10 Massively Underrated Marvel Villains

One of the world's top mercenaries, Taskmaster has the ability to instantly learn and mimic any fighting styles that he sees.

Taskmaster is one of the few villains who doesn't really have a personal grudge against a particular hero (he does have a mostly friendly rivalry with Deadpool though) and will happily take a job from anyone as long as it pays well.

While he does take jobs himself, Taskmaster's main role is to train the next generation of henchman at his academy. He has had numerous successes, training both villains like Crossbones and Spymaster and heroes like US Agent and Spider-Woman. However, he also knows that many of his students are destined for the life of a low-level thug and so deliberately laces their food with intelligence-reducing drugs.

For a long time, Taskmaster's origins were unknown. In his own miniseries, it was revealed that even Taskmaster himself didn't know. His surprisingly tragic backstory is that he was a SHIELD agent called Tony Masters who took an experimental serum that boosted his brain's learning potential. Unfortunately, his increased muscle memory came at the complete loss of his explicit memory and he can no longer remember important details about his life.

Taskmaster has never made it into the villain big leagues, but he has remained a fan-favourite among comic readers.