We were lucky enough to get a copy of Max Allan Collins' novelization of G.I. Joe: The Rise Of COBRA. And we had not fully appreciated the dementia of this storyline, which really is all about nanotech and how it'll eat the world.

In the G.I. Joe universe, nanotech can do almost anything — turn regular people into super-soldiers, control your mind, devour the Eiffel Tower. I wouldn't be surprised if this movie's script was actually written by nanobots, which sliced up a million other action-movie scripts and mashed them up into a wonderfully incoherent mess. There are undigested scraps of Sho Kosugi movies and bad war movies floating around this gray goo of a story, and it's nice to watch them sail past.

This might actually be the most prominent nanotech action movie ever — I'm straining to think of another movie where nanotechnology is so central to the plot.

The central villain of the movie, of course, is the Scottish James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston), an arms merchant who secretly hungers for power. In a flashback, his ancestor gets tortured by the French by being fitted with a searing-hot metal mask, and so McCullen has a special hatred for French people. When we meet the present-day McCullen, he's selling the NATO brass on his latest weapon — nanomites, which are basically nanomachines that eat anything metal, until you hit their "Kill Switch" and turn them off. They can disarm an opponent without the need for bloodshed, and so one NATO suit jokes that McCullen may be the first arms merchant to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

But McCullen, of course, has other plans — after he delivers the nanomites to NATO, he launches an attack of his Neo-Vipers to steal them back. The Neo-Vipers are supersoldiers who have been enhanced by nanotechnology — which also controls their minds. At one point, McCullen gloats that his troops still have their own thoughts, but they're incapable of doing anything but obey his orders. The convoy escorting the nanomites is led by Conrad "Duke" Hauser and Wallace "Ripcord" Weems, and they're the only ones who are prepared when the Neo-Vipers attack.

The convoy gets wiped out, but luckily the G.I. JOE squad shows up — an international team of super-experts who don't officially exist, but appear as if by magic when they're needed. There's Heavy Duty, who's heavy and does his duty. There's Scarlett, who has red hair. There's Cover Girl, who's blonde. There's Breaker, who... uh, breaks things. And there's Snake Eyes, a ninja who's taken a vow of silence. And then their leader, General Hawk. The JOEs save the day, but Duke is loath to hand over his hard-won nanomite cargo to them, so they take him and Ripcord back to their secret base. And of course, Duke and Ripcord wind up joining the team, to the sound of people shouting "Yo JOE!" (That's their rallying cry.)

Meanwhile, McCullen has his own colorful squad. There's Zartan, a fiendishly exotic killer who can impersonate anyone. The Baroness, who turns out to be Duke's ex-fiancee — but now she's married to a Baron, who's not allowed to touch her, or a ninja will kill him. (Seriously, it's a running subplot: if her husband so much as kisses her, the always-watchful ninja will kill him. Try bringing THAT up in marriage counseling.) There's the ninja, Storm Shadow, who's taken a vow of nastiness towards Snake Eyes. And finally, the Doctor, the fiendish nanotechnology genius with a crazy mask who makes the whole wacky operation possible.

When Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes finally face off, Storm Shadow hisses in Japanese, "You took a vow of silence... Now you will die without a word." Sho Kosugi, eat your heart out.

There's also this great bit, towards the end:

Heavy Duty told them: "You know the mission: Find Duke..."

"...grab the warheads," Rip said.

"And kill all the bad guys," Scarlett said.

"Roger that," Heavy D said.

Snake Eyes, of course, said nothing.

But they all knew that when it came to killing bad guys, he was the man.

Snake Eyes can't talk, but he can send text messages, which is kind of cute.

Eventually, we learn that the reason why Duke and the Baroness are no longer together is because Duke got the Baroness' brother killed on a mission. Except that there's a shocking twist, and if you can't see it coming a mile off, I have no hope for you.

Last year's summer movies were all about the relentless advances of weapons technology, and what they cost us. Iron Man was about a remorseful weapons maker, Incredible Hulk was about a remorseful military experiment, and The Dark Knight bemoaned the fact that all of Bruce Wayne's fancy armaments only spurred on the homicidal maniacs. This year, though, it's gung-ho militarism season, spearheaded by toy movies — literally, movies based on toys.

The advantage that G.I. Joe has over this summer's other Hasbro movie, Transformers 2, is that its human characters are action figures. In Transformers, the robots were toys but the people were just standard movie characters — almost every movie nowadays has an Italian Jewish male stripper who blogs about killer robots, after all. But in G.I. Joe, every single character feels like an action figure walking around — reading the novelization is like watching a five-year-old play with figurines, while a middle-aged guy narrates portentously. In other words, it's probably the most perfect action-adventure novel ever.

So because this is all about toys, there are lots and lots of loving descriptions of military hardware, from flying drones to fighter jets to a stealth van called the Scarab. You've already seen the ridiculous Iron Man-esque power suits which Duke and Ripcord wear in one crucial Paris sequence, but the story is loaded with insane hardware. Scarlett gets to wear a special combat suit, which renders her totally invisible.

At one point, Collins refers to Heavy Duty as wielding a massive "machine-gun-cum-grenade-launcher," which put a mental image in my mind that I don't think he intended.

When the Vipers attack the convoy, they arrive in a super-armored stealth ship called a Typhoon, shooting pulse lasers that fling the dead bodies of Duke's Special Forces squad "like discarded refuse." And then there's this great description of the Baroness, who shows up on the scene:

The neckline of the body armor exposed the upper part of her swelling bosom, an exposure of flesh that arrogantly dared bullets to try for her, as if she could walk blithely across the battlescape.

Even amidst an army of plastic characters and silly dialogue, the biggest problem is probably Ripcord, who's played by Marlon Wayans in the movie and is exactly as emasculated as you might have feared. Towards the beginning, when the convoy is attacked, Ripcord gets startled by a shape coming up behind him, and squeals "like a Girl Scout whose cookies had been snatched from her" — before he realizes it's just a stray cow. Later, in the big Paris chase scene, Ripcord runs through a lingerie store and winds up with a bra on his powersuit helmet. He's the one who spouts the jokes about "kung-fu grip," and he's the dumb one who needs everything explained to him. He's constantly saying things like "I'm livin' a brother's dream, man." To be fair, though, he does get to save the day in the end, and he has a quasi-romance with Scarlett.

Here's my favorite passage in the whole book, after the JOE squad gets back to their base:

In his stateroom, General Hawk was in the office area, at his desk, humming a jaunty military tune.

He was going over the paperwork regarding the new JOEs, Hauser and Weems, when a crisp knock came at the door. He rose, answered it, and found his lovely blonde aide, with the smart tablet in one hand and a stylus in the other.

"Sorry to disturb you, sir."

"Not at all, Cover Girl."

"I just need you to sign here, here, and here..."

He did so.

Then she said, "And here, and here."

This he also did.

"Anything else?" he asked.

"No, sir, just this..." She gave him a rare, unguarded smile. "And another thirty-six pages."

He grinned at her. "Maybe you should step inside."

She hugged the smart tablet to her, and began to say something, but it never got said, because the tip of a Katar dagger thrust through the tablet, having taken a path through Cover Girl's back.

As she fell to her knees, eyes large with the shock of dying, the figure of Zartan in camo-cap and jacket revealed the source of the blade.

Her name is Cover Girl... but she gets stabbed in the back. Get it? Get it??

A lot of the violence is amazingly sexualized, actually — there are several scenes between Duke and Baroness where they're so close they can feel each other's breath, as they grapple or wield guns at each other, and it's the nearest and hottest they've been since they used to make love. When the Baroness and Scarlett have their inevitable girl fight, Collins describes the two women as being "locked in a violent embrace." There's a flashback where the young Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes train together and vie for the approval of their teacher, the Hard Master.

Oh, and I should mention that Max Allan Collins is one of my fave writers, and he does a great job with an incredibly silly story. His Ms. Tree is one of my favorite comics of all time, and I love his work on Batman. Here, he occasionally manages to channel the great Mickey Spillane, his idol with whom he collaborated on the underrated Mike Danger series, with some very loopy prose and action-packed jaw-gritting.

It all explodes into a James Bond villain-esque climax where McCullen plans to wipe out three major cities and do something unspeakable to the U.S. president. (And it ends on a genuinely lunatic cliffhanger, which I won't spoil.) The nanotech threatens to devour everything, unless our heroes can hit the kill switches, or unless Ripcord can shoot down the nanotech warheads in mid-air. And as you've probably heard, James McCullen's face gets hideously scarred, and he winds up with a new mask made out of nanotech. A mask made out of nanotech! Sadly, it doesn't reshape itself into new forms or create emoticons or anything.

In the end, that's the thing that still gives me hope for G.I. Joe — with Christopher Eccleston playing McCullen/Destro and Joseph Gordon Levitt playing The Doctor/Cobra Commander, all of this over-the-top growling about using nanotech warheads to blow up the world may actually cure our recent villain ennui. Like so much else about this film, it really depends on whether flesh-and-blood actors can fully embody the plastic miens and jerky-limbed heroism of the toys of your youth. If not, you can always buy the newest line of toys and zoom them around your bed while you read Collins' musky prose.

Star Trek's Nero:

Why He Failed: Sure he was loud, and maybe a tad intimidating - but his anger only made him volatile and pissy, not really frightening. His rage was easy to deter, and even easier to circumvent - once you brought a level headed hero into play (which, granted, took some time). Bottom line: He was all bark and not enough personal bite. Sure, he blew up Vulcan, but we didn't really see the destruction. It was just reckless and wild - once again, something that seems easy to deter with a cooler head. He didn't even take delight in watching Captain Pike squirm. If Nero reappeared via a rift in time, I don't think people would honestly be that worried. It would be all "oh it's that guy again, what's that he's out of red matter, oh well then no worries." Khan, he is not.

Also, there is nothing scary about this:

What Should Have Happened: The unbridled hatred should have been used both in a big way and in a small way. So he can't blow up Earth, fine then he's going down there to kill off little innocent humans one by one. Or he's sending in secret troops to slaughter the new recruits at Star Fleet. He should have channeled his rage in many different ways besides merely blowing up a planet. It would have made a case for a far more convincing and frightening character and seemed less like a drunken bar brawl.

Transformers 2's The Fallen:

Why He Failed: This baddie's menace was lost in the folds of transforming robots. By the time he was on Earth, I didn't really know what his abilities were, in comparison to all the other Transformers. Also he made Megatron look like a total wuss-bot, after he was set up as a pretty scary baddie in the first movie. What was with the kneeling and my master talk, Lame.

What Should Have Happened: He should have killed Optimus Prime as opposed to "gathering strength" on the far side of some moon. Also they should have made an attempt to explain just why this particular early Transformer was so especially scary. You could also argue that this movie shouldn't have been made — period — or The Fallen should have kept back to the third movie, to let the Constructicons take the lead. The Devastator was vaguely threatening for the minutes he was sucking down sand.

Watchman's Ozymandius:

Why He Failed: This character was doomed from the start mainly due to the way he was written (and what was left out) and the role's casting. Sadly, Matthew Goode just couldn't pull off golden haired Adonis, we deserved better.

What Should Have Happened: They shouldn't have tampered with the ending. Zack Snyder left just about everything else in there — why futz with the scariest parts of the film? Snyder never should have let Hayter use 9/11 to cut the destruction and violence out of a book that is destructive and violent for a reason. Leave in the sea of blood that fell upon New York. His part should have been beefed up — poor Ozzy was dreadfully underwritten, and also recasting might have helped a bit.

Skynet (T4 Terminators):

Why They Failed: These robotic buffoons didn't make a single logical decision, from start to finish. We know Skynet and the Terminators are ruthless, they'll leave your mean step-uncle dangling by the neck on their spiked hands until they carelessly flick him off. And yet they can't think far enough ahead so they can maybe, just maybe pit more than one Terminator against THE John Connor, when they are sitting on top of a freakin' Terminator factory.

What Should Have Happened: We could go on — and we have. Basically, they needed menace. They needed to feel cold and uncaring. Maybe if they'd slaughtered floppy-headed little kid in front of Kyle Reese, that would have helped. But really, their idiotic bungling always undercut their actions. A complete rewrite is needed front to back.

Sadly while these bad guys continue to ruin of a supervillain upturn, our future is not looking too bright.

Further Failures:

Whiplash

Sure, Iron Man villains are supposed to be the eviliest evil people of all time, but this is not really helping the case. Whiplash doesn't quite leave me speeches and begging for mercy, not even with those highlights.

Cobra Commander and Destro
While I'm cautiously optimistic about Destro, nothing good will come of a Cobra Commander who looks like this. We've seen further evidence to back up the tremendous fail awaiting our Commander in the GI Joe flick, there's nothing scary about about silver scuba gear with a bit of pipping sticking out the side.

Us

In both Distict 9 and Avatar the human beings are the bad guys, yet again. While I'm excited for these two films, learning a valuable lesson about the human species doesn't really send shudders down my spine.

But fear not —we're holding out hope for the pasty white cave/bat people from space and the Appalachian Mountains to save us. Enter the white demons from Pandorum and The Descent 2. Sure they are similar, but they both give me the heebie jeebies and seem to want only one thing: to confuse you, and then kill you. I'm desperate for some good old fashioned killing, and I have a feeling these guys will deliver.

I had been meaning to write this "keep Khan out of Star Trek 2 (or 12, rather)" blog post for a while now — but honestly I thought Orci and Kurtzman were just kidding about including him. The script for the next Trek, at this point, consists of a few Gorn cartoons on a cocktail napkin, and they're barely batting ideas around. So it's easy for them to hint at all sorts of fan-favorite stuff: Sure, maybe the sequel will include the Doomsday Machine and V'Ger blasting each other. Why not? Anything's possible at this point, and it doesn't do any harm to answer "maybe" to every question. And of course, if the fans get particularly thrilled about one of these trial balloons, then that tells them something.

But now, it sounds as though the Fringe co-creators may actually be considering resurrecting Khan, who's still sleeping in his little suspended-animation capsule in their revamped timeline. So just in case they're really serious about this, here's a list of reasons why a new Khan would be a terrible, epically bad idea:

You can't improve on the original.

They don't make villains like they used to — and that's not just a cranky observation. It's really true. If you think about it. Khan is almost emblematic of what we no longer see in movie and TV villains, for several reasons. He's suave, in a way that nobody is suave any more. (Can you even think of a Hollywood actor who's suave now? Maybe George Clooney.) He's ruthless, and willing to do whatever it takes to win, and to prove his superiority. His arrogant swagger isn't just bravado, it's ideological: he believes, deep down, that he's the pinnacle of human evolution.

And you can't discount the Ricardo Montalban factor. His "Corinthian leather" showmanship is easily mocked, but he was one of a hundred bullies, bureaucrats and demagogues who went head-to-head with Kirk. And there's a reason he's one of the few we remember. (Remember Anan 7 from "A Taste Of Armageddon"? I didn't think so.) Montalban brings all of his gravitas, charm and menace to the role. I can't think of an actor working today who could do the young Khan justice, and it would be hard to imagine a modern-day summer movie that could make Khan as compelling as he was.

And remember, this wouldn't be the batshit-crazy, revenge-driven Khan from the movie. It would be the smooth-as-silk younger Khan from the episode "Space Seed."

Say goodbye to the freshness.

Abrams' Star Trek reboot threw armfuls of candy at the fans, to distract them from the fact that this was a whole new Star Trek. You had the Kobayashi Maru, the classic lines like "I am, and always will be your friend" and "I'm giving her all she's got," the Orion woman, Pike in a wheelchair, and so on. The constant hand-holding got a little annoying, because I'd rather see a movie that's concerned with telling a story than with placating a minority of OCD fans. But it was okay, because behind all of this clutter, there was a fresh story.

Even though Nero was a weak villain, he was at least something new, and he had a few really great moments. But it's hard to imagine a storyline starring Khan that wouldn't feel a bit warmed-over. It would be the opposite of the first movie: a few fresh ideas, wrapped around a core of fan-pleasing deja vu. Pass.

He'd probably be just one of two or three villains.

It'll be hard enough to avoid the traditional "sequel = villain multi-ball" syndrome in this film, in any case. It's hard to think of a recent sequel that hasn't had two or three villains. The pattern goes like this: the original film has the hero's origin story, plus one villain. The second movie lacks an origin story, so the writers throw in a second (or third) villain to compensate. Boom, you're in the movie business.

But for some reason, the addition of Khan makes me even more certain the new movie would end up having more than one villain. (Despite all those tantalizing hints that there might not be any villain at all.) After all, Khan has already starred in one movie as a solo villain. So how do you distinguish between this film and Wrath Of Khan? I know – why not have Khan plus a couple other villains. Like, say, Khan and the Squire of Gothos both giving the Enterprise hell. Or Khan teaming up with the Klingons! That would be awesome! Er, no.

Khan would need to have some kind of trauma.

It's another iron-clad rule of modern-day villainy. The villain can't just be a shithead who wants to rule the universe — a modern-day reinvention of Khan would need to be emotionally scarred. And he'd probably have daddy issues, or some other childhood trauma motivating him to go around trying to take over starships.

You certainly couldn't have a villain who's motivated by ideology — not in this day and age, and not in a Hollywood blockbuster. In "Space Seed," Khan wasn't just a random maniac: he was the product of a genetic engineering project to create the ultimate Nietzschean superman, designed to rule the world. Just like Doctor Who's Daleks, Khan is intended to conjure echoes of the Nazi "master race" ethos. He's a warning about the dangers of meddling with the human genome too much, but he's also the product of a social movement that believed in his rulership. Strip all of that away, and he's just another snarling maniac.

The new Kirk doesn't have the gravitas.

One huge reason why Khan is such a swaggering, charming, magnetic figure in "Space Seed" is because he has to stand up to William Shatner's Kirk, who'd long since perfected his own brand of both swagger and smarm.

Not only that, but the episode comments explicitly on the differences between the two men: one from the barbaric 1990s, the other from the civilized, egalitarian 23rd century. Khan's forcefulness and brutish charm ("I take what I want") are contrasted with Kirk's more domesticated manliness. Yes, Kirk is a sexist tool as well — but compared to Khan, he's a sensitive new-age guy. The episode hammers home the comparisons: Kirk keeps his masculinity under layers of manners and irony, whereas Khan's is right out there in the open. And that's why Khan is so fascinating to Lt. Marla McGivers: she sees him as a throwback to a rawer, more unrefined version of masculinity.

I'm sure Chris Pine's "young hooligan" version of Kirk will grow on me, but I don't think he'll ever have the same "gentleman scholar" vibe that Shatner managed to convey. If you put Pine up against a young Ricardo Montalban, I'm not sure he could really hold his own. And most of all, I don't think you could create the same contrast between the more civilized Kirk and the barbaric Khan.

But the main reason I'd rather not see Khan come back is:

No more excuses for dyslexic bloggers to misspell his name as "Kahn."

Seriously, it makes me think that Madeline Kahn is going to jump out and start showtuning the Enterprise crew to death. Anything we can do to prevent that, we should do.

Top image is from ShitmyJorts.com. All other images from IDW's "Wrath Of Khan" comic book. [Movie-Moron interview via TrekMovie.com]

Blofeld, played by Telly Savalas, wants to blackmail the world by hypnotizing a woman to love chickens. It totally would have worked, too. Bond films are known for their ridiculous Rube Goldberg villain schemes - here's our list of the most brain-dead, including a few Quantum spoilers.

What makes that clip even more awesome is that the woman has just had sex with James Bond, and now she's being hypnotized to adore chickens. That's got to be someone's exact fetish, somewhere on the internet.

So here are the most insane Bond villain schemes, starting with the one above and ending with Quantum Of Solace:

Blofeld's chicken allegy/virus scheme. Actually, Blofeld's scheme in OHMSS is a little more complicated than I let on above. He's pretending to be an allergy doctor, and he's gathered a whole bunch of beautiful allergic women in bikinis and harem pants. They're allergic to various things, mostly food items, and Blofeld is curing their allergies with the hypnotic power of his smooth silky Kojak voice. But he's not just curing their allergies - he's also brainwashing them to deliver the deadly Omega virus to plants or animals, on his command. The Omega virus causes instant sterility and spreads like wildfire. So, for example, if chicken lady (from the clip) infects her chickens with the Omega virus, we'll never hatch another chicken again, anywhere in the world. It'll be like 28 Chickens Later. How does Bond foil this dastardly scheme? I just re-watched this movie, and I'm still not sure. But it involves lugeing. And dancing bears. Best. Bond. Movie. Ever.

Goldfinger's nerve-gas-nuclear-gold scheme. The early Bold films often seem to revolve around nukes. For example, Dr. No plans to use a nuclear reactor to deflect American missile launches off course, eventually including the moon rocket, with the help of an evil geologist. (Mwa ha ha ha.) But Goldfinger's scheme is sheer elegance in its bug-brainedness. He wants to nerve gas all the soldiers guarding the gold depository at Fort Knox, and then set off a nuclear bomb inside the gold reserve, irradiating all the gold and making his own stash more valuable. Mostly, though, he just likes to laser people in the crotch.

Blofeld's spaceship kidnappings. In You Only Live Twice, Blofeld is at it again. This time, the white-cat-loving maniac is launching his own spaceship to space-nap U.S. and Russian spaceships. He also continues the food theme by disguising his liquid oxygen rocket fuel under the label LOX, thus making everyone think it's smoked salmon. Sheer genius!

Blofeld's shine-on-you-crazy-diamond satellite. You can't keep Ernst Stavro Blofeld down. He decides to build a deadly satellite and use it to attack Washington, D.C. Just launching a satellite and building a space-based weapons system would be fancy enough for most supervillains, but not the now-Vegas-based Blofeld. He makes the whole thing out of diamonds. Except for the coolant system, which is platinum. Liberace is his launch technician. Oh, and the satellite is controlled by cassette tape, which is the same way Blofeld controls his chicken-loving women slaves. He loves his Dolby noise reduction.

Scaramanga uses solar power for EVIL. Count Dooku has three nipples. (I just love saying that.) And he's building a deadly SOLAR GUN which harnesses the power of solar energy. He has a solar reactor, which is like a nuclear reactor, but SOLAR. Too bad Miss Goodnight accidentally makes the solar reactor go critical, which is like a solar flare, only on Earth.

Stromberg's Atlantis. Some guy who doesn't have a white cat or extra nipples wants to build his own undersea kingdom, in a seabase named Atlantis, in the Spy Who Loved Me. There's also nuclear submarines and stuff.

Hugo Drax's space-flower-power attack. Now this is more like it. In Moonraker, zillionaire Nazi Hugo Drax has crazy disco facial hair, and he wants to create a new master race of perfect blonde people in Speedos. So he builds a ton of space shuttles and finds some rare South American orchid that can be distilled into a poison that he can spray from the air, to commit flowery genocide. That's the kind of crazy supervillain lateral thinking we like around here.

Christopher Walken wants to smash Google. You'd expect Christopher Walken to have a totally derango plan, but his scheme in A View To A Kill is surprisingly dull. He just wants to set off some bombs and cause some earthquakes, destroying Silicon Valley and giving himself a monopoly on the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Oh sorry. He doesn't even hypnotize Larry Ellison into deploying an exploding goat at the right moment or anything. Very disappointing.

Rupert Murdoch's crazy war agenda. In Tomorrow Never Dies, Jonathan Pryce plays Eliot Carver, a media baron who wants to start a war between the world's two great superpowers: China and Britain. To this end, he sinks a British ship in Chinese waters and steals its deadly payload to start an attack against the Chinese government that will eliminate politicians who are opposed to giving his media company broadcast rights. Plus he thinks World War III will be good for ratings.

Colonel Moon's solar-power minefield detonator. In the recent Bond films, satellite weapons have figured prominently, including GoldenEye's EMP weapon. But we don't get a truly bugfuck satellite scheme until 2002's Die Another Day, the last Pierce Brosnan film. Colonel Moon, an evil North Korean, disguises himself as a Brit named Gustav Graves, and builds a satellite called Icarus that can harness solar energy and then focus it to help grow crops. (Notice a running theme here: Solar power? Always EBIL.) In reality, Graves wants to use the satellite to blow up a ton of mines in the minefield between North and South Korea, allowing the North Koreans to take over. Because, of course, the minefield is the only thing preventing a North Korean takeover. Genius!

The faux-Gore eco-resort water grab. You know what else is evil, besides solar energy? Water management. In Quantum Of Solace, apparently the villain, Greene (Matthieu Amalric), is a fake environmentalist. He builds a fancy Eco-Hotel as a front for his vicious schemes. And he plans to help overthrow the government of a small South American country, in return for an apparently barren piece of land. But then it turns out that land secretly allows him to control most of South America's water supply. How does that work? I'm dying to see the movie and find out.

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Over-exposure. We've seen way, way too much of Bob the Company stooge on Heroes. But there are even worse examples. The Master on classic Doctor Who comes to mind: He appeared in one story and was awesome. So why not have him appear in every story after that? Always hatching one daft scheme after another, always not quite managing to kill the Doctor. And then in the 1980s, the show had Anthony Ainley on contract to play the Master twice a year, like clockwork.

Draggy, saggy storylines. Sylar has many powers, but the power to hold our attention while he seduces the inky-eye woman isn't one of them. It took him like twenty hours to get to first base with her. This is more often a problem in comic books, where storylines get moved around. Kurt Busiek wrote a storyline where the Atlantean time traveler Arion comes forward in time to torment Superman, because he believes Superman will ruin the Earth. This storyline was supposed to last eight months, but lagged because of delays in other things and cross-overs with other titles. Busiek had to keep putting off the resolution to the Arion storyline, until it lasted more like sixteen months.

The villain can't kill the hero, because... It's bad enough when the villain tries to kill the hero over and over, and never succeeds. But it's horrendous when the villain makes a speech about how he/she can't kill the hero because the hero must first fulfill some purpose, or because the hero may know something, blah blah blah... It becomes a crutch for lazy writers.

Middle managers. The Holy Grail of villainy is a character who's complex and misunderstood, and has a believable point of view. Plus if you've ever had a crappy office job, it's tempting to make your villain the reincarnation of your annoying boss. But this can lead to bad guys like Bob, who really just ought to be fixing photocopier paper jams. Or Ming the Micromanager, over in Flash Gordon.

Turning them into quasi-good guys. The best villain Heroes ever had was Claire's dad, aka Horn-Rimmed Glasses. He was creepy and disturbing, but you could also sense he had a core of decency to him. So of course he had to go and become a Tarnished Good Guy (TM), who still goes over the line occasionally but has a good heart anyway. This is a chronic problem that can, uh, Spike your most interesting baddies.

Everybody's related. So far, Angela Petrelli has been the most boring villain on Heroes, because all she ever does is scold her lazy-bum kids for messing in her business. She actually has the potential to become the show's best baddie, because she's totally cold-blooded and vicious. But we need to see her demonstrating a larger vision than just making her son president or whatever. She should have a monstrous plan, or an agenda, or something other than a note for her kids.