My favorite bad guys have some things in common:

Sauron - Smart, ruthless, goal-oriented, organized, and capable of spending millennia to achieve his goal. LAWFUL, by anyone's measure

The Joker - (in the books) Smart, disorganized but highly intuitive, ruthless. Scatter-brained, but good at plots.

Anubis (Stargate) - smart, deceitful, capable of plotting on a very grand scale. Patient - he would wipe out all life across the galaxy and rebuild in his own image, PLANNING on taking tens of thousands of years. Damn near immortal. If he'd kept his head down, there is literally no reason that he couldn't survive as long as there was life in the universe.

Riddle before Halloween '81: Voldemort started out *brilliant* and highly organized. Riddle wanted to be safe. Period. His routes to achieve this goal were personal aggrandizement and immortality. If everyone worshipped and feared him, then he would have no challengers. He had lots of personal charisma, brains, and savvy.


Serial killers, raving lunatics, child molesters, the classic villain-for-gain in Christie's and Stout's murder mysteries don't bring out my "love to hate them" response. Sometimes a well-done manipulative!Dumbledore will get me involved, but in canon, he's so heavy-handed that I just can't get that chill down my spine. And Snape (although a pretty good start on a bad guy) isn't much of an empire-builder. Looking back on him now, I feel more disgusted pity than righteous anger.

 

There's a challenge, Someone write me a fanfic in which Snape is the Dark lord that Harry is supposed to bring down. The puppet master who was using Riddle as a Lab rat to make certain that his own ascent to power would be as smooth as possible. (Hence the reason the AK backfired, It was the wrong person trying to kill Harry.)

"Hmm... the Horcrux Idea is out, I want to maintain what few looks I have, and the part serpent look just wouldn't work for me... Perhaps I'll have him try the Lich approach next... He could reward that to Lestrange for her years of service..."