A good unseen character example is Captain Carnage from Watchmen. His ineffectual nature was on purpose: he was a masochist who enjoyed being on the receiving end of fists... until he tried it on Rorschach, who dropped him down an empty elevator shaft.
Though the rat creatures in the comic Bone are quite fearsome in force, the nameless two most commonly seen around the valley where the protagonists live are pretty pathetic on their own. They want to eat the story's protagonist, but they do themselves more harm than anyone else with their bumbling. Their constant bickering over whether to bake the Bones into a quiche is also quite endearing. A trilogy of junior novel sequels even have them as two of the chosen heroes. Well, more like Token Evil Teammates, really.
Astro City has Glue-Gun, an obvious Expy of Paste-Pot Pete. His only major appearance to date showed him invading a superheroes' dinner club, only to be taken out by the busboy he was holding hostage.
The pirates and most Romans in the Asterix books. No match for the superpowered Gauls and not smart enough to deal with them in more insidious ways. There are a few Romans who avert this and are quite fearsome schemers however, most notably Julius Caesar himself. Especially as the reputation of the invincible Gauls spreads and they start running from any hint of conflict. Most of the generals of the fortified camps surrounding the village are this combined with Punchclock Villain and tend to act out of fear for what the higher-ups would do if they were not seen to be acting, and the foot soldiers tend to be put-upon Mauve Shirts who would rather be doing anything else.
Iznogoud the Infamous, the ever-scheming but hapless Grand Vizier to the Caliph, who merely wants "to become Caliph instead of the Caliph."
Gilles de Geus started out as a Villain Protagonist whose attempts at thievery and robbery almost always backfired. When he became a true hero, he also Took a Level in Badass and became much more effective, although he still has his occasional comedic failures.
Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) had Evil Sonic/Anti-Sonic. Before his transformation into the more fearsome Scourge, he was nothing more than a Sonic who wore leather and was supposedly badass-type evil. But, with each appearance, he kept getting worse and worse with his lowest point is being karate-chopped by Antoine completely by accident. He was so lame that Sonic outright called him "a small time thug" at one point long before Antoine karate-chopped him.
Zodon from PS238. He is an Evil Genius, and is both intelligent and competent... but he's also seven years old, too cynical to ever be truly malicious (possibly because comparatively victimless crimes like insider trading and "tampering in god's domain" means less detention time), and most importantly, is the comic's Chew Toy. Almost everything he tries his hand at will, at one point or another, fail horribly. Ironically, Zodon has proven himself much better at aiding the "good" children (usually unwillingly or very reluctantly), and also saved the world against an Alien Invasion at one point.
Runabout and Runamuck, a.k.a. the Battlechargers of the various comics bearing The Transformers name, often try their hand at malicious and evil things, but are regularly stymied by their breathtaking incompetence, complete lack of maturity, and attention spans that don't last thirty seconds. Their most infamous act was setting out to spray-paint the Statue of Liberty with "Humans are wimps!" instead of, you know, actually doing some real Monumental Damage. Just to give you an idea how bad these two are at being evil, lovable loser Scavenger of the Constructicons has been shown killing more Autobots than the Battlechargers. TFWiki.net aptly labels them the Cybertronian equivalents of Beavis And Butthead. Notably, Runabout and Runamuck even laugh like Beavis and Butt-head years before the latter were created. They proved to be such entertaining yet pathetic villains that several fans actually admitted to being sad when the two idiots got killed off during both the Marvel and IDW runs.
The Simpsons: A one-off story focuses on Doctor Colossus, Springfield's only supervillain, and how he's terrible at crime. Mainly this is because his only tool are his "Colosso-Boots", which do one thing and one thing only: Extend, meaning every time he uses them, he smashes his head against the ceiling. Eventually, the owner of a jewel shop he tries to rob asks Chief Wiggum if he can't do something, because Colossus is getting annoying, but Wiggum just shrugs it off because Colossus is too lovably pathetic to arrest.
