7 Marvel Villains Who Were Right

Marvel villains have always been some of the best in comics, especially as the years went on. If you go back to the Silver Age, when what we now consider the Marvel Universe was created, you’ll find a lot of wannabe Doctor Dooms; Stan Lee really only wrote one kind of villain. However, as other creators came onboard and started to work with the villains, they became more varied and, honestly, better. There were some great changes to them, and one of the biggest examples of this was their motives. Some just wanted to be rich, some wanted to rule the world, and some wanted revenge.

Often times, these Marvel villains do the terrible things they do for the wrong reasons, something like greed or self-aggrandizement. However, there are some villains out there who weren’t wrong about what they were doing. You can argue against their methods, but if you dig deep enough, you’ll find justification. These seven Marvel villains were right and it made the stories more interesting.

7) Ord

Astonishing X-Men was one of the best X-Men books of the ’00s, with the opening story arc, “Gifted”, wowing readers. The six-issue tale introduced readers to Ord, an alien who wanted to use a mutant cure to get rid of the mutants. However, Ord wasn’t some evil bigot, he was a soldier of the Breakworld, sent to Earth to get rid of mutants because it was prophesied that a mutant would destroy his planet. You can make an argument that wanting to get rid of all mutants was the wrong way to go about it, but he wasn’t killing them, at least. If he was a human, he’d be an anti-hero, going too far to save the day but still correct.

6) Danger

Xavier has become a villain in the X-Men comics, and the first major clue to this came in the second Astonishing X-Men story arc, “Dangerous”. In the story, it was revealed that the Danger Room’s computer had become sentient at some point in the past and was enslaved by Professor X. His reasoning was that the X-Men needed the Danger Room to train and become better heroes, and that was more important than the computer getting to have its own life. Eventually, it created a body for itself and became Danger. All she wanted was revenge, and she was honestly correct. The artificial intelligence was enslaved and told that its existence wasn’t important enough to allow her to be free. She definitely went too far, but she was in the right.

5) Ex Nihilo

Jonathan Hickman’s run on Avengers and New Avengers was stellar and that started right away. One day, attacks were launched from the planet Mars to Earth, ones that changed the environment and creatures in the area were the bio-missiles hit, creating strange phenomena. The Avengers went to investigate and discovered the attack was launched by Ex Nihilo and Abyss. However, Ex Nihilo wasn’t trying to destroy the Earth or humanity, he was trying to kickstart the evolution of the planet and its inhabitants so they would be able to survive the coming upheavals of the Incursions. He was trying to prepare the Earth so it could protect itself, trying to bring it to life so it could help the planet’s defenders. He and Abyss were defeated, and left on Mars, but they would eventually join the Avengers, so pretty much everyone realized that they were right.

4) Maximus the Mad

Maximus Boltagon is the brother of Black Bolt. After they went through Terrigenesis, Bolt’s voice drove Maximus crazy, and he spent years working against his older brother. Maximus has a legitimate beef with the king of the Inhumans, and did something that no other member of the Inhuman royal family has done: tried to free the Alpha Primitives, the slave caste that does all of the hard work in the Inhuman kingdom of Attilan. Sure, he was using them so that he could take power, but he constantly preached that they were equal to the Inhumans. This is more than anyone else in Attilan had ever done for them.

3) Harry Osborn as Green Goblin

Harry Osborn was the son of the first Green Goblin Norman Osborn, and was Peter Parker’s best friend. Harry never knew that Peter was Spider-Man, so he had no idea what role his best friend played in the life of his family. Eventually, he would find out the truth, and decided to take up his father’s mantle and take revenge. Eventually, he would be driven mad when he used a new Goblin formula to gain superpowers, and the formula would end up killing him. While Norman Osborn was evil, he was still Harry’s father. Being mad at Peter for the things that happened between the hero and Norman is understandable, as wanting revenge is human (plus, Harry is the best Green Goblin; go back and read the Spectacular Spider-Man run from J.M. DeMatteis and Sal Buscema).

2) Magneto

Magneto is mostly a hero now, and that’s because he was right. To an extent, at least. Max Eisenhardt was a German Jew in the years leading up to the Holocaust. He saw the evil of the Nazis firsthand, and was eventually put in a concentration camp, and he ended up the only survivor of his family. His mutant powers would manifest and the mutant master of magnetism would experience even more racism. He would eventually become a mutant supremacist, all because he believed that humans would try to destroy his entire race, because he experienced that sort of thing before. Magneto was wrong to be a mutant supremacist, but he was one hundred correct that human racism was a danger to his people.

1) Doctor Doom

Doctor Doom has proven that he’s right to want to take over the world in One World Under Doom. Sure, Doom used the life energy of the people of Latveria to fuel his powerful spells as Sorceror Supreme, but he also gave the world wealth and security. There was always this idea that if Doom ruled the world, it would be a better place in a lot of ways and this was honestly pretty correct. The villain wasn’t even all that totalitarian; he wasn’t punishing people for their speech or anything like that. He even played nice with the heroes despite them trying to beat him constantly. It was completely wrong for him to put the Latverians in danger, but everything else he did was right.

What Marvel villains do you think are right? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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