Just in case you needed a reminder...well, then here it is. Germ warfare is no joke.
| “ | I am not interested in conflicted antagonists. Nor, for that matter, is anyone else. People want a bad guy they can hate unequivocally. Someone whose brutal demise they can cheer without remorse. Life, sadly, rarely treats them to such a luxury. And here are all these actors, trying to muddy things with moral complexity. Fuck that, I say. And I'll not have it. I am not the hero in my own story. I am the bad guy. I have no end in mind that justifies my means. There are no skeletons in my closet, no abusive childhood or inciting misery that might expiate my vile behavior. Nor am I insane. I know the difference between good and evil. And I am fully capable of empathizing with the pain, emotional or physical, of others. No sociopath, I. Rather, I simply prefer bad over good. Wrong over right. Sick over healthy. Untrue over true. | „ |
| ~ And I thought Isaac Westcott was the only neurotypical PE out there! |
Hey everybody. So, as many of you probably know, this character has had his quote on this very wiki's Pure Evil category for a pretty long time now. However, his page doesn't have the red (or even blue) lock and nobody's bothered to fix that. How strange. Well never fear, Jacob is here! I won't lie though, despite my love for comics this miniseries was pretty boring to read but I only finished reading it just now, so...here y'all go.
What's the work?[]
Wolverine: The Best There Is is a 12-issue miniseries that takes place within the regular Earth-616 of Marvel Comics. In this story, our beloved Logan goes up against possibly his greatest threat yet. Continue reading for a synopsis.
Who's Contagion and what does he do?[]
Winsor is a Latverian orphan whose family had a long history of inbreeding. Due to his anemic body containing literally every illness known to man at childbirth, his mother quickly died as did a few doctors. Afterwards, he was raised alongside his foster brothers and sisters by their mutual "uncle", Victor von Doom himself. Eventually, with several years' intense study in virology combined with a course in non-traditional metaphysics suffused in disciplinary meditation, not only did Winsor gain sufficient control of his own biology to contain his rampant infectiousness, he also opened his inward-gazing third eye and was able to focus its attention on the challenge of learning to manipulate his "wonderful" sickness and even share it with others. As the first demonstration/usage of his power, Winsor infected and killed several local Latverians when he escaped from the country, including all his foster siblings.
Afterwards, he recruited his own team of unkillable self-healers, infecting each of them with sweat from Jackson Day, a.k.a. the Corruptor, so they had no choice but to obey. Oh yeah, it's also revealed that Winsor hosted pit-fight rings where mutants battle it out to the death in the arena (where we see some dead dogs so it's not Fridge Horror or offscreen villainy), but Wolverine managed to shut that shit down by killing the staff. At one point in time, Winsor had a son named Flip and eventually infected with something that makes him look like THIS while it's slowly killing him, hoping to make him smart enough to find a cure for his own anemia. In that endeavor, Winsor (now naming himself Contagion) kidnaps Wolverine and gives him a sadistic choice: either let Contagion painfully experiment on his healing factor in order to cure Flip, or kill Flip right now and then go home free like nothing ever happened. Wolverine, being the friend of all children that he is, of course opts for the former choice, upon which Contagion puts an explosive collar around Flip's neck so Logan doesn't rebel. Eventually, Wolverine has enough of the abuse upon discovering that Contagion only ever wanted to cure himself and not his son, slashing his way through all of Contagion's minions before leaving Contagion himself for the Corruptor. The end...or is it?
Nope, it's not. Nearing the end of the miniseries, it's revealed that Contagion overcame a mental block that kept him from infecting himself, creating a virus that healed his DNA by eating the flaws that limited the range of virus he could create. Contagion then recaptured all his minions and used their healing factors to distill a virus that will kill anything on Earth, Heaven or Hell, leaving only space and stars to be dealt with as he uses a Shi'ar spaceship to deliver the virus all across the universe. He also infected one of Wolverine's girlfriends with a technocratic virus and killed her before it infected Wolverine as well, although that virus was thankfully eradicated before killing him. Anyways, after recapturing Wolverine one last time, Contagion is forced to battle the X-Men as they break into his hideout. After an epic battle, Wolverine reveals that Flip helped create a signal to self-destruct every virus for miles around, effectively curing everyone Contagion recently infected while also deactivating his own healing factor. Contagion is finally killed for real by the Corruptor, splashing liquid fungus all over his body to contain all the other sicknesses in his body.
Mitigating factors[]
Didn't I literally just cover that with the above quote? Of course he has none! Not only is he fully evil and proud of it, even his own flesh and blood isn't safe from his atrocities as he purposely infected his son in hopes of finding a cure for his anemia.
Heinous standard[]
It goes without saying that Marvel's heinous standard is through the roof. However, for a villain who only appears in one 12-issue miniseries, Contagion makes one hell of an impression being the literal embodiment of germ warfare, having murdered all of his foster siblings, experimented on and was willing to murder his own son, created a pit-fight ring where mutants and animals fight it out to the death, brainwashed a group of unkillable mutants with not just mind-control juice but also satiations of their heart's desires, and intended omnicide by spreading his viruses throughout the entire universe. He's certainly the most heinous out of Wolverine's rogues gallery. All in all, I'd say he checks the mark here.
Final verdict[]
Pretty easy yes, since he provides the PE quote.