Magnificent Bastard/Comic Books: Difference between revisions

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* [[The Joker]]. He has pulled every Gambit in [[Xanatos Planned This Index|the book]] in his ''[[Comic Book Time|seventy year long career.]]''

** Another [[Batman]] example is Ra's Al Ghul, who, out of all the Batman villains, poses the biggest threat globally. He too, like [[The Joker]], has pulled almost every single plan and gambit one could think of for his final goal of wiping out ninety percent of the world's population. Add his [[Affably Evil|polite exterior]] and cunning mind, and you have one Batman villain who is ''not'' to be trifled with.

*** His most Magnificent act of Bastardry was surely his reformation: he still gets to compete with Batman, but now he gets paid to do it, the police don't chase him, and there are many, many fewer Bat-beatings to be endured. The fact that good guy Riddler is an even bigger annoyance to Batman than bad guy Riddler is the icing on the cake.

* Prometheus is another one in ''[[The DCU]]''. He's got no superpowers, but he's stampeded through the Justice League three times now, and has pulled off ridiculous stuff like completely disabling the Flash by lying to him, or talking Superman into suicide, or blackmailing the League into letting him go after destroying Star City. He even teamed up with Luthor once (they caused World War III, no big deal), which led to a [[Crowning Moment of Funny]] as Prometheus showed Luthor around his "crooked house for a crooked man", as the two masterminds passive aggressively snipe at each other.

'''Luthor''': Mm. }}

* [[Lex Luthor]], of ''[[The DCU]]''. Since the eighties, he's been well entrenched in Magnificent Bastardry. The [[Diniverse]] version is especially Magnificent, almost becoming the President as a ''distraction'' from his true plan... Though, unknown to him, he had help with that part.

* The Prankster proved to be one of these in "The Art of the Prank", Superman #660, when dealing with Nitro G, a low-rate criminal with explosive powers that tried to strong-arm him into selling copies of his devices as weapons. And given that Prankster is a normal human, he couldn't simply beat Nitro G in a normal fight. So, he had to go by another route. Suffice to say Nitro G ended up naked, scarred, bruised and humiliated, begging Superman to take him to jail, in front of a laughing crowd while the Prankster ended up with more cash and more customers due to the publicity in his distraction-for-money business.

* [[God of Evil|Anathos]], from [[Les Legendaires (Comic Book)|Les Legendaires]], big time. He put in place a [[Xanatos Gambit]] ''years'' before his first appearance in the serie in order to come back amongst the living. Whereas most characters will fall for the [[No Man of Woman Born]] trick, this guy was so [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]] he ''used it to his advantage'' as part of his plan B. As a result, the Gambit worked, despite the opposition of the protagonists, the [[Big Bad]] and even an [[Eldritch Abomination]]. Not to mention he scarred the heroes to life and almost [[Omnicidal Maniac|eradicated humanity]]...