These Villains Were Created By The Avengers

It's an old argument: are super-heroes our protectors against increasingly dense concentrations of evil, or do these costumed crusaders, in fact, attract these weirdos in tights? If Spider-Man didn't patrol the streets of New York City, would J. Jonah Jameson hire scientists to create super-villains? By the same token, the Avengers have usually had their headquarters right in the middle of Manhattan, where any lunatic could come and challenge them while costing millions of dollars in property damage. 

The Avengers in particular have a long history of not only attracting enemies like that, but also taking on the combined grudges of their individual members' arch-enemies. The fact that two generations of Zemos hated Captain America caused untold grief. Then there have been cosmic entities, beings from the future, friends and enemies back from the dead, and alternate-universe versions of actual Avengers that have plagued the team. Sometimes the Avengers' actions have come back to haunt them, making those villains somewhat sympathetic figures.

Sometimes, however, members of the Avengers have literally created their opponents, often in the form of killer robots and the subsequent creations of said killer robots. In those cases, they had no one to blame but themselves. Let's take a look at the super-villains that the Avengers have had a hand in creating. 

Kang was a 31st-century layabout named Nathaniel Richards, who may well have been a direct descendant of Reed Richards or his father. He was bored with the tranquility of his era and was fascinated by watching ancient recordings of heroes like the Avengers. Further research had him stumble upon a time machine, and he used it to travel back to ancient Egypt and conquer it as Rama-Tut. When he was defeated by the time-traveling Fantastic Four, he went back to the future.

However, he overshot it by a thousand years and wound up in the 40th century. This was a war-torn Earth where no one understood the technology they were using, and it was here that he decided to become a time-spanning conqueror. He donned special weaponized armor that was inspired by meeting Doctor Doom in the 20th century and then decided to visit the original Avengers.

Kang has hinted that his obsession with the Avengers was more of a hobby than his real business. When you hit a mid-life crisis like he did, funny things can happen. In his case, Kang has kidnapped the Avengers to help him against a usurper, used them in a cosmic game, and kidnapped them to fight against his future self, Immortus. Then he conquered 21st century Earth as an exercise to test one of his sons and to make the Avengers officially surrender to him. The Avengers and their era were officially Kang's man-cave.

Eric Williams grew up as a bad boy, unlike his straight-arrow brother Simon. Eric became a career criminal with the Maggia while Simon took over the family's business, Williams Innovations. When Tony Stark was threatening to put him out of business, Simon embezzled money from his company and invested it with his brother. He was caught and sent to jail, after which Baron Heinrich Zemo freed him and offered a chance for revenge against Stark and the Avengers with an experimental process that turned him into ionic energy. He infiltrated the Avengers as Wonder Man, with the idea being that he'd betray the team. Zemo's plan went swimmingly... until Simon sacrificed himself to save the Avengers.

Much later, a guilt-ridden Eric turned to the Tinkerer for an energy scythe, and a young Ultron used his encephalo-ray technology to give him the power to induce comas. He blamed the Avengers for Simon's death. Calling himself the Grim Reaper, he attacked the Avengers and would have killed them if it hadn't been for the Black Panther storming the mansion and saving them. 

Even when Wonder Man returned from seeming death, the Grim Reaper regarded him as a fake version of his brother. The Reaper also had a grudge against the Vision, seeing him as someone who stole Simon's identity. The Reaper continued his crusade against the Avengers even after he died and his subsequent resurrection, despite his brothers welcoming him.

Kang's beloved Princess Ravonna was in a coma, and the cosmic Elder named the Grandmaster challenged him to a game. If Kang won, he would be granted power over life and death. The Grandmaster liked to use proxies for his contests, and while Kang chose the Avengers as his pawns, the Grandmaster created new villains to fight them. He named them the Squadron Sinister, and that lineup consisted of super-strong Hyperion, the ultra-fast Whizzer, caped prowler Nighthawk, and energy-manipulating Dr. Spectrum. 

Hyperion came to Earth as a baby from a doomed Microverse planet. Nighthawk was a millionaire whose powers grew stronger at night. Dr. Spectrum had a crystal that allowed him to create energy constructs. Sound familiar? This was a little goof on the part of writer Roy Thomas, and the Squadron Sinister was the Marvel version of DC's Justice League of America.

Because the Black Knight interfered with one of the battles, the Grandmaster deemed the conflict a draw. As a result, Kang only got the option of power over life or death but not both. He chose death for the Avengers, but he was defeated by the Black Knight, who was not yet an Avenger.

As for the Squadron, the Whizzer changed his name to Speed Demon and fought Spider-Man. Dr. Spectrum's power prism bounced around from owner to owner, taking over the Wasp's body at one point. Hyperion was destroyed in battle. Nighthawk eventually turned against the villains and became a cornerstone of the Defenders.

In the Operation: Galactic Storm storyline, the Kree Supreme Intelligence deliberately started a war with the Shi'ar, knowing that his people would lose. He believed his race was at an evolutionary dead end and wanted to find a way to kick-start their development. His first step was manipulating his own forces into detonating a Nega-Bomb that wiped out most of the Kree.

The Avengers were in the thick of this war, as he knew they would be. They were trying to save Earth from being collateral damage as well as preventing as much bloodshed as possible. The Supreme Intelligence outmaneuvered them, however. Furthermore, he told them that he had caused the genocide of his own people. An outraged Iron Man convinced a group of Avengers that the Supreme Intelligence should be executed for his war crimes. That bitterly split the team, but they did indeed kill him, with the Black Knight landing the killing stroke.

Of course, the Supreme Intelligence had all of this planned out, but he didn't count on surviving Kree fanatics seeking revenge. Led by Galen Kor, he first tried to bribe members of the Starjammers into killing the Black Knight. Later, he led his own group of Kree terrorists against the Avengers, and they almost set off a Nega-Bomb that would have destroyed Earth. Later, they tried to turn humanity into Kree using the Terrigen Mists. They were destroyed, thanks in part to the Supreme Intelligence working against them. He had his own agenda.

The Grim Reaper took a cue from Baron Zemo and formed his own team of villains with grudges against the Avengers to help him out with his own. Naming his squad the Lethal Legion, he had Man-Ape, the original Power Man, the Living Laser, and the Swordsman on his side. Every one of them had a beef with current or former Avengers. The Vision saved the day against the villains, fooling the Reaper into thinking he was his brother.

His second team had Man-Ape, Ultron, Nekra, Black Talon, and Goliath (formerly Power Man). They battled the West Coast Avengers, but that team had too many agendas to succeed and broke up despite their raw power. His third team fought both the Avengers and Norman Osborn, and it included the Absorbing Man, the Grey Gargoyle, Tiger Shark, and Mister Hyde.

Count Nefaria, who had a grudge against Iron Man in particular, also had a couple of Lethal Legions. The first, with the Living Laser, Power Man, and Whirlwind, was just a bunch of pawns he used to absorb their powers and turn himself into a literal superman. The Living Laser and Whirlwind somehow ignored the fact that he had drained their powers and worked for Nefaria in an effort to get his powers back, but Spider-Man interfered. While never quite at the same level of menace as the Masters of Evil, the various Lethal Legions were still dangerous.

Also known as "War Toy," Alkhema was created by Ultron to be yet another bride. He had earlier tried that trick by stealing the brain patterns of the Wasp to create Jocasta, but she quickly rebelled against him and befriended the Avengers. Alkhema would prove to be another matter. Based on the brain patterns of Mockingbird, she kept Bobbi Morse's obnoxious patter but also immediately rebelled against her creator and would-be husband. However, she wanted to destroy humanity every bit as much as Ultron, only this sadistic robot wanted to do it one person at a time instead of en masse.

She aided the Avengers a few times against Ultron mostly to spite him, but later created a group of "children" based on various Avengers' brain patterns called Robos. She helped the Avengers destroy them when she learned that all of Ultron's creations had a deep-seated suggestion that commanded them to recreate him if he was ever destroyed. It's a sign that the Avengers have been around a long time when the enemies that they accidentally created start creating their own villains to menace the world.