Duke of Zill

The Duke of Zill is the main antagonist of the Felix the Cat movie - which was created in 1987 but did not get a US release until 1991.

The Duke of Zill was a would-be-tyrant from a magical dimension called Oriana who utilized an army of evil creations with the aid of both the animal/goblin-like people of Zill and his cowardly royal sidekick Grumper to usurp power from his niece, Princess Oriana (named after her home dimension) - however before he could accomplish complete victory Oriana was able to use a special dimensional-transporter to seek help from a prophesized hero from another world (a "dark stranger").

Before he became what he is today, he (while his real name is almost unknown) was a revoultionary, yet unscrupulous scientist who didn't like the way the entire realm of Oriana is and decided to change all that with a technologically advanced form of manual labor and even tried to win the love and appreciation of all of Oriana. But his ego had him horroribly disfigured in an accident when he was working on the creation of his Cylinder robots. Using his knowledge of technology, he rebuilt his body. Later, he was immediately banished to the Land of Zill by the royal family. While there, he stumbled across the land's own native creatures who mistaken him to be a god because of his appearance and pledge their loyality to him. They believe he was going to help them, but all he cared about was revenge and the conquest of the Kingdom of Oriana.

Unsurprisingly the task fell to the rather unorthodox Felix the Cat, who found himself catapulted into another dimension (largely by his own curiosity) where he faced off against the Duke of Zill and a number of other villains to save the kingdom.

During his adventures Felix was aided by his old friend Poindexter as well as his on-and-off adversary the Professor - who had pursued him across dimensional space.

The Duke of Zill was a formidable tyrant but was also rather comical, forever bullying his minions and flying into a rage, he was a ruler who sought power via brute force and had a legion of robots at his command - at the end of the film he became enraged when he managed to obtain a sacred book from the Princess that supposedly revealed the greatest powers in the universe only to find the pages had only "truth, love, wisdom" written on them.

The Duke felt he was being made a fool of and summoned his most powerful creation - an updating version of the Master Cylinder - to destroy the heroes, however Felix threw the book at Master Cylinder and caused the giant robot to explode.

The Duke of Zill then fled in defeat, swearing to return some day - so far he has yet to make good on his threat..

He bears an uncanny resemblance to the Marvel supervillain, Mysterio.