Remember when King Cobra was considered one of Captain America's biggest enemies as the leader of the Serpent Society? Now he barely shows up, he's lost his leadership to Viper, the last time he was in anything he was the Vulture's flunkie, and the wiki isn't even sure if he's been replaced by his nephew or not because nobody has used his real name in two decades.
The Wrecking Crew were always jobbers, but they used to at least be taken seriously as villains and it would take several pages to defeat them. Now they just appear in crowd scenes and/or job immediately.
Even worse, they job immediately to people that actually should be beneath them. It's one thing to have their shit wrecked by Thor, but another to be slapped around by Kamala, Miles, or Hawkeye.
>another to be slapped around by Kamala, Miles, or Hawkeye.
I'll give you Kamala or Hawkeye, but Miles solos Blackheart.because Venom Blast is the super bestest power ever.
Blackheart is a b***h homie and he just got his ass beat by the Marvel equivalent of the Super Pets
Just cuz he's half black doesn't mean Miles is half-pet.
Wait Miles beat bloody Blackheart?! Like I know that the various individuals with Pete’s powers aren’t no slouches but Blackheart is extremely powerful demon, that doesn’t make too much sense to me. Did Miles at least have major help or something similar?
No, it was a one-shot Venom Blast from him.
Okay, now bring back Toxin.
They look horrible.
The fight they had with the first incarnation of the Thunderbolts was shit.
yeah but didn't they go to shit around the early 80s? what'd they do in Secret Wars again?
nobody remembers because he hasn't been in anything in years
but also he probably stopped being used for the late 80s because Marvel had the GI Joe license and GI Joe had Serpentor, who has a much better backstory and cool toys compared to this guy
virtually the only reason anybody remembers the Serpent Society at all is because of Diamondback, which is like remembering Tidbolt's Traveling Circus because Hawkeye is still around
>nobody remembers because he hasn't been in anything in years
The only thing he's done in recent years is appear in Spencer's Spider-Man and the MJ mini that tied in to it, as part of Vulture's team of animal-themed villains, which both made a point of him having been ousted from the Serpent Society, and put him up against a hero he didn't have much chance against.
>but also he probably stopped being used for the late 80s because Marvel had the GI Joe license and GI Joe had Serpentor, who has a much better backstory and cool toys compared to this guy
Anon, he used to just be "the Cobra" until the Acts of Vengeance event in 1989. He got that upgraded and more Serpentor-inspired armored costume and became King Cobra in the late 80s, after the GI Joe comic had killed off the actual Serpentor (although in a "we can bring him back if Hasbro ever make a new toy" way).
>virtually the only reason anybody remembers the Serpent Society at all is because of Diamondback, which is like remembering Tidbolt's Traveling Circus because Hawkeye is still around
People who like the Serpent Society as a group are generally people who were fans of Mark Gruenwald's Captain America run in the 80s and 90s. Most stories since have misused them as jobbers (including the X-Men books having a weird history of repeatedly grabbing this team of Captain America villains to use as jobbers), and people who haven't read that run are likely only aware of Diamondback.
>and put him up against a hero he didn't have much chance against.
How does him originally being a Thor rogue fit into this?
1960s Marvel did not care about power levels. AT ALL. To some extent this continued into the 70s until the fans-turned-pro writers started to take over. Marvel's Scarecrow, a contortionist with trained crows, started out fighting Iron Man. Most heroes were written as being as powerful as the story and villain required them to be, with Spider-Man in particular could be fighting super-strong opponents like the Rhino or the Scorpion one month, and having trouble fighting the Kingpin the next.
The Cobra starting out as a Thor foe got played up in a Serpent Society story because it left him scared of going up against Thor again.
The ones that woud up with the most use outside of Society were Diamondback, Black Mamba, and Asp (no idea why Marvel never tried to make B.A.D. Girls into its Birds of Prey style book). Constrictor for a while during Priest's Deadpool run. Anaconda seems like a go to when you need a "disposable" female villain as part of a group.
>The ones that woud up with the most use outside of Society were Diamondback, Black Mamba, and Asp (no idea why Marvel never tried to make B.A.D. Girls into its Birds of Prey style book).
Because they all fell into obscurity after Gruenwald's Captain America run ended. Even Diamondback could go years without appearing, and when they did appear sometimes writers had them backslide into being villains without any explanation.
If Marvel had tried to do a Birds of Prey style book they'd have been more likely to just bring together some random non-powered or street level heroines like Black Widow, Black Cat, Silver Sable and Elektra. The 2006 Heroes for Hire book is the closest thing Marvel did.
>after the GI Joe comic had killed off the actual Serpentor
so what you think Marvel changed him to look like a more popular character they couldn't use any more because the toyline was dying?
This happened in 1989, the 80s GI Joe toyline lasted through to 1994, and the comic could have continued to use him after his toy was no longer in production, he just got killed off because the writer didn't like him (it needs to be said here that Larry Hama was a professional about having a new bad guy leader forced into the book and had written him very well).
What happened with the Cobra becoming King Cobra was that this guy who'd been a lower-tier villain for decades had moved up to become the leader of the Serpent Society, so he got an upgraded costume and new name for story reasons. IIRC Mark Bagley designed the King Cobra costume, the Serpentor resemblance may have been entirely his choice rather than a company decision.
Funny thing about King Cobra and GI Joe, when Habro released a King Cobra figure in the Marvel Legends line, he was released under the name "Serpent Society" and described in his bio as just Klaus Voorhees with no codename, most likely to avoid any confusion with Hasbro's own GI Joe toyline.
It's possible some other toy company has the rights to the name "King Cobra" for toys. A lot of other Marvel Legends figures seem to get released with slightly different names because of rights reasons. You can see in that image that Songbird was released as "Marvel's Songbird", not just "Songbird".
Earlier waves avoided using the character name entirely when there was a planned running change to the wave, like a figure sold as "Wrecking Crew" where early releases were Thunderball, later releases were Piledriver, but it was the same body, repainted and given a new head sculpt. Hasbro may have released this figure as "Serpent Society" with plans to re-tool the figure as another character, but it didn't happen.
It's not a GI Joe issue though, they don't actually have a character named King Cobra, and the toyline was basically dead at the time this Legends figure was released.
They got their assess handed to them by the Runaways, and not even the whole team, just the girls. Seriously, these guys used to be able to tank direct hits from Thor, and here they each got one shot from kids who've only had a year at most of experience.
And this issue is almost two decades old, they've been a joke for a good while.
The Wrecking Crew and other such villains have been getting shafted not because writers don't know what to do with them, but because they're not seen as being usable by Marvel. People forget that even before The Mouse ate them that Marvel has always had some very shitty decisions in what to push during any given time, hell they wanted to retire Vulture way back in the mid-00s because they didn't know how an old man with a flight suit could be seen as a cool, menacing villain against Spidey.
And they were right, Vulture is fricking awful and far and away the shittiest and least interesting of Spidey's major and mid-tier villains.
Frick off, Vulture is awesome. You don't understand how rad the creepy old man vulture aesthetic is. He definitely works better with armor, though.
There has literally never been a good Vulture story. Even Stern couldn't make him interesting. He's an old guy who flies, whoop-de-doo.
He's old and bitter he didn't amount to anything in life and his only major achievement had him screwed over, so he's trying to make up for that through being a criminal in part to get rich quickly, and in part just to feel like he matters.
frick off
>Not even the whole team, just the girls
That was the whole team at the time though. Chase was just the driver.
The Runaways were kinda tanky even then. Nico has always been OP.
I'd say the only one that shouldn't have been able to take out one of the Wrecking Crew was Old Lace
Nico and Karolina and Molly are all fairly powerful, especially if Wrecker fricked up and split his power too much by including the kid
Wrecking Crew are fun, they are just a low powered in-between snack with decent designs. Really like them, and unlike King Combra crew is actually marketed in various media.
They shouldn't be low-powered though. They're supposed to be strong enough to brawl with guys like Thor and Hercules. They shouldn't be jobbing to low-powered heroes. A mid-tier hero should be able to handle one of them, but not all four at once. But somehow they've spent more than 20 years jobbing to anyone and everyone.
They fought toe-to-toe with severely weakened versions of Herc and Thor, let's not overstate their feats.
Let's not be too much of a powerlevelgay about this. They were created as Thor villains, back in a time when heroes' power levels were a lot more inconsistent, and before a lot of the power creep that's taken place over the years. Even if we accept Thor can usually handle them, street level heroes and rookie teen heroes shouldn't be beating them.
Wrecker is a class 50 strong guy that still gets his shit pushed in by Thor. When sharing his powers with the crew they are all class 10 and not even a speed bump for Thor. They should still frick up any street level guys that come along though. But largely they amount to bulletproof Spider-Man at best.
Their designs and weapons don't exactly inspire confidence they're anything more than dumb mooks who are kinda strong but not that strong.
>They were created as Thor villains, back in a time when heroes' power levels were a lot more inconsistent
If anything, crazy outlier feats aside, most heroes back then were more grounded and the playing field was more level. Which is how Cobra could be Thor's rogue.
The whole Serpent Society had that same blue collar villain thing that the Flash Rogues did, but they acted more like a union. It was fun. Gruenwald era Cap villains where A-tier.
Sucks that the MCU fricked them over (and they're about to frick the Serpent Society even more, probably make them HDYRA 2.0 and yeah I know the short stint with Viper as their leader) and how modern writers don't even know what to do with them.
>but they used to at least be taken seriously as villains
Remember when they made Wrecker into a child killer? It's either that or turn them into one page jokes. Only Thunderball gets the occasional respect nowadays.
>Sucks that the MCU fricked them over
Captain America 3 was never really going to have the Serpent Society, it was a false reveal, a bait and switch tactic. It had widely leaked out that Cap 3 was going to be Civil War, so he announced it as something else, deflating all hype for that movie, went on to announce the rest of Phase 3 of the MCU, then pretended to "change his mind" about Cap 3, revealing it was actually Civil War, thus ending his presentation in a way that got the audience most hyped up about the very next movie, not ending on hyping them for something years down the line. It sucks that the few people who actually like the Serpent Society got played like that, but they were never really ever going to be in that movie.
>(and they're about to frick the Serpent Society even more, probably make them HDYRA 2.0 and yeah I know the short stint with Viper as their leader)
Is some MCU thing going to be using them as terrorists or something?
>and how modern writers don't even know what to do with them.
I don't know whether it's worse that Captain America writers don't know what to do with them and don't use them, or that X-book writers keep using them as jobbers. Probably the X-book thing, as that's setting the perception of them.
>Remember when they made Wrecker into a child killer?
How can we ever forget when one of those guys who's angry about superheroes who don't kill posts it here every week? That story should never have made it past the editor.
Rumor has it that the Serpent Society will show up in Captain America: Brave New World, presumably as underlings to Ross.
What are the chances that they confused the Serpent Society with the Sons of the Serpent, and it's actually something more like them?
Why is Ross becoming an actual villain?
>Why is Ross becoming an actual villain?
Because this film is also going to be a stealth Hulk sequel. They're finally bringing Tim Blake Nelson back as the Leader, and Ross is gonna be the main villain because Red Hulk is a thing that normies/secondaries want in the MCU, for some reason.
So in case you ever wanted to see Harrison Ford turn big, muscular, and a nice shade of CGI red, this will be the film for you.
>Why is Ross becoming an actual villain?
Because he was one in the comics?
Did they ever explain how his mustache works?
What twatwaddle. It's on par with being pissed at captain america's name for being imperialistic.
Garden snake is CUTE!
I'm just saying, you don't get to ride the high horse of muh historical accuracy when the original villain was a silly pulp stereotype.
>Is some MCU thing going to be using them as terrorists or something?
They're using them in the Falcon Cap film as first act bad guys or enforcers or something like that.
>The Serpent Society is WWE's Seth Freakin' Rollins and two Literally Who? women
>none of them look like any of the comic Serpent Society at all
>You can't even tell if they're in costume there because Rollins' gimmick involves always dressing like a freak
If I was still watching these movies Red Hulk is something I wouldn't object to, but it should happen in an actual Hulk movie.
>and two Literally Who? women
In fairness, the one in the middle just looks to be some crewmember.
The woman on the right is apparently Rosa Salazar, who you might know from the Alita movie, as Diamondback
That's MCU Diamondback?
I can't wait to never watch this.
>Short flat chested Mexican Diamondback
My decision to not watch the MCU keeps paying dividends
booooo they aren't dressed as snakes, fricking lame
>Only Thunderball gets the occasional respect nowadays.
Black Science Man is the entire reason why. I'm surprised they haven't made him a good guy and mentor to Miles yet or something.
They've always had a weird disconnect between their aims and their power levels. They're meant to be tangling with Thor, but they're mostly knocking over banks. It makes them difficult to use in other stories.
The Wrecking Crew being powerful but unambitious guys who just want to rob banks or fight superheroes they have beef with is what made them versatile villains who could show up anywhere and give a hero a big battle issue. The problem is how they kept showing up in books with lower-powered heroes or fighting kids, neither of which should be beating them. I don't care how powerful some of the Runaways are, they shouldn't be beating adult supervillains that belong to other books, losing to kids makes those villains look crap and it's hard to come back from.
Thor has a number of other Earth-based villains from his Silver Age days like Grey Gargoyle and Mr Hyde who could give him a good fight back when writers didn't care about his power levels, but they don't really fit his book so much anymore. Hyde has moved on to fight street-level guys more.
I never really read Thor or Hulk so I always pinpoint the moment they turned from serious C-list villains to one page jokes to them getting stomped by the fricking Runaways.
Has the Living Monolith shown up at all in the Krakoa era?
the last time he showed up was 2019, to beat up a woman, before that he was briefly Juggernaut in 2015 but only for attention
Him and Sphinx are two villains I want to see make a return. I like the Egyptian theme.
what ever happened to malekith? Mandarin? Enchantress?
>Malekith
Black person
>Mandarin
chink
>Enchantress
strong and independent woman
Do you even need to ask?
I was talking about comicbooks I stopped reading marvel in 2016 due to civil war two and ulysses
Comics and MCU are the same now, chud. Only straight white man can be evil. In any medium.
>Gays and foreigners literally seething forever about the protagonists of Planet Earth
>He says as he seethes about gays and foreigners
Know your role, you're the orcs of this story.
b***h i'm whiter than you. But a 30 year old virgin who spends his life complaining about how "le gays are ruining my capekino" isn't the protagonist of any story
>Civil War 2
Amazing how bad that was, though I guess thats expected. They had, what, like a month to complete a story so they could meet the promotion time?
Anyway, glad we never saw Ulysses again. Good riddance.
Jesus Christ just do us a favor and have a nice day already
The Mandarin got killed in a Punisher story, of all places. Literally just stood there trying to use his powers to block a slow-moving bullet instead of just moving out of the way.
Sadly there's a genuine chance nobody will bring him back because of people complaining that being a villain while being foreign is racism. I think his rings have been stolen by Ironheart now.
>Defeated Iron Man on multiple occasions
>Held his own against Fin Fang Foom
>Managed to handle Titanium Man and Crimson Dynamo
>Kill him off with an unrelated character
Frick modern Marvel, seriously
It's completely asinine and ignores the historical reality of Mandarin as an imperial title. I really fricking hated that bit in the Shang Chi movie. Oversocialized urbanites proving how ignorant they really are.
>historical reality of Mandarin as an imperial title.
A magical terrorist supervillain does not reflect that historical reality very well either.
>magical
Kek, the casual homosexual reveals his incompetent ignorance. The rings aren't magic, you rube, they're alien technology.
Mandarin is an imperfect name, but since it boils down to "imperial scholar" it works to set the character apart from the Chi Comms and to hint as his ambitions.
His 60's appearances were pretty racist, but the name wasn't. And his later depictions were rehabilitated. Fraction did good work on the character.
I was with you all the way right up until you picked Fraction's Mandarin as a good take on him over literally any other Mandarin story from after the 60s.
I mean, from his handful of appearances this century I preferred the Knauf run. That was a good book. And as a kid I was into the Byrne run. But Fraction's run probably had the highest profile of his modern appearances. Has he been used in the Iron Man book since?
>Fraction did good work
Never happened.
>His 60's appearances were pretty racist
I wouldn't say so tbh. I've read through them recently and the most racist thing about them is that, visually, the Mandarin is very obviously riffing on Fu Manchu and other yellow peril baddies. But that's really it, as far as any racial element goes. The stories themselves, and the Mandarin's characterisation, are far more anti-communist than they are anti-Chinese.
All the same, it might be best to keep him dead.
Maybe have a new character take the rings along with a different name.
Anon, that's just one more example of Marvel and DC making changes fans don't want, for the sake of appeasing Karens on Twitter who aren't ever going to buy or read comics anyway. At some point you just have to stand up to them or ignore them instead of ruining everything to try and earn their approval.
Mandarin is the last character this kind of stand is going to happen over, his history is too inherently controversial and bad PR.
I thought one of the better versions of the character was in the late 80s-early 90s when he was cribbing loads of technology from the Makluan ship and built robots, armors, and weapons from all of it. Making him evil Stark that builds stuff, but cheating since he got it all from alien technology.
Then they had to drop all of that to do dragons hands shit
>Malekith
In Hell.
>Mandarin
Dead
>Enchantress
A Captain Marvel villain for the last while.
I don't know if Mandarin can even count when he has never been consistent. Every single writer since the late 60s has had a totally different take on him and how he works, and even what powers he has.
>malekith?
wasn't he the villain of the major thor event aaron did?
Loki has been dead since 2012 and his evil clone Ikol has been inhabiting his body since
Damn, Coachwhip is stacked.
Being stacked and being King Cobra's girl are all she had going for her, she seems to get beat up a lot, even by Serpent Society standards.
man those implants are not cheap to replace
It's just the artist showing the impact, she didn't actually burst a boob. They might even be real.
If burst or being implants wouldnt it go “pop“ or “boing“?
The Super-Adaptoid hasn't done anything in years. We've had other adaptoids like the Sinister Adaptoid, but not THE Super-Adaptoid.
Ugh thanks anon, now you've just reminded me of ASM #900
What an utterly crap anniversary issue
And when there's another anniversary, Nick Lowe will still be the editor and will frick up the new anniversary
o right... last time I think was as Ultron's flunkie in annihilation conquest I think
Anon, you said the secret word!
Does anybody remember Cyber? I know he seems like a poor man's Sabretooth, but if you've read Sam Keith's Marvel Comics Presents story, you'd know just how much potential he has. But unfortunately, it seems like nobody knows what to do with him.
Cyber always seemed like an incomplete name to me. You can't just be Cyber, you gotta be Cyber-Man or Cyber-Mutant or Cyber-Assassin or something.
It's like being called just Super.
cyber was a moronic concept, he was a guy with adamantiun laced skin and injection needle fangs that would inject drugs and that was it, he wasnt even that smart or interesting
The only bad part about him is that his name has nothing to do with what he does or he is, not even thematically. As an actual villain he's fine but he seems like he was basically created as a vehicle for Sam Kieth's art more than anything.
He appeared a few more times in Wolverine's solo book in the 90s, but IIRC someone in editorial wanted him killed off, because he was a villain Logan was actually scared of, and they didn't like that, back when editors maybe cared a little too much about never letting their cash cow characters look weak.
Daniel Way's Wolverine Origins book brought Cyber back in the 2000s, but he exited the story looking like he was going to die again, his body showed up years later in the Death of Wolverine mini, proving that nobody did know what to do with him.
He was in PAD's Scarlet Spider series now using the original Hornet's body so he's still hanging around.
Silver Samurai hasn't done shit in a long time. He was killed off and stayed dead until the Krakoa era, but since then all he's done is make cameos as a referee.
I liked when Cobra was partners in crime with Mr. Hyde
>and the wiki isn't even sure if he's been replaced by his nephew or not because nobody has used his real name in two decades
Explain.
The original Cobra's real name is Klaus Voorhees.
He upgraded to being 'King Cobra' at the end of the 1980s shortly after taking over leadership of the Serpent Society.
A few stories in the late 90s and early 2000s had him revert to his old Cobra name and costume, and back to working with Mr Hyde again.
In the mid 2000s, he went back to leading the Serpent Society as King Cobra, while his nephew Piet was introduced as the new Cobra.
There were various Cobra appearances since, from Brubaker's Captain America onwards, where the writer didn't address which one of them it was, and probably didn't even know there were two of them, and it's ultimately going to just be some wiki writer's whim when trying to determine which one of them it was.
In recent years things seem to have settled back to Klaus as King Cobra and Piet as The Cobra, but Piet just appeared last week in a story where the writer screwed up and claimed they'd both been sharing the King Cobra name.
If you think that's bad, don't look up the Mr Fears or the Crimson Dynamos.
>but Piet just appeared last week in a story where the writer screwed up and claimed they'd both been sharing the King Cobra name.
Interesting, what story?
It was a backup in one of last week's X-Men books, I think it was X-Men Red.
Or the Jack O' Lanterns.
Or Xorn.
>King Cobr—
Don’t care. Blue woman on the left. Who is she.
Black Racer, the speedster of the Serpent Society.
the green hair's a wig, and part of the costume, she's actually black
Daredevil's entire pre-Miller rogues gallery aside from Bullseye and Stilt-Man. Even The Gladiator (the only other character Miller kept around) has been nearly forgotten since.
The Owl still shows up often enough.
I mean, he never really had many villains, Matador, Masked Marauder, Leap-Frog, most of his silver age rogues are either dead or retired with few exceptions, not even counting those that went on to be villains to other characters like the Silver Samurai. Apparently the Disney + show might use Mr. Fear but we'll have to wait and see if that leads to him getting used again.
>Apparently the Disney + show might use Mr. Fear but we'll have to wait and see if that leads to him getting used again.
But which one? There have been four different versions of him, two of them are currently alive and active in the comics. Alan gayan is a jobber villain who fought other heroes more than Daredevil. Lawrence Cranston is one of Daredevil's better villains who isn't from the Miller era. Like the Cobra situation this thread started with, most Mr Fear appearances after Brubaker's Daredevil haven't bothered to clarify which one of them we're seeing, and the one in that Thunderbolts mini didn't act like either of them.
Masked Marauder was killed by Punisher in Civil War, but apparently he appeared somewhere after that?
The writer presumably intended to kill the Masked Marauder and all the low-level super-villains at the Bar with No Name in that Punisher issue where he poisoned their drinks and blew up the bar, but the problem was that some of those villains weren't so low-level like the Chameleon. So an issue of She-Hulk that came out soon after revealed that they all survived with third degree burns and got their stomachs pumped.
I kind of want to say outside of Spider-Man villains, most Marvel villains rarely appear except for a couple pages and are defeated off panel or in two pages at best.
It's kind of this. Around 2009 or so Marvel seemed to have decided that villains that are not Doom or Thanos are stupid and never want to use them. When they do they job in the span of a page and they are sure to be portrayed as pathetic losers.
Marvel only wants heroes fighting other heroes and mutants. It's what they have been doing for about 15 years now.
Almost everyone's rogues gallery has been dropped and forgotten. Or they became pseudo-heroes or side characters that we see hanging out and drinking, doing normal stuff. None of them do actual villainy except for a page or so to remind the reader that the main character of a book is a hero that occasionally fights bad guys. Then the story jumps back to whatever overblown drama shit they are cooking up instead. But all conflict is FF vs Avengers, Avengers vs Inhumans, Inhumans vs Atlanteans, Atlanteans vs Mutants....that shit never fricking stops....
This
Marvel writers just love shitting on old villains for being too 'comic booky'
Gay shit. Comic booky is what I like.
Ewing and MacKay are the only writers currently at Marvel that use old villains and treat them with respect instead of as just jokes. Even fricking 8-Ball got more respect in Moon Knight than many B-List or even A-List villains get from other writers.
8-Ball falls into the "pseudo hero" thing but in that case it's fine because the change was the result of multiple seemingly inconsequential appearaces that turned out to actually be a background story arc with believable motivation for the change. He wasn't just suddenly a semi good guy for no reason.
Throw in that decompression means that the writers usually spend like 2 fricking years on a story these days, so they tend to end up choosing to make a story for either one of the big villains or make an oc in the hope for them to take off.
Pretty much this. Since the villains always lose the only way to have some tension is to have heroes fight other heroes, so most villains aren't that useful.
Movies usually only have 1-2 villains as actors are expensive, so this means you only need 5-6 good villains.
Here are all the villains in all the solo live-action movies:
Batman:
Joker, Penguin and Catwoman, Two-Face and Riddler, Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy,
Ra's al Ghul and Scarecrow, Joker and Two-Face, Bane.
Spider-Man:
Green Goblin; Doctor Octopus; Green Goblin, Sandman, and Venom;
Lizard; Electro, Green Goblin, and Rhino;
Vulture; Mysterio; Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, Sandman, Venom, Lizard, and Electro.
I'm sure you can think of some villains that might be better than the villains they used.
I want Slyde in a Spider-Man movie.
Jigsaw. Once the archenemy of one of Marvel's most popular characters. Now probably shelved forever.
While I don't entirely believe in Ennis' assertion that no on should survive their second encounter with Frank, Frank having consistently recurring foes really shouldn't be a thing.
Jigsaw's whole shtick was kind of always that he was just badass enough to be a threat to The Punisher, but not tough enough to ever overpower him, and never smart enough to outsmart him, but just enough to know to turn tail and run before he got got.
The Red Ghost and his Super-Apes are classic FF villains that haven't done anything in a long time. In their last appearance, they all jobbed hard and were single-handedly killed by Captain Hydra, and they're still dead.
Of the classic FF villains, Psycho-Man also hasn't really done much in a while.
why wasn't he the villain of Quantamania since his whole thing is being in the microverse?
>forgotten FF villains
I'm completely out of the loop. What's Diablo up to these days?
He gave some alchemy stuff to the villain of the Scarlet Witch series.
Just about every single Justice League villain, it feels like.
Looking on their tv tropes page, there's a lot of classic villains who haven't shown up in years due to DC's obsession with having the JL fight multiversal threats.
God, I hate the multiverse
It’s not a bad concept but god why do writers keep using it when they’re unable to properly utilize it. Like if you can’t handle the full implications and ramifications for using it just stick to fun romps within one or two alternative universes for a story.
I could use it properly.
But I don't work for any comic company, so I can't help.
I like it when the universes are totally independent of each other instead of being just an le alt version of the main one.
Unique universes are unfortunately pretty underutilized, usually only getting a blink and you miss it scene to show off all the variety in the multiverse. You know despite only really showing small variations of the point of view universe normally. It’s a darn shame.
I love the New Universe line. Or at least what I've picked up of it.
Felix Faust, Amazo and Starro still get used sometimes, but I can't remember the last time Despero, Shaggy Man or Kanjar Ro was in anything.
Kanjar Ro was on a recent GL movie
Shaggy Man is Wade Eiling now and has been for over 20 years
Funny how there is fanart about them. Is it because they once dropped the name for the first Captain Marvel movies?
i miss king cobra ;-;
>Viper
As in the first one, or Madame Hydra after she killed him and stole his costume?
Which he was wearing at the time.
The first one came back to life somehow and took over the Serpent Society, changed it from a pastiche of trade unions to a Wall Street thing.
Okay, but was he in charge before he does too, or was he just a member back then?
Before there was the Serpent Society in the 1980s, there was the Serpent Squad, a smaller group of snake villains. The original Viper was part of the first lineup of the Serpent Squad back in the Silver Age. Madame Hydra killed him to free up the name so she could start calling herself Viper, and he stayed dead until Spencer's Captain America run in the 2010s where he was somehow back, took over the Serpent Society, and like that other anon said, turned them from a supervillain trade union into Wall Street guys but supervillains.
>trade unions
Like in Star Wars?
What ever happened to ExNihlo, Vulcan (gabriel summers), Annhilus, loki, terrax, mesmero, owl, claw, high evolutionary, beyonder?
>ExNihlo
Forgotten
>Vulcan (gabriel summers)
Was a major player in X-Men: Red.
>Annhilus
Shows up every so often.
>loki
Shows up all the time, why do you even ask?
>terrax
Only ever shows up to job.
>mesmero
Appeared in background scenes on Krakoa and was the villain of a Polaris story in X-Men Unlimited.
>owl
Is one of the crime bosses of New York in recent Daredevil and Spider-Man stories and will be a player in the Gang War event.
>claw
I assume you mean Klaw. He's been dead for a few years.
>high evolutionary
Shows up every so often.
>beyonder
Was a big player in Defenders: Beyond and then again in Avengers: Beyond.
Bushman used to be a big threat to Moon Knight but I think he's one of the few villains to get the Uncle Ben treatment after dying he's barely ever mentioned anymore unless talking about Marc's origin or past when he was a mercenary
Whose fault is it for them to be that way. Comics or movies studio?
This is entirely on the comics. Most movie adaptations of comics seldom run past 3 sequels, so only the bigger villains tended to ever get adapted (though there are some exceptions to this from the 2010s onward).
addressed the problem here. Outside of a small number of A-list villains, cape comic writers don't treat most supervillains with any respect at all anymore. They're just worthless jobbers who are there to get beaten up quickly while the real story is more likely heroes fighting other heroes. If it's not that, it's the writer introducing his own new OC villains nobody else will ever use again.
>Most movie adaptations of comics seldom run past 3 sequels
This is why i fricking hate it when they use a long forgotten D-List villain that only had like 1 or 2 appearances back in 1975 for a film villain, with some plans to have the cool villains everyone wants to see in the far future in like sequel #4 or something. Most movies never ever get that far, so there is no point in saving the villains people want for fricking unknown losers.
No one wants to see Whiplash, Steppenwolf, Malekith, or Killian. They want Darkseid, actual Mandarin, Absorbing Man, Fin Fang Foom,
Nobody wants Mandarin
moviecausal pls go back to Cinemaphile
>Darkseid
Sure, people want him, but at the same time, him being the first guy to lose to the JL would be dissapointing for many
>Mandarin
Really should have done him
>Absorbing Man, Fin Fang Foom
For most they might as well be D-listers.
For most of the film's audience they have no idea who a character's major villains are thus making it irrelevant if the production uses a d-lister or an a-lister. Riddler is an A-list Batman rogue entirely due to adaptations.
It depends on adaptations + plus general knowledge of myths for characters like Thor or Wonder Woman.
True, fans have a tendency to overestimate how much normies know or care about the source material when it comes to comic movies. Sometimes they overestimate how many adults would have watched cartoon adaptations as well, or have clear memories and strong opinions on cartoon adaptations they might have watched when they were kids.
To a certain extent, so long as you make the movie good enough, cast it well and promote it well enough to get butts on seats, on a character's first live-action adaptation you can probably use any villains you want and make all kinds of changes to the source material and most of the audience will never know or care that it's not the same in the comics.
Absorbing Man being d-list is sad because he's absurdly overpowered when he wants to be.
MCU Whiplash isn't even comic Whiplash, he's an OC based on merging elements of Whiplash and the first Crimson Dynamo into one character. As the original Whiplash had been dead for about ten years when Iron Man 2 was released, the comics introduced a version of movie Whiplash.
Iron Man 3 and Doctor Strange 1 are the worst offenders for movies using obscure villains most fans didn't even remember, but those movies still did really well. Justice League was supposed to have been a 2-movie saga, with Darkseid in part 2, after the team comes together and beats his henchman in part 1. It could have worked if the first movie had done better.
Speak for yourself.
Eh, Strange 1 used Dormammu, who was probably the most known of his villains.
While Dormammu does appear towards the end, the main villain for most of the movie is Kaecilius, a Literally Who? character who had only a few comic appearances.
I’d completely forgotten Mads character in that movie wasn’t actually Mordo. Of all the actors they’ve wasted, he probably got it worst.
I couldn't see him sticking around for multiple movies, so it makes sense not to cast him as Mordo. As a one off Not-Mordo he was fine. I'd say Malekith was the more offensive case.
I mostly agree with you, but please don't shit on Malekith because MCU Malekith was a pile of garbage excuse for a character.
Proper Malekith would've been great as a Joker-like figure of sorts.
People wanted Whiplaah because they knew him from the 90s cartoon and Armored Adventures, and whips are cool weapons
It also goes back a very long time in comics. Scourge of the Underworld was created so writers and editors could kill off villains they thought were lame all the way back in 1985. Weirdly enough he was created by Gruenwald, who sees like he'd have been the last guy to make such a character.
IIRC the Scourge came about because of the Marvel Universe Handbooks, which were Gruenwald's baby. Having to do profiles on so many minor villains with just a few appearances broke something in him, and he created the Scourge to get rid of them. Strangely a few mid-tier Iron Man villains like Firebrand and Melter got killed by the Scourge too, only to end up with inferior replacements eventually.
I don't really agree that killing off minor villains just so there'll be less minor villains was a good idea, but it's not really the same thing as modern comics treating almost every villain as useless jobbers except for a few big name guys.
It kinda is. Fundamentally it's saying that the characters are worthless. I'd say Gruenwald's position is arguably worse because it adds an element of laziness to it. If you're the one pushing for a complete encyclopedia of Marvel characters you don't get to complain about how much work it is and you certainly shouldn't be killing off characters to make it easier on yourself.
Given that Byrne was involved in the Scourge's creation, I wouldn't be surprised if several of his victims were chosen just because Byrne didn't like them.
It's a similar problem, but it's not exactly the same. There's a big difference between treating some forgotten one-appearance villain as worthless and treating the mainstays of a hero's rogues gallery as worthless. You shouldn't really do either of those things, but doing it with villains who might be fairly well-developed characters with fans, villains who appear in adaptations and get toys, making them look worthless is a much worse act of sabotage.
I'm a fan of Gru but I agree that Scourge was a strange act of creative petulance. To a lesser degree Marv Wolfman did the same thing in CIOE by killing off some villains he thought were lame as well and I never understood why. If you don't like a villain? Don't use them and leave them for somebody who might have a good idea or just leave them as inventory villains.
Ego and self-centeredness. If I, popular and successful comic book writer, don't like a villain or think they're stupid then no one likes that villain and they think they're stupid. And if they do like that villain then they're stupid. But more depressing is the ones where it's entirely down to personal issues between the writer and the creator of the character. That's just the pettiest shit right there.
The latter doesn't really happen anymore. All the old creators died/retired a long time ago, and we don't aboutmodern Marvel's dirty laundry because the editorial has been largely the same for 20 years so no one leaks any drama.
Ironically, due to dozens more writers being involved with Marvel since then, there are now loads more minor villains than there were during Gruenwald's time. If he thought compiling a wiki back then was bad, I imagine it's a nightmare now, especially with all the continuity contradictions that have popped up since then. Modern Marvel could unironically use a Scourge.
Nah, all your heavy lifting is done by wikis, and all you need to do is accuracy checks.
>implying wikis bother updating biographies for C-list villains
Oh you sweet Summer child
lol the DC wiki doesn't even update biographies for bigger heroes.
Oh so that shitshow with no proper payoff was Gruenwald? Dissapointing to know.
The Scourge story did eventually get resolved in a US Agent mini in the early 90s. Since then Marvel have recycled the Scourge name on various other characters, Nomad and D-Man both got brainwashed into being a Scourge, and Nuke was Scourge during Dark Reign.
Any other that isn't Marvel and DC?
Give me the classic villains that deserve more!
A large majority of Hulk villains are rarely used
I like U-Foes. Do they even do anything other than occasionally show up to job and be forgotten about next page?
The U-Foes showed up a year or two back and put Spider-Man in a coma, leading to Ben Reilly taking over as Spider-Man for a while until Marvel made another attempt to turn him into a villain.
A lot of Spider-Man fans were pretty angry about the defeat and had to be reminded they may not have heard of the U-Foes, but they're Hulk villains.
Even his supposed archenemy the Abomination hasn't actually fought the Hulk much in recent times due to being dead for a really long time.
They showed up in Immortal Hulk working for Henry Gyrich, even got to be featured on a cover for the first time in a while. They obviously jobbed, but they were giving the Hulk a run for his money until Devil Hulk took over. They sadly haven't done anything since.
Hulk, Thor, and Iron Man villains are almost never used any longer. Their books turned into weird dramas now about personal problems and dealing with side cast as if it's a sitcom.
What happened to the Radioactive Man? And Zzzax? And the Bi-Beast? And Titanium Man? And Batroc?
Man, I miss when Silver Age villains were treated with respect
Batroc got a surprising amount of respect as a supporting character in Gwenpool of all places. And when the book ends, due to Gwen's meta-knowledge she regrets how she knows that future writers are going to completely ignore all of Batroc's character development and he'll go back to being a dumb joke villain again.
>Man, I miss when Silver Age villains were treated with respect
Nothing is treated with respect or even an ounce of sincerity. Hack writers these days will just look up some old villain is LOL SO CAMP and either make them go full edge for shock value or treat them as a joke for their crappy new heroes.
Stilt-Man was treated with respect in Zdarsky's Daredevil run.
Man, this is sad. In the silver age, Trapster could fight Captain America and be a worthy opponent. Either the Ani-Men or the Jester could fight Daredevil in long three-issue sagas.
Even Plantman came close to destroying London in the Sub-Mariner series or fighting an entire team of Defenders.
I blame Bendis, Quesada and Jemas, who made it fashionable to make fun of all the costumed villains.
Kiteman
he's literally a key figure in the War of Jokes and Riddles and is getting an HBO show
Ay, where is my classical villains at, yo?
Who?
here u go bro
Here's the hard truth, nobody cares about supervillians like these because they're one-note punching bags, and dressing up in theatrical costumes is lame as hell. They have never been and never will be interesting and nobody wants to look at them anymore.
t. hasn't read Gruenwald's Captain America
>dressing up in theatrical costumes is lame as hell
What a terrible opinion. Why even consume comics if you just want them to be as bland as real life?
That is the Manga success.
Inb4 no west vs east!
Egg-Fu got an amazing reinvention as Chang Tzu in 52 and then got used like once or twice before the New 52 made him part of Harley's comic