For stuff that doesn’t neatly fit into any category and is not a proper review, I’m starting this “Random Thoughts” experiment.
Batman and Spider-Man have arguably the best rogues galleries in superhero comics, with Flash being a very close contender (he’s the main reason we call these “rogues galleries” to begin with!).
But I had a random thought: who has the largest rogues gallery?
Here are the results. And of course this is not 100% complete, I’m only including the most well-known and the most recurrent.
And of course, this being just a random thought, it’s not as in-depth as usual.
For the Batman villains I would count 24 as the recurring ones, with a solid 3/4ths being regular humans with no powers.
(at least for the most well-known version of the character. That’s including Mr.Freeze: he’s not exactly a normal human, but he doesn’t have a real power without his weapon).
Here’s the Spider-Man villains; I would count at least 22 between the most recurrent and the ones who have been part of the Sinister Six or the Sinister Syndicate most often. Despite the popular idea that most of them are animal themed, only 8 of them fit the category. An impressive 15 of them have Stan Lee as co-creator. (edit: including Boomerang, who I previously forgot; see the comments below)
And finally the Flash villains. Just counting the main recurring ones (plus the Shade to give the Golden Age Flash some representation), it’s just 15 villains… nearly all of which are regular humans with a gimmick weapon.
Even if I was to count the various identities of the Flash villains separately… there are two main Mirror Masters for example… it’s still less “main villains” when compared to Batman or Spider-Man.
Even if I was to count ALL minor villains, I think it’s a fair assessment that Batman and Spider-Man are the only ones with a similar number of enemies.
This is impressive. Now I could be wrong, but I’d include Boomerang in the “co-created by Lee” category. Didn’t he start out as a Hulk villain with a much uglier costume? Or is that some other guy?
Hey, you’re right! I always forget it’s the same Boomerang, since he’s so wildly different in the Hulk story.
I might go against my own policy and include Boomerang in the retrospective, since unlike nearly all Spider-Man villains he changes a lot from his first story.