Top 10 Reformed Villains - The Left-Outs

While compiling my Top 10 Reformed Villains, there were some characters that could have made the list, but I left them out for specific reasons.  I suppose you could say they are honorable mentions, but to my mind they just didn't quite fit the criteria.

Magneto and Dr. Doom - Magneto is currently running around with the X-Men, and has before in the past, while Dr. Doom is currently a part of the Future Foundation.  However, I have little doubt that these two will return to their villainous ways as they are simply too important in their roles as arch-villains for the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and the Marvel Universe in general.

Angel and Spike - While I included other characters from the Buffyverse, I specifically left these two out.  In Angel's case, the character was created to be a hero.  He was not designed from the outset to be a villain, that came later.  Besides that, I looked at how Angel and Angelus are essentially two different beings occupying the same body, and that was a big part of the disqualification.  Spike is in a similar boat, in that the loss or regaining of his soul defined whether he was a hero or villain.  While his personality remains pretty much the same either way, Angel/Angelus was the precedent and I'm sticking to it.

The Vision - Vizh got his start as a tool of Ultron, but from a character creation standpoint he was never intended to be a villain, based on his very quick turnaround to help the Avengers defeat his creator.  The intention was to create a new hero, not a villain.


Sandman - I desperately wanted to include the Sandman on my list, as I was quite fond of him as a hero/mercenary with the Wild Pack.  I particularly liked his extremely brief stint as an Avenger, where he called in the team to deal with an arms shipment and Captain America told him it was kind of beneath what they usually did.  Sandman had a fit, and I think it was justified.


Wow, Marvel has a lot more reformed villains than DC...other than maybe Plastic Man and Major Disaster I'm having trouble thinking of any, especially with the same prominence as the Marvel characters.