10 Comics Villains With The Best Motivations

[Music] supervillains are colorful creative and at times even disturbing but there's one thing the best all have in common a compelling motivation from the pages of Marvel and DC superheroes have had to contend with some truly despicable characters some boast a fairly simple set of guiding principles but there are also those with a truly new ones to portrayal it's also important to remember that even those villains who are motivated by an easily quantifiable selection of motivations can be compelling in their own rights some men really do just want to watch the world burn but then there are also those who have a clear and obvious set of principles ones that are sometimes very sympathetic immune from what culture and here are 10 comic villains with the best motivations number 10 the Joker the Joker is a villain of many faces psyches and in recent DC continuity living forms it makes discerning one clear motivation almost impossible but whichever one you opt for you're guaranteed to get a compelling clown in the comics the Clown Prince of Crime has been a jolly prankster an aimless agent of chaos or even a man transfixed by his arch-nemesis the Dark Knight no super villain has been remade as many times as he and the explanation for that was until recently that the character was just super sane a phrase coined by Grant Morrison during his long-running stint on Batman as such the villain is able to remodel his personality on the fly fact that in with an origin story that changes every other second and you have the very embodiment of an unknown quantity a figure so unpredictable that not even the world's greatest detective can preempt his next move number 9 brash al Ghul rage is motivated by several factors first and foremost his desire to save the world from humanity itself he is aided in this quest by the League of Assassins and his daughter Talia Batman is only brought with attention as he looks for an heir to carry on his struggle and so he devises a series of tests to determine whether or not the Dark Knight's is true worthy enough to do so eventually race comes to regard his rival as Detective and deduces his secret identity with this knowledge in hands Rach asks that Batman assumed control over the league's that he can die peacefully safe in the knowledge that his centuries spent on earth won't be all for naught he also requests that Bruce marry Talia and that the vigilante does have feelings for her he finds the League of Assassins to be too disagreeable he simply will not violate his no killing rule the sparks a decade's long rivalry between the pair number eight the kingpin in many ways the kingpin aka Wilson Fisk is a typical American mobster first introduced in the amazing spider-man number 50 by the legendary Stan Lee and the equally brilliant John Romita senior the kingpin started out life as a scheming baddie who was constantly frustrated by spider-man however come the 1980s rising star Frank Miller would forever alter how people perceived Wilson Fisk by making him the arch enemy of the Man Without Fear Miller's run needs no introduction but it is worth emphasizing just how much he changed the character of the kingpin during his stint on the book instead of being a simple schemer who was fooled by everyone's favorite friendly neighborhood spider-man he became something altogether more sinister resembling the real-life mafiosos of American history and exemplifying corruption in the extreme Fisk was plenty of things but by recontextualized in the character in Daredevils world one that depicted a vastly different version of New York the one scene in the House of Ideas on the comics miller conceived of one of Marvel's most effective supervillains his motivation was greed anger and love all rolled into one and his status among New York's elite ensured he was pretty much untouchable number 7 Kraven the hunter Kraven tried but constantly failed to hunt Peter Parker during Stanley and Steve Ditko's original run on the amazing spider-man but eventually found success in Warren the web-slinger's darkest ever stories dubbed Cravens last hunt the book written by J M DeMatteis and illustrated by Mike Zack and BOM MacLeod was published during age period for Peter he had recently parted ways with the symbiotes but had opted to retain the black costume as a symbol of his newfound maturity with a character even set to marry longtime girlfriend Mary Jane Watson such a tone prompted a reappraisal of Cravens motivations in turn prompted by D Mateus stumbling across an entry on the character in the official handbook of the Marvel Universe the character until then a relatively cliched supervillain was imbued with an unrelenting obsession to defeat spider-man to become him and in essence proved to himself and his moral adversary that he was superior in every single way number 6 magneto to call magneto a super villain in the traditional sense would just be disingenuous but given how he's fought against the x-men on numerous occasions a group of superheroes lest we forget he fits the bill to begin with the x-men started out life is an allegory for the civil rights movements with Professor Xavier taking on the role of an MLK esque figurehead in the struggle for mutant equality and Magneto that of Malcolm X a slightly more radical intellectual of the period the important thing to remember here however is that even though magneto has certainly done evil things before he did it all for a valuable cause to safeguard mutants from humanity's vile prejudices over the years Erik lenses goals have shifted for certainly protecting mutants by any means necessary to waging a campaign of resistance in favor of what he dubs homo superior there is nothing remotely evil about either approach and though he adopted a more radical method in order to safeguard mutants it's fair to say that xavius and wavering dedication to passive resistance hasn't always achieved results number 5 Loki there are a few characters in Marvel's library that are as Shakespearean as Loki Lau Faison and though he was treated somewhat one-dimensional II before Tom Hiddleston burst onto the scene in 2011 Thor there's no denying his motivations have always been compelling since the beginning Loki has struggle with the nature of being the god of mischief versus the nature of being raised on Asgard he's being pulled towards one destiny whilst wrestling with own identity and there's someone who believes he's the rightful heir to ask guard that's a lot to deal with is this conflicting personality that has more recently seen Loki act as an anti villain of sorts operating on both sides of good and evil but no matter how hard he tries he always seems to get pulled towards the wrong side of the divide whether out of jealousy for Thor his ties to laughy or even his very title number for Lex Luthor Lex Luthor might be the poster boy for standard super villainy but there's a whole lot more to him than just a simple hatred of Superman he's rich corrupt and resourceful but he's also highly motivated intelligent and possesses the know-how to make his schemes work the key to that motivation Superman's presence more specifically what the Mara Steel's rival could imply Lex Luthor for all his skills smarts and influence is still a deeply insecure individual he considers most people to be beneath him but Superman is objectively better kal-el is more powerful and more revered than Lex and it is this jealousy as well as Lex's own difficult upbringing that fuels them to take on Earth's heroes time and time again number 3 Black Manta by now most will have also grown accustomed to Black Manta Aquaman's arch enemy who turns to the ocean in the face of a world that doesn't really understand him multiple origins have been optioned but all begin on land with the most recent of which having depicted the character as having been held in Arkham Asylum at a young age diagnosed with autism and mistreated by its staff driven to the ocean by an obsession with Aquaman as well as a fondness for the cold depths themselves Manta resolved himself to master the waves and in one instance even to build a sanctuary for black people in the sea having been persecuted and oppressed for centuries while that stated aim has been debated Manta himself has long been obsessed with conquering Atlantis which has sparked a bloody feud with its ruler that has lasted for decades number 2 Doctor Doom it's easy to label Doctor Doom as being a somewhat generic supervillain he's a tyrannical dictator who commands a fictional Eastern European nation commands a mastery over both science and magic and squares off against the Fantastic Four while attempting to conquer the world it's a winning if not entirely predictable premise to get behind by far one of the most interesting angles to have been explored in recent decades has been dooms connection to his mother and to his Romani heritage Viktor masters the world of science and magic in order to protect the Romani group under attack in his native Latveria unfortunately for Viktor this exact path was spurred on by a series of tragic circumstances first his mother is taken by Mephisto and then his father passes away in the cold latverian winter these two tragedies specifically are what spurred doomed to villainy believing himself to be the only one capable of commanding humanity's destiny and it's partly why the character just keeps on getting better number one Amanda Waller the handler of Task Force X aka the Suicide Squad Waller presides over warned the US government's most secretive black ops units and does so because she believes it's in her country's best interests all Waller wants to do is safeguard her nation's security but of course it's the way she does it that proves to be an issue super villains though they may be foolish treatment of DCs Dirty Dozen violates every law in the book and promises the false hope of a pardon in exchange for embarking on near impossible missions not only that but should they disobey in the field they get treated to an explosive collar killing them in an instant never mind the fact she's matched wits with Batman the fact Waller straddles a moral gray area makes her all the more compelling whether or not you deem her brand of evil necessary

Channel: WhatCulture Comics

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Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 15 2019