Although the principle has been moulded in recent times, when you open a comic book (or watch a comic book film), it's usually a given that - at the end of the day - the villain will lose, and the hero will win. All that matters is the scale of the victory.
It’s fair to say that there've been plenty of comic book villains out there who've had to deal with their fair share of humiliating defeats over the years. Whether it be through the simple act of underestimating their opponent, or falling victim to a particularly dastardly writer, evildoers on both sides of the Marvel-DC divide have fallen victim to defeats so great that they'll be in no rush to remember.
It's not just the unpowered who've managed to get humiliated either - some of DC and Marvel's most powerful tyrants have been taken down by the most unlikely of sources, some super-powered, others not.
But what are the worst of the worst? The takedowns so savage that even the strongest of healing factors would struggle to repair them? From rodent-based attacks to street side muggings, here are the defeats that left even the strongest of villains feeling very, very small.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
