Eviler Than Thou / Comic Books

• In Marvel Versus DC, Darkseid does some Leaning on the Fourth Wall by sneering Thanos is a "pale imitation" of himself.^note Thanos is an Alternate Company Equivalent.
• X-Men:
  • The comic books and movies contrast William Stryker, a bigoted clergyman who thinks mutants are animals, with Magneto, a mutant supremacist who thinks mutants should enslave humans (or separate themselves from humans, or just kill the humans; Magneto's opinions on what to do with normal humans vary from time to time and writer to writer, and that's not even getting into his periodic Heel Face Turns). The parallels with white supremacists and minority racists are very much open.
  • It's a textbook abused-becomes-the-abuser Aesop with Magneto, as he's a Holocaust survivor. The Red Skull once even said that they weren't that different. Magneto didn't take that well. And kind of proved Red Skull's point by burying him alive.
  • Apocalypse is also often presented as a worse version of Magneto's own philosophy, going beyond even mutant supremacism to ruthless extermination of anyone he considers unfit to survive. So horrific is he that Magneto will often join forces with Xavier and company just to stop him.
  • Nate Grey a.k.a. X-Man actually managed to pull this on both Apocalypse and Magneto during his Anti-Villain period, keeping Apocalypse as a wall-decoration/reminder of what he was trying to prevent via his whole Utopia Justifies the Means scheme, and Magneto on a psychic leash. As an exasperated Apocalypse pointed out to Kitty Pryde, who he'd also effortlessly restrained, he has "Apocalypse in chains and Magneto on a leash like a dog", she should really stop doubting what he's capable of. Everyone turned on Nate in the end, including several villains. It wasn't enough, and the only thing that ended the following Age of X-Man reality was the fact that Nate had a personal epiphany and never really wanted to fight to begin with.
  • In X2: X-Men United, Stryker is a General Ripper, which temporarily leads to an Enemy Mine situation for the two mutant factions.
• In the Tintin book Flight 714, the Big Bad and an eccentric billionaire argue under the influence of a Truth Serum about who's the most ruthless of them. This is also done faithfully in the Animated Adaptation... and is somehow even more funny when Rastapopolous and Carredias repeatedly say, "I'm the baddest! I'm the baddest!" to each other. Jump Cut to Captain Haddock spinning a roll of tape saying, "I'M the baddest!" after having taped their mouths shut.
• Green Lantern:
  • In "Rage of the Red Lanterns", the Red Lantern Corps pulls this on the Sinestro Corps by interrupting the Sinestro Corps battle with the GLs to free Sinestro and slaughtering both sides.
  • In Blackest Night, the Black Lantern Corps have forced all of the other seven corps to work together just to survive.
  • When the Rise of the Third Army arc ended and the Wrath of the First Lantern arc began, Volthoom (the titular First Lantern) proves himself to be a far greater threat than the corrupt Guardians by effortlessly imprisoning them and annihilating their Third Army. And while the Guardians were running a universe-wide Assimilation Plot, that pales to Volthoom's plan to unravel time and space for no other reason than to prove his superiority.
• New Gods: The backstory of Darkseid's master assassin Kanto is that he was a kid on Apokolips called Iluthin who killed the previous assassin, Kanto 13. Kanto 13 was a Villainous Valor type who believed in honorable combat. Iluthin challenged him to a fight just after his workout and got his ass handed to him, but just as he was about to strike the killing blow, Kanto 13 keeled over, and it turned that Iluthin had poisoned his water. Darkseid was so impressed and glad to finally get an assassin who was unburdened by honor that he not only gave Iluthin Kanto 13's job and the name Kanto, but he got rid of the numbering system for assassins, indicating that he believed Kanto was the best he would ever get.
• Spider-Man:
  • In the story Goblins at the Gate, the Hobgoblin (Roderick Kingsley) thinks he's manipulating the Green Goblin (Norman Osborn) to free him from prison and help him defeat Spider-Man, before he executes a takeover of Osborn's business empire. Turns out Osborn knew Kingsley was trying to use him and was just playing along to find out if Kingsley really had any blackmail material on him — and has managed to take over all of Kingsley's business empire instead. How was he able to carry it off so quickly? Easy:
    Norman: I'm Norman Osborn.
  • Fellow Spider-Man villain Mr. Negative feels no one can approach him when it comes to evil or good, because he is both in equally ridiculous proportion. He subscribes to a philosophy that because his alter ego Mr. Li is as kind as a saint, this makes his evil as Mr. Negative all the more despicable, and vice versa. In being both, he is greater than any who is but one.
• In Spider-Man and Batman: Disordered Minds, the Joker and Carnage have an argument over who's the better serial killer. The Joker tops it off by calling himself Orson Welles and Carnage David Hasselhoff.
• As proved by Alexander Luthor's fate at the end of Infinite Crisis, no matter what cosmic scale genocide or Crisis a DCU villain has carried out, the most dangerous villain is still a psychopath in a purple suit named the Joker. Cross him at your peril.
  • In fact, the villains of the DC universe generally agree that working with the Joker is a bad idea. Only Lex Luthor is willing to do it on a regular basis, and makes sure to keep Joker on a short leash when he does, on the grounds it's best to keep him where you can see him.
  • In Justice (DC Comics), Luthor does leave the Joker off the supervillain team, as a reference to the Joker being left out of the Legion of Doom in Superfriends. The Joker goes even more bonkers as usual.
• While responding to fan mail in his Dark Reign tie-in, Venom (the Mac Gargan incarnation) says:
  Venom: I know I'm not the nicest guy on the Earth, but try to compare me with the rest of my team. Daken has to kill four people per day to count it as good, Bullseye once killed a kitty that got struck in a tree just to prove he can, Norman seduced his son's girlfriend, and Ares is fricking GOD OF WAR. Next to them I'm looking like Tom Hanks.
• This is the whole point of Resurrection from Star Wars Tales #9 — Sith cultists clone Darth Maul to make him fight Darth Vader, because they believe Vader has too much good inside him to be Palpatine's apprentice. This could be a Secret Test of Character, schemed by Palpatine to find out if Vader is evil enough as well.
• In the Teen Titans storyline "The Judas Contract", Slade quickly realized that his own Dragon Terra was far more evil and dangerous than him due to her mental problems, worrying him frequently. His plan to bring down the Titans from within went off without a hitch thanks to her prowess, but immediately fell apart the moment she got pissed off at him.
• Relatively early on in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), Mammoth Mogul proved himself eviler than Enerjak (who was more or less the Big Bad of the Knuckles spin-off) by using the Sword of Acorns to steal his powers, reducing him to a frail old man, all while giving him "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
  • Pre-Super Genesis Wave, Dr. Eggman was said on multiple occasions to be many times more cruel and vicious than the original Dr. Robotnik ever was. Considering the fact that the original Robotnik roboticized countless Mobians, overthrew King Max, and polluted much of Mobius, as well as planned to use his Ultimate Annihilator to wipe out Knothole Village completely, that's saying something.
    • This also applies to other villains in the series, pre-Super Genesis Wave. Even if they're immortal, even if they've strange mystical powers, it's almost unanimously agreed upon that Robotnik/Eggman represents the greater evil even when he's not the most immediate threat.
• Near the end of Grant Morrison's run on the pre-reboot Batman books, Oberson Sexton (a.k.a. the Joker playing hero) shows Doctor Hurt why he's pathetic with a line of dominoes and an Ironic Echo of what Hurt said to him.
• In Legacy, Darth Krayt and Darth Wyyrlok have this happen between them. Wyyrlok begins as Krayt's loyal Dragon, advisor, and chief spokesman, but after he decides Krayt is too erratic to be an effective leader any more, he kills him and takes over. Except Krayt was Only Mostly Dead and managed to come back for a head-to-head confrontation over which Dark Lord lead the Sith. Wyyrlok was cunning and had mastered all sorts of esoteric dark powers, but Krayt basically turned himself into the Star Wars equivalent of a lich and was a veritable juggernaut of dark side power. Wyyrlok didn't stand a chance.
• The Beast and the Smiler from Transmetropolitan. The Beast is definitely not a good person, and too lazy, venal and cynical to bother with trying. The Smiler, on the other hand, is a puppy-punter of the first order, who goes out of his way to abuse any power he gets.
• In the Boom Comics Darkwing Duck series, Negaduck uses this as justification as to why only he should be the one to turn Darkwing's life into a living hell. He also uses it to give Quackerjack "The Reason You Suck" Speech that broke him so badly, mentioning Negaduck to him sets off his Berserk Button.
• In Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters, Father Time thought he could use Gonzo the Mechanical Bastard as a puppet to rubber-stamp his authoritarian plans for the United States. He discovers almost too late that Gonzo instead plans to plunge the U.S. into chaos, and is thus forced to turn to his enemy Uncle Sam to stop it. Although it later turns out Father Time knew all along how evil Gonzo was, and set up the scenario to get the Freedom Fighters together and expose Gonzo before turning him into an Orphan Box.
• When the Secret Six were first put together, Cheshire proved she was by far the worst of the group when she betrayed them to the Secret Society just to be free of Mockingbird's blackmail. And for added sting, she got around the threats made on her daughter's life by conceiving a replacement baby and then using that as a way to get Catman to defend her from Deadshot and the others. In every following interaction between Cheshire and the Six, she's tried to manipulate and/or kill them.
• Revolution (2016): The different villainous factions all team-up (barring the since dissolved Decepticons, whose antagonistic members largely stayed out of the event). Miles Mayhem teams up with the Dire Wraiths who conspire to bring Baron Karza into their dimension. The Wraiths had promised Mayhem the rulership of Earth, but they betray him and in turn Karza betrays them and absorbs their ground force into himself to become the event's final boss. Interestingly enough of the three antagonists, Karza is the most sympathetic (having definitive loved ones and a goal that's noble but extreme) contrasting the Wraith's Always Chaotic Evil nature and Miles' megalomania.
• In the Mickey Mouse Comic Universe story "Fatal Distraction", Black Pete complains that the Phantom Blot is perverse for not wanting to keep stuff he could have stolen, whereas the Blot considers anything less than taking over the world as an unworthy evil goal.
• In Hack/Slash, Akakios murders the Black Lamp leadership for rebelling against him and wiping his memory, but also upbraids them for being evil in a self-serving and hedonistic way instead of getting on with his "cull humanity" plan.
• The Batman Who Laughs, first introduced in Dark Nights: Metal, is this to the Joker. While the Joker has only once expressed Omnicidal Maniac desires (in Emperor Joker) and typically is only a threat to Gotham, the Batman Who Laughs managed to kill everyone on his world (except Damian and Alfred whom he corrupted) and joined Barbatos just so he could keep doing killing entire worlds of people. He even tried to destroy the multiverse. The Joker even leaves the Legion of Doom in Justice League (2018) because he's horrified by the Batman Who Laughs and hates playing the straight man. In Dark Nights: Death Metal, he makes another attempt at destroying the multiverse, in which he declares himself Eviler Than Thou to Perpetua, The Social Darwinist and Multiversal Conqueror who up to then had been the Big Bad of The DCU since DC Year of the Villain.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Wonder Woman considers the second Cheetah "far worse than Priscilla Rich" because all Priscilla "cared about was personal revenge on her imagined enemies" while the new Cheetah sees "the whole world as her enemy".
• Wolverine: Sabretooth once managed to bring Lady Deathstrike and Omega Red together to target Wolverine's friends and family, only to end up betraying both of them and forcing an Enemy Mine between Wolverine and the Weapon X Program itself.
• The miniseries Batman: Three Jokers is about three men sharing the identity of the Joker. The three Jokers represent different periods in the character’s history: the Criminal (the Golden Age Joker) is the most serious and the de factor leader of the trio; the Comedian (The Killing Joke Joker) is a sadistic psychopath; and the Clown (the Silver Age/A Death in the Family Joker) is Laughably Evil and largely along for the ride. The Clown is executed by Jason Todd in the first issue, and the Criminal serves as the Big Bad of the series, working towards a larger goal of creating the ultimate Joker by exposing Joe Chill to the Joker Venom, with the Comedian serving as his henchman and focussed mostly on tormenting Jason and Batgirl. However, in the final pages of the last issue, the Comedian kills the Criminal, leaving him as the one true Joker. He explains to Batman that unlike the campy and unimaginative Clown, or the Criminal who had plans and ideals, all he wants is to cause Batman pain until one or both of them is dead, even manipulating Batman into forgiving Chill so the Joker could be the person he hates the most. This is also a case of Adaptational Villainy, as The Killing Joke is the most sympathetic backstory ever offered for the Joker. This version is heavily implied to have been an abusive asshole even before becoming the Joker, and it’s revealed that his pregnant wife didn’t die, she faked her death to escape him.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): In the pre-reboot series, Dr. Eggman was considered this to the rest of Sonic's Rogues Gallery. Even if they're immortal, even if they've strange mystical powers, it's almost unanimously agreed upon that Eggman represents the greater evil even when he's not the most immediate threat:
  • For starters, he's repeatedly described as many times more cruel and vicious than the original Dr. Robotnik ever was. Considering the list of atrocities that the original Robotnik wracked up before being taken down^note [[note]]Among other things, he roboticized countless Mobians, overthrew King Max, polluted much of Mobius, and planned to use his Ultimate Annihilator to wipe out Knothole Village completely, that's saying something.
  • During the Brave New Moebius arc, the Council of Acorn refuse to let the Freedom Fighters take back Freedom HQ from Scourge and the Suppression Squad for this very reason, insisting that compared to Eggman, Scourge is no threat. Their reasoning is vindicated when Eggman overwhelms and nearly defeats Scourge using Metal Sonic and Metal Scourge, the latter of which he literally put together and sent out on the fly.
• The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Cybertron was led by two powerful government bodies before the Decepticons overthrew them; the Senate and the Functionalist Council. The two groups were incredibly corrupt but it's clear that the Functionalists brand of egocentric religion edged them out as the more evil body. Neither the Senate nor the Functionalists treated the constructed cold populace very well, but the Senate saw them as second-class citizens whilst the Functionalists wanted them all killed because they felt the constructed cold process was an affront to god. An alternate reality in which the Functionalists came to power (as opposed to the Senate or the Decepticons) turned the planet into a nightmarish dystopia wherein any class of citizen could be killed off if they were found to be obsolete.

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