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.
— Contagion, Wolverine: The Best There Is issue #3
The X-Men have faced many villains over their long history, but several members of their Rogues Gallery stand out in terms of heinousness.
- Belasco, as well as examples from the Ultimate Universe; the What If? series; X-Men 2099 (Marvel 2099); Old Man Logan and Dark Ages (Marvel Comics) (Other Continuities) can be found here.
- Examples from animated works can be found here.
- Examples from the film series and the Generation X TV Movie can be found here.
- Examples from unproduced scripts can be found here.
- Mutant X can be found here.
- Examples from literature can be found here.
- Examples from video games can be found here.
- Examples from the Wolverine podcast can be found here.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
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Earth-616 X-Men, Including Canon Immigrants
Recurring Villains
- Dr. Roderick "Rory" Campbell, in the dark future of Earth-811, became a monstrous cyborg named Ahab. Responsible for the Hounds program, Ahab tortures mutants into his obedient dogs and uses them to track down and convert or murder other mutants. Ahab attempts to do this to the child Franklin Richards, even trying to convert his family, returning with his Hounds to also hunt down his arch-nemesis Rachel Summers and wipe out the X-Men. Ahab later manages to incorporate psychic powers with a Hound, able to inject memories of horrific torture to shape his victims more efficiently, attempting to exterminate mutantkind and whoever else gets in his way.
- Fabian Cortez is the leader of the defunct Upstarts, a group of mutants that hunted and killed other mutants for points and bragging rights in Selene's Upstarts competition. In his first outing, he puts together the Acolytes and tries to sway Magneto back towards taking an antagonistic stance against humanity. When Magneto is wounded, Cortez uses his own powers to make him dependent on his treatment under the pretense he was helping him. Cortez's machinations lead to the U.S. and Russia destroying Asteroid M with a plasma cannon, which resulted the deaths of his entire first group of Acolytes, including his own sister. When Magneto returns and Cortez loses his top spot in the competition, he goes to Genosha and inspire the mutants there to rise up against their oppressive human government, causing a bloody civil war. At the same time, he kidnaps Magneto's infant granddaughter so he can use her as a Human Shield against the X-Men, the Avengers, and Exodus in an attempt to kill as many of the Avengers as possible. When Magneto becomes the ruler of Genosha and learns the hidden technology that can restore his power levels, Cortez betrays him by amping up ex-Acolytes to send against him. A supremacist and a backstabber at its finest, Cortez committed his despicable crimes in order to score points in a competition.
- D'ken Neramani, until his demise, was the cruel Majestor of the Shi'ar Imperium. Under his leadership, thousands of worlds and their races have been conquered and enslaved, sometimes subject to violent planetary genocides. D'ken himself is a sadist who murdered the pregnant wife of Christopher Summers after the latter tried to stop D'ken from raping her, ripping the fetus from her womb and incubating it into a slave that would grow up to become the homicidally unstable Gabriel Summers. Unsatisfied with the power he already had, D'ken tried to have his benevolent sister Lilandra's soul devoured by horrible beings called the Soul-Drinkers and then tried to use the M'Kraan Crystal to become all-powerful, jeopardizing the existence of the entire universe in the process. When his mind was restored from his defeat decades later by his loyalists, D'ken proved he learned nothing from his mistakes and once again attempted to abuse the M'Kraan Crystal and the now-grown Gabriel Summers, in particular trying to use the M'Kraan Crystal to subject Charles Xavier to excruciating death or insanity.
- The Gorgon, born Tomi Shishido, was a Child Prodigy of dizzying ability who, at a young age, founded the mutant supremacist group called the Dawn of White Light that launched multiple, brutal terrorist attacks across Japan that claimed many innocent lives. when he was eighteen, he joined the Hand, slaughtering his own family to show he had no ties elsewhere. Shishido, now called the Gorgon for his mutant ability to turn humans to stone with a look, captured Wolverine and brainwashed him into a killing machine that claimed many innocent lives, and the lives of heroes such as Northstar. When deprogrammed, Wolverine killed the Gorgon, who was later resurrected. The Gorgon quickly took a leadership role in Hydra, eventually ousting Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, and revealed a disturbing habit of turning innocent women into stone as decorations for his chambers.
- Mister Sinister is a clone of Nathaniel Essex—a tragic, morally bankrupt nineteenth-century eugenicist—and has established himself as one of the most consistently awful villains the X-Men faced, lacking the good qualities of the original Essex. Sinister was approached by Apocalypse and granted great power, only to betray Apocalypse and strike out on his own. Recognizing his own genetic handiwork in some of the Morlocks, a group of street-dwelling mutants, Sinister hired the Marauders to exterminate them, because he viewed their existence as plagiarism. Obsessed with Scott Summers's bloodline, Sinister cloned Jean Grey, and sent the clone, Madelyne Pryor, to have a child with Scott, so that he might then steal the child. He later tried to use the High Evolutionary space station in order to alter the genetics of the entire planet; failing in this endeavor, Sinister later sent out the Marauders to murder everyone who knew about the dark future where Apocalypse ruled the world. On another occasion he merged with the Dreaming Celestial and transformed the entire population of San Francisco into clones of himself. At another time, Sinister promised to free the Weapon X project's prisoners from the concentration camp they were held in, only to turn around and use them as part of his own experiments. Concerned only with his mad genetic theories, Sinister has worked with everyone from Josef Mengele to Apocalypse in the interest of furthering his research, and making himself the dominant life form on Earth.
- Amanda Mueller is a ruthless mutant geneticist who worked with Mr. Sinister, she faked miscarriages in order to supply Sinister with her own babies to experiment on. She eventually joined the Black Womb project where she assisted in experimenting on countless babies with methods too vile even for some of her partners, in one instance strangling a baby to death on camera. Seeking to murder Professor Xavier to use Mr. Sinister to repair her body, Mueller demonstrates that in depravity, she is nearly the equal of Essex himself.
- Omega Red, real name Arkady Gregorivich Rossovich, is a sadistic Super-Soldier who loves killing so much that his need to drain the life force of others to sustain his own annoys him purely because it restricts the creativity of his murderous mind. An abomination since birth who mutilated animals, poisoned fellow children, and murdered vagrants, Arkady later used his position as a Soviet soldier to start murdering young girls. After being transformed into Omega Red, he uses his ability of energy-draining to end hundreds of lives over his appearances, notably killing the warrior Katu's entire village before ripping his arms off; nearly wiping out an entire prison of life; and melting Wild Child alive in lava. A traitorous lunatic who responds to any attempt to control or hire him by inevitably turning on his bosses, Omega Red later travels through all eras of time in an attempt to erase the X-Men from ever having existed, during which he bodyjacks and kills dozens of innocents; threatens newborn infants; and tries to alter history to cause mass death, so long as it accomplishes his goals and satiates his bloodlust.
- Donald Pierce is the cyborg leader of the Reavers and a raving bigot who's thrown in his lot with the Hellfire Club as the White Bishop for a chance to kill as many mutants as possible. Preferring not to go after targets who can fight back, Pierce deliberately goes after the young and vulnerable, having murdered over 300 innocent mutant—virtually all of them children or infants-—with nothing short of glee, transforming his Reavers into cyborgs as well to have them kill as much as they want. Opting to torture the heroes if they fall into his hands, and even plotting the betrayal of his own nominal allies in the Hellfire Club, Pierce is such a vile, spiteful, cowardly bully so filled with hate his last words before Cyclops kills him is to say he's just sorry he won't be around to see the mutant race destroyed.
- Selene (Gallio), at times Black Queen of the Hellfire Club, is one of the few mutants to be older than Apocalypse, and one of the few who can match his evil. A psychic vampire, Selene survives by draining the minds of other beings into herself, a move which brainwashes those she only preys on a little, and kills those she drains completely. She's also possessed of a phenomenal god complex, and has repeatedly tried to attain godhood, and has forced others to worship her. Her crimes include trying to psychically devour the entire city of Rome; using mind control to force the citizens of Nova Roma to worship her as a goddess; trying to kill her own descendant, Magma; successfully killing her loyal servant Eli Bard; manipulating Wither, an otherwise good kid, into descending into omnicidal mania while pretending to love him; promising the Upstarts prizes if they committed enough murders;repeatedly trying to bodyjack Rachel Summers; and enslaving the souls of all Genosha's dead. A seemingly immortal parasite, Selene set the standard for all future Queens of the Hellfire Club to follow.
- Shadow King, real name Amahl Farouk, is the Arch-Enemy of Storm, and a powerful mutant who made his living as a crime lord, using children—including Storm—as pickpockets or prostitutes. After being defeated by Charles Xavier and locked in the astral plane, he became far worse. Taking the alias "The Shadow King", Farouk became a being of psychic malice. Not content to remain on the astral plane, Farouk consistently possesses others with psychic energy, and then enacts a game of destroying them mentally. He often forces them to indulge in the sickest desires he can imagine, or that he finds in their subconscious, leaving them aware that they are doing such horrible things, but making them enjoy it. Farouk enjoys psychic torture as a hobby, and seeks to corrupt the hearts and minds of every human he can, this being both an art and enjoyable past time to him. Recently, Farouk was the one to reveal to the young boy who might grow to be Apocalypse that his life was a lie and he was the destined destroyer. Being Farouk, he mocked him the entire time about how his life was a worthless simulation, and showed utter glee in awakening the one to commit genocide on humanity.
- Reverend William Stryker, debuting in God Loves, Man Kills, hatefully persecutes mutantkind, having stabbed his own infant son for being born a mutant and killing his wife for birthing the boy. Founding the "Purifiers", Stryker has them kill any mutants they come across. Kidnapping Charles Xavier to Mind Rape him, Stryker plans to use the psychic mutant to wipe out every other mutant on Earth in the name of his fanatical quest. Temporarily stopping his genocidal crusade, Stryker resumes upon finding the mutant-killing machine, Nimrod, founding a new Purifier group and revealing it to the world through bombing a school bus full of de-powered mutants, killing dozens of innocent children. After manipulating and then killing a young mutant, Stryker launches an all-out assault on the X-Mansion in the hopes of killing all the children living there. Even after his own death, Stryker's brainwashing of his own son breaks the boy into becoming a fanatical, bigoted monster like his father.
- Tullamore Voge, originally hailing from Earth-1289, is one of the most horrific slavers the X-Men have ever faced. Going across the multiverse searching for enhanced individuals to capture, Voge allies with various other slavers like Ransome Sole to create a trafficking ring unlike anything seen before, buying everything from captured X-men to "living statues" to then sell elsewhere by the hundreds. Even when captured, Voge uses his psychic powers to break the minds of anyone he can reach, almost rendering several X-men catatonic. Resurfacing years later in the 2014 Nightcrawler series, Voge's operation later focused on superhuman children, trafficking thousands of children, separating them from their families, and killing anyone who tries to help them before selling them to other universes.
- Sentinels-related:
- The original Master Mold was designed as the overlord of the Sentinels, meant to head up the capture of mutants across Earth, until it gained sapience and became a threat to the whole planet. Deciding to exterminate all mutants, the Master Mold plans to then lead the Sentinels in conquering humankind itself, and forces its horrified creator Bolivar Trask to help it in this goal lest it destroy half of America one city at a time. Though seemingly destroyed, the Master Mold is restarted by Steven Lang's brainwaves, and begins a new murder spree against humans and mutants alike. The Master Mold tries to unleash a lethal virus that will painfully kill all mutants, and when it learns that the virus has evolved to target humans as well, the Master Mold shrugs it off and notes that a small percentage of humans will survive that it can enslave.
- Bastion is a seemingly-human enemy of all mutantkind, whose hatred for them extends into unbridled sadism. Bastion was born from a magical merging of Master Mold and the more sympathetic Nimrod into an organic, amnesiac being, and though raised by a compassionate human woman, Bastion still developed an egotistical, prejudiced desire to destroy mutants and Take Over the World. Creating "Zero Tolerance", Bastion used the operation to carry out the systematic kidnapping of, experimentation on, and execution of dozens of mutants, notably subjecting Professor X and the teenaged Jubilee to weeks of sensory deprivation and Mind Rape. Bastion's preferred method of targeting mutants is by framing them for acts of terrorism he himself commits, such as trying to slaughter a camp of his own followers and their families to pin it on Rogue; or by using a virus to force innocent mutants' powers to go into out of control and kill hundreds of humans around them. Bastion further creates "Prime Sentinels" by kidnapping and turning humans into cyborg sleeper agents, killing any of them who regain their sapience, and plans to transform all of humankind into these hollowed-out drones when he succeeds. Later reviving a variety of mutant haters, Bastion keeps them as his slaves even as some beg for death, then tries to annihilate 800,000 humans just to kill a pocket of mutants. Even when he discovers a future where mutants no longer exist, Bastion deliberately travels to the past so he can painfully, horrifically "evolve" millions of humans into mutants, just so he will always have mutants to torture and butcher.
- Age of Apocalypse Canon Immigrants:
- Dark Beast is the Evil Doppelgänger of the kindhearted Henry "Hank" McCoy. Initially an apprentice of Mister Sinister, Dark Beast earned a reputation as a sadistic monster in Apocalypse's concentration camps for his cruel experiments which tortured and killed many, giving him the nickname of "Beast", which he liked enough to mutate himself to better fit the moniker. When Dark Beast was brought to the X-Men's world, he set about killing everyone the good Beast cared for and continued his monstrous experiments on innocents. With his most heinous actions being to create a machine that fed off Hank's lifeforce while keeping him in unspeakable agony, in addition to his experiments on children, Dark Beast eventually attempted to foster a war between the X-Men and S.H.I.E.L.D. When exposed and dying from experimenting on himself, Dark Beast attempted to initiate a bomb to take the X-Men with him simply out of spite.
- Holocaust, also known as Nemesis, is the son of Apocalypse. A sadistic savage who values nothing so much as murder, Holocaust leads the Four Horsemen and gleefully participates in the savage culls, slaughtering entire cities or even nations while savoring a chance to torture his victims when he can or sending them to be broken down and used as raw materials for new Super Soldiers. Planning a crusade beyond anything even his father wishes, Holocaust's fervent wish is to create a world where every living thing perishes.
Others
- Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1:
- Issues #37-39: Mutant Master, from the planet Siris, wants to conquer Earth. To this end, he builds a robot body that is disguised as a human and claims to be the Mutant Master, a mutant that will lead mutants to conquer humanity. He gathers several minor X-Men villains and convinces them to help him. Mutant Master kidnaps the X-Men and puts them on trial for crimes against mutant-kind. Mutant Master reveals his plan to the X-Men; he plans to have his underlings assassinate top Soviet military officials and take over a US military and launch nuclear weapons at the USSR, in hopes of starting a nuclear war between the US and the USSR, in order to destroy humanity. Though the Mutant Master claims to act in the best interests of mutantkind, he really only serves his own quest for power.
- Issues #395-398: Paul Botham, aka Mister Clean, was a particularly sadistic enforcer of the Church of Humanity with a liking for burning his prey alive. Having had his skin treated to the point of Nigh-Invulnerability, Mr. Clean was tasked to attack the mutants living in the sewers beneath New York and approached his task with horribly vile relish, torching a community of over a hundred into a few straggling survivors in a single day. Mr. Clean continued to relentlessly hound the survivors of his massacre through the sewers, with special attention devoted to one of his would-be victims being nothing more than a newborn infant.
- Gambit Vol. 3 issues #4 & #6-7: The Pig was the very first enemy of Remy LeBeau, and perhaps the most wicked the Cajun has ever faced. A hideous-looking, order-obsessed mutant who trafficks in Child Soldiers, the Pig conditions teenagers through constant torture before selling them off to buyers like HYDRA. Already responsible for the death of several members of the LeBeau thieves' guild and Remy's younger brother, the Pig's finest outing came when he attempted to use a mutant child who produced mind-controlling gas to subjugate humanity, having the mutant child torturously "milked" for his gases. Pleased with the horrific mutation endured by subjects exposed to the mind-controlling gas as they come to befit the Pig's own appearance, the Pig intends to dispense it upon all humanity, reducing them to his grotesque, mindless slaves forevermore.
- X-Men Unlimited Vol. 1 issue #36's "The End of the Line": Papa/Poppa is a gross mutant trafficker who uses his tavern as a front for kidnappings, where he turns over his victims to become living weapons for the military or fodder for grotesque scientific experimentation. His latest two victims are two young runaway women whom he intends to sell to perverts who "like their women a little different". Papa is a mutant himself with no compunction selling his own kind into slavery and death.
- X-Treme X-Men (2001) "Schism", "Intifada", & "Prisoner of Fire" arcs: Elias Bogan is a reclusive psychic billionaire and consummate mind-rapist who takes a particular interest in breaking the X-Men. Elias Bogan is the original inspiration for the Hellfire Club and its very first Lord Imperial, which already makes him responsible for all the blood they've shed before he even appears on-page. Bogan has a special proclivity for turning people into his shattered "pets", and he repeatedly attempts to subject the X-Men to mental torture and brainwashing, attempting to make them kill their own allies under his control and promising he'll rewire their minds to have them love and beg for the abuse he puts them through. The sickest incident comes when Bogan convinces a young mutant named Jeffrey Garrett and his desperate family to sign on an experiment with the promise of money. Instead, Bogan tortured Jeffrey's entire family until the point Jeffrey had to euthanize them, a fact Bogan cruelly mocks Jeffrey over later. Bogan only takes pleasure in the pain and destruction of others, and has filled an entire library with the archives and knowledge of sheer cruelty he's gathered over the centuries he's been alive.
- Apocalypse vs. Dracula, written by Frank Tieri: Hamilton Slade starts off as the most ambitious and sadistic member of Clan Akkaba, a large and ancient cult that worshipped Apocalypse. For the sake of his advancement, Slade viciously turned his own brother Frederick into a paralyzed vegetable to remove him as a rival, using him as an example to terrorize the other members of the Clan into loyalty. Eventually, Slade eventually betrays his Clan for Dracula, causing the massacre of Clan Akkaba through his treachery. Even worse, as a vampire, Slade bites out the throat of his own mother merely for running her mouth. A vicious murderer of innocent people on the side who forces his abused valet Jack Starsmore to clean up the slaughtered bodies of his victims, Slade also promises to make Starsmore a vampire to endure this abuse for the rest of eternity.
Examples
- Mister X has been enraptured by death ever since he was a child, where his sociopathic fascination culminated in him cooking his puppy alive and murdering his loving, wealthy parents. A minor telepath and a Consummate Professional killer-for-hire, Mister X's self-proclaimed "murder avant-garde" has claimed hundreds of victims, from entire buildings full of random innocents, to fellow martial artists and superpowered beings whom Mister X killed after learning everything he could from them. Obsessing over Wolverine after losing a fight to him, Mister X began killing random people he dressed up as Wolverine to slake his frustration, then goaded Wolverine into a second fight by means of mailing the decapitated head of a kindergarten teacher to him and then threatening to burn her entire class alive. Mister X's treachery and penchant for death stood out even on Norman Osborn's Thunderbolts, where he more than once attempted to betray and kill his own teammates at the slimmest of provocation. On one occasion Mister X even left one of his victims a maimed and paralyzed shell of himself but refused to kill him, simply because it would be crueler to leave him alive.
- Vol. 2 issue #1—"Sword Quest": Banapur Khan is a merciless pirate who preys on groups of refugees crossing the Indonesian archipelago. Banapur always massacres most of his victims, having the women raped by him and his men as well before he sells whoever is left into slavery and makes off with the loot of his victims. Banapur is introduced in the middle of one of these massacres, beheading the captain of a lost vessel in front of the women he hasn't slaughtered, then gloating that if they seem him as an ogre, "do you think it wise to make me angry?!" Also a brutal Psycho for Hire, Banapur is employed to torture the information out of an old man for the location of a priceless blade, which only results in the old man croaking, and when Wolverine intervenes, Banapur attempts to escape with one of his captive women to keep him "company".
- Vol. 2's "Hunted" & "Stay Alive" arcs; 2001 Anmual's "The Watch": Jean-Pierre Beaubier, aka Mauvais, is a French-Canadian cannibal and sorcerer whose powers derive from living flesh. Released from his tomb in a superhuman prison, Mauvais rejuvenates his powers by consuming the regenerative flesh of Wolverine, even ripping out Wolverine's eyes while he's awake and screaming. Mauvais goes onto kill and eat dozens of innocent people, building a larder of half-eaten hobos and slaughtering every contestant in a game show, all in a ritual meant to invoke the Wendigo. Mauvais wants to take the beating heart of the Wendigo and eat it to become its successor, giving him the power to banish the gods who sealed him away and then take over Canada.
- Spider-Man Vol. 1 issues #8-12—"Perceptions" arc: Krahn is a Chief Inspector of the RCMP, as well as a pedophilic Serial Killer who has abducted, raped, and murdered countless young boys throughout British Columbia. When a benevolent Wendigo unearths the remains of one of his victims, Krahn blames the beast for the murder and exacerbates hysteria over it by leaking details of the case to the public, sparking panicked riots and misguided acts of vigilantism that result in the death of at least one innocent hunter. To keep the charade going, Krahn kidnaps and kills another boy, letting dogs gnaw on him in order to make it look like the child was mauled by the Wendigo. Later getting together a posse, Krahn sets out to slay the Wendigo, which will calm the public and allow him to resume molesting and killing children under more optimal conditions.
- Bloody Choices, written by Tom DeFalco: Mr. Bullfinch is an obese toad of a human being, a crime lord who specializes in the trafficking of drugs and of children. A vile, perverted pedophile who keeps the children he hasn't sold off in the husk of an old World War II-era internment camp, Mr. Bullfinch bruises, tortures, and rapes the kids himself, and throws one out a window to his death after he tries and fails to escape. Even when Bullfinch successfully buys his way into SHIELD immunity, he still insists on trying to take the dead child's brother as a personal Sex Slave, and has the temerity to whine that he deserves mercy for the thousands of lives he's ruined.
- Hulk/Wolverine: Six Hours, written by Bruce Jones: "Shredder" is an Ambiguously Human hitman introduced torturing his latest client to death when he's brought on to dispose of two drug dealers named Sid and Whitie. Shredder sets about murdering everybody in his path, connected to his targets or not, with disturbingly casual satisfaction. He carves an old couple to pieces; disembowels a friendly fisherman; kills not only Sid and Whitie but their harmless drop agent as well; and throws a twelve-year-old boy rendered inert by coral snake venom into a lake.
- Switchback, written by Joseph Clark: Sheriff MacReedy is a Serial Killer who uses a switchback curve to pick off his victims, a curve he's deliberately rigged to cause car accidents. These accidents aren't always fatal, and in that event the Sheriff drags them back to his cabin to finish them off. The Sheriff admits he kills For the Evulz, giving his innocent victims the "reality" he claims they all crave; his cabin alone is mounted with around two-dozen bodies he's kept as trophies.
- The Best There Is, by Charlie Huston, Juan Jose Ryp, et al.: Winsor, aka Contagion, was born from a Latverian eugenics program. Winsor's body contained every single disease known to man, which he trained himself to be able to release at will. Killing all the other children born from the program, Winsor struck out on his own, acquiring the services of numerous nearly-immortal individuals as both enforcers and test subjects, whom he would infect over and over again with his diseases in order to make them stronger and more deadly. Winsor used his abused son, deformed from exposure to his father's diseases, as bait to acquire Wolverine for his experiments under pretense of wanting to use his research to cure his son's condition, knowing Logan, as a Friend to All Children, would never refuse the offer. Ultimately, however, he revealed his true motive: In making his diseases stronger and stronger he hoped to engineer one that could kill absolutely anything, which he would then unleash on the world and then the entire universe via a stolen spaceship. When his followers ceased being useful, he subjected then to And I Must Scream to ensure they would not rebel. With evil plans unmatched in scale for an Earth-based villain, Contagion more than makes up for his brief tenure in the comics with his cruelty.
Other Earth-616 Characters
Examples
- Cable Vol. 1, issues #83-86: Gaunt is an intergalactic warlord from the future who desired to conquer the entire universe. For 10,000 years, Gaunt led a campaign of destruction through countless planets and star systems, killing trillions of innocents, and would take tributes from his conquered planets such as women for his own use. When offered a deal to be released from his prison at the end of time, Gaunt accepts the deal and mystically enslaves Rachel Summers to force her half-brother Cable to his location, offering him a fight to the death with Rachel's life in the balance. Gaunt is so desperate to continue his endless subjugation of the universe that he violates his own fair fight rules by psychically attacking Cable in his sleep, gaining joy from the suffering he and Rachel endure in the process.
- Daken: Dark Wolverine issue #5—"Empire, Act 2: Part 2": Petrus is a minor agent of Tyger Tiger's who nonetheless establishes a heinous operation for himself. In Tyger's absence from her main base, Petrus converts three entire floors of the headquarters into a brothel that specializes in trafficking dozens of enslaved children—as young as 10—to wealthy perverts. Not content with merely the sex work of children, Petrus even sells them to the Weapon X program, knowingly sending the kids to be vivisected and butchered by the monstrous Director's scientists so Petrus can line his pockets.
- Excalibur Vol. 1:
- Issues #45-50: Necrom, an alien scientist who refashioned himself as the tyrant of an alternate Earth, seeks to harness the energy matrix caused by the alignment of all the infinite worlds of existence. In pursuit of this, Necrom leaves his planet to die after draining the life from it–-previously having a city of thousands massacred to wipe out the royal family and their loyalists, and murdering the Earth's version of Excalibur to turn them into his mindless undead servants–-and is pursued by Earth-148's Kylun, whose Love Interest he spitefully murders. Necrom further massacres a unit of soldiers sent to investigate him solely for the thrill of it, subjecting the heroes to awful Mind Rape, before revealing his ultimate intentions to harvest the energy matrix by smashing down all the worlds in the multiverse into one, eradicating all life in reality for the sake of godhood.
- Issues #69-70: Commander C'efn is a particularly brutal enforcer for the Shi'ar empire, who seeks to convert planets to their cause. C'efn achieves this conversion by committing genocide, and firebombs the Knsashii race, with any survivors forced into the empire. After C'efn's actions shock Cerise, he coldly murders a child survivor of the Knsashii in front of her, while remarking that "she better be prepared for the next battle". After realizing that C'efn's genocidal ambitions are done for his enjoyment rather than any cause, Cerise herself sabotages his ship to stop his insane galactic rampage.
- Generation X Vol. 1 issues #63-66—"Correction" arc: Johnston Coffin is wanted by S.H.I.E.L.D. for crimes against humanity, but instead somehow finds himself employed by the US Government. With the government's blessing, he builds a Hellhole Prison where he "fixes" disobedient teenagers, many of which had only said or thought something disobedient. He also has his "Special Children"—kids from his first prison in the '70s, whom he's wired up to huge cyborg bodies and uses as security. They've been that way so long—it's implied in perpetual agony—that their bodies have actually begun to rot. He also has half a human mounted on his wall, is implied to be a rapist, and carries around the skull of a child he shot in the head everywhere he goes.
- Mystique issues #16-17—"Unnatural" parts 3-4: Viktor is a club owner and powerful mutant psychic who is also a trafficker and torturer. Luring in mutants, Viktor disables them, tortures them, and sells them to the highest bidder, as pets, labor, or as sex slaves. When several fall into his trap, Viktor keeps them in a cell and shows prospective buyers there, gleefully commenting one young woman will be "submissive" to a new owner.
- X-Factor Annual #1—"Grand Design": Dr. Wolfgang Helmut Heinreich is the son of a Nazi geneticist who inherited his father's penchant for experimentation. Working for the Eastern Bloc and killing any informants, Heinreich's evil is revealed when the team uncovers his lab: hundreds of mutants are abducted and experimented on, brutally vivisected, and left conscious or brain dead throughout his attempts to recreate their powers.
- X-Force comics:
- X-Force Vol. 1 & X-Statix: Spike Freeman, the "Trillion-Dollar Man", is a technology mogul and producer of the X-Statix reality TV show. A firm believer in getting ratings through sheer carnage, Spike engineers disasters so that he can film the X-Statix stopping them, not caring in the slightest that this invariably results in gruesome ends for civilians and team members alike. Freeman is also an international Arms Dealer and smuggler, with among his greatest successes in this regard being the sale of chemical WMDs to dictator Saddam Hussein; he has also deliberately worded the contracts for these deals to imply that the X-Statix members themselves were complicit, so that if he were ever brought down, he could take them with him. Freeman is so callous and selfish that his very last action before the Orphan kills him is to hire mass-murderer Mr. Code to murder former team member Lacuna to prevent her from releasing documents incriminating him.
- Uncanny X-Force's "Otherworld" & "Final Execution" arcs: Harry Pizer, also known as "the Skinless Man", was once a barrister who used his ability to stretch and contort his body to cheat and win cases. When contracted by the Weapon Plus program to fight the Russians during the Cold War, Pizer, designated Weapon III, giddily used the opportunity to slaughter countless enemy troops, deeming it a righteous cause all the while before murdering his way into Otherworld to steal the powerful Orb. After being skinned alive due to Fantomex's interference in his plans, Pizer only got worse as he assisted in orchestrating a bloody war against all of Otherworld, and later attempted to torture Fantomex and Psylocke to death in front of each other, starting by slicing Fantomex's face off. Eventually joining Daken's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants after murdering his ex-wife and her new husband, Pizer gleefully takes part in their plans to psychologically torture the young boy Evan into becoming the next Apocalypse, even tricking the boy into thinking his father figure Fantomex is alive only to reveal Pizer murdered him. When confronted by a vengeful Evan, Pizer offers him one final chance to revive Fantomex, only to swipe the offer away, simply laughing at the boy's gullibility. Pizer stands out even among the Brotherhood due to the fact that, while all the other members have alternative motives for trying to create a new Apocalypse, Pizer just wants the boy to kill millions of people as a final spiteful move towards Fantomex.
- Vol. 4: Yevgeny-Malevitch Volga is a cackling Russian sadist and a merchant of death responsible for, among other episodes of carnage, the Alexandria Incident, where 3,000 innocent people were vaporized by one of Volga's powered-up mutants as a "proof of concept" to potential buyers. Volga specializes in young mutants he tortures into "peopleweapons", including an unfortunate mutant who could look into alternate realities whose family Volga casually murdered, and a pregnant woman named Marrow whose unborn baby was harvested for "weapons-grade stem cells" by Volga, a fact which he delights in nearly breaking her mind with.
Other Continuities
Examples
- Age of Apocalypse (Earth-295): Apocalypse himself, En Sabah Nur, led a genocidal crusade that led to the deaths of most of the world's population. Establishing a nightmarish regime with regular cullings of millions of innocents, Apocalypse allows "breeding pens" to produce humans as raw materials for his twisted scientists' experiments. Going against any truces, Apocalypse intends to nuke the entire world to leave a world where only the strong survive.
- Askani World
(Earth-4935) has En Sabah Nur and his equally evil daughter:- The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix: Apocalypse is an incarnation of Earth-616 Apocalypse two thousand years in the future. His wickedness not dulled over two millennia, he has taken over much of North America and implemented his Social Darwinism beliefs. Perhaps his most vile crime was infecting an infant Nathan Summers, the future Cable, with a Techno-Organic virus two thousand years prior, just to have Nathan prove he was strong enough to eventually serve as Apocalypse's vessel, as the latter is burning through his bodies, and so has to take new ones more often. Even after finding out that Stryfe, a clone of Nathan, isn't a mutant, Apocalypse still tries to bodyjack the boy. Finally, Apocalypse is conducting research on a virus similar in composition to the Legacy Virus.
- X-Men: Phoenix, by John Francis Moore et al. note : High Councilor/High Prelate Diamanda Nero oversees Apocalypse's empire, decades before the majority of the above story, while the latter constructs his newest armor to house his body. A psychotic sadist who is introduced fatally, and gleefully, torturing a victim for information, Nero has killed many mutants, at which point she absorbs their powers. At one point, she tests a plague on an enclave, resulting in over 2,700 deaths. Using this knowledge, she creates Plague, basically a zombie turned into a Walking Wasteland. Her other crimes include more brutal torture and having her forces brutally kill a group assisting those fighting Apocalypse's rule.
- Civil War: House of M (Earth-58163): In this timeline, before Magneto takes over the world, Dr. Bolivar Trask is the Vice President under Richard Nixon. Trask is also the director of the Sentinel program and a major player in an anti-mutant conspiracy. Trask has set up forced labor camps across America that use mutants as slave labor. When Magneto assassinates anti-mutant activist Graydon Creed, Trask uses that as an excuse to send a strike force to Genosha to kill Magneto. Under Trask's orders, Bucky Barnes threatens to blow up key facilities in Genosha, including a hospital, if Magneto does not let Bucky kill him; Bucky kills Charles Xavier in the process. After killing Bucky, Magneto goes to the White House for revenge. Trask uses this as an excuse to launch a nuclear strike against Genosha. When Blackbolt disables the nuclear missiles heading to Genosha, Trask considers nuking the Inhumans' city of Attilan as well. When confronted by Magneto, Trask sends his special Theta Sentinels to kill Magneto, not caring whether he or his SHIELD subordinates die in the process.
- Exiles:
- Vol. 1:
- King Hyperion from Earth-4023, aka Mark Milton, is a vicious superhuman from a world that he tried to conquer, resulting in a massive nuclear suicide that left him the only being alive. Later attempting to conquer a new world, he instead allows it to die thanks to that world's Magneto's actions, betraying heroes and slipping through new worlds where he kills countless beings to conquer their lands. Arriving in a parallel New York, he tries to kill one hundred hostages after murdering all the heroes therein, betraying and slaughtering his own if it suits him. Returning at the Timebreakers' headquarters, Hyperion plans to conquer the multiverse, no matter how many he has to kill along the way.
- Issues #1-2: Charles Xavier from Earth-1815, in stark contrast to his heroic Earth-616 counterpart, is a genocidal misanthrope hell-bent on the complete eradication of humankind. After being freed from prison by the Exiles, Xavier attacked them and went on a rampage in the middle of a city, releasing a mind wipe upon the minds of millions of people, which killed everyone in a five-mile radius. Xavier would later free his version of the X-Men to attack the New York Stock Exchange in order to destroy the human monetary system, while planning to tear the building full of innocent people apart. Xavier later attempt to mind-wipe Mimic—a fellow mutant—in a last-ditch effort to kill him in order to continue his genocidal mission, despite claiming to be a "necessary evil" for mutantkind.
- Vol. 3 issues #1-5: Time-Eater Kang, from Earth-18854, is a version of the conqueror who gained unimaginable power after slaughtering his reality's Galactus. Turning Galactus's skull into a fortress, Kang sets about on hundreds if not thousands of realities, killing their Galactuses as well until he's been warped into an entity that resolves to conquer the multiverse by becoming it. Kang devours thousands of universes, not even sparing adorable Sugar Bowl universes, while massacring Watchers and using hundreds of his own counterparts as disposable fodder. The Time-Eater represents a version of Kang with no restraints and no good qualities left whatsoever, only a hunger to consume all life for the sake of his infinite ego.
- Vol. 1:
- Mutant X (Earth-1298): Dracula, lacking the redeeming features of his Earth-616 counterpart, had turned Storm into a vampire. Awakening to kill numerous innocent people, Dracula allies with the supposed Beyonder who seeks to end the world, as long as he can feed. Going on a brutal killing spree that sees many humans and superhumans killed, Dracula eventually tries to massacre all the X-Men, stopped just before he can bite Professor Xavier.
- Phoenix--Legacy of Fire (Earth-2301): Ma'Lethu Ko Rann, the evil Shadow King, is an Ancient Evil who plunged the primordial world into civil wars and mass death to feast on the agony. When he was banished by Clan Pyre, the Shadow King returns through a deal with demonic beings, having them slaughter most of Clan Pyre on his behalf—including the mother of the protagonists—wearing her skull and mocking her daughters with the gruesome visage.
- Star Trek/X-Men: Second Contact: Kang the Conqueror, after arranging for mass anomalies in the time stream, leads to "bad futures" of oppression and mass death to trick the X-Men and crew of the Enterprise into "fixing" them, with the heroes unaware that these are the time stream's way of correcting the damage. Intending to manipulate the heroes to give him control of the time stream and erasing entire planes from existence, Kang attempts to wipe out anyone who could ever be a threat and destroy the Enterprise completely.
- The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans, by Chris Claremont et al. (Earth-764): Darkseid himself, seeking to expand his cosmic empire, seeks the power of Jean Grey for his own ends. Having Deathstroke and Ravok the Ravager act as proxies down on Earth, Darkseid eventually rallies up both the X-Men and the Teen Titans-–coldly vaporizing Ravok for failure with his Omega Beams right after—and uses their memories to painfully reawaken Jean Grey as the Dark Phoenix. With her power, Darkseid seeks to turn Earth into a second Apokolips, destroying most life on it, before repeating the process with every planet in the universe until he rules all.
- Wolverine MAX issues #1-5—"Permanent Rage" arc (Earth-200111): Victor Creed, the first Arc Villain, very much resembles his canon counterpart in being a sadistic beast of a man obsessed with killing. Having spent his near-immortal life killing everything in his path, notably a peaceful monk monastery where he drank the blood of the head monk, Creed eventually carved a path to become second-in-command of the Yakuza. Using his position to search for the Yashida clan's prized sword, Creed convinces a woman to suicide bomb a jumbo plane, killing nearly 400 people, in exchange for Creed giving her family a good life, something Creed was lying about. Confronting Logan after needlessly decapitating two cops, Creed mutilates Logan and proclaims his intent to begin downing numerous airplanes over and over again until he finds the Yashida sword, and reveals he plans to murder the head of the Yakuza and take over first the organization, then the entirety of Japan.
- X-Men Fairy Tales' issue #3—"To Die in Dreams": The Witch is a powerful being who terrorized the lands before people managed to kill her. Resurrecting herself in the form of Burning Phoenix, the Witch possessed the red-haired princess, using her as a host to try to conquer the kingdom and slaughter countless people who tried to stop her. After the knight, who was in love with the princess, managed to defeat the Witch, the latter fall in eternal sleep along with the princess. When she managed to awaken within the princess many years later, after the princess was found by the Tailor, the Witch escaped, promising to "double her wrath upon the land". Killing the former knight who previously imprisoned her, the Witch desired to kill the Tailor as well, resulting in the princess convincing the Tailor to kill her, to end her threat once and for all.
