Curated playlist

Fictional crime bosses

Joker (character)The Joker was nearly killed off in his second comic appearance. An editor saved him with a hastily drawn panel.
Emma FrostEmma Frost made her first appearance in The Uncanny X-Men #129, published in January 1980, as an enemy of the X-Men. Decades of Marvel Comics stories later, she is one of that team's most central members and leaders. She is a mutant, one…
Gus FringGustavo Fring sells fried chicken in the American Southwest, and the chicken is the least dangerous thing he sells. He is a fictional character played by Giancarlo Esposito in the Breaking Bad franchise. He is one of the main antagonists…
Lex LuthorLex Luthor has no superpowers, no secret identity and no alien heritage, yet he has outlasted nearly every other enemy of Superman. Writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster created him, and he first appeared in Action Comics #23 in April…
Boba FettBoba Fett first appeared in public on the 24th of September 1978, at the San Anselmo Country Fair parade. The armor was worn by Duwayne Dunham, then an assistant film editor and later a film and television director. Fett is a Star Wars…
Darth MaulDarth Maul was cut in half in his first film, yet he came back. George Lucas chose to bring him back.
Jason ToddJason Todd, the second Robin in DC Comics, had his life or death decided by a telephone poll in 1988. Readers of the Batman comics were handed two 1-900 numbers. One meant the boy would live. The other meant he would die. They had only a…
Walter White (Breaking Bad)Walter Hartwell White is the protagonist of the American crime drama Breaking Bad, and his story begins with a diagnosis. The day after his 50th birthday, he learns he has Stage III lung cancer. Walter teaches high school chemistry in…
Two-FaceTwo-Face, the coin-tossing enemy of Batman, makes his first appearance in Detective Comics #66, published in August 1942. Late in that issue, Batman chases him down and corners him. The hero offers a simple deal: give up and start over.…
Seth (Street Fighter)Seth, a Street Fighter villain, is one of many androids built as spare bodies for M. Bison.
Tony SopranoTony Soprano, the New Jersey mob boss at the center of the HBO series The Sopranos, was nearly named Tommy. In the pilot, the name honored Tom Powers, the gangster James Cagney played in The Public Enemy. Clearance to call the character…
Judge HoldenJudge Holden may have been a living man, a borrowed name, or only a rumor that one soldier wrote down. The proof that he existed at all rests on a single memoir. More than a century after that memoir was finished, the novelist Cormac…
F.A.N.G. (Street Fighter)F.A.N.G promised to beat his opponent in exactly two minutes. The Street Fighter V villain still ranked near the bottom.
Ra's al GhulRa's al Ghul, the DC Comics supervillain best known as Batman's immortal rival, once admitted that he could not keep track of his own age. In Azrael #6, from July 1995 and written by Dennis O'Neil, he tells the young hero Jean-Paul Valley:…
Kingpin (character)The Kingpin first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #50, cover-dated July 1967, at a moment when Peter Parker had quit being Spider-Man. Stan Lee had a particular idea for the new villain. He wanted a man who ran organized crime the way a…
Tombstone (character)Tombstone is a Marvel Comics crime boss whose face was built to resemble the grave marker he is named after. Writer Gerry Conway chose the name first. He then gave the character albinism and squared-off features so the finished drawing…
Black Cat (Marvel Comics)Black Cat, the thief whose real name is Felicia Hardy, first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #194 in July 1979, yet she was never meant for that comic. Her creators had a different hero's book in mind when they dreamed her up. She…
Bane (DC Comics)Bane, the DC Comics supervillain, got his name from an insult. At the age of eight, a boy inside the Peña Duro prison on the Caribbean island of Santa Prisca stabbed a criminal who was trying to use him to learn the prison's secrets. It…