When it comes to having memorable characters, Marvel and DC pretty much have no equal. From Spider-Man and Captain America to Superman and Batman, these two entertainment giants have superheroes and villains for every taste that have transcended the very medium they operate in.
But for every awesome villain that fans always want more of, there's a silly and campy one that's next to impossible to take seriously. These range from a racially-stereotyped sentient egg to a ridiculously dressed guy who shoots glue. They may not be menacing, but they do provide a good laugh.
Updated on August 16, 2023, by Diego Pineda Pacheco:
Superheroes have been having a bit of a resurgence this year. DC superfans are excited to watch Blue Beetle (August 18) and experience the DCEU's take on one of DC's most humorous and underrated characters, who has often crossed paths with some of the goofiest supervillains in the mythos.
20 Ten-Eyed Man
Phil Reardon was a Vietnam War veteran blinded by a warehouse explosion that burned his retinas. After the event, an underground doctor made it so that he now had eyes on his fingertips. The sight of him may be silly, but don't be fooled: Ten-Eyed Man can be one of Batman's scariest foes.
But while Reardon can be a creepy force to be reckoned with, the fact remains that he's a man in a weird costume with eyes on his fingers. It's an inherently campy concept, which makes it very easy to forget how scary he can sometimes be.
19 The Kangaroo
One of the worst supervillains Spider-Man has had to face, which makes it likely that he won't be seen in live-action for time to come, The Kangaroo lives a life of crime making use of his fighting prowess and endurance-augmenting kangaroo armor.
The mantle has been worn by two men over the course of the history of the Wall-Crawler, and neither was any less silly than the other. His animal-themed skills don't really make him stand out among other similar Spidey villains, which makes it unsurprising that he's always been such an unremarkable antagonist.
18 The Clock King
The original Clock King, who made his debut in the comics in 1960, was an enemy of Green Arrow. He had no powers, no metahuman abilities, nothing but the lame ability of perfect timing. That's without mentioning his laughable costume.
Surprisingly, though, the Clock King didn't slowly fade into obscurity like many other silly DC villains. Instead, he has seen some rather beneficial development over the years, from joining the Suicide Squad in 2001 to appearing in shows like Arrow and Batman: The Animated Series.
17 Egghead
There's nothing like a great comic book character rivalry. Captain America has Red Skull. Iron Man has the Mandarin. Hank Pym's Ant-Man? His archenemy is the silly, not-so-villainous Egghead, a scientist with a physical deformity whose main goal is finding a cure for aging.
To be fair, it's not like Egghead never does evil things. After all, he also wants to destroy Ant-Man, and he tends to be cruel and petty. But the fact is that nothing about him screams "mighty superhero's intimidating archnemesis." Instead, he has faded into oblivion as one of the lamest villains in the Marvel mythos.
16 Leap-Frog
Now that he has made the jump to the MCU in She-Hulk, Leap-Frog has become a better-known character. Before that, though, he used to be relatively obscure. Something that hasn't changed is that he's still one of the dumbest Marvel villains. He's a failed inventor who decided to start a life of crime wearing a frog costume, soon to be defeated by Daredevil.
If anything, something that the divisive MCU show nailed was the ridiculous nature of a character like Leap-Frog. He has never had any kind of success either as an inventor or as a supervillain, which makes it hard to take him seriously.
15 The Hypno-Hustler
He won't remain obscure for long, since Donald Glover is set to star in a Sony Pictures movie focused on him, but The Hypno-Hustler has for a long time been one of the goofiest figures in Spider-Man's rogues gallery. He's Antoine Delsoin, the lead singer of a band who uses a modified guitar to hypnotize people and carry out crimes.
A Disco-themed crook isn't exactly what you'd expect to be a super menacing figure, and Hypno-Hustler certainly isn't. It can sometimes be funny to see his bizarre abilities in action, but how a movie with him as a protagonist will work is a mystery that remains to be seen.
14 Kite Man
Kite Man, whose real name is Charles Brown (as an homage to the main character of Peanuts), is more of a joke villain than anything else. He commits crimes in Gotham City using kite-based weaponry.
Energetic but dimwitted, and with abilities that no self-respecting superhero should be worried about, Kite Man isn't exactly one of the Caped Crusader's most formidable foes. And yet, he has become a fan favorite throughout the years, with a compelling backstory and an interesting personality that has led him to have his own spin-off show called Noonan's, in development at Max.
13 The Penny Plunderer
When talking about the stupidest DC characters, the Penny Plunderer has to pop up in the conversation at some point. A mostly forgotten Golden Age Batman villain, he became obsessed with pennies after a string of penny-related incidents of bad luck, which led him to a life of crime.
If he's to be thanked for anything, a fight against the Penny Plunderer is what's responsible for the iconic giant penny that sits in the Batcave. Outside of that, though, there's a good reason for his fame as one of the most laughable rogues that threaten Gotham.
12 M.O.D.O.K.
To be fair, M.O.D.O.K. (whose name is an acronym for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) has never been a character meant to be taken seriously. Even yet, it's always delightfully fun to witness whatever havoc such a goofy-looking, irresistibly comical villain can wreak.
M.O.D.O.K. is bizarre by design, and how well that strangeness works varies from comic to comic and adaptation to adaptation (including the version where he's one of the MCU's most ridiculous villains). Sometimes, he's incredibly funny and even a fair bit menacing. Other times, he's a bit of a flying joke that no Marvel fan is truly intimidated by.
11 Crazy Quilt
There are many weird DC villains, but few quite as much as Batman's strange rival Crazy Quilt. He was a painter who lost his mind and was driven to a life of committing crimes themed around colors and quilts. Needless to say, the people of Gotham don't lose much sleep over this particular villain.
Crazy Quilt uses a helmet that allows him to hypnotize his victims and shoot colorful laser beams. His rivalry with Robin is stronger than any beef he may have with the Caped Crusader, but he's not much of a threat even to Batman's trusty sidekick.
10 Paste-Pot Pete
The comically ridiculous villain with a horrible fashion sense Paste-Pot-Pete has pretty much just one ability: A gun that shoots a mega-adhesive and fireproof glue, which comes very in handy when fighting his nemesis, the Human Torch.
Later in his career, he rebranded himself as The Trapster in order to sound and look more menacing, but his original choice of name and costume never stopped haunting him. Ultimately, it's pretty hard to take a guy with such a pathetic weapon and costume seriously. He's not likely to stick around for much longer.
9 The Fiddler
The Flash has a pretty diverse rogues gallery full of villains that may seem silly on the surface, but are actually formidable foes. The Fiddler isn't exactly a pushover, but he's certainly one of the Scarlet Speedster's goofiest classic villains.
The character used to be a petty thief in the streets of India, until he started using the mystical powers of music to aid him in his crimes. He began using a fiddle to hypnotize his enemies, driving a violin-shaped car in his fight against Flash. It's not exactly a menacing look, which makes it unsurprising that this has never really been one of the hero's most popular foes, nor exactly a villain that fans are clamoring to see in the DCEU.
8 Doctor Bong
Yes, his name really is Doctor Bong. He's the nemesis of Howard the Duck, one of the funniest and strangest Marvel characters, which makes it unsurprising that he's such a ridiculous villain. Regardless, you can't deny the fact that a character wearing a bell on his head, named after the sound that said bell makes, is just absurd.
Bullied in his childhood and having lost his hand to a guillotine, expert scientist Lester Verde did what any sane person would have done in that situation: Become the archnemesis of a talking duck. Capable of teleportation, powerful sonic blasts, and all sorts of other powers coming from the bell on his head, Doctor Bong isn't to be taken seriously, but he's certainly more of a menace than you'd think.
7 Nuclear Man
Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, the last movie with Christopher Reeve in the title role, is widely considered one of the most atrocious superhero movies ever made. One of the main reasons is its ludicrous antagonist, Nuclear Man.
The character was actually created for the film, a villain created by Lex Luthor with Superman's DNA. His powers are lame, the fact that he's just a boring clone instead of a proper character is lame, and his costume is lame. He somehow made the jump to the comics in 2018, to expectedly catastrophic results. This one might be better off left in the past.
6 Stilt-Man
Daredevil has quite a few cartoonish antagonists, but few as much as Stilt-Man. One of the weirdest and most incompetent villains in Marvel, first introduced in the mid-'60s, he wears an impenetrable metal armor with powerful telescopic legs.
Stilt-Man isn't without his fans – though, to be fair, enjoyment of the character is often much more ironic than genuine. He's not always treated as a joke, since he has some cool moments and memorable fights with the Man Without Fear. However, most of the time, he's little more than a sad excuse for a villain.
5 Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man
His name tells you all you need to know: Sven Larsen, better known as Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, is a common foe of Batman and the Doom Patrol who can change any part of his body into the form of any animal, vegetable, or mineral – often all at once.
He's arguably one of the most obscure DC villains, and it isn't hard to see why. His powers are so all over the place that they come across as stupid, his backstory isn't particularly interesting, and he doesn't really have anything that makes him stand out.
4 Egg Fu
Picture this: A Chinese Communist agent inexplicably shaped like an egg the size of a building, who uses his mustache as whips to fight Wonder Woman. Meet Egg Fu, one of the most stupid DC characters ever, whose very existence is absolutely puzzling.
Not only was the guy laughable: He was also a crude and deeply offensive Yellow Peril ethnic stereotype. After Crisis on Infinite Earths, he got a brand new backstory and design, but this hardly helped his case. At the end of the day, he's one of the worst DC villains, memorable for all the wrong reasons.
3 Asbestos Lady
Victoria Murdock (supposedly a distant relative of Matt Murdock or Daredevil himself) hated the Human Torch. In the hopes of taking him down, she built herself a suit made of the highly fire-resistant material asbestos (unoriginal name, much?).
Asbestos Lady was never really much of a menace, but she did meet a rather tragic demise. Nowadays, people know about the dangers of asbestos, but Victoria Murdock clearly didn't. At the age of 45, she died of cancer due to all the exposure to asbestos that her line of work required. It's a tragic fate, but that doesn't really make her any more interesting of a character.
2 Condiment King
This Batman foe is one of the weirdest antagonists of the Dark Knight. He's a joke villain who commits petty crimes using various condiments that can cause anaphylactic shock as weapons. Laugh all you want, but he has a reputation: He happens to be Robert Pattinson's favorite Batman villain.
Condiment King may be goofy, campy, and pathetic, but that's precisely the point. He's meant to be a parody of the silly criminals that Batman used to fight back in the day, and it definitely works. He's really funny, and who knows? In a campy story à la The Suicide Squad or Peacemaker, a live-action version of him could work quite well.
1 Big Wheel
Bet you'll never guess what this Spider-Man villain uses to carry out crimes. That's right: A big metal wheel, one complete with weapons, arms, and other high-end gadgets that give him the ability to oppose the Web-Slinger.
He proved to be much longer-lasting than one would think. He went from having an unsuccessful life of crime, to being rehabilitated and helping Spidey fight villains, to eventually returning to his old ways. One thing about him is always constant: He's such a dumb character that it's simply impossible to take him seriously.
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