10 Crap Supervillains No Hero Ever Wanted to Fight

Not everyone can be Darkseid. Not every mutation can create the Juggernaut or Apocalypse. There's just too many heroes going around for every one of them to have an arch-nemesis like Ultron or The Green Goblin.

That's why there's these guys. The villains no hero ever wanted to have in their rogues gallery. The ones even the lowest ranking Avenger would leave out of their tales of triumph at Tony Stark's next mixer.

1. Dansen Macabre

This feisty young lady first appeared in a Marvel Team up starring Spider-Man and Werewolf. This disciple of a Nepalese cult devoted to Kali (incorrectly labeled as the Goddess of Death) pirouettes around stark naked but for some conveniently located streamers of black energy while boasting some very poorly explained powers, like being able to not be noticed unless she wants to be (wrong outfit for subtlety, love), and then, on the polar opposite of the scale, being able to hypnotize anyone who watches her dance. Apparently she can kill people with her dancing too, but we never see that.

Villains based on the performing arts are understandably interesting. Take Clayface for example; the passion and obsession of an actor makes a great villainous concept. The beauty and precision of a dancer is just as exciting, and that's why Marvel already have a villain who is a dancer; she's called Spiral, and she is AWESOME. You don't see Spiral prancing around in the buff trying to get the attention of a second rate hero team like the Midnight Sons.

So much more could have been done with a character inspired by the most complex of Hindu deities. Although she did turn up again recently in Marvel Zombies, poor Dansen Macabre has gone the way of most dances of the 80's. Into obscurity.

2. Mighty Endowed

Yeah, you read that right. Nina Dowd was a talented (but plain) archaeologist working on the dig of her career, and upon discovery of a mysterious relic from an ancient civilization, she just couldn't resist reaching out to touch it. The magic of the object transformed the woman into a supervillain of unique and terrible dimensions. When Young Justice turned up to battle her, they had no idea they would be confronted with the Mighty Endowed.

You guessed it, she's got magic tits.

Dowd was transformed into a sexy cat-like woman, bearing the most powerful breasts in comic book history. Too great in scope and magnificence to ever appear on the page, they emit a blazing strobe light that can hypnotize and control minds with but a single glance, or just plain freak people out. Young Justice brace themselves for the fight of their lives against the fearsome Endowed, only to have her upper body weight drag her over to lie helplessly on the floor, until she's dragged away and imprisoned.

The craziest part is, the bicycle-like object she touched is revealed to be of Apokoliptic origin, belonging to the New Gods, and actually a big part of DC universe lore. What's next for the Mighty Endowed? Think of the plot opportunities! Kryptonite pasties! The ultimate chest-off against Power Girl!

3. Crazy Quilt

There was a time when all it took to be a Batman villain was a really dodgy bit of tailoring. None more so were guilty of this most heinous of crimes than the malevolent Crazy Quilt.

A throwback from forgotten comic Boy Commandos, Crazy Quilt would reappear to terrorize Gotham City. Now Crazy Quilt actually has a fairly interesting backstory, unlike most of these losers. A skilled painter with many dark connections to the criminal underworld, Crazy Quilt left clues to heists in his paintings (sixty years before the Da Vinci Code, people!). When betrayed and shot by a fellow criminal, Crazy Quilt's eyesight is irreparably altered to see nothing but blindingly bright colours all the time, like being stuck in Saturday morning television forever.

Naturally, becoming Crazy Quilt and engaging in a colour based crime spree, he creates a helmet that blazes bright colours and....hypnotizes. Oh. That again. Also, sometimes he fires lasers.

Crazy Quilt would return to menace Batman and Robin on many occasions in the Golden Age, but was thankfully mostly forgotten about by the time a more fashionable metal came around. 

4. The Orb

The Residents were popular in the seventies, that much is clear. This eye catching chap was a Ghost Rider villain who appeared to be halfway between Evil Knievel and a Masters of the Universe action figure. Disfigured in an accident during a motorcycle race against Ghost Rider's old mentor, Drake Shannon was left horribly scarred and burning for revenge. He was then given his signature great big Eyeball helmet for NO CLEAR REASON by They Who Wield Power with which to retake the traveling motorcycle show he once part owned. And he occasionally took part in some petty larceny when someone remembered him enough to use him. The Orb thinks big.

As for the powers of the dreaded Orb? ...Hypnosis. How groundbreaking. Oh and sometimes.... he fired lasers. Again.

Let's face it, the Orb just can't compete. I'd take a villain with a great rack over a big eye anytime.

NEWS! The Orb has stepped up his game with a major new appearance in a Marvel Universe crossover event in recent times. Not to spoil anything, but it's the event with the great big eye on the cover of every issue. What's next? Mighty Endowed partners with Darkseid? Crazy Quilt confirmed main antagonist in Arkham Knight? The possibilities are endless!

5. Stiltman

It generally takes some examples of truly exceptional level talents to be a superhuman. We're usually talking world class Engineer, Technician, Athlete, etc. No one who is just kinda good at their Tech career becomes Iron Man. Elektra didn't get a B in gymnastics. Wilbur Day was the guy who just didn't quite excel in supervillain school. When he stole advanced designs to construct that stupid ass metal outfit I'm sure he was damn proud of himself and all, and that's good. But when your name, and the main feature of your ability deals with having long legs that go up and down, you aren't going to be leading the masters of Evil anytime soon.

Now go take a look at Stiltman's Wikipedia page. 'Competent Engineer and Inventor'. Yeah, so was the smart kid in high school shop class. 'Moderately Talented disguise artist'. I could better than that after my first year in Drama school. And this loser goes around acting like he's on the same level as Iron Man and Crimson Dynamo.

They'd take one look at his resume over at Stark Industries and the best job he'd get offered would be cleaning up Hulk poo.

Stiltman and his amazingly long legs would commit robberies of very high places. Occasionally tangling with the likes of Daredevil. He turned up a lot over the years somehow, battling a variety of heroes who foiled his nefariously tall schemes. Until of course he tangled with the Punisher, who showed Stiltman what was what and shot him in the face, and that was the story of Stiltman. You could say... it was a tall tale.

6. Mad Mod

Now if being British was a superpower, I would be Doomsday. I British way better in a more British way than most other British people could hope to dream of. Mad Mod, on the other hand, took it to the next level. Mad Mod made a villain out of Anglophilia.

A Teen Titans villain whose ENTIRE deal was being British, Mad Mod was an artsy fashion designer with a Beatles haircut who made a criminal career out of importing designer clothes. Hardly Lex Luthor stuff there, I know, but when you're English you just do everything more stylishly. Mad Mod didn't really have any powers to speak of. But hey, at least he isn't trying to hypnotize anybody.

Mad Mod would go on to such nefarious schemes as blagging the Crown Jewels, and putting the letter U in more words than those pesky Americans would.

Turning up again years down the line, Mad Mod would return in the animated Teen Titans series, voiced by British person Malcolm McDowell. This incarnation of the Mod was a crazed inventor, and a brilliant way for the showrunners to turn everything he did into a reference to British pop culture, with homages to everything from Monty Python to Yellow Submarine.

Interestingly enough, England might be just about the only country you could base an entire character around gross stereotypes of, and it still doesn't seem racist for some reason. I mean, if you made a Mexican villain a taco eating luchador with pet chickens...that would just be irresponsibly racist. Wouldn't it?

7. Animal-Vegetable-Mineral-Man

Just look at that name. Whoever created this guy had all the chances in the world to come up with a better name. This was the 60's. The comic book world hadn't taken all the names yet. There was room for great, memorable names still to be had! But no. Animal-Vegetable-Mineral-Man stood tall in the face of his enemies, the Doom Patrol.

A Swedish scientist who fell into a vat of amino acids, AVMM, as he shall now be referred to, gained the amazing ability to transfigure any part of his body into parts of animals, minerals, or indeed vegetables.

There really isn't that much more to say about this guy, other than if you're taking a stroll down the street one day, just looking to fight crime in a nice peaceful way, and a villain comes screaming at you down the street hopping on the legs of an Alpaca with a parsnip for a head and waving arms made out of collard greens and the Starship Enterprise, he doesn't need to have AVMM emblazoned on his shirt for you to know just who you're dealing with. 

That really has to be one of the worst names in comic book history.

Proteor, Shapemaster, He could've been 'The Major General', even. Doom Patrol is lucky a plucky little rip off turned into the X-Men, or it would just have nothing to show for itself.

8. The Terrible Trio

We all know DC's Terrible Trio. Three everyday criminals who wore zoot suits and animal masks and end up looking like something you'd find when you've spent too long on Google Earth. They menaced Batman from now and then, and were generally dated as hell. But at least they had a gimmick, shallow as it may have been. The Terrible Trio I've picked for this list is another Terrible Trio altogether. One so awful that it takes all three of them to fill one spot on this list.

Let me take you back to the 60's, where villains needed catchy names and the most random and seemingly useless powers in the history of comic books. Doctor Doom assembled a fearsome team of three plucky criminals from the streets, and gave them superpowers loosely themed on them. It really was that simple in those days.

The aptly named Terrible Trio consisted of Bull Brogin, who was quite strong. Yogi Dakor, who has every racist Indian Yogi stereotype under the sun at his disposal, including fire invulnerability, snake charming, and riding a flying carpet, and of course Handsome Harry, who possesses the amazing power of super hearing. Super hearing, yes. For all the hearing based super villainy.

These losers would battle the Fantastic Four, with little measure of success. Because lets face it, being a bit strong ain't gonna help your ass against the Thing, and being invulnerable to Johnny Storm's flames still ain't gonna help your ass against the Thing. In a moment of truly genre defining trickery, they use an asbestos blanket against the human torch. That's the equivalent of going up against Ice Man armed with one of those heated blankets for joint pain or trying to battle Magneto wearing a rubber wetsuit.

In the years gone by, the Terrible trio have been lost to time and better super villains. Ones who have powers extending beyond the ability piss off an entire ethnic group or to overhear your neighbors having sex at 2am. 

9. Leap Frog

Now Stan Lee created a lot of characters in his time. Dozens of the greats of the comic book universe sprung from the brow of Stan the Man. Of course, you can't create as many characters as he did without producing a fair number of absolutely shite ones along the way as well.

Leap-Frog (who was French, obviously) dressed like a giant frog, with green flippers, googly eyes and all, and bounced around committing petty larceny with his amazing power of jumping.

That really is all there is to it. A goofy as fuck outfit with springs on the soles of his feet.

His backstory involved him being a designer of novelty goods, driven mad with the tiresome repetition of his job. Because everyone who works at Mattel goes out and builds a giant flaming death steed when work on the My Little Pony line gets boring. He probably had an amphibian based catchphrase to match, but I just can't be bothered to read enough old 70's Daredevil books to find it.

Leap Frog would menace Daredevil for a brief time, before retiring from the crime game.

You'd think a villain so awkward would have the good graces to stay forgotten, but no. Years later a second soul took up the proud mantle of Leap-Frog to battle Daredevil once more, only to be chucked off a building into a trash compactor in his first appearance. Stay dead that Leap-Frog? No sir! The resurrected Leaping terror would return Yet AGAIN to battle the Avengers, and be unceremoniously mullered by Wolverine. Because in French chess, Canadian trumps Frog person.

10. Metal Master

You know what I love? Characters that are just other characters, only crap. Stan the Man and his trusty pal Steve Ditko struck again when they created Metal Master. Practically the defining example of suffering other-better-character-related-crapness, and the worst part is, he came before his significantly more powerful and momentously popular successor, Magneto.

Metal Master has control over metal. Kinda like how Magneto has control over magnetism. But of course magnetism has a million other uses besides, suddenly making the ability to reform metal molecules less impressive. Sure, Metal Master tangled with the Hulk, and messed some heroes up pretty bad in his time, but his character design was absolute arse, and his power was never explored or really defined. (His powers wouldn't work on ALL metals, y'see.) I'm sure Stan and Steve were chuffed with themselves for thinking him up at the time, until Stan and Jack Kirby got together later that year and decided to make the same character, only a million times better, with a thrilling back story and a provocative psychological drive, who would go on decades later to be voted IGN's greatest comic book villain of ALL TIME. Yeah, don't seem to cool now do you Metal Master?

In summary, just like real life, the worlds of comic books are filled with wonderful characters, and just as many absolutely horrible ones we never wanted to meet in the first place. You won't thrill at the sight of Leap-Frog on the cover of the new issue of Thor, no one will wait with baited breath to see who they cast as Stiltman in Avengers: Age of the Silly Stilt Bastard, and you don't want The Mighty Endowed in your Heroclix army (Unless she's anatomically correct, maybe).

Think you can dig up a worse villain? By all means, let me know... These losers, the Z-listers lurking at the back of the supervillainy class will always have have a very special place in our hearts.

Book Review: The Shattered Sea Trilogy by Joe Abercrombie

Let's talk about Joe Abercrombie.

For those of you not familiar with him, picture the dark fantasy conflicts of George R R Martin, with the biting humour of Terry Pratchett and the sharp human dialogue of 'Stand By Me' era Stephen King, and you've got an inkling of what you might find in a Joe Abercrombie book.

Within the pages of an average book by ol' Joe, you'll find scoundrel lit at its finest. Characters ranging from grim, archetypal barbarians to shifty rogues and tortured old heroes fill the pages. But it's beneath the expected personalities where you'll find a complexity and nuance of character you won't find in other stories of the genre. Here are barbarians who doubt themselves, question their morals, and fight with the simple concept of barbarism. Storied commanders on the battlefield, with songs sung of their bravery, but fed up with the blood and the fighting, desiring nothing more than a farm or a wife to settle down with. These are human characters, with real faults and believable flaws, and it's easy to fall in love with the most heartless, hateful soul when you get to know them well enough.

Joe Abercrombie appeared on the fantasy scene only a short time ago, with an under-the-radar trilogy called The First Law. Chronicling the exploits of three seemingly unconnected heroes (in the vaguest sense of the word) who're swept into the machinations of superpowers far beyond their scope of understanding. It's bloody, hilarious, and genuinely thoughtful by turns.
With some of the most brutally lovable and enjoyably despicable characters I'd seen in the genre in years, I found the whole trilogy impossible to put down.
Joe would continue the world of The First Law with three more stand alone books, before expanding his horizons with an entirely new trilogy.

The Shattered Sea, the collected name for the trilogy of Half a King, Half the World, and Half a War, is Joe's latest work, and following in the footsteps of his earlier worlds, it's dark, gritty and fun all the way.

The Shattered Sea follows the events surrounding an inevitable war boiling amidst bordering countries, each individual nation with their own kings and queens, governed over in turn by a seemingly benevolent High King and his devious minister. Borders are being threatened, lines are being redrawn, and thrones are being vacated at an alarming rate. Unrest is particularly present in Gettland, where the young prince Yarvi is torn from his future as a respected minister when the male line above him is extinguished in a single night, leaving him as the unexpected and undesired monarch. In a world where kings are expected to be mighty warriors, Yarvi stands a frail figure with a crippled hand, but a mind sharp as any blade.

Half a King, the first book in the series, follows the first steps into the crooked rule of unexpected King Yarvi, as the broken King uses his wits and knowledge alone to survive backstabbing, betrayal, slavery and the advances of a drunken pirate queen. From this point on, into the second and third volumes, things only get bigger, wilder, and more enjoyable.

What separates Abercrombie's work from the rest is the fluidity at which our viewpoint character can switch. The story of the heir to the throne of Gettland is but one part of the larger war the Shattered Sea must face. More than just Yarvi's eyes are used to see the looming battle to come, and as the series continues, we're introduced to personalities like the savage Thorn, a young woman undeniably skilled in battle but scorned by other warriors because of her sex, and Brand, an untested warrior thrust Half the World away on a desperate mission to seek aid from the farthest reaches of the Shattered Sea. There are brilliant characters here, and lots of them. It's hard to pick favorites, in truth. Even the smallest roles are given character, history and a life of their own.

Like all great scoundrel lit, the villains are just as fun and likable as the heroes, like the towering barbarian king Grom-Gil-Gorm, whom it is prophesied that no man can kill, and the dashing Bright Yilling, a military commander who worships no higher power but Death herself.

The Shattered Sea books span a decade of plot, counterplot, scheming ministers and outright warfare, with the most dangerous weapons often being wicked minds. The writing is fast, intelligent, energetic and has some pretty solid twists along the way that'll impress the dedicated fantasy fan. Yet, as deep and complex as the story is, it isn't too dense or mired in its own world to be unreachable to casual readers, or even teen readers interested in a more mature fantasy experience.

Joe Abercrombie's work is breathing life into the speculative fiction genre in a way that I can't get enough of. While the story of The Shattered Sea may be over, there's glimpses of more brilliant characters in short stories to be found, and hints at greater enemies to come throughout The First Law trilogy. It's safe to say that whatever Joe has planned, his work certainly isn't over yet.