Being a successful Marvel villain is as much about style as it is substance. Choosing the right costume means striking fear into their enemies, possibly even winning the battle before it starts. Doctor Doom is a prime example of this as his armor is about as frightening a costume as anyone will find.
Unfortunately for many of Marvel's villains, terrible costume and gimmick choices have held their careers back rather dramatically. Some of them are impractical while others are outright pointless. A bad costume choice can ruin a supervillain's career before it even gets a chance to start.
10 Attuma Wore Ridiculous Gear
An evil, savage merman, Attuma was raised to be the leader of a horde of undersea barbarians. He desperately hated Namor as well as Atlantis in general. Attuma was a powerful villain who gave Namor and the Avengers a run for his money on more than one occasion.
That doesn't mean he made good choices in tailors. His costume served no purpose, particularly the helmet. Attuma's costume had unnecessarily large and pointy shoulder pads which echoed the large and pointy parts of his helmet.
9 Electro's Original Mask Served No Purpose
Spider-Man has had a lot of enemies over the years, many of whom were extremely powerful. Electro was certainly one of them. His ability to manipulate electricity made him incredibly versatile and dangerous, to say the least.
But as powerful as Electro is, no one took him seriously for a long time thanks to his costume. The green and yellow color scheme was bad enough but his weird electric starfish mask was three steps past ludicrous and it did nothing. Thankfully, he's stopped wearing it all the time.
8 Leap-Frog Took His Name Too Literally
Being the man without fear means having a list of incredibly deadly enemies. Daredevil has spent much of his career dealing with violent lunatics like Typhoid Mary and Bullseye. And they certainly know how to dress for a fight.
Then, there's Leap-Frog. This villain quite literally dresses like a frog and leaps around. He's surprisingly agile but that's about it. Other than looking like a frog, his costume was just big and ungainly and was definitely not appropriate for fighting Daredevil.
7 The Grim Reaper's Costume Makes No Sense
Simon Williams has had a rough ride as a superhero over the years. He keeps dying and getting resurrected, often with new and different powers. His brother didn't make things any easier as he was the villain known as the Grim Reaper.
It would be easy to underestimate the Grim Reaper but he was a challenge for various iterations of the Avengers. At the same time, the man had a non-sensical costume that had a symbol on the chest that made it look like he was poisonous.
6 Jack O'Lantern's Headgear Was Rough
The Green Goblin inspired a lot of villains in Marvel Comics. That obviously includes Hobgoblin, who quite literally stole most of his original gear from one of Green Goblin's caches. Norman Osborn has always been annoyed by that.
Jack O'Lantern used gear that was quite reminiscent of the Osborn's, as well. The main difference was that Green Goblin never wore a giant flaming pumpkin on his head as it would have just restricted his vision in a dramatic fashion.
5 Stryfe's Helmet Was Just Plain Awkward
If there's one thing that's true about Cable, it's that he knows how to make an enemy. He's certainly made a few of them over the years. Even a good number of his friends don't like him that might. But back in the 1990s, Cable's main enemy was Stryfe.
A clone of Cable raised by Apocalypse in the future, Stryfe came back to the past to cause problems for his "brother." Unfortunately, he had even worse fashions sense than Cable, which included an overdramatic helmet that did nothing except look stupid.
4 Wizard Needs A Better Stylist
Marvel Comics is overrun with smartypants, both heroes and villains. That includes the likes of Mister Fantastic, Iron Man, Amadeus Cho, Doctor Doom, and the Leader. Naturally, Reed Richards tends to attract the attention of evil geniuses such as the Wizard.
While he has certainly developed a lot of impressive technology and weapons, his fashion sense is nowhere near as developed. The color scheme is terrible but even worse is the massive helmet that makes him surprisingly top-heavy.
3 Porcupine Should Have Picked A Different Gimmick
Animal themes are common for heroes and villains. Look at Spider-Man, as an example. The gimmick was kind of forced on him by the bite of a radioactive spider, but he certainly owned it and made it work.
Porcupine, on the other hand, was not bitten by a radioactive porcupine. As such, he wasn't required to dress like a pointy rodent. The guy did look menacing to an extent but the costume was just plain awkward to move around in.
2 Jackal Was A Poorly Dressed Menace
When fans think of Spider-Man's greatest enemies, names like Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Carnage jump to the top of the list, and for good reason. But Jackal has been one of the nastiest villains he ever faced. The games he played with clones changed the path of Spider-Man's life in numerous ways.
Keeping that in mind, why he called himself the Jackal has never been satisfactorily explained. Even worse, his costume was utterly ludicrous. Nothing about it was useful in combat and it wasn't even scary. A ski mask would have been more effective.
1 Wildside Needed To Ditch The Shoulder Pads
The 1990s era of X-Men saw the advent of an edgy team called X-Force. Led by Cable and born from the remains of the New Mutants, this team was made up of some of the toughest Mutants around, including the likes of Feral and Shatterstar.
At the same time, Stryfe had his own crew. One of them was Wildside who was analogous to Feral. But his costume was hideous and his shoulder pads were utterly insane. Given his fighting style, they probably got in his way a lot.