# CBR Community  > Comics Should Be Good >  What makes a good rogues' gallery?

## Mormel

So I'm thinking this topic is pretty straightforward 
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Typically, in superhero comics, the hero will build up a rogues gallery as time goes on. The early issues serve to establish the villains almost as much as the hero himself, and we get to see which villains stick around for the long run and become recurring bad guys.
Now, since each hero has his or her own personality and power set, naturally a writer is going to write villains that kind of key into the protagonist in terms of theme, opposing personality traits, similar powers, their civilian relation with the hero's civilian identity, etc etc.
Well, I'd like to ask you guys here at CBR: what are some of the worst and best rogues galleries you've seen in superhero comics?

I personally feel that Spider-Man's rogues gallery has been generally strong. Characters like the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, the Scorpion, and Venom all seem to have some kind of different personal stake at finding and crushing Spidey, when they go on their merry villainous way. Then there's villains that are not quite so personally involved or don't bear grudges, but are still interesting foils for spider-Man because of their power sets. I find that typically Spider-Man fights villains that are just a notch stronger than he is. Spider-Man is very strong and agile, and he has a couple of nifty superhuman abilities, but most of his better villains have the odds stacked in their favour when it comes to sheer power. I've always felt that that's also part of Spidey's challenge every month, to fight seemingly unsurmountable odds, and still come out on top.
Last things last, a great many of Spidey's villains could in fact be considered a dark mirror image of Spidey/Peter. Many of them gained their powers in some freak scientific accident, and some were seemingly good people before this happened. But they are the ones who, unlike Spidey, don't live by the adage that 'with great power comes great responsibility'. They instead shirk all responsibility, and live the life of an out-of-control supercriminal, using their powers for completely self-serving purposes, whereas Spidey puts the endangered civilians first, and uses his powers altruistically.

at least, that's my take on it. What do you guys feel about rogues galleries in Marvel, DC, and beyond?

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## Neil Kapit

You raise a good point about the best rogues demonstrating a dark mirror of the hero's personality and conflicts. I also think that diversity is important; the best rogues galleries have villains who have an emotional connection to the hero in a variety of distinct ways.

Having said that, my favorite Rogues' Gallery is Iron Man's, even though he's rarely considered to have the best villains. This is probably because his arch-nemeses are either painfully dated and sometimes racists (Mandarin, Titanium Man, Crimson Dynamo) or already dead (Obadiah Stane, Justin Hammer). However, there's a unique conflict inherent in Tony's villains that you don't see in other rogues' galleries, because the best Iron Man villains tend to be closer to Tony than he'd like to admit. Tony's story is about becoming better, about atoning for sins and improving oneself and one's world, and helping the rest of the world do so. Which means that his villains tend to either indulge themselves in their vices, use their advanced weapons technology for dangerous ends, and put their own needs above the consequences of their actions to others--all things Tony himself has done. Even the villains like the Ghost who don't share Tony's background at all have some of his former childishness, as the Ghost's anti-corporate terrorism is just as shallow and destructive and answer as the Mandarin's fascism-- destroying everything rather than trying to control everything still eliminates the chance for genuine growth and progress.

(There's also the fact that Tony's power set as Iron Man makes him nearly unbeatable against most bad guys, so the best Iron Man villains find creative ways to get to him. The aforementioned Ghost has intangibility and invisibility, powers which made him such a great assassin that he literally had Tony sleeping in his armor out of fear in his first appearance. Obadiah Stane was just a regular human with a chess fetish and a David Bowie wardrobe in his first appearance, but he figured out Tony's greatest weaknesses and cruelly hit him through there. The Mandarin draws on alien technology beyond Tony's initial understanding, and placed in the hands of a petty warlord. Even a genius in a power suit that gives him superhuman strength, durability, flight, sensors, and more weapons than most nations has reason to worry).

As for the worst Rogue's Gallery, I'd sadly have to go with the X-Men's, for becoming so unbelievably bloated with random and arbitrary characters that really don't have anything to do with the characters. Certainly the appeal of the more famous villains like Magneto, the Sentinels, Apocalypse, Sabretooth, the Hellfire Stryker, etc. is obvious, but Mojo? Selene? The Phalanx? Breakworld? Vulcan? The Brood? Stories and villains that were once interesting diversions from the main storyline somehow became recurring foes themselves, reflecting how cluttered the entire franchise became.

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## Mormel

Very much inclined to agree on both counts, Neil.

The X-Men's rogues gallery has gone up and down with the addition of very odd choices for villains from pretty much the very beginning. For every Magneto, you had a Lucifer. Strange villains like Mekano, Grotesk, and the Mutant Master certainly didn't help give the X-Men a clear purpose (as a book) in the Silver Age.
I'd say their rogues gallery was at its strongest in the early to mid 1980s. That was when Claremont was introducing all the female antagonists, like Callisto, Mystique, Deathstrike, and Deathbird, all very well-motivated. He had the Hellfire Club, which presented a new angle at how a majority-mutant villain group could operate if they actually already had access to all the wealth and resources that other villains (like the Brotherhood) were looking for; and Nimrod, the ultimate unstoppable mutant hunter. Most villains were tying into the X-Men's theme. But then you'd still have foes like the Brood or Arcade rearing their heads every once in a while, and while the Brood saga was excellent, it's a valid question whether or not they would be more suited as, say, Avengers enemies.

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## blackwidow12345

Or ................ if the superhero herself is a rogue. Ah, where would we be without Natasha having her own agenda most of the time. In her books, Natasha is the true rogue of Shield and I imagine a royal pain in the ass to Nick Fury at times. Being good and very bad, is very rogue to me.

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## CharlesM

It may seem obvious, but a good rogue's gallery needs to be comprised of actual villains. They need to be prone to excess, regardless of what their ambitions and objectives are. It could be greed, or ambition, or lust for power, or any of countless different things.

 They need to be colorful - and memorable. The Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin, even Cat Woman. All quite memorable. All easily identifiable. All very colorful.

Diversity is, indeed, very important, so that a given rogue's gallery isn't comprised of a bunch of clones. Variety is the spice of life. So, too, is it the spice of a good rogue's gallery. Variety helps to make them more interesting to the reader.

They must also be relevant. They must be able to challenge the superheroes and super heroines - whether physically, mentally, emotionally, or even spiritually. They should constitute a threat, not just to the heroes in question, but to those that matter to the heroes - whether at the individual level, or at the hero's city of residence. If they are not real threat to a hero, then it is boring. The connection simply isn't there.

The Legion of Superheroes have Mordru as a foil. Exceptionally powerful, seemingly unstoppable. Doctor Strange has Dormammu. The threat value is multiplied many fold over. Believable threats, threats that matter.

A good rogue's gallery must also be persistent. The make life difficult for our heroes, time after time after time. This persistence, this damnable recurring nature, it's at the crux of why we love them, of why we hate them. 

Ultimately, a good rogue's gallery brings out the very best - and the very worst - of our heroes.

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## Pinsir

The best rogues galleries that exist are those who were created by the creators of the hero

> most of Batman's villains were created by Bill Finger
> most of Spiderman's villains were created by Steve Dikto 
> WW had one of the best Golden Age rouges, they just were not taken care of after Marston died
> Superman, who lacks a well defined gallery does so because the Golden Age superman didn't fight supervillians all to much
> I think there might be some others (Shazam, FF), but I really am not sure who created what there

Exceptions would be X-Men and Batman is one of the few to have a bunch of successful additions (Poison Ivy, Harley, Pyg, Black Mask, Ras, etc)

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