I’m sat there, minding my own business when the boss-man drops me a line and asks me to look into making a list of the top comic book villains that audiences are yet to see in a live-action format.

Seems an easy enough prospect, right? Everybody’s got that favorite bad guy that they either read about, or watched on early morning kids TV. Someone they’ve been secretly itching to see crop up amongst the current wave of comic book projects.

Well trust me, it isn’t necessarily that easy. Whilst we’re a mere three phases into Marvel’s plans for world domination, and just about to commence DC’s planned response, both companies are also mining their back catalogs in order to pad out their accompanying TV shows. Which eats somewhat into the available cast list.

Also, when I started rattling off a list of the prospective candidates, it became apparent I’d forgotten that there’s already been seven Batman films, seven X-men movies, five Spider-Man offerings, two Hulks prior to Mark Ruffalo and umpteen other films, over the last two decades.

Oh, and Smallville. BLOODY SMALLVILLE!!! The majority of you will have no idea just how many bad guys DC managed to cram into seven series of Smallville. Frankly, it makes the villain roster for ‘Gotham’ look practically anemic by comparison.

Anyway. Forgive my inane ramblings. It’s been a lengthy, and wearing process. Presented below for your geeky pleasure, or alternatively for you to take angered pot-shots at, is the top 15 villains that we want to see immortalized in film:

12. Omega Red

Wolverine seems to have somewhat cornered the market when it comes to getting the best opponents in Marvel. With his deeply communist background and mutant regenerative capabilities, Omega Red is another villain who could potentially feature in differing Marvel timelines.

With a particularly brutal temperament, and some rather nifty vampiric metal whips that shoot out of how wrists he’d have been a far better avenue to explore for Iron Man 2 than Mickey Rourke and his parrot.

11. Onslaught

With the announcement that X-Men: Apocalypse will be the last in the current crop, it’s hard to see how Onslaught will make it into cinemas, barring a franchise reboot. Mind you, having seen the initial test shots for Oscar Isaac, maybe he is best of waiting it out a bit.

Which is a shame really. One of the most lethal villains to ever grace the pages of Marvel comics, comprising the mental powers of both Professor X and Magneto. Be it a combination of McStewart or McBender, the scriptwriters would surely have had some fun creating such a wicked personality.

10. Crime Syndicate

Any team of players that can out-villain Lex Luthor are surely a force to be reckoned with, and there’s something delightfully dark about this inverse-Justice League.

Owlman provides an appropriately nightmarish reply to the Batman, alongside suitably ruthless incarnations of the other League members. Already depicted with no small degree of success in the animated DC ‘Crisis on Two Earths’, this team is more than deserving of a real life upgrade.

9. Black Lanterns

With the ability to raise an army of severely pissed-off reanimated heroes or villains, Black Hand is one of the most dangerous opponents the Lantern Corps have ever faced. And an extensive back catalogue of murdered and wronged DC players for a script to reanimate, there’s potential here to see everybody’s favourite heroes either rising from the dead, or fighting defeated predecessor. C’mon DC, if you’re gonna reboot Green Lantern, throw him in at the deep end.

8. Phantasm

A firm favorite for any fan of the original Batman animated features, Bruce’s long lost love, Andrea Beaumont, is an antagonist providing true depth and engagement for a viewer. Torn between revenge for her murdered father, and the yearning for a different life, her path will bring her into conflict with hero and villain alike. Tell me you weren’t choking back a tear as the building started to come down around her and a cackling Joker. And a live-action interpretation of her suit would be a very exciting prospect.

7. Carnage

With the embarrassment that was Venom being shoe-horned in Spider-Man 3, fans are still waiting for a suitably accurate depiction of a symbiote in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

And symbiotes don’t get much deadlier than Carnage. Already a merciless alien killing machine before it found a host, it then manages to become bonded to a deranged human serial killer. Whichever actor chooses to try and fill those shoes will have to provide a career defining performance.

6. Homelander (The Boys) 

Imagine if Superman had some pretty serious, and deep rooted mental health issues? Like, hating all of humanity for example?

The leader of earth’s mightiest heroes, the Homelander occasionally acts out some quite odd impulses, like shooting airliners out the sky during naked nighttime flying. This virtually indestructible saviour didn’t crash land down to earth from space though. He was created in a lab by a weapons company, kept in line with blackmail and coercion, and is secretly plotting for his fellow genetically modified supes to become the dominant species on Earth.

5. Daken

When Marvel came up with the concept of Daken, it seems like the writers were trying to create the utter reversal of Wolverine, and were trying to cram all the cool traits and characteristics for a successful bad guy into one being, to oppose all the good guy features which they’d originally forced together to create Logan.

With the ability to control and influence those around him via pheromones, those trademark claws to supplement his natural aggression, and a really bad attitude, this mutant is not one to mess with.

4. Barracuda 

There aren’t many bad guys in the Marvel Universe who’ve gone head to head with Frank Castle and gone further than one round, but ‘Cuda didn’t just do that, he earned his own spin-off to boot.

Too big and far too bad to kill, this ex-military gangster bad-ass has taken as many lives with his oversize hands as he is with his trademark .50 cal…

3. The Dark Judges

Two Dredd films in, and we’re still yet to see the Dark Judges onscreen? Frankly, this is just not acceptable.

As their tag line goes “The crime is life, the sentence is Death”, so what’s a demonic entity to do when they’ve taken every life that they possibly can in your reality? Hop next door to another reality, naturally….

Audiences need to see that iconic image of Death’s hand passing through a victim’s heart. They need to see a depiction of what Fear actually has under his visor, and the horrendous results of the touch of Mortis.

Please, can somebody green light this. Now…

2. Marvel Zombies

Considering its popularity, Marvel haven’t allowed their zombie reality to dimension-jump anywhere near as much around its neighbors as you might expect. Unless of course they’re holding them back for a future large story-arc.

Regardless, the zombies are a winning combination of deadly and humorous, with the added bonus that a writer would be able to go into any corner of the Marvel comic universe, however daft, and upgrade a minor villain into a deadly contagious killing machine.

C’mon, Marvel, if you’re not going to give the undead their own badly deserved movie, let a zombie Deadpool loose into Agents of SHIELD…

1. Jason Todd

And here he is. The man/boy/unhinged killing machine, that cinema goers need to see. Having been already brilliantly represented in ‘Under The Red Hood’, we simply have to have someone portray this vengeful caped apprentice dragging himself out of a Lazarus Pit, and descending on Gotham all guns blazing. How does the Bat fight the boy he trained to his own standard, but who’s not afraid to push further than him, who knows his secrets? How does the Joker combat someone he beat to death with a crowbar?

 

We wouldn’t really count BvS as an appearance would we?

What do you think of the list? Anything we missed? Sound off in the comment section below!