Super villain Wiki
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A supervillain or supervillainess is a "superhuman criminal"-variant of the villainous stock character-archetype, commonly found in comic books, action movies and science fiction in various media. They are used as foils to superheroes and other heroes.

By some definitions, the first supervillain was John Devil, a proto-Fantômas, created by Paul Féval, père in his eponymous 1860 novel, or Féval's nearly-immortal, machiavellian Colonel Bozzo-Corona, leader of Les Habits Noirs introduced in 1863. Professor Moriarty, the archenemy of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective Sherlock Holmes, was introduced in 1893. Dr. Fu Manchu, the antagonist of several popular novels of Sax Rohmer, is credited with popularizing many of the typical characteristics of the modern supervillain, including his sadistic personality, The first supervillain who wore a bizarre costume was the Lightning, from the 1938 film The Fighting Devil Dogs. The first supervillain to regularly battle a superhero was the Ultra-Humanite, who first appeared in Action Comics #13 (1939).

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