Friday, May 23, 2008

The 50 Greatest Animated Villains of All Time (Part 2)

I can't believe that I actually had some actual feedback with Part 1 of the list! I'm actually...happy.

Well, here it finally is, the much anticipated Part 2 of the 50 Greatest Animated Villains of All Time after a solid 3 months of waiting. I thank you all for being so patient. This time, we're counting down #'s 40-31. Click here for a refresher on Part 1.

Expect some greatness, some surprises, and, hopefully time permitting, some interesting witty commentary from Michael Ian Black (scheduled to appear).


#40: Plankton - SpongeBob Squarepants



Voiced By: Doug Lawrence

So we start off Part 2 with Plankton, the Tiny Terror from Spongebob Squarepants. Say what you will about the show (I thought it was good until around Season 4 or so, or when SpongeBob sold out, whichever one came first), but I believe that Plankton was an excellent villain from the show, and he's my favorite character on the show to boot, as well as his introduction episode being my favorite in the whole series. I surely believe that any episode that he even makes the slightest cameo in becomes at least one letter grade better due to his presence.

He mostly exists on the show as the business rival to Mr. Krabs, attempting to steal his Secret Krabby Patty Formula so he can make knockoff burgers to make his flailing Chum Bucket resataurant successful. These schemes usually involved just sneaking in with machinery and stealing a Krabby Patty, to more Trix Rabbit-type schemes involving tricking SpongeBob and Co. with increasingly elaborate disguises in order to take it. These simple shcemes have since evolved into plans for World Domination, usually involving the said Krabby Patty Theft.

More notable qualities include his small stature (a suggestion for a booster seat as a birthday gift by Spongebob almost made him go legit), his Lab, his Laboratory, a talking Supercomputer whom he had married at one point, thousands of inbred rural cousins, and my personal favorite, an old-timey record player to play some menacing music for the hell of it.


#39: Candle Jack - Freakazoid!



Voiced By:
Jeff Bennett

We now come to *whisphers* Candle Jack. The reason why I whispered his name was by speaking his name, this ghoulish...demon...thing arrives to tie you up with his rope to abduct you in order to torture you, like attempting to convince you that Sinbad is getting another sitcom.

The only representative of the vastly underrated show Freakazoid on the countdown, which is kind of a shame since the show had several great villains. But this is only a Top 50, and Candle Jack is probably the greatest one, despite only appearing about 4 times total in the entire series. After his inital episode which spoofs the likes of Friday The 13th, he was among the menagarie of captured villains in the episode "The Island of Dr. Mystico," where his only major role was being given the job to scare Freakazoid's butler Professor Jones, played by Johnathan Harris.


#38: One-Shot Scooby-Doo Villains - Scooby-Doo Series



Voiced By: Various One-Shot People

Aah, Scooby-Doo. This entry is not for one particular villain, but for every masked villain that ever graced a single episode in the entire Scooby-Doo history.

It usually works out like this: Alleged monster is haunting some random location. A group of hippies with a talking dog (sometimes with a smaller, Scrappier, talking dog) have their van break down in said location. Said monster scares the bejeebus out of the gang and chases them set to cheery folk music. Monster falls for some trap, usually by Shaggy & Scooby disguising themselves. Monster is revealed to be the only other character introduced at the beginning of the episode, and dressed up as the monster so they could claim some small treasure for themselves. Sometimes the Harlem Globetrotters are involved. Credits Roll.

The villain pictured above is probably their most famous villain, The Creeper. The episode that he appears in is actually not that bad. He is actually some kind of threat accused of stealing money from a bank without breaking in, and he's looking for a piece of paper found by the Gang and terrorizes their Sock Hop or whatever the 60's equivalent of a rave was. It's revealed that he was the bank manager who stole from the vault at night and left as the Creeper, and that the "paper" he was looking for was an undeveloped incriminating picture of him casually taking the money out of the vault. He appeared a few other times in the Scooby-Dooniverse, such as anytime when Generic Scooby-Doo villains are featured like "Scooby-Doo & The Cyber Chase" and an episode of Harvey Birdman. He was also featured in an ad for a Relay-For-Life-esque event, saying that those who volunteer will run, but not from him. Ha. Ha.


#'s 37-33: The Fearsome Five - Darkwing Duck


#37: The Liquidator - Darkwing Duck



Voiced By: Jack Angel


#36: Quackerjack - Darkwing Duck



Voiced By: Michael Bell


#35: Bushroot - Darkwing Duck



Voiced By: Tino Insana


#34: Megavolt - Darkwing Duck



Voiced By: Dan Castellaneta


#33: Negaduck - Darkwing Duck



Voiced By: Jim Cummings

Yes, these 5 entries are known as the Fearsome Five from Darkwing Duck. I originally just had Bushroot, Megavolt and Negaduck as separate entries, but then realized "Why don't I just add Quackerjack & Liquidator and cover the entire Fearsome Five?" Yes, I'm awarding them spots not only on personal merit, but as the team itself. These five villains ranged from slightly-cool, to excellently kickass, but when they teamed up, there were among the most powerful of villains in the entire show.

Let's start with the Liquidator. A water-based Dog Villain who was given water-based powers in a freak accident involving falling into a vat of water that he himself had poisoned, similar to Hydro-Man, while having a personality similar to the Transformers' Wreck-Gar; as in, he speaks in nothing but advertising slogans, due to his pre-villain profession being a crooked salesman for a bottled water company. Only a minor villain at first, but he doesn't truly shine until he becomes one of the core members of the Fearsome Five.

Next we come to Quackerjack, a better villain. Here he fills a role that's an amalgam of the Joker and Toyman, as he builds nothing but dangerous, sadistic toys to cause general mayhem. He turned evil when no one would buy his evil toys. Most known exploits aside from joining the Fearsome Five include forcing toy stores to only stock his sinister creations, traveling back in time to stop the invention of the Yo-Yo, and releasing a Demon trapped in a Jack-In-The-Box voiced by Phil Hartman that inhabits his doll/best friend Mr. Banana Brain. Usually teams up with Megavolt.

Then there's Bushroot, a plant-based villain who got his look and powers from, you guessed it, a freak accident. Similar to Poison Ivy, he uses plants in order to do evil deeds. What makes him stand out among Darkwing Duck villains (and villains in recent times itself) is that he actually killed people. Not just "Oh look, I see parachutes!" or "He went to another dimension!" died, but on-screen, corpse-riddled dead. All for the love of his life, who rejects him after learning that he caused death on a Disney show.

Megavolt is another odd creature, but one of the most fearsome. Among the many villains on the show, he's the most likely candidate to be Darkwing's Arch-Nemesis, due to them fighting each other since high school. Like the other four members of the Fearsome Five, he's quite insane. Due to being electricity-based, he believes that electric appliances are sentient beings that have emotions and feel pain, so many of his crimes involves him "liberating" his pluggable bretheren from the clutches of the overworked streotyped Disney Show Housewives of St. Canard. I still have his action figure, where his chest actually spat out sparks like a lighter. That definitely earns a spot on my currently fictional "Most Kickass Obscure Action Figures" list.

Last we come to Negaduck, the leader and most psycho of probably any villain Darkwing ever faced. Depending on which episode you watch, Negaduck is either Darkwing's dark side manifested into an evil clone, or a parallel Darkwing from the Negaverse who rules Nega St. Canard. Either way, he is the exact opposite of Darkwing, as unlike DW, he's a borderline psychopath who hates friends and anything Good. He also carries around a chainsaw as his main weapon. He usually dresses up as Darkwing to frame him for crime spress and such, while his most infamous act was stealing the powers of the other four members of the Fearsome Five for himself to become an abomination that was defeated within a half hour.


#32: Chairface Chippendale - The Tick



Voiced By: Tony Jay

Being awarded with one of the greatest names for a cartoon character is Chairface Chippendale from the animated version of The Tick. One of the greatest and memorable villains from the show, he fills the role of the "Gentleman" Villain, and...he has a chair for a head. Not only that, he has a son named Stoolface (guess what he has for a head?), as well as a butler who has two hook hands and no head at all.

His most sinister act was attempting to carve his name into the moon, but he only made it to "CHA." Afterwards, as a genius act of continuity, "CHA" would appear on the moon whenever it was shown onscreen. It was later shortened to "HA" when the Galactus parody Omnipotus took a bite out of the moon.


#31: Feathers McGraw - The Wrong Trousers



Voiced By:

We end the 2nd part to my five-part countdown with Feathers McGraw, the penguin villain of the Walace & Gromit cartoon "The Wrong Trousers." He also happens to be another award winner of "Best Cartoon Character Name."

His part in the cartoon was that he's a jewel thief who wishes to steal the world's biggest diamond at the British Museum. He avoids suspicion by disguising himself as a chicken (consisting only of a red glove on his head). He then uses Wallace's new Techno-Trousers to use Wallace as an unwilling accomplice to his theft, as Feathers controls the pants with a remote control to use its machinery to sneak past security with ease. One of his shining moments in the stop-motion cartoon is an elaborate chase scene between him & Gromit chasing each other with model trains, with Gromit supplying his own track from a bottomless box of train tracks.

This bastard didn't even need to say anything. It just shows how slick and awesome he is.



That's it for Part 2, stay tuned for Part 3...Eventually.

3 comments:

DC said...

I loved Feathers McGraw. He wa awesome. He didn't speak or even show any emotion, but he totally controlled Wallace and Gromit. He was pure evil genius!

Anonymous said...

I still love Spongebob. It definitely peaked somewhere around season 4 but even the new specials are decent.

I cannot WAIT for the Freakazoid DVD set. Candle Jack's first appearance is one of the few things from the show that I remember is detail, besides that it's awesome. And that sometimes Agarn would show up wearing a dress.

Anonymous said...

I'm loving the countdown so far, can't wait to see who makes #1 because whoever it is has surpassed some great competitors. I loved Darkwing Duck when it was on and one of my favorite episodes was when DW created his own "super-team" to battle Negaduck's.