Who Has The Best Rogues Gallery?

[Christopher Glennon]

I apologize if this has been made before, but I was inspired by the Batman rogues gallery thread. Who do you think has the best villains? Who says the most about the hero(es) and the world they live in? Who has the most threatening/terrifying? Who gives the hero(es) the best dilemmas? Best fights?

I suspect Batman and X-Men are going to be pretty popular, but I personally like Flash and Fantastic Four. The Flash's villains have personalities and lives all their own while the FF are really imaginative.

I also apologize if this is too Marvel/DC.

 

[Spider-Man]

Spider-Man and Batman easily have probably the best rogue's gallery in comics right now even if they are being a bit midhandled (Green Goblin? 'Nuff said!). I think that they just did an excellent job on fitting both these heroes with suitable villains and made them memorable and just classic. I am pretty letdown with Superman's enemies as most of them don't seem as classic or dangerous as the ones Superman and Batman go up against.

 

[sKorpia]

Who says the most about the hero(es) and the world they live in?

I think if you do general public vs. the X-Men for this one, it's probably one of the most powerful examples of villany in comics and one that says the most about the world they live in.

 

[jadrax]

Personally I think spidys villan line up is rather weak. The only one of them thats really interesting is Doc Ock.

Flash on the other hand, has a great villan line up, helped along by the fact DC isent afraid to totally concentrate on them and allow them to be very fleshed out.

 

[RAINMAN]

I`m going whit spiderman. He has a crazy and unique line up of wackos.

 

[Sharklady]

I have to agree with the poll results. While Spidey has a sterling rogues gallery, Batman's is the gold standard.

 

[Fone Bone]

This is tough. While Uncle Scrooge has the Beagle Boys, Flintheart Glomgold and Magica DeSpell, Bone has the Hooded One, Kingdok, and the Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures. I think the Stupid, Stupid, Rat Creatures swing the pendulum in Bone's favor.

Bone.

 

[Beyond Batman]

Batman hands down. Then again I'm a huge Batfan, so my opinion may be a bit biased.

 

[KryptoKnight]

X-books

I'd have to say most of the X-books.

5 best (or my 5 favorites)

Magneto
Mr. Sinister
Apocalypse
Stryfe
Omega Red

Fantastic 4 have one of the best villians in Dr. Doom though. But Batman's would be a close second to the X-men. Spidey's would be 3rd.

 

[TimTwoFace]

Batman hands down. Then again I'm a huge Batfan, so my opinion may be a bit biased.

It's not biased if it's 100% gospel truth, dude.

(Batman for me, too!)

-Tim

 

[The Overlord]

Personally I think spidys villan line up is rather weak. The only one of them thats really interesting is Doc Ock.

Flash on the other hand, has a great villan line up, helped along by the fact DC isent afraid to totally concentrate on them and allow them to be very fleshed out.

How many Flash villains besides Professor Zoom are Flash's league power wise?

 

[jadrax]

How many Flash villains besides Professor Zoom are Flash's league power wise?

Power dosen't really equate how interesting they are. Theres a ton of Superman villens that can go toe to toe with him, but there all pretty bland and often don't show up more than one comic.

Flashs line up is interesing as Flashs power level is pretty much off the scale, hes almost as fast as light, and as if that wasent enougth has icorprability, time travel and other stuff thrown in on top. Realistically he should be able to take out pretty much anyone on a good day.

But his rogues, there all built around levling the playing field pretty much. Abra Kadabra, Weather Wizard, Mirror Master, Zoom, The Turtle, The Top they can all pretty much go Toe to Toe with any DC hero, even Superman and would put up a convincing fight. Captain Cold, Trickster(s), Captain Boomerang(s) are all more subtle, Batman level stuff out for the Physchological punch. Wild Cards like Dr Alchemy add totally different twists.

 

[Sharklady]

> Fantastic 4 have one of the best villians in Dr. Doom though. <

Dr. Doom belongs on any list of Top Five comic book villains. The problem is, he makes the rest of the FF's rogues gallery look rather weak by comparison.

 

[Christopher Glennon]

This is tough. While Uncle Scrooge has the Beagle Boys, Flintheart Glomgold and Magica DeSpell, Bone has the Hooded One, Kingdok, and the Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures. I think the Stupid, Stupid, Rat Creatures swing the pendulum in Bone's favor.

Interesting choices, Fone, especially since there's not much I know about them as villains (aside from the episodes of Duck Tales I've seen). You know how super hero's enemies are treated, how do they compare to Scrooge's and Bone's enemies?

Dr. Doom belongs on any list of Top Five comic book villains. The problem is, he makes the rest of the FF's rogues gallery look rather weak by comparison

The reason I mentioned the "hero's world" in my original post was because of the Fantastic Four's non-Doom villains. Although there aren't a lot of villains anywhere that can compare to Dr. Doom, the FF's bad guys come from all over the place - Underground (Moleman), Underwater (Attuma), Outer space (Galactus, The Skrull), Subspace (Annihulus, Blastaar), and Microspace (Psycho-Man). The Fantastic Four are explorers, everyone they face comes from some different realm.

 

[TwoPossums]

Somebody said it, Batamn is the gold standard. They are just the best. Maybe they aren't the strongest but they fit the character best, tell a lot about his world and generally have been handled well, more often than other villians.

X-men and FF have good villians but really without Magneto and Dr Doom they really aren't as memorable.

Flashes villians, well I don't know enough. I have an opinion but it is uninformed so I'll keep it to myself. but Spiderman, man I always thought his villians were his weakness. The vulture? what? Doc Oc while handled well a lot is really a stupid villian. Its been proven a lot lately that you can do amazing stories with second rate heros and villians so that doesn't hold them back from doing great comics but in of themselves I don't like Spidermans villians.

TwoPossums

 

[King_of_doom]

Spider-man and Batman are the top of my list

 

[Dark Night]

Batman has the best villians--they reflect Batman's human flaws and inner demons and are as unique to other villians as Batman is to any other super-powered (yawn) character ...

 

[Style]

The Powerpuff Girls.

 

[GregX]

I have to go with Batman. The gold standard indeed.

Yes, the X-Men have Magneto, who is the greatest supervillain character ever, but as a whole, their rogues gallery is weaker.

To quote Greg Weisman on Batman's villains...

Very much so. To me, the creation of a great villain depends on
making that villain a true counterposing force to the hero. Each villain
has to make us feel, at least in that individual story, that he or she is
the ultimate nemesis. This is accomplished not simply with opposition, but
by juxtaposing similarities and contrasting them with opposition. Let's
look at Batman for a moment.
a. Batman and the Joker both operate in strange, even garish
costumes, outside the law. But the Batman represents ORDER, the Joker
CHAOS.
b. Or... Batman is a man with two faces. Bruce Wayne and the Bat.
Two sides of the same coin. Personify that, and you have TWO-FACE. Now
you've got two characters who share a bond, and yet are as different as
night and day.
c. Batman was created to inspire fear in criminals. The Scarecrow
exists to inspire fear in decent people.
d. Batman is a man seduced by the darkness in his soul. Catwoman
is that seduction brought to life.
e. Batman strives to find order out of chaos, Ra's al Ghul strives
to establish his own order in place of human freedom. To me, these have
always been Batman 's best villains, because they each speak to his soul.
Anytime I thought about working with any of the others, it was always more
of a struggle.
f. Take the Riddler. As fun as he can be, he was never my
favorite. The best I could come up with was to piece out a segment of the
Batman mythos, i.e. Batman is supposed to be the world's greatest detective.
Thus we pit this man of answers in a battle of wits against the world's
greatest questioner. (Not bad, but not great either.)
g. Penguin always stumped me until I saw the movie BATMAN RETURNS.
Now, I didn't care for that movie much. I thought it was a mess. But the
one truly brilliant addition to the Batman mythos was the notion that the
Penguin was a monster. Batman has a monster inside him. And he puts on a
monstrous aspect to give that monster reign. Tim Burton's Penguin was born
to that misshapen life. Suddenly, the villain worked for me.

 

[Stuckey]

Batman's rogue gallery, to me, is the best by a longshot. However, I also really enjoyed what Johns was doing with Flash's rogue gallery before I stopped buying comics regularly.