8. The Mud Pack



Preston Payne was the villain who drew me fully back into DETECTIVE COMICS when Marshall Rogers and Len Wein created the third villain to bear the title of Clayface in 1978. The previous versions hadn't shown up much in either new or reprint form in my 8 years of comics reading, so I don't know how much I knew about them when Alan Grant and Norm Breyfogle brought all of them, along with a new "Lady Clayface", together under the inspired group name of "the Mud Pack". And hey, they got their own logo on the issues of SECRET ORIGINS and DETECTIVE COMICS where they appeared, and I've already established what a level of prestige I always attached to that accomplishment!

Clayface is a great name for a supervillain, evocative and sinister and unnerving, but vague enough that it could mean a lot of things, as it in fact did with the variety of evildoers here--a psychotic version of Lon Chaney, a shapeshifting lug, a tragic melting monstrosity with a deadly touch, all wonderful riffs based on a simple phrase. Is this the only supervillain team where everybody has the same code name? I think it is!

A little late because I was playing D&D all afternoon.

On the fifth day of Christmas, the Ghost of Christmas Villainy brought to me...

Jake Fury's LMD Zodiac




Another greatest hits from the nostalgia train here. I got Defenders 350 in one of the polybagged 3 packs of Marvels as a stocking stuffer one Christmas and in those wondrous Giffen channeling Kirby pages I discovered to my delight a group of villains based on the Zodiac (I had briefly seen Libra from the other Zodiac in a copy of Avengers #124 I inherited from a neighbor, but this was my first full exposure to a Marvel Zodiac team). I absolutely adored the Giffen designs for these villains and mixture of incompetence and deadliness embodied by these sad sack LMDs charmed 8 year old me. I recently revisited the 4 issue orc of Defenders (47-50) where Moon Knight was working with the team and reread this Zodiac saga and it still held some of its peculiar charm, so I knew I wanted these guys to appear on my list when Kurt announced the topic. The kind of straddle the line between pure nostalgia and one I still like today, but I think their longevity in my esteem stems form the nostalgia side of the equation, so they inhabit the lower half of my list.

-M

Let's judge the tree by its fruit:

Dixit Medusa : "I will aid you against the Avengers... if the Inhumans shall be the next to fall!" It seems that the fall of the Avengers and that of the Inhumans is in the cards.

A bit later, after the Masters of evil are defeated by the Avengers and the Liberators, Medusa attacks Pietro for no reason. The game is afoot!

The Wasp then says : "Come on, Widow! Let's take the Panther together!" (this is followed by a simultaneous wasp sting and widow blast).

Walkyrie then blasts the (male) Avengers with her power lance, much to the delight of the rest of her team. 

The Avengers are then bound and the Liberators abduct a scientist, all on Walkyrie's say-so. The scientist is supposed to help operate an untested and dangerous space-time gizmo, a nefarious trope we've often seen. Only then does Wanda come to her senses and breaks the influence she had been operating under.

Granted, this was a one-shot deal and the Enchantress used a spell to convince her partners to join her cause... but the Lady Liberators were not acting like heroes when they attacked their erstwhile colleagues or abducted Professor Sciencedude; they were acting like regular bad guys (or bad ladies). 

I rest my case, your honour, and beg court's indulgence.

Validus from the Fatal Five is technically under the mental control of Tharok. This becomes a slippery slope if mind-controlled villains don't qualify, same thing with "amnesia" manipulated like Medusa in the Frightful Four. It would even mess up another choice I have for tomorrow.