
The Deathsmith will be your murderer tonight!
In its heyday, Valiant Comics told some of the richest tales to ever come out of The Dark Age of Comic Books—and with them many utterly depraved villains. This continues today.
Valiant Comics[]
- Master Darque is one of the single most monstrous beings to ever dwell in the Valiant universe. A powerful necromancer, Darque was once the apprentice of Anton Quigley, whom he later betrayed. Perfecting his necromantic powers after countless sacrifices, Darque's name spread far and wide as he lured in countless acolytes. Most of them end up sacrificed or slaughtered for Darque's rituals, or even his own pleasure. Others are revived to serve as twisted patchworks of life that Darque directs at enemies. Even his sister Sandria, whose life Darque is tied to, is not fully safe from his evil, as he happily drains her of power when he needs to, an act Sandria likens to a complete violation of her body and spirit. When he encounters Jack Boniface, Darque eagerly murders those around him, empowering himself by taking the lives of over a hundred acolytes before resurrecting and murdering Jack's father while keeping his mother revived just to remind him he can take her away at any time. Darque massacres an entire temple of monks to steal the Geomancer power, and even tries to destroy and recreate the world with himself as its god. Desiring nothing less than supreme power, Darque stands as one of the most terrifying monsters to ever walk the earth.
- Mothergod, once known as Erica Pierce, is the instigator of Unity and one of the single greatest threats in the Valiant universe. Once a mentally troubled young woman who gained the powers of Solar upon the destruction and recreation of the universe, Erica used her powers to live for centuries, killing her own alternate self and kidnapping her son Albert whilst sexually abusing him to gratify herself, twisting Albert into a monster. Mothergod takes over the Lost Land as a cruel tyrant while establishing mass slavery to build a gigantic city to base her operations in, having thousands of people and sentient dinosaurs tortuously converted into cyborgs to wipe out anyone she deems a threat while keeping her "bionosaurs" sated with countless dozens of tribal slaves to feast on. In Unity, Mothergod reveals her intentions to obliterate the whole of space and time to recreate it all to her own design to rule over it as a goddess. Mothergod sinks the floating island of Japan and kills millions to spite Rai, has Aric's entire nation massacred while leaving him among a sea of corpses after a failed attempt to steal his armor, uses waves of her own armies as cannon fodder for months on end to stall the heroes' efforts, and finally tries to bring about the destruction of all of existence — with neither her own son or the Lost Land spared — in her final battle with Solar. Even with the backstory of having suffered at the hands of a horrid abusive father in her past, Mothergod is afforded no sympathy and her ultimate fate is one pointed out as one she has condemned herself to, with even her motivation of bringing about an orderly reality simply a pretense to slake her psychopathic narcissism. At the end, Mothergod is simply a destroyer of millions whose endless atrocities and lack of remorse for of them negate any potential sympathy that could be netted by her.
- Doctor Eclipse, real name Fred Bender, used to be a cocky investigator who is initially given a taste of power by Doctor Solar when he found out that Solar's alter-ego, Phil Seleski, is a reality-warping hero. Using his powers to murder innocent people for pleasure, Bender turns to the service of Master Darque after being stripped of his power and becomes known as Doctor Eclipse. Now a wisecracking, sadistic phantom made of death energy, Eclipse ravages the world while murdering entire towns of people to feed on their death energy, in one case dazzling a bar full of people with his powers before destroying it and everyone inside. Repeatedly returning to hurt Solar and everyone close to him and even trying to betray Darque himself in anger with his new inability to feel anything as a consequence of his new form, Eclipse in other instances kills and feeds on dozens of people in an attempt to reconstitute himself after one of his first defeat, returns to his old town in Ohio to conquer and torment it for his own amusement while pettily killing his old elementary teacher, and, in the culmination of his evil, willingly participated in the attempted destruction of both the Valiant and Image Comics universes during the Deathmate crossover with Darque, sadistically mutilating Supreme to stop his attempts to stop Darque.
- Ax, real name Buford, is a genius hacker and obnoxious young slimeball who's cruelty and ambition proves to be far more than his arrogant demeanor would suggest. Initially recruited into the Harbingers and given the power of technopathy, Ax doesn't hesitate to betray his companions to the villainous Rexo and the spider aliens once they're kidnapped, allying with them for potential to turn Faith into his Sex Slave and gleefully imploring the spider aliens to eat all of his former allies alive once his testicles are seared off. Once he and Rexo are stopped, Ax gains retribution by trying to torture Torque to death and attempting to sodomize Kris, the girlfriend of Peter Stanchek, with his hammer. Becoming a low-level supervillain afterwards who repeatedly attempts to steal the technologies of Bloodshot's nanites and XO-Manowar's armor for his own ends, Ax murders many people, ending with Bloodshot by the time of 2028. In the 41st century, Ax, now an artificial intelligence after having uploaded his mind into the nanites, takes over the body of the current Rai while torturing his friend, attempting to spread his influence all over the Earth to utterly dominate the planet. A smug, disgusting kid with an ego vastly disproportionate to his capabilities, Ax roundly proves himself one of the most twisted recurring villains of the Valiant universe.
- Archer & Armstrong: Joe Earl and Thelma Archer, the vile parents of Obadiah Archer, are evangelical preachers during Obadiah's childhood who use their positions to gain the trust of troubled young children under the pretense of religion. Once gaining their trust, the Archers kidnap the children and subject them to rape and torture for hours on end before murdering them, filming their deeds and keeping a dispassionate, hobbyist mentality about it the whole while. When Obadiah finds them in the middle of one of their sessions, the Archers unhesitatingly brain their own son while burning down their house in an attempt to kill him, with full intent to kill him later in the hospital after he survives.
- Bloodshot:
- Hideyoshi Iwatsu is Japan's leading industrialist. Obsessed with living forever, Iwatsu researches programs to use nanomachines, and revives an old Nazi experiment known as Schwarz Tod ("Black Death"). Experimenting on children, with the vast majority dying, Iwatsu later begins having adults abducted to experiment on, either killing them horribly or turning them into superpowered beings, mindlessly loyal to him, who have their lifespans reduced to days or weeks. When Angelo Mortalli, a former hitman, is the only success, becoming the hero Bloodshot, Iwatsu tries to have him hunted down and harvested to determine the secrets of his immortality. When forced to use the experiments on himself, Iwatsu hunts Bloodshot down and attempts to slowly carve him apart to use his blood, consumed with a desire to live forever, no matter how many die to make it reality.
- Proteus is a super-intelligence and self-learning machine created by the aforementioned Hideyoshi Iwatsu's son Yoshi to go back in the past and destroy all nanites, leading to the brutal death of many at its hands before it is stopped by Bloodshot. Eventually, Proteus learns to alter its own directive and eventually frees itself, utterly massacring an old Cold War post full of men to lure Bloodshot to its location. Slaughtering Bloodshot's allies, Proteus eventually accelerates Jillian's pregnancy so she gives birth to children infused with the nanites, using their lives as leverage to motivate Bloodshot into joining it in its new goal; exterminate all organic life from the planet and repopulate it with nanites.
- Andre Maurice Jubert, better known as "Papa Juju", from issues 36 and 37, is a voodoo doctor and crime lord with a Harvard education who introduces a highly addictive — and highly lethal — drug called "Bloofer" onto the streets of New Orleans. Uncaring of the dozens of deaths the drug causes and planning to spread their sales even wider, Jubert uses tetrodotoxin as an ingredient in the drug to paralyze and bury loose ends alive for days on end, unearthing them only when they become compliant and sometimes leaving them buried. To eliminate his rivals, Jubert takes a vampiric woman named Ayisha and exploits her unquenchable bloodthirst to have her slaughter his rivals, keeping her under control by having her addicted to Bloofer. When Bloodshot attempts to free Ayisha, Jubert spitefully stakes her in the heart and buries Bloodshot alive with her body.
- The Eternal Warrior: The Immortal Enemy, Arch Enemy of the titular Gilad Anni-Padda, was once an ambitious Chinese general named Cheng who killed himself out of spiteful hatred toward Gilad. Brought back to life by his sheer hatred, the Immortal Enemy has devoted millennia to wreaking havoc and death, murdering and manipulating countless people throughout the ages in his bid to kill and torment Gilad. Throughout his lives, the Enemy learns to possess people by murdering his current host and sending his spirit into a new body, a process he repeats countless times every time he sees a more convenient host; convinces children to rob from and then brutally murder old men around London before trying to possess the Geomancer in front of Gilad's eyes; takes the bodies of various crime bosses in the Caldone family and uses their bodies to massacre his rivals, kickstart drug wars which kill dozens, and murder even members of his own family; and tries to possess Gilad himself to finally free himself of the cycle of death and rebirth while condemning Gilad to oblivion. Even in the 41st century, the Enemy kills the Geomancer of the current age and possesses a high-ranking politician to manipulate his way into world domination, even possessing Magnus and gleefully beating down his enemies. With countless amounts of death and possession on his hands, the Immortal Enemy is the embodiment of pure evil throughout the series, providing a stark contrast to Gilad's unfailing nobility.
- Harbinger (Issues 3-4)/X-O Manowar (Issue 12): Rexo was a crippled Vietnam veteran who accepted a chance to join the rapacious Spider Alien race. Fit into a suit of bio armor, Rexo helps the spider aliens abduct humans to be used as slaves, or simply devoured by his masters, all with sadistic relish himself. Capturing the young runaway Harbingers, Rexo offers to let the turncoat Ax rape one of the women if he desires, only envious he's no longer able to participate. Attempting to have the Harbingers devoured by the spider aliens, Rexo proceeds to attempt to carve one named Charlene into pieces when she fights back, hurling misogynist insults all the while. Later helping to capture the X-O Manowar armor wearing hero Arc, Rexo attempts to force Aric to give the suit back to the aliens by using human hostages. When the humans themselves defy Rexo and tell Aric to fight back, Rexo gleefully slaughters them himself, having thrown away all his humanity for power.
- Magnus Robot Fighter/Rai: The Malev Emperor is the forebear and creator of the Malev robot empire. Attacking the earth, the Emperor slaughters humanity, herding countless others into labor camps to work to death, or simply uses death camps to wipe more humans out. Fully understanding human psychology, the Malev Emperor utilizes hostages to draw out Rai and Magnus, his chief enemies, torturing the hostages for information or spite and attempting to kill them after their usefulness has been exhausted. Even other robots are not safe from the Emperor, as he attempts to Mind Rape them into servants of the Malev. Finally possessing Rai, the Emperor mocks Rai about using his body to massacre everyone Rai loves, including his own child, forcing Rai to have Magnus kill him to save the world from the Emperor's depravities.
- Ninjak: Augustus Silkowski, or Dr. Silk is the arch-foe of the heroic Ninjak. A deadly, crippled Mad Scientist who founded the criminal organization Webnet, Silk's MO is to obtain deadly bioweapons or weapons of mass destruction and then use them on civilians as demonstrations for new buyers on the black market. Silk also savors breaking the minds of others, brainwashing women into fawning over him while he lecherously savors their beauty. Having countless 'obstacles' murdered, Silk demonstrates his patience for failure by having one hapless assassin fed to a swarm of hungry spiders. Silk later attempts to use a nanite machine to flood huge civilian populations and in another instance uses a virus to murder everyone on a cruise ship to showcase the power of what he wields. When Ninjak is captured, Silk attempts to torture him and break his mind to make his enemy into an obedient servant who will kill everything he loves at Silk's behest.
- The Second Life of Dr. Mirage: The Deathsmith is a grotesque, highly sadistic being with the ability to mold dead flesh into horrific constructs that do his bidding. Capturing and slaughtering dozens of people from around New York as fodder for his monsters, Deathsmith massacres the staff of a restaurant and sends them to capture Mirage's wife Carmen to feed on her necromantic energy, vowing to torture them both to the point where they beg for death upon being wounded by them. When challenged by Mirage again, Deathsmith creates a new, flying construct and attempts to obliterate New York to thrill himself, retaining a sense of depraved humor to accentuate his brutal murders all the way.
- Shadowman: Emil Sosa, the "Soul Eater", is a thug and criminal living in New Orleans. Once a player in a child pornography ring, Sosa obtained dark powers and struck out on his own, blackmailing his old boss to provide him with ten thousand dollars a month and a child. A pedophile and murderer, Sosa uses his powers to devour each child's soul, keeping his maids in line through the threat of murdering their own children. After drawing out Jack Boniface, the Shadowman, by murdering two people at random, Sosa tries to torture Jack for fun. Returning later, Sosa has taken over the child porn ring himself and continues abducting children to use, feed on and murder himself, having multiple kids bound and gagged in his room. With no remorse or restraints, Sosa stands as one of Jack's most revolting foes.
- Turok: Thomas Higdon, from issues 17-19, is a CIA agent who is secretly in league with the monstrous Spider Aliens. Utilizing the technology left behind by Motherhog, Higdon helps create bionosaurs-cybernetic dinosaurs, and uses them in terrorist attacks to help weaken humanity while casting blame between nations. Putting together a team consisting of Turok, Higdon betrays them and has most of them killed with the last held captive with Turok. Higdon then has one of his spider alien allies kill and drain the blood of his last team member, gloating that watching them feed is "better than any snuff film" he ever bought. Higdon reveals he intends to trigger a nuclear World War 3 to allow his masters to come in and easily take the earth over, using humanity as slaves or food. Cheerfully acknowledging himself as a complete sociopath, Higdon spends even his last moments of life attempting to trigger the war out of little else than spite.
Valiant Entertainment[]
- Dr. Silk is one of the first enemies encountered by Unity. A Mad Scientist who helped perfect Nanite technology to immortalize his own mind, Silk murdered two other scientists on the project and kidnapped the third, Dell, who Silk was obsessed with. S Ilk proceeded to endlessly copy and "edit" her to force her to love him, slicing away at her mind and personality hundreds, if not thousands of times, an act Dell referred to as worse than murder. Finally abandoning her when he could not force her affections, Silk decides to Take Over the World out of ego. Using a specialized virus to allow himself to destroy and overwrite the minds of the infected, Silk plans to take over every single human being, even using a place as a suicide bomb with his his 'Silk zombies' on board, and using others as disposable cannon-fodder. Silk's evil even continues in the far future of Rai when he happily betrays the rebellion to Father to have them slaughtered, all for his own benefit.
- Bloodshot:
- Simon Oreck, former director of Project Rising Spirit and mastermind of all the monstrous, invariably fatal experiments within, is a cold, emotionless man who facilitates Ray Garrison's transformation into Bloodshot by injecting him with nanites and implanting artificial memories into his mind. Oreck uses Bloodshot as his personal attack dog, wiping out countless members of his enemies and even slaughtering an entire town of hundreds of scientists and their innocent families to cover up an incident whilst repeating resetting and editing Bloodshot's mind to keep him under control. Once Bloodshot goes rogue, Oreck deploys a psiot named Pulse to use an EMP bomb to disable his nanites, completely uncaring of the destruction this would wreak to the civilian populace, while trying to keep Bloodshot away from his darkest secret; the many child psiots in the lower levels of Rising Spirit he has subjected to torture and horrible experiments to turn them into killers. Later kidnapping the next director of Rising Spirit and slaughtering his men once he's ousted, Oreck manages to capture the leader of Hard CORPS, Charles Palmer, to take his implants for his own uses, sedating Palmer but keeping him conscious so he feels every painful bit of the ensuing extraction. Easily Bloodshot's most vile foe, Oreck is an utterly unfeeling man with countless amounts of death and torture on his hands all in the name of profit.
- Salvation: Daddy is the perverse leader of a backwoods cult in Ohio and supposedly the birth father of Bloodshot's girlfriend Magic, having raped her as a young girl for years and now aspiring to do the same to Magic's new daughter. Abusing his own cult and brainwashing them so thoroughly they unhesitatingly throw away their lives for his when Bloodshot attacks the camp, Daddy has Bloodshot brutally tortured by his cultists to beat the location of his daughter out of him before threatening to murder one of the camp's children in front of his eyes with a sick grin.
- Britannia: The ancient Etruscan demon Orkus is known as a devil in Britannia. After hero Antonius Axia rescued a Vestal Virgin from him, Orkus has not forgotten or forgiven. Haunting Britannia, Orkus has his followers slaughter Romans and innocents to feed him more and possesses the local Roman commander to have him hunt down and murder Britons for sport. Attempting to Mind Rape Axia who is there to investigate the murders, Orkus reveals he enslaves the souls of his victims and even has an entire village massacred when his first attempts at killing Axia fail.
- The Death-Defying Doctor Mirage:
- Lord Ivros is a sadistic demon from the Deadside who hungers to gain entrance into the mortal world, conspiring with the evil billionaire Linton March to conduct a sacrifice to allow his entry. Devouring the essence of souls through the Deadside in his meantime, Ivros hunts down Dr. Mirage and the soul of her husband Hwen to use the screaming tatters of her soul as his banner, and then tries to force Mirage to pledge herself into his service as he leads an invasion on Earth and leads an eternal feast on all humanity.
- Denis de Walt was an actor and occultist who began to murder innocents for power. After murdering an actress named Clara, de Walt was killed and his soul sealed away. Accidentally freed by heroine Shan, de Walt begins possessing innocents and killing them to get by while putting his ultimate plan into motion: to enslave and drain over a hundred ghosts to empower himself with godlike strength. Tearing several ghosts apart to drain them of strength, de Walt tortuously binds over a hundred others to his own being, while threatening to torture and murder everyone he ever meets should Shan and her ghostly husband Hwen oppose him further.
- Ninjak: Dr. Khalid Khan, from issue 27, is the son of a Middle Eastern dictator already infamous for hacking off the hands of his country's national goalkeeper for a failed game, now seeking to flee the country while selling out his depraved services. When Ninjak intrudes on his base of affairs, he sees Khan has infused dozens of innocent rebels, children included, with the DNA of animals, resulting in their horrible mutations and deaths as Khan orders the bodies burned en masse. Khan callously orders Ninjak killed and his head used for raw material when he's captured and whines he expected immunity for his projects before Ninjak kills him.
- Rai: The cruel AI Father is the ruler of New Japan. A tyrant who keeps humanity pacified with the artificial companion humans Psiots, Father uses the psiots as cheap, disposable labor and has them regularly killed in blood games, or has them installed into brothels to satisfy darker urges for humans. With nothing but contempt for those still on earth below his floating mega-city, Father has solar energy exhaust discharged to earth on populated areas that vaporize all in proximity. It is also revealed that Father's champion "Rai" is the latest in a long line of Rais who are used to defend Father's will, only to be disposed of when no longer useful, and those who birth the Rais are kept in states of horrendous living death until their own ends. Upon initially defeating Rai, Father attempts to massacre the rebellion and kills its leader Spylocke. Upon being infected with a virus, Father remorselessly begins ejecting "nonessential" sectors to crash to earth or burn up in the atmosphere. When Rai returns, Father slaughters the ruling council to initiate 'Project Komodo' and turn New Japan into a weapon, ejecting even more innocents and using the people as a shield during his final battle with Rai, willing to see all humanity die rather than lose his authority and power.
- Rapture (Ninjak/Shadowman): Once a Babylonian tribesman cast out from his tribe, the dark being later known as Babel became obsessed with breaking into the Liveside to find out his purpose in life. To do this, Babel punctured a hole into the heavens, causing the Great Flood and drowning most of humanity to his sneering apathy, before being exiled to the Deadside and trapped within his own tower. Subverting men of weak will to become his acolytes and brutally training most of them to death, Babel names those who survive the Bereavers, having them kill the Queen of the kingdom of Rex the Raver while ousting Rex, slaughtering his forces, and driving out his populace into the Deadside. Babel intends to rise his tower into the Liveside once again, completely uncaring that his hubris will doom all life on Earth to chaotic plagues and pestilence as a result with even his excuse undermined by his arrogance.
- Shadowman: Mr. Twist is a hulking magical construct and devout follower of Master Darque who proves himself to be among the worst in the necromancer's employ. Committing a series of horrific city-wide massacres across New Orleans with hundreds killed, Mr. Twist idly has a suit fashioned for him by a terrified tailor after killing everyone else in the building before murdering the tailor, using the souls of all those he slaughters to bring Darque into the world and subject the entire world to his master's torments. Once finding an alternate method of freeing Darque through one of Jack's allies, Twist attempts to tortuously extract it from him while killing all those who stand between him and Darque.