The Best Worst Villains

Just so I can get this out of the way, this blog entry is going to be about Nazis. I in no way endorse or condone the actions of these horrible people. But I cannot deny while they are vile human beings, they do make excellent villains in fiction.

If you follow closely the worlds of Fantasy and Science Fiction, the Nazis have been involved in nearly every form of doomsday scenario imaginable, especially in films. Zombies (Dead Snow), vampires (Bloodrayne 3), Old Gods (Hellboy), time travel (The 25^Th Reich), Space Travel (Iron Sky), werewolves (FDR: American Badass), and the list goes on and on. It makes a certain kind of sense that the worst of the world’s real monsters would become the worst of our fictional monsters as well.

In comics, most super villains’ ultimate goal is world domination. That was the goal of the Nazis as well so it makes perfect sense that there are so many Nazis among the ranks of comic book super villians. Both DC and Marvel have a gluttony of SS super villains. The most famous of these is The Red Skull. The Red Skull, like Captain America, was birthed during World War II. According to the film, the Red Skull was created by the failed attempt to use the same super soldier serum that gave Captain America his amazing abilities.

Baron Zemo

Joining the Red Skull in their hatred of Captain America is Baron Zemo, Baron Von Strucker, Hate-Monger (who was an actual clone of Adolph Hitler), Master Man, and a few others. All of these are characters who are Nazis. And not simply characters Cap fought during the War. These are all characters that still exist in current continuity and plague Captain America in the stories to this day.

 

The only man who has fought the Nazis as much as Captain America is Indiana Jones. Two out of three films (I am not counting Crystal Skull) Doctor Jones was hounded by the minions of the Reich in his adventures. And I do say minions. Besides a few characters, Indy was mostly defeating faceless nameless soldiers. Soldiers that he eliminated by the dozen. There were scenes in those films where Indiana Jones would just gun down four or five Nazis at a time. And that is another reason why Nazis are good villains. They can be killed indiscriminately. Much like zombies, nobody sheds a tear for dead Nazis.

A very simple reason for Nazis being so prevalent in comics is to save time. Your average comic book is only about twenty-two pages. That requires stories to be very economical with the facts they wish to expose about their characters. Trying to establish a villains motivations and nature can take up valuable real estate. However, everyone already has a negative opinion of Nazis. No real explanation is necessary to establish why your character is evil if you slap a swastika on him. It’s pretty much a dead give away they are the bad guy.

"Take that, Hitler!"

It’s sometimes hard to talk about Nazis in a fictional sense. These were real people who committed real atrocities. Part of me feels wrong to put them in any sort of context where what they did can be made light of. But at the same time, what they did is something that should not be forgotten. There place as villains needs to be constantly remembered and if comics can assure that occurs then that should be considered a good thing.