Is it ever a wonder why they were demonized for fighting against mutant oppression?
The Silver Surfer met his latest and greatest enemy this year: A tyrant named Tyrant. And wasn't it only last year that X-Factor was fighting nasty boys called the Nasty Boys? Next year, Marvel heroes will battle all-new characters named Villain, The Bad Guys, The Antagonist, The Opponent, The Legion of Enemies, Mister Naughty, and The Incredible Do-Badder.
— Marvel Year in Review 1993
- The DCU:
- In Rick Veitch's early-2000s run of Aquaman, the titular hero confronts his archnemesis (and murderer of his son), Black Manta, and, after defeating him, uses his new magic powers to re-wire his brain and cure him of his autism; the painful and incompetent treatment he received as a child was part of why he'd become such an insane monster. He appears to turn himself around, but the apparent Freudian Excuse and Heel–Face Turn are subverted when, at a critical moment, Manta stabs Aquaman in the back and explains: "Y'see, deep down, in my most secret heart of hearts, I'm still a totally depraved sonuvabitch whose main goal in life is to watch you die. Slowly and painfully. Just like your kid."
- Batman: The Joker once identified himself to Black Canary as "genuine, card-carrying, lock-me-up-throw-away-the-key lunatic!" It sparked a letter column debate (remember those?) about whether or not insane people could recognize themselves as being insane — in any case, the Joker has been shown several times to be fully aware of being crazy (the plot of The Killing Joke hangs on this very fact). Incidentally, the Joker is often seen carrying Joker playing cards, very much playing this trope literally.
- Justice League of America:
- As a Shadow Archetype of Batman (his parents were criminals killed by the police), Prometheus' stated goal is to "annihilate the forces of justice."
- Played for Laughs in one Justice League (2011) issue
:Captain Marvel: One of you actually carved "Secret Society of Super-Villains" into your table?
Cyborg: My bet's on Doctor Alchemy.
- The Legion of Super-Heroes is opposed by an Evil Counterpart Legion of Doom called... the Legion of Super-Villains.
- New Gods: Darkseid openly admits to being a God of Evil and that he desires to crush all happiness and free will in the universe.
- Justified with the Supergirl villain Satan Girl (self-named, mind you). Being Kara Zor-El's Evil Twin, she's basically dark desires and impulses made flesh with no conscience to hold them back, so she delights in evil for the sake of evil.
- Wonder Woman Vol 1: Eviless has no tragic backstory or other sympathy garnering details. She just likes control, murder and corrupting people.
- Marvel Universe:
- The Purple Man (usually an enemy of Daredevil) gets this treatment in Alias, with a disturbing justification — he's seemingly aware that he and the other characters are in a comic book, and thus fully aware that he's a villain. Given that he's a psychopath with mind-controlling powers, this is a very bad thing for anyone and everyone he comes across.
- The very first appearance of Captain America's archenemy, the Red Skull, had him exit stage left saying "I'll be back — with more murder!" Subverted, however, in that as early as the Silver Age, he became increasingly more of an ideologically sincere Nazi true believer, as opposed to a merely power-hungry or randomly evil villain. His modern characterization fluctuates between card-carrying villainy and outright self-righteous Knight Templar behavior, Depending on the Writer.
- As revealed in Deadpool, Bullseye's childhood ambition was "to be the bad guy". In contrast, Deadpool's was to make a suit out of meat and fight somebody in it.
- During Dark Reign, Marvel Comics introduced Zodiac, a guy who killed every single member of an old supervillain team with the same name so he wouldn't be confused with them. Zodiac plots about the fall of Norman Osborn. Why? Because he finds Osborn's new position an insult to all who just wants to commit evil for its own sake, like himself.
- Fantastic Four: Subverted by Doctor Doom. The name he uses and manner in which he dresses at first glance gives the impression that he's making no bones about the fact that he's a supervillain, but he's so egotistical that he actually thinks of himself as a fair and wise ruler. And Depending on the Author, he actually is, at least when it comes to his home country of Latveria.
- Played for Laughs in G. Willow Wilson's run of Ms. Marvel, where the villainous henchman Doyle wears (in addition to his "1985 hair and a laser gun") a sleeveless shirt with "IMA BAD GUY" on it.
- Dirk Anger, Director of H.A.T.E in Nextwave."I'm older'n you. I'm ninety years old. You want to know how I look so pretty? I take drugs. Special H.A.T.E. drugs. Life-extending drugs. H.A.T.E. has the best drugs because H.A.T.E. loves me. And I love H.A.T.E. Every day of my horrible drug-extended terrorist-fighting life. Every day I smoke two hundred cigarettes and one hundred cigars and drink a bottle of whiskey and three bottles of wine with dinner. And dinner is meat. Raw meat. The cook serves me an entire animal and I fight it bare-handed and tear off what I want and eat it and have the rest buried. In New Jersey! For H.A.T.E.!"
- Contagion, the villain of the first arc of Wolverine: The Best There Is."I am not the hero in my own story. I am the bad guy. I have no end in mind that justifies my means. There are no skeletons in my closet, no abusive childhood or inciting misery that might expiate my vile behavior. Nor am I insane. I know the difference between good and evil. And I am fully capable of empathizing with the pain, emotional or physical, of others. No sociopath, I. Rather, I simply prefer bad over good. Wrong over right. Dirty over clean. Sick over healthy. Untrue over true."
- X-Men:
- Sabretooth thinks himself a violent, animalistic savage who lives only to hunt and kill, and is very proud of this fact. He does a very good job at living up to this.
- Magneto's early characterization made him a prime example of this. Most (in)famously in his guest appearance in The Fantastic Four (1978), but really, that is only slightly more over-the-top than he was in the comics. When the Toad or the Scarlet Witch would profess their loyalty to him, he would usually sneer something to the effect that he did not want followers motivated by fickle love and devotion, but rather fear and blind obedience. He unironically called his team the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as well. This is a major source of Early-Installment Weirdness; there's no trace of the Well-Intentioned Extremist who sees himself as a protector of mutants who regrets the necessity of fighting his poor misguided old friend Charles (and needless to say, the sight of Mags working with the X-Men would make a sixties fan think this must be a Mirror Universe storyline). Later stories either just call them "The Brotherhood" or "The Brotherhood of Mutants", or keep the name but make it a Then Let Me Be Evil thing: "No matter what we try, you've decided all mutants are evil for being different? So be it, we'll give you evil mutants!" But in The '60s, they were straight-up capital-E Evil and proud of it.Magneto: Loyalty! Bah! I rule by fear alone!
- One version of the Brotherhood working for the U.S. Government and led by Mystique takes a smart idea and calls itself by the innocuous moniker "Freedom Force".
- In The '90s, when X-Men writer Stan Lee was asked why Magneto called his group "Evil Mutants", responded with this:"He didn't — I did! It was just one of the many typically boneheaded decisions I've been known to make! If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably call them 'The Brotherhood of Exceedingly Nice and Well-Mannered Mutants'."
- The same goes for the Alliance of Evil, though they're from The '80s. The Silver Age well over, there were still bad guys who weren't shy about letting the world know they were bad guys. They worked for Apocalypse, himself someone who fit on this list at the time (day-one Apocalypse was basically day-one Magneto with Bold Inflation, filling the "mutant supremacist card-carrying Big Bad" void that Magsy left once characterization marched on). He definitely didn't call himself helping the world (Apocalypse considers removing the weak and forcing the strong to adapt and get stronger to be beneficial). Why does he keep an evil-for-evil's-sake sounding name? If he deemed you worthy of giving an answer to, he'd remind you that the word originally meant "revelation".
- Sauron, the a Superpowered Evil Side of a man afflicted with an exotic type of energy vampirism, just can't shut up about how evil he is. In fact, upon first transforming, he immediately names himself Sauron in order to emulate what he saw as literature's greatest evil."And, I choose — Evil! An evil so great... so monumental that only one name in all the annals of literature will contain it! The name of Tolkien's ultimate villain... that dark lord who personified evil... who was truly evil incarnate...! The name of Sauron!"
- Set, the apparent leader of the Order in Invincible spinoff Guarding The Globe. In an issue released the same week as the issue in which Contagion makes the speech in his entry, Set begins a meeting of The Order with this:"I've heard it said, everyone is the hero of their own story. The thought is that even the most vile villain believes his actions to be right and thinks of himself as 'good'. I am here to tell you, right now, that I am evil. I am greedy, selfish, I do not care for the plight of others."
- 2000 AD:
- In Judge Dredd:
- Pa Angel is openly trying to raise his sons to be the "meanest, orneriest, baddiest bunch a' men that ever lived." The boys are only too happy to learn from him.
- Chief Judge Cal, an exemplar Tyrant Takes the Helm Caligula, proudly calls himself "a tyrant's tyrant".
- Subverted by the Dark Judges. Their name and appearance might be a dead give-away, but they are even more of a Knight Templar than Judge Dredd.
- Zombo: Shadow President Jason van Satan, who makes no light of the fact that he's the most evil man on Earth.
- In Judge Dredd:
- Jurassic Strike Force 5 has Master Zalex, a large, threatening villain who wears all black, has red eyes, and spends all of his time trying to cause as much destruction as possible in his conquest to rule the universe.
- Kid Miracleman/Marvelman displays this trope when he goes over the edge. Moments after starting his slaughter-spree, he spares the life of a nurse who had been kind to him. He returns a moment later, saying "They'd only say I was going soft...", and pulverises the top of her skull with a blast of his eye-beams.
- Herr Starr of Preacher starts out as a Knight Templar, but, in the end, admits, however unrepentantly, that he's become a "monster" obsessed with hatred and revenge.
- Queen of the Universe: Dober-Man.
- Requiem Vampire Knight takes place in a Hell-like dimension where anybody who is somebody in this place embraces evil wholeheartedly. For example, the most depraved and evil people in history reincarnate as vampires and they form the top hierarchy of society, having completely embraced their twisted nature. The Dystopians are lizard-people who committed terrible crimes in name of colonialism and greed, the mummies were scientists who created disastrous experiments and so forth. The ghouls are exception to this, since they were people that committed crimes in name of the greater good and as such, feel like they don't deserve being in Hell for it, and are looked down by the vampires as inferior beings because they are unrepentant about their crimes.
- In Usagi Yojimbo, Noriko calls herself "the Blood Princess."
- Ava Lord from the Sin City story "A Dame to Kill For" identifies herself as evil in her Evil Gloating speech to Dwight McCarthy, who she has just manipulated into murdering her husband Damien so that she can inherit his money:Ava: Insane? Ha! That's so easy, so convenient — and so wrong. Crazy people push shopping carts down the streets and talk nonsense. Crazy people sit in padded cells and soil their pants. A madwoman couldn't have pulled this off. No. There's a word for what I am, but nobody uses it anymore. Nobody wants to see the simple truth. If they did, they'd kill people like me as soon as we revealed ourselves. But they don't. They close their eyes and blather about psychology and say that nobody is truly evil. That's why I've won. That's why I always win.
- In the very first issue of Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), there is a sign on Robotnik's desk which reads "Dr. Robotnik: Supreme Dictator, Industrial Polluter, Megalomaniac, Corrupt Politician, Underhanded Reprobate, Rain Forest Ravager, Puppy Kicker, Oil Spill Coordinator, Holiday Hater, Insurance Salesman. Rights violated while U wait!"
- Supreme's arch-enemy Darius Dax delights in being evil for the sake of being evil.
- In Transformers: Generation 2, Starscream ends up begging Optimus Prime to take the Matrix back, as he doesn't want to be good!.
- Doctor Wyspa, Wilq's arch-nemesis.
- Later issues of Savage Dragon have subverted this a bit with the new Overlord referring to his team (the Vicious Circle) simply as the Circle. Since there are a number of similarities between Magneto's Brotherhood and Overlord's Circle, it's arguable that one is in response to the other.
- In Violine, Muller boasts about how much of a bad guy he is, even claiming this is what makes him survive his apparent death. The corrupt board executives of the company exploiting Africans in Zongo also know they do bad things, but don't care and delight in it.
- Oxymoron: Oxymoron announces his presence to the people of Swanstown through a live news broadcast by calling himself "a very bad man" and "a plain-dealing villain".
- "Stinky", one half of a villainous duo in Bone, continually insists that as monsters they should be acting like monsters. That his comrade "Smelly" is addicted to quiche is a matter of constant frustration for him.
