Marvel has some of the greatest villains ever, and the two most popular are easily Doctor Doom and Magneto. Honestly, both of them started out pretty similar; they were both over the top regal villains, known for hyperbole and histrionics. They quickly became the most popular villains with their teams, and that led to them getting more development. Fans wanted more and more from the characters, and Marvel gave it to them. They became two of the greatest villains of all time, but that appellation isn’t even correct; they became two of the most popular characters of all time. They are widely considered to be the best of the best.
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However, as powerful and dangerous as they are, they aren’t Marvel’s most dangerous villains anymore. Doctor Doom is a monster, and Magneto is a complicated god cast in flesh, but they aren’t all that dangerous. Their goals aren’t monstrous, and they’re not mad dogs killing everyone. However, there is a villain who is much more dangerous than either of them. In fact, he’s the most dangerous villain ever: Mister Sinister, one of the X-Men’s greatest foes. Sinister has reached another level in recent years, and it’s time that we gave him his flowers.
Mister Sinister Has Showed That He Will Burn Down the Universe
Mister Sinister has been all about the bloodshed from day one. Before day one, actually. The attack on the Morlocks in “Mutant Massacre” was his doing (and it took place a year before his debut), all because he felt that they were useless to his work on perfecting himself and mutants. This set the standard for what he would be. He went to extremes that no one else would go to. There’s a certain scientific ruthlessness to the character that honestly buoyed him for years when he was just a shadowy manipulator trying to gain power over the mutant race for his own aggrandizement.
He would keep targeting the X-Men, even playing a role in the destruction of the X-Mansion, but as a character, he was kind of static. All of that changed in the 2010s, as he became a campier villain, one with more of a sense of showmanship and humor. This honestly made him even more brutal than before, as his humor in the face of his atrocities made it all even worse. Eventually, the X-Men’s monumental Krakoa Era would dawn, and we would learn the truth about Sinister: he was created to use mutants to figure out how to become a Dominion, a godlike being outside of space and time, and he was going to use Krakoa to do it. “Sins of Sinister” proved that he was dangerous on another level.
Readers learned that Sinister had been fooling with the DNA of everyone resurrected in Krakoa, allowing him to make them like him. He suddenly had complete control over a mutant population with what amounts to negative morality, and they set about to conquer the human race. He created chimeras, compound mutants with powers he could tailor. He destroyed heroes and villains, manipulating the world in a shape he liked. However, he lost control over the Quiet Council and had to fight for a thousand years before he could get to the point where he could become a Dominion: by destroying everything in the universe and using all of that energy to ascend.
Sinister failed; he found out that Enigma, the original Nathaniel Essex who created him, had become a Dominion, and the timeline he had created was erased. However, this is something that Sinister can still do; he knows how to become a Dominion now. Sinister has no problem doing extremely dangerous things in order to have his way. He created an era of carnage and war that spread to the stars, all so he could be a god. He doesn’t care about anything or anyone but himself and his own power. His mind works on a brutal calculus, and all he sees around him are meat bags he can use. He doesn’t care about ruling the world; the world only matters because of what he could take from it. He wants to be a god, and those are the most dangerous villains of all.
Mister Sinister Makes Even Thanos Look Tame
A lot of Marvel fans will scoff at all of this, and bring up Thanos. The Mad Titan is dangerous, yes, but there’s an honor to the things he does. He’s a nihilist, and he believes in that completely. He has a reason he wants to kill everything, but he can be moved at times. He doesn’t want to burn down creation just because; he’s doing it because he believes. This makes him less dangerous than most villains because he’s liable to just be hanging out philosophizing about his views until he reaches a point where he needs a little bit of the ultraviolence. Sinister is always working, always tinkering, always hurting something.
One of my favorite Mister Sinister moments, one that shows how dangerous he really is, came from Avengers vs. Aliens. Sinister wanted a Xenomorph version of himself. He knew exactly what this would mean and what would happen, and he did it anyway. There’s nothing more dangerous than a villain like him. Thanos, Doom, or Magneto can be reasoned with; they want to underneath it all. However, Sinister doesn’t care about your reasons. He only cares about himself, and this has allowed him to become Marvel’s most dangerous villain.
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Image courtesy of Marvel Studios.
