Marvel has been putting out blockbuster comics for decades and a big reason for that is the villains of the Marvel Universe. Marvel created many of the greatest heroes and they needed villains to match. Luckily, Marvel’s creators were up to the task, and Marvel helped change the comic book villain in the same way it changed the comic book hero. The publisher has brilliant villains and many of them have only gotten better with time, aging like a fine wine. However, unfortunately, the opposite of that has happened as well. Loads of Marvel villains have regressed over the years, becoming pale shadows of their former selves.
Villains have a lot riding on them in superhero comics. They have to move the action forward and act as an interesting foil for the heroes. The best villains are able to do that and evolve, constantly becoming better. The same can’t be said of these villains. Some of them started out as amazing villains but haven’t lived up to their promise, falling down the ranks. Others of them didn’t start at the top and regressed as well, becoming less interesting as time went on. These seven Marvel villains have gotten worse as the years have gone on, squandering much of their potential.
7) Thanos
Thanos is Jim Starlin’s greatest creation and is often considered the ultimate Marvel villain, star of the amazing Infinity Gauntlet, and the main villain of the first three Phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Fans love Thanos, but the villain has definitely gotten worse as the years went on. It’s actually very easy to pinpoint the problem with Thanos and it comes from Marvel just being Marvel. For years, Thanos creator Starlin was the chief architect of the character. He wrote him throughout most of his existence and built him up as a character magnificently. Thanos became one of the most compelling characters of early ’90s Marvel, starting with his appearances in Starlin’s Silver Surfer and Thanos Quest, coming to a head with Infinity Gauntlet, and expanding with books like Infinity War, Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch, Infinity Crusade, The Warlock Chronicles, The Mighty Thor, Infinity Abyss, and Marvel Universe: The End. Thanos grew from the nihilistic conqueror to a more balanced form, coming to terms with his past and ambitions, and becoming a better character than ever. Starlin’s Thanos had depth, and Marvel abandoned that depth to regress the character back into the monster he was before. It’s such a disappointment for longtime Thanos’ fans. Thanos is still a great villain, but he’s endemic of a bigger problem with Marvel — regressing a character to appeal to the biggest audience, and replacing all of that growth with stories by lesser creators. He can still be entertaining, but he’s nowhere near what he was at his height.
6) Baron Zemo
Baron Heinrich Zemo was positioned as one of Silver Age’s Marvel’s greatest villains. He battled the returned Captain America as the head of Hydra and formed the Masters of Evil to go after the Avengers once Cap joined the team. Heinrich Zemo was a hater of the highest order, but it couldn’t last. Heinrich died and was replaced by his son Helmut, and the new Baron Zemo jumped in where his father left off. He went after Cap and formed a new Masters of Evil to battle the Avengers, handing them one of their most famous defeats in “Under Siege”. Zemo dropped a notch for a time after that, until Thunderbolts #1 revealed his latest scheme — using members of the Masters of Evil in the guises of new heroes to fool the public into trusting them and taking over the world. This was the second height for Zemo, and the last one. His Thunderbolts scheme was so good that everything he’s done after has been lackluster. There have definitely been some cool Helmut Zemo stories since Thunderbolts, but he’s most often a lackey of another villain or hasn’t been going after the A-list heroes like he used to. Zemo still has the potential, but it’s going to take another brilliant story to bring Zemo back to the heights he used to sit at.
5) Carnage
Carnage is undoubtedly popular, but he’s one of the worst comic book villains ever. Now, obviously, there’s cool stuff about Carnage. Symbiotic characters are always cool when drawn well and Carnage’s origins as a serial killer given the power to kill at will made him a good, but edgy, villain. He joined the Marvel Universe just as the height of The Amazing Spider-Man was tapering off, when writer David Michelinie was teaming with artists like Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, and Mark Bagley to tell blockbuster Spider-Man stories, and that definitely helped. He was related to Venom, the biggest new Spider-Man villain in years. The stars had aligned to make an amazing villain. However, the problem with Carnage has become more apparent as time has gone on. Carnage is a one-note character. He basically only does two things well — lead rampages against innocent people and act as a formidable villain — and that’s made him a ridiculously limited character. The only way Carnage has ever gotten “better” over the years is his power level, as he’s been resurrected several times with more powerful symbiotes, but as a character he’s stagnated. No creator has figured out a way to tell a new kind of story with Carnage, and every subsequent Carnage story is part of a cycle of diminishing returns. Fans may love Carnage, but he’s definitely gotten worse as the years have gone on.
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4) Kraven the Hunter
Kraven the Hunter was one of the most unique Spider-Man villains of the Silver Age, the big game hunter presenting a formidable challenge for the Wall-Crawler. Kraven’s threat came to culmination with “Kraven’s Last Hunt”, when he defeated Spider-Man, buried him alive, took his place and showed that he could do what Spider-Man could, and then killed himself. It was a perfect story, and remains the best Spider-Man story for many readers. Kraven may have died, but he died winning. He was suddenly an untouchable legend, and he stayed there, with fans always pointing at “Kraven’s Last Hunt” when people asked why they should care. However, Marvel can never leave well enough alone, so they worked for years to find a way to bring Kraven. First, they tried bringing his son who served pretty much the same purpose as Kraven, except revenge was his motivation, but he got lost in the shuffle of the early Clone Saga. Eventually, Marvel just cloned Kraven, bringing him back to life with all of this physical and tactical skills but not all of his memories. The Kraven clone is basically a placeholder, a Kraven-shaped piece for Kraven-shaped holes, but the argument can be made that bringing Kraven back to life does a grave disservice to the character’s greatest story. It’s made all the more frustrating that Marvel pretty much has no idea what to do with Kraven. They resurrected him just so he’d be there, not for any particular purpose.
3) Red Skull
Red Skull is another mostly good villain that has suffered from something of a fall of grace, but that’s only because the height he was at was so high. Red Skull is still Captain America’s greatest foe and can menace the Avengers as well. He’s smart, formidable, and always looks great, a perfect picture of what a villain can be. Red Skull is an all-timer, but the problem has come since the end of Ed Brubaker’s tenure as writer of Captain America. This was the best Red Skull readers had read in years. The twists and turns in his plan were exactly the kind of wild supervillainy you’d expect from Red Skull. It was brilliant, it was bombastic, it was cheesy. Red Skull was on a high, and his next major appearance, stealing the telepathic portion of Charles Xavier’s brain and grafting it to himself, got fans hyped. However, it resulted in AXIS, an event comic that no one liked, and since then Red Skull has never reached the heights of what he was in the Brubaker run, literally getting worse since that run ended. That doesn’t mean that Red Skull can’t have good stories anymore — he almost certainly will — but it’s going to take more than making him a manosphere influencer (which wasn’t a terrible idea, but wasn’t great) to do that.
2) Cassandra Nova
Cassandra Nova was created as the first villain of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run, and she made a splash right away. Revealed to Charles Xavier’s twin sister, she was a being called a mummudrai, a parasitic anti-self from the Astral Plane. Xavier defeated her in the womb, but she was able to survive, eventually forming her own body. Cassandra Nova dedicated her life to destroying her brother, unleashing the Mega-Sentinels on Genosha, getting captured by the X-Men, and taking over the body of her brother. She used his visage to attack the Shi’Ar Empire, destroying the home of the woman that Charles loved, dooming her. She’d turn her attention to the X-Men finally, nearly destroying the team before they were able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Cassandra Nova’s opening salvos were amazing, and nothing since then has even close to comparing to it. Cassandra’s next story, the Astonishing X-Men yarn “Torn” that was as much an Emma Frost story as it was anything else, was okay but seeing how Cassandra was just a psychic projection that had been planted in Emma’s mind, she wasn’t as fun. It was the first disappointing Cassandra Nova story, but it wouldn’t be last. Cassandra Nova was a villain with a very specific purpose, and she served that purpose brilliantly. She’s a character who has suffered every time that she’s been taken out of her original story, and hasn’t reached the height of entertainment she had before.
1) Apocalypse
Apocalypse has earned his spot as one of Marvel’s greatest villains, but anyone who thinks his most recent adventures were up to snuff with the En Sabah Nur of the past has another thing coming. Apocalypse’s height was in the late ’80s through the ’90s, when the powerful shadowy villain was waiting in the wings as the new big bad. He was the main boss of X-Factor, and would soon move on to the rest of the X-Men, being built up as a bigger and bigger deal. All of that ended with “The Twelve”, a story that has a very mixed reception, where the X-Men were able to stop him from bringing together the Twelve and becoming a god. The end of the ’90s was the end of Apocalypse as a good villain. It’s hard to think of a legitimately great Apocalypse story in the 21st century, at least up until the blockbuster Krakoa Age, when he played a huge role in the affairs of Krakoa at the beginning. However, this new altruistic version of Apocalypse kind of destroyed everything interesting about the character. It was established that Apocalypse became a member of the nation of Arakko, and had learned his survival of the fittest stylings from his wife Genesis. Apocalypse promised her that he would create an army powerful enough to face against the demonic hordes of Amenth. Apocalypse spent millennia trying to make mutants into this master army… except he kept the whole thing a secret when he could have revealed the truth and did the same thing. It’s the definition of a bad retcon, and it takes a time that could have amazing for Apocalypse as a character and ruins it.
What Marvel villains do you think have gotten worse? Sound off in the comments below.
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