After many years of putting it off, I've finally started reading the big 90s crossover event to end all crossover events until a different crossover event comes along: Onslaught. It is as terrible as every X-Men fan has told me it is.
It made me wonder if there is, in fact, a worse X-Men villain then Onslaught. If you don't know who Onslaught is, don't worry, I'll provide as many context clues as possible while we go through a long list of X-Men villains and decide whether or not they are worse than Onslaught.
So, let's start! Listicles! The Internet loves them.
Trevor Fitzroy
People hate Trevor Fitzroy. Understandable. He is very hateable. Where I part ways with most comics fans is that I think he's still a really fun villain. He's the absolute worst, but that makes it really fun to watch him get his ass kicked by Bishop, or Cable, or whoever decides to kick his ass in a given moment. He's a trust fund kid with a time machine who just wants to take a joy ride through the Marvel Universe and kill mutants for "points." He's basically Don Jr. with superpowers. He's awful, but sometimes it's fun to have a villain who's just the worst person in the world.
Also, Fitzroy's action figure was awesome. So many muscles! So much chrome! I had no idea who this guy was, but I coveted this action figure so much just because he looked like a badass.
I would also say that maybe my favorite thing about Trevor Fitzroy is that he is not in part the result of Professor X's deeply repressed sexual longing for Jean aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggh
Is he better or worse than Onslaught? Better, because when I read a story with Fitzroy, I get to take some joy in hating his rich kid guts and a sense of delight when he finally gets the piss beaten out of him. Onslaught, I don't hate him as a character so much as I hate the very concept of him. I can't even think of him as anything other than a terrible, half-assed idea Scott Lobdell came up with during a not-particularly-memorable shower. Onslaught isn't even fun to hate, because I hate him for his failure as a concept, not for being a villain.
The Sugar Man
I've already written a post about The Sugar Man and how he works in exactly one story and should never have been used in any other context ever again. The thing is though, in the one story where he works, he works perfectly. He's a confusing, weird character, but that's by design. It's what makes him creepy. Plus, his look, if nothing else, is memorable.
Is he better or worse than Onslaught?
Better, because though he only works in exactly one story, that's still more then Onslaught, who works in exactly zero stories (particularly the one that is built entirely around him).
The Goblin Queen
Oh, wow, you don't like the Goblin Queen? How does it feel to be so wrong? The Goblin Queen is amazing, the end result of Madeline Pryor's mistreatment by the X-Men and by Scott Summers, in particular. More importantly, though, The Goblin Queen is the metatextual commentary on Chris Claremont's fury at Marvel Editorial's mistreatment of Madeline Pryor.
Madeline Pryor was supposed to be the end of Scott Summers' journey as a character, a likable, smart, clever person who Scott falls in love with. It's through their romance that Scott finally heals from his grief over Jean Grey. He moves on with his life. He leaves the X-Men. He becomes a father. It's a beautiful story that Claremont had planned.
But then Marvel Editorial had to ruin everything by bringing back Jean Gray and starting X-Factor, a series that became great but started out horribly because it basically meant every one of the original five X-Men turned into an immature piece of trash willing to abandon their adult lives and responsibilities just for a chance to hang out with Jean again.
The Goblin Queen is Claremont (with the help of Louise Simonson, who had taken over X-Factor by this point) giving Pryor her agency back. She becomes a supervillain, an incredible supervillain, all because the X-Men line as a whole abandoned her and treated her like disposable waste. Her origin gets retconned so that she's a clone created by Mister Sinister, a bitter commentary on what Marvel assumed she was supposed to be (a copy of Jean thrown into the story for no reason).
Inferno isn't just a great villain story, though. It's a redemption arc. Through Inferno, The Goblin Queen's anger against Jean and Scott slowly dissipates. Scott realizes what a monster he was to her and what an irresponsible parent he has been for their child. The Goblin Queen realizes that the true target of her wrath is Sinister, who has been manipulating things from the start. That doesn't absolve Scott, but Scott's realization of his crimes and his desperate efforts to make things right go a long way to absolving him.
Is she better or worse than Onslaught?
Is this a joke? Of course she's better. She's a complex metacommentary on the mistreatment of girlfriend and wife characters in superhero stories, and more importantly, she's not the darkest aspects of Magneto that got sucked into Xavier's head and somehow developed sentience and turned into a Super Shredder version of Magneto yeeeaaaaaaaaarrgghhh
That Octopus That Ambushed Scott and Madelyn's Plane When They Were On Their Way to Their Honeymoon
Pretty great villain, honestly. It has a clear motivation (It is an octopus that eats people), it elicits a change in behavior in our protagonists (Scott decides he's had enough of this superhero shit, Madelyne realizes she's just as good at fighting an octopus as any superhero), and it has a hint of mystery about it that does not require a resolution but does add to the overall mystique of the villain (Is it a squid or an octopus? The creative team doesn't seem to be clear on this either.)
Is it better or worse than Onslaught?
There are a lot of things to praise about the That Octopus That Ambushed Scott and Madelyn's Plane When They Were On Their Way to Their Honeymoon (tm), but I have to say maybe the most positive thing I can say about it is that it doesn't completely upstage the entire X-Men line for what feels like hundreds of issues (although I would much rather read a massive crossover event story starring That Octopus That Ambushed Scott and Madelyn's Plane When They Were On Their Way to Their Honeymoon (tm) then the one I read about Onslaught).
Forearm
Say what you will about Forearm, that his name is stupid, his powers are stupid, and his design is Liefeldian as hell and deeply stupid: at least I understand him. He's a big guy who has four arms. I mean, he really got the short end of the mutation stick. I would probably join the Mutant Liberation Front too, if that was my crappy mutation.
Is he better or worse than Onslaught?
Forearm is a weird, terrible 90s villain, but his action figure is one I badly wanted as a kid, because how cool is it to have an action figure with four arms? I also think a point in Forearm's favor is that he's an actual character and not some stupid psionic being whatever that means whose existence implies an innate black-and-white evil and goodness in Magneto and Xavier, two of the most morally complicated characters in mainstream comics yeaaaaaarrrrgh
Brickbat
Brickbat is one of several named Brood (i.e., the Marvel version of xenomorphs) who is slightly more powerful than a normal brood and therefore gets a name. There are a few things that are stupid about Brickbat.
1) He is a named brood. That's like picking a random xenomorph from the horde that attacks LV-426 and calling it "Dennis."
2) His name is Brickbat, which is a very stupid name, especially since he's an alien who probably doesn't know what a brick or a bat is.
3) His "superpower" is that he's really strong. All of the other brood are also really strong, so I don't really know why we care about him.
Is he better or worse than Onslaught?
Silly as it is to have named brood who all have pretty basic, unremarkable superpowers, the brood are still pretty solid villains and in all fairness to Brickbat, I did remember his name which is more than can be said for a lot of one-off X-Men villains.
Another plus in Brickbat's favor is he's not the creation of a writer with a history of having issues with women and people of other races, who is writing a story about how everyone has really dark, repressed thoughts and instincts and, you know, everyone's bad if you dig down deep into our psyches and arrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhh
Hey you! Leave a comment if you have a villain you want compared (favorably) to Onslaught!
Omega Red, the Assassins generically(gambits folks), power skrull