Filed Under » villains

The thing that sets apart great comic books from the rest are the quality of their villains. While superheroes are stuck playing the boring good guy know-it-alls, villains get to plan the crazy schemes, blow stuff up, and cause the kinds of havoc and destruction that makes comic books work. And after over 850,000 votes (check out the results here), Dorkly readers and people who have never read Dorkly but just really wanted to see Ocean Master hold his own (in which case, bad news, guys…) have decided who were the best of the best. Or…best of the worst? The worst of the worst? …they picked the bad guys they liked the most. And here are the 25 greatest comic book villains of all-time.

25. Poison Ivy

Being named after a plant that gives people a mildly irritating rash isn't really the best start for a villain, but Poison Ivy (or Pamela Isley, as she's called on her driver's license) is more formidable than you'd expect. While it's never made a whole lot of sense why Batman doesn't just straight up murder most of the villains he runs across, you can almost understand his unwillingness to kill Poison Ivy – he usually wants to have sex with her. Not only is she (by most accounts) pretty attractive, but she also uses some pheremones and toxins to hypnotize Bruce into falling for her (or just to poison him). But her greatest skill is using her abilities to turn heroes against each other – Batman against Superman, Batman against Robin, etc. Now if only her dermatologist could do something about that green skin thing.