Marvel Comics has introduced some great villains over the years, but some of its more persistent villains have some of the pettiest reasons for their actions. Some of the best villains in comics are sympathetic ones, who are thrown into a life of crime because of bad circumstances in their lives. However, the polar opposites of that are the petty villains, who are fuelled by jealousy, arrogance, or, in some cases, simply anger at the smallest of slights they perceived a hero did against them. While the pettiest villains are often the most pathetic, they can also be highly entertaining as they do anything they can to ruin the hero’s life for the worst reasons.
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Here is a look at the seven pettiest villains in Marvel Comics.
7) Rabble
Rabble is a new villain as Marvel Comics continues to beef up Miles Morales’s rogues gallery. However, out of all the villains that Miles has fought in his comics, Rabble is easily, and by far, the pettiest. Rabble is a young woman named Raneem Rashad, and she became a villain for one simple reason. She applied for a raffle to attend Brooklyn Visions Academy, where only 40 spots were available. Miles Morales was the 40th student chosen, and Raneem missed out on the opportunity.
While Raneem resented Miles for this, when she learned he was Spider-Man, she decided she would ruin his life the way she felt he ruined hers. Raneem possesses technopathy, so she can communicate with machines and make them do what she wants. Instead of using her powers to do good in the world, Rabble chose to use them to make Miles’ life a living hell for something he didn’t even do on purpose.
6) Mister Sinister
Mister Sinister is an X-Men villain whose origin began in Victorian London, where he was a human scientist who wanted to engineer a perfect race of superhumans. When he learned about mutants, he met Apocalypse, and the mutant gave Sinister superpowers, while also making him ageless. He then sought to create the ultimate mutant and focused on Scott Summers and Jean Grey.
When Scott ended up an orphan, Mister Sinsister founded an orphanage and took in Scott while sending Scott’s brother Alex away to ensure he could manipulate the child. When Jean died, Sinister created a clone of her named Madelyne Pryor so she could have the super mutant child. He even ordered the slaughter of the Morlocks to protect his own interests. These days, SInister is worse than ever, and he is a series of clones, all believing they are the genuine SInister, and all of whom hate the other for that reason.
5) Norman Osborn
Norman Osborn is working hard to make up for his past actions, and he has seen a great rehabilitation arc in Marvel Comics. However, it is also easy to see why so many heroes have a hard time believing and trusting him. He has done so many bad, and often petty, things in his life that showed how evil he really was when he was the Green Goblin, and later when he was a self-professed savior of the planet.
The most petty thing he ever did was make a deal with Mephisto to become wealthy and successful, and the only thing it cost him was the soul of his son, Harry. His son’s rough life was all thanks to Norman’s greed. When he took over as the head of SHIELD and renamed it HAMMER, his petty nature ovderwhelemed him as he used his government power to punish every superhero who ever stopped him in the past.
4) Sabretooth
Sabretooth is a Wolverine villain first and foremost. He is also someone who doesn’t care about anything other than hurting other people. When all the mutants had a fresh start on Krakoa, and the only rule was not to kill humans in the main world. Sabretooth refused to stop and ended up banished to the pits of Krakoa. However, it is Wolverine that makes him petty.
Sabretooth hates Wolverine so much that he has something he does every year just to torment his main enemy. Sabretooth shows up every year on Wolverine’s birthday and beats him so badly that Wolverine is one step from death. Sabretooth then stops right before Wolverine dies, and this is his birthday present to the mutant every year. The biggest reason for this is that Sabretooth sees Wolverine as a “sueprior” version of himself, and this is his way of proving he is just as good.
3) Kingpin
To understand how petty Kingpin is, look at the storyline where he became the Mayor of New York City, which also happens to be the ongoing story on Daredevil: Born Again right now in the MCU. In both, the second that Wilson Fisk became the mayor, he started making new laws to help improve his own self-interests.
However, he also used his new government powers to get revenge against anyone he felt slighted him in the past. This is also nothing new. Remember, this is the man who decided to ruin Matt Murdock’s life when he found out he was Daredevil. He didn’t care about beating Daredevil; he wanted to punish him for stopping him over the years. His own allies can’t even trust him because he has killed people just for saying the wrong thing.
2) Thanos
Thanos snapped out half of existence for a very different reason in Marvel Comics. Instead of snapping out all those lives to “help” save resources as he did in the movies, he did it because he fell in love with the personification of Death and wanted to impress her. Thanos also didn’t take it well when that disgusted her, rather than attracting her to him more. That also led to one of his pettiest actions.
When Thanos learned that Deadpool also had an attraction to Death, Thanos used black magic to make Deadpool immortal to keep him from ever dying and getting closer to Death. There is also the case of a man named David, whom Thanos visits every year on his birthday just to do things to ruin his life. The only reason that Thanos does this is that he is bored. Thanos got David’s girlfriend to break up with him, drugged an entire party he attended, burned down the school he was accepted into, and even killed his cat. It was Reverse Flash levels of pettiness.
1) Doctor Doom
Doctor Doom became one of the world’s most dangerous villains because of his intense jealousy of Reed Richards, as well as his own sense of superiority to everyone around him. Since most people consider Reed Richards the superior genius, Doom will do anything he can to prove them wrong, and many of his actions are simply to make Reed Richards look bad. In Marvel Comics, Doctor Doom renamed the toilets in the country “Reed Richards.” He even helped save Susan Richards during her pregnancy, and his only demand was that they name their daughter Valeria, rather than anything Reed wanted.
In one issue of Luke Cage comics, Doom hired Cage to find some stolen tech and then refused to pay Luke the $200 fee because he didn’t do a good enough job. Doctor Doom once kidnapped Stan Lee because of what he wrote in the Fantastic Four comments concerning his failures. That is petty.
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Courtesy of Bones Film
