Top 5 Henchmen Who Were Smarter Than Their Villains

1. Armin Zola

The brains behind HYDRA– the Nazi sect devoted to science and hatred, Dr. Armin Zola has served for countless decades as the obligatory mad scientist for The Red Skull, as he bravely sends wave after wave of quasi-Nazi henchmen into the red, white and blue blutwurst processing machine that is Herr Captain America.

Though HYDRA agents thrown against Captain America, The Defenders, and the greatest generation ever, have about the same odds for survival as a snowflake in Gillian Jacob’s jeans, those odds wouldn’t even be an iota as high if it weren’t for the genius of Dr. Zola.

Take for example Dr. Zola’s depiction in Captain America: The First Avenger, wherein Zola provides the Red Skull with the technology necessary to harness the power of the Cosmic Cube. With the cube as a power source, Zola was able to single-handedly bolster the entirety of the HYDRA war machine, from Uber-tanks capable of launching a solo-blitzkrieg to the laser-Mauser that the Red Skull is so fond of. When left to his own mental devices however, Red Skull simply grasps the cube with his bare hands, teleporting him instantly to the bifrost. Without Zola, there would be no HYDRA.

This is a bit off topic but while it appears as if the Red Skull is killed when he touches the cube, I assure you, with the Skull’s superhuman stature and Hitler levels of villainy, he is totally alive, likely translating Mein Kampf into whatever language Frost-Giants use.

Doctor Zola, on the other hand is likely still alive, as the film makes several allusions to the robot bodies that Zola is quite fond of using in the comics. By digitally transferring his consciousness into these android bodies, Zola is able to attain a level of immortality unknown to both the Red Skull or Captain America. If either one of the super soldier serum sporting soldiers get shot in the face, they die. You shoot Zola in the face however, and he will just transfer his consciousness to another robot body.

Blueprint of robot shell– 1:00:32

In fact, although Zola has been living under the collective boots of the Red Skull and Captain America for his entire comic life, both of Zola’s tormentors are only alive thanks to the mecha-bound doctor’s machinations. When the Red Skull dies, who supplies the bipedal android body to house his consciousness? And when Marvel decided to kill Captain America for a year, who provided the obligatory retcon-machine to pull him out of a time warp? Armin Zola. So yeah, Armin Zola didn’t just keep World War II going, but even brought back its two most super-powered combats to keep the conflict going sixty plus years later.

Perhaps if his ambitions matched his penchant for evading death, Zola could spearhead his own league of science-based super-villainy with a penchant for using bolas and iPads somehow incorporated into masks.

Of course these are just five henchmen in an endless sea of six-color cannon fodder, so let us know what you think! Should I have gone with my gut and placed Kim Possible’s Shego on the list? Stephen from Django Unchained? Bob, Agent of HYDRA? LET US KNOW IN THE COMMENTS!