Best villain casts on action shows

S

*Shannon*

New member
What action shows that had recuring villains or the villain of the week format, had the best overal cast of villains?

1) Batman: The Animated Series - nuff said, the villains are just as famous as Batman himself. The Joker, Penguin, the Riddler, Dr. Freeze, Catwomen, it had so many great villains. It was easy to make this number 1 on my list.

2) Teen Titans - this shows was also loaded with memorable villains. Some were very silly and funny, others were very serious. But the bottom line is, they had Slade. He was a awsome villain. Trigon was also very scary and evil. Rounded out with comic relief villains like Mad Mod, Mumbo Jumbo, Control Freak, and the H.I.V.E. Five. Though she was much better in the comics, Blackfire was a good villain on the show as well.

3) Superman - to tell the truth, the only villains I remember were Lex Luther and Brainniac. But they were awsome, so it makes up for not a deep villain lineup in my opinion.

4) Gargoyles - how could I forget, a great show. It was a mix between villain of the week, and telling a story like on Avatar. It didn't have that many clear cut villains. They had David Xanatos, MacBeath, Demona, the Pack, Wolf, and those weird sisters who gave me the creeps when I was a kid.

There is a tie in 5th place on my list.

5t) Danny Phantom - it had a lineup of villains each one is very different from the other. Mostly gimicky villains. Vlad Plamous was a great aversary, Dark Danny was also great in his one appearance, to bad they didn't bring him back. The ghost gimick villain lineup with Skullker, Technous, Ember, Walker, Spectra, Desire they were okay. But Vlad is the main reason this made my list.


5t) Kim Possible - didn't have are real serious villains, except for maybe Monkey Fist, it was nothing but comic relief villains like TT had. Drakken, Shego, Monkey Fist, the Seniors, Duff Killigen, it was a very deep villain lineup, even though no one was really a serious dark villain except for Monkey Fist, who also could be essentric and funny at times.
 
If Kim Possible counts that Darkwing Duck definitely does, though I definitely count both of them as comedy shows. So if we're looking at Darkwing I'd have to say Megavolt, Quackerjack and Negaduck. Some great, memorable characters right there.
 
One of my personal favorites: The Monarch from Venture Brothers.

He was just a great goofball villain that furthered the comedic intent of the show. I mean, he dressed up his minions in butterfly suits for cryin out loud. His sidekick, Doctor Girlfriend was pretty funny, too. And the League of Calamitous Intent! What a great way to rip off another show.

The-Monarch.jpg
 
Action shows to me, are shows that have fighting, and has the good vs evil battles. Weather it is in comdic fashion or dramatic fashion. As long as there is fighthing, between heros and evil doers.

If I want to disguard comedy, I would have titled this threat:

"Best villains casts on dramatic action shows."
 
I always felt that the best villains are in comedy shows. While supervillains tend to take much of the lime light from the heroes naturally (especially in Batman), when you have a wacky superhero, you have even wackier supervillains.

I would add to the list:
One Piece: These are some of the most eccentric villains I've ever seen. Buggy the Chop-chop clown, Captain Wappol that can eat anything, even his crewmates, and make something strange and wild out of it, Captain Foxy who gets his crew members in rigged competitions, and fooled Luffy by dressing in disguise (poorly), you name it. in every saga, even more serious ones, there is at least one crazy kooky bananas villain they have to defeat. And the character designs. WOW!

Kinnikuman: (this includes the 2000 series, Ultimate Muscle) while a lot of the stories are kinda formulaic, and the villains all seem to have the same kind of vendetta for the Justice Chojins, they all have crazy different abilities. Most of them are based off of fan submissions. My favorites; Cassette King-who has the encyclopedia of Chojins, and can use their powers at will. he lost by putting in an outdated cassette of Kinnikuman, from a time in which Kinnikuman was scared of everything. And Dialbolic, who has similar powers, but calls up different people that had terrible frightening memories for his opponant. And let's not forget, Monsier Cheeks, the Buttfaced warrior. Now that's a 10 in my book.

The Tick: Borrowing some villains from its comic and making others up, we got a great cast of weirdos du jour for the Tick and Arthur to face (and Die Flatermaus to run away from). Who can forget Chairface Chippendale, Brainchild, and Thrakkerzogg? They were all so memorable, to list their specific oddities is just redundant.
 
Gargoyles was already mentioned so I got nothing to add except that David Xanatos is THE benchmark for antagonists IMO.

Beast Wars - Megatron and his cronies were really memorable. Due to the show's nature they HAD to develop the villain, either as serious threat or as comedy gold (Waspinator!) so we knew them as well as the good guys. Beast Wars Megatron is still the best Megatron ever.Yessss...

HunterXHunter - Gennei Ryodan and Gensuru's gang. 'nuff said. Throw in the Kimera Ants when they get animated and lookout!

Saint Seiya - While not always the deepest show the antagonists always had lots of charisma. GALAXIAN EXPLOSION!

Digimon Tamers - The Devas and the D Reaper were amongst the most threatening Digimon villains ever and provided a very solid bad guy line up for most of the season.

I also want to give some props to Dr. Phibes and his henchmen from Shaggy and Scooby Doo Get a Clue! Those guys were just hilarious. Especially number 2 with his constant shifting of theme. His ninja shtick was just awesome!
 
Batman: TAS easily takes first place. The Joker, the Riddler, Mr. Freeze, Two-Face, Posion Iy, I could go on and on. Justice League is dangerously close, as well. Hell, just the entire DCAU. Another show with a grade-A rogues gallery is Spider-Man; TAS. Spdey's always had some of the best IMO, and most of them return here.
 
Respectfully, I must disagree. Slade, Trigon and Blackfire were all pretty weak villains, IMHO, mainly because on the show we weren't provided with any kind of logical backstories or histories for any of them.

Slade was probably the most formidable villain the show had, but without a proper explanation of his origin or a logical motivation for his opposing the Titans, he came off as just another bad guy who was evil for the sake of being evil. Same deal with Blackfire. In the comics, she had a reason for being evil; she was born deformed without the Tameranians' natural ability to fly, and as such was passed over for the throne in favor of her younger sister. Without her comics' back story, Blackfire just came off as a petty jealous brat who antagonized her sister just because she got some sort of perverse jollies out of doing so. And Trigon simply wasn't characterized enough to qualify as a true villain: for all of the grim foreshadowing of his oncoming arrival, what horrible thing did he do besides turning everyone in the city into stone and parking his tuckus on his throne swatting the Titans away like flies?

TT's joke villains were just that.

The lack of any real, fleshed-out baddies was one of the reasons that TT: TAS was a notable effort, but a weak execution, IMO.
 
We can agree to disagree. But we are on the same track, in that Blackfire was much better in the comics. The comic book version of Blackfire is one of my favorite antagonist characters in fiction. I felt sorry for her, you forgot to mention, Tamerion turned on her for no good reason, simply because of the date of her birth is sympolic for some bad day in their history. They blamed Blackfire for it.

I loved the Teen Titans comics, the show was different. It worked for me, it doesn't work for everybody.

All those reasons why don't like Teen Titans: TAS, is the reason I love it. I like the no nonsene no sobb story Slade better.
 
To each his own, of course, but I personally need to have a better motivation for a villain's machinations besides just "I'm evil." Just me, though.
 
Personally, I thought Slade rocked for two reasons: 1. He was a very formidable opponent, using psychological and physical weapons against the Titans and 2. Ron Perlman. The man is just awesome. In my opinion, Slade is Ron Perlman's best character aside from Hellboy and Batman: TAS' Clayface. True, Slade didn't have any true character development to speak of, but in a series full of mostly goofy villains, he stood out as the most dangerous (well, Trigon is dangerous too, but being an inter-dimensional, freakishly powerful demon being tends to give you an advantage in the "danger" department).
 
Serious villains are okay, but gimme a Mad Scientist! Gimme a crazy dude who thinks he has powers. Gimme a character that's Wile E. Coyote's level of patheticness when he loses.

I will also add to the list Dasdardly and Muttley. The villains were so great, the show was named after them, and not that annoying Yankee Doodle Pidgeon.
 
I agree with the choices of Batman: TAS, Kim Possible (much better than Danny Phantom, in my opinion) and Teen Titans - all had a great rotating cast of bad guys.

I'd also like to add Earthworm Jim, which had a great cast of wacky bad guys in the same vein as The Tick:

Psy-Crow
Professor Monkey-For-a-Head (and his monkey, Monkey-Professor-For-a-Head)
Evil the Cat and his idiot sidekick Henchrat
Bob the Despotic Goldfish and his silent lackey Number 4
Evil Jim
and the head honcho Queen Slug-for-a-Butt (though she was probably the weakest villain).

And let's not forget the little problem of Jim's sidekick Peter Puppy transforming into a hideous monster when provoked.

So, who had a better cast of villains - Jim or the Tick?
 
While Gargoyles has its share of good villains, I have to say on reflection, most of these (Xanatos, Fox, Sevarius, Thailog,) fell into a somewhat similar type--unusually smart, level-headed, manipulative, and with a couple of exceptions, human. The farther away they got from that type, the less effective I usually found the character. More physically inclined characters, such as the Pack, Arch-Mage (who had a cool personality and look, but was made to lose far too easily), Coldstone, Hakkon, Tony Drakkon, ranged from "decent-but-conceptually-flawed" to "get him/her off my screen".

On another note, the latest Ninja Turtles cartoon strikes me as possesing one of the largest, most varied rogues galleries in recent cartoon history. Ancient ninja masters, demons, alien invaders, evil uncles, gangsters, dinosaurs, mystics, bigots, government agents...They might not all be memorable, but given the sheer amount of them, there's a surprisingly little amount of outright misses (Garbageman, Viral). They also get major props from me for not overusing their Big Bads, and knowing when to mix them up with B-listers and one-shots.
 
I agree with the choices of Batman:TAS, Superman:TAS, Gragoyles, Spiderman:TAS and One Piece.

I would add to the list with

Dragonball/Dragonball Z: It had nice mixture of comic villains (Emperor Pilaf, Ninja Murasaki, General Blue.) and serious villains ( King Piccolo, Piccolo Jr, Vegeta, Frieza, the Androids and Cell.) as well as one who could be both. (the Ginyu Force and Majin Buu.) Also unlike other villains, alot of the DBZ villains came across as completely belivible in their claims of inviciblity. You can actually feel that they really were all-powerful and unstoppible and the Z warriors can't beat them.

Sailor Moon: It had wonderful assortment of cool and colorful villians. From the wicked Queen Beryl to the creepy Wiseman/Death Phantom to the charismatic and debonair Prince Demand to the mad Professor Tomoe to the hideious Zirconia to the eerie Queen Nehelenia to the awesome Sailor Galaxia, each were unique and fascinating.
 
Teen Titans? Erm, no. Slade did rock--mostly in the episodes when he went head to head with Robin--but the rest did not impress. Brother Blood and Triggun didn't carry their season well. The Brain did okay and oversaw a few great scenes, but nothing to match up to the first season. For me, the whole series really boiled down to Slade, Red X, Control Freak (for a fanboy laugh) and a bunch of other clowns... *shrug*

I must second Darkwing Duck. Two distinct stables of villains (the Fearsome Five and the various FOWL agents) with some excellent stand-outs (Megavolt, Negaduck, Steelbeak) and of course, Taurus Bulba. Weird, wacky, a few great team-ups, some great lines, and an occassional awesome backstory. Fun stuff.

And I'll give a shout-out for transformers: G1. (If it counts, it wasn't really villain of the week, but it did have a big cast of villains.) Megtron, Starscream, Soundwave (and Rumble, and Ravage, and Lazerbeak), and of course, Devastator. I remembered those guys more than I remembered the good guys.
 
I think the reason so many people like him (myself included) is that he was just so good at it. I would've liked to see a little more story, too, though; they seemed to be going in that direction right up until the second season.

I second Gargoyles. Might come up with more later.
 
Well since no one has mentioned G.I.Joe, I would say that the most dangerous villain wasn't Cobra Commander, but rather his replacement Serpentor. I mean this guy had the potential but when you are the genetic replicant of 6 or 7 major dictator types, it makes you wonder what strategy Serpentor had. But when he got his act together, This villain was major terrorist gold.

As for Anime, In the Robotech Universe the real dangerous villain was in fact Khyron.. this guy would literally backstab his own people (The Zentradi) and then turn around and Backstab the Humans in retalliation. All for no real reason too.

Then we can Jump to Alpha Teens on Machines (A.T.O.M.) and who better than a villain than Alexander Payne... of course Alexander's daughter, Sam Payne (Aka Magness) gives you this "Magneto" vibe.. and believe me, don't leave metal utensils lying around.. Cause Miss Payne will give any hero a major Pain..(with a capital P.)

As for Gargoyles, I have to agree, between Xanatos, and Demona, both are equally fickle.. and Xanatos played everyone to the hilt.. till he himself got p'wned by Oberon...But Demona? Man she had intentions across the board..

:coyote:
 
Batman: TAS - Batman has had a solid rogues gallery for decades
Superman: TAS - Darkseid's inclusion to STAS injected new blood
TMNT 2K3 - great job of not introducing random mutant foes
Avatar TLA - the Fire Nation has some serious baddies past and present
Gargoyles - the triumvirate of Xanatos, Demona, and MacBeth are enough
Megas XLR - mostly one-shots but hilarious homages to all things sci-fi
JL(U) - when your enemies consist of the entire DCU, c'mon!
He-Man 2K2 - Skeletor, Evil-Lyn, and the rest. Solid revamps.
 
I want to add ALL Jay Ward shows. From Bullwinkle and Rocky to George of the Jungle (even the Capn' Crunch commercials). And such great acting range from people like Bill Scott, Paul Frees, and Daws Butler. And such hillarious names too. Boris Baddenov, The Grand "Guy" Visir, Jean LeFoot. All just bungling goofs that are dispisable, but yet endearing.
 
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