Few teams out there face the kind of threats that the Avengers do. The group is known as “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes” for a reason and that’s because they face off against the most dangerous enemies out there. These foes endanger the world and the universe, with only a group consisting of the most powerful heroes able to stop them. Some of the greatest comic villains of all time have been introduced in Avengers comics, names like Ultron and Kang. Fans love the team’s enemies, and the best of them have grown beyond the group, facing off against the most formidable heroes in the Marvel Universe.
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The Avengers have some amazing villains but not all of them are perfect. The group has some villains that are merely good, but it also some villains that are pretty bad. These are the villains that no one respects or the villains that can’t reach the same level as some of the better ones. These seven Avengers villains are the worst of them all, and it would better if they never showed up again.
7) Egghead
The Masters of Evil are the Avengers’ greatest enemies combined into one powerful force. There have been several rosters of the group, mostly consisting of B and C-list villains with a powerful enemy at the helm. And then there’s Egghead. Egghead led his own Masters of Evil and was mostly an enemy of Hank Pym. He’s a cliche evil scientist, and that’s pretty much all there is to him as a character. He’s an enemy from another time in comics, and there’s really no way to make him into anything other than a lame throwback. He’s a joke villain, and joke villains don’t work up against the Avengers anymore.
6) Attuma
Attuma is very much a cool looking villain, but he’s not a good villain. Basically, he’s a villain that only works in one kind of story, one where the Avengers have to deal with Atlantis. He wants to run the undersea kingdom and wants to destroy the surface world, and that’s basically the entirety of his character. Great villains can be slotted into all kinds of stories, but Attuma can’t. He’s a threat at times, but even that threat is limited to stories that deal with Atlantis. He’s just Namor if the sea king was always evil, so you might as well just use Namor instead.
5) Veranke
Veranke was one of the big bads of the early years of New Avengers. The Skrull Empress took control of the shapeshifting aliens after Galactus destroyed their homeworld and began the secret invasion of Earth. Her entire character was based around her place as a religious zealot who wanted her race to be as powerful as they used to be. She’s a one-dimensional character that we barely got to spend any time with in her natural form; we mostly saw her as Spider-Woman being a little sneaky at times. Attuma works in one kind of story and that’s bad. Veranke only works in one story, and she barely appeared in that one, and that’s even worse.
4) The Void
The Void is the dark side of the Sentry. It is every thing bad inside of Bob Reynolds, and the main reason why the Sentry is such a dangerous hero. Any time he’s around, there’s always the chance that the Void will show up as well. The Void is an “evil for evil’s sake” villain. The monster just wants to destroy everything, and while that works for some stories, it’s not exactly interesting. You can’t really build a whole multi-part story around the Void (at least not one that centers the Avengers), and that makes it not all that fun to read about it. It’s yet another villain that only works in a limited amount of stories.
3) Immortus
Kang is one of the best villains in the Marvel Universe. One of the most interesting parts about the character is the versions of him that move through time, the villain at different ages. Immortus is the oldest version of Kang, having survived the wars his younger self fought. Instead of being obsessed with conquering, he just wants a seat at the table with the powers of the universe, like the TVA’s Those Who Remain. He’s a scheming, kind of boring villain that is more about background actions than overt assault. His younger selves fight the Avengers head to head, but he manipulates everyone for the benefit of others. Immortus is fine as a background character, but he’ll never be a major enemy of the Avengers like his younger selves are.
2) Baron Zemo I
Baron Zemo is a legendary name in the annals of the Marvel Universe, but let’s be real about it. That legend was mostly made by Helmut Zemo, the villain who used the Masters of Evil to almost destroy the Avengers, and formed the Thunderbolts to take advantage of the disappearance of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. On the other hand, Heinrich Zemo is just kind of there. He’s one of several interchangeable Nazi villains, like Baron Strucker, and the most important thing he did was form the first roster of the Masters of Evil and then die so Helmut could take his place. We have him to thank for that, but that’s it.
1) Proctor
Black Knight was always a cool character, and Marvel tried to make him a focus of Avengers in the early ’90s. This led to the “Proctor Saga”, where an alternate universe version of the hero, with a major power upgrade, showed up to fight the team. The problem with Proctor is that Black Knight never panned out as a major hero, so making an all-powerful evil version of him from another universe just doesn’t work. Most fans don’t even remember the “Proctor Saga”, so the villain is best left in the dustbin of history. Maybe one day, when Dane Whitman makes his MCU debut and becomes a household name, the Proctor will have a chance to shine. Until then, we don’t need to worry about him.
Who do you think is the worst Avengers villain? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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