10 Comics Villains Who CHEATED Their Powers

Supervillains are notoriously averse to playing by the rules, so it only stands to reason that they would regard their OWN rules with the same amount of consideration. That is to say none.

Cheating is a broad term, as there are many ways to cheat a system or a set of rules, especially when you're dealing with something as loose as superhero comics.

Showcased today are supervillains who manage to either find loopholes in the rules of their power set to address a weakness, gain increased power - or at least the appearance thereof - through illusions, betrayal or trickery, or outright disobey the established limits of their abilities.

A bit broader a category than usual, but seeing as how there are many ways rules can be cheated, the net cast here needs to be nice and wide in order to cover the most ground.

With that said, Here are the many times and many ways supervillains have managed to pull a fast one on their own powers.

One of the coolest villains from the 100% original rogues gallery of Batman Beyond was Spellbinder, whose whole schtick was being a more effective (if less versatile) Mysterio.

Spellbinder was a scientist who figured out how to build a machine that could induce near perfect hallucinations onto people, even making them forget what they were previously doing and genuinely think they are living the hallucination.

So obviously he used this tech to get rich. First by straight up turning teenagers into hypnotized slaves to do his dirty work and then take the fall, next by realizing "oh wait I can just siphon money off of them by making VR headsets that don't suck and charging them for the privilege!"

What puts Spellbinder on this list is his dramatic flare which belongs to all Gothamites by birthright leading him to hide his science based powers behind a façade of mysticism, hence the all-spiral onesie costume and the hypnosis device made to look like a large magic eyeball.