top ten villians

[dupersuper]

Only 10??? Ok... Off the top of my head, in no particular order, and until I change my mind:

1 Lex Luthor
2 Dr. Doom
3 Joker
4 Ras Al Gul
5 Zod
6 Asmodel
7 Circe
8 Dr. Psycho
9 Titano
10 Solaris

[AZBarbarian]

1. Dark Phoenix
2. Magneto
3. Ozymandias
4. Hobgoblin
5. Mr. Mxyzltplk
6. Lex Luthor
7. Joker
8. Ultron
9. Sabretooth
10. Shredder

[Scott Harris]

Terra-Man (Did he have even one appearance post-Crisis???)

Yes, Black Adam ripped him limb from limb in 52.

Welcome to the Modern Age of comics!!!

[berk]

from Marvel and DC, in no particular order, and interpreting "villain" in the broadest possible way (IOW any antagonist to the lead or title characters):

Dormammu - could be Marvel's Sauron or Darkseid if handled right; great visual
Umar - as powerful as Dormammu and also a darkly beautiful and seductive woman
Fu Manchu - prototype villain you sneakingly admire and partially agree with even though you know he has to be stopped
Shen Kuei, aka "Cat" - not really a villain, but most impressive MA antagonist ever and (debatably) winner of all-time best fight in comics
Doctor Doom - see Fu Manchu
Darkseid - perhaps the villain of villains, as far as comics are concerned; plus the antagonist of possibly the greatest comics story ever told
Dracula - only entry here that was actually the title character of a successful, long-running series
Thog - visually, a pretty generic Satanic or devil-type, but gets the nod over Marvel's Mephisto due to his position in Gerber's mind-blowing, multi-part Man-Thing saga
Bullseye - in Miller's Daredevil, even more compelling than the title character
Black Adam - great name, great visual, and another antagonist who's way more interesting, and in this case even more sympathetic, than the hero

[hondobrode]

1. Dr. Doom
2. Darkseid
3. Bizarro
4. Joker
5. Kang
6. Red Skull
7. Lex Luthor
8. Ares God of War
9. High Lord Papal
10. Sivana

[Roquefort Raider]

Kulan Gath also returned in Busiek's Avengers run issues 28-30.

Gath was created by Marvel for that Marvel Team Up story with Sonja, so I think Marvel at least shares the rights. The X-Men issues are reprinted in Essential X-Men Vol. 5.

-M

Actually, Kulan Gath originated in Conan the barbarian 14-15, in which the Cimmerian teamed up with Elric of Melniboné. Gath was a rival of the wizard Thoth-Amon, and he tried to wake a Melnibonean sorcerous empress to use her power. (It did not end well for him).

I believe he was also seen in recent Red Sonja comics, so the rights to the character might partly belong to Red Sonja LLC. (I hate those shared rights things... Since the character was created in a Marvel mag, why isn't it a Marvel character? The same goes for Red Sonja, as far as I'm concerned, since her link to Howard's Red Sonya of Rogatino is extremely tenuous apart from the name. The squadron supreme is a lot closer to the JLA than Sonja is to Sonya).

[DubipR]

Shen Kuei, aka "Cat"

I thought about Shen Kuei as well, but like you said not a villain, more of a foil. He's not sinister enough. Still, a great pull berk!
If you read newer books, Shen Kuei showed up in Cable/Deadpool a few years back.

[Polar Bear]

8. The Collector
9. The Grandmaster

Great choices! This, plus my pointed omission of Thanos, reminds me that I used to be tremendously into "cosmic" Marvel--Warlock, Silver Surfer, the shi'ar, Eternity, etc. Infinity Gauntlet (including its predecessors, Starlin/Lim's Silver Surfer and Thanos Quest) actually removed that interest for me, surgically removing it from my brain. It's never come back in the same way it was before that series, even when I re-read the older stuff. Don't know why, exactly.

But yes, I do love old Collector and/or Grandmaster stories.

[Kurt Busiek]

Gath was created by Marvel for that Marvel Team Up story with Sonja, so I think Marvel at least shares the rights.

No, Kulan Gath first appeared in the CONAN THE BARBARIAN issues that guest-starred Elric.

I assume that what they thought was that since those issues weren't entirely owned by the Conan guys (because of the Elric deal), that Gath wasn't owned by either the Conan side of the deal or the Elric side of the deal, and thus was fair game. Or maybe they just didn't think about it.

I used Gath in AVENGERS because Chris used him in X-MEN, which was a pretty clear indication that he was considered a Marvel-owned character.

Roy Thomas, who co-created him, used him in a later CONAN arc, looking like he did in the TEAM-UP story (he had looked very different in his first appearance), which tilts toward thinking the Conan people own him.

And I think he's been used in Dynamite's RED SONJA comic, which is a whole 'nother ownership situation.

I expect if anyone really dug into it, something went screwy with his ownership, and someone has used him in a way he really shouldn't have been used. But he's not prominent enough for anyone to care.

kdb

[icctrombone]

My top villians are people that strike fear in the hearts of people and that are not easily beaten.

5. Amazo
4.The Joker
3. Ultron
2.Kingpin
1. Thanos

[Kurt Busiek]

Since the character was created in a Marvel mag, why isn't it a Marvel character?

For the same reason that Jaxon the Green Bunny or the von Tagge family from the Marvel-published STAR WARS comics belong to LucasFilm, not Marvel.

Just because Marvel published something doesn't automatically confer ownership; lots and lots of things are published by publishers while someone else owns them. All of Stephen King's novels, for instance.

It depends on what the contract says. If it says "everything in this comic is owned by the licensor," then the licensor owns it all, as with STAR WARS. If it says "everything in this comic is owned by Marvel except the stuff they licensed for it," then Marvel owns all the Marvel-created bits, as with MICRONAUTS and ROM.

The Conan deal was much more like the STAR WARS deal than it was like the MICRONAUTS deal. If Gath had debuted in an issue of CONAN that didn't have material in it that someone else owned (Elric), then the rights would be clear: Conan Properties would own him, just as they owned all the other stuff Roy created for that series.

There was clearly some flexibility, and Roy later used at least one Marvel character in CONAN -- Shuma-Gorath, the Cosmic Obscenity -- but for the most part, if it debuted in CONAN, it was owned by the Conan people. Only the Elric guest-appearance (which necessitated a modification to the deal for those two issues) leaves Gath's status in question.

The same goes for Red Sonja, as far as I'm concerned, since her link to Howard's Red Sonya of Rogatino is extremely tenuous apart from the name.

At some point, they spun off the Red Sonja rights into a separate company, and Roy has some equity in the character, I think, but she was never even partially owned by Marvel, any more than Marvel owned Laza-Lanti, Zula or any of the hundreds of other new characters who first appeared in CONAN comics.

The squadron supreme is a lot closer to the JLA than Sonja is to Sonya).

The Squadron Supreme wasn't created in a comic book owned by someone else, under a licensing deal.

kdb

[icctrombone]

For the same reason that Jaxon the Green Bunny or the von Tagge family from the Marvel-published STAR WARS comics belong to LucasFilm, not Marvel.

Just because Marvel published something doesn't automatically confer ownership; lots and lots of things are published by publishers while someone else owns them. All of Stephen King's novels, for instance.

It depends on what the contract says. If it says "everything in this comic is owned by the licensor," then the licensor owns it all, as with STAR WARS. If it says "everything in this comic is owned by Marvel except the stuff they licensed for it," then Marvel owns all the Marvel-created bits, as with MICRONAUTS and ROM.



kdb

So interesting. Lucasfilm did to Marvel what Marvel does to their employees.

[Roquefort Raider]

It depends on what the contract says. If it says "everything in this comic is owned by the licensor," then the licensor owns it all, as with STAR WARS. If it says "everything in this comic is owned by Marvel except the stuff they licensed for it," then Marvel owns all the Marvel-created bits, as with MICRONAUTS and ROM.

Which is why, I take it, the character of Juma used in Conan the barbarian #37 was said to be "created by L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter, and used with permission". (Although Juma was later re-used in the last few issues of Savage sword of Conan with no such mention, probably because, like Kulan Gath, nobody really cared)!

There was clearly some flexibility, and Roy later used at least one Marvel character in CONAN -- Shuma-Gorath, the Cosmic Obscenity -- but for the most part, if it debuted in CONAN, it was owned by the Conan people. Only the Elric guest-appearance (which necessitated a modification to the deal for those two issues) leaves Gath's status in question.

Shuma Gorath is actually a Robert Howard name, mentioned in the fragment "the curse of the golden skull"; I suppose that when Marvel needed a Lovecraftian name for the nemesis of the Ancient One in Marvel Premiere's Doctor Strange revival, whoever was writing at the time (and shame on me for not remembering who penned those great stories!) thought the easter egg would be cute.

The Dr. Strange Shuma Gorath was a tentacled eye; the Shuma Gorath Roy used in Conan was more classical in its demonic appearance and had a strong link to "the iron-bound book of Shuma Gorath" that was mentioned in the Howard story. I think that if it came to a legal tug of war, it could be argued that the two are different characters (like the King Kull from Captain Marvel and the one from Howard's prose).

I'm still sorry that the rights to Red Sonja didn't follow the Conan ones. Not that I root for Marvel (or Paradox, or whoever), but I would have liked her to remain part of the Conan comic-book universe.

[JerryinChicago]

Interesting to read about the licensing rights above. Well, my list might change on any given day. Let me keep my top ten all in the pre-1980 world:

1. Galactus (Lee and Kirby's finest hour, nuff said)
2. Darkseid (This villian and the 4th World saga is Star Wars before Lucas)
3. Dracula (Gene Colan's smoky rendition)
4. Modok (This dude freaked me out as a kid; best version is again Kirby's)
5. Anyone holding the Cosmic Cube (I don't think it can be used for the forces of good)
6. The Destroyer (Asgardian robot, not Drax--recent movie should have made it as invincible as it was meant to be)
7. The Serpent Squad (changing cast of minor characters always gave Cap a good time; it continued to be good past the bronze age, too)
8. Ras al Ghul (I think Batman's best villian, though my fav version might be from the 1990s Batman toon)
9. Mr. Mind (Yes! Mr. Mind! He's great! He's small, but not in ambition)
10. Juggernaut (Always a knock down battle to stop the unstoppable--I love great action sequences)

As I review my list, I think that Marvel created the better villians in the Golden, Silver and Bronze ages. I like DC's classic heroes more than Marvel's, though. And though I read old Gold Keys, Dells, etc., I can't think of a single memorable villian from those publishers.

[JerryinChicago]

Who is Shen Kuei? Which fight might be the best? There aren't enough good action scenes in comics anymore.