Editing Marvel Comics (section)

==Notable Villains==
===Magneto===
Introduced as fairly generic racial supremacist villain in the Silver Age - more or less Mutant Hitler with magnetism powers - Magneto was subsequently salvaged in the Bronze Age, which retconned him into having a much deeper backstory; born a German Jew, he lost his family to the death camps, and when he saw that anti-mutant sentiment was on the rise, he immediately saw the similarities to the anti-Semitism that had exterminated his kinsfolk, and he swore that he would not stand by and allow it to happen again. Add a few more traumas to deepen the misanthropy, stir in a genuine sense of nobility and a true zeal to protecting and promoting mutantkind, and somebody who had been a forgettable, generic villain went on to become one of Marvel's most popular villains, the mutie Malcom X to Professor Xavier's mutie Martin Luther King, and even a shift between "noble villain" and "antihero" over the decades.

===Thanos===
One of Marvel's biggest cosmic villains, and also in many ways one of its weirdest. One of the heaviest hitters in the Marvel arsenal, Thanos is an alien overlord with a truly disturbing obsession with death. No, it's not that he wants to kill everyone per se, it's that he literally believes that Death is a cosmic entity with a female identity, and he wants to stick his dick in her. Whilst a few stories have suggested that he may be delusional and no such being exists, primarily the 1990s Silver Surfer cartoon, it's generally accepted that there really ''is'' a Lady Death (no relation to Neil Gaiman's or Bryan Pulido's individual takes on the concept), and she wants nothing to do with Thanos, whom she thinks of as a creepy stalker. To try and win her over, Thanos committed acts of genocide on a galactic scale, and even created the reality-controlling Infinity Gauntlet as an attempt to try and force her into loving him back.

===Red Skull===
One of the few Golden Age baddies to still be running around in modern Marvel, the Red Skull was originally a psychotic youth in Nazi Germany, a random bellboy in a hotel whom Hitler declared could be made into a better Nazi than any of his supposedly elite agents he was meeting with at the hotel at a time, [[Not as Planned|and succeeded]]. Red Skull is generally portrayed as a masterful spy and manipulator, whose primary role in the World War 2 comics was a combination of overseeing various Nazi mad science projects and managing a spy ring of Nazi American 5th columnists. He usually has no inherent superpowers of his own, unless you count his iconic "Dust of Death"; a toxic compound that swiftly kills the victim and dissolves their face, leaving them with a bloody skull for a head. His own similar mug used to be a mask, until he was exposed to the Dust of Death and somehow survived.

In modern times, he's either attempting to lead a Nazi revival or just trying to take over the world for his own brand of hate-fueled tyranny, depending on the story.

===Doctor Doom===
Archenemy of the Fantastic Four as a whole and Reed Richards in particular, Victor von Doom was born the son of a medical doctor and a Romani woman in Latveria - a small unimportant nation somewhere in the middle of Europe. After the deaths of his parents, which may or may not be of importance to his future character development depending on the story, he traveled to America to learn advanced technological sciences, where he proved himself as a genius. It was here that he met Reed Richards; they were roommates. When one of Doom's experiments blew up, he was expelled from the academy, and he blamed Richards; Reed had previously pointed out that Doom had made a mistake in one of his calculations, Doom had ignored him, and so Doom was convinced that Reed had sabotaged him out of spite.

Which nicely encapsulates Doom's biggest flaw: he is a total raging egomaniac, a man with a god complex so powerful he has literally been able to no-sell some of Marvel's most powerful mind-controllers because he is ''that'' wrapped up in his own arrogance and sense of self-importance.

Returning to Latveria, Doom built himself an intimidating suit of power armor, conquered the nation of his birth, and began plotting to conquer the world, usually using diplomatic immunity to escape the consequences of his failures. The most notable bit of his armor is his mask, said to cover [[Balthasar Gelt|the allegedly horrifying injuries his face suffered from the explosion]]. Some comics confirm that the damage is real, while others say that it's merely a scratch blown out of proportion by his ego. The current story splits the difference; [[Grimdark|the trauma ''was'' superficial but in his haste, Doom put on the mask while it was fresh from the forge, disfiguring himself for real]].

Some of Doom's most notable traits, outside of the whole "power armored egomaniacal self-righteous world conqueror" thing, include:
* He's acknowledged as the world's greatest master of robotics, and has been using robot clones of himself, called "Doombots", to escape actually being captured or punished for years. Marvel writers love to abuse Doombots as a way to handwave away anything they don't like from other Doom stories.
* Doom actually practices [[magitek]], combining sorcerous skills learned from his mother with the technological skills he learned in America. In fact, originally, the idea was that's actually not as great at either science or sorcery as the more big name specialists, but he can fake being better by using the combination to cheat around their stylistic limitations.

Doom is basically the Wolverine of Marvel's villains, or perhaps maybe the Lex Luthor; it started out that Doom was supposed to be just an operatically flamboyant and egomaniacal asshole, but over the years, writers have fallen so in love with him that they've increasingly portrayed him as actually living up to his own hype.

===Galactus===
A literal deity-level threat, Galactus is a colossal being of incomprehensible appearance (okay, he kinda can be comprehended, but it's a matter of the form only being dependent on the individual) who uses his even larger ship to feed off the energy of countless worlds before destroying them. While this all sounds terrible, the truth is that his purpose is one that's considered a necessity in the greater scheme of things and cannot be killed by any weapons, conventional or otherwise.

He also famously employs the services of Heralds, individuals who are empowered with his cosmic powers tasked with scouting the endless cosmos and finding the ideal planets for their master to devour.
*'''Norrin Radd/Silver Surfer:''' The most famous of his heralds. Originally became a herald in order to spare his planet from getting eaten, transforming into a metal-skinned humanoid who rides the cosmos on a surfboard. Eventually, he comes to Earth, where he remembered all the emotions he cast aside in his service to the devourer of worlds and finally turned on his master.

===Ultron===
A [[robot]] created by Hank Pym a.k.a. Ant-Man, he immediately turned evil upon being switched on. Ever since he's been a nemesis to his creator and the associated Avengers, periodically returning in upgraded and increasingly more powerful bodies. He's also responsible for the creation of Vision, using parts of the original Human Torch.

===Loki===
As in the same god as in Norse Mythology, here being a shape-shifting son of a giant who was adopted by Odin in a surprising show of compassion after killing his parents and was raised alongside Thor like a brother. However, here Loki isn't treated as just the god of trickery but also deceit and even ''evil'', as his inferiority complex has led to him betraying all of Asgard in his own pursuit of power.

His portrayal in the MCU has seen to his status as evil going through a significant re-examination, as he managed to hit the [[Tumblr]] sexyman demographic no thanks to the actor in those movies.

===Kang the Conqueror===
A time-travelling tyrant from the far future, going around trying to conquer other time periods and timelines with his advanced technology and knowledge. He even had a stint as an ancient [[Egypt|egyptian]] pharaoh. His origin is that he was born as Nathaniel Richards in the 30th century of an alternate universe that had no Dark Age period, though as a time-traveller, his chronology from there can be rather convoluted. He may be descended from Mr. Fantastic and/or Doctor Doom.

===Green Goblin===
Businessman Norman Osborn used an experimental serum on himself, increasing his strength and intelligence but giving him an evil persona. Thus, Spider-man's arch-nemesis the Green Goblin was born, dressing up as a halloween-themed supervilain in a goblin costume, wielding pumpkin-shaped bombs and riding initially on a rocket-broom, later on a metal glider shaped like a giant bat. What reason could the Green Goblin have to hate the wall-crawler so much? When he first appeared, he tried to kill Spider-man to get respect from the mob, and Spidey had the audacity to not get murdered. That's it. Since then, he's been dedicated to making spider-man's life miserable. He's responsible for killing Peter's original love interest Gwen Stacy, and was revealed to have been the mastermind of the infamous Clone Saga. At one point, Norman took over S.H.I.E.L.D. in what would be called the Dark Reign era, and created a team of Dark Avengers, made up of villains and anti-heroes, with himself as a Captain America/Iron Man knockoff called Iron Patriot.

Others have taken up the title of Green Goblin, notably Norman's son Harry, Harry's psychologist Bart Hamilton, and Phil Urich who initially tried to be a hero. Similarly, there have been knockoff Goblins like the Hobgoblin (originally a rich asshole who wanted to rip off Norman's tech but others have taken the mantle), Jack-O-Lantern (a separate series of knockoffs who got some of Hobgoblin's tech as well as set their heads on fire) and the Demogoblin, a literal demon who was bound to a Hobgoblin before splitting off and being edgy as all fuck because it was the 90's.

===Doctor Octopus===
Dr. Otto Octavius is a scientist who pioneered the use of a cybernetic harness with four metallic tentacle-like claw-tipped arms, allowing him to safely perform experiments with dangerous chemicals and radioactive materials with great precision. Then there was a freak lab accident, his lab blew up, and the harness was literally fused to his spine, giving him the ability to control the tentacles with his mind, but also driving him mad. As you can probably guess from the name, he's a Spider-Man villain, and one of Spidey's oldest and most respectable. The 90s cartoon actually made him one of Spidey's teachers when he was a kid, a guy that Spidey looked up to as both a mentor and a friend before the experiment drove him nutty. That had no basis in the comics whatsoever, but they have had a long and often complex relationship.

How complex, you ask? Well, when Otto was slowly dying of old age, he decided to abduct Peter and then somehow swap their minds. While Peter was stuck with the old body with failing health, he decided to take up the role of Spider-Man by implementing his own scientific prowess in a bid to prove that he could be the "Superior Spider-Man". The problem was that at some point his quest to prove his superiority, he eventually had to accept the gravity of what he did and undid the swap at the last moment, accepting that his time was truly up...except he didn't because he had experimenting with making a clone body fusing his own genetics with Peter's. He then decided to leave for San Francisco in order to make his own run as a superhero, the Superior Doctor Octopus.

===Venom===
On Battleworld, Spider-man got a new black costume, which was actually the member of an alien species known as Klyntar, which bonded to him and provided benefits such as turning into other clothes and shooting unlimited webbing. However, the symbiote puppeted his body while he was asleep, and in other media it's often depicted as making him more agressive and merciless as well, prompting him to get rid of it. Spurned, it latched itself to Eddie Brock, who also had reason to hate Peter Parker when he got him fired for selling faked photos. They became Venom, a being referring to itself in the plural "we" with the powers of Spider-man but with a lot of sharp teeth and able to prevent the spider-sense from triggering, but was weak to fire and loud noises. They aimed to get revenge on the wall-crawler, though over time Venom would go from villain to anti-hero, calling himself the Lethal Protector. The Symbiote would sometimes bond with other characters, and become the source of a myriad of other symbiotes (who inherited its ability to bypass spider-sense).

*'''Eddie Brock:''' The first and most iconic. A failed news reporter who nursed a grudge towards Spidey as much as the Symbiote did, leading to the birth of Venom. He would eventually develop some sort of cancer that made him unsuitable as a host and thus they parted ways. A chance encounter with Mister Negative managed to trigger a reaction that forced his white blood cells to act like the Symbiote did and turned him into '''Anti-Venom''' - All the same powers, plus the ability to instantly purge poisons.
*'''Mac Gargan:''' Otherwise known as the Scorpion. Gained the suit as part of Norman's "Dark Avengers" initiative, suppressing the more monstrous parts of the suit's powers via specialized drugs.
*'''Flash Thompson:''' Formerly Peter's high-school bully, but serving in the Middle-East and losing both his legs saw him seriously change as a person. A special government initiative saw him bonded to a pacified symbiote to become '''Agent Venom''', using his own willpower to try and suppress the more monstrous parts. Unlike any of the other hosts, Flash was very much a good person.

====Carnage====
The first offspring of Venom, the Carnage symbiote bonded itself to Kletus Cassidy, a sadistic serial killing redneck that was Eddie's cellmate. Kletus and the symbiote would have a stronger bond than Venom did, referring to himself as "I" and not "We" and eventually fusing into one entity. Carnage has proven far more dangerous and evil than Venom, usually forcing him and Spidey to team up against the mass murderer.

===Mephisto===
Officially, Marvel doesn't have Satan in it - that pesky rule about not promoting "real" Satanism during the Silver Age. Mephisto is the guy they invented to be the Devil without actually explicitly ''being'' the Devil. Of some note: A 2020s book, Immortal Hulk, introduced The One Below All (God being the "One Above All" in Marvel cosmology), who can fill the "anti-God"/"exact opposite of God" role that most devil characters like Mephisto cannot, making Mephisto more a "Magic Using Red Suited Guy With Horns Who Likes To Cut One-Sided Deals" type villain than anything more directly religious.

===Kingpin===
Wilson Fisk came from humble beginnings and fought his way up to head one of the world's biggest multinational organized crime networks, earning him the moniker "The Kingpin of Crime". Despite looking like a great big fat guy, he's actually a fridge-sized block of muscle, making him literally strong enough to rip a regular-sized guy in half and way faster than you'd think. While he  tends to show up in Spider-Man cartoons for some reason, he's more an archenemy of Daredevil's, although he's clashed with a lot of street level heroes to some degree or another.

===Dormammu===
A giant flame-wreathed demon-god who serves as the archenemy of Doctor Strange. He rules a massive realm called the Dark Dimension, and seeks to expand it further by conquering and absorbing other dimensions into it, such as Earth's. He also happens to be the uncle of Strange's love interest, Clea.

===Apocalypse===
The most notable X-Men villain who ''isn't'' Magneto, Apocalypse is a mutant who was born in [[Egypt]] during the Late Stone Age/Early Bronze Age, and was considered a bloodthirsty psychopath even in those far-flung days. Born with a freaky appearance and a superhuman physique, he ''really'' got his stride when he discovered a buried cache of Eternal (basically alien super-god) power armor, which made him all but immortal and with almost [[DC Comics]]-tier shapeshifting abilities. Apocalypse literally worships the concept of "survival of the fittest", and his goal is explicitly to plunge the world into hell to breed stronger and stronger humans, mutants, or whatever else emerges from the crucible. Typically served by a group of four powered up (and sometimes brainwashed) mutant slaves called the Four Horsemen, just to complete the biblical reference.

===Mystique===
A blue-skinned [[mutant]] [[Callidus|shapeshifting femme fatale]]. Raven Darkhölme has been a notable X-men villain and often affiliated with mutant extremists. Her assassination of Senator Kelly would've resulted in the ''Days of Future Past'' timeline, where the mutants were all but wiped out by the Sentinels and the rest of humanity wasn't far behind them, had it succeeded. She's much older than she seems, having lived in the 19th century and no sign of aging. She's also technically always nude, using her shapeshifting to simulate clothing, since logically real clothes wouldn't change with her. She's the mother of the X-men Rogue (adoptive) and Nightcrawler, and has had many relationships throughout her life, though her closest one (especially in recent years) is the decades-long lesbian love affair she's had with the clairvoyant Destiny. A bit of trivia: she would've been Nightcrawler's ''father'' if Marvel hadn't nixed the idea, as at the time writers were forbidden from having gay or bisexual characters.

The earliest concept of the character was actually as an arch-enemy to Carol Danvers during her early years as Ms. Marvel, and initially she was implied to be the vanguard of an alien invasion, possibly even some kind of Skrull variant. She got retconned into her mutant incarnation largely due to her connections to Rogue, who went on to become hugely popular as part of the X-Men, whereas Carol Danvers basically sank into C-lister territory until the 2010s.

===Skrulls===
An alien race of shapeshifters that have tried to invade Earth on multiple ocasions. They are descended from the Deviant branch of the original Skrull species, created when the Celestials paid them a visit and split the species into normal, Eternal, and Deviant species. The normie Skrulls and Eternal Skrulls went extinct, and the Deviants thrived into the Skrulls we are now familiar with. The Skrulls would go on to become a mercentile empire, creating the first Cosmic Cube and sharing their technology to other species they deemed worthy to elevate them, establishing free trade and cooperation. This all changed when their emperor's delegation reached the the planet Hala, homeworld of the then still barbaric Kree. Except there was another sapient species living there: peaceful plant-people called the Cotati. They held a contest to determine who would represent Hala, and the Cotati were clearly winning. So the Kree's solution was that they wouldn't lose the contest if [[That Guy|there were no other competitors, and genocided the Cotati.]] The Skrulls were naturally appalled and were going to ban them from the interstellar community, so the Kree murdered the emperor and his entourage, stealing the Skrull technology to reverse engineer.

Thus, the Kree-Skrull War began and would last thousands of years. Being a pretty adaptive culture due to their nature as shapeshifters, the Skrulls changed pretty quickly into an aggressive, militaristic warrior culture in response. This brings us to their initial interest in Earth: it was a strategic location to help wage their war if they captured it. Sort of like an island in WW2's pacific theater.

*'''Super-Skrull:''' The first Skrull shown copying the powers of Earth superheroes. He has the combined powers of the Fantastic Four, plus hypnotism.
*'''Paibok the Power Skrull:''' Another enhanced Skrull, he tried to infiltrate Earth with a plan that replaced Alicia Masters (the Thing's love interest) with an infiltrator who married the Human Torch. His powers include hypnotism, ice and electricity generation, and turning into metal like Colossus.

===Taskmaster===
A minor villain, but with a fair share of fans due to his pragmatism and personality. Taskmaster has photographic reflexes, which allow him to copy any move or skill after seeing it once. If it doesn't require superpowers, unique equipment/tech, or it isn't performed by a machine, then he can do it too. He used this talent first to set up an academy where he taught the skills he copied to villains, henchmen, and others willing to pay, and he's often worked as a mercenary.

His talent has a downside, in that he loses personal memories not related to the skills he's copied, causing him to forget about his own family and friends. The heroine Finesse has the same power as him, but he couldn't tell if they had any relation whatsoever because of this amnesia. And when he tried to copy her moves so that he'd at least remember her, he found that every move she used was copied too, and she had nothing original for his own ability to memorize. Unfortunate.

===HYDRA===
A terrorist organization that aims for world domination, identified by a symbol of a skull with tentacles sprouting from the jaw. Originally a reptoid cult, they were part of the nazi military as the Thule Society, and were taken over by the nazi members after the defeat of the reich. They operated in secret since, and largely abandoned nazism (though some branches still ascribe to it) but they still ascribe to a fascist ideology. In other media that are adverse to displaying nazi iconography in any context such as the cartoons, they may be used to replace the nazis when delving into Captain America's involvement in WW2. Taking inspiration from the [[hydra]], for every head that falls, two more grow back, and so no matter how many times their leadership is taken down, it is always replaced and more branches are created. Notable leaders of HYDRA include the Red Skull, Baron von Strucker, Madame Hydra, Viper, and Kraken.

===Zemo===
A longstanding villain of Captain America. The first one, Baron Heinrich Zemo, was a nazi who had his own purple mask superglued to his face by his own Adhesive X. He's notable for causing the incident that resulted in Steve being frozen in ice and for forming the Masters of Evil, a supervillain team of various baddies coming together to destroy the Avengers, with generally each member having a bone to pick with one Avenger (Zemo obviously had his sights set on Cap). He eventually died and his role was filled by his son, Helmut Zemo, who you may recall from above as being responsible for creating the Thunderbolts. He, too, got disfigured by Adhesive X eventually.

===A.I.M.===
'''Advanced Idea Mechanics''' is the go-to organization for mad scientists of all varieties, often leading to clashing with other high-tech companies like Stark Industries. Their henchmen are recognizable by their beekeeper-like yellow jumpsuits.

Its leader is MODOK ("Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing", or occasionally "MODOC", with the C standing for "Conquest"), one of the goofiest looking characters in all of comics. Two things make him a somewhat serious character: (1) His condition was something that was intentionally done to an ordinary human being, making him something of a horror character, and (2) his transformation has turned him as murderous as his name implies; the reason he's the head of A.I.M. is he's usually killed most of the competition.

===Mandarin===
Iron Man's archenemy for a while. The character was an example of Yellow Peril during the Cold War. He wears ten rings on his fingers of either magical or alien technological origin, each of which has a different ability.
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