100 Greatest Comic Book Villains Of All Time

67. Ma Gnucci

Ma GnucciFIRST APPEARANCE: THE PUNISHER: WELCOME BACK FRANK #4 (2000) Isabella Carmela Magdalena 'Ma' Gnucci, matriarch and head of the infamous Gnucci Crime Family, is one nasty old bitch! Along with her brother Dino and three sons, Eddie, Bobbie and Carlo, Ma controls much of New York City's organised crime underworld. Despite having half the city's officials in her back pocket, Ma is unable to prevent her boys meeting grizzly fates at the hands of a recently returned Frank Castle, aka The Punisher. In retaliation, she hires 3 assassins to take out the man in the skull t-shirt, but they are no match for Frank. With her back against the wall, Ma and her remaining henchmen track The Punisher to Central Park Zoo, but things just don't go to plan, and Ma is thrown into a pit of Polar Bears who decide to chow down on her arms and legs. Yummy. This wouldn't be enough to kill the tough old bird though; instead she is apparently burned to death in her own mansion when her henchmen abandon her to The Punisher in one final showdown. Dead or alive, Ma Gnucci is one of our all time favourite female villains.

66. Junior aka That Yellow Bastard

Yellow BastardFIRST APPEARANCE: SIN CITY, THAT YELLOW BASTARD If some of the above choices haven't been sick enough, how about That Yellow Bastard from the justifiably acclaimed Sin City series? Now, he was one truly sick dude! Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Junior Roark was the son of a highly powerful and corrupt US Senator who raped and abused young (pre-pubescent) girls just for the Hell of it. When he abducts 11-year-old Nancy Callahan, Roark falls onto the radar of good cop John Hartigan, who makes it his personal mission to rescue Junior's latest victim. When Hartigan eventually finds little Nancy, he sets about dismantling her captor by shooting off any body part he may have used to hurt his victims, finishing with his genitals. But this is the world of comics, and so young Roark survives, frames Hartigan for Nancy's rape, and has him thrown in jail, branded a paedophile. Cut to several years later and Roark is at it again, however this time he's hideously mutated from experimental surgery to regrow his balls - thus That Yellow Bastard is born. With Hartigan seemingly out of the picture, Junior again abducts Nancy Callahan - now a woman, and exotic dancer - but he has underestimated his old adversary, and is soon castrated once more (this time by hand), before finally being killed once and for all. A fitting end to a truly iconic but vile comic book villain.

65. Hush

1175326-hush2FIRST APPEARANCE: BATMAN #609 (2003) Much like Batman himself, Thomas Elliott doesn't have any supernatural superpowers, but has poured much time and many resources into trying to match the Caped Crusader's level of all-round skill. A childhood friend of Bruce's, he too has suffered through the loss of his parents, his father in a car accident, while his mother was smothered to death at his own hand for cutting him out of the family inheritance. Elliot taught Bruce much of what he knows about strategy and investigation, allowing Hush to get into Batman's head like few other adversaries. Hush is also a genius surgeon, notably fixing Harvey Dent's burned face in one comic, and also performing complicated surgery on himself, such as altering his appearance to resemble Bruce Wayne. Though Elliot did eventually gain access to his family's funds - and therefore enjoy a similar level of freedom to Bruce - this was eventually taken away when Catwoman fleeced him into poverty. If there's any Batman character that needs to be adapted to the screen, this is it.
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