Villains Who Became Less Powerful When They Joined Super Villain Teams

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Feb 28, 2019

In their latest look at recurring plot points, CSBG spotlights times when supervillains became less powerful when they joined teams!

In Drawing Crazy Patterns, I spotlight at least five scenes/moments from within comic book stories that fit under a specific theme (basically, stuff that happens frequently in comics). Note that these lists are inherently not exhaustive. They are a list of five examples (occasionally I'll be nice and toss in a sixth). So no instance is "missing" if it is not listed. It's just not one of the five examples that I chose.

Today, based (essentially) on a suggestion by reader Aaron C., we take a look at five super villains who were strong enough to take on an entire team before they joined a super villain team and then suddenly they were treated much weaker (I like to call it the "team effect"). There are LOT of examples of this trope, so I could easily do a few sequels to this installment. Maybe I will!

For now, we start with one of the earliest Justice League villains...

DOCTOR LIGHT

Introduced in Justice League of America #12, Doctor Light was so powerful that he took on the entire Justice League not once but on numerous occasions! You see, back in the early days of the Justice League, the League often had to fight one of three types of villains. A villain with magical powers, a villain who could somehow produce Kryptonite somehow or a villain that could send Superman to a planet with a red sun. In this case, Light was the latter. He was a genius who teleported Leaguers all over the galaxy!

However, even before he formed the Fearsome Five in the pages of the New Teen Titans, Doctor Light was beginning to be treated like a bit of a joke and finally, in New Teen Titans #7 (by Marv Wolfman, George Perez and Romeo Tanghal), Light was embarrassed in a fight between the Titans and the Fearsome Five...

LIVING LASER

The Avengers were not exactly at their most powerful levels when the Living Laser first fought them, but come on, he still took on the entire Avengers team for not one but TWO issues...

Over a hundred issues later, the Living Laser did not acquit himself very well in Avengers #164 (by Jim Shooter, John Byrne and Pablo Marcos) while working with Power Man and Whirlwind...

He even gets a power boost later in the issue to spotlight just how relatively weak he had become!

GRIM REAPER

The Grim Reaper, brother of Wonder Man, was once able to capture a rather powerful Avengers lineup singlehandedly to force them to have a trial involving the Vision "stealing" Wonder Man's life!

Decades later, he is used as a gag in how easy it was to take him out when he joins the Secret Six in Civil War #2 (by Mark Millar, Steve McNiven and Dexter Vines).

Later still, in Vision #1 (by Tom King, Gabriel Hernandez Walta and Jordie Bellaire), the Reaper was killed by the Vision's wife with a kitchen tray!

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BLOB

When the Blob was introduced, he was treated like he was one of the most powerful mutants the X-Men had ever encountered!

By the time that he was in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in Uncanny X-Men #142 (by John Byrne, Chris Claremont and Terry Austin), he was just some guy...

POST

In the lead-up to Onslaught, we see essentially his herald. The idea is that if Post could take on Storm, Cyclops, Iceman and Wolverine by himself than can you imagine how tough ONSLAUGHT was?