Worst Marvel Comics Villains:
The last decade saw a lot of new and incredible characters grace the pages of Marvel Comics. Along with some good, there were also some pretty bad concepts that became mainstream and the bane of Marvel Comics for the years to come. These supervillains may never be featured in any future Marvel Comic issue but they will always be remembered as Marvel’s greatest failures.
1. Tenfingers
Tenfingers was originally a member of The Hand, an infamous international terrorist organization. Tenfingers learned a lot from The Hand and later on gained superhuman attributes thanks to The Hand’s resources. He later betrayed the organization after he decided to defect and founded his own criminal empire. Called the Church of Sheltering Hands, this Organization tried to take over China-Town and its vast resources.
The church would have succeeded in taking over the cash-rich China-Town if not for Daredevil and his new sidekick Blind Spot. Tenfingers is not a good villain because he represents the age-old concept of a cult leader being shown as the guy who starts the bushfire. That trope has been done and dusted, driven to the ground. Marvel needs to move on to other ideas for an origin story for a supervillain.
2. Regent
Regent’s real name is Augustus Roman. He is a regular guy who had a regular job and led a regular life. After the Avengers fought the Masters of Evil, this regular guy lost his family as collateral damage to the battle. Augustus realized that he is not alone in his grief. A lot of other families have lost their near and dear ones because the Superheroes and Super-Villains could not keep it in their pants.
Augustus designs a special suit of armor that can absorb the powers of other superhumans. He would have been a hit but the cheesy way he was written combined with the fact that his story is extremely similar to several other villains’ makes him just another villain of the day. He had a lot of potentials but in the end, he too ended up becoming generic because of lazy writing.
3. Wraith
Yuri Watanabe was a fairly popular supporting character in the pages of Spider-Man lore. She was the hot-headed, rule-bending New York Police Department Captain who would do anything to get the job done. In more ways than one, Yuri Watanabe was the quintessential anti-hero cop. Then Marvel pulled off the unthinkable. Like always, Marvel turned a good character into an unpopular one by introducing unnecessary changes to its back story.
Yuri ended up using the equipment of the other supervillains that Spider-Man had defeated to become Wraith, the Spider-Man hunting vigilante who had a very twisted take on giving out justice. Wraith was the enemy number one of Superior Spider-Man and the more they showed her in action, the more the fans hated her.
4. Toxin
The writers at Marvel Comics have confirmed that symbiotes are innately evil. They are born as avatars of crime. Venom ended up becoming a superhero because it learned from its mistakes and mended the error of his ways. That was not the case with Toxin. The toxin is the child of Carnage and the grandchild of Venom. And Marvel made Toxin a typical clueless villain who did not know what he was doing.
To add insult to injury, the symbiote found its way back to Eddie Brock, who used it for a time to regain his status as the Lethal Protector. Toxin only cares about him-self rather than everybody else. He is not a superhero and many would claim he is also not a supervillain. He lies somewhere in between and the fact that fans do not know how to interpret Toxin as the newest member of the superhuman gallery of Marvel is also a matter of grave concern. Marvel itself does not know what to do with Toxin!
5. Lady Stilt Man
Lady Stilt Man is the very epitome of incompetence. Marvel has a tendency to remake old legacy villains with a modern twist that resonates with the times. Realizing that they needed more women representation in the villains’ corridor, they gave the mantle of Stilt man that originally belonged to Wilbur Day to Callie Ryan.
Marvel did not even do a good job at giving her a good enough superhero codename for compensating for that. They just threw the word Lady in front of Stilt Man. Callie Ryan has become more of a laughing stock in the Superhero community. She is only used as a punching bag for the other superheroes and since she is easily defeated, she is either always a plot device or a confidence booster for others.
6. Orchis
Orchis is not an individual but an entire organization. It is an amalgam of different prominent forces in the Marvel Comic Book Universe. Orchis is composed of Shield, Armor, Hydra, Alpha Flight, Sword, hammer, and Aim. As a result, it is a total soup. The very objective of Orchis is to prevent humanity from being wiped out. It is a pretty malevolent aim but their methods really do suck when it comes to executing their grand plan.
Orchis is generally dominated or influenced by the elements of Hydra, Aim and Hammer something that an organization should have thought of before allowing such evil people into their ranks. Orchis is a failure and Marvel knows it as well. It is just that they have invested so much of their time and resources to come up with this idea that they are biased enough to let it run amok.
7. Don of the Dead
Don of the Dead was a flop because he was basically a racist stereotype. What do you get when you combine a Mexican guy and a skull theme? Why the Day of the Dead of course!! Don of the Dead was inspired by the Taskmaster and he too started wearing a Skull mask and embodied the Day of the Dead parade in his shenanigans.
Don of the Dead represents everything that is wrong with how people of color are featured in popular culture. Don of the Dead did not even have any good character development or appearances worthy of it being re-featured again in the pages of Marvel Comics. The comic book readers quickly lost interest in a guy who served nothing more than a sad excuse for comic relief.
8. The Golden Skull
The Golden Skull is the grand-son of the villain (yeah you guessed right) – the Red Skull. In the future, the world is scared of a new threat in the form of an evil businessman and criminal mastermind who goes by the name the Golden Skull. The Golden Skull does not aim to conquer the world and purge it into the pits of racial purity like his grandfather. Instead, his only objective is vastly materialistic in nature.
The Golden Skull only wants to become richer and richer. He will go to any extent to achieve wealth beyond the wildest imaginations of humanity. Regularly coming at odds with the future Captain America aka Daniella Cage, daughter of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, the Golden Skull’s bland super villain ambitions bored the fans.
9. Pets of Evil Masters
What was Marvel thinking when they thought that vetting such an idea would actually make then any money?? What do you get when you think that making the pet animals of the Super Heroes and the pets of Super-Villains fight each other in a grand battle royale? We will give you the answer A TOTAL DISASTER!! Animal super villains sound as ridiculous as a concept.
Even a child would know that it will not work. Marvel still tried it out. After giving it a spin, Guardians Team-Up became the comic book laughing stock of the century. They were created, according to Marvel, to tickle our funny bones but they were still included in the official Marvel Villains’ list so we know that Marvel is lying. They wanted these little critters to go the full-fledged villain route. Right now they are just trying to do some damage control by covering their tracks.
10. Big Murder
They have an army of creative artists and writers that are really good at what they do. They have people who were trained for coming up with new concepts and ideas that could catch the attention of the new generation, which is saying something. And the best they could come up with is Big Murder. The name itself sounds like a villain who would be the primary antagonist if a Teletubbies movie was ever made. Marvel realized that they had done a gross mistake with Big Murder and soon discontinued the villain from ever appearing again in the comic books. Let’s hope it stays that way.
