50 Greatest Super Villains In Comic Book History

38. Ozymandias

(Write-up by Matt Conner, Bam Smack Pow Staff Writer)

Putting Ozymandias on a “Greatest Villains” list is a spoiler for an amazing piece of fiction, but Watchmen finished in 1987, and you’ll love reading it even if you do know the twist. In short, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons put together a forceful creative project about the nature of super hero comics, a story about a group of retired adventurers investigating the murder of one of their own. The death is tied to a secret project, led by Adrian Veidt, to teleport a psychic monster into New York City, immediately killing millions of innocent people.

Adrian Veidt is a great villain for three reasons.

First, he was originally Ozymandias, a hero and teammate of the Watchmen, and his only superpower was intelligence. Throughout most of the book, he’s seen as a trustworthy friend, and the revelation of his plan comes across as a painful betrayal.

Second, and this is huge, he wins. On a list of fifty great villains, Ozymandias is the only one who ends his story in the winner’s circle. One of the best pages in comic history has his reaction to the confrontation by his former teammates about when he plans to enact his evil plot. “Do you seriously think I’d explain my masterstroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago.” As much as readers want to believe the heroes can lose, it never happens. The bad guy may kill a sidekick or something, but the good guy is going to stop the worst of it. And Ozymandias breaks that rule.

Finally, in the context of the story, Ozymandias is right. Throughout the book, the background hums with news reports of ongoing global conflict. His terrorist attack on New York City is a callous way to unite the world governments against the threat of an alien invasion. And within minutes of the action, the surviving Watchmen are inundated with reports that war has ground to a halt everywhere.

As a result,  the heroes are forced to let Ozymandias get away with it out of concern for the greater good. Watchmen challenges the convention that heroes follow the same moral compass, and the fact that Ozymandias is despicable because of calculation rather than sadism — combined with the notion that his enemies accept this because it has led to world peace — earns a spot on the Greatest Villains list for a man with only a dozen issues of exposure.

Next: No. 37: Insanely symbiotic