Father’s Day was this past weekend, and like all dutiful sons in the Internet Age, I marked this occasion by writing ‘Happy Father’s Day’ on Facebook and assumed my father would see it. He and my mom have progressed to the point of getting their own Facebook page, but only so they can read statuses, not so they can actually post anything or interact. Parents, amiright? But as I looked around Facebook, I saw people really going the extra mile and writing nicer, longer messages, buying their fathers gifts and actually spending time with their dads. But I’m no good at fishing, I have yet to give him a grandchild, and I’m not making millions of dollars in a high paying job. What kind of son am I?

So I decided to celebrate my father with the one skill I do possess: writing! I decided to dedicate this week’s List of Six to comic book fathers  – but in my research, I discovered something pretty horrible: most comic book fathers are totally evil!

Pa Kent was a drunk

This list was going to be titled ‘The 6 Coolest Fathers in Comics’, but once I actually started looking up comic book dads, I discovered that most of them are bad to the bone. For every Pa Kent, who raised his son to be the world’s greatest hero, there are half a dozen evil dads, who often force their children to become dark reflections of themselves. So I decided it might actually be a lot more fun to do a list of the 6 most truly evil fathers in comic books. Though it should be noted that this list is not a reflection of my own father, who clearly raised me into one of the coolest, most handsome bloggers on the Internet!

6. Magneto

“Help daddy up.”

The Master of Magnetism has never particularly been a master of fatherhood. Magneto abandoned all three of his children shortly after they were born, only to return to their lives later once they were all costumed superheroes or villains, as the case may be. In fact, with his first two children, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, Magneto recruited them into his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants without telling them he was their dad, instead just forcing them into the family business of fighting X-Men. As for his third child, Polaris, he let her join the X-Men and fight him on several occasions before she found out the truth. He’s like every deadbeat dad who tries to get back into his children’s lives once they’re all grown up, only his attempts often involve purple capes, Nazi-killing and attempts to take over the world.

5. Deathstroke the Terminator

The family that slays together…

Being the world’s greatest assassin and mercenary is a busy job, and it doesn’t leave a lot of time for children. You can have children, sure, but taking care of them? Raising them? No thank you! Yet even still, Slade Wilson’s children sure have a habit of getting involved in the family business. Two of his children, Grant and Rose, turned themselves into copycat mercenaries named Ravager, and Rose even stabbed out her own eye just to make her father happy. His other son, Joey, joined Slade’s arch-enemies in the Teen Titans. But can you blame him? When Joey was a boy, he was kidnapped by one of Slade’s enemies, and his dad refused to pay the ransom. Joey had his throat cut as a result. Fathers should always pay a kidnapping ransom. Or at the very least, use their world class assassin skills to save their son. Bill Cosby would have done it!

4. Ra’s al Ghul

The face of a proud poppa

Despite being an immortal, Ra’s al Ghul has had few children over the centuries. And those he’s had he’s really messed up. The only one of note is his daughter Talia, who has followed her dear old dad into international eco-terrorism and assassin-training. At least Talia seems to enjoy being the leader of the League of Shadows, which is probably good work, if you can get it. And in between all the death, destruction and genocide, Ra’s is constantly trying to hook his daughter up with Batman. That should earn him Father of the Year. What dad wouldn’t want his daughter to marry Batman?

3. Omni-Man

“…about why I’m covered in someone else’s blood.”

Imagine if you found out that not only was your dad an alien, but that he was also the superhero Omni-Man, defender of the planet Earth. And imagine if you found out that you would inherit some of your father’s super powers, and that you too could become a superhero! Now imagine if your dad also revealed that he came to Earth to conquer it, and that he was the first part of an evil alien invasion, then proceeded to beat you to within an inch of your life for getting in his way. Maybe super-powers aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Omni-Man comes from the series Invincible, which is written by Robert Kirkman, the same guy who writes The Walking Dead. So clearly he likes stories about beating on people.

2. Darkseid

Father/Son Bonding

Far be it from me to criticize parenting on a planet called Apokolips, but the villainous ruler Darkseid definitely hasn’t been a good father. Though what can you expect from a rock golem of unfathomable evil? Darkseid made his first son, Kalibak, one of his top lieutenants, but Darkseid will never provide the love and support that poor Kalibak so desperately wants. With his second son, Orion, Darkseid traded him to his enemies to ensure a peace pact. The two then spent the rest of their lives trying to kill each other, and both Darkseid and Orion succeeded at one point or another. The new son he got in the pact, Scott Free, was immediately dumped into a torture dungeon. I understand that Darkseid has a pretty busy schedule torturing dissidents and slaughtering his enemies and all, but would it really kill him to give his kids a hug once in awhile? Actually…it probably would. Darkseid is hardcore.

1. Norman Osborn

Get it? Because both he and his son’s blood is poisoned by the vile Green Goblin formula he invented.

A lot of the evil fathers on this list recruited their children to follow in their footsteps. Sometimes it works, sometimes it fails, and sometimes it completely ruins their lives on a deeply fundamental level. Such is the bond between Norman and Harry Osborn, both of whom went batpoop insane and became the Green Goblin at one point or another. We’ve all seen the Spider-Man movies, and businessman Norman’s misguided attempts to make his son a better, tougher person turned Harry into a quivering, self-conscious loser with some hardcore daddy issues. Even when Harry followed his father into super-villainy, Norman wasn’t pleased, and only ever mocked Harry for being a terrible Green Goblin.

But the worst only happened recently. When Norman Osborn became head of SHIELD (don’t ask) and stole one of Iron Man’s armors to become Iron Patriot, he also designed a suit of armor for Harry to wear, promising to patch things up between the two. But then Harry found out that Norman’s real plan was to have the armor fail in the middle of battle, so that Harry would be killed in order to garner sympathy for Norman. Not only that, but Harry’s girlfriend revealed that she was pregnant with Norman’s baby, and that her relationship to Harry was also a ruse to help Norman’s greater evil plans.

In other words, she’s breaking up with you

For coming up with a plan to have his son killed, which involved knocking up his son’s girlfriend in order to produce a new, better son, Norman Osborn is definitely the most evil father in comic books.

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