Magneto is the number one man as far as X-Men villains go. He is diametrically opposed to everything Professor X is trying to accomplish, which means that Magneto will be getting in the X-Men's way and vice versa time and time again (though in my reading he's still marooned on The Stranger's home planet with Toad). Magneto's magnetic powers can do all sorts of awesome things, but when you add his mental powers which are comparable to Prof. X's, it's no wonder that Magneto often introduces himself by saying, "I am power!" Not only is Magneto the greatest villain the X-Men ever face, he has to be considered a top 5 villain in all the world of comic books. Stan Lee got Magneto right from the very first issue, and he only gets better with time. I rank him thusly:
Not only does The Vanisher not look like much (He looks like a bored college professor in a freaky cirque du soleil clown costume) he doesn't really do much other than vanish and reappear somewhere else. His powers make him a bit of a bother, but you don't really get the super-villain vibe from him. Sure he's a bad guy, but there are much much worse bad guys than he. I guess it was a pretty clever caper to steal our country's top secret defense plans, but it's only clever because our nation's top military leaders were dumb enough to keep the plans in a handy dandy lawyer-style leather carrying case. After meeting Magneto in X-Men #1, The Vanisher in X-Men #2 is complete snoozeville. Because The Vanisher is such an unappealing villain I can give him no higher than...
It's a little hard to get too excited about a villain whose powers mainly come from his extreme fatness. As a country we've all gotten so fat that a guy like The Blob wouldn't be fat enough to be a side-show attraction, which is where he got his start. I have to say that despite his fatness and general surly nature, I really like The Blob. There's a bit of a tragic side to him because he finds himself swept up in a fight not of his own choosing. The X-Men originally tried to recruit The Blob, but he felt he was stronger than all the X-Men put together and he didn't need them as much as they needed him. When he tried to leave they had to attack him and wipe his memory so he wouldn't give away their secret identities. Make no mistake, The Blob is a bad guy. He's not the worst bad guy in the realm of X-Men bad guys, but he does have a tendency toward evil. He once returned to the side-show swearing off everything but the life of a freak, but it wasn't much later before he was terrorizing the city with Unus the Untouchable. I really like The Blob as a character. Even though he's built like a tank he does have a human side that shows itself fairly often. Inasmuch as he is not a top-tier X-Men villain I can give him no higher than...
The Scarlet Witch is an interesting case because she isn't really a villain at heart, at least not as she appears in the first 20 or so X-Men comics. She is aligned with Magento's band of evil mutants only because he helped save her when she was condemned as a witch in her homeland of Eastern Europe (they never say which country in Eastern Europe, which I find funny). She and her brother (who we'll get to in just a second) are only in the employ of Magneto until their debt to him is repaid. Both she and her brother eventually go on to join The Avengers, proving they really aren't villains at heart. One thing I have to point out about the Scarlet Witch as she appears in issue #4 onward is that her power is referred to as a hex, and it only seems to give people slight bouts of clumsiness which they recover from fairly quickly. It's really not much of a power, and not really the sort of thing I can see Eastern European villagers grabbing torches and pitchforks over. I also must point out that Wanda is one of the hotter women in the Marvel Universe. I'm definitely a fan. Anyway, since hers powers aren't that great and she does turn away from the dark side, I can't give her higher than...
Quicksilver is The Scarlet Witch's brother. If The Scarlet Witch has a tenuous relationship with Magneto and his evil organization, Quicksilver has an even more tenuous one. He's only along for the ride performing acts of evil so he can keep an eye on his sister and protect her. If there is a more non-sinister reason for hanging around Magneto, I'd like to hear it. Quicksilver has a really awesome costume. I dunno, something about a lightning bolt on a green suit just goes well, especially when the guy wearing it is named Quicksilver. As his name implies, his power is based on his ability to run at blinding speeds. He could literally punch you in the face and you wouldn't know what hit you. Even though his power is a bit more potent that his sister's, he still doesn't seem too evil. When his sister joined The Avengers, he joined up as well, proving that there's plenty of good in him. As a character I'd rate him pretty highly, but as a villain he gets...
Mastermind is a master of illusion. He dresses like Professor Moriarty, but would be lucky to be considered half the worthy foe Moriarty is. His powers lie in his ability to create very realistic illusions. He can trick your eyes into thinking they're seeing just about anything. He has, in the beginning, actually tricked The X-Men into thinking they were seeing things they weren't, so I have to give him a little credit. And yet his powers are almost completely harmless. Say for instance that he creates an image of a giant three-headed monster. That monster can't hurt you. In fact, you could walk right through it. Once you learn to not trust anything you see when Mastermind is around, it gets pretty simple to defeat him. He is a bit of a coward and has been seen fleeing from the X-Men along with Toad on more than one occasion. He definitely has evil in his heart, but doesn't really have the power to carry out anything large scale. I'll give him a slightly higher score than toad, only because he has tricked The X-Men before.
There's something about Unus that I just happen to like. I dunno. Maybe it's the fact that he is a former professional wrestler, or maybe it's the fact that he can create a freaking force field around his body that not even The X-Men can penetrate. Unus really is untouchable. His wrestling matches must have been pretty boring because the man's power involves a lot of him just standing there and taking whatever his opponents can dish out. I'm sure he's a lot like The Big Show: just a complete freak of nature, but in the end not nearly as fun to watch as Rey Mysterio. Also, is his name pronounced Eunice (like your grandmother's friend)? Or do the two u's have an oo sound so he's really oonoos. They were kind enough to give us a pronunciation guide on Ka-Zar so why not tell me how to say Unus? Anyway, all my joking aside, Unus is a very cool character who is quite the foe. I can't really see him commanding countless minions, so that takes him down a peg, but he'll always give The X-Men trouble, which is all you can really ask for. He gets a solid...
If you're going to go walking around with the same name as the devil himself, you had better bring something special to the table. Lucky for Lucifer, he more than lives up to his namesake. First of all, he's the reason Professor X lost the use of his legs (It's actually a much lamer story than I hoped for. Lucifer just dropped a huge stone block on the Prof's legs). Secondly, he isn't a mutant at all. He's really a member of a technologically advanced alien race that takes over and enslaves entire planets. His plan is to do the same with Earth, and he comes dangerously close. He woulda gotten away with it if it weren't for thos meddlin' mutant teenagers. And then there was the time he had a nuclear bomb rigged to his heartbeat, so if The X-Men killed him, he would wipe out half the Earth's population. He's a real bad guy with grand plans of domination and the power to carry them out. That earns him a full...
Juggernaut is one of the absolute best villains in the Marvel Universe. First of all, he's Professor X's jealous stepbrother. He wasn't born a mutant. He got his powers when he was fighting alongside his stepbrother in the Korean war. He found a cave which was actually the temple of Cyttorak. When he touched the sacred gem that was kept within the temple, he became The Unstoppable Juggernaut. He really is unstoppable. He has superhuman strength that none of The X-Men can match. He is unharmed by practically everything they try to do to him. Your only hope is to try and take his helmet off, but his helmet looks like it's riveted on. Because he's the sort of guy who will carry a grudge and never let it go, it's best not to get on Juggernaut's bad side. All in all he's a terrifying villain. He deserves no less than...
The sentinels are a bunch of killer robots designed by Dr. Bolivar Trask in a very misguided attempt to take care of the, "mutant menace." The sentinels are programmed to protect ordinary humans and destroy mutants, but that's not what they decide to do when Trask activates them. They decide that humans are too weak and foolish to protect themselves and in order for the sentinels to protect mankind, they must first conquer it. Yeah, nice going Dr. Trask. So basically he invented killing machines that will either enslave or demolish everyone on the face of the Earth. What makes the sentinels terrifying is the fact that they have no feelings. They make cold computer-driven decisions and don't take into account thing like: 1) humans don't want to be enslaved 2) there are good mutants as well as bad mutants 3) sentinels are really super creepy and evil. They're the borg. That's pretty much it. If the borg made your skin crawl in Star Trek, the sentinels will have the same effect with The X-men. For an enemy as terrifying as the sentinels, I can award no fewer than...
If the sentinels are the borg, Master Mold is The Borg Queen (yeah, we're knee deep in nerdy nerd crap). The sentinels have no thoughts of their own. They are all controlled by a central mind, and that mind is Master Mold. Master Mold also holds the power to create more sentinels. As long as there is metal to be found on the Earth, Master Mold can churn out sentinels to enslave humans and destroy mutants. Resistance is really really futile. In addition to the ability to replicate drones, Dr. Trask gave Master Mold a whole battery of weapons so he can protect himself against mutants who would (wisely) seek to destroy him. It was Master Mold who decided the sentinels should enslave mankind and it was Master Mold who nearly killed Professor X's astral projection, which would have left the Prof. in a coma. Master Mold is the cold metallic heart of a race of unfeeling and practically unstoppable soldiers. Like I told you, Borg Queen. For a machine as evil and misguided as Master Mold I have to give a full...
Cal Rankin aka The Mimic is a great character because from issue to issue your feeling about him might change. He's arrogant and over-confident, which makes you hate him at first. He also feel like he has no place in the world, which is somewhat tragic. At one point he even joins The X-Men, but he acts like a jerk half the time and in the end he sacrifices himself to save the day. He's a complete roller coaster ride. The Mimic got his powers by knocking over some chemicals in his Dad's lab. From then on, he would absorb the best abilities of whoever he was around, mutant or not. He was an outcast in school because he was as smart as the teachers and as athletic as the best athletes. His one problem is that his powers don't last when he's not around the people he's mimicking. He's a problem for the X-Men because he doesn't have their powers unless they're around, but if they're not around they can't fight him. His father developed a machine (in the picture above) that was supposed to make Cal's powers permanent. Upon stepping into the machine, however, Cal finds that the machine his father invented was actually designed to take away his powers. His father was worried about what would happen if his son could just absorb the strengths of potentially every person on Earth and keep them. The Mimic has a really cool story, and The X-Men having to fight their own powers with their own powers is a pretty cool thing to see. All in all I feel The Mimic deserves...
Count Nefaria is part of the criminal syndicate known as the Maggia. Unfortunately his little society has a long history of having their butts handed to them over and over again. In his first issue with the X-Men, he actually has a pretty nice little scheme going and he has the technology to carry it out. He creates an impenetrable dome over Washington DC and has projected images of The X-Men hold the city hostage for a large ransom, which if not paid will result in all the air being sucked out of the dome and the entire population of our nation's capitol meeting an untimely end. So that's a pretty cool plot, but you never get the sense that Count Nefaria is a true top grade villain. For one thing, his henchmen are constantly trying to mutiny and that doesn't say much for his leadership. A villain needs to either be able to destroy his nemeses himself or command large numbers of unquestioning minions to do it for him. If you can't control one of the most rag-tag group of ne'er -do-wells ever assembled, you just aren't cutting it as a villain. Also, what does our friend The Count really do? We never get the sense that he's a true threat. Maybe he'll pop up again with some cool powers and really do something evil, but from our first meeting I can't really give him more than...
No, this is not some kind of Megaman boss, this is an actual villain that actually fights The X-Men. As part of Count Nefaria's plan, he must kidnap The X-Men. In order to do so he enlists the aid of villains that are even lower on the totem pole than he is. Plantman is one of Nefaria's henchmen in his Washington DC caper. His yawn-inducing power is the ability to control plants and cause them to attack. Also he apparently has a chloroform gun. He would probably make a better date rapist than a villain, but I can condone no such action. Anyway, I just can't get excited over a guy who has power over plants. It's hard to believe this guy actually captured Jean Grey using his unbelievably lame powers. Now if he was some sort of sexy female like...oh, I don't know...Poison Ivy, I would be a little more interested. As he stands he is a complete snooze and is banished to the lowly rank of...
You can't just make yourself a suit covered in quills, name yourself The Porcupine, and think you're an enemy worthy of The X-Men. It's just not done. The Porcupine is another of Count Nefaria's henchmen, and despite being one of the more...ahem...interesting looking sub-villains (he looks like a poorly drawn samurai with a weight problem) he still doesn't register much on the compelling villain scale. He clearly isn't a leader and doesn't have the wherewithal to really make himself much of a menace on his own. As with pretty much all the other villains Count Nefaria has called into action for his cute little scheme, The Porcupine is only good enough to be included on a pu-pu platter of villainy, and even then it's still not as compelling a dish as something someone like Lucifer or Magneto would have cooked up. This being the case, the man with the dumb looking costume gets...
Let's just face it right off the bat: DC's Scarecrow is better than Marvel's by any standard of measurement you wish to apply. DC's Scarecrow is legitimately terrifying, but Marvel's comes off a little flat and less interesting. I guess he has an interesting power in that he can command an army of attack crows (did he get that idea from the Adam Carolla podcast? I guess the world will never know). Crows are much more intelligent and can be more fierce than they are often give credit for, but they are far from the fiercest birds in the sky. Even if they were the fiercest birds in the sky, remember how many birds it took in The Birds just to take down one normal human? It would take a lot more crows to really take down a mutant, and the comics just don't show The Scarecrow commanding Hitchcockian numbers of crows. With his dozen or so crows he's more of an annoyance than anything. I must admit that out of Nefaria's band I'm more partial to The Scarecrow than most of the others. I actually like crows, so I'm going to give him a slightly higher score than the others.
If all the unicorns in the world looked like this one, do you think girls would love them as much as they do? I'm pretty the ladies of the 80's would not have paraded around with Trapper Keepers featuring the unappealing character you see on your left. The Unicorn is another member of Count Nefaria's little company, and he's about on par with the rest of them. His name is derived from the fact that he can shoot lasers out of the top of his comically shaped hat. Does he have a horn under there or something? The hat isn't really horn shaped. It's actually flat on top. Was he at one time a much more powerful Unicorn but some lucky superhero managed to lop the top of his horn off? These are questions I don't care enough to find the answers to. The Unicorn is just another half-baked villain who isn't compelling enough to command a larger role. As such he is ranked...
He's the last guy we'll talk about who got dragged into the Count Nefaria Washinton DC caper. There's something about The Eel that I like more than any of the rest of his compadres. Maybe it's the fact that he has a better name than any of his fellow villains, or maybe it's because he has the best costume in this issue. Either way, The Eel is just better than the humdrum like of Plantman and The Porcupine. Unfortunately, The Eel's powers are far from overwhelming. It is revealed that he is just as comfortable in water as he is on land, but I can't imagine he compares favorably with The Sub-Mariner or Aquaman in that arena. Also, he has the power of electric shock, but he has to be pretty close to his victim to use it. I wish his powers were a bit more powerful because that would put him over the top. Because they aren't, I can't give him anything higher than...
After the parade of duds thrown at us in issues 22 and 23, you would expect that the X-Men would be back fighting someone a little bit harder to bring down. Someone a little more epic. Does The Locust fit that profile? No he does not. He's just a former college professor who has had one too many people laugh in his face over his theories of what could turn insects into giants. So what does he do? Well, he makes himself an insect-themed suit and releases his specially treated insects into the fields of unsuspecting farmers. Sure enough, his insect grown to be giants, but they don't even give the army much of a fight, let alone The X-Men. As for the man who calls himself The Locust, he doesn't bring much to the table. He has his ion flashlight that causes the insects to become gigantic, and he has synthetic wings on his suit that are just slow enough for him to get caught by Angel who doesn't break a sweat. Did I mention that I really really hate bugs? Yeah, I'm a bit phobic, so this was far from my favorite X-Men villain. He's going to be down there with Plantman and The Porcupine with only...
The boring villain doldrums end here because El Tigre/Kukulcan is a super cool villain. El Tigre is a conniving treasure hunter who stumbles upon half of a magic amulet. The first half of the amulet lead the way to the second half, which happened to be in a museum near X-Men headquarters. When El Tigre joined both halves of the amulet he became the living embodiment of the Mayan god Kukulcan (feathered serpent god). With El Tigre transformed into a deity, the X-Men have a worthy foe on their hands. Unfortunately for El Tigre, the amulet also carries a curse. If the wearer of the amulet can survive the curse, they will retain the powers of Kukulcan indefinitely. El Tigre is unable to keep his powers, but the X-Men themselves weren't really able to do much to stop him. You can't help but wonder if El Tigre had survived, could the X-Men have beaten him? For anyone who puts this much doubt in your mind, they have to score pretty highly. The downside is that El Tigre can't possibly come back to bother the X-Men in future issues, so that's a bit of a knock, but otherwise this is a cool villain and a great story. Final verdict is...
The Puppetmaster seems to be an opportunist for the most part. Somehow and somewhere he came across a large supply of radioactive clay. The Puppetmaster take this clay and uses it to form puppets of the people he wishes to control. It's a pretty neat trick and he can get away with a lot without anyone knowing who he is, where he is, or what he's up to. I do have a bit of a beef with The Puppetmaster and that's this: he always gets someone else to do his dirty work. He's always toiling away with his puppets unseen and unknown, and for the most part unwilling to do anything on his own that he can't force someone else to do. That's just lazy villainy. Oh, and his puppets don't always work. That little Professor X you see him holding crumbles in the very next frame because the Prof. feels the mental attack and smacks it with a mind block. He does work as a great plot device for team-ups, but other than that I just don't feel right giving him any more than...
Well there you have it. I couldn't be happier to finish this entry. In fact, I think I'll look away and never read it again. If you enjoyed it half as much as I did, you didn't enjoy it at all.
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