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[[quoteright:350:[[ComicBook/XMen https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/evil_mutants.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Is it ever a wonder why they were demonized for [[WellIntentionedExtremist fighting against mutant oppression?]]]]

-> ''The ComicBook/SilverSurfer met his latest and greatest enemy this year: A tyrant named Tyrant. And wasn't it only last year that ComicBook/XFactor was fighting nasty boys called the Nasty Boys? Next year, Marvel heroes will battle all-new characters named Villain, The Bad Guys, The Antagonist, The Opponent, The Legion of Enemies, Mister Naughty, and The Incredible Do-Badder.''
-->-- '''Marvel Year in Review 1993'''

* ''Franchise/TheDCU'':
** In Rick Veitch's early-2000s run of ''ComicBook/{{Aquaman}}'', the titular hero confronts his archnemesis (and murderer of his son), Black Manta, and, after defeating him, uses his new magic powers to re-wire his brain and cure him of his autism; the painful and incompetent treatment he received as a child was part of why he'd become such an insane monster. He appears to turn himself around, but the apparent FreudianExcuse and HeelFaceTurn are subverted when, at a critical moment, Manta stabs Aquaman in the back and explains: "Y'see, deep down, in my most secret heart of hearts, I'm still a totally depraved sonuvabitch whose main goal in life is to watch you die. Slowly and painfully. [[KickTheDog Just like your kid]]."
** ''ComicBook/{{Batman}}'': [[Characters/BatmanTheJoker The Joker]] once identified himself to ComicBook/BlackCanary as "genuine, card-carrying, lock-me-up-throw-away-the-key lunatic!" It sparked a letter column debate (remember those?) about whether or not insane people could recognize themselves as being insane -- in any case, the Joker has been shown several times to be fully aware of being crazy (the plot of ''ComicBook/TheKillingJoke'' hangs on this very fact). Incidentally, the Joker is often seen [[PlayingCardMotifs carrying Joker playing cards]], very much playing this trope literally.
** ''ComicBook/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'':
*** As a ShadowArchetype of ComicBook/{{Batman}} (his parents were criminals killed by the police), Prometheus' stated goal is to "annihilate the forces of justice."
*** PlayedForLaughs in one ''ComicBook/JusticeLeague2011'' [[https://comicnewbies.com/2015/01/09/the-justice-league-arrests-the-secret-society/ issue]]:
---->'''Captain Marvel:''' One of you actually carved "Secret Society of Super-Villains" into your table?\\
'''Cyborg:''' My bet's on Doctor Alchemy.
** The ComicBook/LegionOfSuperHeroes is opposed by an EvilCounterpart LegionOfDoom called... the Legion of Super-Villains.
** ''ComicBook/NewGods'': [[Characters/NewGodsDarkseid Darkseid]] openly admits to being a GodOfEvil and that he [[DystopiaJustifiesTheMeans desires to crush all happiness and free will in the universe]].
** {{Justified|Trope}} with the ''ComicBook/{{Supergirl}}'' villain Satan Girl (self-named, mind you). Being Kara Zor-El's EvilTwin, she's basically [[TheHeartless dark desires and impulses made flesh]] with no conscience to hold them back, so she delights in evil for the sake of evil.
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: Eviless has no tragic backstory or other sympathy garnering details. She just likes control, murder and corrupting people.
* ''Franchise/MarvelUniverse'':
** The Purple Man (usually an enemy of ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}'') gets this treatment in ''ComicBook/{{Alias}}'', with a disturbing {{justifi|edTrope}}cation -- [[MetaGuy he's seemingly aware that he and the other characters are in a comic book]], and thus fully aware that he's a villain. Given that he's a psychopath with mind-controlling powers, this is a very bad thing for anyone and everyone he comes across.
--->''"[[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/515feeeb927be83e64cd1e4375f8ecfb.jpg Well, I am the bad guy.]]"''
** The [[UsefulNotes/TheGoldenAgeOfComicBooks very first]] appearance of ComicBook/CaptainAmerica's archenemy, the [[Characters/MarvelComicsRedSkull Red Skull]], had him exit stage left saying "I'll be back -- with ''more murder!''" {{Subverted|Trope}}, however, in that as early as UsefulNotes/{{the Silver Age|OfComicBooks}}, he became increasingly more of an ideologically sincere [[NotSoWellIntentionedExtremist Nazi true believer]], as opposed to a merely power-hungry or randomly evil villain. His modern characterization fluctuates between card-carrying villainy and outright self-righteous KnightTemplar behavior, DependingOnTheWriter.
** As revealed in ''ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}'', [[ComicBook/{{Daredevil}} Bullseye]]'s childhood ambition was "to be the bad guy". In contrast, Deadpool's was to [[{{Cloudcuckoolander}} make a suit out of meat and fight somebody in it]].
** During ''ComicBook/DarkReign'', Creator/MarvelComics introduced Zodiac, a guy who killed every single member of an old supervillain team with the same name so he wouldn't be confused with them. Zodiac plots about the fall of [[Characters/MarvelComicsNormanOsborn Norman Osborn]]. Why? Because he finds [[VillainWithGoodPublicity Osborn's new position]] an insult to all who just wants to commit evil for its own sake, like himself.
** ''ComicBook/FantasticFour'': {{Subverted|Trope}} by Characters/DoctorDoom. [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast The name he uses]] and [[TinTyrant manner in which he dresses]] at first glance gives the impression that he's making no bones about the fact that he's a supervillain, but he's so egotistical that he actually thinks of himself as a fair and wise ruler. And DependingOnTheAuthor, he actually ''is'', at least when it comes to his [[EvenEvilHasLovedOnes home country of Latveria]].
** PlayedForLaughs in G. Willow Wilson's run of ''ComicBook/MsMarvel'', where the villainous henchman Doyle wears (in addition to his "1985 hair and a laser gun") a sleeveless shirt with "IMA BAD GUY" on it.
** Dirk Anger, Director of H.A.T.E in ''Comicbook/{{Nextwave}}''.
--->''"I'm older'n you. I'm ninety years old. You want to know how I look so pretty? I take drugs. Special H.A.T.E. drugs. Life-extending drugs. H.A.T.E. has the best drugs because H.A.T.E. loves me. And I love H.A.T.E. Every day of my horrible drug-extended terrorist-fighting life. Every day I smoke two hundred cigarettes and one hundred cigars and drink a bottle of whiskey and three bottles of wine with dinner. And dinner is meat. '''Raw''' meat. The cook serves me an entire animal and I fight it bare-handed and tear off what I want and eat it and have the rest buried. In New Jersey! For H.A.T.E.!"''
** Contagion, the villain of the first arc of ''ComicBook/{{Wolverine}}: The Best There Is''.
--->''"I am not the hero in my own story. I am the bad guy. I have no [[WellIntentionedExtremist end in mind that justifies my means]]. There are no skeletons in my closet, [[FreudianExcuseDenial no abusive childhood or inciting misery that might expiate my vile behavior]]. Nor am I insane. I know the difference between good and evil. And I am fully capable of empathizing with the pain, emotional or physical, of others. No [[TheSociopath sociopath]], I. Rather, I simply prefer bad over good. Wrong over right. Dirty over clean. Sick over healthy. Untrue over true."''
** ''ComicBook/XMen'':
*** [[Characters/MarvelComicsSabretooth Sabretooth]] thinks himself a violent, animalistic savage who lives only to hunt and kill, and is ''very'' proud of this fact. He does [[AxCrazy a very good]] [[PsychoForHire job at living]] [[ImAHumanitarian up to this]].
*** [[Characters/MarvelComicsMagneto Magneto]]'s early characterization made him a prime example of this. Most (in)famously in his guest appearance in ''WesternAnimation/TheFantasticFour1978'', but really, that is only slightly more over-the-top than he was in the comics. When the [[SycophanticServant Toad]] or the [[TokenGoodTeammate Scarlet Witch]] would profess their loyalty to him, he would usually sneer something to the effect that he did not want followers motivated by fickle love and devotion, but rather fear and blind obedience. He unironically called his team the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants as well. This is a major source of EarlyInstallmentWeirdness; there's ''no'' trace of the WellIntentionedExtremist who sees himself as a protector of mutants who regrets the necessity of fighting his poor misguided old friend [[FirstNameBasis Charles]] (and needless to say, the sight of Mags working ''with'' the X-Men would make a sixties fan think this must be a MirrorUniverse storyline). Later stories either just call them "The Brotherhood" or "The Brotherhood of Mutants", or keep the name but make it a ThenLetMeBeEvil thing: "No matter what we try, you've decided all mutants are evil for being different? So be it, we'll ''give'' you evil mutants!" But in TheSixties, they were straight-up capital-E Evil and proud of it.
---->'''Magneto:''' Loyalty! '''Bah!''' I rule by '''fear''' alone!
*** One version of the Brotherhood working for the U.S. Government and led by Mystique takes a smart idea and calls itself by the innocuous moniker "Freedom Force".
*** In TheNineties, when X-Men writer Creator/StanLee was asked why Magneto called his group "Evil Mutants", responded with this:
---->''"He didn't -- I did! It was just one of the many typically boneheaded decisions I've been known to make! If I had to do it all over again, I'd probably call them 'The Brotherhood of Exceedingly Nice and Well-Mannered Mutants'."''
*** The same goes for the Alliance of Evil, though they're from TheEighties. UsefulNotes/{{The Silver Age|OfComicBooks}} well over, there were still bad guys who weren't shy about letting the world know they were bad guys. They worked for [[Characters/MarvelComicsApocalypse Apocalypse]], ''himself'' someone who fit on this list at the time (day-one Apocalypse was basically day-one Magneto with BoldInflation, filling the "mutant supremacist card-carrying BigBad" void that Magsy left once [[CharacterizationMarchesOn characterization marched on]]). He ''definitely'' didn't call himself ''helping'' the world (Apocalypse considers [[TheSocialDarwinist removing the weak and forcing the strong to adapt and get stronger]] to be beneficial). Why does ''he'' keep an evil-for-evil's-sake sounding name? If he deemed you worthy of giving an answer to, he'd remind you that the word originally meant "revelation".
*** Sauron, the a SuperpoweredEvilSide of a man afflicted with an exotic type of energy vampirism, just can't shut up about how evil he is. In fact, upon first transforming, he immediately names himself Sauron in order to emulate what he saw as literature's greatest evil.
---->''"And, I choose -- '''Evil!''' An evil so ''great''... so ''monumental'' that only ''one name'' in all the annals of literature will ''contain'' it! The name of ''Tolkien's'' ultimate villain... that dark lord who ''personified'' evil... who was truly ''evil incarnate''...! The name of '''Sauron!'''"''
* Set, the apparent leader of [[TheSyndicate the Order]] in ''ComicBook/{{Invincible}}'' spinoff ''Guarding The Globe''. In an issue released the same week as the issue in which Contagion makes the speech in his entry, Set begins a meeting of The Order with this:
-->''"I've heard it said, everyone is the hero of their own story. The thought is that even the most vile villain believes his actions to be right and thinks of himself as 'good'. I am here to tell you, right now, that I am evil. I am greedy, selfish, I do not care for the plight of others."''
* ''ComicBook/TwoThousandAD'':
** In ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'':
*** Pa Angel is openly trying to raise his sons to be the "meanest, orneriest, baddiest bunch a' men that ever lived." The boys are only too happy to learn from him.
*** Chief Judge Cal, an exemplar TyrantTakesTheHelm [[TheCaligula Caligula]], proudly calls himself "a tyrant's tyrant".
*** {{Subverted|Trope}} by the Dark Judges. Their name and appearance might be a dead give-away, but they are even more of a KnightTemplar than Judge Dredd.
** ''ComicBook/{{Zombo}}'': Shadow President [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Jason van Satan]], who makes no light of the fact that he's the most evil man on Earth.
* ''ComicBook/JurassicStrikeForceFive'' has [[BigBad Master Zalex]], a large, threatening villain who wears all black, has red eyes, and spends all of his time trying to cause as much destruction as possible in his conquest to rule the universe.
* [[ComicBook/{{Miracleman}} Kid Miracleman]]/Marvelman displays this trope when he goes over the edge. Moments after starting his slaughter-spree, he [[BecauseYouWereNiceToMe spares the life of a nurse who had been kind to him]]. He returns a moment later, saying "They'd only say I was going soft...", and pulverises the top of her skull with a blast of his eye-beams.
* Herr Starr of ''ComicBook/{{Preacher}}'' starts out as a KnightTemplar, but, in the end, admits, however unrepentantly, that he's become a "monster" obsessed with hatred and revenge.
* ''Queen of the Universe'': [[http://www.eyebeam.com/Queen1991/index.php?num=278 Dober-Man]].
* ''ComicBook/RequiemVampireKnight'' takes place in a Hell-like dimension where anybody who is somebody in this place embraces evil wholeheartedly. For example, the most depraved and evil people in history reincarnate as vampires and they form the top hierarchy of society, having completely embraced their twisted nature. The Dystopians are lizard-people who committed terrible crimes in name of colonialism and greed, the mummies were scientists who created disastrous experiments and so forth. The ghouls are exception to this, since they were people that committed crimes in [[WellIntentionedExtremist name of the greater good]] and as such, feel like they don't deserve being in Hell for it, and are looked down by the vampires as inferior beings because they are [[AtLeastIAdmitIt unrepentant about their crimes]].
* In ''ComicBook/UsagiYojimbo'', Noriko calls herself "the Blood Princess."
* Ava Lord from the ''ComicBook/SinCity'' story "A Dame to Kill For" identifies herself as evil in her EvilGloating speech to Dwight [=McCarthy=], who she has just manipulated into [[spoiler:murdering her husband Damien so that she can inherit his money]]:
-->'''Ava:''' [[YoureInsane Insane?]] Ha! That's so easy, so convenient -- and so wrong. Crazy people push shopping carts down the streets and talk nonsense. Crazy people sit in padded cells and soil their pants. A madwoman couldn't have pulled this off. No. There's a word for what I am, but nobody uses it anymore. Nobody wants to see the simple truth. If they did, they'd kill [[TheSociopath people like me]] as soon as we revealed ourselves. But they don't. They close their eyes and blather about psychology and say that nobody is truly evil. That's why I've won. That's why I always win.
* In the very first issue of ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'', there is a sign on Robotnik's desk which reads "Dr. Robotnik: Supreme Dictator, Industrial Polluter, Megalomaniac, Corrupt Politician, Underhanded Reprobate, Rain Forest Ravager, [[BadPeopleAbuseAnimals Puppy Kicker]], Oil Spill Coordinator, Holiday Hater, Insurance Salesman. Rights violated while U wait!"
* ComicBook/{{Supreme}}'s arch-enemy Darius Dax delights in being evil for the sake of being evil.
* In ''ComicBook/TransformersGeneration2'', Starscream ends up begging Optimus Prime to take the Matrix back, as he ''doesn't want to be good!''.
* Doctor Wyspa, [[ComicBook/WilqSuperbohater Wilq's]] arch-nemesis.
* Later issues of ''ComicBook/SavageDragon'' have {{subverted|Trope}} this a bit with the new Overlord referring to his team (the Vicious Circle) simply as the Circle. Since there are a number of similarities between Magneto's Brotherhood and Overlord's Circle, it's arguable that one is in response to the other.
* In ''ComicBook/{{Violine}}'', Muller boasts about how much of a bad guy he is, even claiming this is what [[spoiler:makes him survive his apparent death]]. The corrupt board executives of the company exploiting Africans in Zongo also know they do bad things, but don't care and delight in it.
* ''ComicBook/{{Oxymoron}}'': Oxymoron announces his presence to the people of Swanstown through a live news broadcast by calling himself "a very bad man" and "[[Theatre/MuchAdoAboutNothing a plain-dealing villain]]".
* "Stinky", one half of a villainous duo in ''ComicBook/{{Bone}}'', continually insists that as monsters they should be ''acting'' like monsters. That his [[HeterosexualLifePartners comrade]] "Smelly" is [[TrademarkFavouriteFood addicted to quiche]] is a matter of constant frustration for him.
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