furthering the corruption of the original arrogant message of the character. He doesn't make sense as a dictator since he spends half his time in other countries, therefore failing to be in control of his country. That is failure #1 of a dictator. You gotta dance with the one that brung ya, as Leo McGarry would say.

Doctor Doom has some great stories. But when you string them together, they all feel like they feature different characters. And Doctor Doom isn't a character that can exist on a sliding scale. He isn't an incarnation of anything. He isn't a Vertigo character. He exists in the Marvel Universe, but he changes constantly. And these aren't simple evolutions: these are wild departures from writer to writer.

And the worst aspect of Doom is the junkie-like need to insert him into every story possible. There are some simple, fantastic Doom stories, but they are generally fantastic because of his opponent. Doom himself is a two-dimensional cartoon in the vast majority of stories that feature him. You can easily poke holes in his philosophies as they contradict themselves from story to story.

Unlike Lex Luthor who is steadfast in his core motivations, Doom varies wildly, flip-flopping and changing his mind. Furthermore, Doom is a character that copycats the stories of other companies. Case in point: when Lex Luthor switches sides in Justice League, Marvel immediately went to work, trying to make their marquee villain into a hero as well. But it's virtually impossible to buy the motivations when you know that it was done first and better by someone else. Doom got magical powers after other characters in the MU were beefed up in strength. Doom was given a personal backstory with his mother after DC decided to start personalizing a lot of Batman villains under the runs of guys like Alan Grant.

Doom is unoriginal and bastion of bad dialogue. It's not funny. It's stupid. And people who emulate Doctor Doom have no conception of how presenting a unique voice works.
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Glad to see Doom so low, I've always felt he's an overrated and uninteresting character.

Unexpectedly low placement!
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Anagram posted...

expectedly low placement!

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I've always wanted to write a story where some villain like Electro or Shocker or someone turns good and starts going to all of the villains they have worked with over the years, berating them for how stupid and nonsensical they are. Doctor Doom would be public enemy #1.
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I also feel this is mandatory posting for any Doctor Doom-related discussion.

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Yeah, that is a bullshit characterization of Doom that makes no sense. Pandering.
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#204 - Killer Moth (Drury Walker) Nominated by: BetrayedTangy
First Appearance: Batman #63 (Feb. 1951)
Created by: Bill Finger, Dick Sprang and Lew Schwartz

Fundamentals: 4/10
Track Record: 2/10
Scarlet Factor: 5/10

There is nothing remotely good about Killer Moth from the perspective of storytelling and characterization, but I've got a soft spot for the guy. He's a character that has just kept on slowly ticking off appearances despite an absurd gimmick, a terrible costume, and utter mistreatment by the DC writers.

For example, during Underworld Unleashed he was literally turned into a man-moth. It was actually a worse design than the one above. It looked like a zombie with insect wings covered in diarrhea. That alone would plummet the track record category here, but that wasn't enough. It wasn't enough when Superboy-Prime ripped him in half during Infinite Crisis. It wasn't enough when he returned as a Black Lantern zombie bent on seeking revenge against Superboy-Prime during Blackest Night, only to be ripped in half again. It wasn't enough when he was replaced by another Killer Moth and no one even mentioned that this guy was the SECOND Killer Moth... because no one else knew or cared.

It's a depressing story. Forty years as a D-Lister before being given a terrible revamp, going 10 years before being killed off and 5 more years before being killed off again.

God, this is why I love comics. Still, I have a strange affection for Killer Moth. I kinda like the guy. Don't get me wrong; he's utterly useless. But having a goofy villain jobber is necessary in certain situations, and Batman's mythos is one that desperately needs jobbers to make other heroes and villains look stronger. That's what Killer Moth is - enhancement talent. His purpose is to heighten the perception and appearance of the other characters around him, and in that role he succeeds.
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I was gonna be sad about Killer Moth but I saw the scarlet factor and smiled.
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So, it was fairly obvious to me that Doctor Doom would drop down here because I know from listening to Scar that he hates Doom. Reading his argument brought up a factor of him joining the side of the heroes and it never making sense to his character. Naturally a lot of my nominations were Marvel due to Marvel Avengers Alliance, a little FB game I would talk to Scar about. Doom was a lockbox hero (lockbox heroes were clear to be villains turned good, minus like... Thane).

So taking every lockbox hero prior to Doom...
Magneto- Alliance co-aligns with Magneto's ideals, it fits his character as that's why he joins X-Men, Avengers, etc anyway.
Omega Sentinel- Gains a human personality and thus joins. Boring, but makes sense, she's not a full machine.
Juggernaut- If you can't break them, join them and they'll let you break other things. I guess that's a way to bring up his motivations.
Constructor- All he wants is money, he succeeds at sueing Hercules and thus has money. Shield offers a standing job with redemption, he takes it.
Satana- 100% coward, ends up in a lot of shit and uses the protagonist agent to do crap to save her. Not really a hero, but makes sense on why she's temporarily on this side.
Elektra- Just an assassin being paid by Shield, and I think the Hand kind of just left the game by this point.
Thane- Get saved by GotG and Shield from dad. I guess.
Loki- I mean, play both sides so you can trick more people at all times, it's in his character to do this.
Sabretooth- Someone planted a bomb in his head that will kill him if he ever kills anyone. So he joins Shield so he can still fight.
Okay... and then we have Doom. Who joins because he apparently opposes Incursions and wants to stop them. And he's agreed to join by Fury because he knows the most about them. Basically similar to the comic above, writers have no clue if he has a conscious or not, and just decide to add one occasionally to give him plot. And then remove it to make sure he's a villain again.
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She also looks like a drag queen.
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#203 - Proteus (Exiles) Nominated by: Mega Mana
First Appearance: Exiles #69 (Nov. 2005)
Created by: Tony Bedard and Paul Pelletier

Fundamentals: 5/10
Track Record: 6/10
Scarlet Factor: 1/10

God, what a mess this character ended up being. Proteus, who is pretty much exactly the same character as the original Proteus only still alive, is a real motherfucker. And that's a good thing when it comes to a villain. But the main problem with this Proteus is that he was mainly used to change the status quo of the Exiles rather than develop as a character and enhance the world-building within Exiles. In all honesty, Proteus served mainly to make one shocking death happen, then the writers didn't know what to do with him afterwards.

When Morph and Proteus merged, we were given this character that ultimately came completely full circle with mind-wiping involved, so that at the end of the day, Proteus pretty much never existed. It didn't matter that Proteus had possessed members of the team and killed others; the Exiles just moved on as if it didn't matter, and therefore Proteus didn't matter either.

And as a side note, when every single word is spelled phonetically with accent marks in your dialogue, you suck. A couple words at most goes a long way. Every word becomes such an unbearable chore that as a reader, you want to just close the book. Fuck writers who think this is how you create a unique voice for your characters. It's about what your character has to say, not how they say it.
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#202 - The Orb (Drake Shannon) Nominated by: Mega Mana
First Appearance: Marvel Team-Up #15 (Nov. 1973)
Created by: Len Wein and Ross Andru

Fundamentals: 4/10
Track Record: 6/10
Scarlet Factor: 2/10

One thing I personally hate more than anything else is inconsistency. Within the span of the last five years, The Orb has been presented as one person, a second person who has taken up the role, the original person again with no reference to the second, the fact there may have never been a second one, a guy with the powers of the Watcher, a guy who lost the powers of the Watcher, a guy who never lost the powers of the Watcher...

I hate inconsistencies like that. I also hate goofily bad designs, and this fits that role. From an objective standpoint, the Orb is a memorable looking character, but his design has nothing to do with the rest of his character, which makes it utterly pointless. And I hate that.

Still, this guy somehow managed to become relevant 30 years after his debut, so I give him props to that. Too bad that writers can't get their collective acts together and figure what in the hell is going on with this character.
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Inconsistency is the story of Marvel.
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I've always liked the Orb a little, he design invokes a sense of mystery and paranoia even if his personality and actions usually lag behind. Bonus points for invoking The Residents signature eyeball helmets.
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Still outrunning the bullet
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#201 - Reverse-Flash (Daniel West) Nominated by: Corrik
First Appearance: Flash #0 (Nov. 2012)
Created by: Brian Buccellato and Francis Manapul

Fundamentals: 4/10
Track Record: 6/10
Scarlet Factor: 2/10

Until now.

Daniel West was easily the worse Reverse-Flash-type character created at DC. At no point in the story did Daniel feel like a speedster in his behavior and attitudes. His storyline was very one-note, something that had been told about thirty times before in the Flash series, each one of those previous stories done better. And tying Iris to another speedster felt so blasted contrived as to destroy all realism with the series.

Daniel also had a costume that didn't suggest Reverse-Flash at all. It suggest Black Flash, only with a red front for some unknown reason that looked like part of the costume had been ripped off at his night job as a male stripper. I'm not sure how the master designer that is Francis Manapul could have coughed up the ball so easily, but here we are.

Anyways, Daniel West was a dull character that really signaled the end of good Flash comics in New52. Luckily he bit it in Suicide Squad and we'll never be forced to put up with that waste of space again.
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Yes all in the top 200
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Johnbobb posted...

Yes all in the top 200

Same. ^5
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Seems the paradox has closed on the Reverse Flash.
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Your list was very much like the Sesame Street segment "One of these things is not like the others".
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scarletspeed7 posted...

Your list was very much like the Sesame Street segment "One of these things is not like the others".

It was Lady Savitar or him for the last spot.
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It is nice to see Dr. Doom so low. It just seems like he's very ubiquitous when it comes to Marvel Big Bads, but in turn he just appears to be a shitty Marvel version of Black Adam

And you make Killer Moth out to be DC's version of Waspinator hahah
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Boop
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Memorial Day holiday. We'll back to normal tomorrow when I get to work.
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Corrik posted...

scarletspeed7 posted...

Your list was very much like the Sesame Street segment "One of these things is not like the others".

It was Lady Savitar or him for the last spot.

I actually like Christian a lot! She would have been a good nomination.
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scarletspeed7 posted...

Amatsu-Mikaboshi, a fake god created by Marvel

I agree with you for the most part (although I did like his thing with Ares' son) but he's not fake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amatsu-Mikaboshi

Marvel certainly took some liberties but he's from real mythology!
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It's so far from the real thing, come on.
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So?

Doesn't make him any more fake or made up than Thor is!
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Thor is fake too, yes. This wasn't a Thor write-up though.

Just wait until I tear apart Loki.
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I guess we'll have to disagree on their "fakeness" then!

*shrug*

Loki is one of my favorites but I have no personal investment if someone else doesn't like him so have at it.
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Oh hey nice that you liked The Life And Times of Scrooge McDuck
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I've got to say, I enjoyed inserting Doom into a world and giving him a Magikarp.

Namor superior.
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Namor was freaking fantastic in that story. You nailed him.
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Thanks, that means a lot coming from you as I know how much you enjoy the character.

I certainly have a handle on a particular type of character. Coming to terms with that has helped my writing a lot. I admire the virtuous heroes, but I can't write them at all.
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I think for most superhero stories to be successful, you have to wrestle with an issue - be it cultural, social, ethical, etc. - and let your inability to find a solution drive the narrative. Leave it up to the reader, but put the pieces together and in their hands. They'll use your template and come to a conclusion.

At least, it's that way for me in what I consider most of the best superhero stories.
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You take the fantastical and make the heart of the story about what the titans on the pages have in common with the reader. It makes a good deal of sense, and this is true in a lot of fantasy stories. I don't think I've quite nailed it in my original work, but I try to make my more powerful characters have some humanity scraped into them.
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For me, I've become inured to normal people dealing with normal problems. That's my own problem, but I'd much rather escape to a world where the things I can't deal with are the things that are dealt with by people who are just better than me.

That's not to say it's the best system though. Breaking Bad was a hit and it was about people who were much stupider and less interesting than I am.

I'm weird though.
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I hated Breaking Bad, actually. Stopped after Season 1. I am in the extreme minority there.
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Oh my god, Chris. You and me, man. You and me.
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