Supervillains

***Supervillains*** is an American animated television series which aired on Kingson from 1998 to 2003. The series has been created by Ralf Hat and written by him as well. Setting in the fictional city of *High Noob*, the series follows a group of five supervillians who usually fail at spreading chaos throughout the world. The shows humor tends to be dark and somewhat controversial, which led to the cancellation of the series in 2002. Overall, Supervillains has 64 episodes, 120 segments, four specials, and one television film.

## Background

### Premise

The series follows the malicious and dark escapades of the members of **T.O.M.E** (the Troop of Magnificent Evilness), which includes: *The Chief, Mayfly, Straight Jacket, Bigfoot, and Manpuff*. While living their lives in secret, the team, undercontrol of the Chief, plan their sinister plots for world domination, but often always fail embarrassingly.

### Setting

Supervillains takes place in the fictional city of *High Noob, Vermont.* The city is known for its peacefulness, and is nicknamed: "America's City of Eternal Peace". Other than that, High Noob features a variety of superheroes, most notably Captain All-Kinds and Shine Lass (the two siblings of Chief, the main character). The city is featured in all episodes of the series, and is the main setting overall.

## Characters

### Main

* ***The Chief:*** The Chief is the founder and self proclaimed leader of T.O.M.E. Chief is an odd slug-like creature from an unknown race of beings. He lived a pretty sad and lonely life growing up with humans, which is in fact the main cause for his villainous ways. His main goal in life is to *"set the world ablaze"* by making life miserable to everyone. However, his childish, selfish and stubborn ways ultimately causes his own plans for world domination to fail quickly. Chief is also considered to be a short tempered person who is in fact an absolute jerk to the rest of the team, and everyone else around him.
* ***Mayfly:*** Mayfly is the cynical person in the group, the only female, and the *"sanest"* one in the T.O.M.E group. Mayfly is a blue humanoid, whose race comes from another dimension. She has superhuman powers which allow her to shoot energy blasts at her opponents. Being the accurate description of an "edgy emo", Mayfly hates most the world, and the people in it, including her teammates. There are times where she can have an optimistic and friendly view on certain people, but nearly all the times she is seen as a sarcastic and non caring individual.
* ***Straight Jacket:*** Straight Jacket is possibly the insane one in the group, and the wackiest overall. Before he joined the team, Straight Jacket was in fact a professor, with an intelligence so high, he became literally insane, to the point where he was taken to the mental facility. He isn't much help to the gang, to state, his only objectives are just to spout abnormal gibberish and levitate out of control. Despite this, nobody actually minds him that much.
* ***Bigfoot:***  Bigfoot is the calmest out of the rest of the group. He is really tall to the point where only his legs and feet are visible in the screen view. Despite being the biggest and strongest, Bigfoot is actually sensitive and gentle. He doesn't occupy as an actual villain, but usually helps the team out on their adventures.
* ***Manpuff:*** Manpuff is an intelligent mutant pufferfish with muscled arms and a Russian accent. He is pure arrogant and easily annoyed. His inventions commonly fail every time, which angers him to the point where he becomes violent. He and the Chief have a huge rivalry against each other, yet still work together in the team, but their rivalry actually gets in the way of their merciless plots.

### Recurring

* ***Tom Cruise:*** Tom Cruise is the Chief's loyal dog like pet, who is a dark abnormal figure which can shape-shift into many choices of living creatures (most notably Tom Cruise, who he is named after). Tom is very playful, and hyperactive. He builds up most of the Chief's happiness which is actually rare considering the fact that Chief is filled with hatred and anger.
* ***Lilly Von Bubbles:*** Lilly is a geeky teenaged girl in the city. She is aware of the supervillains and overly obsesses over them, especially the Chief, who she will usually attempt to kidnap him, for her own psychotic needs. She is a sociopath who is highly skilled and flexible, which she uses for the dumbest reasons ever.
* ***The Mayor:***
* ***Dr. Overlord Doom:*** A former cyborg supervillain who is now a friendly restaurant owner. Because of his successful villainous past, the Chief adores and idolizes him, but feels upset that Overlord Doom is now a good civilian. Other than that, Overlord Doom gives advice to Chief become a successful villain like how he was.
* ***The Ants:*** A family of "brain ants" who live in the Chief's head. They are a live action set of people in ant costumes, who build up most of the mixed media style moments in the show. They spoof a steryotpical 90's sitcom family, and usually mess up Chief's brain by accident.
* ***Chunk & Rogers:***A duo of prideful and well polite rich beavers, who run a large business which controls a lot of the stores, restaurants, etc in High Noob.
* ***Mumzies:*** Chief's adoptive mother. A extremely wealthy and strict businesswoman who is "trapped" in the Victorian era, as well as nearly all of her family. She adopted Chief since he was abandoned during his youth stages, but acted ultimately strict and eager to educate Chief about the human world, but lacks of strict treatment towards her biological children, making it unfair for Chief.
* ***Young Chief:*** A past self version of the Chief who often haunts the Chief's in hallucinations.
* ***Mrs. Doom:***
* ***Phil:***
* ***Bertha:***
* ***Captain All-Kinds:***
* ***Shine Lass:***
* ***Mother Nature:***

## History

### Predevelopment

During an interview about the series, Ralf Hat implied that the series has been inspired by many things. *"It all basically started with this...odd dream I had. I don't know much about it, but i do remember naming the characters the following morning"*, Hat stated. Hat also replied: *"The series is just a huge spoof of those Saturday morning superhero shows, except focusing on the villains, rather than the actual superheroes"*. According to Hat, he originally conceived the idea, along with other shows like ***The Misadventures of Gecko***, and ***Instruments & Instruments.*** It was planned to air on Kingson somewhere in 1997 but was pushed a year further, due to difficulties with the network.

### Production

Supervillains was first conceived as a short in 1995 along with other shorts ror upcoming series. When starting to work on the entire series, a new voice cast were hired rather than just Ralf Hat voicing all of them.

The series is animated using flash animation, and uses traditional animation in some episodes.

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## Episodes

* *Main article: Supervillains/Episode Guide*

## Reception

### Critical reception

Supervillains, when first aired, was a huge success for the channel since The Sherry Show (1997). It had a positive income on critics and viewers alike. Critics admire the "dark" yet creative atmosphere and humor of the show, although some critics admit that the comedy can be too fast and less understandable than other series.

On the Internet Movie Database, Supervillains currently holds a 7.1, while also holding a 8.4 on TV.Com. On the Kingson website review forums, Supervillains was placed as the fifth greatest series which ever aired on Kingson.

### Cancellation

Supervillains was cancelled in 2001, with its final 16 episodes airing on the channel up to 2002. Many rumors about the cancellation have been speculated across the internet, some saying that the Kingson executives were tired of the series, or something more controversial. In reality, creator, Ralf Hat is unsure why the network cancelled the series, but he has stated that the show was "losing it's luster" by the fourth season, which may have lead to cancellation.

## Media

### Video games

In 2001, Kingson Games released Supervillains: The Conquers of Conquering, on PlayStation. It was however filled with mixed to negative reviews, mostly for the game's "terrible" graphics and confusing gameplay. The game is considered rare. Also, three internet games on the Kingson website were made: *The Chief's Dream Quest, Run-Away Villains, and Powerfight*.

### Possible reboot

Hat's idea to revive the series somehow has been pointed to a couple times. In the season four home release commentary, Hat stated that the show will *"most likely be brought up again someday, in the form in a series of specials, or an exact new series (quite different than the original)".*

There is a current rumor, saying that the cast and crew on Supervillains are secretly making a reboot to the series. However, this is only just a rumor.

## Notes

* During early production, Supervillains was originally planned to take place in New York City, but this was scrapped for being *"too unoriginal"*.

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