Let's discuss how you place Marvel Villains into different categories. I got the because David Displays did his full ranking 4 hour live stream of all 2023 Marvel Legends and he repeatedly mentioned how he loves C and D-list Villains. I realized I also love them.
It goes back to reading the 1960s X-Men where you'd have the team be confronted with some absolutely zany character. Spiderman had that, as well. Batman The Animated Series cartoon had the epitome of this, in Condiment King.
However, then David talked about Puff Adder BAF and he shrugged at it, saying "it's cool to get another Serpent Society, but he didn't really care" whereas I was excited for Puff Adder. I think it falls under the category of C and D-list Teams, which also excite me. For example, I LOVE the older Wrecking Crew figures.
I like to display my figures into action scenes so the purpose of this exercise is to figure out how to create a fun scene. An example of something that doesn't work, pitting a Condiment King against the entire quad of 90's Jim Lee X-Men. That's a silly scene, they'd just crush him in a "real" encounter instantly.
But maybe a complete D-List team could fight a handful of X-Men but not a full X-men roster. Or maybe three different D-list teams fighting the entire X-men. Wrecking Crew on one side, Serpent Society on another side. X-Men in the middle.
Adding in an A-List team like Evil Brotherhood of Mutants would ruin it, because they'd take attention away from the D-list teams, and also in a "real" fight, it would put the X-Men at too large of a disadvantage since the X-Men struggle against just the Brotherhood.
Spiderman could fight against a collective of D-listers all at once, whether or not they're a specific D-List team or just an ad hoc grouping of D-listers who team up.
If you had to come up with various categories for Marvel Villains, how would you do it? Power-level? Mutant versus Human? Whether they're on a team? How strong the team is?
Toad isn't who I'd classify as an A-list super powerful villain, but he's part of the Brotherhood which overall is very strong. Then again maybe we could argue Magneto is the core of Brotherhood, he's very strong, and he could pick almost any rag tag team of D-list evil mutants to join him and have some success against the X-Men.
I don't organize by power levels or notoriety, but by affiliation & character family.
My main categories here are:
X-Family
Avengers Family (includes Cap, Iron Man and Thor villains)
Defenders Family (includes Doctor Strange, Namor and Hulk villains)
Fantastic Four Family
Spider-Man & Street-Level Family
Cosmic Family (excluding Fantastic Four)
Supernatural Family (excluding Dr. Strange)
Genre & Miscellaneous Family (like Wild West, WWII, alternate realities or timelines (Killraven, Star-Lord FA, etc.)
Within those categories, there are teams and there are individual players. "Fights" and scenarios generally mimic real comic-based match-ups.
I also have my displays broken out into 4 main segments of the Marvel Universe:
X-Men: By far and away the largest of my displays. I'm considering breaking out Wolverine and X-Factor displays out of this main one just because this has gotten too big. Having 3 HasLab Sentinels (along with the older smaller 16-inchish ones) alone makes this enormous. This takes up all of 2 full bookcases alone.
Avengers
Spider-Man
Those next two are both roughly the same size. There's a lot of Spider-verse (and Daredevil characters!) in the Spidey display but the Avengers often seems to include characters and their villains that don't fit well anywhere else like Spider-Woman, Moon Knight, Luke Cage & Iron Fist for example among a host of others. These both cover most of a book case each (4 out of 5 shelves).
Fantastic Four: This is by far the smallest of the four overall but has the HasLab Galactus & his heralds, Inhumans (including the Mezco Lockjaw) and many cosmic characters in it (including Dragon Man, multiple Watchers, Annihilus, Blastaar, etc). I'm using non-traditional shelving for this particular display.
I've gotten a little out of hand with my army building to the point that I can't display everything that I have in regards to those. That tells me that I've overdone it. I could easily have multiple shelves each of just Wakanda, Kree/Skrull and AIM, for example. Although I don't have a large Thor roster I bought like ten of those McFarlane Ice Giant megafigs for Thor to fight when they got under $15, and they take up a ton of space also.
I do something similar for DC where I have very large separate displays eacg for Batman and the Justice League. Then I have a shelf each for Superman, Teen Titans, The Legion of Super Heroes, Flash and Green Lantern families of characters.
All in all, these nearly completely fill a 700 sq ft otherwise unused/vacant room in my house. I laugh when I remember that the first house that I bought way back in 2000 was only like 850 sq ft total. If I still lived in that first "starter home" then I never could have built this collection! My two sons are already dreading what they're going to do with this when I die (I'm 48, and they're both grown, 23 & 20).
Marvel villains are top shelf in my display but I have recently had to expand to another shelf space just for cosmic villains. I have a dedicated shelf for Masters of Evil/ Lethal Legion and Serpent Society. Daredevil / Punisher baddies are lumped in with my Spider-Man villains on a different shelf and Hydra/ Hand/ AIM army builders are on spaces of their own. If they make Doombots im gonna have to get another bookcase!
I feel ok with the amount and villain characters made for the X-Men. I'm done with Spider-Man side also as im not liking the ones they've been choosing over Swarm and Spot. Excited to add a Crimson Dynamo soon to the Iron Man area and an official Count Nefaria. A new Annihilus on the way too!
Classic Blastaar, U-Foes, Attuma, Skurge, Dragon Man... you got some work to do still Hasbro.
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