[thechris]

I think as far as "costumed villains" go, The Zodiac Killer and Captain Killdozer would be pretty up there. Killdozer built a super weapon and leveled a small town. Zodiac had an actual costume and emblem on his chest. Dr. Chaos caused global chaos with his elite hacking skills. If Foolkiller, Calculator, Jigsaw, Saracan and Crossbones can be considered supervillains, then surely these guys are closer to real life super villains.

In fact, they're even closer to their comic book counterparts by definition (in that they're committing real life heinous crimes) than these heroes (while some of them do good in the world like visit schools and go to charity events) clearly haven't reached the magnitude of what a superhero is by most comic book definition. It's not that I condone what they're doing, but it's a lot easier to be a real life Super Villain than a real life Super Hero. All you need to gain validity is to commit terrible crimes and have a gimmick, right? And these guys are obviously insane further driving them to be reckless.

And jokes aside, we have people who are supposed to save people from petty crimes and dangerous situations. I don't want to debate how well they do their jobs. I'm just saying that when some guy wears a costume and pepper sprays people for committing petty crimes, it doesn't seem all that impressive and a lot of people even consider it a joke. On the other hand, when some creepy psycho murders what he claims have been hundreds of people while wearing a creepy costume, then leaves cryptic messages to the police and all the while, he has NEVER been caught... Well, that's pretty bad, but that makes him even worse than the Riddler during his initial run as he never really killed anybody.

This gets news. This is what I'd think of as a villain. It's easier to find terrible crimes to commit than it is to find big crimes to save people from, right? As morbid as it may sound, by the time Phoenix Jones finds a real crime to pepper spray, in his day, Zodiac will have killed 10 people, left notes, gotten away. Killdozer would have leveled 10 small towns. I don't think you necessarily need to have a real life superhero arch nemesis in order to be defined as a supervillain. If the day ever came where we had real life supervillains battling with real life superheroes, our world will be in true peril. LOL. I could totally see a Kingdom Come situation or if anyone played Fallout 3, the AntAgonizer and the Mechanist.

Can you imagine a psycho challenging these "costumed heroes" and going on a killing spree? Won't be so fun, then...