Who are the biggest jobbers in comics?

The strongest Jobber auras belong to significant Badass Normal villains - think people like Deathstroke and Prometheus. Because while Batman might need to win against one adversary he logically shouldn't be able to beat, those two might need to beat six or seven of the same at the same time.

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

Deathstroke is an Empowered Badass Normal. The problem is even his powers shouldn't really allow him to take on Flash, Green Lantern, Black Canary and Zatanna and win. Not without planning ahead. Hell, the Titans were a serious enough challenge for him back in the day that he'd have to resort to using civilians as human shields.

edited 12th Apr '18 6:28:33 AM by windleopard

As for Prometheus if I recall in his first appearance he was basically the fake ultimate villain. Sure he could do a lot of cool stuff but he ultimately put too much faith into his technology.

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?

Prometheus got shilled enormously in Cry for Justice and basically wrecked all of America.

Cyborg Superman and Mongul, at least could theoretically pull it off in a believable manner.

Speaking of which, prior to Reign of Superman, Mongul was an incredible jobber.

Basically, "What if Thanos wasn't smart?"

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

he even shows up at the beginning of IC just to get beaten up.

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?

Mongul's problem is that he is redundant, similar to Despero. He's just a big strong alien and that's basically it.

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

Well, you need those.

Guys to punch, I mean.

Mongul has the benefit of being as powerful as Superman so that allows Superman to punch him and be punched back, which is not something he has with a lot of rogues. For the longest time, Superman's Rogues gallery suffered from the fact no one was actually in his weight class. Mind you, making Mongul Junior a Yellow Lantern was just...weird.

Prometheus is kind of an odd bird as while he debuted as a guy who could take on the entire Justice League and then became Hush's lackey only to become Cry for justice's megavillain. It's just....he kind of sucks as a villain.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

The original idea of Prometheus is basically the meme of "if Batman has prep time he can beat anyone" taken to its logical conclusion because while he was able to take down the entire Justice League the mere presence of Catwoman proved a spanner in the works that lead to his defeat even though she's much less impressive than any individual leaguer.

That's not a terrible idea for a villain since, with careful writing, it lets them be an opponent to people of varying power rank.

But what happened is, of course, Cry For Justice. The exact same thing that happened to Deathstroke via Identity Crisis.

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

That reminds me of this character I think Mr. X who was in some of the Dark Reign comics. His premise was something like Awesomeness by Analysis coupled with mind-reading/ability to predict anyone's next action, but he ended up being used mostly for other characters to figure out his gimmick/beat the crap out of him.

I was also thinking of both Bendis' tendency to have other characters job/anyone Miles has used his venom blast on, as well as the Hood. Which I kind of understand because he was an entertaining Villain Protagonist but makes for a natural Hate Sink as a villain.

Mister X rampaged right up until he fought Quicksilver.

Who said, "You can predict my every move but...guess what...it doesn't matter because I am the fastest man alive."

(punctuated with punches)

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Electro suffers from both not being very smart and having serious confidence problems. Of course, he’s likely written that way due to his enemy being a street leveller.

If I recall correctly, Peter had sustained a broken arm from a fight with the Lizard and was at a bit of a disadvantage.

edited 12th Apr '18 8:08:43 PM by windleopard

Jobbersied. Pooky

Mileena Madness

To be fair, Shocker had an amazingly good ending where he had Peter, tortured him, and basically lectured him in a very nice "The Reason You Suck" Speech.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

Where does the First of the Fallen fit into this thread?

He works as a Devil Is A Loser.

However, he manages to eventually fuck up John's life royally by damning his sister and her husband to hell forever.

At that point I'm not sure who "won" in the end.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

I recall someone once saying that Sandman and Electro are Spider-Man villains who really should be bigger threats than they are, taking on more powerful heroes.

I think that's part of their charm. Guys like Electro and Sandman are very powerful when they put efforts into it, but ultimately they are just small-time crooks who lucked out into getting powers.

And there's nothing wrong with those types of characters. It makes the pool of villains diverse. Not everyone needs to be an ultra-badass.

Bite my shiny metal ass.

It's also totally possible to make "small time crook who lucked into powers" really entertaining, like Spectacular Spiderman's version of Sandman.

"And when the last law was down and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?"

In other words, the First ISN'T a jobber? (Sorry if I sound like an idiot)

Well, the First was an embarrassing Jobber for years.

Sort of like Mephisto always failed.

Now they aren't due to their most infamous stories.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.

I'd say very nearly any villain can be a jobber, especially depending on who the storyline's big villain is. In Crisis on Infinite Earths the Joker was treated like a jobber (at least by the definition given here); Batman was confronting the Joker when the Flash's "ghost" appeared, after which the Joker was promptly forgotten. I suppose it takes someone like the Anti-Monitor to turn the Joker into a jobber.

I remembering thinking that it felt a little odd on Batman:TAS that villains given loads of attention and pathos in their introductory episodes would quickly become jobbers in subsequent episodes.

edited 21st Apr '18 2:30:51 PM by Robbery

Heh- the Mister X vs. Quicksilver fight was more involved than that, and pretty funny in some ways- Mr. X had gotten ahold of Gungir, freaking Odin's spear, and was wrecking the entirety of the assembled Avengers. Hawkeye called in Quicksilver, who jogged over from Eastern Europe in the blink of an eye, grabbed a piece of rebar from nearby, and beat the snot out of Mr. X while calling him the 'least dangerous man alive'.

Basically, it was one of the two standard ways of beating a precognitive fighter- i.e. attacking faster than they can react, even if they do see it coming (the other being outmanoeuvering them so that they end up in a situation where seeing the attack coming is in no way helpful, like an incoming avalanche, for example). That being said, it was very, very satisfying.

But yeah, the Wrecking Crew are the quintessential jobbers- to the point that there are tonnes of jokes about it floating about in the fandom.

Dr. Light is probably the single biggest jobber who hasn't been mentioned yet, I think- dude started off credibly throwing down with the entirety of the JLA, then abruptly jobbed so hard to the Teen Titans that they eventually retconned in him getting brain-damaged to explain why he was suddenly such a pushover.

Another, rather odd, case would be characters like Professor X and Odin, the ostensible Big Goods of their respective series. Writers seem unable to resist writing 'dark secrets' into their pasts, until the cumulative effect ends up with them as the most horrific villains in the series, entirely via retcons. Then they get killed off, and resurrected later when people have hopefully forgotten about the giant stack of retcons that retroactively made them into horrible, horrible people.

Plus there's also his portrayal in the 90's series

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?

i don't think that's jobbing so much as character derailment.

Would Wizard be considered a jobber? He was a pretty legit threat in the 60s-70s, but as time went on he became less and less of a threat (at least compared to some of the bigger bad guys out there). Come to think of it, i'm more of a casual fan now (I only buy books occasionally just to see what storylines are going on), what has he been up to lately?

edited 9th May '18 4:24:55 PM by J79