The Best Marvel Team Never Had a Name

Marvel has created the greatest teams in the history of comics. The proof is in the pudding. The Fantastic Four took the superhero sci-fi that DC had been doing since 1956, and boosted it to the next level by embracing the characters. The Avengers were the House of Ideas’ version of teams like the Justice Society and the Justice League, but with that little extra Marvel oomph. The X-Men were the deepest team in the Marvel Universe, their central metaphor allowing writers to take the superhero to more complex places. Those three are only the tip of the iceberg, though; there are plenty more great teams from the publisher.

Marvel also has its share of villains teams. In recent years, they’ve fallen to the wayside, but there was one from Marvel’s most interesting era that I don’t think gets enough credit. However, it’s kind of hard to talk this team for a very simple reason: it’s never had a name. While it has some similarities with the Masters of Evil, even sharing some members with that villain group, it’s not a new version of the Avengers’ greatest enemy. This team played a huge role in events in the late ’00s, and it’s about time that we gave it the credit it deserves. And a name.

The Hood Created Marvel’s Greatest Villain Team by Borrowing from Other Groups

It all started with the Hood. Parker Robbins wanted to make more money, so he turned to the superpowered criminal community, eventually getting his hands on a magical cloak that could teleport and give him other demonic abilities. He had his own miniseries and appeared in Beyond! (a modern retelling of the original Secret Wars that’s really, really good, from the late great Dwayne McDuffie). During this time period, New Avengers was Marvel’s most popular book. It kicked off with the Skrulls paying Electro to bust the Raft wide open and allow the villains there to escape. There was suddenly a lot of B, C, and D list villains running around. Civil War broke the superhero community, and Robbins had an idea.

The Hood brought together these villains and told them that they needed to work together. The heroes were in shambles, and if the villains shaped up, they could make as much money as they needed and become a force to be reckoned with. So was born a group that is usually just called the Hood’s gang. They battled the New Avengers and helped out during the Skrull invasion, joining the Initiative when Norman Osborn was given control of the superheroic national security apparatus. I remember thinking that Marvel was going to make them into the new Masters of Evil, but the more I read about the team, the more I realized they were taking a page from DC.

Most villain teams at Marvel and DC are known for their tendency to drop the ball because they betrayed each other, but there was a team that was different: the Rogues. The Flash’s villains knew that there was no way that they could defeat the Fastest Man Alive without working together, so they teamed up. The group worked together as a force, sharing the plunder and always looking out for each other. The Hood’s gang took a page from their playbook; they had been defeated so many times, often because they couldn’t trust each other, that they realized how smart it was to work together. The Hood kept the peace, going after anyone who wouldn’t work well with the others.

The group was basically a small army of supervillains, with members like the Wrecking Crew, Madame Masque, Blackout, Constrictor, Armadillo, Graviton, Jigsaw, Purple Man, Mister Fear, Shockwave, Scarecrow, and many, many more. These definitely aren’t the most popular Marvel villains out there, and thanks to the change in the way comic stories were written (writing for the trade instead of one and done stories), they had nothing to do. The Hood gave them something to do. I’ll be honest, the team was mostly used as a unit, with very few of the villains actually doing anything that stood out. However, I think that’s fine. What made the group so great was that they had seemingly learned their lessons after years of defeat; it was a huge change from the way villain teams usually worked, and it paid off in the few years it existed.

The Hood’s Group Was the Last Important Marvel Villain Group

Villains teams are something of a thing of the past in comics nowadays, especially at Marvel. The best we usually get is a cannon fodder team, meant to be mid-level bosses of five and six-issue stories. The major Marvel villains teams have all but disappeared, partly because their stories all followed the same trope, with the villains usually ending up betraying each other or not taking the opportunity to win so they could get revenge or just to gloat. The Hood’s army of villains was different. The Hood made sure that they realized that they were actually a team, and that they would work together in all things. It’s a much smarter way of writing a villain team, modernizing the approach to this kind of group.

It’s always been weird that this team never had an actual name. As I talked about above, most longtime Avengers fans got the feeling that this was the Bendis version of the Masters of Evil. That never happened, but that doesn’t change how cool of a group that they were. They are easily one of the greatest teams in the history of the publisher, and as a fan of the Hood, I’d love to see them come back. Maybe one day, Marvel will bring them back and give them a name.

What do you think of the Hood and his gang? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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