Villain Decay / Comic Books

• Astro City: Noted in-universe with Karnazon, who started out robbing Fort Knox and ended up doing anything to defy Winged Victory just to prove the superiority of man over woman.
• Batman:
  • The Joker went through this after his introduction in the 1940s stories, with him becoming increasingly silly and less dangerous. 1973's "The Joker's Five Way Revenge" returned him to his original personality of scary sadistic madman. From then on there have been certain storylines that will ensure that the Joker may never suffer Villain Decay again if we keep going in this direction. Said decay, depending on which continuity you follow, has become a part of Joker's character: He can go from complete comic relief to a serious Straw Nihilist psychopath out of the grimmest and darkest of fiction, in an instant and, according to Grant Morrison, went through the decay because he likes to "reinvent" his act every so often.
  • As to the Batman (1966) show, it actually reversed the Villain Decay of a lot of villains; it didn't cause it. The Riddler and Mr. Freeze in the show might seem goofy today, but prior to the show both characters had only appeared in a handful of issues and the TV series is actually what established them as major rogues. They might have been silly, but that's better than being forgotten and forgettable, plus no bad guy on the show was quite the Harmless Villain they have been remembered as — it may have been light-hearted entertainment, but they did nearly kill Batman and Robin in various horrible and sadistic ways at the end of every other episode, after all. Especially the Mad Hatter, who, in the comic book introductory story that provided fodder for both of his televisual appearances, was merely an essentially harmless exotic hat collector who was not above stealing some of his prized treasures; whereas onscreen he sported an instant-knockout hat which he used to kidnap the jury that had previously convicted him, as well as planning Batman's demise on a specially-designed, vicious Conveyor Belt of Doom (managing to put Robin on it in the climactic scene).
  • Bane just might have it worse than the Joker. In his debut he uses a whole slew of preexisting villains as pawns and puts the Bat out of commission for a good chunk of time. He was subject to The Worf Effect a few times, but got the worst of it in adaptations, where he's usually relegated to the main villain's muscle, even when he's not Dumb Muscle.
  • In his first appearance, Victor Zsasz was a Serial Killer so dangerous that he had to be kept completely immobile while awake and a criminal mastermind so brilliant that Batman had to get himself committed to Arkham just to get close enough to figure out how Zsasz was seemingly killing from within the Asylum. Since then, he's been strictly villain-of-the-week material, or briefly served as The Brute to the latest Arc Villain.
  • In his earlier appearances, Killer Croc was so brutally strong he was able to manhandle and beat down Batman at his best in most confrontations. Over time, however, Batman's been able to beat him up more and more easily that Croc can get taken down in just one or two hits even when Croc is trying to mob attack Batman with other Arkham rogues. And in Batman: Europa, a virus-stricken Batman was still able to put him down in a few hits. Then there's the fact that in modern times, Killer Croc can get hit with The Worf Effect whenever another really strong villain, usually Bane, comes to town to establish himself.
  • Probably the friggin' Patron Saint of Villain Decay is probably Batman villain Killer Moth. When he first came on the scene, he was Batman's greatest arch-nemesis, not the Joker. Despite his strange colorful costume, he was a threat, the anti-Batman, and someone criminals ran to. Then, they introduced Batgirl. Having this amateur crime-fighter kick the ass out of what was supposed to be Batman's greatest foe twice in her first appearance just killed his credibility overnight and he was seen as a joke in-series as well. Since then, he was only brought up for his Fashion-Victim Villain status. Not even turning him into the monstrous Charaxas saved him.
  • A rare example of a character suffering this at the hands of their own creator: Ulysses Hadrian Armstrong, AKA The General, was an Enfant Terrible that could have passed for the son of the Joker in his first appearance. His backstory has him burning down a building at the military academy where he was educated, not because the academy's bullies lived there, but because he was bored. He then proceeds to run away to Gotham with a bunch of guns, shoot rival gang members and law enforcement alike in cold blood, and lays siege to a police station with an army of gang members armed with rocket launchers. Oh, and he also had the balls to smack Batman in the back of the head with a shovel, sending the Dark Knight plunging three stories down, after Batman had just saved his life. All done at the tender age of 11. Later, when creator Chuck Dixon reused him in the Lighter and Softer Robin ongoing, he started acting more his age, began to incessantly quote military figures, and was generally Played for Laughs a lot more.
  • David Cain is an in-universe example. He used to be one of the most feared killers in the world, trained Batman and Deadshot, and was Ra's al Ghul's right hand man. By the time he actually shows up in the comics, however, he's a melancholy, alcoholic old man, broken by the loss of his daughter, and though he still occasionally takes jobs, his heart obviously isn't in it. His old protege Deadshot is disgusted by how far he's fallen.
  • Is Lady Shiva the worlds greatest martial artist or not? Honestly, it's hard to tell some times. This is mostly due to her getting hit by the Worf Effect to show how powerful and skilled her opponent is, who just happens to be one of the main characters of the story where the conflict is taking place. To her benefit, at least most writers will offer a flimsy excuse to explain her loss (such as poison or mind control), as well as allow Shiva herself to exact some kind of retribution to prove her reputation is still well-deserved.
• Black Moon Chronicles: Lucifer is flat-out terrifying during his main series appearances, as a Faux Affably Evil Prince of Hell with ultimate plans to annihilate the entire human race and a habit of devouring screaming souls. In the Sequel Series, Lucifer and his minions track down Wismerhill and the other survivors to the new Earth, but the entire demonic army is quickly curb-stomped and Lucifer himself is sealed away by Methraton.
• Blake and Mortimer: Colonel Olrik fits this trope to a tee. In his first appearance, he aided The Empire in bringing about World War III and successfully conquering the world. Understandably, his later appearances as a smuggler/thief/spy are not as impressive. Even when said Empire's bloodthirsty dictator was brought Back from the Dead via Time Travel and Olrik joined him once more in The Strange Encounter he was little more than a thug.
• Deathstroke: Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke hasn't decayed into an easy-to-defeat villain all across the board but for certain Badass Normal heroes, particularly Batman and Nightwing, he's no longer a nightmare opponent who can easily manhandle them like in the early years, particularly during his first fight against Batman where Deathstroke relentlessly beat Bruce unconscious. Thanks to ongoing Power Creep, Power Seep, heroes like Batman or Nightwing have gotten to the point where they can defeat Deathstroke after an intense fight, stalemate Deathstroke while getting in equal or more hits, or in some cases, completely embarrass Slade by taking him out easily in a span of a page, like Batman once did when he attacked and defeated Deathstroke and Deadshot together.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • Allegedly Carl Barks claimed that Magica de Spell "demanded a strong plot", but later writers have had her go after Scrooge McDuck's lucky dime, again and again. She is now a Villain Protagonist in many stories focusing on new trinkets and gadgets she obtains for this purpose. As a result, her character has mellowed considerably over the years, moving into Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain territory.
  • In the early days, the Beagle Boys were a serious threat to Scrooge McDuck and his fortune, even getting the upper hand on him a few times, usually thanks to Donald's bumbling or sheer bad luck. Later stories had the Beagles gain a bit more characterization (moving on from the nameless army of smug thugs), but also lose a lot of their competence.
• Fables: Gepetto, the evil mastermind of the series, contracted a bad case of villain decay. He'd conquered and ruled countless realms for centuries, but after he lost the first couple battles of the new war, he became depressed and sat about moaning while his Empire fell to pieces, until the heroes came and took him to live in a nice new apartment in New York City.
• Fantastic Four: While Doctor Doom has generally managed to ride out any waves of this and remain one of the big names of the Marvel Universe, Otto "the Handsome" von Doom - his counterpart in the Marvel 1602 universe - goes from requiring all the heroes to bring down and plotting the conquest of the world with what he thinks is the Templar treasure and an army of specially bred slaves, to flying to the edge of the world in a quest to get cosmetic surgery from the king of a lost civilization - not super weapons, not long-lost ultra-science, not an army of mermen or anything like that, but cosmetic surgery.
• The Flash: The Daniel West iteration of Reverse-Flash has played this trope straight to tragic levels. Initially presented as a new Arch-Enemy for Barry in the New 52, he was unceremoniously moved to New Suicide Squad after one story arc to make room for the reappearance of Professor Zoom after the latter gained a new level of recognition in the 2014 TV series — then Dropped a Bridge on Him mid-Heel Realisation there. Rebirth had Barry regain some of his pre-Flashpoint memories and start referring to Thawne as the first Reverse-Flash once more, displacing him completely from even sole use of the Reverse-Flash name. Meanwhile Thawne constantly made snide remarks about Daniel's use of the name, not even acknowledging him as a successor like he did Hunter Zolomon, his true successor. On top of all this, Hunter Zolomon was also later revealed to be alive, thus further distancing Daniel from the top of villain chain. Since he was only effective in one arc, he can't even claim to be a recurring villain, let alone a Big Bad Wannabe now.
• Green Lantern: Parallax was introduced in 2005, where he gloated that he had been behind the hero's greatest defeat and no-one had known for years. However, over the next decade, he went from shadowy destroyer, to being Anti-Monitor's Dragon, to being a quite dangerous weapon the heroes could lock up, to finally, being used as an 11th-Hour Superpower by Sinestro.
  • It gets worse. He's now no longer merged with Sinestro, but imprisoned within him, serving as an attack dog Sinestro can let out whenever he wants to make a point. It actually kind of works, though, as Parallax was already a Flat Character, a monster relying on instinct and just spreading fear.
• Hellblazer: First of the Fallen was intended to be the devil and a major antagonist for Constantine, but a string of constant defeats starting with his first appearance and ending with his death removed any threat.
  • Writer Paul Jenkins did tried to return him back to badassery during his run (the First even flipped the finger back on John), but ultimately it was Mike Carey who finally give the John his greatest lost, and the First's most powerful blow on him after getting the soul of John's sister.
• Hellboy: Deliberately invoked and lampshaded with Rasputin, as each defeat costs him power.
• The Incredible Hulk: The Marvel supervillain Abomination has probably lost more bad boy status than almost any other. He started out up-powered even by the Hulk's standards, whomping him down in their first encounter. He then had some gamma power stripped, which was added to the Hulk, thus losing in their next encounter. He then suffered a series of beatdowns at the hands of the Hulk, leading to humiliating exposition as his character developed a fear of even encountering the Hulk anymore. But that was not the end of it. Over subsequent years, he became a chew toy to show how badass the lower bricks in the Marvel universe could be, taking solo beatdowns at the hands of both Wonder Man and She-Hulk, and even getting bested by Hawkeye of all people. Hercules even one-shot KO'd him with a traffic light once. Oh, true, they pulled out all the stops in their demonstration of badassery, but the Abomination just can't get any respect, in spite of still remaining perhaps the physically strongest character without some quasi-infinite trick up their sleeve. He got a slightly better treatment in the Chaos War Herc family crossover, where, after having been killed off a couple years ago by the Red Hulk, he comes back as a servant for the Big Bad Chaos King. After tearing through a team of Hulks, Doctor Strange states that he was "the Underworld's strongest prisoner". He's still dead again by the end of the story, but he definitely got some cred back.
• Justice League of America:
  • Lampshaded in the case of classic JLA villain Felix Faust; much of his power comes from literal deals with devils, and every time one of his schemes falls through, the demons decide to collect on their debts, taking bits of his soul, to the point that he's basically the magical equivalent of a subprime borrower, and the demons now treat him accordingly, granting him increasingly less power.
  • Prometheus, first introduced in JLA (1997), was originally created to be the anti-Batman. He was psychotic, Crazy-Prepared, and used a high-tech helmet to load information and fighting skills directly into his brain. He had an exceptional origin story, built his own unorthodox weapons, and he killed an evil interdimensional alien monk to steal his teleporter. Prometheus took down half the Justice League in his first appearance (even Batman) and then... He became a Mook. Much later, it was revealed that these appearances were his never before mentioned sidekick using his gear while the real Prometheus was imprisoned in his own mind (and, you know, prison). When he finally escapes, he tracks down his sidekick and lights him on fire. Then again, the arc also ends with him being shot and killed rather easily by Green Arrow, because his research apparently didn't include that Green Arrow has killed people. It's worth noting, though, that he was always something of a Smug Snake; he was ultimately defeated in his first appearance by Catwoman and Barbara Gordon, simply because he was so prepped-up for his fight with the Justice League that he had no planned defense against a hacker deprogramming his viruses and a bullwhip to the crotch.
    • This was lampshaded by the Crime Doctor in Birds of Prey #94. Although that issue uses his Villain Decay to make it that much more shocking when he destroys Lady Blackhawk, Huntress, Mirage, and Lady Shiva.
      Crime Doctor: You know, Prometheus, I'm almost disappointed...When you first appeared on the scene, we were all mighty impressed. You carry the knowledge of the world's thirty greatest fighters in your helmet, Right? The point is, we thought you'd be a world beater. Then we heard Catwoman tore your manhood. We heard Hush made you his punk.
• Mickey Mouse Comic Universe: This was especially obvious with the Phantom Blot, who was at first a genuinely and believably scary threat to Mickey Mouse but after the serial in which he first featured ended, he quickly became just another bumbling comic relief villain.
• The Mighty Thor: The Wrecking Crew started out as villains who could give Thor himself a run for his money. But over the years they became almost throw away villains to be beat up by anyone and everyone including a group of superpowered, but untrained teenagers. Worse still, in a recent back-of-the-book ad campaign for Harley Davidson motorcycles, the Wrecking Crew were defeated by a group whose superpowers consist of owning Harley Davidson motorcycles.
• New Gods: The degree to which Darkseid has fallen is striking. In his original appearances, he was a true Physical God; an unfathomably powerful manipulator who sought to dominate all of creation, capable of wiping out any challengers with a stare and even the Bronze Age Superman barely able to run damage control against his schemes. Only the other New Gods could even try to work against him, and only his son Orion had any chance of fighting him. His first large-scale usage in the mainline DCU, the Great Darkness Saga, had him battling the entire pre-Crisis Legion Of Superheroes (generally considered one of the strongest hero teams ever) while weakened, and very nearly defeating them. This heavily raised his profile, but also resulted in him going from a villain of the New Gods to the Big Bad of the entire DCU and Superman in particular (spurred on even further by his usage in Superman: The Animated Series). Consequently, Darkseid was overused almost to the point of comedy, his level of power dropped so that Superman and characters of his level could feasibly defeat him in straight fisticuffs (which proceeded to happen on a regular basis), he was hit with The Worf Effect by a number of characters (including the above Doomsday), and he suffered heavy-duty Motive Decay from "find the Anti-Life Equation and corrupt all existence in my image" to "invade Earth and smash things because I'm evil." This wasn't helped by the Mainstream Obscurity of his original appearances, leaving readers and writers nothing but the decayed Darkseid to go on. Grant Morrison has done their best to rehabilitate the character, depicting him in JLA as a supreme threat that effortlessly conquered the Earth and broke its heroes in a Bad Future, and in Final Crisis as a multiversal Eldritch Abomination to which every prior Darkseid was merely Fighting a Shadow, but his usage in the New 52 dropped him right back to Generic Doomsday Villain status, to the point that he doesn't even speak for his entire debut arc and gets soundly beaten by the Justice League on their first mission.
• Onslaught: The titular Onslaught initially appeared as beyond godlike and it took every superhero on Earth to defeat him. When he did come back, he was the subject of a low-selling mini where he was defeated far more easily and sent to the Negative Zone by Captain America and some Creator's Pets. Not very fitting for a guy who took on the Marvel Universe at one point.
• Preacher: Herr Starr was actually genuinely menacing in his first appearance (and again in his Start of Darkness). That didn't last very long at all. Not even the fact that he frequently defeats other villains does anything to stop the decay - mostly because poor Starr just can't seem to stop losing body parts...
• Predator: The Predator extraterrestrial embodies this trope after being trounced by virtually every other comic book character in the industry. Despite the incredible awesomeness of the original Alien vs. Predator comics, it later became a check-the-block for every character from Superman to Judge Dredd beat up a Predator at least once in their career. This trope is somewhat rationalised by the fact that the Predator's code of honor means they must look for a "fair fight."
• Secret Wars (1984): The Beyonder was initially presented as a mysterious and powerful cosmic being capable of swatting Galactus aside like a fly in the original maxi-series, he assumes human form and becomes mostly a joke in Secret Wars II. One memorable scene involves Spider-Man teaching him how to use the bathroom. It doesn't help that his character was portrayed inconsistently throughout the second maxi-series and the tie-ins. In one tie-in, he's murdering the New Mutants (only to bring them Back from the Dead later), in another he's consoling the Human Torch over the accidental death of a fan. It's little wonder that Secret Wars II is considered 'drek' by many comics fans. The Beyonder decayed even more after Jim Shooter left the company, with his powers being considerably downgraded.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • When originally introduced, the Evil Sorcerer Ixis Naugus was an extremely powerful wizard with power over the elements and who sent Sonic and Tails on a wild goose chase around the world before being banished to the Void. When he came back a few years later, he soon found himself reduced to Mammoth Mogul's Dragon, but was still threatening... at least, until his time as Dr. Eggman's prisoner destroyed his mind, leaving him a mindless beast Mogul kept as a pet. But as of issue 220, Naugus has had his mind and powers restored by a Chaos Emerald wielded by his apprentice Geoffery St. John, and has set himself up as part of a Big Bad Duumvirate with Dr. Eggman. He did pretty well for himself, until Eggman's actions at the end of the crossover caused a Continuity Reboot that inadvertently put it back into place for the time being.
  • Series Big Bad Eggman himself goes through several instances of this—sometimes in-universe—he'd finally lost his marbles completely and stayed that way for most of a nearly year long story arc. He's largely recovered—both from the in universe decay and the meta version—by becoming the go-to 'event' villain. The last five years or so have involved Eggman launching tremendously huge attacks that significantly alters the status quo—only barely being beaten—then hiding out or otherwise removing himself from direct conflict for a while while Sonic and co. deal with other, lesser (for the most part) villains, then launching an attack that once again significantly alters the status quo.
    • Part of this is due to the writers taking away one of the main reasons he was a threat - his ability to turn people into robots. Then came Sonic Genesis where he hit a "reset" switch that made it possible to roboticize again. While his whole plan didn't pan out he got a consolation prize in the form of Mecha Sally and the villain decay seems to be wearing off. Even with the aforementioned Continuity Reboot he seems to be doing well, even though the Freedom Fighters are stronger than ever.
  • Metal Sonic was hit with this as well. Since his return around issue 150, he had went through eight incarnations after each one is destroyed in combat. Ultimately, Sega told Archie to stop it and stick to one Metal Sonic.
• Spider-Man:
  • The Hobgoblin was first introduced as a powerful Arch-Enemy to Spider-Man, proving himself a more cunning and manipulative foe than the then-deceased Green Goblin had ever been, and having an unknown identity that kept readers guessing who he really was. While the original Hobgoblin (Roderick Kingsley) is still a credible foe, the other Hobgoblins that took his place in the years before he was revealed lowered his reputation: first Ned Leeds (at the time considered the original Hobgoblin) died like a punk to nameless goons offscreen, then Jason Macendale took up the identity and went through many humilating failures, to the point that Kingsley eventually came out of retirement to kill him and salvage the Hobgoblin's image.
  • Venom, whose career as a psychotic murderer and Spider-Man's most frightening enemy ended the minute he decided to become "the Lethal Protector". In Venom's early days, he was able to tango with both Spidey AND the Human Torch. Remember, he's weak to fire. In his first appearance, he almost KILLED Spider-Man. Fast forward about seven years. Spider-Man, in a bored nonchalant manner, sends him running scared WITH A LIGHTER.
• Superman:
  • Doomsday, the monster who killed Superman has been affected by this. What used to be a threat which forced Superman to kill him (and then die after) after tearing through the entire Justice League, and after his first rebirth rampaged throughout Apokolips, shrugged off the Omega Beams and brought Darkseid to his knees, became a lackey, mind controlled villain for Darkseid in later series, then could be massacred en masse when an army was created from his tissue, to the point where he was One-Shotted by Imperiex in Our Worlds at War.
  • The Hank Henshaw Cyborg was the Big Bad in the Reign of the Supermen storyarc. Since he had Clark Kent's DNA, he had all of Superman's powers and then some. During his first appearances as a villain, he single handedly defeated a team made up of Superboy, Supergirl, Steel and the Eradicator. Subsequent appearances made him less and less of a badass each time, with Superman defeating him with increasing ease. In the end he was working for villains of lesser quality and defeated in only two panels in his final appearance prior to the New 52 reboot. Henshaw's downgrade is lampshaded in the Ending Battle saga:
    Henshaw: I used to be... greater than... this.
  • This trope fell on Lex Luthor for the famous Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? saga. Luthor was just the means for Brainiac to move and communicate. (Note that Luthor, after having his body co-opted by Braniac, suffering a Fate Worse than Death, begged for Lana Lang to kill him. Luthor started Superman's Byrne era as the richest, most admired man in the world. Some twenty years later and still under the same continuity he was a fugitive who had lost his money and reputation (but he got better).
  • Mongul in the Pre-Crisis era was so powerful he could beat Superman unconscious during a time when Superman could pull an entire galaxy's worth of planets and sneeze away solar systems. And if Superman was able to beat Mongul, he usually collapsed from exhaustion due to the effort it took to defeat him. From the Post-Crisis onwards, Mongul's character has turned into more of a big alien bruiser whom Superman can typically beat up after a lengthy brawl or worse, gets taken out in the span of a single page. He's also transitioned into a punching bag for other characters like Flash, Green Lantern, Neron, Zod, and Sinestro to beat up on to establish their credibility. These days for Superman and other DC stories, Mongul fills less the role of The Juggernaut and more of "big, brutish alien villain you can put in a team of other villains in stories with less big stakes than Darkseid or the Anti-Monitor".
• Teen Titans: Dr. Light. At first, he was tough enough to take on the whole Justice League, and then declines through the 1980s to the point where he is beaten by the kid non-powered superhero team, Little Boy Blue and his Blue Boys. This was explained/retconned in the infamous Identity Crisis (2004) storyline as the League having given him what amounted to a psychic lobotomy via Zatanna's magical powers after he had sneaked aboard the Watchtower and raped Sue Dibny. It was an attempt to make him a threat again, but it largely didn't work, as his every appearance thereafter was sure to remind the audience that he was a sexual deviant—turning him from a loser to a loser who was really proud of the one time he did something a common street thug could do. He was then turned into a candle by The Spectre, left unmourned.
• Thanos: Thanos was a recurring foe for Captain Marvel and The Avengers, and was so powerful he not only took on multiple teams of superheroes at the same time, but once even killed half of the known universe. Then during the 90's, he started getting Worfed by characters like Thor (who was never able to match Thanos one-on-one previously) and Ka-Zar (who is just a Badass Normal), greatly diminishing his reputation. This led to Jim Starlin, Thanos' creator, retconning those past defeats by claiming they were simply clones, and that the real Thanos had been been biding his time in the shadows.
• Tintin: The recurring villains are ineffectual and ridiculous in their last appearance in Flight 714. Former Big Bad Rastapopoulos is reduced to playground banter with his intended victim over which of them is nastier, and loses (although in Rastapopoulos's defence, said banter occurred while he was drugged into total honesty without being able to adopt a more Machiavellian approach). He also becomes a Butt-Monkey, with such incidents as getting caught in a grenade blast and having a stalagmite fall on his head. According to Word of God, Rastapopoulos would have been more menacing...if only his outfit hadn't ended up looking so utterly daft. Herge apparently took one look at his own sketches and was unable to see him as a serious threat ever again. Meanwhile Allan, the other most recurring villain in the franchise, gets beaten up by some other henchmen as they try to escape and is reduced to a toothless man who can't even speak properly.
• Ultimate Fantastic Four: Namor started off as being so powerful that he easily defeated the entire Fantastic Four with his bare hands, and was only persuaded to spare the city of New York when Susan Storm agreed to kiss him. In fact, it was stated that he was the most powerful superhuman on the planet, stronger than even the friggin' Hulk. Then when he reappeared during the Ultimatum crossover, he was easily clobbered and tied up by an unaided Reed Richards.
• The Walking Dead: The zombies. As the story progresses, the zombies become more manageable, and dangerous people such as The Governor, cannibals, marauders, The Scavengers, and The Saviors are the ones whom the characters and the audience fear most. After all, zombies are incapable of using battle tactics and raping people. Their sanity is never questioned because they have no minds of their own, whereas people themselves are unpredictable. Heck, the storyline introducing The Saviors is called Something to Fear. After the All Out War storyline, there is a two-year time skip, implying that life in a world full of zombies has been relatively peaceful until a new threat (sentient beings once again) emerges. Interestingly enough, the zombies physically decay as time progresses, so they may be considered a literal personification of this trope.
  • Zig-zagged however in that said sentient beings are shown to have an ENORMOUS army of captive zombies ready to unleash on their enemies.
  • And very much averted later when in a huge aversion of Plot Armor, Andrea, the comic's main heroine is killed with a simple zombie bite.
• X-Men:
  • It's been brought up in-universe that Arcade has never succeeded in killing a superhero, even though that's actually his job. Justified though, as Arcade doesn't do it for money or out of spite, he does it because he loves the thrill of seeing the superheroes fighting out of his Murderworld amusement park. Now as to why anyone still bothers to hire him remains an untold story. Avengers Arena has Arcade frustrated by this. He decides to reclaim some cred by trapping a bunch of young heroes in Murderworld and force them to kill each other in a tournament ala The Hunger Games or Battle Royale. Somehow, getting other people to kill for him is going to increase HIS rep as an assassin. Arcade is not exactly mentally stable, so he could believe that himself. This is averted in the sequel, Avengers Undercover, where we find out that his little tournament did absolutely nothing to up his street cred. In-universe, it just made him look like a pathetic bully who had to stoop to murdering inexperienced Kid Heroes because he wasn't good enough to thrown down with A-listers like the X-Men and the Avengers.
  • Sabretooth has suffered this heavily for the last few decades. Originally in the X-Franchise, Claremont wrote him to be Wolverine's superior, even stating that in all their lives, Logan has never defeated him in a straight up fight. Wolverine was shown defeating Byrne's Sabretooth in the orange costume, and Claremont had intended for that version to be revealed as a Sinister Clone, while the real Sabretooth would've bee the Jim Lee designed one, who hadn't faced the X-Men. However, Claremont left the X-books before he could really expand on the story, and his ideas were dropped or made null & void by future writers & editors. Despite this, he was a big enough threat in the 90's. He was a clear Genius Bruiser, and it's driven home when he manages to outsmart Mr. Sinister of all people. Sabretooth had more popularity in the 90's and early 2000's which spawned guest appearances, his own minis, and a few one-shots. Once Chuck Austen took over the X-Men in 2003, he started Sabretooth's villain decay. He wrote him as a meathead, had Wolverine continuously defeating him with no kind of effort or urgency, and at one point the heroes laugh at him when Wolverine asks him to name a time he was ever a threat. Since then, Sabretooth loses every fight he's in and Took a Level in Dumbass to the point Loeb wrote him saying that he was trying to become smarter so he could beat Wolverine. During the 80's and 90's, Sabretooth defeated characters such as Black Panther, Rogue, Psylocke, Omega Red, Wolverine, and Mystique. Post villain decay, he has suffered being slapped around by all of these characters. Despite being known as Wolverine's Arch-Nemesis, it's subverted in the comics when it's revealed that Logan is more bored with Sabretooth than afraid or concerned about him.
  • Mr. Sinister got this in the '90s. When he was introduced, he was revealed to have ordered the massacre of the sewer-dwelling mutant community, the Morlocks, one of the greatest crises and tragedies the X-Men ever faced with consequences that completely overturned the status quo of the X-Men in multiple ways, and was later shown to have been manipulating Scott (Cyclops) and Alex Summers (Havok) and Jean Grey since they were children. When he's finally confronted, he's able to all but single-handedly hold his own against both the current and original five X-Men. However, in later stories he mostly became Mr. Cryptic who showed up only to drop vague hints about characters' backstories, much of which never amounted to anything for many years, if ever, since that was the way of the X-Men comics of the '90s. Also at the same time the poor guy ended up accidentally releasing the Legacy Virus and having his laboratory broken into with impunity by the X-Men. In this case, though, the Villain Decay was reversed somewhat once it turned out that all along Sinister had been trying to create a mutant powerful enough to destroy his creator and rival, the villain Apocalypse. And he pulled it off. Sort of.

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