Everyone knows what anti-heroes are — superhero who often use the violent methods of villains to fight evil. However, there’s another category that people don’t often think about even if they love the characters who fit it — anti-villains. These are villains who often do the right thing but do it for evil reasons. Anti-villains haven’t always been a thing; Marvel and DC Comics usually kept things black and white when it came to the morality of heroes and villains for a very long time. The birth of anti-heroes paved the way for anti-villains, but another big part of it is the way that villains have been developed over the years. Villains have become more and more popular over the decades, and this had led to the reasoning behind their actions becoming more nuanced as they were being explored.
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Anti-villains are some of the most interesting characters in comics. They have a complexity that makes them extremely attractive to readers. We know that they are monsters, but their actions often serve the greater good, so we’ve gained (a sometimes grudging) respect for them. These ten anti-villains are the best in comics, enthralling and shocking readers with their actions.
10) Destiny
Irene Adler was born to a wealthy Austrian family. Eventually, her precognitive mutant powers manifested and she began to write her diaries, trying to make sense of the future and create a road map to save the world from disaster. She was struck with blindness after finishing the 13th volume. She eventually met the love of her life Raven Darkholme, and so began the story of Mystique and Destiny. Destiny used her powers often for her and Mystique’s aggrandizement, but she also realized that she needed a world to live in if she wanted to enjoy the world with the love she’d found. Destiny has been party to terrible things over the years, but she’s also helped make sure that the worst things imaginable couldn’t happen. She walked into her death knowing that it would pave the way for Krakoa, and did her best to make the mutant island nation work. Destiny has been party to many, many deaths over the years, but she’s also saved many lives and given others the tools to save lives as well.
9) Mystique
Where Destiny goes, Mystique isn’t far behind. Mystique used her shapeshifting powers to make her life easier, and found her soul mate in the person of Irene Adler. Mystique did use her powers to help people as Sherlock Holmes, but she also used them to make a lot of money by becoming one of the world’s foremost spies and assassins. She’s worked with some of the most monstrous people in the world, and has betrayed nearly everyone who she’s ever known, including Destiny. However, Mystique also used her abilities to help the mutant race and humanity in general in many ways. Mystique is a complex individual. She wants her people and the people she loves to thrive, and she’s willing to do anything to make sure that happens. She and Destiny worked together over the years in a number of ways to make sure that Destiny’s worst visions never came to pass. She secretly worked for Xavier to help mutantkind for years, and even her time as the leader of the Freedom Force, the first government approved mutant team, saw her sometimes doing the right thing. Mystique has rode her anti-villainy to stardom, working as hard as she can to keep the world from ending while also basically doing whatever she wants.
8) Loki
Readers have been treated to many different versions of Loki over the years. They’ve changed a lot since we first saw attacking their brother Thor. Loki was a child of the Frost Giants, and was taken in by Odin after the Asgardians won a war against the Frost Giants. Loki was raised alongside Thor. Loki did their best to be a worthy child of Asgard, but they were the God of Mischief; they were destined to do evil at times. Loki made the lives of the Asgardians miserable (while also helping when they could), but was only following their nature. In recent years, Loki has moved more towards the anti-villainy side of things. Loki is currently the God of Stories and actually helped their brother Thor in his battle against the gods of Utgard. However, Loki also killed Thor at the end of his battle, for reasons that honestly might be altruistic. Loki will do whatever is possible to get what they want, and what they often want in recent years is to save the day. Loki has become one of the most intriguing characters in the Marvel Universe because of their new outlook on the universe and the way they comport themself.
7) Galactus
Galactus is one of the most feared beings in the universe. He’s been traveling the cosmos since before the current iteration of the existence, and was baptized in the energies of creation at the end of the last universe. This transformed him into the World Devourer. Galactus is the master of the Power Cosmic, a force that gives him powers greater than any god. Galactus has been responsible countless deaths. Look at it like this — we speculate that the amount of dead humans in all of our history is the same as the amount of humans right now; we can extrapolate that the same thing is possible on a cosmic scale, so Galactus could have killed as many beings as currently exist in the billions of years he’s existed. However, Galactus is an important part of the balance of the cosmos. Galactus is the scourge of the Celestials, destroying their works so that they can’t use their creations to gain even more power. Galactus has fought to save the universe many times over the years. Galactus doesn’t want creation to end, even though he knows it’s inevitable. He will do whatever he needs to keep the universe going, and that means that he’ll continue to destroy in order to have the power to do so.
6) Ozymandias
Ozymandias is often thought of an anti-hero, but I think that him being an anti-villain is more like it. Ozymandias knew that the world was heading for something terrible, and did everything he could to prepare himself for the terrors that he would need to commit to save the world. Ozymandias became arguably the best of the second generation of superheroes, and realized that the things that he had foreseen before were going to come to an head at the first meeting of the new Minutemen. When superheroes were banned by the Keane Act, he retired and prepared himself for his greatest accomplishment — the act of mass murder that would stave off nuclear war. In fact, looking at Ozymandias’s actions in the run up to that terrible day in Manhattan, Ozymandias played a big role in accelerating the whole situation. He killed the Comedian, he drove off Ozymandias, he murdered Moloch, and he started Rorschach on his path. Ozymandias murdered millions of people in order to stop a war, and when his role in this was revealed (we’re going by the comics here, not the show, just to be clear), he went on a multiversal quest to find Doctor Manhattan to get him to save the day. This also saw him doing more villainous things, but it did work in the end. Ozy is a monster who has saved countless lives by doing the most terrible things imaginable.
5) Sinestro
Sinestro is, and this is definitely an oxymoron (not to be confused with an Ozymandias — ha ha), a benevolent fascist. Sinestro killed the Korugarian who was about to get a Green Lantern ring, and gained the power for himself. Sinestro became the greatest Green Lantern in the Corps, and he did this by transforming Korugar and Sector 1417 into a fascist wonderland. Sinestro did good by doing evil; the people of his sector were sacred of incurring his wrath and it became the safest sector in the galaxy. He was so good at fooling everyone that no one questioned the fact that Green Lanterns weren’t allowed in his sector. Eventually, the truth was discovered and he was expelled from the order. He would gain a yellow ring of fear from the Qwardians and began his villainous career. Sinestro’s obsession with his former protege Hal Jordan (who Sinestro is almost certainly in love with — go read Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s brilliant Green Lantern Season Two) caused him to become a more out and out villain, although he still wanted order more than anything else. Eventually, he would create the Sinestro Corps, a Lantern Corps who followed his ethos of using fear to impose order. Sinestro has spent the intervening years helping save the universe while also still doing evil. He’s the perfect anti-villain and this approach to writing the character has made him immensely popular.
4) Lex Luthor
The road to anti-villainy for Lex Luthor has been a long one. For years, Lex was an out and out villain, trying to destroy Superman and take over the world. However, post-Crisis DC changed Lex in many ways. He became a billionaire industrialist, beloved for the good his corporation did for the world. Lex was always a shady operator, doing whatever he could to aggrandize himself. The dawn of Superman drove him mad, because suddently he was the number two person in Metropolis. Eventually, Lex’s motives established that he did what he did because he felt the metahumans were belittling human achievement. Now, when he said this, he meant that metahumans were belittling his achievements, but he did actually care about the planet — without a planet, he couldn’t have people praising and looking up to him. Lex has become even more heroic in recent years, working with Superman multiple times to help save the world, but he’s also had his plans that weren’t on the up and up. Luthor has become even more fascinating as an anti-villain; the dichotomy of his arrogance and altruism makes reading stories with him so much better.
3) Magneto
Magneto started out as a pretty stereotypical villain. He hated humanity, thought that mutants were better, and wanted to rule a world of mutants. However, all of that would change after Chris Claremont took over as the writer of the X-Men. Claremont fleshed out Magneto’s history, adding in the Holocaust background that made him such a rich character. The question of whether Magneto is a hero or villain has become a main part of the character’s make-up. Magneto has done unequivocally monstrous things over the years — for example, detonating an EMP that took out the electrical infrastructure of the world, killing countless people — but he’s also did a lot of good things. Magneto has become a member of the X-Men and has helped save the world multiple times. Magneto is still a mutant supremacist — make no mistakes, Magneto is just as bigoted as the humans he hates — but he helps fight for the world so that his people can one day inherit the Earth.
2) Black Adam
Black Adam has a long, twisting legacy. This is thanks to two things — his very long history and the multiple retcons that the character has gone through. With that in mind, I’ll keep it simple. Teth-Adam and his young cousin were chosen to gain the power of the Wizard Mamaragan. Teth killed his cousin so he wouldn’t have to share the power, and became Mighty Adam, helping free his people from slavery, and killing everyone who stood in his way. Adam would reappear in the present day (either possessing a distant descendant who gained his power or taking several thousand years to fly back to Earth after being cast out by the gods for his sins), and became the enemy of Shazam. He eventually decided that he wanted to be a hero again, and joined the Justice Society, where his violent ways saw him clash with the team. He freed the country of Kahndaq from Asim Muhunnud in a bloody coup. Since then, he’s pulled a Doctor Doom in Kahndaq; his people love him, but he’s been known to terrorize the rest of the world. Black Adam has killed a lot of people, some of them evil and some of them innocent, but he believes that his reasonings are valid. Black Adam has helped save the world multiple times, though, using heroic and villainous methods.
1) Doctor Doom
Doctor Doom is the king of the anti-villains, which is definitely fitting for him. Doctor Doom grew up as an oppressed Romani, losing his parents to the forces of Latveria’s Baron and Mephisto, and would go to America because of his genius, enrolling in Empire State University. This is where he would meet Reed Richards and Ben Grimm, and develop his hatred for the two of them. He refused Reed’s help for building the machine that was meant to save his mother’s soul from Mephisto, scarring his face. Doom would return to Latveria after the accident (which he made worse by putting on the still molten mask made to hide his scar by a group of monks) and took his country back from the Baron. Since then, he’s tried to take over the world and killed the hated Richards. However, Doom honestly believes that he is the best person to rule the world. While Doom is definitely a totalitarian, he cares for his people deeply. Doctor Doom is certainly a monster — he basically caused the Incursions in order to stop the Beyonders from ending the universe, a move that made him God for a time — but he does much of what he did for the betterment of mankind. One World Under Doom shows that Doom is definitely a good ruler… as long as you do whatever he says.
Who do you think are the best anti-villains? Sound off in the comments below.
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Image courtesy of Netflix
