Kala, Queen of the Netherworld was always a fun villain to me.
Kala, Queen of the Netherworld was always a fun villain to me.
Mojo can teleport and transport people through time, space, and reality, allowing him to basically kidnap anyone he wants whenever he wants. Then he can alter their brains and bodies however he wishes and even send them back in time to hunt themselves. His body is so corrupt that Rogue can't touch him without being overwhelmed. He can magically stand up to Dr. Strange. He loves brainwashing people to fight against their own friends to the death and even after they die, he can still bring them back as his slaves.
Yet he's usually just used as "ha ha funny tv parody."
Kulan Gath. He is insanely powerful and unbelievably dangerous. Despite Manhattan being full of superheroes, he easily took control of the whole city and turned it into a medieval nightmare out of Conan. The cover to Uncanny X-Men #190 scared the crap out of me as a kid. Scream Xavier scream indeed.
I'd love to see a Sphinx again, either the original or the lady from New Warriors. (Not enough Big Bad tier ladies, IMO, although I'd prefer a leading lady villain who isn't derivative of a pre-existing dude.) Any villain that wants to recreate the glory of Phaoronic-era Egypt (and the power to pull it off, and a fancy hat) has my vote!
Mad Thinker is definitely another I'd like to see more use of, but staying in the background, using words as weapons. I LOVE the soft retcon that he mindjobbed Reed Richards into supporting the Registration Act in Civil War by convincing him of the inevitability of bad things happening if superhumans weren't regulated (and so *guaranteed* that bad things would indeed happen, and that Reed would be helping to make it happen!). Just the thought that he ran game on Richards amuses me.
And as long as we're considering New Warriors villains that don't get enough play, the High Evolutionary makes for a powerful not-entirely-a-villain-but-still-must-be-opposed-sometimes antagonist. He's got his own potential army of 'New Men/Knights of Wundagore,' any of whom can use his high technology, and some of which, like Mongoose, can have super-powers as well. (A team with a cheetah or hummingbird-person speedster, eagle-person flier, rhino or bear-person tank, etc. could be fun.) Wyndham's not always a villain, but could certainly embrace some initiatives that a hero team would oppose, like culling various deviant or mutant strains of humanity (things he's attempted in the past...), or trying to otherwise 'prune the garden' of humanity by weeding out people he considers 'undesirables' (like clones or alien half-breeds).
I know, right?! Since Cosmos in Collision coincided with The Infinity Gauntlet, even Thanos couldn't come to grips with the competition.
Last edited by K7P5V; 02-14-2024 at 09:44 AM. Reason: Made Adjustments.
"Good-bye. Good luck. Good riddance."
Wasn't the High Evolutionary the main villain of Christopher Yost's New Warriors a decade ago exactly because he intended to cull humanity of its various superpowered genetic offshoots after being tricked by Zuras, then the leader of the Eternals, into believing this was the only way to save humanity as a whole from being completely purged by the Celestials? And when the Eternals were made to realize the Celestials weren't coming (yet) and they'd been tricked by Zuras, too . . . Zuras claimed the High Evolutionary was the one that tricked him in the first place to retain his own standing with them. Plus, he was revisited in the last couple of issues of the current X-Men run, so . . .
As for Mad Thinker, him manipulating the in-universe invention of "psychohistory" to trick Reed Richards into supporting the SHRA and doing more damage to the superhero community and his own family than just about any villain . . . that would probably be the only way to make him viable/acceptable/forgivable as a hero still after some of the atrocious s*** he was complicit in during Civil War. Points. Mad points for the Mad Thinker.
The spider is always on the hunt.
Moses Magnum. Anyone who can do this to Wolverine and Colossus deserves better treatment than how they've handled him.
The guy controls one of the fundamental forces and gets turned into a weak lackey.
I think, to a degree, The Abomination is under appreciated. He's primarily considered a strength-based Hulk villain, but if you think about it, Emil Blonsky was a spy before he was turned. He should be cunning, calculating, a master strategist with plans within plans on how to reach his objective. Imagine an evil James Bond and then give him the powers of the Hulk. Hell, I'd even argue that Abomination should be more in the camp of the mastermind villains than the brute villains.
But my big one here is...Swarm. He's played for laughs anymore, it seems, but a Nazi scientist whose body is entirely made up of bees, every single one of which he has control over, is absolutely terrifying. I'd love to see a scenario where, as far as leftover WWII antagonists go, they finally give the Red Skull a rest and lean into the horror aspects, both in terms of his physical being and the atrocities he committed, of Swarm. This guy should be a much bigger player on the villain scene.