Hot take of the day: Kulan Gath is a shit villain.

I know most of you won't care.

Okay, so for everyone that doesn't know: Kulan Gath is an evil wizard that first appeared way back in CONAN THE BARBARIAN #14 (1972). He was a shitty second-rate Thulsa Doom then, in a one-off story involving Conan teaming up with Elric of Melnibone, which was actually cool.

MARVEL TEAM-UP #79 (1972) - Kulan Gath is resurrected in the modern day; Red Sonja possesses Mary Jane Watson and she teams up with Spider-Man to beat the wizard. This establishes the whole stupid Kulan Gath/Red Sonja antipathy and resurrection schtick.

Fast forward to UNCANNY X-MEN #188 (1981) - Kulan Gath is resurrected in the modern day when his amulet is found, he turns New York back to the Hyborian Age, tussles with the X-Men and Spider-Man, and loses. Again.

Eventually, Red Sonja gets her own series, which gets sold off, and Kulan Gath becomes her recurring nemesis for decades. She'd stab him through the heart, he'd come back bigger and evil-er and more powerful than ever, and they'd do it all over. They're STILL DOING IT.

It's like a fucked-up inverted Eternal Champion gig at this point. Yeah, Kulan Gath had a couple guest spots as villain-of-the-miniseries or story arc in Conan, but once Marvel lost the Conan license, he became effectively Red Sonja's Big Bad for her entire comic existence.

Which is really shit because Kulan Gath has never had anything else going on except "be an evil wizard who always comes back." His powers are as generic as a third-rate Dr. Strange villain, he has no life outside just being evil for the sake of evil. He's not a great villain.

...and now Marvel is well into its new Conan series, and in SAVAGE AVENGERS the villain is...Kulan Gath. Again. As a resurrected evil wizard doing evil things. Whoo.

I wish I could get excited about the guy, but at least Thoth Amon has a bit more going for him than Gath does.

I'm kvetching about this because I'm reading the RED SONJA: AGE OF CHAOS series where the whole thing revolves around Red Sonja's supposed eternal resurrection cycle hate-boner with Kulan Gath and it's...I'm just tired of it. Gath was never engaging as a villain.

Granted, you don't have to have a tragic backstory to be a villain. But some sort of inner life beyond "I wanna be a god!" would be nice. It doesn't help that in most of his appearances, Gath's powers have been the typical "whatever the plot needs for the moment" kind of magic.

It's the limitations that define a character, and Gath's limitations are whatever the failings of the writer in charge of puppeteering his ass around in are this time. But he really is basically the Generic Evil Wizard, and it's really tiresome.

When you look at the great villains of comics, they all have something that drives or shapes them - not Kulan Gath. Part of that is the inter-company licensing issues where the character's backstory gets hard-scrubbed, but mostly it's just there wasn't much there to start with.