Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Difference between revisions

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** There was also Asbestos Man, another foe of the Torch. When he appeared a second time - quite a bit later, in ''[[The Fantastic Four|The Fantastic Four Vol. 5 #1]]'' - he also suffers from cancer and has to carry an oxygen tank around with him even as he commits crimes. This ironically makes him more successful, as everyone he tries to rob is terrified at the thought of getting the disease. Despite this, he is miserable, as he now has no purpose (he came out of retirement seeking revenge on the Torch, only to find out he was dead) and thinking that if anyone remembers him at all, it will be as a lame fool who was defeated by his own poor judgment. Fortunately, the Great Lakes Avengers (the heroes who oppose him in this story) are no strangers to being regarded as lame, and promise they will remember him and spread the word about how notorious a villain he is, if he simply turns himself in. He agrees, and passes away soon after.

* Codpiece, from ''[[Doom Patrol]]''. This crook started his criminal career when he was rejected by a girl in high school who said he wasn’t “big enough”. She meant height but he thought she meant [[Teeny Weenie|something else]], and it inspired him to build… [https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Codpiece_(New_Earth) eh, this]. Even worse was the way he was defeated - rookie heroine Coagula was trying to make a name for herself after the Justice League rejected her application, and figured fighting this villain would help, but because she didn’t have a costume yet, she bought a cheap frog mask from a convenience store and took him down in a… [[Groin Attack|rather humiliating manner]]. It did indeed gain Coagula a spot on the Doom Patrol, but Codpiece wasn’t so lucky. He hasn’t been seen since.

* Foes of [[The Fantastic Four]] include such iconic villains as [[Doctor Doom]] and [[Galactus]], but even they have some of these:

** The Hate Monger. With his pointed Hood that made him look like a klansman, this villain could cause a [[Hate Plague]] in his victims. Unfortunately, this villain’s gimmick was the secret identity behind his mask, kind of like a darker version of a crook from [[Scooby-Doo]]. When the heroic foursome took him down and removed his mask (revealing him to be a clone of [[Adolf Hitler]] himself) he lost that edge and there was nothing left. Even the [[Red Skull]] (an actual Nazi) called him lame.

** [[Stan Lee]] once claimed in an interview that the one character he may have regretted creating was Diablo. Yep, this was a [[Card-Carrying Villain]] who was purposely designed as a Card-Carrying Villain, hence his name. He was pretty much Marvel's poster boy for the [[Alchemy Is Magic]] trope, but never really accomplished much. In fact, initially it seemed he was [[Only In It For The Money]], selling his alchemical concoctions to make profit, but failed at that because most of his potions wore off in a few weeks at most.

== Film ==