5 Marvel Villains Readers Love to Hate (& One Might Be Too Brutal for the MCU)

Marvel Comics always had their own flavor of superhero; compare Namor to anything that their distinguished competition was putting out in the Golden Age. The Silver Age would see these differences make the House of Ideas into the premiere purveyor of superheroes, their more human heroes striking a chord with fans. However, superheroes are just a part of what Marvel did so well; the other half of the equation are the supervillains. They form an important part of the story, with the most popular of them becoming some of the most fleshed out characters in the Marvel Universe. Many of them have become icons, reaching levels of popularity that some heroes could only dream of reaching.

Being a fan of a villain can be difficult, mostly because some of them are extremely reprehensible. Many fans hate various villains, with that hatred making these antagonists more and more popular. Readers love to hate them, and that love has helped many of them reach legendary status. They’re the villains who you’re supposed to hate; that’s how you’re supposed to express your fandom for these characters. Readers love to hate these five Marvel villains, including Wolverine’s more monstrous villain.

5) Doctor Doom

Doctor Doom has one of the most interesting fandoms out there, all stemming from his complexity. On the one hand, Doom is the sort of the kind of villain who you can actually respect and look up to. He’s honest to a fault, driven, loves his people and genuinely cares about the people under him, is generous with his gifts, has saved the universe more than once, is able to put aside his grudges to get the job done, and has numerous other laudable attributes. He’s an honorable villain, so you can definitely love him the way you love a character like Wolverine or Deadpool.

However, all of that is sophistry, because underneath all the honor and duty, Victor Von Doom is a vain, cruel, small man, one who can’t help but be jealous of a world that he has never felt like he’s a part of. Sometimes, he’ll do something amazing and you’ll praise him, then you’ll learn that he did it by doing something horrible. He finds a way to take all of the great things about him and twist them. Doom is Marvel’s most storied villain, his complexities making his fandom the most bipolar out there, constantly swinging between respect and admiration for Doom and outright contempt for him.

4) Thanos

Thanos is one of the most tragic monsters you can imagine. He was one of the first children of the Eternals of Titan, but he looked more like a Deviant than one of the Celestial’s perfect children. This simple quirk of genetics made it so his people completely and totally hated him. They treated him like garbage, causing him to become a nihilist who didn’t care about anything , worshiping death as both the cessation of his suffering and as a being that he could fall in love with. All of the Mad Titan’s evil comes from the people of Titan treating him differently because of his looks, and it makes him an extremely sympathetic character.

However, Thanos has also committed some of the most terrible acts imaginable. His nihilism and worship of death has caused him to kill countless beings, ending their lives because of the emptiness inside of him. He’s saved the universe many times in the years after getting the Infinity Gauntlet, but he’s also gone back to his old ways and began killing planets worth of victims for no other reason than that he can. Much like Doom, it’s easy to respect and admire the villain until you remember exactly what he’s done and how he looks at life in the universe. He’s a complex monster, generations of fans falling into his charismatic trap.

3) Red Skull

Marvel has many irredeemable villains, but there are few of them as bad as the Red Skull. Johann Schmidt was chosen by Adolf Hitler to be the ultimate Nazi killing machine, acting as the Third Reich’s most feared soldier. His threat was enough to cause the United States to create their own supersoldier program, and so Captain America was born, setting the two of them on a collision course. Red Skull led Hydra throughout the conflict, honing it into the spiritual successor of the Nazi Reich. He survived the war and kept up his hidden conflict against the world, with his arch-foe’s return pushing Thanos to the top of the supervillain food chain.

Red Skull is an amazing villain. To begin with, he’s a Nazi and that makes him a snap to hate. He has an amazing visual and is the perfect comic book supervillain, an over the top monster, dripping with histrionics. He’s the kind of bad guy you hate with a burning passion, cheering on the heroes when they finally start beating him up. Fans don’t like Schmidt as a character, because he is a monster. However, they love to hate him, making him into Cap’s most popular villain.

2) Green Goblin

So, Green Goblin is in a rather interesting place nowadays, having become an ally of Spider-Man since the Sin-Eater ate the evil part of him. The Norman Osborn we’re getting today is one who has done all of the terrible things but the part that did those things and makes him do worse is gone. He’s been working closely with Peter Parker and has even acted as Spider-Man while Peter was in space. It’s a weird arrangement because Norman is now altruistic and helpful, even getting recruited to fight against the Infernal Hulk, but he’s still the guy who threw Gwen Stacy off a bridge, kidnapped Aunt May and have an actress fake her death, caused the miscarriage of Mary Jane’s baby, did the whole clone saga just to hurt Peter, and used his position as the Iron Patriot and head of HAMMER to destroy enemies.

Osborn has always been a popular villain, with fans learning to love the insanity he brings to every scheme he has. He’s a villain so hated that in the decades after his death, the fandom still hated him for what he did and kept him as Spider-Man’s greatest foe. He’s always been a villain that fans love to hate, his horrific actions, interesting personality, and twisted sense of humor creating a bad guy that fans love to read about.

1) Sabretooth

Wolverine and Sabretooth’s bloody rivalry has become one of the most brutal in comics, with Victor Creed riding it to superstardom. Logan and Victor have almost the exact same powers, except Vic has super strength and different claws, with similar tragic pasts. They are two sides of the same coin, with Wolvie working hard to control the animal inside of him and ‘Tooth glorying in releasing it, using his powers to do whatever he wants. He’s a twisted hedonist, a person for whom the word “no” is little more than a barrier for him to break through. While he’s worked with the X-Men and other heroes many times, even having a period where his morality was inverted, causing him to desire to do good, there’s no denying that he’s a monster.

Sabretooth is a lovable villain, one who fans enjoy reading about and spending time with. However, we love him so much because he’s so terrible. Much Logan, readers can see the good person that Victor could be if he just decided to try and see the choices that he makes that lead him down the bloody paths. We know that he constantly chooses evil, making hating him a snap. However, he’s a magnetic monster, one who you can’t help but cheer for at times.

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