In my search for bad guys in books I came across an interesting overview of the characteristics of super villains on Wikipedia (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervillain). Here's a selection based on the most commonly mentioned villains:The Evil Genius: These are villains that were especially standard in the Golden Age of comics. They are really bad through and through and have a constant hunger for power. Examples include Lex Luthor, Doom, Red Skull, Krang, Professor Moriarty, and Joachim Sickbock. Nowadays, the villains are a lot more complex. The Psychopath: villains who are completely deranged or crazy, unable to control their homicidal tendencies. Examples are Sabretooth, Shredder, the Joker and Carnage.The Beast: villains who turn into beastly creatures or monsters, and in that form can no longer control themselves. Examples are Man-Bat, Dr Jekyll, Baxter the Fly, The Lizards Sauron.The Dark Lord: a dark villain who is sometimes more of a diabolical force than a person. This type of villain is often very skilled in (dark) magic and usually lead armies of dark mages or infernal creatures. Some dark lords are so feared that people dare not speak their names, such as Voldemort (Harry Potter) and Sauron (The Lord of the Rings).

After the male bad guys, I was curious to see which female bad guys I would find. However, my keywords female, villain and books hardly yielded mean and evil female characters.At https://booksometea.com/2020/02/28/friday-five-the-biggest-bad guys-in-books/I ran into Dolores Umbridge. In "Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix" by J.K. Rowling, Dolores Umbridge is a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Magic and the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts. She is sadistic, cruel and dictatorial, and treats her students and colleagues in a horrible way. She is considered meaner than Voldemort, who is mean because of a loveless past, because Dolores chooses to be mean and act like a bully in order to assert her own superiority.

What draws the reader to a character?