Comics: Underrated Villains.

Sure Joker was obvious, you had to have Joker in a batman movie, but when it came to the sequel, Tim Burton had the whole rogues gallery to choose from, and he chose...penguin?

I thought I'd look at some of the lesser known, or underrated bad guys as a brief offering for today, that for one reason or another tend not to get their due.
So I'll kick it off with a list, I don't know how long this list is going to be, but its a list no less.

#1 The Penguin (Batman): The penguin is perhaps the most underrated bad guy in the whole comic book world. He has only disadvantages, he's short, he's ugly, he's ridiculous. His gimmick is confusing, is he obseesed with birds in general, or just penguins? What's with the umbrella? This is what happens when you are inspired by corporate logos on a matchbox in the early days of Bob Kane, who really was no less a hack than any other comic book writer in history.
But that's what makes the penguin so beautiful, he has become the conniving imp. Relying on brainpower alone, and hired muscle. He generally just wants to run a crime syndicate. HIs motivations pure and simple so pure and simple infact that almost any reader can understand him, unlike the more bizarre afflictions of counterparts like Joker and Two-Face that have mental conditions that don't really exist and thus no audiance in the world can actually relate to them.
The Penguin is the ugly short man, insecure he seeks compensation. He seeks quite literally revenge on everybody, for pushing him to the fringe of society over a condition he was born with.
Tim Burton was no dope, their is a lot more to work with in penguin than a lot of other villians that have been brought to the screen, abomination, joker, two face, iron monger, green goblin... none of them have as tidy and understandable back story as the penguin.

#2 Lex Luthor (Superman):

Okay so maybe Lex Luthor isn't underrated in the scope of Superman, but in when people talk about Superman they talk about Superman. I doubt most people could name more than say 2 enemies of superman without consulting wikipedia. And then in the broader context of comics, when people talk about comics they talk about Batman & Spiderman.
Lex Luthor though, is similar to the penguin in that he is voiid of any abilities. Also he has been incarnaed over the years as being simultaneously a mad scientist and some corporate moghul.
But Lex Luthor is bald, and has no powers to speak of. And yet he takes on the man of steal. He is the contrarian, when all the world chooses to love Superman he chose to hate him. Lex Luthor, simply is Grant Hackett pre Ian Thorpe's retirement.
His life had been dedicated to building an empire, where he could showcase his ability as the number one human being, the man of tomorrow. And then some fucking alien comes down from the sky and steals all the attention.
Lex Luthor, quite simply is batman. He uses his brain to fight superman, calculating his weaknesses and exploiting them. Its just that Lex is Evil, Batman is good. But essentially they are the same, billionaires indulging in their own selfish fantasies.

#3 The Abomination (Hulk):

The abomination may seem like somebody looked at the poster of 'creature from the black lagoon' and then tried to figure out another name that wasn't 'creature' and I'd almost bet that that was how he came about.
But on the surface the abomination seems pretty obvious to work out, he is a brute strength type villain, that turns up has a punch on with hulk and eventually is thrown into outer space or some shit.
That's generally how he is treated. But I say he is underrated A) because his name may appear 'stupid' and B) he needs to be considered in contrast with the Hulk.
Over the years, Hulk has been overcomplicated so that now, sometimes Banner can transform into Hulk whilst maintaining control, but usually and especially in the early days, he transformed into a mindless beast.
Contrast the abomination to Hulk and then you see how truly horrible a concept it was. Abomination is a gamma monster like Hulk, except Emil Blonsky post transformation retains his mental faculty, the catch though is that unlike Hulk he can't return to his civilian identity, he is stuck quite literally as an abomination. And furthermore unlike the hulk he is quite capable of comprehending his own fate.
That's fucked up.
As an adversary the Abomination has lots in common with the Hulk, but in many ways whilst the reade is to sympathise with the likeable unfortunate Bruce Banner, and cheer on the Hulk the abomination's predicament is actually worse.
He has undergone an irreversible transformation, can comprehend his own fate and the Hulk is strong enough to subdue him and deny his freedom.
That's one underrated bad guy.

There we go a list of 3, lets face it in manga, all the bad guys in Dragon Ball Z ended up being Goku's friends and I can't thin of any other particularly outstanding bad guys in the rest of Manga's history except maybe Lord Gemma in Ninja Scroll.
And most villains are either rated appropriately, or never written to realize their potential or just plain shit.