10 Bad Comic Book Villains Who Were Still Better Than Steppenwolf

Few movie franchises have the same calibre of villainy to live up as the Superman series. Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor, Terrence Stamp's General Zod: even if we disregard the superhero movie label, these are bad guys for the ages. How could subsequent films hope to deliver comparable adversaries for the Last Son of Krypton?

Answer: they really couldn't. Plenty could be said against Robert Vaughn's Luthor-lite Ross Webster in Superman III, but no Superman villain is quite so legendarily awful as Superman IV's Nuclear Man. The musclebound Mark Pillow was plucked from obscurity to go up against Christopher Reeve in the Cannon-produced, eco-conscious sequel which proved to be the final nail in the coffin of the initial series.

It's not really Mark Pillow's fault. The whole enterprise is so mishandled and cut-price (we're supposed to accept Milton Keynes as Metropolis, for crying out loud), and the mere idea of a solar-powered evil Superman is so absurd, we'd have been laughing no matter who they put in the black-and-gold suit.

Giving him Gene Hackman's voice, however, is the hair that break's the camel's back and sends the whole thing headfirst into self-parody. Again though, it may be ridiculous, but it's certainly memorable.