6 Times Comics Made Great Villains Terrible
How do you ruin the Joker? Put him in everything.
Take a look back through the last few decades of superhero funny books and you'll find an abundance of once obscure supervillains who benefitted from a modern makeover. A lot of the time these characters were underwritten, overly-gimmicky or just a complete joke, but with enough thorough love and care, they became icons of the genre in their own right.
However, not every supervillain has benefited from a timely reappraisal. Some of the most unfortunate, sadly, can end up with their legacies being tarnished, whether because they were brought back after going out with a bang, were oversaturated to the point of frustration or even suffered the wrath of a retcon gone wrong.
Some of the more iconic evil-doers are of course able to recover from such setbacks (the Joker will never not be popular), but quite a few aren't so lucky, with some of the most egregious moments in the medium lingering long after the issues themselves have come to pass.
This goes double for some of the genre's most famous antagonists, who, having once enjoyed beloved status in the medium, ended up with the kind of reputation that tainted their future escapades. Here are the worst of the worst...