Top 5 cartoon villains

Courage the Cowardly Dog starts my badguy list off at the number 5 position. Differing slightly from your traditional cartoon villain I’ve included the likes of this rather adorable pup. You see often, rather than the ulterly mad cast of monsters, aliens, asian ravers and mad scientists that plague him and his owners Muriel and Eustace Bagge, this small pink dog is his own worst enemy. Abandoned as a puppy, Courage was adopted by Muriel Bagge, a sweet-natured but blissfully unaware Scottish woman, and her husband, Eustace, a grumpy farmer who hates Courage.

The little dog is afraid of arbitrary things like fluff and Nataniel and often causes himself far more grief than most of the villains he encounters in Nowhere- Kansas.

For being his own worst enemy- Courage starts of the likes of this very auspicious list.

This awesome list has its number 4 spot occupied by the likes of the endlessly devious sorcerer Gargamel. In the fictional world of the Smurfs, Gargamel is a wizard sorcerer guy who has badly thinning hair and penchant for wearing black coats.

While Smurfs fanatics describe the sworn enemy of these little blue guys as a wizard it is worth noting that he doesn’t actually have any magical powers per se, but can definitely mix up a good magical potion like a more evil (I know) Tom Cruise from Cocktail.  

Convinced with capturing the Smurfs so that they can be used to create the mystical potion needed to turn base matter into gold, Gargamel the Gold digger earns my number 4 spot.

Skeletor – Apart from being the name that we fondly call tik-heads by, this is also the name of the number 3 baddest cartoon villain of all time. Skeletor is the main badguy from the thoroughly entertaining He-Man series of the 80’s. He was quite a buff ou with a purple hood over his yellow bare-bone skull (am I the only one who thinks that sounds sexual?).

Skeletor was always trying to conquer Castle Grayskull so he could learn all of its secrets, making him unstoppable and able to conquer the likes of Eternia relatively chilled-like.

The cloak-wearing bad guy (noticing a theme here?) had a large array of mystical powers and better mixing skills than Gargamel when it came to magical potions with cute umbrellas in them. Apart from being a killer barman (haha, see what I did there) he also wasn’t scared to drop science on shit- having created various machines and devices in both the Filmation and New Adventures animated He-Man series.

For combining science, bartending and the Posh Spice skinny look, the devious Skeletor sits at number 3.

I’ve listed both the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote at number 2, because to be honest I am not entirely sure which one is the badguy.

Wile E. Coyote would make use of mad contraptions and extremely elaborate plans to pursue the likes of that beep-beeping cocky bird, who would almost always make a fool out of the poor guy, causing him a considerable amount of physical and irreversible emotional pain.

As in most cartoons, the Road Runner and Coyote follow the laws of cartoon physics. What are those you ask? Well:

In “Chuck Amuck: The Life and Times Of An Animated Cartoonist”, it is claimed that Chuck Jones and the artists behind the Road Runner and Wile E. cartoons adhered to some simple but strict rules:

1. Road Runner cannot harm the Coyote except by going “beep, beep.”
2. No outside force can harm the Coyote—only his own ineptitude or the failure of Acme products. Trains and trucks were the exception from time to time.
3. The Coyote could stop anytime—IF he were not a fanatic. (Repeat: “A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.” —George Santayana).
4. No dialogue ever, except “beep, beep” and yowling in pain.
5. Road Runner must stay on the road—for no other reason than that he’s a roadrunner.
6. All action must be confined to the natural environment of the two characters—the southwest American desert.
7. All tools, weapons, or mechanical conveniences must be obtained from the Acme Corporation.
8. Whenever possible, make gravity the Coyote’s greatest enemy.
9. The Coyote is always more humiliated than harmed by his failures.
10. The audience’s sympathy must remain with the Coyote.
11. The Coyote is not allowed to catch the road runner.

For keeping to a badguy code- the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote sit at my penultimate spot on the badguy list.

As everyone who grew up in the 80’s will know, neither Hitler nor that smoke thing from Lost is the universe’s most evil genius. They were all pretty badass dudes/smoke things, but nothing they ever did would qualify them as evil on a galactic scale. Krang- the most Evil Genius in the Universe, travelled through time and space to wreak havoc on alien planets including the likes of earth (which in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, consisted only of New York and Chicago). Yes that’s right, I am talking about the one and only, weirdly high-voiced, disembodied pink brain named Krang. He is both brilliant and crazy, with a side order of sinister – And lets get real, anybody that looks like him and is still able to command the respect of a couple of crime-fighting mutant turtles and a wise, robe-adorned Rat deserves the number one spot.

Once the Ruler of Dimension X, Krang came to Earth with his Technodrome (which lost its record as the world’s largest gadget when the Large Hadron Collider was built), decided to destroy said Earth with his new friend, Shredder, for reasons obviously related to his hatred for pepperoni and skating turtles along with speaking rats etc. His plans were so devious that they outsmarted the likes of himself- a true characteristic of an evil genius.

As the number 1 badguy on my list- I feel that there are still too many questions surrounding Krang and his cryptic dealings with talking animals that need answering like:

Why hate humanity so bad?  

Why is the Technodrome always breaking down?

Why build yourself a bald robo-suit wearing only red underwear and metal shoulder pads?

Krang…YOU are truely evil!