Okay... we all know that any type of hero has it's opposite... A character that challanges the hero both physically and mentally. All depends on what type of story and what type of hero... For Guybrush Threepwood it was LeChuck, for The Prince of Shapir it was Ad Avis, for me it is George Lucas... pompous bearded freak... Shove that lightsaber up your--
...
Back on topic here...
Who do you think is the most compelling supervillan? Catagories considered should be appearance, powers, personality, feats of evil (or coolness), and (sometimes) connection to the hero. This is not to be confined to any genre. Comic books, movies, adventure games, books, my home-made movie of me attempting to assasinate the beloved creator of Star Wars... (On sale October 15th!)
I hope i'm not misunderstoon... I mean ANY villan. Ever. Anything you can possibly think of that has done something evil and deserves to be crowned the best supervillan ever.
It has to be Dr. Evil. The scariest & funniest evil doctor on the planet.
He eventually got friggin sharks with laser beams on their head. How evil can that be.
There's no better measure than success. I get sick of villains that make stupid mistakes so that the hero can win. I have great admiration for genuinely clever/intelligent villains.
I can't think of any off the top of my head but combine that quality with sheer charm and ...cooleness and you've got my favourite villain.
Satan ...
Truely a great villian.
"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled ... was convincing the world he doesn't exist."
- Verbal Kent
The greatest supervillain ever is the Joker. Alot of people see him as being just some weirdo, but it's not until you read some of Frank Miller's work where you can really see that the Joker isn't the Assclown that Mark Hamill, Cesar Romero, and Jack Nicholson made him out to be (but then again, everyone who ever played Batman did the same to him). The Joker is a truly horrifying enemy: true madness incarnate. His desire for omnicide and his complete lack of compassion for anything that breathes... In The Dark Knight Returns he poisons an entire Boy Scout troupe to leave as a present for the Batman... There is of course the fact that, although it was in the movie that Batman actually created him, that the Joker only exists because Batman does... If there were no Dark Knight, there would be no Clown Prince of Crime, which is a fact that has made Batman numerous times want to hang up his Batarangs. The Joker might not have any superpowers, but what he lacks in that department he totally makes up for by just being truly and entirely psychopathic.
Darth Vader, of course...
I agree with Darth Mandarb on this one, but one more:
The green Goblin (not as seen in the movie), from Spiderman. He's the guy who killed Gwen Stacy. Unforgetable and unforgivable!
This also gives away my love for spiderman and Marvel Comics (not anymore though...)
What about Gargamel, from The Smurfs!
He rocked.
Two words... Lex Luthor
Best villain ever. C'mon he had no real powers and he stood up to Superman, yes the man of steel himself! But like all super-villains he always fell just short of succeeding.
Another good supervillain would be Darth Vader, but he wasn't all that evil, he turned good at the last minute, he started out good, he wasn't even the real bad guy, just their henchman.
Magneto, mainly because the rets have stupid "insanity" or shallow "world domination" concepts.
But superheros are better without supervillians in my opnion. When they fight against their own fuckups, it's far more entertaining.
Oh, and Kraven the Hunter, homoeroticism incarnate, oh baby.
Mmmm... Darth Mandarb mentiones Verbal Kent... That reminds me that Keyser Sossek was cool. I love the usual suspects... specially because:
SPOILER
Spoiler
It's the story of a man in a big mess... Keyser (Verbal) invents all that story to scape of the police station, but the film is the story of his greatest failute. He makes it all in the movie to eliminate a guy who saw him, but at the end of the fiml there's a lot of witnesses who know how does Keyser look.
That makes the film soo lovely, IMHO...
Does Predator count as supervillain? He's the coolest!
Ofcourse Mandarin (http://ironman12.homestead.com/files/mandarin.jpg) ;D ;D from "Ironman", which was my favorite cartoon when I was little. :)
Baron Rakosi and Dr. Hellingen
http://www.fumettando.it/viaggiodizagor/mostri/rakosi/rakosi_sin.jpg
http://www.scanner.it/strips/images/hellingen.gif
Dr. Doom always held some sort of fascination for me...
Dr. Nonookie all the way! :=
-Eigen
After watching 60 episodes of the Teenage mutant ninja turtles in a row I feel numb and undecided between Shredder and Krang whom we all know naturally, but I think shredder must be it, since he's always there to make things difficult! And he's evil, talks in an evil way and all...
Syndrome from the Incredibles is pretty evil! He kills all these supers to make his creations withstand the next supers. (...and all because he had a super for a role model that was too busy.)
And another EVIL villan would be Bram Stoker's Dracula! (...aslo in Castlevania and many other mediums.)
I don't know if I would consider Satan as a villan... he is much much more!!!
If satan ever were to be seen as a villan, he would have to be everything that is evil.
As for dracula... couldn't agree with you more, man :)
My brother and I came up with a pantheon of "absurd" (not merely "silly") villains and heroes years ago, and I did a few comics.
Of those I drew, my favourite is "Christmas Tree" a giant talking christmas tree. Everything he did was iconic to the comics. He appears by shattering through a skylight, pot and all (he has no mouth or eyes or any cartoony features) and immediately demands all the "Mr. Sponge" action figures.
When the heroes confront him he has this incredibly bad line, "Eat ornaments do gooders!" and shoots a barrage of tinsel and bulbs. Just fun to do. Possibly the stupidest idea for a villain I've ever seen -- except for my favourite, below.
My favourite "super" villains of all time though (not just villains, because that makes things far too complex) are a mix between Magneto, the Joker (same reasons as those above, though I mostly know them through descriptions of the novels and comics, and from the movies and cartoons having rarely ever read them), Boy and Girl and the Chairman.
Boy and Girl were invented by my younger brother, and are two percotious children that happen to be insanely powerful. At one point they turn the creator of the universe into a monkey riding a tricycle. They can destroy the entire earth in less than a blink, and often do. Their only weaknesses are that they are easy to distract (with toys or videos or what-have-you) for a few minutes at a time, and that they obey their parents (two celestial beings with no real powers, per se) and their babysitter, the Tower of Evil.
But if he had had more than one appearance in a comic, by and large my favourite villain would have been the Chairman. Every panel of his scuffle with Spiderman made less sense taken out of context than the last, and the entire premise blows my attempts at parody out of the water. You can't parodize this, folks:
http://www.seanbaby.com/hostess/spidman20.htm
Mmm, chairs.
EDIT: Looking again, my favourite bit of that comic is right around panels 4 and 5. THe more I think about it (my mistake) the less sense any of it makes, from the internal logic of the comic itself, through to the attempt to actually sell cakes.
The Villian from the movie "Saw"
because he wasn't caught. And he has some disease. and he's old.
Yes, but Rui Dr. Doom was not evil at all.
All he did was trying to free his mother from eternal hell (?)
and his face was burnt from trying to do that, thus the mask.
He is just a tormented soul nothing more.
and of course I've seen him work alongside with ironman and of course when taken the place of the Beyonder he was not evil at all.
I don't know, fascinating of course but not evil. Well but... super villan maybe...
Dr. Doom knows when to fight alongside the heros when he has to because he's not dumb...
About the rescuing his mom from hell, Reed Richards gave him advice on it, saying otherwise it wouldn't work. Doom ignored Richard's advice, thus the machine blew up as Reed predicted. The explosion gave him a long scar on his "perfect" face, yet doom blamed it on richards and put on a "piping hot mask of evil" to cover his "Horribly Scarred Visage". The mask scarred his face WAY more than the machine did. Plus, he's an oppressive tyrant over a third world nation who's entire purpose in life it to kill the fantastic four. Just because he's a tortured soul doesn't mean he's not evil. Most of his torturing he had brought upon himself, simply because his swelled ego got in the way of his judgement. I don't really read the regular FF comic books, but i know that in Ultimate Fantastic Four he did evil things out of pure spite and self conceit.
Saying Dr. Doom's not evil is like saying a man who was abused as a child--who killed 15 people before subdued--doesn't deserve to be put in jail or killed, because he was warped by his abusive father. Horrible as abuse may be, there are many people who survived child abuse and grew up to be fully functional members of society and generally decent human beings.
Paste-Pot Pete.
That or
(http://www.sylpher.com/novomestro/stuff/fatsuit.jpg)
General Grevious.
He's a robot, he's a coward, he wears a cape, and he coughs all the time. Come on, he's hilarious.
The best villain evar is Molecule Man. He could manipulate everything whenever he wanted. The only thing keeping him from destroying the world was his therapist. (He later joined Dr Doom and those evil fellows..)
I guess that a lot of people here read Marvel comics. Whatever happened to DC or Dark horse?
This, for example:
(http://www.bicycle-for-slugs.org/ac/295/mischief.jpg)
My answer to the initial question, of course, is Superman, trite as this may sound to some by now.
You know, I think I like the phrase "streaks towards the moon" most out of those panels. Space-nudity is always the answer!
Definitely the timeless Professor Moriarty - the only man who could bring Sherlock Holmes to his death.
Anyone who can outsmart that dude has got to be good.
But Sherlock Holmes didn't die ;)
(neither did Moriarty, if you accept The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen as canon)
so that asian sunami was cuased by superman....?? ???
I rethought. Dr. Doom is NOT my favourite villain.
Go Venom!
Quote from: nikolasideris on Sat 24/09/2005 10:49:10
I guess that a lot of people here read Marvel comics. Whatever happened to DC or Dark horse?
I don't know, but it's just what we do... All the comics I read are the ones my older brother buys, so whatever he gets I read :P
Edit: In FF # 500, entitled "The Unthinkable" Doom made a deal with the demons of hell forsaking science for the rest of his life and sacraficed his only love Valeria to these demons and wore her skin as "leather" armor to increase his dark magic abilities. He became stronger than Dr. Strange and banished the FF to hell. Evil? Nah.
Winnowill!!
(How's that for obscure comic-book villains?) :D
HoN
Obscure is fine... but... none of us know who the hell Winowill is, so it doesn't really contribute to our discussion here. could you explain a little?
Batman. Final.
Yes, I'm quite amazed that some people read so much Marvel comics. I sticked to Bonelli, at least they didn't have gay outfits. :=
Spoiler
I really like Samuel L Jacksons character in 'Unbreakable'
I would love to see him and Frozone from The Incredibles have a fight...
Speaking of The Incredibles...Syndrome was pretty great too.
Rasputin.
Quote from: King_Nipper on Sun 25/09/2005 03:59:53
Obscure is fine... but... none of us know who the hell Winowill is, so it doesn't really contribute to our discussion here. could you explain a little?
Winnowill is the main villainess of the ElfQuest comic book series, seen here:
(http://xs48.xs.to/pics/05391/Winnowill-threat1.jpg)
And hey, she can't be THAT obscure. She's got her own entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnowill) on Wiki!
HoN
...Wikipedia can't lie... It knows everything. Cool :)
I don't know if anybody would consider this a "villain" (definetly not a SUPERvillain), but I think the best protagonist would have to be Percy in the movie the Green Mile. He was such a little turd. Everyone I know who saw that movie said they hated him as well.
Out of what's been mentioned already, I totally agree with Farlander, and whoever mentioned Dr Moriarty (I LOVE LoEG btw) and Mr. Hyde for mentioning Percy (one of the few movie characters I -truly- felt hate towards. I find that movie difficult to watch because of him).
...that still doesn't explain anything to me. I don't follow batman comics, so I don't know what you're talking about.
Pinhead. He owns me, and all of you as well. Don't fight it - you know you want to see the pleasures he can show you - the adventures of flesh that await!
;D
Reading this list I'm a bit surprised that one of the most villanous villain (at least in my opinion) is missing. He's reckless, cruel, a agonized soul, he reigns like a god over a tribe and doesn't hesitate before brutality. Maybe his appearance isn't so shocking because the whole movie feels like your in the centre of the forecourt of hell and you reach it at the end, while you met him. What is so frightening about him is how calm he reacts, he talks in a soft voice, without any visible anger. He's a truly psychotic.
I am talking about Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, Apocalypse Now.
He looks like this:
(http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Mptv/1120/6365-0100.jpg)
General Zod from Superman 2 (not the comic version, who is a pansy and should always be ignored always).
Either him, or Winnowill, who is probably the most evil comic book character I have ever seen.
Kobras, without a doubt.
snidely whiplash and boris badenov :=
Quote from: magintz on Thu 22/09/2005 11:17:07
Two words... Lex Luthor
Best villain ever. C'mon he had no real powers and he stood up to Superman, yes the man of steel himself! But like all super-villains he always fell just short of succeeding.
I agree with Magnitz here, being a major fan of the superman comics series cartoons and smallville...
Lex is by far the coolest slickest most needed and sometimes wanted super villian of al time! Besides the
guy drives a Porche... that has to add atleast another 100% to his evil-ness 8) <- lex cause he aint got no hair either!
That dude that ran the Cobra Kai martial arts academy in Karate Kid....Just down and dirty, he managed to pull one over on the Karate Kid, even thouh he was "The best, oh oh, nothings gonna ever keep him down"....
I remember him saying "You can't fight, if you can't breath". +200 bastard points right there...
Orsted from Live-A-Live. A Super Famicon RPG which I reccomend. He has a perfect backstory...
Spoiler
His friend, Straybow, winds up hating him because Orsted always beated Straybow in everything. Straybow even goes as far as to allude him into believing the king was actually the demon lord, so Orsted kills the king and winds up fleeing he very castle he once protected to the death...for his life. Straybow winds up saving the princess from the true demon lord, and he faces Orsted in a rage, but Orsted once again(hopefully) proves he is superior. Upon Straybow's death, the princess commits suicide, and Orsted becomes embittered at humans, vowing vengeance and becoming the next demon lord, the very thing he had been struggling to defeat.