A supervillain or supercriminal is a variant of the villainous stock character. It is sometimes found in comic books, and may possess superhuman abilities. A supervillain is the antithesis of a superhero.

A villain is a stock character, whether based on a historical narrative or one of literary fiction. Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines such a character as "a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel; or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot". The antonym of a villain is a hero.