Perhaps the best comics fan site I have ever seen was Unca Cheeks The Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Website. I say 'was' because the site is no longer extant. However, much of the content of this site (sans pictures, sadly) is available on a mirror site that is still crawling along. There is no new content and you can't view the original pictures, but many of the essays and opinion pieces written for the site are still available. I don't agree with all of Unca Cheeks' opinions, I'm more a fan of Bronze Age and 80s Marvel Comics and less of the Silver Age DC stuff which tops his list, but he communicated them very well and his enthusiasm for the subject is clear. I especially recommend any writing whatsoever on the site about Green Lantern, whether his waxing poetic about Hal Jordan or the series of 'rants' about conflicts between Hal Jordan fans and Kyle Rayner fans on online bulletin boards.
One of the more amusing articles is a three part essay on 'The World's Lousiest Super-Villains' entitled 'The Marvel Comics Hall of Shame.' I certainly can't help but agree that a lot of the villains on his list are or were pretty dang awful. Yet his basic premise, which is: 'ONCE YOU HAVE REMOVED DOCTOR DOOM, THE RED SKULL AND THE KINGPIN FROM THE EQUATION... THE VAST MAJORITY OF MARVEL'S SUPER-VILLAINS ARE IRRETRIEVABLY L-A-M-E. (caps in context)' is not one with which I am in complete agreement.
Marvel has managed to create quite a few extremely interesting bad guys as well. I agree, of course, with the naming of the Big Three above. I would also submit that Magneto, Starr Saxon (who battled the X-Men and Daredevil under his own name, battled Daredevil as the second Mr. Fear, and then became the never-really-gone Machinesmith to battle Captain America), the Green Goblin (before being killed, Norman Osborn has never done much for me since coming back from the dead), Tombstone, and Crossbones have all been great as well. The Mad Thinker can be written brilliantly. Marv Wolfman's immortal, jaded, and suicidal Sphinx and his brain-in-a-box mad scientist Dr. Sun were excellent in their heydays.
Since my first post was on the Iron Man movie, I will segue to two Iron Man villains who truly left an impression on me. The pair were two of the best ever foils for Tony Stark outside of his armor, as well as capable of finding ways to cause him trouble as old Shellhead.
The first is businessman-par-excellence Obadiah Stane. Stane actually appeared in the Iron Man movie, played very damned well by Jeff Bridges, but the movie didn't touch on all the depths and complexities of this victim-turned-bully.
Obadiah Stane was the son of degenerate gambler Zebediah Stane, a drunkard who had failed in all his attempts to make a career for himself and whose last moment of life was shooting himself in the head as he attempted to show his young son just how hot the streak of good luck he was riding that night really was, via a game of Russian Roulette that ended very badly. This trauma had two lasting effects on the young Obadiah. First, by the time he was eight years old his hair had fallen out and left him completely bald. Second, repulsed by his gambler father's self-destruction, Stane became attracted to games of pure skill in which proper planning left no room for blind chance to intervene, especially chess. Ultimate, he came to believe that life itself was a chess game and he became determined to win at all costs.
As his life progressed, however, Stane made sure to rely on every possible gambit and stratagem to assure victory. He was more than willing to play outside the rules and make use of the most vicious psychological warfare, whether killing a little boy's dog and leaving it in the kid's locker to make certain he beat the little boy in a chess tournament or taking over his first company by showing his mediocrity of a boss faked pictures of his beautiful young wife and loyal best friend inflagrante delecto to break his spirit.
By the time Stane first met Tony Stark, the two were rivals in the munitions business and Stark's corporate empire thwarted Stane's attempt to form a massive international business cartel. The two soon became deadly rivals. To give himself the ultimate edge, Stane resorted to the most vicious illegal tactics (forcing Iron Man to fight an array of minions and gadgets) and the most ruthless psychological warfare. Finally, Stane won. Tony Stark succumbed to alcoholism and Stane, assisted by the superspy agency SHIELD, was able to buy out Stark International. Stark had ceased manufacturing weaponry and SHIELD, his principle customer, was now able to do business as usual with Stane.
Unfortunately, Stane pushed his advantage too far. Rather than being content with his victory, he continued to push his beaten foe until Stark had no choice but retaliation. Wearing his brand new red and silver armor, Stark easily brushed aside all Stane's gadgets and minions to force Stane to confront him in his own suit of super-armor. The inexperienced Stane was no match for Iron Man, and rather than give Stark the final victory of seeing him arrested he killed himself just as his father had. Before he went down, however, he had pushed Tony Stark lower than he had ever been pushed before. If he had been able to resist his own egotistical need for a 'complete' victory, he would have stayed on top.
Justin Hammer was another sinister business competitor of Tony Stark, but unlike Stane he was always terribly careful not to get his hands dirty. Instead, he provided technology, money laundering services, and other amenities to any costumed criminal who measured up to his standards in return for half their profits and their loyalty when he needed a job done. Able to command a small army of super-villains at a moment's notice, Hammer never felt the need to suit up himself.
He had his own set of small victories over Tony Stark, including the use of a device capable of overriding control of the Iron Man suit to force the armor to kill a diplomat at an international conference. He bankrolled the armored terrorist Force and then tried to kill him when he attempted to go straight, making it impossible for him to testify and forcing Stark to bide his time and employ the ex-killer under an assumed identity. Most insidiously, however, Hammer bought the blueprints to the Iron Man armor from the industrial spy and saboteur known as the Spymaster and then sold the technology to a host of governments and supervillains (including the U.S. and Soviet governments, the mercenary known as the Mauler, and the would-be world conqueror the Controller, and the ever-present and ever-dangerous Dr. Doom) without Stark ever knowing... until he disassembled and examined the Force armor. This kicked off the first Armor Wars, a paranoid campaign in which Tony Stark destroyed or stole every suit of armor incorporating his technology. After attacked the U.S. and Soviet governments and unintentionally killing the Soviet freedom fighter and superhero the Gremlin (who wore a version of the Titanium Man armor) in a fight with him and the Crimson Dynamo, Iron Man became a wanted 'terrorist' himself.
While it was the equally nasty Edwin Cord who was directly responsible for the circumstances in which Stark was forced to destroy his armor and fake Iron Man's death at the hands of the absurdly overpowered government hitman Firepower, it was Justin Hammer's machinations that made the confrontation happen in the first place. Worse, Hammer continued to plague Stark after the Armor Wars, completely untouched by the chaos.
Sometimes, the most dangerous suit of armor a foe can wear is a business suit.
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