10 Least Practical Super Villain Designs

In Captain America Comics issue #63 Asbestos Lady gets her origin story. The year was 1947. It was a gentler time, where no one understood the dangers of asbestos and Torch and Toro are up to such quaint activities as watching the brutal hanging of a man they'd helped arrest. The Human Torch is in no way put out by watching a man killed in front of them and pleasantly says, "Well, that ends THAT case."

Because everyone is distracted by the (as the comic puts it) "high pitch of excitement" of getting to watch a man hung, no one notices another spectator... the dead man's sister. It is in those moments of watching her brother's death that Victoria decides to take revenge against the Human Torch. What does the brilliant scientist invent to help her in this task? An outfit made of asbestos.

There's a lot wrong with this villain's design: the strange mask that from the back looks like a bridal vial, but from the front leaves her eyes and neck vulnerable to flame - or the fact that no matter how flame retardant she is, the world around her is not. This makes it easy to do things like melt the asphalt she stands on to trap her in place.

The biggest problem is, of course, that her outfit is made of asbestos. Yes, she is in theory nonflammable into the 900 degree Celsius range, but much good that's going to do if she dies from cancer.