Get ready for some more geeky goodness…
Like sci-fi, video games, cosplay or anime? Then you most definitely cannot miss the MCM Comic Con which is coming to the RDS in Dublin on 12th and 13th April.
Any comic book fan, video game aficionado or chic geek worth their salt will know all about MCM Comic Con, but what you might not know is that the world famous convention is coming to Irish shores in April, bringing with it some unmissable experiences for anyone who has even a passing interest in the travails of Superman and his super friends.
To prepare you for what the wonderful weekend will have in store, JOE has already brought you some of our favourite graphic novelists and our favourite graphic comics that we would love to see on the big screen someday.
Now it’s the turn of some of JOE’s favourite bad guys and let’s all admit it, everyone loves a bad guy. They’re cooler, they’ve got better clothes and, although the good guy always wins out in the end, it’s the villain who always has the most fun along the way…
Nemesis Resident Evil
How could you make Resident Evil, one of the most frightening video game franchises around even scarier?
Well, apart from the zombies that jump out of nowhere in the eerie environments of Raccoon City, how about making a giant super-zombie that was impossible to kill, and then give him a rocket launcher too so that he was truly terrifying.
Resident Evil: Nemesis was one of the first games we vividly remember making use of the dualshock function on our PlayStation controllers was Nemesis, and we remember it so well because of the sheer terror it would induce every time it rumbled, alerting us to the presence of the beast.
Shotguns, petrol bombs, machine guns and rocket launchers were all useless against him, and in particular we remember a level where we were sure that we’d killed him in a diner (if memory serves correctly), only for him to appear again minutes later, and force us to involuntarily shriek at a pitch that only dogs could hear.
Well, dogs and Nemesis. He could hear it all… We won’t be sleeping tonight.
Magneto
One of the great super-villains across comic books, TV and movies is Magneto.
Despite repeated attempts from the ever-wise Professor X, he refuses to accept that humanity and mutants can co-exist, and his intransigence only serves to further the problems that the mutants all experience. Add to that fact his powers to control metal and that a conventional prison can’t hold him, and you’re dealing with one hell of a villain.
Pic via Mobile9.com
His tragic origin story is a large part of why we feel some degree of sympathy for him though; he has seen humanity’s worst side during the Holocaust, and it is understandable that he should want to enact some form of retribution.
Although he dabbles in being an ally with Charles Xavier and at times as a super hero himself, deep down he can’t escape the horror of the events that formed him, that push him to believe mutants are the future and humanity should be eliminated. A chilling character.
The Green Goblin
What a bummer it must have been for Peter Parker AKA your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man when he found out that it was none other than Norman Osborn, the father of his best bud Harry, who turned out to be his arch-nemesis the Green Goblin.
And you thought your best friend’s dad was a nightmare to be around.
After taking a secret serum which enhanced his physical abilities and intellect, Harry Osborn’s father Norman was driven to insanity and, as much as we here at JOE love dressing up for Halloween, he took his own fancy dress obsession to an entirely new level. The mad man adopted a Halloween-themed appearance, dressing in a goblin costume, and rode around on his bat-shaped Goblin Glider, terrorising New York City and Spidey’s loved ones with his nefarious schemes and his grenade-style Pumpkin Bombs.
The violent psycho was most notably portrayed by Willem Dafoe in Sam Raimi’s 2002 film…
The Joker
Here at JOE, we recently brought you some of the reasons why Batman is one of our favourite heroes of all time but, as our Granny never used to say, a hero is nothing without their arch-nemesis.
Although Batman has a huge number of memorable bad guys to keep him busy, including Catwoman, Two-Face and ahmm, Killer Moth, it really is hard to top the most sadistic and smiley of them all – The Joker.
The master criminal is one of the most super of all supervillains and, although the character originally started out as a crafty trickster he has, over the years, gradually morphed into the vicious psychopath that fans have grown to love… and be completely terrified of.
Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the character in Tim Burton’s Batman was , for a long time, JOE’s favourite incarnation of the cackling clown-faced killer but, ever since Heath Ledger pencil-popped his way to a posthumously-awarded Oscar, it’s been hard to top his incredible performance in Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film The Dark Knight.
Why so serious?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-5TeTQmuxM
Darth Vader
It doesn’t matter whether you reside in this galaxy or one that’s far, far way, Darth Vader is the undisputed father of all villains.
Plus he flies the flag for asthma-sufferers everywhere.
Dressed in his iconic all black outfit – a crucial part of any bad guy’s look of course – the helmeted Sith Lord is evil to his very core… apart from the teeeeeeeeeny tiny little bit of good that was hidden deep, down inside of him and which came in quite handy when Emperor Palpatine was acting the big b*lls in front of Luke Skywalker.
The less said about those controversial daddy issues the better though… *SPOILER ALERT*
The Star Wars supremo has, for nearly four decades, been the biggest, baddest, throat-squeezing, Force-using villain around and, unsurprisingly, is JOE’s favourite villain of all. Let’s play him out, shall we?
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
