Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Difference between revisions
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** Calendar Man started out as a lame villain. Julian Gregory Day (his name is ''three puns in one'') committed crimes on holidays with an appropriate theme. (For instance, dressing as Uncle Sam on Independence Day and robbing historic museums.) And he made really bad puns doing it. In recent years, however, he's [[Took a Level in Badass|become more serious]] and is seen in darker stories, becoming a ''little'' better and less of a joke.
** Charlie Brown, [[Sarcasm Mode|the notorious]] Kite Man. ([[Not Making This Up Disclaimer|Not making this up]], he was a lame [[Shout Out]] to ''[[Peanuts]]'' who even crashed into a tree in one story and yelled "Rats!") Obsessed with kites, he committed crimes with a rocket-powered hang glider, until he was killed off and [[Old Shame|never mentioned again.]]
** Most characters designed by comic legends Bob Kane and Bill Finger would be A-list, but the Penny Plunderer was anything but. Joe Coyne [[Punny Name|(another pun there)]] was a newspaper seller who was fired for stealing pennies, and turned to crime over an obsession for them. But it gets worse. He was the ''original owner of the giant penny'', the one proudly displayed in the Batcave. DC was [[Old Shame|so embarrassed by this story]], they gave it a [[
* ''[[Wonder Woman]]'' had a few, most from [[The Golden Age of Comic Books]]:
** The Blue Snowman. This was a scientist who invented a suit of [[Powered Armor]] that made her (yes, ''her'') look like a snowman, and it had a freeze ray that produced ''blue snow''. A new version of the character in the more modern era tried to be [[Darker and Edgier]], but only looked ''sillier'', adding a corncob pipe.
** The Duke of Deception and the Earl of Greed were two of Ares' flunkies whose job was to keep the Earth in a perpetual state of war. Since this was during World War II, it's not clear why Ares even needed these buffoons, who always messed up. DC may have been going for the [[Halfhearted Henchman]] angle here, but these guys were bigger failures than [[Hercules (1997 film)|Pain and Panic.]] DC seems to have given up on the Earl, but the Duke managed to eventually [[Took a Level in Badass|Take a Level in Badass]], pulling a successful coup on Ares. [http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Tomas_Byde_(The_Legend_of_Wonder_Woman)|(He still appears from time to time.)]
** Angelo Bend, aka Angle Man, a villain with a... geometry theme. Obsessed with committing crimes with "unbeatable angles" this guy had a silly-looking costume covered with mathematics symbols and a sillier-looking weapon that looked like a Penrose triangle ("the Angler", he called it) but always got his ass handed to him by the heroine. Eventually he modified the weapon so it could warp time and space in a variety of ways, ditched his silly costume (for a getup that made him look like a middle-aged accountant) and was killed in the Crisis.
** Egg Fu may have been in a class of himself among Diana's enemies
*** The first was likely one of the worst cases of [[Unfortunate Implications]] in comic book history. He was a huge egg with a face that was an insulting caricature of a Chinese man. With no limbs. And he couldn't move. [[Evil Cripple|At all.]] He was killed the first issue he appeared (after a somewhat clever scheme to turn the heroine and Steve Trevor into living bombs), but he left an heir, it seemed...
*** Unfortunately, DC felt a need to revamp him, bringing in Egg Foo the Fifth. (Where were the other three? Nobody knew, nobody cares.) This one was worse than the first, managing to capture the heroine by binding her with her lasso (common practice for misogynist villains she tended to fight) but was done in when she got too close by offering to dance for him.
*** Eventually a robot version of Egg Foo called Dr. Yes (a [[Shout Out]] to ''[[Dr. No]]'', of course) was introduced as an enemy of the ''[[Metal Men]]''. A slightly better bad guy, still an American-hating
*** DC would come up with another version post-Crisis, one that gave him a robotic body and a scheme that involved summoning the [[Four Horsemen]] using technology. Sadly, it was still hard to [[Nightmare Retardant|take a giant, living egg seriously.]], and he was still a blatant Chinese stereotype, so he didn't last, until...
*** Finally, the most recent version was named Edgar Fullerton Yeung [[Don't Explain The Joke|(get it?)]] who became a regular in [[Harley Quinn]]'s own title. The [[Denser and Wackier|nature of the title]] made him more acceptable when the Chinese background was removed, but he was still a truly incompetent villain who was much happier when Harley hired him as a handyman.
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** He's fallen to the point that he no longer appears on the local news' supervillain alerts even though ''Stilt-Man'' did. Desperate, he teams up with a similarly washed-up Hydro-Man to [[One Last Job|knock over ONE bank and retire]]. You feel pretty bad for him when Spider-Man not only stops them, but the Shocker accidentally ''evaporates'' Hydro-Man and injures himself to the point that his ''ribs are sticking out of his chest''. "You always said I looked like a pincushion..."
** But contrary to his reputation, the Shocker actually has a fairly high success rate against Spidey. He once proved himself to be [[Not So Harmless]] when he captured Spidey and, in a fit of rage, delivered a [[No-Holds-Barred Beatdown]] that nearly killed him. Even [[The Hood]] mentioned that he had great respect for the guy.
** While the "regular" Shocker has his moments of competence and [[Not So Harmless]], his [[Ultimate Marvel]] counterpart consistently fits this trope.
* ''[[Daredevil]]'' villain Stilt-Man. A man whose suit of Powered Armor offers some minimal amount of protection while making him very tall. One of the more baffling villains of his era, writers gave up on revamping him into a serious threat a long time ago. Since then, whenever you needed a really pathetic villain to beat up, Stilt-Man was your guy. Eventually, [[The Punisher]] killed him. For all that, his wife, Princess Python, was pretty hot, so perhaps Stilt-Man was effective in other areas.
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