Rewrite a hero's rogues gallery

[Michael Watkins]

They need an untold tales book to revisit pym's early days and reenvision all of his foes. Whirlwind is the only one to graduate. I would have made Egghead a closet mutant with a hyperactive brain, no need to sleep, and a sadistic streak. I would play up Madame Macabre's connection to the Mandarin and the Ten Rings.

[Hybrid]

For Iron Man, I think the dude needs more foes who aren't using power armor. The most interesting villains a heroes has are always the ones that are different from him. It gets boring, forgettable, interchangeable otherwise, and that's what Iron Man's rogue gallery is.

You reference Batman. Batman isn't going around fighting other billions with advanced bat-themed gadgets. Batman fights a deranged clown, a guy that uses fear gas, a steroid-powered criminal mastermind, a guy that is obsessed with word puzzles, a woman who can control plants, a guy that freezes things, a mutated crocodile person, the immortal head of a secret society, a man who makes all this decisions based on the flip of a coin...

But Iron Man, he tends to just face other people with power armor. It's boring.

I think my suggestion solves that while still focused on a theme. Notice that Batman has a theme -- each of his rogues represent a different part of himself, or an antithesis, taken to an extreme. Very few have powers, representing Batman not having any himself. That's the idea here, in that his villains possess a theme or are an antithesis in some way, and most are tied to the concept of technology.

Also, I'd say the rogues I came up with are quite diverse in keeping with it: a tech-speedster, a super hacker, a giant robot, a mad scientist in a mech suit, a mutant with a grudge, another man in power armor but represents Tony's opposite, and a true sorcerer that stands against Tony thematically.

Sounds like it'd be good to me.

[MichaelC]

For Iron Man, I think the dude needs more foes who aren't using power armor. The most interesting villains a heroes has are always the ones that are different from him. It gets boring, forgettable, interchangeable otherwise, and that's what Iron Man's rogue gallery is.

You reference Batman. Batman isn't going around fighting other billions with advanced bat-themed gadgets. Batman fights a deranged clown, a guy that uses fear gas, a steroid-powered criminal mastermind, a guy that is obsessed with word puzzles, a woman who can control plants, a guy that freezes things, a mutated crocodile person, the immortal head of a secret society, a man who makes all this decisions based on the flip of a coin...

But Iron Man, he tends to just face other people with power armor. It's boring.

He actually does have quite a few non-armored foes: The Mandarin, Living Laser, Fin Fang Foom, Madame Masque, Ghost, Ultimo. I do agree that his most boring foes are other guys in power-armor, though. Iron Man has the least interesting mirror-matches in comics. His best foes use just about everything other than armor: money, armies, massive superweapons, psychological manipulation, political subterfuge, and on and on.

The guys who try to out-armor him are incredibly boring.

[Hybrid]

I see what you're saying though. I know the MCU has been criticized for relying a little too much on villains with the same powers as the hero. Ant-Man and the Wasp acknowledged this by using Ghost, who possesses a unique power set that has nothing to do with shrinking, in order to give more variety to the action.

[Killerbee911]

Okay let's do this

Iron Man- I would make Dr Doom his arch nemesis I think they work as flip side of the same coin

IronFist- I would make Mandarin his arch nemesis. I think they could elevate each other

Miles Morales- I would make the Hood his arch nemesis,He is biggest free agent enemy I think he would make for good enemy for solo hero. Miles is one of these new school heroes who doesn't have arch nemesis yet

Avengers- I would make Apocalypse on their big enemies, Apocalypse is suppose to feel like Darkseid or Thanos . X-men is too self contained at times for Apoccy to feel like the world ending threat that he should be .

X-men- I would make Ultron one of their big enemies, It is being explored in X-men that maybe robots are meant to be next evolutionary successor and Ultron would be perfect bad guy to embody that

Ms Marvel- Purple Man, She is one of the most moral heroes. Purple Man is slimy villain that would push hero like Kamala past hero breaking point which would make for a great story.

A full gallery makeover

Black Panther- Killmonger, Namor, Kang, Master of the World, Gorgon, Mr Negative , Graviton, The Void, Morlon

While I am reworking Black Panther core group because I think a lot of them need to tweaked. I would use Black Panther as more global hero than before.I would fill in with some of the better new school villians and underrated villains. Gravitaton should be a big time villain and should be used more. Morlon is a little weird in Spiderman but a villian that could attack feed on Spiritual source of his powers works better in black panther I think.

[chamber-music]

They need an untold tales book to revisit pym's early days and reenvision all of his foes. Whirlwind is the only one to graduate. I would have made Egghead a closet mutant with a hyperactive brain, no need to sleep, and a sadistic streak. I would play up Madame Macabre's connection to the Mandarin and the Ten Rings.

Spencer sort of tried to update some of the old Ant-Man foes.

My here are some of my ideas to reinvent or update his foes.

Doctor Nemesis
Give Doctor Nemesis (Micheal Stockton) a new name and make him the reverse Flash of the Ant-Men/Giant-Men. Play up the villainous mad scientist angle. He is essentially Pym but without any morals or ethics. Being stuck in the microverse for a while has driven him slightly crazy and seeing the building blocks of existence on a sub atomic level has given him a god complex.

My idea would be to have him kidnap people and experiment on them with Pym particles with horrific results. Exposure to various variations of Pym particles has frequently caused physical strain to Pym's health throughout his comic history (stuck in giant size, heart problems, fatigue from being giant size to long, mental health issues ect). I think they could showcase the negative effects with a villain who has a history of experimenting with Pym particles and have heroes try to stop him from unleashing experimental unstable pym particles on a wider populace.

Use Gargantua (Edward Cobert) as Stockton's Igor like henchman.

The Voice
I would have the Voice (Jason Cragg) take over a small town or Island nation with his powers and threaten to have the residents under his control kill themselves if any outside force tried to interfere. Cragg is still a egotist but less of a coward.


The Magician
I would make the Magician (Lee Guardineer) a criminal master mind for hire. A guy other criminals turn to when they need someone to do the seemingly impossible. Instead of the old robbing rich people stage magician version form the sixties or his Criss Angel like son I would have him be a consulting criminal who plans heists, prison breaks, terror attacks, drug or people smuggling by using his illusionist skills to deceive and evade the authorities. He is wanted by the FBI and very little is known about him besides his reputation.

Madame X
Make Nina Vladimirovna Tsiolkovsky a former apprentice and lover of the Chameleon (Dmitri Smerdyakov) with a similar skill set. She wears a fabric mask that can alter to the appearance of anyone. She is a saboteur, spy and terrorist for hire. Tsiolkovsky spends so much time pretending to be other people that she sometimes forgets who she is and develops self identity issues. She believes she actually is the people she becomes and has trouble returning to being herself. She could also be used as a for for Black Widow or the Winter Soldier in international espionage stories.

[Michael Watkins]

Spencer sort of tried to update some of the old Ant-Man foes.

My here are some of my ideas to reinvent or update his foes.

Doctor Nemesis
Give Doctor Nemesis (Micheal Stockton) a new name and make him the reverse Flash of the Ant-Men/Giant-Men. Play up the villainous mad scientist angle. He is essentially Pym but without any morals or ethics. Being stuck in the microverse for a while has driven him slightly crazy and seeing the building blocks of existence on a sub atomic level has given him a god complex.

My idea would be to have him kidnap people and experiment on them with Pym particles with horrific results. Exposure to various variations of Pym particles has frequently caused physical strain to Pym's health throughout his comic history (stuck in giant size, heart problems, fatigue from being giant size to long, mental health issues ect). I think they could showcase the negative effects with a villain who has a history of experimenting with Pym particles and have heroes try to stop him from unleashing experimental unstable pym particles on a wider populace.

Use Gargantua (Edward Cobert) as Stockton's Igor like henchman.

The Voice
I would have the Voice (Jason Cragg) take over a small town or Island nation with his powers and threaten to have the residents under his control kill themselves if any outside force tried to interfere. Cragg is still a egotist but less of a coward.


The Magician
I would make the Magician (Lee Guardineer) a criminal master mind for hire. A guy other criminals turn to when they need someone to do the seemingly impossible. Instead of the old robbing rich people stage magician version form the sixties or his Criss Angel like son I would have him be a consulting criminal who plans heists, prison breaks, terror attacks, drug or people smuggling by using his illusionist skills to deceive and evade the authorities. He is wanted by the FBI and very little is known about him besides his reputation.

Madame X
Make Nina Vladimirovna Tsiolkovsky a former apprentice and lover of the Chameleon (Dmitri Smerdyakov) with a similar skill set. She wears a fabric mask that can alter to the appearance of anyone. She is a saboteur, spy and terrorist for hire. Tsiolkovsky spends so much time pretending to be other people that she sometimes forgets who she is and develops self identity issues. She believes she actually is the people she becomes and has trouble returning to being herself. She could also be used as a for for Black Widow or the Winter Soldier in international espionage stories.

sounds good. if it were me, i would forget about Darren Cross being Yellowjacket. it doesn't fit his personality or build. i think Stockton would make more sense as Yellowjacket a) because he needs a new costume and b) he's way more of an evil reflection of Pym than Cross is. Cross is the behind the scenes money guy. Stockton was an actual subversive who managed to crack Pym's formula; weaponize pym particles. with Madame X, i like the surrogate to Chameleon angle. or she could even be like Nadia in that she idolized the Chameleon and had been practicing to fill his legacy for whatever shadowy russian agency she served. just to throw in a wrinkle, maybe "she" isn't even really a she. some kind of body dysmorphia would be a great impetus for becoming a professional "chameleon." i don't know that the stuff would work with Cragg; a new Voice maybe. but the latter has just been shown to not be that creative or ambitious. and pretty much anyone could become the voice by having their vocal chords altered. i think that his powers are tech based (but i could be wrong). i like the idea of a villain who could basically turn anyone against the hero though. oh and why stop at one Gargantua? why not an army of them?

[Agent Z]

Shang Chi - the Mandarin would be made into his enemy as the upcoming movie is doing.

[Blind Wedjat]

Doom's arch-enemies should be the Illuminati (or vice versa, I guess). He fits as the moral opposite of some of the members roles. Richards's /McCoy's intelligence, Stark's technology, Strange's magic, T'Challa's/Namor's/Xavier's/Boltagon's politics. I guess you could say the comics did this with Secret Wars and Hickman's New Avengers but I'd really like to see this team and match up again.

I definitely agree about making Black Panther more global or international by showing what he and Wakanda are doing in other countries especially in Africa and so on. Explore if it's completely possible for Wakanda's aid to be completely altruistic and benevolent, or are they simply neocolonialist like other foreign countries taking advantage of Africa right now despite claiming otherwise.

Which brings me to Achebe. Make him less Joker wannabe and more Lex Luthor meets Mission Impossible villain. Someone with immense political power and believes the Black Panther's deeds are secretly nefarious and only in service of himself and to spite Achebe. Also an extremely intelligent villain in terms of strategy, politics and technology so he can hang with T'Challa in those regards. I never really liked the Mephisto connection and rather have that Achebe is crazy all by himself.

Killmonger should be the best possible combination of his 616 origin (his abilities, backstory and hatred for T'Challa) and his MCU counterpart (his other motivations and his look) while removing the cousin dynamic, and adding he's Sekhmet champion that gets stronger with each kill and uses anti-metal Vb weapons and tech.

I'd also add the Mandarin as a villain. Chinese globalist/industrialist/terrorist vs the leader of an African nation just fits all too well. Could lead to some great fight scenes as well.

[chamber-music]

I would use Doctor Crocodile (Joshua N’Dingi) more as a Black Panther foe. He has some similarities with Black Panther with him being a intelligent African monarch educated abroad who wants reform and protect his country. The character is sometimes an antagonist but not is often not a outright villain as what he does is generally for the betterment of his home nation. Doctor Crocodile has allied with Wakanda in the comics most of the time but it would be interesting to see him clash more with them more over the directions of their nations. I think an African cold war between Wakanda and Mbangawi would be interesting to see.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

Janet van Dyne's powers comes from the Brotherhood of Wasps. They are a villian group introduced as the rivals for the Spider totems.

[PCN24454]

For the Spider Characters, I would base their rogues galleries on the decade that they first appeared in. Spider-Man has so many rogues that he honestly isn't losing anything by dividing them out.

Ben Reilly-1970's
Slingers-1990's
Anya Corazon-2000's
Miles Morales-2010's

[Sutekh]

They need an untold tales book to revisit pym's early days and reenvision all of his foes. Whirlwind is the only one to graduate. I would have made Egghead a closet mutant with a hyperactive brain, no need to sleep, and a sadistic streak. I would play up Madame Macabre's connection to the Mandarin and the Ten Rings.

He could have enhanced his own intellect (and given himself a swollen noggin, that requires a neck-brace to support and built-in air conditioning to keep it from overheating, to which he's added a HUD and computer that cybernetically interface with his big ol' brain and allows him to remotely interface with the various tech in his hideout), keeping the 'big head' but giving it a more modern explanation. Perhaps he started with a mutant brain, perhaps he was 'merely' really smart, but now he's even smarter, more so than merely human geniuses like the Wizard or Doc Ock, although not in the class of superbrains like the Leader or the High Evolutionary.

Pym's biggest foe is, of course, Ultron, but I think he's really played out. Perhaps some threats from other realms, like Kosmos, or wherever the mass he 'borrows' when he grows (and that shows up temporarily when he shrinks) comes from. What sort of unintentional havoc might be wrought in that other realms with all this mass appearing and disappearing all the time? What dimensional barriers are being weakened, hanging a big 'all you can eat!' sign for extra-dimensional invaders like Dormammu or Shuma-Gorath or the N'Garai? There's a lot of story and villain potential just based off a casual moment's thought about the nature of his Pym particles...

[Michael Watkins]

He could have enhanced his own intellect (and given himself a swollen noggin, that requires a neck-brace to support and built-in air conditioning to keep it from overheating, to which he's added a HUD and computer that cybernetically interface with his big ol' brain and allows him to remotely interface with the various tech in his hideout), keeping the 'big head' but giving it a more modern explanation. Perhaps he started with a mutant brain, perhaps he was 'merely' really smart, but now he's even smarter, more so than merely human geniuses like the Wizard or Doc Ock, although not in the class of superbrains like the Leader or the High Evolutionary.

Pym's biggest foe is, of course, Ultron, but I think he's really played out. Perhaps some threats from other realms, like Kosmos, or wherever the mass he 'borrows' when he grows (and that shows up temporarily when he shrinks) comes from. What sort of unintentional havoc might be wrought in that other realms with all this mass appearing and disappearing all the time? What dimensional barriers are being weakened, hanging a big 'all you can eat!' sign for extra-dimensional invaders like Dormammu or Shuma-Gorath or the N'Garai? There's a lot of story and villain potential just based off a casual moment's thought about the nature of his Pym particles...

You would think that AIM and the Enclave would be long time rivals of Pym. Both organizations have "bee" motifs. I could see the Enclave seeing Pym as a menace because of his recklessness with science and refusal to focus on practicality. And AIM would have the opposite opinion; championing his reckless pursuit of progress without concern for humanity (skewed interpretation).

[JudicatorPrime]

Would it be cheating to establish that Blue Marvel's rogues gallery would consist of every major villain that was alive and active during the 1960s, including several immortals?