Nerd roundtable: Seven lame villains that we truly hate
Published: 2/8/2013 6:00 AM
Last Modified: 2/8/2013 8:58 AM
Nerd roundtable: This week, we focus on the lamest villain in the wide world of nerd.
Matt Clayton 
My lamest villain is Calendar Man. I’m kind of taking a stab in the dark here because there are so many options here, but the lamest character that I can remember in any nerd genre. Calendar Man, Julian Gregory Day, first appeared in Detective Comics #259 in 1958 as an enemy of Batman who is, shockingly, obsessed with dates and holidays and commits crimes according to the calendar based on significant holidays. Yes, this character is as lame as it sounds. He has no real powers or abilities other than he has a great memory of dates. Calendar Man got a reboot during the Long Halloween story arc, a 13-issue limited series comic book written by Jeph Loeb, originally published in 1996 and 1997. The reboot had Calendar Man taking on the character-type of Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lambs.” Still, it’s not enough to erase the terrible memories of this character from my youth.
Chris Moore 
Decoy Octopus has got to be the worst villain out there; the only member of the FOXHOUND unit who doesn’t die from combat in Metal Gear Solid. In fact, he dies without you even seeing his true face. He dies from a virus in Solid Snake. Not the coolest way to go really.
Who really cares about this villain, so I am going to stop talking about him now.
James Royal 
There are lots of choices, but I'm going with Hypno-Hustler. His powers: He can hypnotize you with his guitar, and his boots emit knockout gas and have spikes that kinda turn them into platform shoes. Oh, and his guitar is pink, the most intimidating color in the world. And he has backup singers. And he looks like a cross between Jimi Hendrix, James Brown and Prince. Not quite the type of villain that strikes fear into a hero.
Jason Powers: 
Lamest Villain: Voldemort. I know I’m going to ruffle some feathers here, and I’m okay with that. And to be honest, I don’t really have that much of a problem with Voldemort per se, other than the fact that he was kind of right all along. What I have a problem with is how he was overused in the “Harry Potter” stories.
With the exception of “The Prisoner of Azkaban”, where the villain isn’t really a villain and everything was Voldemort’s fault anyway, here is the plot of every “Harry Potter” book: Oh, dear, there is something creepy in the basement/woods/cave/sewer…. Hey! It’s Voldemort! Again. Lookie there.
Recycling the same villain in multiple stories is nothing new, and indeed, with things like “Friday the 13th” and that’s the whole point. The thing is, J.K. Rowling sprinkles little hints throughout the series that Dark Wizards are nothing new, and that evil stuff happens all the time. Yet, every major challenge Harry and his friends face are either Voldemort, or someone working on his behalf. Just once I would have liked to see someone else get a shot in at Harry. I really like the idea of the three protagonists running off and solving some other mystery “Scooby Doo" style, then returning to tackle snake-face.
Perhaps, eventually, J.K. will open up the Wizarding world to other writers, like the Expanded Universe of “Star Wars,” and we will get to see the other bad guys roaming the world. Even better, I’d love to see Harry, Ron, and Hermione in a “Hardy Boys” style series full of post-Hogwarts adventures. I’d also like to see what the Wizard school in Japan is like. I don’t know why.
Michael Dambold 
Worst villain: Kite-man. Kite Man was an early Batman villain who wore a pink and yellow suit, with a helmet, nazi books, and flew around Gotham on a kite attached to his back.
The enormity of stupidity with this character is overwhelming. So many very basic city-life factors could conquer this guy, I wonder why Batman even tried.
I mean, all Batman had to do was throw a batarang at his kite, and that's the end of Kite Man. This assumes though that he had enough of a breeze to stay aloft..
Micah Choquette 
The Ten-Eyed Man was a Vietnam Vet who was blinded in a warehouse fight with none other than Batman. He'd been working there as a night janitor and was knocked unconscious by some punks who planted a bomb. When he came to, he mistakenly thought Batman was one of the punks and engaged him in a fight. Upon realizing who he was fighting with (and losing to), the bomb went off and blinded him permenantly in both eyes.
A gifted surgeon was able to restore his site by attaching his optic nerves to his fingers, giving him - you guessed it - 10 eyes. He blamed Batman for his fate, but was hired instead to take out the mutated creature called Man-Bat.
The battle was over almost as soon as it began: Man-Bat tossed The Ten-Eyed Man a shrub, which hurt and blinded him (again) when he caught it. He's fought Batman twice and lost about the same way. His sad story came to an abrupt end when he was killed in the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Anna Codutti 
Over the course of seven TV seasons, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" gave us some lame villains, but I'm gonna say the first was the worst. The Master is a vampire so old his features are like what you might imagine a pasty bat might look like. And for some reason, his makeup included garish red splotches around his lips (as though he's drunk so much blood it's stained his skin), earning him the nickname "old fruit punch mouth" by snarky critics.
He's the patriarch of the Aurelian clan, so I thank him for his role in giving us best-vampire-ever Spike, but other than that The Master is useless. He spends a whole season trying to off Buffy, and to this end he employs one ineffective dunce after the other (including an 8-year-old boy) until Buffy finally gets a season-finale smackdown that lasts all of five minutes before she skewers The Master with a pointy chunk of 2-by-4.
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Written by
Matt Clayton
Staff Writer
