A supervillain or supervillainess is a variant of the villain character type, commonly found in comic books, action movies and science fiction in various mediums. Supervillains typically concoct complex and ambitious schemes to accumulate power. They are often used as foils to superheroes and other fictional heroes. Many supervillains share some typical characteristics of real world dictators, mobsters, and terrorists and often have aspirations of world domination or universal leadership.
Origins
By most definitions, the first supervillain was John Devil, a proto-Fantômas, created by Paul Féval, père in his eponymous 1862 novel, or Féval's nearly-immortal, machiavellian Colonel Bozzo-Corona, leader of Les Habits Noirs introduced in 1863. Professor Moriarty, the archenemy of Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective Sherlock Holmes, was introduced in 1891. Dr. Fu Manchu, the antagonist of several popular novels of Sax Rohmer, is credited with popularizing many of the typical characteristics of the modern supervillain, including his sadistic personality, his desire for world domination, and his use of sinister lairs and themed crimes and henchmen. Rohmer's work had a strong influence on Ian Fleming, whose James Bond novels and their film adaptations further popularized the image of the supervillain in popular culture. The first supervillain who wore a bizarre costume was the Lightning, from the 1938 film The Fighting Devil Dogs, which preceded the first modern superhero, Superman. The first supervillain to regularly battle a superhero was Ultra-Humanite, who first appeared in Action Comics #13 (1939).
