2. Insecticons (Marvel/Marvel UK, 1980s)






The Insecticons are a faction, if that is the right word, within the Decepticons, certainly not a faction to be trusted (can any faction ever be trusted?). That’s the simple write-up. I am most familiar with them from the Marvel and Marvel UK comics.

I like their independent, rebellious nature (too many Decepticons fawn over Megatron). But I have to include then on my list because a) they have a cool name, and b) their abilities are really interesting, such as the ability to form a swarm, the fact that they consume organic and inorganic matter, and one or two abilities I may have forgotten, including controlling the weather. If I was Optimus Prime, the Insecticons would be giving me sleepless nights.

An Idento-computer is is a technological system that adapts a Transformer’s ability based on what is near, so when the Insecticons landed on earth, in prehistoric times, they ended up in a swamp; this meant that the Idento-computer gave them transformative modes based on local insects.

Such a cool idea, such a great team. I end this write-up because autocorrect is beginning to bore me, with its attempts to change Decepticon, Insecticon and Idento-computer (I *loathe* autocorrect).

#2 The Frightful four


Fantastic Four # 36
Marvel Comics ( 1965)
Writer: Stan Lee
Artist: Jack Kirby
Inker: Chic Stone





I always loved this team. The core three members, The Wizard, Paste Pot Pete ( Trapster), and the Sandman were used in other parts of the Marvel Universe but they united in order to be the counterpart for the Fantastic Four. With the addition of Medusa, they were quite formidable and actually soundly beat the FF in their 3rd appearance . The magic to the team is that when they replaced the fourth member, it always made for a good story. During their history they had Thundra, the Brute, Elektro , Blastarr and even had a mind controlled Thing help them in their schemes.



A few points about the the team:

The Wizard has Reed Richards level intelligence which makes him the natural leader for the group. He also had an eye for women and it hurts his judgment at times.

The Frightful Four soundly beat the FF a few times , and the first time in FF # 38 Leads to them losing their powers and a great 2 parter where Doom takes over the Baxter building.

Issue # 177 of the FF has a great story where the Wizard has a recruitment drive for the vacant fourth member spot. It includes a few first appearances and lands them the Brute , the Richards of counter earth.

Maybe my favorite "fourth member" was Thundra. She was a powerhouse and nice eye candy as well.  

#2 - Luthor and Brainiac
Superman 167




This one was originally much lower on the list. But rereading it bumped my appreciation for this issue up quite a bit. It's not just that Superman's 2 greatest enemies were teaming up; we all know that big concepts don't always equal big stories. But this one lived up to the concept.

We start with Luthor escaping from prison, again. (And I love how the silver age stories would go out of their way to give us an elaborate escape plan just to set up that the villain was available for mayhem again.) He tries to kill Superman, fails, and decides he needs help. So he builds a machine to find the 'mightiest intelligence in time and space' to team with. He ends up learning the true origin of Brainiac. See, up until now, Brainiac was just an alien space pirate. This is the issue which first establishes that he's actually a humanoid computer. They spend 4 pages on this, and talk about it on the letters page, so they meant it to be a big deal.

Luthor frees Brainiac from the prison on an abandoned world Superman had built for him, and they agree to work together. Luthor helpfully offers to increase Brainiac's intelligence, but also implants a failsafe to prevent his new partner from turning on him. (Which alone makes Luthor a genius, in comic book villain terms.) They capture Superman, take away his powers and shrink him down to birdcage size. While Brainiac is busy hypnotizing Luthor to undo that failsafe (no slouch himself), Supes manages to alert the Kandorians to his location. A group of super little guys goes to his rescue, but too late to prevent Brainiac from paralyzing Superman, leaving him in a state of living death.

The Kandorians take the 2 villains to their bottle city to stand trial. Brainiac is sentenced to eternity in the Phantom Zone. But he and Luthor bargain with the tribunal, offering to save Superman in exchange for their freedom. The bottle city votes to forego their revenge on the guy who put them in the bottle, to save Superman. Revived, big blue feels obligated to honor the agreement, and lets the 2 bad guys go.

This was a lot of really good stuff. Epic, even. The new origin of Brainiac, the team-up where each villain manages to stab the other in the back, but they end up helping each other anyway. The bad guys beating Superman, actually pretty easily. He didn't even put up much of a fight. Kandor bringing Brainiac to justice, then facing a moral dilemma. And the bad guys won! They nearly killed Superman; they would have if they hadn't bargained for their freedom. Then in the end, they get away with it! I mean, sure, Superman swears a solemn vow to catch them again. File that along with his vow to restore Kandor, cure Mon-el and get him out of the Phantom Zone, find a cure for Kryptonite. Hell, he probably vowed to find the Holy Grail and the final digit of pi sometime in there. The fact remains, he didn't win in this one. He couldn't even rescue himself.

The story was written by Edmond Hamilton, apparently from a plot by Cary Bates. Clearly, they put in the extra effort, to make this story fulfill the potential of that initial concept.

2. Dark Judges

"The Crime isss Life. The Sentence isss Death."



I love me some early 80s 2000 AD -- Nemesis the Warlock, Torquemada, Slaine, Strontium Dog, Rogue Trooper, and of course, Dredd. When you think of Dredd, the first villains that spring to mind are Judge Death and the Dark Judges.

It may come as a surprise to American readers who saw Judge Death used as comic relief in the Batman/Dredd crossover, but when Judge Death was introduced, he was one scary mother. Not only was his primary method of killing people to thrust his fingers into the body of his victim and squeeze their heart until it burst, you also couldn't kill the guy! He was a spirit that inhabited a corpse. Even if you manged to destroy his host body, his spirit could escape and possess a living human. Then he'd prepare the new host by using a mixture of chemicals to decay the flesh and let the body reach full ripeness. In order to defeat Judge Death the first time, Psi Judge Anderson had to make a tremendous sacrifice that left her inextricably linked to his spirit, trapping it inside herself and encasing her body inside a makeshift sarcophagus. 

And his buddies were just as bad.

Judge Fear wore a giant helmet with bat-like wings. When he'd pass judgement on a suspect, his faceplate would open and he'd frighten the accused to death with whatever they saw inside. (His face was only ever shown twice, once as a mass of eyeballs and again as grotesque mandibles.) His catchphrase was "Gaze into the face of Fear," which led to this iconic Dredd moment:



Judge Mortis was a in a perpetual state of disintegration, and his touch caused his victims to decay at a rapid rate. Judge Fire wasn't quite as macabre. He was the Ghost Rider looking dude, who was dangerous because he had a weapon he could use from long distance. 

The height of the Dark Judges during my fandom was when they took control of Mega City One and turned it into Necropolis, the city of the undead, killing 60 million citizens in the process. How many other villains in this year's countdown can claim they killed 60 million people? 

And no-one's mentioned yet that the original Judge Death stories were drawn by Brian freakin' Bolland.

Seriously, crank up some British New Wave of Heavy Metal and prepare to have the bejesus scared out of you.

Fatal Five



What can I say? They're the bee's knees.

2. The Grail

From the zany and blasphemous imagination of Garth Ennis comes the group whose pale imitation helped make the sophomoric "Da Vinci Code" an international success.


(Starr, Featherstone and Hoover).

The Grail was founded thousands of years ago to make sure that the bloodline of Jesus would not be lost, and to that end it oversaw a program of inbreeding that led to exactly the kind of result you'd expect. Paving the way for the Second Coming, the Grail holds all the great powers of the world by the short and curly, and it might eventually have ruled the world if not for one Jesse Custer.

At its head was the deceptively harmless-looking Father D'Aronique, whose gross dietary habits was only equalled by his table manners. After he met an inglorious and meteoric end, he was replaced by his prime executioner, Herr Starr, a character who redefined the term"ruthless". (For example: when tasked to murder a certain man in a hospital without the crime being traceable, Starr simply blew up the whole place. He reasoned that among the hundreds of possible motives for the bombing, the murder of one individual would be lost in the background noise.) Starr was hilarious thanks to the contrast between his forceful and irredeemable attitude and his incredibly bad luck : his eye was cut out by a school bully; a huge scar on his bald head made it look like a giant penis; one of his ears was shot off; one leg was eaten by a family of cannibals; a dog ate his genitals... and to top it off, after an unfortunate encounter in a back alley, the only way he managed to get sexual satisfaction was by being buggered with a lobster. 

And yet somehow this horrible human being managed to have another Grail member, the ever-efficient Featherstone, fall in love with him! Featherstone was a tough-as-nails Grail agent, whose devotion and competence was never appreciated... except by another prominent Grail member, the bumbling Hoover. Poor Hoover... he started as a promising agent too, one who really believed in the saintly goals of his organization, until he was offhandedly condemned by Jesse Custer to count all the grains of sand on a beach. A windy beach. (For the folks new to Preacher: its main character inherited the "voice of God" and can force anyone to do anything just by telling them to). This experience broke Hoover as a field agent, but he remained absolutely smitten with his partner Featherstone. 

Due to Starr's hatred of Jesse Custer, the Grail eventually destroyed itself, lost the holy bloodline and saw all of its major members die. But what a fun ride it was while it lasted! Marrying classic comic-book villainy, grand conspiracy theories, iconoclastic theology and potty jokes, it was pure Garth Ennis.