{"id":4880,"date":"2022-05-10T14:59:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T17:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=4880"},"modified":"2026-09-27T19:22:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T22:22:11","slug":"minor-super-villains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/?p=4880","title":{"rendered":"MINOR SUPER-VILLAINS"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like taking note of minor and obscure characters from days of yore, and none other is so beloved of my heart as the minor super-villain. Even though lot of them are real duds, as a class of characters they pack such a lot of potential<\/i>. Just as very little separates an Ultra-Humanite (middlingly significant super-villain) from a Luthor (one of the top super-villains of all time), just as little separates them from Zolar, a bald super-scientist who fought Superman one time in 1940.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if we’re going to talk about minor super-villains then we must determine what exactly defines a villain as super (at least to me). The simplest route to this is to put on a costume, adopt an alias, and commit a crime. Particularly <\/i>if the costume, crime or both are themed according to the name. Call yourself the Viper and dress in a snakeskin jacket and papier mache snake head while robbing a reptile house and you, my friend, are a super-villain.<\/span><\/p>\n

Not every super-villain fits those criteria, however – heck, Luthor basically never has and he was my major example earlier – so I had to come up with some criteria. Generally<\/i>, a villain who fulfils two or more of the following is elevated to the ranks of the minor super-villain:<\/span><\/p>\n

-costume (even a simple domino mask can make the difference)<\/span><\/p>\n

-foe (fight a super-hero and the super can rub off on you)<\/span><\/p>\n

-methods (superpowers or superscience make super-villains)<\/span><\/div>\n

-name (probably the least important without any of the others – comics are littered with gangsters named the Little Gardenia or the Bone Butcher who amount to exactly nothing)<\/span><\/p>\n

-scale (rob a convenience store: nothing. Rob every convenience store in the city: that’s supercrime!)<\/span><\/p>\n

-theme (theme your weapons, your crimes, your henchmens’ names. Delicious stuff)<\/span><\/p>\n

-style (absolutely the most important. A character who fails to thrive doesn’t make the list: Tex Thomson once fought a guy who lived in an isolated castle and had rebuilt himself as a shapechanging plastic cyborg and he is not represented here because I yawned my way through the issue)<\/span><\/p>\n

That’s it and I’m sure that I’ll be very inconsistent as I go along.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I like taking note of minor and obscure characters from days of yore, and none other is so beloved of my heart as the minor super-villain. Even though lot of them are real duds, as a class of characters they pack such a lot of potential. Just as very little separates an Ultra-Humanite (middlingly significant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2369,23,84,235,498,646,7,2370,2368,2031],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-luthor","category-minor-super-villain","category-super-villain","category-super-villain-definition","category-superman","category-tex-thomson","category-the","category-ultra-humanite","category-viper","category-zolar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4881,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4880\/revisions\/4881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theskeletoncurse.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}