When superhero comics first evolved from the pulp heroes, there were no supervillains. They fought mobsters, drug dealers, smugglers, cheating gamblers, and then the war happened. Once the Axis powers were defeated in World War II, a stronger villain was needed to make the heroes more interesting, and the mad scientists, alien invaders, and previously unknown underground and undersea worlds weren’t enough. Enter the supervillain, because a hero is only interesting if they have a good villain to challenge them.
Some villains can take on more than one hero. The Rhino started out as a Spider-Man foe, but he can also fight the Hulk. Kingpin usually challenges Spider-Man and Daredevil in comics and cartoons, but in live-action I don’t think Spider-Man’s ever met him. Doctor Doom fights pretty much every Marvel hero at least once. Even short-lived heroes like Solarman have tangled with him or one of his Doombots. Had they been left tied to the Marvel Universe outside of issue #3 and the Savage Land I’m pretty sure he would have even gone up against the Autobots. However, a villain usually serves as an opposite for the hero, challenging either a hero’s abilities or his moral center. Or both if you’re Lex Luthor. Loki has challenged Thor separately and the Avengers together even without Thor.
Below are two examples, one DC and one Marvel, of villains who debuted in the live-action hero universes recently, the only media Hollywood cares about, and how their debut was against the wrong hero. These villains, outside of an occasional appearance, were otherwise exclusive to a particular hero. Just not the one Marvel or DC Studios opted for because they think they’re smarter than the guys who created these characters or the fans who made the characters popular enough to be adapted in the first place by connecting to the characters under writers who cared about what they were doing.
The Villain: Black Adam
Some of you may not even realize Black Adam was supposed to BE a villain, thanks to his solo movie and more recent uses as an antihero. They even wanted to put him in the Justice League in the comics. That’s just ridiculous. An ancient sorcerer who was give superpowers because someone chose poorly, Teth Adam opted to conquer his not-Egypt homeland before having the superpowers stripped and sent into exile where his magic wouldn’t be of any use, either.
The Wrong Hero: Superman
I blame Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s wrestling heritage for this. Rocky Maivia was the legacy of two wrestlers, dad and grandad, before simply going by The Rock. When you’re a wrestler, you want the championship belt and the prestige that goes with it, even if your character didn’t rightfully earn it. That means you have to challenge the champ. In DC, that’s Superman, and at the time Henry Cavill’s Superman in particular. Whatever you thing of Snyder’s Superman, Cavill was easily accepted by DC fans as the Man Of Steel, so Johnson thought for his Black Adam to matter he should fight Superman. Instead, he got the Justice Society, which would have worked if the right hero had been included.
The Real Hero: Captain Marvel/Shazam
Black Adam isn’t even a DC character originally. In fact, he had one story in the comics and died in that same story. Remember Adam’s superpowers? They were the powers of the Wizard, Shazam. He abused those powers and the wizard exiled him. His powers weren’t completely removed, so his body never aged until he finally returned to Earth. There he challenged Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Freddy Freeman, who in the end managed to get him to say the magic word that turned him back to his old body…centuries old, so he just turned to dust. When DC bought the Fawcett heroes in a rather jerkish move if you know the history, they found out about the character and brought him back to be Captain Marvel’s opposite number, while Superman had General Zod or Bizarro to contend with. While two “Shazam” movies were made, following Geoff Johns “I’m going to use multiculturalism to remake the concept of the Marvel Family so I can get some of that sweet revenue” as their model, Johnson knew who the champ was and that’s the fight they wanted. Thankfully we never got there, but moviegoers still got the wrong impression of who Black Adam is supposed to be.
The Villain: The Mandarin
Now this one comes with an asterisk that in my opinion doesn’t matter. Marvel Studios didn’t even get the villain right, seeing as the director wanted to do a modern “wire-fu” movie (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) instead of a plain old martial arts movie, which meant giving the Mandarin a bunch of magic bracelets that just fire energy blasts or something. In the comics, the Mandarin was a pauper who found the spaceship of the alien dragon Fing Fang Foom. Using the crystals inside, he bonded them to ten rings, each having a different power instead of whatever the movie bracelets offered. It was less mystical martial arts and more sci-fi. The Mandarin was also a high-tech genius, and wanted to remind China that the Mandarins weren’t just the basis for naming a type of orange. He wants to return to those days, with him as ruler.
The Wrong Hero: Shang-Chi
I understand it, but it belongs on this list. Inspired by martial arts movies of the 1970s, like Bruce Lee pictures, Shang-Chi was the son of Fu Manchu. The problem with that wasn’t the “yellow menace” stereotype but that it was a licensed character, from a series of novels. Why Marvel wanted to tie them together is beyond me. Making the Mandarin his dad makes a bit of sense to a movie audience who doesn’t need to sit there and listen to a bunch of comic lore, but since the Mandarin’s rings were all wrong anyway I don’t think anyone would have cared if he was a new character. Comics daddy was renamed Zheng Zu, leader of the Si-Fan until Shang-Chi opted to kill his dishonorable father to save the world. The magic kung fu bracelets would have been inaccurate, but they got it wrong anyway.
The Right Hero: Iron Man (Tony Stark)
Here’s where the asterisk comes in. I know someone might bring up the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, or that for brevity and timeline stuff Tony’s origin villain was changed from Wong Chu to the “Ten Rings” cult. Except the Mandarin we met was a fake, since Marvel Studios didn’t want to have the white man challenging the guy from China so as not to upset the Chinese government and get the movies in theaters. (The movie failed, so being in China wasn’t much help, was it?) The real Mandarin…has technically never appeared in live-action, though the 90s cartoon, both the terrible first and great second, used him quite well, and other animated Iron Man media appearances followed. The Mandarin corrupts the science that Tony uses, even beating the hero more than once, with the space jewel rings being an advantage. While armored villains like Titanium Man or Crimson Dynamo challenge Iron Man, the Mandarin challenges Tony Stark. Except in the movies.
That’s two examples of villains designed with the hero in mind. Putting Mephisto’s debut in an Ironheart series was dumb, but at least he got around the Marvel universe, not just a Doctor Strange villain or something. Lex Luthor is Superman’s foe and Batman’s the Joker, but even when no team-up is involved they’ll occasionally tangle with the other heroes, but until you’ve established that universe’s version of either that’s a bad move. You can have villains in a shared universe threaten any hero, but understanding why a villain works when they’re created for a specific hero is important to make the villain interesting. Black Adam shouldn’t fight Superman just because he’s the DC Universe’s top hero and the Mandarin shouldn’t fight a simple martial artist simply because they’re both Chinese. These characters were created for a reason, and using them wrong loses your audience even if they aren’t aware of the history because opposite number villains especially serve a narrative purpose lost when they fight a different hero. Those connections matter, as we found out from the above examples. Neither movie did well enough for a sequel because nobody cared. The parings were wrong, and that makes for a bad match.
