3

Seattle's Robin Hood

Colton Harris-Moore is the kind of person you find it difficult to believe exists: He's a legendary folk bandit archetype - part Robin Hood, part Tom Sawyer and part John Dillinger. He's a criminal that hasn't just charmed the hearts of swooning young girls but--considering the random accidental escapes, fateful strokes of luck and quite frankly idiotic stunts that miraculously work out just fine in the end--has apparently gotten the universe itself wet. He lives entirely in the forests outside Seattle like a feral child. He's thought to be responsible for several dozen burglaries. He's stolen cars, speedboats and even several planes which he taught himself to fly by playing video games. And that is balls right there; figuring you can fly a plane because you've played Crimson Skies for an afternoon. He actually got in an aircraft and took it up into the sky because he'd played a game about it before. To put that into perspective, that's like starting a war because you beat the first level of Halo.

Welp, that should do it. I'm ready to fight Russia.

It gets even crazier: He uses stolen thermal vision goggles to hunt  at night, and he mostly just steals things he can use like blankets, food and medical supplies. He once made-off by driving a car into a gas storage tank and using the explosion as a distraction to escape, another time by crash-landing a plane into a forest clearing and another time by slipping through the dragnet of largest manhunt in a decade.  The FBI and police coordinated their efforts and cordoned off an entire island just to catch him. The result? Two policemen say they "think they saw him once" but that he "disappeared right in front of their eyes." Basically, he's a feral hillbilly criminal Batman. Famous Villain Equivalent:

There's no such thing as an actual hill-folk Batman... yet (I'm available for talks, DC). The closest equivalent to Colton is Marvel's Hawkeye. Most people remember him as an Avenger, but Hawkeye started out a villain. Not a very good one, mind you, as is plainly evidenced by the above panel. The worst thing he did was tie up people's butlers and then shoot them free, which is like the eighth  least practical way to untie a knot, way behind "using fingers" and "cutting with a knife," but just slightly ahead of "prayer" and "seduction." Hawkeye, like Colton, seems drastically outmatched. They both have to rely on their resourcefulness and extraordinary luck to get them out of life or death situations they are not remotely qualified for: Colton flies planes on the basis that he is good at video games; Hawkeye fights guys that eat suns on the basis that he owns a bow and arrow.

2

The Radioactive Professor

Thomas Leopold is an English college professor for a university in Harrow, Middlesex. He recently contracted a thyroid condition, and underwent experimental radiation therapy for it. The risky treatment had a terrifying side-effect: It made him so radioactive that he would pose a significant danger to others, inadvertently passing the radiation on  through his urine, saliva, sweat and other bodily fluids. Ordinarily that just kind of sucks: You can't go to the gym, kiss your girlfriend or piss on a hooker, but it's not exactly a villainous qualification. It's not like he's coming for your children or anything. Except for one thing: Thomas Leopold was also a convicted pedophile.

1

Spider-Capped

Twenty-one years ago, David Blancarte was in a terrible motorcycle accident that paralyzed him from the waist down. For more than two decades he lived with his handicap to the best of his ability. Then one day he was bitten by a spider, and now he can walk again. It was a Brown Recluse that got him, and he went to the hospital to treat the bite. The nurse noticed spasms in his leg--a leg that should not move--and eight months of therapy later he was walking again, completely healed. And I am just so, so pissed off that that works: As a child I spent hours microwaving spiders--despite a crippling fear of both radiation and arachnids--and then trying to get them to bite me. At best I'd get a spider bite that smelled like burnt Hot Pockets; at worst I'd get a Hot Pocket that tasted like burnt spiders. Famous Villain Equivalent:

Blancarte is a very real example of miracles and magic still being present in an otherwise mundane world. He is a hope and inspiration for handicapped people across the globe. Whereas the obvious real world equivalent, Spider-Man, is a serial domestic abuser. What? You didn't see Spider-Man 3, when he slapped Mary Jane and danced a celebratory disco number? OK, then what about this:

"--but I also totally killed my bitch ex-girlfriend! WHO'S IMPOTENT NOW, GWEN?!"

Jesus! He beats women so much I half-suspect it's a conveniently overlooked side-effect of his super-powers. I'm tempted to put forth the somewhat controversial theory that miraculous spider bites are the primary cause for domestic violence, but then there's guys like David Blancarte who - what? Oh, he was arrested in March? ... For domestic violence? Shit! I've got a microwave to stop! If the next time you see me, I'm an unstoppable girl-face-punching machine the likes of which this world hasn't seen since Nicolas Cage then please remember and mourn the man I was, but stop the monster I've become!

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You can pre-order Robert's book, Everything is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead on Amazon, or find him on Twitter, Facebook and his own site, I Fight Robots but you probably shouldn't get too close, he's just absolutely covered in burning spiders right now.