Published with a cover date of May 1984, the first issue of Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars sold in excess of one million copies; according to various sources, each subsequent issue of that twelve-part mini series sold anywhere between 750,000 and 1.25 million units. These were record sales figures at the time, but throughout the 1980s many other titles shipped in similarly enormous quantities. Over twenty years later, Marvel’s best selling titles struggle to top figures of 125,000.

There are numerous reasons to explain such a decrease, not least inflated cover prices, the end of newsstand distribution, the rise of a significant rival consumer market in computer games, and a greater trade in collected formats, with many comics sacrificing stand-alone tales in favour of decompressed story arcs. However, I’ll leave further dissection of the industry to others far better qualified and more well-informed than me. I’m more concerned with what I firmly believe is another, less recognised reason for a drop in sales: the poor treatment of a staple ingredient of superhero comics in the 60s, 70s and 80s that all but vanished during the 90s. I want to talk about supervillains.

I’ve been a comics reader and collector for almost 30 years, and one of my fondest memories of childhood was the eager anticipation regarding which villains would be appearing in any given month’s issue of Spider-Man or Batman or The Avengers, or a number of other titles. You see, back then, you’d often get a different adversary pitching up every one or two issues to hassle the hero – and, even more importantly, they were all noteworthy threats in some way, compared to a lot of modern stories where villains exist simply to act as punch-bags to make the heroes look strong and cool. At some point in the 90s, everything changed. I don’t think I’m alone in being saddened by that.

Now, I’m not going to sit here in my rose-tinted spectacles and claim everything was perfect back in the day. Not every villain was original and well-realised, with plausible motivations; hell, this was an age of kitsch and gimmicks, and pretty much every story was an excuse for characters to smack the beans out of one another whilst the fate of the world teetered on the edge of destruction. However, for me, that was all part of the charm. I never wanted real life to the exclusion of all else in my superhero comics when I was a kid. I still don’t. Unfortunately it seems that four-colour villains have been designated as the scapegoats as comics strive to become more 'mature'. In the past ten years I’ve read so many stories where once-classic rogues have been treated as jokes that I despair. Not every writer is guilty of this crime – I have a lot of time for Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, for example, who obviously loves and respects the characters he uses – but in many other cases villains are derided and slaughtered at the writer’s whim.

These writers seem to have conveniently forgotten that, without the likes of Mysterio and The Green Goblin and The Scorpion and Electro and Doctor Octopus and so many more, Spider-Man would never have been a success; ditto for Batman, with The Joker and Catwoman and Scarecrow and Two-Face, or the Fantastic Four with Doctor Doom and The Red Ghost and The Puppet Master. Without villains, the heroes are nothing. And that’s where this series, Supervillain War, comes in.

This is a story fashioned in the spirit of Secret Wars and the comics of the 70s and 80s, featuring over 40 classic villains – not as jokes, not as one-punch wonders, but fully kitted out to strut out onto centre stage. Aside from the odd name check, there are no heroes in the mix here: nada, not a one. This is a story devoted to the bad guys. And if, like me, you loved all those old comics where it was always a thrill to see familiar faces emerge to threaten truth and justice, well… this one’s for you. I hope you like it.

And so, without further ado, let me introduce you to our colourful cast…

Two decades ago, the late Mark Gruenwald was a writer celebrated for his creativity and respect for continuity, although he inexplicably blotted his copybook with one particular storyline in Captain America, wherein the pasty-faced, white-smocked vigilante known as Scourge went on a killing spree, shooting old school villains who were considered lame (when what the writer should have done is revamp them and make them cool, right? Right!). It's therefore ironic that Gruenwald himself created Armadillo, considered by many to be far more ludicrous than the likes of the original Firebrand, Mirage or Cyclone, or other notable Scourge victims.

Armadillo is the result of a heinous experiment by Doctor Karl Malus, wherein unlucky shmuck Antonio Rodriguez has his DNA spliced with that of… an armadillo (what, you were thinking raccoon?). I call Rodriguez unlucky because not only is he unwittingly transformed into six hundred pounds of orange armour plating, his wife Maria is dying of a disease that only Malus can cure. Shockingly, not-so-saintly Maria then goes and does the horizontal hip-hop with another man, in a particularly cruel plot twist, leading to our abandoned freak deciding to commit suicide by leaping from the Empire State Building.

Not the most uplifting storyline, as I’m sure you’ll agree. It gets worse, however, in that Armadillo survives his plunge only to then suffer twenty years of being a plot device in the world of loose comics continuity, wherein he fluctuates between being an oddly-drawn member of the Unlimited Class Wrestling Federation and a career jailbird, for the sole reason that he looks good in the background whenever there’s a prison breakout.

However, all is not lost - for Armadillo is destined for a major role in the Supervillain War...

Speaking of Mark Gruenwald, his crowning glory has to be The Serpent Society, a criminal gathering boasting over twenty members, all of whom are named after snakes – because, if we’re being honest, snake names make damn cool supervillain monikers, even the stupid ones. Like Fer-de-Lance. (Which is stupid just because it’s French... right? Hey, I'm English, it's a cultural rivalry!).

Unfortunately, cool names count for very little and the majority of the Society faculty have gone the way of most villains. Black Mamba – real name Tanya Sealy – has had her moments however, possibly because she dresses in a highly revealing costume, and modern comic artists love nothing better than to draw women in highly revealing costumes.

An exotic dancer who agrees to have a special implant inserted into her brain, Mamba gains the ability to telepathically glean information from the minds of others relating to their secret desires - and fears. She is then able to manifest these desires via the manipulation of the otherdimensional energy known as Darkforce, gathering her victims into her 'embrace'. And then, she suffocates them. Which is kinda kinky.

I love all the Serpents – hell, even Fer-de-Lance – but Mamba was always my favourite (and if you don’t know the reasons for that by now, you haven’t been paying attention). So don’t be surprised if she gets a lot of screen time in this series…

It doesn’t tend to stand out in comparison to that of Spider-Man or Batman, but Iron Man’s rogues gallery is actually quite superb. A shame, really, that they have an uncanny habit of being killed off.

Mark Scarlotti originally operated under the moniker of Whiplash but progressed to Blacklash when, later in his criminal career, he upgraded his arsenal, from a whip to… well, a better whip. But, dude, what a whip! According to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Deluxe Edition (the Geek Bible that no self-respecting comics fan can live without even though much of it is out of date some twenty years after publication), Blacklash’s weapon is composed of ‘woven boron-filament-impregnated sapphire strands plus steel braid’ and ‘pre-stressed titanium leaf’ in a ‘two layer counter spiralled pattern for rigidity’. Hell yeah!

Unfortunately, Blacklash was a victim of the gratuitous bloodfest that was the onrush of the new millennium, the brutal murder of his wife leading to him discarding his Blacklash identity and becoming Whiplash once again, in a gimp-style leather mask and bare, hairy chest, displaying a newly developed Steroid-induced musculature. Which was pleasant. He was beaten to death by Iron Man’s sentient armour in true sadomasochistic-tastic fashion.

Fortunately, this all happened after the cut-off for Avengers 2000’s continuity, meaning that it will be the authentic – and far more interesting – pre-S&M Blacklash who will be appearing here…

When I assembled my original cast list for the Supervillain War I didn’t even consider Donald ‘Donnie’ Gill, otherwise known as Blizzard. This is because the character has suffered the one fate worse than being Scourged – he has been Thunderbolted. Thunderbolting is the informal term for the process of taking established villains and directing them along the path of righteousness and redemption, typically under a new name. Because, you know, villains haven’t suffered enough indignities these past few years. Now they have to see the light, proving that there is a spark of goodness in every heart! (Personally, I’d like to see more heroes becoming corrupted, but then that’s me all over…)

Credit where it’s due, however; sometimes muddying the moral (or rather immoral) waters works quite well. At the opposite end of the scale to those classic villains who have been tragically strip-mined, there is our Donnie, who – let’s face it – was never really cut out to be a bad guy anyway. It’s a shame that the Blizzard legacy – which has roots in the 60s, when a mad Hungarian (aren’t they all?) named Gregor Shapanka dropped his Jack Frost moniker and began operating under the Blizzard signature instead – seems to have reached an end. Or has it?

At the suggestion of Tom Deja, current writer of Avengers 2000’s popular Iron Man title where the reformed Donnie is a feature character, Blizzard is back, specifically for this series. Is it for the last time? Or is this a prelude to a resurgence? Only time will tell; but I will say this. The supervillain community needs a Blizzard – in some form or another…

Before I begin, I feel compelled to mention that fact that – for a prose writer such as myself who suffers from a neurotic aversion to repetition – having a character named after their principal weapon is a royal pain in the arse. Each and every sentence must be carefully constructed so that the word ‘Boomerang’ doesn’t appear with jarring frequency, which, for the benefit of those who have never come across such a problem, makes you want to take a sharpened instrument (a razor-edged boomerang, perhaps) and stab your own eyes out. But, anyway.

Boomerang – real name Fred Myers – is, naturally, an Australian (because Russians don’t have an affinity for boom... er, wooden throwing projectiles) who was once a highly promising baseball pitcher banned from the game for taking bribes. And who, like all self-respecting disgraced sports professionals, then became a costumed assassin-for-hire, killing people with boomerangs rather than bullets. Which is about as old school as it gets. Plus he gets to speak with one of those fernickety foreign accents, which writers invariably find hilarious to transcribe. Blimey.

My best memories of Fred are stories by Gerry Conway and Tom DeFalco, two masters of comic book scripting with the ability to seamlessly weave together a half-dozen plots and subplots in every issue to keep a reader coming back for more. Conway and DeFalco loved their villains, and their Boomerang caused Spider-Man major problems, in the latter case as part of the superb Sinister Syndicate (in a story guest-starring the ever-wonderful Silver Sable). Oh, and he’s also fought The Hulk and Iron Man – so this is one Aussie deserving of respect, roight? Cobber? Fair dinkum. Etc.

You know, I’ve never actually liked Bullseye all that much; for me, he’s the supervillain equivalent of a girl with pretty eyes and a lovely smile and great legs but who is somehow a little bland when it all comes together because nothing quite fits. Bullseye – whose real name has never been exactly established, but whom I’ll be calling Leonard Lester – has a super-cool costume, is splendidly evil and irredeemable, and possesses the intriguing gimmick/ability of being able to turn any object into a potentially lethal projectile (and, although the science of this particular power is a tad suspect, the nigh-Zen process of a man being instinctively able to judge the weight and angle and the aerodynamic attributes of any missile, ranging from a razor-edged shuriken to an Ace of Spades or a paperclip, is terrific grist for a writer).

Unfortunately, in my eyes, Bullseye is forever associated with Frank Miller’s epic story wherein he stabbed Elektra through the gut with her own sai, and many of his subsequent appearances – to the point of saturation – have failed to compare. There’s also the matter of Bullseye’s body (shattered in a fight with Daredevil following that Elektra incident) being rebuilt with Adamantium bone-grafts, rendering him pretty much invincible – which, in my opinion, detracts from his appeal rather than increasing it.

All that said, Bullseye was a must for Supervillain War, simply because his potential for sheer nastiness is unmatched. And trust me when I say he will be nasty...

One of the most fascinating aspects of writing is the way that the process is organic, and that no matter how extensively you plot (and for me that’s a lot) your characters and situations have a way of heading off in directions you hadn’t initially anticipated. It was that way with Curtis Carr, otherwise known as Chemistro, whom I hadn’t considered for my original cast list for a second. I had a scene in mind for four characters, three of which were already pencilled in, and I needed a fourth; ambling through various online character lists I happened upon this guy and he fit perfectly. He was supposed to appear for half a page. A couple of days later he had settled in quite comfortably and was suddenly a fixture in the main story. I love things like that.

Curtis is a criminally inclined innovator type who invents an alchemy gun that, utilising an unspecified power source, is able to transform any element into another (this power source being unspecified because Chemistro was a 70s character, and in the 70s things just were, man). Now, for a scientific genius, Curtis isn’t too bright; panicking during a fight against Luke Cage he accidentally zaps his own leg, transmuting it to steel, then decides to use it to kick his bulletproof foe that little bit harder. Forgetting, of course, that whatever he turns the gun on tends to disintegrate into dust under heavy impact. That’s the last old Curt sees of that appendage, let me tell you.

So, an obscure 70s villain with massive potential and a prosthetic leg... how could I resist?

Now, there’s obscure and there’s obscure… and then there’s Coldheart. Imagine Lady Deathstrike spliced with DC’s The Huntress and that’s the visual identification taken care of, right down to that special kind of neon blue hair that only exists in comics; and, to be honest, that’s not much meat on her origin either.

An unnamed woman who works for an unspecified governmental agency – the kind where they have powered bodysuits and weapons, so we’re probably talking some SHIELD division here – Coldheart suffers a psychological breakdown when her unnamed son meets an unfortunate – and, of course, unspecified – end. She steals her armoured costume and a brace of swords that channel an unspecified (notice a theme here?) energy that freezes living things on contact, then gets involved in a fight with Spider-Man and The Hobgoblin, and is then never heard of again.

Until recently, apparently. It seems – unbeknownst to me – that Coldheart has somehow, inexplicably, been involved in Civil War. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that the writers involved haven’t suddenly fleshed out her back-story or motivation in any way whatsoever and instead have used her as fodder, and now she’s dead. Right?

To be honest, all I truly care about is that Coldheart is a female supervillain who actually has an interesting gimmick rather than just being really cool at martial arts, and who doesn’t wear a flimsy costume that displays three quarters of a pair of breasts each larger than her head. Which is amazing, considering she was created in the mid-90s…

Marvel continuity is littered with one-shot wonders, characters who, with a little love and attention, may have joined the elite rather than becoming a footnote. Some of these characters suffered because they were the brainchild of a specific writer, and were cut loose to drift off into the void when that writer moved on to another company. Such is the case of the fascinating Conundrum, an oddball creation of the superb J.M. DeMatteis from his time as Spectacular Spider-Man scribe in the 90s.

A sometime partner of Jack O’Lantern (during a time that Jack O’Lantern is actually called Mad Jack, a tricky continuity hitch that shall be discussed further under that character’s entry later in this issue), it’s alluded that Conundrum is a student of Quentin Beck, the original Mysterio, and also that he has some unspecified connection to the previously-unheard-of kingdom of Sufind. He’s certainly proficient in the illusion stakes and seems steeped in eastern mysticism, but, unlike Beck, he doesn’t wear an upturned fishbowl on his head; instead his mask is fashioned from rotating, interlocking puzzle blocks that are sometimes blank and sometimes painted with eyes and mouths and sideways noses, like Picasso meets Escher after spending a night in an opium den. Which is infinitely cooler.

I don’t think Conundrum has recently been reintroduced just to be fodder for Civil War… but, hey, at least he’s destined to tread the stage in Supervillain War!

And so, to the last of a triumvirate of mid-90s Spider-Man villains who were created then abandoned like illegitimate offspring by irresponsible writers who really should have worn protection. Cedric and Dagny Forrester are a pair of filthy rich siblings who decide to invest their wealth in dodgy scientific experiments, to the extent that a scantily-clad Dagny is immersed in a tank of what looks suspiciously like hot cooking oil (there are people who’ll pay good money for that kind of thing, you know).

Does she emerge crispy fried and savoured with eleven secret herbs and spices? Well, no, although that could be pretty cool. Instead she’s turned gold, is surrounded by a green energy field that dissolves anything it comes into contact with (except when it doesn’t) and she can shoot energy beams from her hands. Oh, and she can fly. I don’t know about you, but I think crispy fried would have been more scientifically plausible.

There really isn’t much else to be said about Corona, apart from the fact that she has a distinct ruthless streak and that her powers are pretty heavy-duty (if somewhat vague). Oh, and in case you were wondering, she was the progeny of a fledgling Kurt Busiek. Although there’s absolutely no truth to the rumour he created her after watching a late-night showing of the movie Reality Bites, specifically the scene where Winona Ryder and Janeane Garofalo dance in the gas station…

As is now widely known, Stan Lee wasn’t really responsible for Spider-Man becoming one of the most iconic heroes in the history of popular culture; to call his early plots thumbnail sketches would give thumbnails a bad rep, and were mostly along the lines of coming up with a name for a villain for Spidey to fight, and maybe a reason why they were fighting. And that was it. The rest of the story – in other words, all of it – was up to artist Steve Ditko. Then, when the twenty-or-so pages of masterpiece were done and dusted (typically in the time it would take most modern pencillers to work up the gumption to sharpen their instruments) Stan would come along and add the dialogue. Which, to be fair, was pretty superb in itself, but it was Ditko who made it so easy, and it’s Ditko who deserves the credit for not only Spidey but also so many of his instantly recognisably rogues gallery, not least Doctor Octopus, The Green Goblin, The Vulture, Mysterio, Kraven The Hunter, Electro, The Sandman and a dozen others.

Where do The Enforcers fit into this little trip down memory lane? Well, the original three amigos – Fancy Dan, Montana and Ox – made their debut way back in Amazing Spider-Man # 14, which also saw the first appearance of the aforementioned Green Goblin. Which means that, even though they never caught on in the way all those other villains did, they at least have pedigree. Unfortunately, at a time when comics were famous for funky costumes and powers, a motley gang of street thugs – which is all these guys were – was never going to tickle the taste buds.

Fancy Dan knows karate. Montana wears a Stetson and can loop a mean lariat. Ox is big and dumb. Two later recruits to the Enforcer enclave, Snake Marston and Hammer Harrison, don’t really add much more to the mix other than, respectively, being skinny and slippery, and wearing knuckle-dusters. Ultimately, even I have to admit that these dweebs are, well, dweebs. But, hey. Doesn’t mean they don’t have a significant role to play in the War…

Of all of the reviled Scourge’s victims, the murder of Gary Gilbert, the original Firebrand, was always the one that made least sense to me. Commander Kraken and The Hijacker? A shame, but you can kinda see where the writer’s coming from. Firebrand, however, was different. He’d been battered from pillar to post by Iron Man, of course he had, but that’s a villain’s lot in life – and having your arse handed to you by Iron Man isn’t the same as being rainbow-ed into the ground on a regular basis by Speedball, for example. But, more pertinently, Gilbert was one of those rare specimens, a character who was thoroughly interesting in his civilian identity as well as in costume, with well-defined motivations – more than most of the other Scourge victims put together.

Created to touch upon the zeitgeist of violent social unrest of the late 60s and early 70s, Firebrand is a radical political agitator rebelling first against his abusive father, a corrupt businessman, and thereafter against the entire weight of corporate America. One of comics’ first eco-terrorists, his modus operandi is a far cry from the traditional angle of villains robbing banks and beating on heroes for the hell of it, and he remained true to his core concept for many years. Eventually, however, the character lost his focus and Gilbert retired from the armour to pursue his anti-establishment goals by becoming a go-between and organizer for other villainous types (a status reminiscent of The Trapster’s role in current Avengers 2000 continuity).

Regrettably, this is where all of this rich back-story becomes moot, for it’s Gilbert who unwittingly assembles a cast of third-tier villains that Scourge proceeds to gun down in Mark Gruenwald’s Captain America. A new version of Firebrand debuted a few years later, as a man known only by the name Broxtel appeared, wearing a replica of Gilbert’s costume and utilising his flamethrower weaponry, in the pages of Web of Spider-Man. The character’s motivations were far less interesting – but who know where he’ll be at the end of this series…?

Racial stereotyping is, of course, terribly lazy. Judging by Marvel’s two most well known French villains, Batroc The Leaper and The Grey Gargoyle, the Gallic persuasion are all bucket-headed and barrel-chested, speak in a silly accent with every other word being presaged by ‘ze’, and sport ze ridiculous moustaches that curl at ze ends like ze cat’s whiskers. Take it from a geographical neighbour, this is obviously not the case for all French… some of them, after all, are female (although those moustaches do make it difficult to tell the difference at times).

Paul Pierre Duval is a chemist from Paris who accidentally spills an experimental, organic substance on his right hand, his flesh then transmuting at a molecular level into malleable stone. Duval thereafter discovers that he can engender elemental metamorphosis in any material mass, including living tissue (even his own), and turn that to stone too – the standard, non-malleable kind. Which is actually a damn good power, simple but visually striking – kind of like a reverse Absorbing Man – and highlights why this character was an effective foil for powerhouses like Thor, Iron Man and The Avengers back in the day.

Unfortunately The Gargoyle has been put out to pasture with most of the other cool 60s and 70s villains this past decade, with some unscrupulous writers preferring to poke fun at his French-ness rather than take him seriously. Which, rest assured, I would never do. A-haw-ze-haw-ze-haw!

Okay, pay attention. We could be here awhile.

Once upon a time there were two rather classy mid-80s Spider-Man villains, The Hobgoblin – real name Roderick Kingsley, although this wasn’t revealed until much later – and Jack O’Lantern – civilian identity Jason Macendale, a discharged CIA operative with a chequered history of violence. In the midst of underworld upheaval, Kingsley needed a patsy and led Macendale to believe that Daily Bugle reporter Ned Leeds, a long-time member of Spidey’s supporting cast, was The Hobgoblin; Macendale then had Leeds killed, and decided he was going to ditch his Jack identity and become the new Hobgoblin. With me so far? Great. Now forget all that, it’s no longer important (although the saga of a brand new Hobgoblin will be told in the near future at Avengers 2000!).

Now we come to the confusing part. Enter Quentin Beck, otherwise known as Mysterio, another Spider-Man villain; exit Quentin Beck when he eats both barrels of a shotgun in Kevin Smith’s Daredevil. Before his death, Quentin was a mentor of sorts to a trio of individuals: Conundrum, real name unknown, plus two tech assistants, a guy named Daniel Berkhart (who apparently wore the Mysterio costume on occasion) and a girl named Maguire Beck (listed by various sources as Quentin’s wife, sister, daughter and cousin, although probably not all four at once, unless she’s from deep mountain country). The third Jack O’Lantern, also sometimes known as Mad Jack (I know, I know, it’s a nightmare) could be Berkhart or it could be Maguire, or it could be both. Between them, the writing/editorial enclave of Kevin Smith, Howard Mackie, Danny Fingeroth and J.M. DeMatteis were never quite able to sort it all out to anyone’s satisfaction (although I understand Peter David is currently taking a stab at it).

So why am I even bothering to use Jack O’Lantern in Supervillain War? Because, for my sins, I love the character (hell, who couldn’t love a flaming pumpkin head, with the exception of Ichabod Crane?). So, here’s the deal. My Jack is going to be Maguire ‘Maggie’ Beck, for the reason that – as I mentioned in the Coldheart stub – I have an affection for female villains who aren’t simply one-dimensional, saucily-clad vixens. She’s going to be Quentin’s younger cousin. She’s going to have a connection with Conundrum. And, just by point of reference, Berkhart is the current Mysterio in Avengers 2000 (even though Mysterio doesn’t appear in my story). Okay? Okay!

A confession. As I mentioned, I’ve been reading and collecting comics for a long time, and feel I have a good knowledge of almost all the characters I’ll be using in Supervillain War – almost all. This guy is an exception. I can honestly say that, even though he was created by Stan Lee and Gene Colan back in the 60s and is considered one of Daredevil’s traditional rogues gallery, I’ve never read a single issue featuring The Jester. So, chances are I may hit completely the wrong note on this one.

Jonathan Powers is an aspiring stage actor who turns to crime after his performance in a production of Cyrano de Bergerac is derided. His name and appearance (which seems to have changed significantly in recent years to a more conventional jester costume) may invite obvious comparisons to The Joker, but in actual fact he reminds me more of the Superman villain The Toyman in that his modus operandi utilises murderous gimmicks and children’s toys fashioned with deadly modifications.

And that, regrettably, is about all I know. I’m therefore aware that my version may not be the authentic Jester that Daredevil fans will hanker for, for which I apologise in advance… but, hey, at least he’s been dragged out of Marvel’s closet and dusted down, right?

As wonderfully accomplished as Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were, sometimes their character histories could become a little… convoluted. I’m sure it was fabulous for fans at the time, and in no way would I advocate writers taking the easy route by making all their villains mutants – half the fun of all these old rogues is that their origins were invariably kitsch and wacky, which is what comics are all about. However, some characters can be really hard work. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Klaw.

In a single issue of Fantastic Four back in the 60s – impossible to imagine in today’s decompressed era, I know – Stan and Jack introduce not only the concept of the African nation of Wakanda, the only region in the world (at that time) to boast a significant deposit of the extraterrestrial ore Vibranium, but also T’Challa, otherwise known as The Black Panther, who will go on to become a highly popular character in the next 40 years. And then they add into this heady mix Ulysses Klaw, a Dutch scientist and genius in the field of applied sonics who wants Wakanda’s Vibranium to power a machine that he’s created that can potentially transform sound into solid mass. And then there’s some other stuff. And some other stuff. And, eventually, (the important bit) Klaw becomes the character we know today, a being himself composed of solid sound, with a sonic transmuter device in the place of his right hand.

If you were a comics fan in the 80s, like me, you’d be forgiven for not realising just how malevolent Klaw truly is, because in Secret Wars he had been rendered a prancing lunatic after spending far too long as a sonic frequency absorbed into the walls of Galactus’ solar-system-sized Homeworld starcraft. Then Doctor Doom chopped him up, whilst Klaw sang songs. All very surreal. But, that aside, Klaw has always been a truly worthy opponent for The Avengers and Fantastic Four – and he could well prove to be the most powerful character in the entire War…

Yuriko Oyama is the daughter of Kenji Oyama, later to be known as Lord Darkwind, a Japanese industrialist whose face was badly scarred after a failed kamikaze mission when he was a pilot in the Second World War. A certified nutter, Darkwind ritualistically scars his daughter’s face to mirror his own – which, predictably, doesn’t do much for her sanity either – as well as overseeing her strict training in various martial arts and samurai disciplines. This all leads to Yuriko killing her father and then adopting the identity of Lady Deathstrike to track down two individuals who have benefited from a specific process that Darkwind had developed many years before – the grafting of Adamantium to human bone. Following an unsuccessful encounter with one of those individuals, Wolverine, Deathstrike then allows fellow X-villain Donald Pierce and his extra-dimensional ally Spiral to turn her into a cyborg so that she might compete on equal terms in the future.

For those readers only familiar with the Kelly Hu movie interpretation of Deathstrike, the true comics version has more of the swashbuckler about her, especially when she wields a mean katana rather than relying on her ten-inch-long steel fingers (which render her samurai training a tad redundant). Personally I’ve always loved the original incarnation, as is obvious to anyone who may have read my previous Topaz series (from altmarvel.net) wherein the odd gathering of Deathstrike, Topaz, Paladin, Colleen Wing and Jack Russell’s Werewolf travel to a fantasy realm in search of the soul of Rintrah – and, therefore, there will be a measure of swordplay to be had in Supervillain War…

There are a handful of characters who I believe have the potential to be stellar feature stars of their own books (real comics as well as fanfiction) and none more so than Mayhem, a hybrid of the 70s monster mash and the 80s vigilante movement every bit as much as Ghost Rider. Brigid O’Rielly is a tough-as-nails police detective with an acid-trip hairstyle pitched somewhere between Siouxsie Sioux and Daredevil villain Typhoid Mary, who is in the midst of investigating her own corruption-riddled precinct when she is murdered by a cop who is on the take. This is no bullet in the brain in a darkened alleyway execution, however; instead, O’Rielly is trapped in a bulletproof glass chamber death trap in a gloomy pharmaceuticals warehouse, whereupon she is engulfed in clouds of experimental chemical gas. This scenario sounds like it should be tipped at a forty-five-degree angle and scored with overly-dramatic brass percussion in true Adam West Batman style, but it’s actually pretty creepy as it occurs in a customarily grim and dirty Bill Mantlo issue of Cloak and Dagger from the mid-80s.

O’Rielly is on the verge of death when Cloak and Dagger themselves pitch up, at which point Dagger attempts to save the detective by flooding her with light energy. It doesn’t work – or, at least, not in the way Dagger intends. Instead, her light reacts with the chemicals in O’Rielly’s body, turning her hair and skin green and resurrecting her as a punk zombie who sets out to paralyse and kill victims with the poison gas that now surrounds her like a shroud, as well as enabling her to propel herself through the air.

Let me re-iterate: a flying punk zombie vigilante who kills criminals with glowing green gas. The fact that Mayhem hasn’t starred in her own title in the past twenty years – hell, the fact that she’s barely even appeared anywhere – is a true Crime Against Comics!

For some reason, whilst Marvel have turned their back upon ninety per cent of their villains in recent years, they still appear to love Mister Hyde, who seems to crop up somewhere at least once every three or four months. We aren’t talking the Alan Moore version who did unmentionable things to The Invisible Man in the second volume of The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, of course (nor the original from Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, come to that), but rather scheming scientist Calvin Zabo, who was inspired by Stevenson’s tale to develop a chemical serum that would unleash the manifestation of his own ego, with all its size and strength and wild sense of immorality. He succeeded and went on to battle the likes of Thor, Daredevil and Spider-Man, sometimes in the company of fellow villain Cobra, for no apparent reason other than everyone loves little-and-large/fatty-and-skinny /Laurel-and-Hardy pairings to provide some giggles.

Depending on the writer, Hyde will either be superciliously verbose or guttural and animalistic, but at his best he is arrogant, bestial and never less than menacing. Three of his storylines stand out for me; the first, the seminal Masters Of Evil arc where they take over Avengers mansion and where Hyde, in shockingly brutal fashion for the time, delivers a just-off-the-panel bone-breaking beating to poor butler Jarvis; the second, a fabulous single-issue meeting between Hyde and The Hulk by Peter David and the superb Sam Keith, which explores the respective dichotomy of both characters, and muses on the conflict between the Ego and the Id; and, lastly, an issue of Squadron Supreme at Avengers 2000 itself, by Jason MacAskill, in which a tremendously imperious Hyde augments his physical stature by adding elements of old villain Mister Fear’s own chemical meddlings to his serum, causing his sheer presence to rouse panic and terror in his enemies.

Therefore, if you’re a reader who is sick of the sight of our not-so-genial giant, worry not; the Avengers 2000 version who’ll be strutting his stuff on the Supervillain War stage has something a little different he wants to share with you…

Whenever I come across this villain I can’t help thinking of an awful 70s schlock shocker The Incredible Melting Man, an intended throwback to 50s B-movies but with nothing like as much style, in which an astronaut returns to Earth from a mission to Saturn, his skin melting (obviously) after exposure to a solar flare (on Saturn?), who then goes on a rampage for living flesh. I can’t help thinking that Marvel’s Molten Man would have achieved deserved cult status if only he could boast this origin, but instead he’s another scientist, just like The Grey Gargoyle, who develops an amazing chemical formula only to spill it over himself. It’s amazing anyone ever employed these scientists, all of them are obviously the clumsiest buggers you could ever meet, not to mention thieving swines (Molten Man, real name Mark Raxton, has his accident whilst attempting to steal the formula from Spencer Smythe, who wants to take the credit for Raxton’s work).

Raxton ends up not looking particularly molten at all, but rather like a muscular Adonis (all these scientists obviously work out in between spilling stuff) dipped in gold paint, kind of like Shirley Eaton in Goldfinger (but, you know, not). He then fights Spider-Man, which is pretty much the point of the story. Molten Man is then filed under ‘forget about it’, and only becomes particularly interesting when he returns some ten years later under the tender care of Gerry Conway, who turns his skin more into a volcanic eruption of boiling fire, and who establishes a familial relationship between Raxton and step-sister Liz Allan, a long-time member of Spidey’s supporting cast.

Always a tragic figure with great potential, Molten Man was instead returned to his original, gold-paint state in the 90s and became (yawn) a hero who didn’t seem to mind so much that he was not-very-molten. Whatever. I’m off to watch the still-evil-as-intended Incredible Melting Man!

One of the saddest sights of the 90s was witnessing a new generation of adolescent comic fans drooling over the shockingly awful ‘bad girl’ art of the time and mistakenly thinking that impossibly pendulous breasts and leather gussets jacked up into the crotch were sexy. I wanted to take each of them by the tongue and drag them over to the back issue bins, whereupon I would force them to purchase complete runs of Carmine Infantino’s Spider-Woman. This late 70s/early 80s series was, of course, thoroughly un-PC, what with poor Jessica Drew being hogtied, chained, manacled and even asphyxiated on a regular basis, but hey. Great, sexy art.

That Spider-Woman series was also famous for introducing a whole host of fantastically bizarre new villains, not least The Needle, who appeared in the first issue written by Mark Gruenwald (remember him?). The Needle is an un-named tailor who is beaten up by a bunch of young thugs and who winds up, almost paralysed, in hospital, whereupon his impotent fury manifests in being able to mesmerize his victims with an evil, one-eyed stare. Thereafter, The Needle – who actually carries a six-foot needle, for no reason whatsoever, and with no explanation for where he got the bloody thing from – proceeds to take a much smaller needle and sew up his victims’ eyes and mouths (a firm favourite in visual horror and used to terrific effect in an episode of Chris Carter’s TV show Millennium).

As a matter of interest, Gruenwald’s next issue saw the debut of Gypsy Moth, another superb villain, whom I would have used in Supervillain War if she hadn’t been (sigh) Thunderbolted long before now. Gypsy Moth possessed one of the best powers ever; she was telekinetic, but she could only affect lightweight, inorganic materials. Such as fabric. Such as, Spider-Woman’s costume which she proceeded to unravel during their battle. Listen to me. This may not sound like much, but upon discovering this issue my 12-year-old mind was distracted for months lingering over the possibilities. Kids of the 90s, you can keep your Witchblade and your Lady Death and your poor rehash of Vampirella. I know where my pathetic male fantasies are rooted…

Coincidentally, Nekra also clashed with Jessica Drew just a few issues after The Needle, and their fight was so savage that in true Spider-Woman style they beat each other’s clothes off. No, I’m not kidding. Not that Nekra tends to wear much anyway, the little minx, but even so.

Nekra Sinclair’s mother is an African-American woman who, whilst pregnant, works as a cleaning lady at a laboratory where there is an accident (those bloody squid-handed scientists again) that results in a radiation leak. Nekra is affected in the womb and is born an albino with vampiric features. She is also to turn out to be a mutant, whose physical strength and resistance to harm increases depending upon how much hatred and rage she is exposed to – which, in her formative years, is a lot, considering she looks like Morticia Adams dipped in wet chalk.

By turns ravishing and scary as hell, Nekra has been a Marvel mainstay for thirty years but her motivations are erratic, seeing her pitch up, variously, in the villainous ensemble The Lethal Legion, leading the Death Cult of Kali, as the ladyfriend of The Grim Reaper, and involved in all manner of mystical and voodoo-zombie shenanigans. However, despite her appearance, she isn’t actually a vampire in any way whatsoever – which is possibly a missed opportunity on Marvel’s part. After all, as the aforementioned Vampirella has proved, comics can never have too many scandalously-clad vampire ladies, right?

If there’s one villain who has managed to appear in more titles these past few years than Mister Hyde it’s Alexsei Sytsevich (he’s Russian, don’t you know), alias The Rhino. One of the first Spider-Man villains not to be created by Steve Ditko in conjunction with Stan Lee but rather by John Romita Sr., The Rhino made his debut at a time when Spidey – or rather, Peter Parker – was becoming hip, moving away from his wallflower image by owning a motorcycle and flirting with both Gwen Stacy and Mary Jane Watson. However, there is nothing hip about Alexsei, a dim-witted ugly-bug-thug stuffed in an experimental, ultra-tough suit developed by Russian paymasters, whose sole gimmick is the ability to run into things with his big horn.

Despite having his hide-covered butt handed to him by just about every superhero ever, The Rhino keeps coming back for more. Unfortunately, for my money, the last time he was particularly interesting was back in Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz’s 80s Amazing Spider-Man, where – in a cleverly redesigned costume that made him far more menacing than his traditional grey-and-shapeless lumpsuit – he was a member of what could have been the best villain team ever (with a little love and care), The Sinister Syndicate. As a point of note, he has never, ever, ever been as cool as this picture of him would suggest…

Never having been the biggest X-Men reader perhaps I’m not qualified to judge a character like Sabretooth, but it seems to me that comics fans are divided into those that love him because he’s a villainous version of Wolverine and those who hate him because… well, because he’s a villainous version of Wolverine. The pros are that he is a distinctive and well-realised fellow, a truly nasty piece of work who can always be relied upon to wreak havoc and who doesn’t get rolled over by heroes every time he appears, whilst the cons are that he is overexposed and unoriginal, and that his back-story is utterly overcomplicated. So, yeah. Pretty much a villainous version of Wolverine.

It has been suggested (because, when you’re cool and mysterious, your origins can only ever be ‘suggested’ and never stated as fact) that Sabretooth, real name Victor Creed, was horrifically abused as a child and that by the time he reached adolescence and his mutant regeneration factor had taken hold he was already callous and maladjusted. He and Logan have known and hated each other for almost a century, and their paths cross regularly, not least every year on the day Logan believes to be his birthday, when Sabretooth shows up wherever Logan happens to be and they wallop the crap out of each other.

Interestingly, Sabretooth first appeared in a 70s issue of Chris Claremont's Iron Fist of all places, but the preceding decades have all been thoroughly revisited since then with all manner of continuity implants. Personally I have little time for the whole Victor/Logan merry-go-round, and prefer a quite simplistic version of the character; a sly, surprisingly intelligent fellow who would tear out someone’s heart as soon as look at them, and who has an extremely black sense of humour. So that’s the Sabretooth you’ll be getting in Supervillain War…

MacDonald ‘Mac’ Gargan is a private detective hired by J. Jonah Jameson, the irascible publisher of The Daily Bugle newspaper, to discover how Peter Parker obtains such great photos of Spider-Man; then, when that doesn’t pan out, Jameson convinces Gargan to undergo genetic experimentation at the hands of a mad scientist to become a costumed nutjob known as The Scorpion, whose goal is to bring Spider-Man to justice. So, if you were under the impression that Jonah was simply a loveable old rogue with a heart of coal, think again – he’s actually indirectly responsible for all the murder and mayhem perpetrated by The Scorpion (not to mention Alistair Smythe’s Spider-Slayers and The Human Fly, whose creation he also funded) in years to come.

With enhanced strength and speed, a pea-green, bulletproof suit and armed with a six, foot cybernetic tail – that, in later versions, is augmented with a laser and a totally cool poison spike – The Scorpion would likely wipe the floor with Spidey if not for the fact that the experimental process also leaves him severely deranged. Blaming Jameson for his condition, Gargan thereafter goes hunting for the publisher on, at a rough estimate, 374 different occasions, typically at The Daily Bugle offices, whereupon Spider-Man (or, in one instance, Ms. Marvel) quite literally kick his tail.

In the Marvel Knights Spider-Man series, Gargan comes into the possession of the alien symbiote and discards his Scorpion identity to become the new Venom. Which, to be honest, is a story that left me cold – but which, fortunately, occurred after the cut-off for Avengers 2000…

Lancaster Sneed (quite possibly the worst made-up-obviously-English-name in comics history, and which constantly brings to mind Lemony Snicket) is an operative of MI-6, the British Secret Intelligence Agency, specialising in explosives. Unfortunately, on his first mission in the field, to North Africa, he is caught in a blast and severely injured. His body is repaired with metal plates as Sneed seeks to become a bionic soldier, but he is discharged from MI-6 when his mental stability is questioned (or, at least, this is the official line; I’m thinking they just can’t stop laughing at his name, and no one is getting any work done).

His face hideously scarred, Sneed travels to Asia where he becomes proficient in martial arts disciplines, then to America, where he procures a suit of armour that allows him to generate and channel electricity through his cybernetically-enhanced body. It is at this point that he drops the Lancaster, and the Sneed, and begins calling himself Shockwave, which is probably all just as well.

Created by Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy as a foil for Shang Chi in cult 70s hit Master of Kung Fu, Shockwave seems to be a direct result of writer and artist saying, “Hey, wouldn’t it be great to have a bad guy who does kung fu and gives electric shocks every time he kicks someone?” – which, as supervillain conception goes, is about as wonderful as it gets. When the martial arts craze petered out Shockwave faded into semi-oblivion, only dragged out every now and then when a writer wanted to indulge in 70s homage. Which is a shame, especially as (to my knowledge) Lemony - er, Lancaster - has only ever faced Iron Man once, in a brief battle in the unabashedly kitsch early West Coast Avengers. And if any hero could profit from having an electrified kung fu-kicking armoured bad dude in their rogues gallery, it’s Iron Man…

Heh. Oh man, where do I start? Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce my favourite villain ever in almost 30 years of reading comics.

Jalome Beacher, another genius-but-otherwise-hapless scientist, develops a revolutionary new non-stick chemical (we’re talking Teflon times ten), only for his boss to fire his ass after a corporation takeover. Seriously glum, Beacher purchases a speed-skater’s outfit, applies his chemical in liberal doses, and sets out to rob banks, figuring that he can make good his escape by skating at incredible speeds on his frictionless boots. Which, to be fair, works a treat, especially when Spider-Man can’t stop him because his web fails to stick to Slyde’s costume.

Why do I love Slyde? Why do I love Slyde? I’ll tell you why. For me, when Tom DeFalco created this guy, he rediscovered the pure Ditko formula that had been sitting around gathering dust for years. Slyde is a purely gimmick-driven villain – and it’s a unique gimmick, far more interesting than run-of-the-mill super-speed – but he’s also fabulously lame in that his abilities are almost entirely defensive. This is a guy whose best option is always to run away. He isn’t evil or sadistic or a megalomaniac; he’s a thoroughly normal dude who sees stealing cash as his only option if he ever wants to set up his own laboratory to mass produce his chemical, but who then doesn’t whinge about it or debate the morality of his actions, he just gets on with it. And, probably best of all, he’s about 40 years old. 40! In the constant ‘youthification’ of comics characters he remains middle-aged. Score one for us half-lifers!

One of a whole host of X-characters whose origins are rooted in alternate reality and fluctuating timeline shenanigans, this villain’s complex story is centred about the machinations of a sadistic, other-dimensional despot called Mojo, who kidnaps a stuntwoman named ‘Ricochet’ Rita from Earth and has her transformed into a six-armed cyborg on his own world before despatching her back through time and space to her own planet. Now calling herself Spiral, an accomplished spell-caster as well as a fearsome warrior, she fills a number of roles over the years, serving as a member of Freedom Force and battling the X-Men and The Avengers on a number of occasions.

However, the Spiral who has always most appealed to me is the incarnation responsible for the transformation of Yuriko Oyama into Lady Deathstrike back in the 80s and who runs The Body Shop, an operation responsible for augmenting human bodies with cybernetic parts. Although this is an aspect of Spiral’s character that is rarely touched upon I see her as a slightly deranged version of the X-Men’s Forge, dabbling in technology and genetics with little regard for the consequences.

Of course, there is also the matter of Spiral being a skilled swordswoman – a swordswoman with six freaking arms – who has unfinished business with a certain other beauty of the blade who is featuring in the Supervillain War…

Of all the characters starring in Supervillain War, none have been so hard done by as this poor guy, the butt of jokes ever since his very first appearance, when Spider-Man had the audacity to laugh at his villain name (which, held up against such stunning monikers as ‘Hammerhead’, ‘The Looter’ and the matchless ‘Iguana’, isn’t actually that bad at all). Of course, creator Al Milgrom possibly never intended his creation to be good for more than a few giggles; after all, when you realise that we’re talking about a fellow named Johnny Ohnn (as in, Johnny Ohnn, The Spot) the truth of the matter is plain to see.

Bizarre, then, that The Spot could – and should – have been one of the best Spider-Man foes to emerge from the 80s. A scientist working for The Kingpin, Johnny is studying the mystical properties of Cloak’s cloak (a shred of which was left behind after a fight at Fisk’s office tower) when he creates a warp hole into another dimension, as Cloak himself might. However, when Johnny passes through the hole he finds himself not in Cloak’s Darkforce Dimension but rather in a realm of white punctuated with hundreds more black holes. When Johnny then returns to Earth through another hole he discovers that he has warps all over his body, which he can peel off and cause to open out into apertures to the other ‘Between’ place.

The Spot then proceeds to battle Spider-Man, flitting in and out of our reality through these warp gates – and, to be honest, if he could just pack more of a punch then Spidey would be in real trouble. Predictably, though, the villain gets his comeuppance and thereafter never gets the opportunity to shine as a true threat. Until now, perhaps…?

A character created by Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz in their masterfully creepy Moon Knight series from the 80s, Stained Glass Scarlet – real name Scarlet Fasinera – is the kind of villain who helped give rise to the common conception that Moon Knight is simply Marvel’s version of Batman. I say this because Batman’s famous rogues gallery are defined by psychological motivations far more than the adversaries of any other hero, and Scarlet certainly fits that bill.

A survivor of a traumatized childhood, wherein she murdered her own abusive father but was never punished for the crime, Scarlet grows up to become a reasonably well-adjusted woman with a passion for poetry and the arts, and also for God, resulting in her joining a convent. Unfortunately she then falls in love with a criminal who leaves Scarlet with child when he is shot to death on the steps of her church. Further tragedy follows when Scarlet’s son, Joseph, becomes a heroin addict and dealer as a teenager – and, when Moon Knight arrives on the scene to bring Joseph to justice, Scarlet is forced to shoot her own child dead before he can do the same to Moon Knight. Which is all really, really miserable. And it leads, understandably, to Scarlet losing her grip on sanity and taking to the streets with a crossbow to kill men she deems as ‘guilty of sin’.

Beautiful, mysterious and as nutty as a bag of nuts, Scarlet has always been a villain who has intrigued me – and, hopefully, she will do the same for readers of this series…

Created by Ditko and Lee way back in Amazing Spider-Man # 6, the villainous Lizard was born when Doctor Curt Connors, who had lost an arm in the war, took to studying herpetology due to his fascination with the way reptiles could regenerate lost limbs. He developed a serum, which he then ingested – and which transformed him into a rampaging human-reptile hybrid and one of Spider-Man’s deadliest and best-loved foes.

I mention all this because the origin of Stegron is tightly interwoven with that of The Lizard. Geneticist Vincent Stegron is assigned to assist Connors in the study of dinosaur DNA procured from The Savage Land, an isolated region of Antarctica that, because of aliens (they get the blame for everything) has remained in a tropical, prehistoric state for over 200 million years. However, Stegron is so obsessed by Connors’ previous dalliance with dodgy chemical serums that he concocts one of his own, laced with dino-DNA (all this long before Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park, by the way), and transforms himself into – can you guess? – a human-dinosaur hybrid! Which is basically an orange version of The Lizard, with added spines.

Stegron then proceeds to try and take over the world. To be honest, he may have had better luck if he’d been less influenced by his own surname and instead of modelling himself on a stegosaurus, a genial herbivore, he had beefed himself up with some tyrannosaurus juice. But, as they say, hindsight is everything…

When homeless wretch Jacob Eishorn accepts a stranger’s offer of money in return for agreeing to be a test subject for some suspect medical research, should he really be surprised when matters take a terrible turn for the worse? Still, you can’t help but have sympathy for the poor guy when he’s pumped full of experimental cancer cells and other viruses, all of which coalesce in his body but which don’t actually kill him. Instead, Eishorn becomes the insidious Styx, a frail little fellow whose very touch can cause almost instantaneous death, transmitting a cancerous disease that can corrode organic matter.

Styx would have been a sure-fire hit of a villain in the horror-themed 70s, but he was actually a slight disappointment during his few appearances some two decades later. Teamed with a buff gentleman named Stone – presumably just so creator David Micheline could write a duo called Styx and Stone – Styx’s only real moment of note was when he came close to killing Venom's alien symbiote with his cancer fingers in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man. However, the sheer potential of this character cannot be denied.

Styx is as close to out-and-out evil as any character in this series gets, and you just know that someone, somewhere is destined to come to a pretty nasty end - especially as I haven't brought along his partner to keep him in check…

Back in the 80s before mutant saturation, and before there was any need for Decimation, every time a new mutant team was introduced there was always a real buzz of excitement. New Mutants was a series that attracted a lot of attention, being a younger version of the X-Men for a new generation of readers, and in issue # 16 the team came up against the teenage equivalent of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in Emma Frost’s Hellions. Whilst most of the Hellions were suitably wicked, one – shy, sweet-natured Marie-Ange Colbert, otherwise known as Tarot – stood out a mile.

Able to conjure up the physical manifestation of the essence of a pack of tarot cards she carries – so, for example, she can wield Death’s scythe, or can summon the lion of Strength – Marie-Ange is never really given much of an opportunity to shine, possibly because tarot cards aren’t as diversely exciting as one might think. Still, the potential has always been there for a writer to exploit her character in new and interesting ways; for example, if ever Marvel decided to try and emulate DC’s Vertigo line then a horror-magic Tarot series could be their answer to Sandman or Lucifer if they, uh, played their cards right (sorry, that line wrote itself).

Most of the Hellions died, slaughtered by Sentinels during a period where it was written into writers’ contracts that at least three mutants had to perish every issue, but Tarot survived, perhaps as karmic reward for always being so nice. But, I’m sorry to say, a gentle nature may not be enough to see her through the War…

For me, no other villain epitomises the sheer pleasure I experienced as a young kid reading comics in the late 70s and early 80s than this guy. There are two reasons for this; Marvel Team-Up # 14, featuring Tiger Shark against Spider-Man and The Sub-Mariner (as he was always called back then, rather than simply Namor) was the very first published-before-I-was-actually-born back issue that I ever purchased; and, when I was about six years old, one of my most treasured possessions was a deck of Marvel game cards, like Top Trumps, and Tiger Shark’s awesome stats beat everyone (I guess the deck designer was a fan).

Todd Arliss is a professional swimmer who injures his back and is forced to seek medical help from a Doctor Lemuel Dorcas, a mad scientist type, who is experimenting with genetics. Dorcas imprints Arliss’ DNA with the genetic codes of a tiger shark and also with Namor’s DNA, creating an amphibious hybrid with a serious (and, to be honest, understandable) mad-on for life in general. Calling himself Tiger Shark, Arliss clashes with Namor on numerous occasions, not least when he kills Namor’s father; however, there has always been a lot more to the character than a simple plot device, and he is a key component of many of the best Sub-Mariner stories as well as giving him a hell of a fight every time they meet.

At the time of the Avengers 2000 cut-off, Tiger Shark had been mutated into a monster-fish in the pages of Thunderbolts for absolutely no reason and with no explanation other than because it suited the writer and artist. This genuinely makes me want to cry.

Going a little way to address the serious imbalance between male and female villains (and indeed featured characters overall) in Secret Wars, writer Jim Shooter introduced two of the latter in issue # 3 of that series in Volcana and Titania. Volcana was more interesting, visually and in terms of her fire and magma related powers, whilst Titania was simply super-strong and bore a passing resemblance to fellow redhead Ms. Marvel, although perhaps a little more butch; however, as Volcana passed into obscurity mainly due to her seriously dull devotion to The Molecule Man, so Titania actually went from strength to strength.

A weakling victimised by those around her, Mary ‘Skeeter’ MacPherran is more than happy to offer herself up as an experimental guinea pig to Doctor Doom, who busies himself using alien technology from the Secret Wars battleworld to bestow his specimens with super powers (the presence of such human subjects out there in the depths of space being explained by the fact that a chunk of Denver was used in the creation of that world; no, seriously, that’s what happened). Suddenly tall and tough and dressed in studded leather, Mary takes the name Titania (nothing to do with Shakespeare and faeries, but because it’s similar to ‘titan’, obviously) and immediately attempts to beat up The Absorbing Man (which likely isn’t what Doom had in mind when he conscripted her). Probably just as well she doesn’t kill him, because they end up married; and, hey, who hasn’t been there, right?

In the next twenty years of comics, Titania develops fixations for Spider-Man and She-Hulk, and… well, not much else, actually. Which is a shame, because she’s Marvel’s premiere powerhouse female villain – something she could be about to prove in this series…

There are two villains who have undergone a radical overhaul during their time in the Avengers 2000 universe – two villains who duly deserved such special attention – and the first is Pete Petruski, alias The Trapster, a character who has been plaguing Marvel’s greatest heroes for over forty years. Another genius scientist – I swear, comics couldn’t survive without them – Petruski develops an extraordinary adhesive paste that he loads into a gun and uses to commit crimes, initially under the fabulous 60s name of Paste Pot Pete, a moniker he will thereafter never, ever manage to live down.

As The Trapster, Pete has fought Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four on dozens of occasions, either solo or as part of the Frightful Four, inventing and utilising other traps such as magnetic wire-bombs along the way. And that, to be honest, is about as far as he goes in the real Marvel Universe – but, at Avengers 2000, he has taken a big step into the limelight. As the head of The Alliance, a shadowy criminal cartel that operates throughout the United States – and possibly beyond – The Trapster no longer personally engages heroes in conflict but instead organises and provides resources and information for other villains, in exchange for a share of whatever illegal gains they make from their nefarious businesses. Think of him, then, as a Wilson Fisk for the costume brigade.

Speaking of costumes, The Trapster has had a few of his own during his career; if you don’t recognise his icon above, that’s because his current attire is brand spanking new, consisting of a welder’s mask and boiler suit with a heavily upgraded arsenal. Avengers 2000-vintage Trapster is a whole new animal, baby. Hear him roar.

Remember when I said that Iron Man’s rogues gallery was one of the best in comics? Well, here’s another gentleman who has given the armoured Avenger some serious problems over the years. Milos Masaryk, quite possibly the only villain ever to herald from Slovakia, is a member of the Soviet Intelligence force assigned to shadow Anton Vanko, the engineer who developed the armour for another classic Iron Man villain, the Crimson Dynamo. When Vanko defects to the United States, Masaryk is charged with tracking him down, and to this end is outfitted with a helmet that emits concussive power beams and is designated with the codename Unicorn.

Later, Masaryk is voluntarily subject to experimental treatments that augment his powers, but which result in cellular deterioration that eventually drives him insane. Thereafter Unicorn appears in a number of stories in which he is searching for a cure for his condition, without success, until he is ultimately last seen heading out to sea in the grip of dementia. Which is pretty damn bleak. But, hey, at least I can make claim he’s still alive and use him in the War!

As a point of interest, someone claiming to be the original Unicorn appeared in the mid 90s as part of a mercenary unit called The Stockpile, but as this Unicorn was not mentally insane, was Australian rather than Slovakian, and was totally crap, we’ll not talk about him. If that’s okay with you.

I claimed that there were two villains who had been overhauled in the Avengers 2000 universe, the first being The Trapster; well, here’s a guy with even more of an enhanced reputation. New readers, if there’s one series at this site you can do yourself a favour by checking out it’s Supervillain Team-Up by Steve Sienberg, a novel-length saga of how David Cannon, the mutant known as Whirlwind, assembles a new Lethal Legion to rock the world of The Avengers on its ever-loving ass. Trust me: it’s a killer.

When his mutant ability – to be able to rotate his body at incredible speeds without incurring nausea or physical damage – manifests at an early age, Cannon takes to a life of crime under the identity of The Human Top only to fun afoul of Henry Pym, the hero Giant-Man, and his wife Janet van Dyne, The Wasp. Developing an obsession with the two of them for reasons of hate and love respectively, Cannon then becomes Whirlwind and operates as a thorn in the side to The Avengers for years, often in groups such as The Masters of Evil. Unfortunately he ultimately ends up being considered just another loser. Well, to hell with that!

At Marvel, Cannon has never come close to achieving his potential; in Avengers 2000’s Supervillain Team-Up, however, all that is rectified. Supervillain War is, in spirit, a successor to this superb series. Go give it a whirl.

For my money there’s no more versatile comics writer than J.M. DeMatteis, the scribe of the chilling and thought-provoking Spider-Man stories Kraven’s Last Hunt and The Child Within, and also of the patently (and purposefully) silly Justice League International, where there was a wonderfully large number of storylines concerned with Blue Beetle and Booster Gold not fighting bad guys but rather attempting to make easy money and get in Fire’s pants. DeMatteis also brought his superb brand of humour to Spectacular Spider-Man, epitomised by this creation, a gorgeous – and utterly crackers – strawberry blonde in a Playboy bunny outfit with an Alice in Wonderland fixation.

I make no apologies for adoring The White Rabbit, an unnamed lady of cultured upbringing but deprived childhood who takes refuge in the works of Lewis Carroll and who then attempts (and fails) to become a queen of crime. I also freely admit to fleshing out her back-story in this series and to allowing her character to develop naturally into something that could well be utterly loveable. And making her English, even if she wasn’t originally intended to be. Just because I can.

Unfortunately, that same affection doesn’t extend to The Rabbit’s accomplices, The Walrus and The Dormouse, at least on this occasion, so don’t get your hopes up for a Tea Party reunion, mmkay?

No, it’s not Edward Nigma. Or, for that matter, The Three Investigators (for those of a certain age who remember such things!).

No, dear reader, these query marks indicate that there shall be other iniquitous cameos during Supervillain War that – for the sake of plot – must be kept secret for now. However, if your taste buds have thus far been tantalized by the array of underused villainous talent on the series cast list, then savour the thought that there’s more to come…

Who’s your favourite Marvel villain? A menace to civilization as we know it, such as The Red Skull, Doctor Doom or Loki? A stalwart rogue for a particular hero, such as Electro, Bullseye or Sabretooth? A classic foe now regrettably undervalued, such as Tiger Shark, The Grey Gargoyle or Mentallo? Or, perhaps, a truly obscure adversary who never achieved the success you think they deserved, such as Mayhem, Dansen Macabre or The Spot?

It’s pretty obvious who my favourites are. By and large, they’re all listed here, although there are hordes of others – Will O’ The Wisp, La Tarantula, The Brothers Grimm, The Orb, The Prowler, The Matador – who would have fitted perfectly in Supervillain War if I’d had the elbow room. Ultimately, there’s no right or wrong where the question of favourites is concerned; after all, even The Big Wheel has his fans. With regard to what makes a classic villain, however, there are a number of factors I personally deem to be essential.

First and foremost a villain needs a gimmick – a unique power or weapon, a personality quirk, or some visual identifier (or, hell, even all of them) – that sets him apart from the pack. Just like Mickey Mouse is recognizable from his silhouette, so even a novice comics fan can probably guess the identities of the following villains from the briefest descriptions: a lunatic scientist with four mechanical tentacles grafted to his midriff; a bruiser armed with a ball and chain whose body can take on the properties of anything he touches; and a guy who rides around in a motorcycle helmet painted up like a gigantic eyeball. Well, maybe not the last one. But if you can name him, you may now consider yourself Officially Cool.

Secondly, a villain needs a solid motivation. Just ‘being evil’ doesn’t really cut it any more than ‘he fell in a vat of acid and now he’s, uh, bad’. He needs to be driven to do what he does, be it threaten the world with nuclear warheads or robbing fast food restaurants, for a specific reason. It helps if that motivation is original, but it isn’t especially necessary; after all, the desire for revenge for power is always going to be at the root of most criminal activity. However, a villain must be able to present an interesting aspect to his origin that gives him a credible stimulus for being a nasty piece of work if he’s going to impress me. For example, if he was, say, an astronaut who fell into a vat of acid (after returning from a mission to Saturn where he was exposed to a solar flare, and is now melting all over the place), then that would be fine. Incredible, in fact.

Thirdly, a villain needs to be a threat. I don’t demand they all go around sinking submarines or throwing the hero’s girlfriend off a bridge or sinking France into the ocean (although I can hope); however, I expect a character’s menace to last longer than being introduced on page 2 of a story then being scuppered by a repulsor ray or a star-spangled shield or an Uru hammer before page 5, or for a scintillating masterplan to build in momentum for twenty pages only for the villain behind the scheme to be socked on the jaw and left in a bundle of webbing for the police inside three panels on the final page. Regardless of whether a villain ultimately gets defeated – and, let’s face it, they all do – they need to put the hero through some serious hoops before that victory can be achieved.

And, lastly, there’s the question of names. I have a penchant for ‘The’ names – The Mandarin, The Hobgoblin, The Vanisher – and also for animals, such as Puma and Tiger Shark. When the two occur simultaneously, as with The Vulture and The Jackal, you know you’re onto a winner. Conversely, if you have a villain with a fantastic gimmick, motivation and who is always a threat, but their name sucks, then everything goes down the pan. So, no Thermonuclear Boy or Queen Spasm or The Black Antelope, if you please. I just wouldn’t be able to take them seriously. Even though The Black Antelope has a ‘The’ and an ‘Antelope’ and is also Black, which is a cool villain colour. I have to look at the bigger picture, see.

Ultimately, if all these elements fit together, then you could well be looking at a classic villain. Of course, I may be completely misguided; but, in my defence, I offer the immortal words of my fellow fanfic scribe and villain aficionado Chris Munn, as stated when he was talking about the legendary Swarm: “He’s a Nazi made of frickin’ bees, man!”

Swarm. A cool name, he almost stung Spider-Man to death, and he’s a Nazi made of frickin’ bees.

I rest my case.

(But, no, he’s not in Supervillain War. I’m saving him for the sequel...)

Hi. My name’s Meriades Rai and I’m a villainaholic. I’m also 32 years old, from England, and I’ve been writing fanfiction for three years now. If you like what you’ve seen so far of Supervillain War and fancy reading any of my other work I would, of course, be pathetically grateful, as only an internet writer can be.

You can email me with comments about this series at ameriades@hotmail.com or visit my Livejournal for an up-to-date list of current work. If you wish to read any of the other great series hosted at Avengers 2000, click the Avengers 2000 Presents banner at the top of this page. If you wish to return to the gatefold for this series, click on the Supervillain War logo, also at the top of this page.

I hope you enjoy Supervillain War – and, when you’re done, let’s all raise a glass of cheer to the villains of the world. Because, without them, there'd be no reason for the heroes to get out of bed...