Some supervillains terrify us with their cruel, coldblooded schemes. Others elicit our sympathy with a tragic backstory or a conflicted conscience. And then there are the villains who make us want to pet them on the head and give them a "you tried" sticker. You know who we're talking about. These are the guys who get lost on the way back to their evil lair and stop someone in the street to ask for directions, only to realize that the person they stopped was the hero they've been running away from. They do their best, bless their little black hearts, but whether through lack of talent or good old-fashioned bad luck, they just can't seem to get it together.

Now sure, a few of the baddies on this list have gone through some character development in recent years, designed to elevate them from mockery to menace. But to us, they will always be the lovable losers who can't even put their shoes on properly (and in at least one case, we do mean that literally). Let's take a look at 15 not-so-super-villains who have brought so much schadenfreude to our lives. Reading comic books wouldn't be nearly so much fun without them!

15 CONDIMENT KING

This inferior felon debuted on Batman: The Animated Series. In fairness, he was just a comedian brainwashed by the Joker into becoming a supervillain. We shouldn't expect such a character to be a criminal genius. His comic book counterpart, however, has no excuses. Mitchell Mayo -- yes, that's his actual name -- donned a costume moderately less ridiculous than the original's and immediately ran out to squirt ketchup at the Birds of Prey.

You'd think a guy with a gimmick like this would at least lace his condiments with poison or something. But no. Literally the worst thing Condiment King has ever done to anyone is send them into anaphylactic shock.  This makes Condiment King the only villain around whose evil schemes can be thwarted by an epinephrine autoinjector.

14 CAPTAIN BOOMERANG

In the "fun but stupid" category we have Captain Boomerang. First a Flash rogue and then a member of the Suicide Squad, Captain Boomerang's plots usually involve a giant boomerang. On one memorable occasion, he turned himself into a giant boomerang. Even for comic book physics, that's pretty out there.

Somehow, Boomerang got more stupid and less fun by Identity Crisis. Here he is depicted as well past his prime and so desperate for cash that he'll take whatever work he can, no matter how odious. He ends up as an assassin-for-hire and kills Robin's father, Jack Drake... but not before Drake puts a fatal bullet in Boomerang. Fortunately, the good captain is now back with the Suicide Squad, getting his butt kicked and complaining at everyone who will listen to him. Truly all's right with the world.

13 LEAP-FROG

The name alone is ridiculous enough. Is he trying to intimidate people who are terrified of schoolyard games? But Leap-Frog goes the extra mile by also having a costume too silly for a children's birthday party. In this get-up, he tries being a thief but mostly ends up being punched by Daredevil. The one time he didn't get punched by Daredevil was because he was too busy getting punched by Iron Man.

At one point, Leap-Frog "tricks" a lawyer into letting him put on his spring-loaded shoes so he can escape his trial. But he fails to notice that the lawyer removed the shoe's fasteners, even though they're his own dang shoes and he should be well-acquainted with how they work. Leap-Frog only realizes his mistake after he jumps out the window and is speeding defenselessly towards the pavement. Ouch.

12 BLACK TALON

Wonder Man, a longtime Avenger, tends to die a lot. Fortunately, he also gets resurrected a lot. After his first resurrection, he runs afoul of Black Talon, who puts him in a box and sends him to New York with orders to kill the Avengers. Instead, Wonder Man collapses in a heap. It's all downhill from there.

The Avengers, curious about how their formerly dead teammate managed such an impressive recovery, follow a clue to New Orleans. Wonder Man leads them right to Black Talon, who is in no way prepared for their arrival. Even with the help of a zombie army and a literal god, this alleged master of dark magic still can't cut it. The Scarlet Witch knocks him out with some logs. Nowadays, Black Talon is probably more famous for that time Deadpool mocked his "chicken-head" costume than for any villainous acts.

11 BIG WHEEL

Jackson "Big Wheel" Weele dislikes being blackmailed. He dislikes it so much that he hires a guy to build him something so he can crush his tormentor. The result? A giant metal wheel equipped with guns. The wheel can crush cars, but its maneuverability leaves something to be desired. Spider-Man defeats him by just stepping to the left. Big Wheel, unable to turn fast enough to catch him, goes flying off a pier and into the Hudson River, where he presumably drowns.

But of course Big Wheel is fine. He even comes back to prove that he's just as bad at being a hero as he was at being a villain. He couldn't even capture Stilt Man, a guy who avoided being featured on this list by the skin of his, uh, stilts. Big Wheel's last villainous act was to try to assassinate Ghost Rider. Ghost Rider assassinated him instead.

10 TUMBLER

Remember the 98-pound weakling? He used to appear in comic book ads, promising that a particular exercise routine would turn skinny boys into muscular men. Well, if the 98-pound weakling turned supervillain, he'd be John Robert Keane. After being rejected for gang membership, Keane swears revenge. He joins a circus and trains tirelessly, becoming the greatest tumbler in the world. How he thought this would help him get vengeance against a bunch of mobsters, we don't know.

By the time Keane completes his training, the gang members who wronged him have already been jailed. What now? Attack Captain America, of course! He doesn't even get the right Captain America, instead attacking another villain who happened to be disguised as Cap. The minute the real Cap returns, Tumbler goes down hard. Honestly, Tumbler's greatest contribution to supervillainy is getting murdered by Moonstone, who framed Captain America for the crime.

9 ASSASSIN

In Avengers #145, a bunch of crooks hire the Assassin to kill the Avengers. While she monologues at the Avengers, a door behind her happens to open, smacking into her and sending her sprawling. That's right: the Assassin is so ineffectual she gets taken out by a door. The Avengers take advantage of this by completely disarming her. This involves stripping off half her costume.

The Assassin makes a break for it, ultimately bumping into her henchmen. The henchmen, not realizing that she is the Assassin despite the fact that she still has half the costume on, riddle her with bullets. So really, who was dumber: the henchmen, or the lady who hired them? But we'd like to thank the Assassin anyway, for showing young female villains that they, too, can aspire to be just as incompetent as male villains.

8 PRISM

Prism is a mutant made of glass. You may have already noticed a problem with this guy's decision to become a supervillain. Specifically, he is a mutant made of glass. All you have to do is chuck a rock at him and you could take his whole arm off in one go.

Not surprisingly, Prism's criminal career mainly consists of him being shattered over and over again. In X-Factor #10, Jean Grey shoves him into a wall, smashing him to pieces. When he eventually comes back and returns to crime, he is destroyed by a group of mutant-haters called the Purifiers in X-Men: Messiah Complex. And yet, last time we checked, the guy was still out there trying to make it as a supervillain. Maybe take a hint, guy.

7 RAINBOW RAIDER

If it's weak origin stories you want, look no further than Roy G. Bivolo. Calling himself the Rainbow Raider, Bivolo becomes an art thief purely because his being colorblind somehow prevented him from being a painter. Bivolo's guilt-ridden father makes him a pair of goggles meant to cure him of the horrible life-ruining affliction that is colorblindness. Instead, the goggles allow Bivolo to control other people's emotions and drain people of color at will.

The goggles don't protect him against the ground, though, and the Flash kicks at him at superspeed until the Rainbow Raider is up to his neck in dirt. But the Rainbow Raider realizes he's a washout and seeks help. With the encouragement of his therapist, Rainbow Raider almost, but not quite, manages to defeat Batman in Brave and the Bold #194. Maybe with a few more therapy sessions...

6 KING OF THE CATS

The King of the Cats has, if nothing else, the pedigree to be a good supervillain. As Catwoman's brother, Karl Kyle should have been able to overcome his clumsy choice of codename and climb to the top of Gotham City's criminal underworld. So how come most people never heard of him before?

Well, mainly because he's not so much a bad guy as he is a whiny sibling. He's so busy trying to cajole his sister into returning to a life of crime that he never gets around to doing anything especially impressive himself. In the end, when he realizes Catwoman really, really does not want to be a criminal anymore, the King of the Cats just sort of gives up and turns himself in.

5 MECHANO-MARAUDER

The Mechano-Marauder encountered the Avengers several times in the '80s, though to be honest, the Avengers spent more time disparaging him than fighting him. When he attacks Iron Man, two other Avengers see the brawl and just walk away, deciding Iron Man doesn't need their help to defeat such a "pest". And they're right.

But his most embarrassing defeat came not at the hands of an Avenger, but of a talk show host. After managing to encase a TV studio in an impenetrable forcefield, Mechano-Marauder sits down for a chat with David Letterman. And they chat about everything. All Letterman has to do is ask about the forcefield's weak spots, and MM immediately tells him exactly how the field works and how to destroy it. Letterman wastes no time in bashing him over the head and stealing the device that controls the forcefield.

4 SPELLCHECK

Imagine if the annoying jerk who constantly points out your every spelling and grammar mistake became a supervillain. Well guess what? He did, and his name is Spellcheck. Appearing in Spider-Man's Tangled Web #18, Spellcheck doesn't try to rob anyone or take over the world or even deface a wall with grammatically accurate graffiti. That would have been at least slightly interesting.

No, basically Spellcheck just annoys the heck out of the vigilante Typeface. He follows an increasingly irate Typeface around on his patrol, distracting him to the point that several gang members end up escaping while Spellcheck plays the role of snobby English teacher. Typeface finally has enough and ties him up with a note begging Spider-Man to take the knucklehead to jail. Presumably Spellcheck is still in jail to this day, pointing out every typo in the other inmates' tattoos.

3 CRAZY QUILT

After artist/criminal Paul Dekker is blinded by a gunshot wound, a surgeon manages to restore his sight. But the surgery only works to an extent: he can now only see obnoxiously bright colors. This infuriates him so much that he has the surgeon shot and vows to take out his anger on society as Crazy Quilt, who commits color-themed crimes. Huh. Maybe him and Rainbow Raider should hang out.

Crazy Quilt is so non-threatening as a villain that the people of Gotham, who by this point should be conditioned to react badly to anyone in a tacky costume, completely ignore him. And, as the final nail in the coffin of indignity, his arch-nemeses are all literal children. First the Boy Commandos and then Robin the Boy Wonder dispatch Crazy Quilt while hardly breaking a sweat.

2 KANG THE CONQUEROR

Kang the Conqueror is a grandiose name. Unfortunately, it was a little too ambitious for Kang to live up to, at least during his early days. Every story hinges on Kang the time-traveler forgetting that he’s a time-traveler and, however crankily, accepting defeat. What's stopping him from learning from his mistakes and going back in time again and again until he wins?

But that's not even the most embarrassing part of Kang's early losses. In Avengers #8, Kang loses to the Teen Brigade, a group of kids who used to hang out with the Avengers for nebulous reasons. And how do they defeat Kang? They walk up to him and say they want to join him. Kang is so pleased that he sends them up to his spaceship and lets them poke around unsupervised. They poke their way right into the holding cell where Kang is keeping the Avengers hostage.

1 PAPER MAN

Sadly, the Paper Man is exactly what he sounds like. Even more sadly, it takes Wonder Woman an entire issue to stop him. In Wonder Woman #165, factory worker Horace Throstle suffers a horrible workplace accident. Instead of gaining godlike powers, however, he just turns into a piece of sentient paper. That's rough.

Even rougher is his unrequited crush on Wonder Woman, which he deals with by stealing expensive gifts for her in a misguided attempt to woo her. When Wonder Woman tries to stop him, Paper Man's idea of self-defense is to give her a paper cut and then fly away as a giant paper airplane. In an ironic but surprisingly gruesome conclusion, Paper Man is killed by a printing press, which turns him into just another newspaper.