Blog Party I: Top Five Villains

Hello! Thanks for coming! Please, help yourselves; there's plenty of text for everyone. When we run out, we can just go over to your homes for more. I've got a lot to serve today, so let me put up the official logo and get to work having fun:



I've been thinking about the topic for my first Blog Party ever since I announced it last week. It wasn't easy. Batman alone has a rogues gallery that could more than fill this list. So, in order to narrow things down, I had to break it in to categories and limit myself. If I picked a Marvel villain, for example, none of the other four could come from Marvel. It resulted in the painful omission of several really good characters from the list, but at least this way I can “cheat” and mention them in passing as runner-ups. The five categories that make up my list will be animation, film, television shows, Marvel comics, and DC. In instances of overlap, such as comic characters appearing in films or animated series, my criteria is based on the version which impacted me the most. Now then, let's dig in!:


TELEVISION:
I didn't really watch Buffy, the Vampire Slayer when it was first on. I'd heard buzz that it was a good show, closer to Joss Whedon's original vision than the campy feature film. I really enjoyed Dracula: the Series and thought Buffy might have the same tone...and lifespan. Besides, the few shows I did catch here and there felt very “girly” and I was a little embarrassed to be watching.

One night, I caught the last few minutes of an episode in which she's consummated her love with a recurring informant/love interest. The pair are lying in each other's arms asleep when he suddenly sits bolt upright, looking very panicked, and runs out into the rain. I had no idea what was going on and tuned in the following week to see her boyfriend acting truly evil.

Angelus was one of the vilest vampires to roam the world, carving a swath of death and destruction across Europe for hundreds of years until he crossed paths with gypsies who placed a curse upon him that restored his soul. As Angel, he could now feel remorse for his atrocities, the memories still there to haunt him. He broke ties with his party of vampires and fled to America, hiding in the shadows and living off the blood of rats and other animals, eventually becoming a defender of the innocent in a never-ending battle to atone for his evil. Allying himself with the Slayer was a good move to that end, but sleeping with her proved tragic. The gypsy curse came with a price, that if he ever experienced a moment of “true happiness” his soul would be torn from him once more and he'd become the remorseless demon he once was. Now that I know Whedon was an X-men fan, I wonder if Dark Phoenix was an inspiration for this storyline. The idea of lovers become bitter enemies and one having to die to save countless others is certainly a parallel. For weeks Angelus terrorized Buffy and friends and ultimately planned to plunge Earth in to a hellish dimension. The only way Buffy could reverse the portal he had opened was to impale Angelus with a sword. Unfortunately, at the last minute one of her friends had succeeded in restoring his soul and it was Angel that she killed. Aghast, she left town in the season finale and I became a regular viewer.

Angel returned at some point in the next season after having spent hundreds of years in a hell dimension where time moved faster than it did here. Eventually he was spun off into his own series and, four seasons into that, Angelus returned for a few episodes. His second run as Angelus wasn't quite as good or as terrifying as the original, but it had its moments, such as the cliffhanger where he bites the slayer Faith, or the one where inside his mind, Angel fights Angelus.

Close runners-up in this category included Arvin Sloane (Alias), The Cigarette Smoking Man(The X-files) and Alex Krycek(The X-files).


FILM:
How does one go about choosing just one villain when movies have offered us so many? Even now as I write this, I'm unsure of my choice. So much so that I find myself writing about my original second choice instead.

It's arguable whether or not Freddy Kreuger has ever been as scary as he was in the original Nightmare on Elm Street. I thought the second one wasn't as strong but I absolutely loved Dream Warriors. Robert Englund is both charismatic and funny in this role, unexpected traits in someone doing such evil things to children. Sleep is such a safe haven that the notion of being unsafe in your own bed is terrifying. I also really enjoy the surrealness of it all, the powers a villain has on a plane where thought becomes reality. Freddy was extremely creative. Speaking of creativity, though the sequels inevitably declined in quality after the third movie, Wes Craven's New Nightmare has one of the most brilliant premises I've ever seen. Bringing Freddy into the “real” world to terrorize the actors and creators involved with the movie was sheer genius. It was great to see the original cast again, and Englund was awesome as both Krueger and a tormented...Robert Englund.

I came very close to picking General Zod from Superman II for this, if only for being in the best comic book slugfest of the 80s and having the greatest defeat scene of any supervillain. Besides, Terrence Stamp is everywhere these days from Star Wars to Elektra to Smallville(and I really don't trust him as the voice of Jor-El on the latter given his prior role). The other close runners-up in this category were Darth Vader, Keyser Sose, and Biff Tannen.


MARVEL:
Definitely my publisher of choice in my comic-collecting days, this too proved difficult to narrow down. I managed to narrow it down to two, suspected Rey might beat me to the punch on one of them, and ultimately picked Thanos anyway.

The Infinity Gauntlet was one of the most impactful crossovers that I read as a high school senior, and introduced me to Thanos of Titan. I had seen a glimpse of him in an old issue of Captain Marvel my uncle had given me, but hadn't known the full story behind the character. Thanos worshipped Death herself, embodied as a robed female skeleton, and would stop at nothing to gain supreme power in order to impress her. Upon collecting all six Infinity Gems he became a master of time, space, reality, power, mind, and the soul, and his first act was to kill HALF the universe's population, just to impress his girl. Eventually, the surviving heroes teamed up and defeated him, in part due to his own subconscious desire to lose, and reverse the effects of his evil and restore the deceased.

Thanos is ruthless and brilliant as well as powerful in his own right, and heroes have often paid the ultimate price facing off against him. The Infinity Gauntlet was not the first time he threatened the galaxy, and it wouldn't be the last, but it's the campaign that impacted me the most.

Dr. Doom was a very close runner-up in this category. Others were Magneto, Apocalypse, Juggernaut, the earliest appearances of Venom, and the aforementioned Dark Phoenix.


D.C.:
Joker. Not the cheesy Cesar Romero version with the clearly visible mustache under his makeup that I grew up with on the '60s TV show. Not the one voiced by Mark Hamill in the animated series, though he was very good. Not even Jack Nicholson's portrayal in the movie. I didn't read as many DC comics as Marvel, but when my Aunt and Uncle gave me A Death in the Family as a Christmas present one year, I saw how evil the Joker was. THAT'S the Joker I'm talking about. The one who shot and crippled Batgirl, who beat Robin to a pulp with a crowbar and left him to die in a horrific explosion. The comic incarnation of the Joker is no joke. Is he responsible for his actions or is insanity to blame? Either way, he's no less of a threat, and all the more dangerous.

Runners-up are Bane, Darkseid, and Chemo.


ANIMATION:
Not surprisingly, Megatron is my favorite animated villain. Roughly ten years ago, I would have been talking about Megatron from the original Transformers, as voiced by the busy Frank Welker. I might even have talked about his later incarnation as Galvatron, at least the Leonard Nimoy-voiced movie version. Welker’s post-movie TF season three version was maniacal and unhinged, but Nimoy's was cool and vengeful and had some of the best lines, including “Coronation, Starscream? This is bad comedy.” and “It's a pity you Autobots DIE so easily, or I might have a sense of satisfaction NOW.” Yes, it wouldn't be surprising that a Transforners fan like myself would pick Megatron, but I'm not talking about either of those guys. I'm talking about Megatron II from Beast Wars.

Beast Wars took place both before and after the original series, thanks to a clever twist. At the end of the civil war portrayed in the first show, the heroic Autobots defeated the evil Decepticons. As a result their descendants, the Maximals, ruled over the Predacon descendants of the Decepticons. The Predacon council bided their time, and went along with the Maximal government, but a renegade in their ranks who had taken the same name as the original Megatron had plans of his own. He recruited a crew with a lie and stole a mysterious golden disk. Pursued by a Maximal exploration ship that was closest to theirs when they made their escape in to warp space, the Predacons emerged over a strange primitive world. Both ships crash landed and their occupants adopted alternate forms as animals to survive the world's harsh conditions.

The original Megatron didn't tolerate treachery and often unleashed his rage on upstarts like Starscream. Megatron II had his share of traitors(one even joined the other side in the first episode), but he often manipulated their treachery to his own ends. He manipulated the actions of two traitors to his benefit, resulting in the destruction of the opposing side's leader in the first season finale. He accomplished after 26 episodes something his predecessor only managed after 65 episodes and a feature film!

The real depths of his genius and villainy were revealed in the second season when we learned that these characters had traveled through time as well as space, and the world they were on was in fact a prehistoric Earth. The premise of the original Transformers was that the warring robots crashed on Earth in an Autobot ship, the Ark, four million years in the past, only to be revived after a volcanic eruption in the year 1984. The true nature of the golden disk was that it had been encoded with detailed information by the original Megatron and sent in to space as a back-up plan, should he fail. It revealed the exact location of the Ark where the Autobots and Decepticons lay dormant, and Megatron II's true master plan was to change history itself. In the heartstopping second season finale, Megatron puts some distance between himself and the Maximals and manages to breach the Ark's control room, where he blasts the Autobot leader Optimus Prime in the head, unleashing a furious timestorm. As the Maximals flicker and he declares victory, that they “no longer exist”, viewers were left wondering for months how there would be a third season, let alone how the original series could be considered intact. I won't spoil where things went from there, but there was a third season as well as 26 episodes-worth of a spin-off in which this cool, calculating genius continued his reign of terrorizing. Things got much, much worse for the good guys before they got better, and the cost was high.

No other cartoon villain accomplished what this one did, so the runners-up aren't anywhere as close this time. Besides the original Megatron/Galvatron, other distant contenders in this category are Unicron, Mumm-Ra, Skeletor, C. Montgomery Burns and Clayface.

* * * * *

Angelus.
Freddy Kreuger.
Thanos.
Joker.
Megatron (II).

I wouldn't want to cross paths with one let alone five of these characters in a dark alley, or anywhere for that matter. Hopefully everyone will survive the Blog Party and make it past all five to the comments section, where other participants are invited to leave their addresses. If all goes according to plan, I'll be back tomorrow to post links to everyone who joined in the fun in a Blog Afterparty wrap-up. If not, I've either had my blood drained, had a really bad dream, been wiped from existence, beat-up with a crowbar, stepped on or blasted by a large robot, or met some other dastardly fate. Stay tuned...