6. Ozymandias
A member of, and arguably the leader of, the Watchmen, Adrian Veidt is a genius super-villain posing as a superhero in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' celebrated classic, Watchmen. Veidt spends the book working behind the scenes, killing off the heroes while Nite Owl and Rorshach investigate the murders as the doomsday clock ticks closer to midnight. Veidt has an odd outfit, modelled upon his admiration for Alexander the Great. The headband and gauntlets belonged to Alexander, who spent his short life trying to unify the ancient world, a goal Veidt adopts in Watchmen, as he tries to avoid nuclear annihilation by creating a unifying event all the peoples of the world can get behind. He has the classic super-villain mindset of doing terrible things with a belief that the end justifies the means. What is the death of a few million when it's to save a few billion? His calm demeanour and pseudo-rational explanations make him all the more disturbing as he talks matter-of-factly about genocide, perhaps in the same tone of voice that Hitler once did, ie. that of a sociopath. His actions and aims seem truly insane but does he find redemption in the end? Ozymandias is a complex and engaging super-villain who is made all the more interesting for originally starting out as a hero and becoming the worst villain in the Watchmen world.