Never let it be said that all the good super-villain themes are taken. If you can settle for not being the next Joker or Doctor Doom of the world, there are a whole host of possibilities for the up-and-coming villain of tomorrow! There are whole arsenals of deadly weapons to base yourself on or an always expanding and ever fearsome animal kingdom! Or why not combine the two? Did someone say Pistol Shrimp?

Or maybe you can just base your villain identity on whatever you find lying around.

Vacuum...Woman? Maybe? Too sexist?

Not everybody can have a real stellar super-villain identity like Magneto or Doctor Octopus. Sometimes super-villains need to get creative. And sometimes maybe they shouldn’t have even bothered. Here are 6 super-villains who weren’t trying very hard.

6. Fisherman

God dammit Aquaman, how did you let that happen?

Let’s kick things off with an Aquaman villain! Because who is more dangerous to old fish-whisperer himself than a Long John Silvers reject? Seriously, the Fisherman’s modus operandi is a big fishing reel and rod. He uses them to steal high tech gadgets and other valuable technology. His costume includes bright blue, thigh-high fishing boots! And what’s that yellow thing on his head? Some kind of scarf? Fisherman is also one of those villains who is so mysterious that his real name was never revealed. Possibly because he’s simply too embarrassed to tell anyone his real name. His family probably got a court order. What’s so deadly and dangerous about the Fisherman? The worst you’d have to worry about would be getting his hook stuck in your finger. Ouch.

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5. Stilt-Man

I want to learn to walk on stilts, just so that I can cosplay as Stilt-Man at a future comic book convention

Stilt-Man is one of my all-time favorite comic book super-villains, but man oh man is he still silly. We all know that lucrative treasures are usually stored really high up, but c’mon man! You couldn’t have found a better way to get up there? And it’s not like superheroes and cops are going to miss the giant mechanical robot-man standing next to the building, slowing rising up to the top floors. Or what about the comically inept attempts to get away, when he tries to run through the streets of Manhattan on giant stilts!? Sometime tells me that when Wilbur Day was a little kid, his parents kept the cookie jar with the really good cookies on the very top shelf.

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4. Calculator

Nerdiest super-villain ever!

Once upon a time, calculators were actually cutting edge technology. They probably also filled an entire room and only the five richest kings of Europe could own them. When the pocket calculator came along and revolutionized the entire world, DC Comics totally jumped on that craze and created The Calculator. He probably seemed like the most futuristic super-villain ever! And of course, Calculator had a giant number pad with pressable buttons on his chest. Because no doubt number pads were seen as the wave of the future! They’d soon be in telephones too! But then for some insane reason, the number pad could scan and adapt to any super-power it encountered. And the device on his forehead could create hard-light holograms. My calculator could never do that…not even the $100 graphing calculator they made me buy in advanced math in high school. What was up with that? Did they think I was made of calculators?

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3. Javelin

Kicked out of the 2000 Sydney Olympics for excessive meanness

There are a lot of weapon-based super-villains out there, because every little kid knows that weapons are cool. A lot of these villains use guns or arrows, weapons that are actually used to kill and hurt people. And then we’ve got a guy like Javelin, whose only claim to fame in life was being able to throw the javelin really well in the Olympics. Not a spear, not a lance, not anything that was ever an actual weapon; this guy wanted to stick to the javelin. Because he’s got class, dammit! But then in what must have been the ultimate drunken bar challenge, Javelin decided that he was going to be an arch-villain to the Green Lantern! Now Green Lantern is also a weapon-based character, but Green Lantern’s weapon just happens to be THE MOST POWERFUL WEAPON IN THE UNIVERSE! Let’s hope Javelin has a better strategy than ‘throw javelin’ – but I doubt it.

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2. Kite-Man

He looks like quite a pleasant fellow, for a super-villain

Hang-gliding in the name of crime! Have you ever gone around committing a bunch of robberies and then didn’t know how to make your getaway? Kite-Man never had that problem. This guy is the villainous embodiment of a Mary Poppins song. But he wasn’t just about using a kite to fly around, he also had a bunch of smaller kites that he could use to overwhelm his foes. Remember that scene in Batman Begins when Batman summons all those bats to distract the cops? Kite-Man does it with kites! When Charles Brown chose his super-villain identity, he really went all–wait…Charles Brown? Yep! Kite-Man’s secret identity is Charles “Chuck” Brown! How’s that for awesome? No wonder Kite-Man lost his fight against Hawkman by crashing into a tree.

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1. 8-Ball

He's waiting for his cue...to fight!

Why 8-Ball isn’t starring as the main villain in next month’s The Avengers movie is beyond me. Here’s a guy who wears a giant 8-ball on his head! Why does he wear a giant 8-ball on his head? Because he really liked to play pool, that’s why! When he decided to become a super-villain to pay of his gambling debts, 8-ball decided to to base his identity off the very vice that put him in debt in the first place! But that wasn’t all. Leave it to comic books to also make him a missile design specialist for a living. So 8-ball built himself a rocket-powered pool stick and that giant 8-ball you see him floating around on. How does he even see out of that giant 8-ball head of his? Unfortunately, Marvel Comics missed the greatest opportunity in the world by not making this guy some kind of fortune teller with the power to see the future. But maybe that would have been too silly.