6 Outrageously Offensive Comic Book Supervillains
In my journey to get to know some crazy obscure comic book characters (some of which you can read about here, here and here), I came across some really interesting villains that can be considered ridiculously offensive and distasteful by some people. The first one I came across was Marvel’s Armless Tiger-Man, and that sent me on the hunt to look for more. I came across six in total that also kind of shocked me and made me laugh.
Comic book publishers have always been under pressure to create comic book villains, and in the process they pushed through some that were clearly bad ideas. Here are six of them for you to check out. I'm sure some of you have already heard of some of these, but here they are:
Armless Tiger Man - Disabled Villain
Armless Tiger Man was introduced in Marvel Comics the 1940s. His real name is Eric Hertz, and he worked in a mechanical laboratory in Germany. His arms ended up being caught in a machine and were ripped off. He developed a strong hatred for machines because of that bad experience, and started working on building strength in his mouth and legs. He even sharpened his teeth into fangs for weapons, and his above average strength allows him to bend steel with his mouth. His toes are also very dexterous, allowing him to throw daggers with them.
The Nazis would send him on missions to America where he would destroy machines with his feet in an attempt to sabotage America’s war effort. Marvel lists his weakness as being handicapped due to his lack of arms. He was very resourceful with what he had, though!
Snowflame - Snorts Cocaine for Increased Power
“I am Snowflame! Every cell of my being burns with white-hot ecstasy. Cocaine is my God -- and I am the human instrument of its will!”
DC Comics came up with this brilliant idea for a villain named Snowflame. He’s a Columbian drug lord, and the more cocaine that he used, the more powerful he became. He had superhuman strength, speed, pyrokinesis, he was immune to pain, and if someone just touched him, that person would get a contact high. He even had an army of coke-head henchmen.
DC Comics lists his weakness as being a drug addict, but if the drug is actually making him more powerful, how is that that a weakness?
Floronic Man - Made of Marijuana
DC Comics seemed to have a thing for creating supervillains that are powered by drugs. The Floronic Man - also known as the Plant Master, Floro, and The Seeder - is a plant/human character crossbreed in the DC universe to fight the Atom. The character was originally an exile from an inter-dimensional world, and he used his advanced botanical knowledge to control plant growth in an attempt to take over the world.
The character was eventually revamped in a Batman storyline in which his head is decapitated. A group of scientists manage to keep his head alive, and the first thing he comes in contact with is marijuana. That marijuana regenerates his body, so his body is now literally made of cannabis. He’s basically a big pot plant with a human old man head.
At one point, the character takes some of Poison Ivy's DNA so he could create a pot child that would help him rule the world.
Hate-Monger - A Hitler Clone with a Racism Gun
So in 1963, 20 years after WWII ended, Stan Lee thought it would be a good idea to clone Hitler and turn him into a villain called the Hate-Monger. He was a purple KKK hooded racist, and was cloned with the real Hitler's consciousness, which was transferred into the clone body upon his death. He didn’t have any super villain powers, just a special gun called the Hate Ray, which literally shoots out rays of hate, causing people to fight each other. He used it against the Fantastic Four once, and they beat the living shit out of each other.
According to Wiki, The Hate Ray “affects the centers of the human brain controlling emotions so as to stimulate and magnify the victims' feelings of dread, fear, and anger to unreasonable levels, including repressed or subconscious sentiments of this kind. The hate-ray can also transform feelings of love into equally strong or perhaps even stronger hatreds.”
Over the years, Hitler’s consciousness has been transferred into one person's body after another - Hate-Monger II, Edmund Heidler, and Josh Glenn. So Hitler has been making his way through the Marvel universe for some time.
Because he was basically Hitler, the Hate-Monger was a smart strategist and a charismatic leader who was able to incite fanatical loyalty to him through his rhetoric and persuasive personality.
Egg Fu - Every Asian Stereotype as a Big Egg
I don’t know what DC Comics was smoking when they created Egg Fu in 1965. Actually, scratch that, I do know what they were smoking. Egg Fu is a super evil genius and former communist agent that pretty much embodies every Asian stereotype. He would speak in broken "Engrish" like Charlie Chan, use his mustaches as whips when he fought, and for some reason he was so freakin’ huge!
Egg Fu was one of Wonder Woman’s villains, and in his first story arc, the villain attempts to take down a U.S. Navy fleet by blowing it up with a missile…with Wonder Woman’s boyfriend, Steve Trevor, strapped to it. This is just one of those characters that left me scratching my head and asking myself, “why?”
He-She - A Hermaphrodite Criminal
"The deadliest of the species is the female! The strongest of the species is the male! Combine these with the killer instinct and you have the most cunning, the most vicious, the most fiendish killer of all time!"
All I can say is...wow! Here we have a half-man, half-woman villain who who uses her "power" (?) of being both a boy and girl to commit devious crimes. Like this one time, He-She tricked a woman into marrying him/her to de-fraud her of money!
He-She basically uses the "she" half to seduce people with her charm, and then the "he" half comes in and kills those people with his manly strength. It’s absolutely hilarious to me that her whole strategy consists of only being seen from the right angle and using a high-pitched female voice to lure his/her victims in.
Information sources: Marvel Wiki and DC Wiki.
UPDATE: It was brought to my attention that there is an identical list to this on Cracked.com. That is completely unintentional. I guess these six villains make up the definitive list of most offensive supervillains out there.