At the heart of every great Marvel comic is the dynamic between its hero and villain. Heroes are the people we root for who stand up for everything right and just, putting their lives on the line for others and their beliefs. Villains, meanwhile, seek to either destroy or corrupt what they perceive as in their way, and are often embodiments of everything the audience is meant to root against. Heroes and villains are meant to be foils to each other, bringing out the best and worst in each other to create an entertaining, thought-provoking story. Of course, the line between these two categories often blurs a lot more than you’d think.
It doesn’t happen all the time, but heroes and villains will occasionally swap their alignments. Heroes could break bad and cross the lines they once held dear, and villains could dedicate themselves to improving the world they once gave up on. Be it because the heroes get through to their villains, or writers just want to shake up the status quo, these changes happen, and they can be some of the best stories for any of these characters. Today, we’re digging into why that is by looking at five heroes who would make interesting villains, and five villains who would make very fun heroes.
Let’s start with an easy one. Sandman is one of Spider-Man’s most classic villains, and for very good reason. His powers are easy to understand and promote endless creativity, and his personality rides the perfect line between competent and incompetent villain. He’s also one of Spider-Man’s more tragic and sympathetic opponents. He comes from a hard life, and Flint has never been the vilest guy around. He rarely seeks wanton destruction or to conquer the world. Usually, his plots boil down to wanting money or respect, which always stems from him wanting to be loved.
Sandman has actually been a hero a few times before, even joining the Avengers, but he’s always returned to fighting Spider-Man for various reasons, usually tied to returning to normal. Sandman is the perfect villain to make a jump to full-time heroism because he’s practically already there. He doesn’t want to hurt innocent people and only does villainous acts for what he sees as survival nowadays. Flint has a good heart and wants to live a peaceful life, which he could easily leverage into being a true hero. Spider-Man especially is a hero who tries to help his foes, and having the Sandman leave his past behind for good is a great way of showing why his approach works.
Quicksilver has always been a complicated character. He debuted as a villain alongside his sister, but very quickly learned that he was being manipulated and joined the Avengers. Yet, while Scarlet Witch blossomed as a hero, Quicksilver never really fit in. He’s arrogant, egotistical, and downright abrasive. He tends to put his own wants and needs above everyone else’s except his sister’s, which aren’t very heroic qualities, at the end of the day. There have been times when he’s gone way too far to achieve his goals, like how he was the mastermind behind House of M and his subsequent crimes against the Inhumans.
Quicksilver has always ridden the line between hero and anti-hero, occasionally even flirting with being a villain, and his fall to the dark side could be his most interesting story to date. Wanda has become one of Marvel’s most prominent defenders, but in doing so has become very divorced from her brother. Quicksilver giving in to his worst impulses and standing against his sister could be exactly the kind of drama and cataclysmic event that she needs to prove she deserves to be Sorcerer Supreme. This could give Pietro the new direction he’s desperate for and put him back into the spotlight in a way that feels very organic to his character.
Staying on the train of characters who aren’t technically mutants despite what everyone thinks of them as, Cassandra Nova is a truly heinous villain. She is Charles Xavier’s Mummudrai, an evil spirit that everyone must overcome within the womb. Unlike most, she survived thanks to her telepathy that equals Charles’s. She’s his true opposite. Everything Charles does is guided by love for other people, but everything Cassandra does is fueled by hate. Most of all, she longs to see mutants wiped off the map. She seems to be a monster of pure malice and disgusting desires, but that’s not entirely true.
In the end of Grant Morrison’s run that introduced Cassandra Nova, the potential future of “Here Comes Tomorrow” showed that she had completely redeemed herself and worked with the X-Men. Just as Charles isn’t pure good, she can’t be pure evil. The X-Men are all about coexistence and educating yourself and others to better understand how we can live with our differences. Learning how to see the good in what seems like a spirit of pure vitriol is what’s taken to the logical extreme. There’s potential for a very powerful story about nature versus nurture with Cassandra, and I would love to see that explored in more depth.
Namor is one of Marvel’s oldest heroes. Arguably, he’s even the first, although his initial comic didn’t release properly. The point is that the arrogant king of the seas has been around for a long time, and since then, he’s crossed far more into villain and anti-hero territory than traditional heroic. Heck, his reintroduction after his post-WWII hiatus was as a major Fantastic Four villain. Over time, however, he’s settled more into an isolationist role. He’ll fight to save the world if necessary, but he much prefers to be left alone. He’s not causing problems like he once did. It’s not uncommon to see him on a heroic team, even.
Yet, to me, Namor has always been the most fascinating as a villain. His past as a hero contrasts his pragmatic, arrogant, even selfish point of view in a very unique way. He has undoubtedly done horrific things, but they are usually either because he legitimately believes he is doing the right thing or because he’s a petty, petty man. He’s literally blown up an alternate Earth before, for crying out loud. As a villain, Namor holds a unique position where people have trusted him in the past, but now he stands as a threat that can drown the world. As a hero, he’s just kind of a jerk.
Taskmaster is a strange case, but one you need to hear me out on. He’s one of the deadliest mercenaries in Marvel, boasting the ability to perfectly mimic any fighting style or physical technique he’s seen someone else perform. He developed this ability by injecting himself with a Nazi prototype of the Super Soldier Serum, which altered his brain chemistry to give him photographic reflexes. However, it’s also left him with some serious side effects. Namely, he tends to forget any information that isn’t related to fighting or survival to make more room for combat techniques. He’s leveraged all of this to become a terrifying mercenary, but he could be so much more.
He actually started as a SHIELD agent, and even later decided to sell his skills in more than death by opening Taskmaster’s Academy to train anyone, heroes and villains alike, to fight like he does. He can be a ruthless killer, but at his core he’s a man who doesn’t remember anything but violence and greed. He has the potential to be more. The Avengers or someone like Iron Man hiring him to be a hero could easily happen, and along the way, Taskmaster would learn more about how it feels to fight with a purpose instead of just for money. He could grow into a tragically flawed man trying his best, which is one of the best kinds of redemption stories.
The Hulk is one of Marvel’s most complex characters. He’s been everything under the sun, from hero to villain to anti-everything, leaping back and forth to fit whatever run he starred in. At his core, there are only two consistent things about the Hulk: he is born from incalculable rage, and Banner is a complex man who is trying his best, even when he falls very short of that. The Jade Giant works so well because he can be everything from the embodiment of all of Banner’s worst traits to righteous rage given physical might. He started as a very clear monster, but over the years he’s become more and more openly heroic. Yet, maybe it’s time for the Hulk to be a villain once again.
I don’t mean like the Eldest is now as Infernal Hulk, puppeting his skin, but with the Hulk himself as a genuine terror. Modern Hulk stories have lost the threat of his appearances in a lot of ways, with the Hulk’s arrival almost always being a good thing, or at least good adjacent. Making the Hulk a force for actual evil while still tying him to Banner could very easily reinvigorate the fear that he’s supposed to generate whenever Banner’s eyes start to glow. The Hulk has, in essence, become predictable, and making him a villain would massively shake that up.
The Mad Titan is one of Marvel’s evilest beings, period. He literally spent his first several decades worshiping and being in love with Death, sacrificing countless lives for her affection. He revels in agony and despair, even being enough of a masochist to enjoy Ghost Rider’s Penance Stare. He’s often used as the benchmark of evil in Marvel, even more so than the literal Satan analogue they’ve crafted. Yet, despite all of that being one hundred percent true, there’s also a little part of Thanos that can’t quite let go of his longing to be a simple man, or even a hero.
Thanos’s ideal futures almost always involve him being a member of the Avengers or a farmer left alone to tend to his crops. He ultimately rejects these realities every time, but they are still born from the deepest desires in his heart. Thanos wants to be more than a monster, and giving him that opportunity could be the best way to evolve his character. Watching Thanos finally acknowledge those parts of himself and try to accept them could be very, very interesting. He doesn’t have to change completely, either. A Thanos bridging the gap between who he is and who he wants to be is the recipe for all kinds of drama and great character studies.
Speaking of the villainous Thanos, let’s talk about his less evil brother, Eros. Where Thanos was rejected by his people and left to become an intergalactic warlord, Eros became a celebrated hero, using his power and guile to protect others. However, those powers and guile are exactly what make him so strange as a hero. He can stimulate the pleasure areas in people’s minds, making them anything from too happy to move to aroused. He traditionally stands as a symbol of empathy and love, calling for others to be more understanding, which is great, but he’s also a womaniser, which causes some understandable friction with his powers. Even that could be ignored if he weren’t occasionally really slimy.
Starfox has all the makings of a bog standard villain, between mind control powers and his attitude. Him choosing to be heroic despite all of this is interesting, but it’s also strange to see him jump between being the voice of reason and someone who will manipulate others’ emotions for his personal gain. If it were revealed that he was a villain manipulating everyone to love him, it wouldn’t be surprising. Frankly, it’s strange to have him as a hero as is, given the mix of how his powers work and how he acts.
Our final villain is one whose redemption is near and dear to my heart. Stilt-Man has never been an A-list villain. Heck, he’s lucky to be a D-lister. He’s one of those joke villains who only shows up to be utterly decimated by the hero to show you what their average day looks like. I mean, he literally commits crimes with giant metal stitls. It’s impossible not to laugh at that when he tries to present himself as a serious threat. Yet, he’s shown that he’s capable of being much more than a petty criminal. Chip Zdarksy’s Daredevil and Elektra run saw the Man Without Fear reform a group of villains to be more, and Stilt-Man was one of those men.
This gave Stilt-Man depth for the first time. It let the story dig into the idea that he was just a sick, lonely man who wanted to be more than he was but didn’t know how, and watching Daredevil inspire him to reach for heights he never dreamed of stepping towards was great. Heroes inspiring villains is one of the greatest parts of long-running comics, seeing their reputation and repeated kindness turn even the most scarred hearts around. As a villain, Stilt-Man is nothing, but as a man becoming a hero, he’s proof that anybody can do the right thing and it will matter. Allowing Stilt-Man to stay a hero full time is the perfect way to make him matter.
The alien symbiote and Eddie Brock have gone through a whole lot of changes over the years. They started as nothing more than revenge-obsessed, two-bit, shallow villains, but they’ve become genuine heroes ever since. They both struggle against natures that demand they be anything but, yet they’ve managed to carve out a path to doing the right thing, even when it hurts. They used to be one of Spider-Man’s most dangerous, deadly villains, but now they’re one of his closest allies as both Eddie and the symbiote, respectfully. This is one of Marvel’s most complete and successful character arcs, but I can’t help but miss Venom as a villain.
I’m not saying that Venom should return to being a villain full time or anything, but exploring the duo veering back towards their worst tendencies can make for a very interesting experiment. Venom has always been a loner that was defined by Brock’s codependent reliance on the symbiote, and forcing them to be alone without their support system could create the temptation to be those old villains once again. Venom has never been scarier than when he’s a villain out for blood, and even if it’s only for a short time, returning the duo to that status quo would be very fun indeed.
Overall, I love that the heroes and villains are who they are. They defined each other and bring out everyone’s best strengths and weaknesses, but seeing writers experiment with those on the edge is always fun. Which heroes and villains would you like to see trade moralities?
