Comic books are a tricky thing to master. You have to pull your audience in with a brilliant story, armed to the teeth with enough truly interesting characters for the casual reader to stick with it, as opposed to heading to see the same story in a TV or film adaptation. In a way, there's still very much a stigma about reading comics; it can be seen as somewhat juvenile, a throwback to being a child again. Such a stigma is especially attached to the staple stories of the comic format: superhero tales. Yes we have all the dark and delightful characters well known from the DC universe. And yes, we have the wondrous and light-hearted Marvel creations, but some characters managed to slip through the quality control net. What follows is a select few of what I believe to be the most ridiculous characters ever conceived between the pages of a comic book.
5. Dreadlox
That right there is what can only be described as a misguidedly silly and teensy bit racist stereotype of a supervillain. Dreadlox is infected with an alien bacteria, giving her the power to strike terror into her enemies by creating visions of their deepest fears. She also happens to sport some eponymous dreadlocks, whilst wearing a white catsuit which bares an uncomfortable resemblance to stereotypical disco attire. Enormous and utterly function-free collar very much present. Comics have never really had an easy relationship with racism; all too many villains are some degree of un-American, whether that's being actually foreign or simply not being as white as Abraham W. Roosevelt, and Dreadlox is the perfect example of this. We could forgive the pun of a name, and to some extent, the costume (she is a comic book female character, remember), but it's when you look a little closer at her details that you squirm a little. Before being infected (itself not a glorious way to achieve superhuman abilities), Dreadlox was a homeless vagrant sheltering in a basement in Phoenix, probably not an encouraging back story for one of the very few black characters present in the Marvel universe. Add to this that some of her powers include mystical healing and youth-restoring abilities, which sounds suspiciously like voodoo, if you ask me. Oh dear...