10 Widely Mocked Comic Book Villains That Get A Bad Press
2. The Wrecking Crew (Marvel)
First Appearance: Defenders vol. 1, #1, 1974 (as a team anyway) The Wrecking Crew are generally presented as a group of complete morons intent on fairly low-level thuggery, but that is a far cry from what their ambitions should be, considering their power. They were formed when Dirk Garthwaite the man known as "the Wrecker" and the teams leader was approached in prison by a man named Dr. Eliot Franklin and asked to retrieve a gamma bomb which Franklin had designed himself. The intent was to ransom New York for millions of dollars using the bomb, and Garthwaite recruited his former crime associates as his team-mates to help him complete this task. Garthwaite had previously been a violent but petty criminal who had earned his name by demolishing his crime scenes with his trademark crowbar, but gained his power when he was mistaken for Loki and given godly powers by the powerful Norn Queen, which are later distributed amongst his team-mates. These guys are Asgardian-level villains with a bunch of esoteric tricks at their disposal. The Wrecker himself has proven completely impervious to a sea of bullets being fired at him and has even knocked the Hulk out with a single punch. The Wrecker has a hate for Thor and he and his team-mates regularly clash with the Thunder God, though the fact that their power is shared between them means they are regularly overpowered by him individually. That said, they can absorb and project energy, generate forcefields around themselves, cast extremely convincing magical Illusions, mind control people and teleport (either from one place to another or between dimensions). If they used their more esoteric powers more regularly - which they are more than capable of doing - they could be a huge threat to the Marvel universe. However, as they are most often written as morons, they do not get the respect they deserve.
