One of the best things that Marvel brought to comics is a certain maturity. The DC Multiverse was always a bit more fantastical, embracing more out there sci-fi and fantasy ideas. Marvel was sold as the world outside your window, and the heroes and villains often felt more realistic. This has helped make the threats of Marvel villains to feel more real, something that has extended to their plans. Someone like Ultron is so chilling because he wants to destroy all biological life and his plans are usually just to use overwhelming power to enact that; they make sense. The Hood created a supervillain team that was basically just a supervillain working together to make money and stay out of jail. Various X-Men villains use the tools of oppression against the team and their allies.
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However, not every Marvel villain has plans that make any sense. There are multiple Marvel villains out there, many whom fans love, who have plans and goals that are completely nonsensical. These four Marvel villains made plans that are frankly ridiculous, and they don’t always make sense.
4) The Builders
Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers run was amazing, pitting the Avengers against threats on a level they have never faced before. The idea of the Builders was planted in the first three issues of Avengers (Vol. 5), and readers learned more and more about them until Infinity, when the Builders master plan was revealed — they wanted to destroy the empires of the universe on their way to Earth, which they were targeting because of the Incursions. Destroying Earth makes sense, since one way to stop an Incursion was to destroy the Earth. However, there was no reason for the Builders to attack everyone else in the universe on the way to the Earth. They should have just attacked the Earth with their full power immediately. None of the other galactic empires, who have often fought the heroes of the Earth, would have jumped to the planet’s aid. Infinity is a pretty cool story, but it didn’t really make much sense when you think about it hard.
3) Kang the Conqueror
Kang the Conqueror is one of the Avengers’ greatest villains. Kang comes from a future where technology has robbed the universe of excitement; everyone has idyllic lives of plenty. Kang hated the boredom of the universe, so he decided to use time travel technology to become a true conqueror. Kang has created a cross-time and space empire, making himself into a modern day Alexander the Great. Eventually, Kang decided that he wanted to destroy the Avengers, and set about his mission. Now, Kang has killed multiple teams of Avengers from across space and time. However, for some reason, he won’t just go back in time and kill the Avengers of Earth-616 in their cribs. Kang has killed every hero and villain in Marvel history in his travels through space and time. He has nothing left to prove to anyone, so him not just destroying his worst enemies in order to finally achieve his goals makes no sense at all.
2) Red Skull
Red Skull is a Nazi and likes to pretend that the Aryan race is superior to everyone else. Red Skull has built his entire personality around Nazi ideology, but let’s be real — Nazi ideology is wrong. The “Aryan race” that Nazis talk about isn’t real (actual Aryans aren’t blonde hair, blue-eyed, they’re central Asian) and they aren’t superior — they have lost every time they tried to take over the world. Red Skull is always trying to pretend that his side is still superior and uses that as a proof that he’s correct to do what he’s doing. None of his plans ever make any sense, because he’s fighting for a cause that has been proven wrong over and over again. Anyone espousing Nazi ideals or racial supremacy of any kind is acting in a nonsensical manner (in comics and the real world), and Red Skull is the poster boy for this kind of foolish behavior.
1) Apocalypse
The Krakoa Era was great for the X-Men overall, but it did ruin one of the most important X-Men villains of them all — Apocalypse. Apocalypse was always presented as a Darwinist, wanting only the strong to survive. This made a lot of sense. And then Krakoa and X of Swords came along. It was revealed that Apocalypse had once lived on Okkara, the living super-continent that would birth Krakoa and Arakko. Okkara was attacked by the demonic hordes of Amenth, and in order to stop the world being overrun, the mutants of Okkara entered Otherworld with the sundered half of the living continent, known as Arakko, and Apocalypse’s wife Genesis made him promise to create an army powerful enough to stop Amenth when they came back. So, Apocalypse’s entire Darwinist stance was basically altruistic. However, this is the dumbest thing that has ever been done to Apocalypse. If there was this terrible threat out there in the multiverse that he was building an army to defend, why wouldn’t he tell everybody? The strongest army doesn’t always win; numbers and logistics win. Apocalypse’s entire villain career has been rendered nonsensical on order to “flesh out the character”.
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
