The 6 Most Pointless Supervillain Schemes Ever Hatched

6 Getting Batman Married

There are lots of reasons why criminals should be afraid of Batman: He's trained in martial arts, he's a genius detective and he's dressed like a giant bat. But one night a gang of ruthless criminals comes up with a plan to get Batman out of their way permanently: finding him a wife.

The reasoning here seems to be that if Batman got married, he wouldn't spend so much time patrolling the city -- he'd probably be, like, watching Grey's Anatomy every night. Thus the villains spend $1 million on a "Batman for Marriage" ad campaign designed by "the most brilliant minds" in advertising -- all apparently big fans of the flier-drop method of demographic targeting.

Batman and Robin are inundated by women desperate to get in their underpants. Dozens of attractive girls keep showing up at dangerous, back-alley crime scenes seeking to get a man who dresses like a bat to marry them. Because the fliers told them to. Needless to say, Robin handles this poorly ...

With Batman busy warding off the hordes of easily misled women, the crooks are able to carry out their planned crime spree ... stealing fur coats. Sure, they could have robbed every bank in Gotham City, but they decided that the real money was in fur (as opposed to being in actual real money).

Next, it's time for phase two of their plan: Bring out their conspicuously good-looking female henchman. The idea is that when she "saves" Batman by beating the shit out of the women who want to jump on his boner, he will fall hopelessly in love with her. Of course, the flaw in this plan should be obvious. No, not the idea that a crime fighter will be attracted to someone who just physically assaulted a crowd of innocent women ...

The flaw is that there's obviously no such a thing as a woman who won't be swayed by the fliers telling her to love Batman. When her soft brain falls in love with the Caped Crusader, she ends up giving up the location of the stolen fur coats and the rest of the gang.

5 Becoming Spider-Man's Uncle

Most supervillains wouldn't sleep with a superhero's 80-year-old aunt as part of an evil scheme. Most supervillains aren't Doctor Octopus. When Doc Ock began dating Peter Parker's elderly Aunt May, we learn that the vaunted "Spidey sense" has a conspicuous blind spot for hideously deformed murdering psychopaths boning your loved ones. This exchange illustrates the full extent of Peter's efforts to get her to reconsider her decision:

But one day he comes across a disturbing envelope that reveals Doctor Octopus' real intentions:

Having learned the horrible truth, Peter rushes out to Doctor Octopus' house but arrives just in time to witness the following scene:

Turns out Aunt May was about to come into a large inheritance but had no idea, maybe because you typically inherit stuff from older relatives and in her case that's impossible. Doc Ock decided the best way to get a piece of this action was to marry Aunt May instead of just stealing the inheritance, because -- gangster with metal arms or not -- the man has morals. Also, he kills everyone else who knows about the inheritance.

What did Aunt May inherit that Doc Ock wanted so badly? Why, a fully functional nuclear plant!

Of course, it's fully functional and completely abandoned, so we're not sure why Doc Ock went through so much trouble to legally own half of it. Also, marrying someone doesn't automatically mean you get all her stuff.

Somehow, the brilliant plan fails to get off the ground when another ridiculous Spider-Man villain called Hammerhead learns about the inheritance. He crashes the wedding and tries to kidnap Aunt May, an approach that probably seemed puzzling to Doc Ock, since it didn't involve kissing, marrying and possibly having sex with an 80-year-old woman.

Spider-Man ends up kidnapping Aunt May himself and hauling her unconscious body back to New York while Hammerhead and Doc Ock get blown up in a nuclear explosion that probably wiped out half of Canada.

With the nuclear plant, Hammerhead, Doc Ock and Celine Dion finally destroyed, Spider-Man heads home and, much like the rest of us, desperately tries not to imagine what would have happened on the honeymoon.

4 Defeat Superman by ... Bringing Back the Beard

During a Daily Planet investigation Jimmy Olsen -- Superman's young friend and the single most useless superhero sidekick ever -- attempts to infiltrate the secretive Beard Band, which should be easy enough given that the only criterion for membership is having a beard. But instead of just not shaving for a couple of days, Jimmy tries to gain access by using a fake beard, which unfortunately fails to pass the group's complicated verification process.

Jimmy is about to give up and go home when a guy on the street conveniently offers him a potion that will grow him a beard immediately. Not one to question street peddlers, Jimmy buys and drinks the potion on the spot, and oddly enough doesn't wake up from a drugged stupor two days later with his pants around his ankles and the back of his neck itching from whisker burn.

Now that Jimmy's got a real beard, he's finally allowed into the club ...

... allowing him to witness a meeting presided over by the same bearded guy he's now witnessed working the door and selling beard tonic on the nearest corner. Jimmy finds out the shocking reason the Beard Band really exists: They are deviously trying to bring beards back into fashion.

That's their whole plan. They don't want fame, fortune or anything like that: They simply want respect for the beard. Sounds almost admirable, if it wasn't for their questionable methods. The Beard Band extorts Jimmy into becoming their new spokesman by revealing that unless they give him the antidote to the tonic he drank, his beard will continue growing forever unless he keeps shaving it -- a cruel and unusual curse no man has ever had to endure every morning since the beginning of time.

Despite being a huge assclown, Jimmy is supposed to "lend prestige to their cause" by making a string of public appearances sporting his dashing new beard. This goes about as well as you'd expect.

That's when shit gets real: The Beard Band step up their game by deciding to poison the water supply with their beard tonic, so that everyone in Metropolis will grow facial hair. Fortunately, Jimmy manages to save Superman from getting involved in the most ridiculous story line ever by dropping his beard into the beard tonic, thus canceling its effect and tragically negating the beards of everyone in the Beard Band.

If you're wondering why Jimmy's "dissolving beard" causes the chemicals in the tonic to change, well, that's just the sort of question the Beard Band would want you to distract yourself with. It's recommended that you stop shaving your face for a few days. If a beard grows there, you should immediately turn yourself in to the proper authorities, because the Beard Band has already won!

3 Switching Bodies with a Blind Guy

As part of a scheme to destroy the Fantastic Four, Dr. Doom employs the classic "switching bodies with your deadly enemy" plot. This is one of the oldest tricks in the super villain playbook. You can soil his good reputation by committing evil deeds, freely make out with his wife or girlfriend and then plaster the Internet with the resulting photographs. The one way to screw this up would be to choose the only superhero who, in addition to having no powers, happens to be blind.

The first stage of Doom's plan is defeating Daredevil in combat, which literally takes him about 15 seconds. Doom even remarks that he doesn't normally fight with his fists, but it would be a shame to "waste senses-staggering weapons on one so weak." With that accomplished, Doom grabs Daredevil's weak body and takes him over to his lair to switch bodies with him.

After the bodies are swapped, Daredevil finds himself trapped in Doom's body and locked inside a cell. Of course, "trapped" is a relative term, since he's controlling Doom's super-strong body now and should logically be able to overpower his captor in no time. Also, for a blind guy, he seems relatively downbeat about having his sense of sight restored.

Using Daredevil's body, Doom plans to kill the Fantastic Four. He never explains how he plans to defeat four guys with actual superpowers using a body he himself called "weak" and a "puny, trivial nuisance." But it's all worth it, because he now has Daredevils power of ... being blind? Doom could have accomplished a way more effective version of this same plan by keeping his super powers, putting on a Daredevil costume and fighting the Fantastic Four with his eyes closed.

Meanwhile, Daredevil manages to persuade Doom's henchmen to free him, which is easy since Doom never mentioned any of this body-switching business to them.

He proceeds to have the time of his life with his new indestructible armor and dozens of super-high-tech weapons, along with "unlimited diplomatic immunity" since Doom is the leader of his own nation. Also -- and we can't emphasize this enough -- he can freaking see again!

Upon hearing that Daredevil isn't acting all blind anymore, Doom rushes back to his mansion and switches bodies with him, which means that unfortunately we never get to see the Fantastic Four beat up a blind guy.

2 Making Milk Expensive to Weaken America

In this story from 1942, Wonder Woman's alter ego, Diana Prince, notices how expensive milk has gotten and decides that pure evil must be afoot.

Prince goes directly to the president of the International Milk Co., who helpfully explains that his company has an illegal monopoly on milk. In case she's doubting her initial diagnosis of evil, for absolutely no reason he then does this ...

After changing into Wonder Woman she still feels it's necessary to call her boss, since this is 1942. Later, she finds out the Nazis are behind this despicable deed; more specifically, her old enemy Baroness Von Gunther.

The Baroness had previously been executed for her crimes, but she was returned to life using advanced Nazi technology, all so she could unfurl her diabolical scheme.

By spending millions of Nazi dollars buying all the milk companies in America, she can raise the price of milk, thus weakening the bones of every poor kid in America. Then, in 20 years or so, America will be so weak that the strong-boned Germans will just stroll in and start running the place.

Our first question is: Why sell the milk at all? If she really owns all the milk then it would make a lot more sense to simply keep it. Second question: HOLY SHIT, NAZIS ARE IMMORTAL!!! That's more of an exclamation, but still. If the Nazis have perfected a machine that brings dead people back to life, why are they bothering with milk? How about bringing all your dead soldiers back to life instead and completely demolishing the Allies in the actual war?

Hell, selectively zap the cemeteries in the southern half of America, and the country you're trying to weaken is suddenly fighting the Civil War a second time.

Or bring back the slaves and Native Americans. America goes from being united against the worst enemy in world history to facing a zombie horde that the rest of the world would have to admit had a reason to be pissed.

Or, make milk expensive. It's really six of one and a half-dozen of the other.

1 Spider-Man: Clone Saga -- Cloning Spider-Man to Cause Him Mental Anguish

Spider-Man's Clone Saga is to Marvel Comics what World War II is to Germany -- they try their best to pretend they never did something so awful, because that's the only way to continue living. What makes this particular evil scheme so horrible is that it didn't happen on a single issue: It took place over 20 years of Spider-Man comics. It all started in a 1975 issue where a mad scientist creates a perfect duplicate of Spidey:

The clone turns out to be a pretty fly dude, (since he was a perfect duplicate and all) but he still ends up dead by next issue. That would've been the end of the story, if 20 years later Spider-Man writers hadn't decided to shake things up by bringing back the clone ... and revealing that he was actually the original.

Peter himself did a blood test and confirmed this. So, basically, Spidey fans had been buying The Amazing Spider-Clone for the past 20 years, without their knowledge. The Spider-Man who dated Mary Jane, got married, and fought guys like Venom? Sorry, that was a fake. The original had become a drifter, presumably surviving by performing sex acts on other hobos. Now that the truth was out, Peter Parker retired from web-slinging while the original (who had adopted the name Ben Reilly) became Spider-Man once again.

Shockingly, readers weren't thrilled about this development, because apparently having your childhood heroes shat upon isn't popular. So after a year or so in which Ben Reilly was Spider-Man, the writers had to come up with a way to explain everything away, and they did this by revealing that the whole thing had been part of an evil scheme by the Green Goblin ... who was supposed to be dead at the time, but that's the least-confusing part of this story.

It turns out the Goblin came back to life right after his death in a classic Spidey comic way back in 1972. Feeling pretty ticked off over the whole "dying" thing, he devised a long plan to torture Spider-Man psychologically by making him doubt himself (as if he didn't do that already in every issue). The first thing he did was order a clone of Peter Parker: not an evil clone, but an exact duplicate with all his memories and abilities and that same urge to fight evil while making bad puns. So the Goblin enacted his revenge by... doubling his own enemies.

But that's just part one of the plan. Part two involves having Spider-Man meet the clone, letting it become a drifter for a few years, arranging his return to New York and rigging some blood tests to convince Peter that the other guy is the original.

To what end? Causing Spider-Man mental stress and hoping he develops an ulcer, apparently. But wait -- doesn't Spider-Man sort of hate his job? If there's another one out there, then Peter can just retire and live happily with his wife ... which is exactly what he did. Even better: If he's not the real Peter this means he's not technically responsible for the death of Uncle Ben, which is the source of every bad thing that's happened in his life. Instead of tormenting Spider-Man, the Goblin made him happy for the first time since he was a kid. Brilliant plan!

Peter eventually learns he's the real thing and gets back into the crime-fighting game, meaning that the only real result that the Goblin got from this plan was giving Spider-Man a much-deserved vacation. If only more supervillains were so considerate.

There's plenty more baffling plot holes to laugh at in our new book!

To read about more Supervillan stupidity, check out The 5 Most Pointlessly Elaborate Murder Plots in Movies.