Traditionally, we’re used to hearing and seeing stories that feature good prevailing
over evil.
It’s an ancient trope, and with good reason – as an audience, we want to be reassured
that good will always triumph, with hopes that it will do the same in the real world.
But, as we’ve seen in comics, that isn’t always the case.
There’s been a handful of times where super villains in certain instances have come out
on top.
Some of these times have produced incredibly memorable stories, while others have left
readers groaning.
So today, we’re counting down some of those instances with our list of the top 10 Super
Villains Who Actually Won.
Before we begin heads up, there are some spoilers for Avengers Infinity War on this list.
10 Doomsday Starting off this list is a villain who managed
to beat Superman to death – Doomsday.
In the god forsaken 1992 story arc the Death of Superman, we witness Doomsday arrive on
Earth, and he and Superman battle to the death – seemingly, that is.
While Doomsday is also down for the count, he took down the superhero that no one else
in 54 years could ever really do.
Eventually though, it was revealed that Superman wasn’t dead, just in a Kryptonian coma which
made him look as if he was dead, and the character returned, causing a lot of fans to feel really
cheated by DC for the emotional rollercoaster they put them through, all to make a solid
profit.
9 Sinestro When you think of clever super villains, DC’s
Sinestro is definitely a name that comes to mind.
He’s giving the Green Lanterns a run for their money on many occasions, especially
during the Sinestro Corps War event.
Despite inevitably being defeated, his main goal was achieved – Sinestro reveals at
the end of the story that the whole point of waging his war was to get the Green Lantern
Corps to submit and use lethal force, which was against their code of conduct.
So yeah, he technically won the long game.
8 The Drowned The Drowned was a villain who appearing as
part of the Dark Nights: Metal story event spearheaded by Scott Synder and Greg Capullo.
She is an evil version of Batman from an alternate world that was part of the dark multiverse.
As with many of the other evil alternates of Batman, the Drowned had experienced rather
tragic and nefarious events on her own world prior to being recruited to Barbatos’ cause
by the Batman Who Laughs.
In her case though, she went through a bit of a rollercoaster ride during her time on
Earth -11.
Bryce Wayne turned evil after her lover, Sylvester Kyle, was killed by metahumans.
Bryce kills every single super powered being on land until Aquawoman reappears from her
self-imposed exile to fight Bryce.
This starts a war, Bryce wins by surgically altering herself to be superior in underwater
conditions, takes Aquawoman’s trident, and becomes known as the Drowned.
7 The Joker While the Joker and Batman are eternally at
war against one another, the clown Prince of Crime has one up-ed Batman many a time
by harming the ones closest to him.
This includes the likes of the metaphorical death of the Bat-Family in the New 52 arc
Death of the Family, and crippling Barbara Gordon in the Killing Joke, but perhaps the
worst of all was his murder of Jason Todd, which psychologically destroyed Batman FOR
YEARS.
And was also pretty brutal – he beat him to death with a crowbar.
Todd would return years later with his own vendetta against Bats, too.
6 Norman Osborn The 90’s Clone Saga focused heavily on a
clone of Spider-Man’s named Ben Reilly.
Peter and Ben had a brotherly relationship with one another.
And Norman Osborn murdered him.
Reilly, who first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man issue 149 in the 1975 clone saga,
donned the Scarlet Spider mantle in the 90’s Clone Saga, taking the name Ben Reilly – Ben
for Uncle Ben and Reilly, Aunt May’s maiden name.
He would be impaled by Norman Osborn after Peter handed the spider-man mantle over to
him so that he and MJ could start a family together.
Also worth noting that the character scored a major victory against Peter Parker when
he was technically responsible for Gwen Stacy’s death, which hard core messed with Spidey
for a very, very long time.
5 The Vulture The Vulture is a Spider-Man villain who has
had many a character pick up the mantle.
Recently, we saw the character make a big screen appearance in Spider-Man Homecoming,
played by Michael Keaton.
Keaton plays the Adrian Toomes version, who, in the comics, has quite the history of being
successful with certain goals of his.
This includes ridding his body of cancer, regaining his youth briefly, willing himself
to health in order to defeat an usurper who tried to murder him in prison, and also killing
the man who betrayed him and ruined him financially.
Not too shabby, Adrian.
4 Ozymandias Adrian Veidt plays a serious long game.
In Watchmen, both comic and film, the character manipulates events in order to prevent nuclear
war by causing mass destruction in various cities in order to bring international rivals
together.
This already daunting feat also includes pulling the wool over the eyes of the practically
omnipotent Doctor Manhattan.
While the comic version is a bit more complex and monstrous, the film adaptation takes it
a step further by Veidt setting up Manhattan to be the scape goat, with traces of him at
the sights of the destruction, making it seem that he is against humanity, causing world
leaders to set aside their differences in an aim to work together.
Essentially, kill millions to save the world for the greater good.
And he got away with it, too.
3 Doctor Octopus In a story line that took a lot of heat back
in its day, the Dying Wish storyline in The Amazing Spider-Man involved Otto Octavius
switching bodies with Peter Parker after he discovered he had cancer.
This caused Peter to die while he became Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Man series was born.
Otto reformed, and was affected by Peter’s memories, but eventually erased all of his
brain waves in order to fully get rid of him.
Eventually, he too would die after realizing he was a failure, delete himself from existence
and restored Peter, but for the duration of about a year and a half in 2013-2014, he held
the Spider-Man mantle, and many a fan was pissed.
2 Doctor Doom Doom’s victories aren’t necessarily traditional
wins.
First off, he’s managed to take over the world in Secret Wars after he imprisoned the
Purple Man and weaponized his powers for his own use, but then got bored with ruling over
a world at peace who listened to his every command.
He let Namor destroy the machine that he had crafted to control Kilgrave, and everything
reverted to normal.
Doom also scored a personal victory over his nemesis Reed Richards by not only delivering
his child when Reed failed to be there to help Sue, but also named the child too.
1 Thanos Thanos makes our top spot because, unless
you’ve been living under a rock, the mad titan just scored the biggest super villain
win in the history of comic book movies to date.
The MCU’s 3rd Avengers film, Infinity War, left fans absolutely baffled when the movie
ended with Thanos victorious, and many beloved superheroes dusted, ceasing to exist.
Now, in the comics, it goes down a little differently.
The film is primarily adapted from the six issue Infinity Gauntlet miniseries from the
early 90s, with a bit of the more recent 2013 Infinity story event sprinkled in.
In Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos does succeed in eliminating half of all living beings in
the universe, but he’s also thwarted – the story continues with Adam Warlock rallying
all of the heroes against him – all of which pretty much die in an epic battle against
the Mad Titan, until Nebula snatches the gauntlet off of him after he thinks he’s won.
Long story short, Adam Warlock ends up getting the gauntlet back from her, and reads Thanos’
soul to discover that the mad titan never thought he was worthy of all that power – or
Death’s love – to begin with.
Thanos then retires and lives on a farm, and the story ends with him watching the sun rise,
just like it did in the MCU film.
In the comic, he seems more than content to be rid of that extreme power, but he eventually
comes back, seeking it once more and facing off against the Marvel universe’s heroes,
and Warlock.
There we have it friends!
Which of these villains’ victories did you think was the most deserved?
And what villain would you love to see score a win for once?
Let us know in those comments below!
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