I gotta stop this sleep deprivation thing. It’s really cramping my style. And it makes me FORGET TO POST ON ENTIRE DAYS.

Sorry about that. And welcome back to the final day of the Celebration of Wickedness, place where we celebrate the best of the worst. I am your host, the incredibly sleepy—but still spunky—Christopher Starr. Since my body decided rest was more important than posting yesterday, you get one more Two-Fer. First up is the most iconic of Bond villains—Ernst Stavro Blofeld.

Blofeld is the head of SPECTRE, a global organization bent on world domination—wait, that sounds like Cobra. And Hydra. And MAD. And Dr. Evil from Austin Powers. And Al Qaeda. Know why? Blofeld was that awesome. This guy was the villain in six different Bond films—two of them he didn’t even appear in and was still the villain. He bothered three different Bonds: he screwed with Sean “The Original” Connery in three movies; George Lazenby (who? Oh, the dude that only played in one James Bond movie…yeah, that guy); and Roger “Smooth As Silk” Moore. In any series that ain’t about the villain (like Friday the 13th, Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street), no one appears six times. No one. Except Blofeld. And he’s raw enough to be rumored to appear in the upcoming Bond flick. You never know with this guy.

Ok, so let’s give him his due: Blofeld runs this global terrorist organization, right? He speaks about everybody in terms of numbers—he’s Number One (like Nelly), so on and so forth. He runs his shit like a business, making his folks do financial reports and shit. He kills his own people when they don’t act right—years before Darth Vader made it cool. His schemes are devilishly complex: he likes the “I got you hanging over a shark tank with bloody drawers and a rope that’s being burnt by a candle on the other side of the room, let’s see you get outta this shit” variety. He undergoes repeated plastic surgeries so you never get a good look at his face. He makes stunt doubles CONSTANTLY so, provided you can find him, you never know if you got the right guy. He won’t freaking die. EVER. Like a roach. And he made stroking a white cat cool.

Oh yeah, and he killed James Bond’s wife. Right after he married her. And drove the getaway car.

Ernst Blofeld is not just impressive because he’s persistent, smart, cold-hearted, calculating, diabolical, or because he has a beautiful shaved noggin. It’s because he’s an icon. You don’t hear that about villains often but it’s true. Villains from GI Joe to Inspector Gadget to Austin Powers to Ceelo Green on the Voice have taken bits and pieces of Blofeld to add to their own legend. They said imitation is the sincerely form of flattery. Blofeld must be truly flattered.

In every other instance of a villain we’ve looked at in the Celebration, there has been an emotional attachment to the work at hand. They care about it. They’re invested in the success of their diabolical schemes or their revenge or their power play or the destruction of their hero. But Blofeld is cold. He is surgical in his approach. Like Spock as a killer. No rage. No anger. The level of his evil is delivered by his icy monotone and it only makes him more sinister. That he does it all stroking that damn cat is what makes him iconic.

And now, for your finale of the Celebration of Wickedness Volume 1, and the Letter Z for the A to Z Blog Challenge: General Zod!