Ed Ranks X-Men (TV series) Villains, Part 2

Remember when I ranked X-Men (TV show) villains three days ago? 

Well, this is Part 2, featuring the more memorable and better villains. Though honestly, some of them still sort of suck.

20. The Morlocks - Eyepatch girl Callisto (not to be confused with the MUCH BETTER Callisto at DC Comics) and her association of sewer freaks including Leech were pretty "meh" and boring villains in this show. It's sort of awesome that Storm comes up and basically kicks their asses and declares that she's the leader of them - only to never show up again for like 4 seasons when she's like "Oh yeah, I'm you're leader." If you want childhood cartoon nostalgia with mutants in the sewers, the Morlocks are not should be your first choice of who to turn to.

See how cool he looks here? Well, he didn't look like this in the show.

19. Silver Samurai - You'd think the awesome villain Silver Samurai would be used in a plot that was more than just "local biker gang shaking down rural Japanese laborers for small amounts of money," but that's all you get from this episode. Cool villain... but not in this show where he's bascially an A-Team episode villain. You didn't need to bring in a mutant with adamantium claws to defeat him. Mr. T and Howling Mad Murdock could have probably done it.

18. Arkon - Space He-Man who too-easily convinces Storm to marry him, and Storm is for some reason extremely stupid and unobservant about the fact that this idiot is evil and raids other planets for slaves. So stupid that it takes a two-part episode for the X-Men to help her realize that she's a strong, independent Black woman and she don't need no man.

17. Shadow King -  Shadow King appears twice in the show, most notably in the "Storm goes to Africa" episode (that's not the name of it, but there is clearly just one "Storm goes to Africa" episode, so if you remember this show, you know what I mean). He's depicted completely different in the show than he is in the comics, but I guess he's okay here. Just okay. Villain of the week who takes over Storm and uses her powers. Some backstory with Xavier banishing him. Cool beans.

16. Nimrod - Nimrod is not being ranked as part of the Sentinels (even though Master Mold is) because Nimrod is lame. Nimrod looks stupid. He looks like a bad, stiff 80's toy that had no flexibility or joints that could be moved. Nimrod is boring as hell. Sorry to the one Nimrod fan out there.

15. Omega Red - Another character sort of suddenly introduced, and then we don't get backstory until later, with Wolverine flashbacks fighting him back in the day. All his appearances in this show scream out early/mid 90's, from that vague era in history where all the villains were ex-Soviets who were sad that their empire died... but were always balanced with "good Russians" to show that they're not all bad. In the case of Omega Red, we almost always get Colossus in his episodes as a counterpoint. If I can be honest, let's just all admit that Omega Red is shitty in every iteration. Comics, cartoon, whatever.

14. Bolivar Trask - The famed Sentinel-creating villain whose robotic servants cause havoc on the X-Men. Oddly, he's featured less prominently in this show than his douchey assistant, Gyrich, is featured. Although he and the creation of the Sentinels is very important for the first few episodes of the show, Trask basically vanishes for the rest of the series (save for a few Season 4 appearances where he, again, features less than Gryich).

13. The Inner Circle - Because a Saturday morning children's cartoon was too afraid to use the term "Hellfire Club" with "hell" in it, they're called The Inner Circle, which is honestly a perfectly fine name for them too. They are  Sebastian Shaw, Jason Wyngarde, Emma Frost, Donald Pierce, and Harry Leland. And honestly, I couldn't really some of the boring white guy villains apart in this episode. Which one has the mind control? Which one is the pirate? Which one is Thomas Jefferson? After a while I stopped caring

Ah, becoming a robot FOR REVENGE!

12. Lady Deathstrike (and the Reavers) - The number of "villains from Wolverine's past" in this show are very high, and in this case, Lady Deathstrike is also an ex-girlfriend. Here, she joined the Reavers and became a cyborg in order to avenge the death of her father Professor Oyama who she believed was killed during Logan's rampage at the Weapon X headquarters. Of course, in the end it winds up that Logan was actually blameless or something like that. Well, I suppose that works out in the end!

11. Sauron - FUCK YEAH! Dinosaur villains are awesome. The Season 2 "Savage Land" story arc, which was basically a single episode that they cut into a bunch of pieces and then tacked on to other episodes, slow-rolled out the appearance of this villain witha name that is stolen from another much better villain with the same name. But whatever. DINOSAUR. In this version he's created by Mister Sinister's experiments. So that's something I guess.

10. The Juggernaut - Yes, we all know that the "I'm the Juggernaut, bitch!" dub was a funny meme when we were all younger and were more easily amused by internet videos when there were only four of them. But I'm not ranking The Juggernaut because of the meme, I'm ranking how he appears in these episodes. Quite honestly, he's just okay and the whole "Professor X's brother" thing was never handled that well. But then again, the Juggernaut episodes were also some of the episodes that Disney+ ran completely out of order, so that might have hurt how effective the story of Juggernaut was in the show. I know there was an episode clearly set right after he's initially defeated, but it aired like 2 seasons after it was written.

9. Dark Phoenix - Jean Gray comes back alive and turns evil as Dark Phoenix. One of the most iconic plots ever, right? I guess in the comics, but every single adaption had trouble pulling it off. In the cartoon they certainly did it better than the movies, but still... the "Inner Circle" story here left me unsatisfied. Dark Phoenix adaptions are doomed for failure.

I mean a tad flamboyant.

8.  Mister Sinister - Another villain who I remember being GREAT in childhood, but when I watched him again it was sort of a big "meh" and didn’t live up to the memory of him being as super cool as I thought he was. Oddly enough, the only Mister Sinister episode that I really liked and stuck with me was the 19th century flashback / origin episode with Xavier's beardy great granddad or whatever. That was a good episode. The rest though? Didn't do much for me on the re-watch.

7. Henry Peter Gyrich - A douchebag who works with/for the "Mutant Control Agency" (at first) and is generally just an anti-mutant douchenozzle after that. Honestly, I had forgotten that he and Graydon Creed were different characters... because they basically play the same role in this show. He should have played second fiddle to more important anti-mutant characters like Bolivar Trask, but for some reason he was actually featured more prominently in this cartoon than his boss, Trask, was. Gryich, who is typically totally unmemorable in comics and film, actually has his moment in the spotlight during this show.

6. Graydon Creed / Friends of Humanity - Guy who hates Mutants and leads the Friends of Humanity, which is a protesting hate group that stands around, usually holding signs and hating minorities. So basically they're Republicans. HA! SUCK IT! This counts as social commentary. Seriously, re-watching this show following the 2020 election and in the wake of Trump idiots storming the Capitol was oddly scary and made me go, "yeah, these villains actually exist." As I note when talking about Gyrich, my memory from childhood actually conflated Creed and Gyrich as the same character/villain and only through re-watching did I remember that they were different bland white guys who hated mutants. Of the two, Creed is more interesting in the end beause the eventual "Creed hates mutants because he IS a mutant" plot twist where he is the son of Sabretooth and Mystique. Mystique is everyone's mom on this show.

5. Mystique - Remember how awesome Mystique was in this show? Well, that memory is MOSTLY NOSTALGIA because she's in this show a lot less than you’d think. She's introduced suddenly and without much explanation at first, then we go huge chunks of time without seeing her again before we're presented with some "she's Rogue's mommy" stories that don't make much sense in context of what's shown on the screen. Really, you have to know about and have already read the comics to really understand what's going on with her in this show. Then skip a few more seasons ahead to late in the series and she becomes super annoyingly Christian Nightcrawler's mom too. Oh, and Graydon Creed's mom. By the end of the show, I think she was everyone's mom. She's okay, but under-utilized. Other than for random mommy issue twists.

4. Sabretooth - Yeah, Sabretooth is pretty good in this show, and frequently shows up as Wolverine's arch enemy. He might even show up more than Magneto. As was somewhat common with this show, Sabretooth is introduced cold without any origin story and we're just supposed to pretend like we know all about him and his history. Fortunately, as the show goes on, we learn more and more stuff about him which provides depth to his character. He even becomes somewhat relatable-to at times.

Just trying to make Sentinel babies from his toilet

3. The Sentinels (including Master Mold) - The Sentinels are great villains and a great way to start off the show as the first villains. This show didn't kid around with filler episodes much in the beginning, and dove straight into amazing comic plotlines like Days of Future Past early in its run. I could hypothetically break out Master Mold (the Sentinel Mommy that pops out Sentinels from its Robo-Vagina) from other Sentinels and rank him by himself... but why bother? He's more like "Boss Sentinel" anyway, when he turns on Trask and others. Sentinels are great. Yay Sentinels.

2. Magneto - Look, Magneto was straight up badass amazing on this show. The voice actor who did his lines, the late great David Hemblen, was freaking AMAZING. He did such a great job that most of my memories of this show were of the awesome Magneto episodes. Re-watching it again, there were far less Magneto episodes than I remembered. In fact, there are tons of stretches of time where there is no Magneto at all. While some other characters were oddly over-featured in the show, Magneto was definitely under-featured for essentially being THE X-Men villain. There are also a few episodes late in the show where Magneto is clearly voiced by a different voice actor and it's totally fucking weird to watch those episodes with the wrong voice. Pretty much every episode Magneto is in, he plays at least a somewhat sympathetic role where he's not outright villainous and simply has a different and more aggressive way of countering human racism than Professor X does.

1. Apocalypse

Time to purge the world of the corrupt and weak. LORD LIVE THE ETERNAL ONE!

Apocalypse was GREAT in this show, and this is clearly the most iconic version of Apocalypse that ever existed. Like with the amazing voice actor who played Magneto, much of Apocalypse's awesomeness was just the amazing voice skills of John Fucking Colicos (Count Baltar in Battlestar Galactica, Kor in DS9, Mikkos Cassadine in General Hospital, etc). His episodes were great, all his time travel stuff was great. And you know what? I'm gonna go ahead and rank him ahead of Magneto. And this has nothing to do with Oscar Isaac playing him later, which I figured I'd just mention because Oscar Isaac. The series also was supposed to originally end with an "Apocalypse being finally defeated" episode, until they decided to add on another season. That just further shows that he was THE villain of the show. Right?

Ed Ranks X-Men (TV series) Villains, Part 1

Are you feeling nostalgia yet?

I started writing this one AGES ago and then got angry because I lost a bunch of it and didn’t want to rewrite it.

Anyway, long story short: a few months ago I got a year of “free” Disney+… “free” being a very relative term considering how much I’m paying Verizon a month in cable bills to get this “free” service for a year. WHATEVER besides the point.

Some people would use access to the vast catalogue of Disney+ to watch Star Wars, Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, classic Disney films, and all that other crap? Me. NOPE. Straight to the 1990s “X-Men” Cartoon.

Some TV shows, when watched decades later, don’t stand the test of time. This one ABSOLUTELY DID and is still so good.

Anyway, by my count there are 42ish “villains” (or “antagonists” really, as my list features some people who are good or neutral characters in other episodes that for some reason or another are antagonists or opposing the X-Men here).  None of this reflects the continuity outside of the TV show or how cool the characters are in the comics or movies. This is 100% based on this awesome 90’s cartoon.

With 42 of them, you can bet your ass I’m going to break this into two parts.

So here are 42 through 21 – e.g. the suckier villains. 

42. Mojo - Mojo fucking sucks. I couldn't watch these episodes at all. I started watching the first one and got through about 3 minutes of it before I skipped it. Then there wound up being a second episode. Skipped that shit too.

Nobody likes you Morph, but at least you're not Mojo.

41. Morph - Morph was a lame character who I'm glad instantly died at the beginning of the show, and I am sad that they actually brought him back later (both as a villain, and as a man seeking redemption). There is no reason to have Morph villein episodes. Any Morph episode would have been better as a Mystique episode, who had the same shapeshifting power but wasn't a giggling, unlikable twat.

40. D'Ken - the Phoenix Saga had, like, 37 villains introduced in it. D'Ken was another one of those villains. I don’t care.

39. Trevor Fitzroy and Bantam - Turncoat mutants who work for Master Mold / The Sentinels and want to travel back in time and kill professor X. Honestly leads to an AWESOME two part episode with an alternate reality that included a married version of Wolverine and Storm. More time travel. More Bishop and Shard. More Magneto. Good episode. But Fitzroy and Bantam themselves? They were just sucky lackeys.

Mediocrity!

38. Children of the Shadow - A mutants-only anti-human cult that operate out of a small western down out in the desert. Cyclops is looking for his missing friend and needs to investigate them. Whatever. They are like the bizzaro opposite version of the Friends of Humanity. A FOH vs COS fight would have been epic, but it never happened. Just this filler Cyclops episode.

37. High Evolutionary - If you think you remember High Evolutionary from this cartoon, you're probably just remembering the version of him that was on the Spider-Man series, not this one. On this show, he features in one episode that's barely memorable and the only memorable parts are the parts with Magneto. This might have been one of the episodes where Magneto had the wrong voice too. anyway, he's forgettable from a forgettable episode.

36. Bella Donna & X-Ternal - These two were used in a Gambit backstory episode where his former fiance tricks him to going back to bayou country because his brother is kidnapped and also because she wants to force him to marry her. There we learn all about strange fucking redneck bayou cults. Okay. I'm glad we only had to put up with these characters in one episode and then basically never mention them again.

35. Cameron Hodge - Ultra-forgettable Cameron Hodge first shows up as Beast's lawywer before becoming a villainous servant of the anti-mutant, pro-slavery government of Genosha. After that, he straight up vanishes for four seasons before reappearing after you forgot who he was. When he shows up again, he is basically a half-robot who has betrayed mankind to work for the Phalanx. It would have been more effective if there weren't four years of episodes between his appearances though, so I wasn't like "Dafuq is this guy again?"

34. Gladiator - I guess Gladiator counts as a sometimes villain (or at least "antagonist") in this show too, after initially being portrayed as a good guy.

33. Alpha Flight - One of another set of "Wolverine Backstory" villains, though technicaly a Canadian superhero team. But since this is an AMERICAN SHOW WITH BALD EAGLES AND FREEDOM, you just know that the Canadian heroes are therefore DEVIOUS VILLAINS. Or, you know, misguided or something. Anyway, Alpha Flight as villains totally suck, but at least these episodes are good in that they serve to help the viewer learn about Wolverine's past, Dr. Cornelius' adamantium injections, "Weapon X", and all that great shit.

32. Iceman & X-Factor - Another "flashback"-ey episode where we learn that there was a guy called "Iceman" who was an "original" X-Man before he left because daddy issues with Xavier. He and the X-Factor team are introduced as antagonists, only for them to redeem themselves and not be evil after all. Which happened a million times on this show by the time this episode aired.

31. Erik the Red (and Black Tom Cassidy) - If Daredevil wore red S&M bondage gear with an exposed midriff, he would just be Erik the Red. Honestly, this crap Shi'ar villain who sort of introduces us to the space characters that we'll be meeting as part of the upcoming Phoenix Saga is mostly forgettable. His biggest claim to fame is, yes, being prominently featured in the infamous Juggernaut fan dub. I'll just include Black Tom Cassidy as a sub-villain here too, underserving of his own ranking, because he's just a dude hired by Erik.

30. Red Skull - Yep, there was a Wolverine flashback episode where he was with Captain America, fighting the Red Skull in WWII. Did you forget that? Because I did.

29. Zebediah Killgrave - The Purple Man shows up in another episode that was run completely out of order. It aired in Season 5, but is clearly set after Jean Grey dies at the end of the Phoenix Saga but before she returns to life. So when you watch that episode you're like "wait... did she die AGAIN?" No. They just can't run episodes in order. Anyway. Killgrave. Pretty not memorable. I just wanted him to be David Tenant and he wasn't.

28. Lilandra - Lilandra is mostly in the show to be an ally and Dr. X's space girlfriend, but also when Jean turns into Dark Phoenix, Lilandra thinks it's a pretty good idea to kill her (because it honestly is a pretty good idea to kill her), and thus she's temporarily an antagonist in the show too for, like, two episodes or something. Not a bad character, just a bad Antagonist because it’s not like we believed she was really going to kill Phoenix or anything.

27. The Starjammers – Like Lilandra, they're not "villains" in the show, per-se, but they are introduced in The Phoenix Saga, Part IV as antagonists, led by Corsair. After their initial appearance, they'll eventually show up again, but mainly just so Corsair can reveal that he's Scott Summers' daddy.  This show wound up having a HUGE number of parent reveal episodes. It's like an episode of Maury.

26. The Colony - A version of the Brood from the comics that is changed up A LOT and here they want to make Rogue their queen. They appear once, and I barely remember the episode. Space insects. Whatever. After a while, every villain just started being from space.

Totally stone Megatron, right?

25. Garokk - Garokk is a rock which looks vaguely like Megatron's face. He is an evil rock. Yep. Evil rock. We worked with the evil sorceress Zaladane (unranked here, so just consider her as a Garokk sub-villain) and Sauron. That's about all I have to say about rocky.

24. The Phalanx - In the comics there were actually two separate (but related) robo-alien species that went around trying to conquer/assimilate other species - the Phalanx and the Technarchy. The cartoon streamlined the two into just The Phalanx, which was a good call. Still, by the time they show up in season 5 with their ability to change shape to impersonate other people we've already had 400 other "shapeshifter" plotlines and 400 other alien invasion plotlines.

23. Cortez - When Magneto makes a space colony so that the mutants can live in peace in space, of course this douchebag Fabian Cortez messes things up so Magneto can't have nice things. I guess Cortez is an effective villain because I hate him a lot. But I also hate him a lot because he's a shitty and underdeveloped character who was a dickhole for no reason. Eventually he winds up as Apocolypse's bitch.

22. Avalanche, Pyro, and Blob - Look, these "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" D-lister villains don't deserve separate entries, and basically they should all be lumped together. They're not even, like, real villains on their own. They're idiot henchmen basically.

21. Proteus - Professor X's earth girlfriend, Moira MacTaggert (not to be confused with his space girlfriend, Lilandra... this dude was a multi-girlfriend mac daddy) always had a "weird" relationship with X, and one of the reasons why was because she had a secret son, Proteus, who was a giant fuckup who was locked up on Muir Island for his whole life. He escapes to go try to find his father, who is also a giant fuckup and shitty Scottish "family values" politician who doesn't practice what he preaches because he abandoned his fuckup son. Professor X is able to eventually defeat him with his amazing power to calm down the angsty teenager children of his girlfriends. Yep, that is another Professor power.

Next time? THE TOP 20!

Ed Ranks the Worst 2020 Shit that had Nothing to Do with COVID-19

Technically Australia, but symbolically the entire world.

Hey, remember this blog? Yeah. I stopped updating it a while ago. But don't worry... I didn't die of COVID! I just got super lazy! But now I'm back, and maybe I'll post more often than once every four months.

Oh, and speaking of COVID -- or NOT speaking of COVID -- 2020 was a shithole of a year. Now that it's 2021, let's look back on the top 8 things that happened in 2020 that were ALSO complete shit, and had nothing to do with the biggest piece of shit of 2020. 

8. Megxit

I mean, this one wasn't that bad unless you're the type of person who really gets emotional about drama related to the British Royal Family. Which appears to be most people, based on the ratings of The Crown. But whatever, this wasn't that bad. That hot mixed chick from Suits didn't divorce Prince Harry, but she and Prince Harry divorced their family. Whatever. Last place. Not that terrible. Life will go on. The concept of monarchy and royal families is pretty much on the way out anyway and it's time to put the nails in the coffin.

7. Beirut Blew Up 

Remember that? Yeah. A substantial part of a city blew up because a large number of government bureaucrats disregarded repeated warnings from officials that maybe having a shitload of Ammonium Nitrated from seized Russian cargo vessel sitting around in a warehouse in the Middle East was perhaps a bad idea. But then again... who had ever heard of Ammonium Nitrate ever blowing up before other than people who paid attention to EVERY SINGLE STORY ABOUT IEDs FOR THE LAST THREE DECADES?

6. World War III... Almost

Remember how the United States and Iran almost started a World War in January? Ah, those were such simpler times! 

5. All the Koalas were on Fire

Yeah, this one was pretty terrible too.

4. RBG, Chadwick Bosman, Alex Trebek, Eddie Van Halen, Sean Connery, Kobe, Terry Jones, Little Richard, Ian Holm, Dianna Rigg, That Guy who Played "Squiggy" on Laverne and Shirley, My Cat Squiggy, etc. etc. etc.

James Bond, Pussy Galore, and Tracy Bond...
all the same year? Fuck.

Look, everyone who was ever born will also one day die. Everyone dies. So people, including famous people, dying... is inevitable. And despite all the people who died of COVID, a lot of big names also died in 2020 of things that had nothing to do with COVID. Still, even ignoring COVID, it seems like 2020's death toll was especially more gruesome than other years. Fucking hell man. That "in memorium" thing they run during awards shows would probably last 2 1/2 hours itself if they named everyone. 

3. POTUS Not Kicked Out of Office

For only the third time in US history, the President of the United States was impeached. Alas, also for the third time in history the impeachment failed and POTUS wasn't kicked out of office. Lame. Still, he lost the election eventually anyway, so fuck that guy and I hope he dies in prison.

2. Murder Hornets

Murder Hornets. Need I say more? 

1. Cops Keep Murdering Black People for No Fucking Reason

Although technically this could also be on the "worst shit that happened" lists for 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016... etc. to whenever the concept of police forces was invented.