Ever heard the saying, “He has a face only his mother could love?” Well, when it comes to the people on this list, odds are not even their mothers would want anything to do with them. These comic book characters are some of the ugliest to grace the pages, and it’s not just their looks that are working against them. They’re also some of the biggest bad guys ever seen.
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Honestly, there aren’t very many good-looking supervillains in comics. Most are drawn to be monsters, or at the very least, deformed to the point where they’re just... gross. However, the villains on this list rise above the rest to a completely different level of ugly. These are flying heads and bug men. Some are human/monster hybrids. One is poop. Just poop. On that note, let’s take a look at the 15 ugliest supervillains in comics.
15 MODOK
MODOK, which is short for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing, is one of the most ridiculous looking characters in all of comics. MODOK was created by the two biggest legends in Marvel Comics history, Jack Kirby and Stan Lee, with his first major appearance in “Tales of Suspense” #94. Ever since then the floating head has been terrorizing the likes of Captain America, Iron Man, and the Hulk for decades with his superior intelligence and psionic abilities first given to him when he was a scientist with AIM named George Tarleton.
However, it’s not his intelligence and other mental abilities that put him on this list. No, MODOK is on this list because he’s an oversized head floating around with tiny robotic arms and legs. To top it all off, MODOK’s massive face is usually depicted with wrinkly skin and a deeply disturbing grin. While definitely a formidable opponent, most of MODOK’s appearances in comics are relegated to heroes throwing jokes about his looks while they beat the crap out of him.
14 RED SKULL
Definitely the oldest running villain on the list, the Red Skull made his debut back in “Captain America Comics” #7 in 1941. As a Nazi serving directly under Hitler, Johann Schmidt is one of the ugliest characters on this list for a variety of reasons. Not only is his appearance grotesque, but also the fact that he’s one of the most despicable villains in the Marvel Universe is enough to make him ugly in literally every way.
Now, when you talk about the Red Skull’s looks, it’s not hard to see where he got his name. In Joe Simon’s autobiography, “My Life in Comics,” the comic book legend explains hat he got the idea for the Red Skull when he observed a hot fudge sundae melting. When it melted, and he saw what looked like a human figure in it, Simon got the first idea for the Red Skull. Obviously, he wasn’t able to make the Skull a melting hot fudge sundae villain, but he wanted to make his face resemble the nightmare of his vision. The result is a horribly gross looking man that is truly the opposite of the clean-cut Boy Scout, Steve Rogers.
13 TWO-FACE
Harvey Dent was one of the great public figures in Gotham City. An outstanding District Attorney, Harvey was the public face of justice for those villains in Gotham. That is, he was, until a mob boss threw acid on half of his face, and he eventually gave into madness, becoming the villain Two-Face. Now, Harvey flips a coin to determine his own decision-making, and torments Batman and the other heroes of the DC Universe.
Unlike many of the villains on this list, Two-Face’s design has changed various times throughout the years. Each artist that tackles Harvey Dent seems to put his or her own spin on the disfigured former District Attorney. One thing remains through every interpretation of the character is that he is incredibly ugly. Half his face looks like burnt or radioactive ground beef, with little fuzz where his hair used to be. Two-Face’s worst physical feature is perhaps his smile, or lack thereof. Half of his mouth is deformed with teeth and ripped skin, making it look like he’s always half-smiling.
12 SUGAR MAN
Not much is known about Sugar Man before he became the bizarre-looking monster we see today. First appearing during Marvel’s “Age of Apocalypse” storyline, Sugar Man was shown to be working for Mr. Sinister, performing genetic experiments on human slaves. After finding his way back to the main Marvel Universe, Sugar Man has made a name for himself as one of the oddest-looking villains in comic book history.
Not all of Sugar Man’s abilities and features are bad. He has super strength and senses. He also is an expert on biology and genetics. However, he also has a big head for a torso, complete with razor sharp teeth and a razor sharp tongue that can grow to incredible lengths. Oh yeah, and he also has two extra arms that grow out of the top of his head. Even MODOK probably looks at him and thinks he’s ugly. To complete his ridiculous look, Sugar Man has a silly heart tattoo that says “Sugar” on his upper left arm.
11 THE COLLECTIVE
The Collective had a short, but memorable, run in comics. Appearing in one issue of “Marvel Adventures: Fantastic Four” #37, The Collective made a name for itself as a powerful villain that hoped to defeat Ben Grimm and take over his body as a host for the thousands of cockroaches that made up his body. As happens in comic books, the good guys won at the end of the day, but The Collective goes down as one of the ugliest, and grossest, villains ever.
There aren’t many people out there that would say a cockroach is an attractive bug. Now, multiply that by thousands, and you’re left with a villain that is not only ugly, but definitely icky, as well. The Collective was created when a lone cockroach became irradiated in 1955 by weapons testing. Irradiating the rest of his colony, the cockroaches developed a hive-mind, and went on the lookout for a host body. Imagine sitting in your house, watching TV, when thousands of cockroaches come in and kill you, then use your body as their own. Horrifying, right? That’s what The Collective does, and it’s enough to give you nightmares.
10 MAN-BAT
It’s only natural to have a Batman villain named Man-Bat. It’s also common sense to make a character named Man-Bat into a man that turns into a bat. That’s exactly what they did in “Detective Comics” #400 in 1970, when DC Comics introduced Man-Bat. There are tons of scientist characters in comic books that develop a new miracle serum that gives them horrible side effects, and Robert Langstrom was no different.
After trying to develop a way to give people a sonar sense, similar to bats, Langstrom ended up injecting the serum himself. The result was a horrible side effect where he became a human/bat hybrid that terrorized Gotham City. Man-Bat is exactly what you would imagine a man and a bat would look like smashed together. His face is that of a bat, with the ugly facial features and leathery skin. Langstrom also developed wings that grew from his arms. Unless you look at bats and think they’re cuddly, adorable creatures, you know full well why Man-Bat is on this list.
9 FREAK
Not much is known about the villain Freak before his run in with Spider-Man in “Amazing Spider-Man” #546. All that is known is the man who would become Freak was a drug-addicted homeless person that stole from a soup kitchen where Peter’s Aunt May worked. When the homeless man finds himself at the laboratory of Dr. Curt Conners, aka Lizard, he mistakes various animal gene fluids as drugs, and injects himself with them. After injecting himself, he develops a cocoon around his body.
When the cocoon breaks open, Freak emerges. Freak is best described as a human male with all his skin ripped off. Various muscles, bones, and tissues all over his body, Freak is the epitome of a horror show. His eventual downfall is his drug addiction. After appearing to die and be reborn various times through his cocoons, he is eventually captured after Spider-Man tricks him into taking “drugs” that happened to be quicklime, which eventually trapped him in his cocooned state.
8 ABOMINATION
You have to guess that a character named Abomination would find his way on this list. Created by Stan Lee and Gil Kane, and first appearing in “Tales to Astonish” #90 in 1967, Emil Blonsky became Abomination after purposefully exposing himself to gamma radiation. After using more radiation than Bruce Banner when he became the Hulk, Abomination is bigger and potentially stronger than Hulk.
Unfortunately for Blonsky, using that much radiation had even more negative side effects than what happened with the Hulk. Instead of looking like a normal human with green skin and massive muscles, Abomination resembles more of a dragon than human. His scaly green skin and ears that resemble fins make him earn his moniker. It’s not all bad for Abomination, though. He actually has gills, which allow him to breath underwater. So yeah, he looks really ugly and monstrous, but he's as graceful as you like beneath the waves!
7 SHITHEAD
If you’ve ever seen “Wanted,” you know that it’s about a group of assassins that pretty much run the world. However, for those who read the Mark Millar and J.G. Jones comic series of the same name, you know that the movie is almost completely different than the comic series it’s based on. One of the biggest characters that didn’t make it to the big screen was none other than the villain Shithead. Yep, his name is actually Shithead.
Shithead is actually a huge shape-shifting pile of excrement. He is said to be made completely from poop from the six hundred and sixty-six most evil people to have ever walked the Earth. As such, Shithead is pure evil, and loves the puns. Before killing someone in the series, he says, “Eat shit and die!” Then, when he reports his killing to his superiors, he says the cause of death was “death by dysentery.” With that being said, it’s only fitting that Shithead ends up dying when he gets bleach poured all over him and he’s flushed down the toilet.
6 YELLOW BASTARD
It’s hard to be a more disgusting and vile creature than a huge pile of poop, but somehow the Yellow Bastard from Frank Miller’s “Sin City” does just that. Yellow Bastard has to go down as one of the most disgusting, and obviously ugliest villains to ever grace a printed page. He’s a rapist, pedophile and murderer with bright yellow skin. Yeah, he lives up to the name.
The Yellow Bastard is actually the name Detective Hartigan gives Roark Junior. Junior is the criminal son of Senator Roark, and has a run-in with Hartigan that results in Junior losing an ear, hand and his genitals. Through the Senator’s extensive political power, he is given an experimental medical procedure that grows back his missing parts, but turns his body yellow. Now, he’s the same murdering bastard, but with yellow skin, a big belly, and an egg-shaped head. The ugliest, and most disgusting, part of Yellow Bastard is his need to hear victim’s screams to get aroused. He’s truly gross.
5 KILLER CROC
Killer Croc is the third Batman villain to land on this list. Apparently, Batman has the ugliest Rogues Gallery of them all. Killer Croc is the human/crocodile hybrid villain that has been a regular part of Batman’s history since his debut in “Detective Comics” #523 in 1983. Much like Two-Face, Killer Croc’s visual appearance has changed quite a bit over time. In his early appearances, he resembled a man with scales, but in more recent times, he’s adopted a much more crocodilian image.
Waylon Jones was born with a very rare genetic disorder that gave him scaly skin and reptilian features. Growing up constantly degraded due to his appearance, he turns to a life of crime and becomes Killer Croc. In some modern appearances, his reptilian features have been amped up due to mutation. Either as a huge crocodile man or just a scaly guy with tough skin, he’s still ugly enough to find himself on this list.
4 KING SHARK
Created by Karl Kesel in “Superboy” #0 in 1994, King Shark is a humanoid shark that does what sharks do – kill people! King Shark is actually Nanaue, the son of the “King of the Sharks,” from Hawaii. Originally clashing with Superboy, King Shark has made the rounds in the DC Universe, battling Aquaman (naturally), Flash and various others. Eventually, after the New 52 reboot, King Shark becomes a member of the anti-hero Suicide Squad.
There have been two major designs for King Shark, both of which are pretty darn unpleasant. The first design is much more in line with a great white shark, and actually looks pretty neat. Granted he’s still an overgrown shark/human hybrid, which is pretty ugly. However, when he was rebooted in the New 52, they gave him his hammerhead look, which make him look far less badass, and way more ugly. With his bulging eyes out of the side of his head and silly face, he looks far more ugly than he does intimidating.
3 MOJO
Mojo is basically a combination of Jabba the Hutt and a ruthless TV producer, all atop robotic spider legs. There’s nothing visually attractive about Mojo. Unlike other entries on this list with big muscles, and one or two deformities, Mojo is just a gross alien with tubes coming out of him, a nasty tongue, gross fingers, and ugly yellow skin. He’s the definition of revolting.
Created by Ann Nocenti and Art Adams, Mojo debuted in “Longshot” #3 in 1985. He is one of the “Spineless Ones,” which is an alien race that can only move around with the assistance of technology. Mojo uses a complex series of tubes and wires that holds him upright, while he travels around on metal spider-like legs. He rules the Mojoverse, where he pits slaves against each other in gladiatorial matches. He was created as a parody of television network executives, and their lust of all things violent and bloody. To make things worse, Mojo also basically has the touch of death. When he touches organic matter, it withers and dies.
2 TOAD
With a name like Mortimer Toynbee, how could he be anything else but ugly? It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, really. Add a prehensile tongue, a hunchback, and toxic saliva, and you’re left with one of the nastiest villains in all of comics. After developing his mutant abilities that left him very frog-like, Toynbee became the villain known as Toad, but he hasn’t always been this unpleasant to look at.
Debuting in “X-Men” #4 in 1964, Toad was initially drawn as more human-like, with less toad-y features. It wasn’t until 2000, with the debut of the film “X-Men,” that Toad was given his current look. Actor Ray Park portrayed a version of Toad that focused more on a prehensile tongue and leaping abilities, whereas the comic version never had the long tongue. However, since the popularity of the movie, creators began to give Toad more of his movie features, along with the hunchback and general ugliness that the character has always had. The result is one of the ugliest villains the X-Men have ever faced.
1 DOOMSDAY
In 1991, writers gathered to brainstorm how to kill Superman. They decided to create a character that was finally a physical match for the hero, instead of most of his rogues that depended on their intellect to try to best the Man of Steel. Doomsday was the result of this brainstorming. Debuting in “Superman: The Man of Steel” #17 in 1992, Doomsday is best known for “killing” Superman, but will also have the distinct honor of being one of the ugliest villains ever.
The ugliness about Doomsday is less about how revolting or gross he looks, but more about how he represents an era of ugly character designs. Initially debuting in a green suit that hid his true form, Doomsday eventually is shown as a huge Hulk-like character with gray skin and large bone protrusions all over his body. He is definitely the spawn of an era of excess in comics. Instead of pockets and pouches, Doomsday has bones; bones on top of bones, sometimes. He even has a bone “beard,” bone “eye brows” and bone teeth. It just all adds up to one ugly character design.
Who do you think is the butt-ugliest character in comics? Let us know in the comments!