Well, tragic in a different sense, maybe. As in, me having to read him is a tragedy.
For me, I have to admit that Teth-Adam, Hank Henshaw, and Victor Fries are up there in the most sympathetic villains (as denoted by the fact that we all like to call them by their real-world names, especially Henshaw.) But for my money, it's Captain Cold and the Joker.
In the Killing Joke, we are treated to a portrait of a fragile, pained man, a man who knows he's funny, but for some reason, when he really needs them, the people around him aren't there to support him. Nobody gets up on stage and tells jokes unless they're good at that in everyday life. But somehow, the jokes that worked at the water cooler or in the bar don't work on stage, and with a baby on the way and no steady income, this man is at the brink. Finally, that last element of stability is removed from his life, and he sinks into a nihilist existential crisis. For most people, that would be as awful as it gets. But it gets worse. A victim of a misunderstanding, he'd rather end his life than get taken in. From there, his life takes a downward spiral into an absurd, macabre nightmare. Of course, these days DC wants me to believe that the Joker was just another hitman, a bland, boring nothing-character. Nothing tragic or sympathetic about the prima donna BatCon gave us. So if the Joker is Alan Moore's Joker, he's incredibly, intensely, tragically sympathetic. If the Joker is this silly thing from BatCon, never mind. He's just another useless Silver Age one-dimensional villain.
Captain Cold is sympathetic in a whole different way. Here's a guy who's just making a living, doing his job. He's not tragically sympathetic, he's just an everyday joe.
Speaking of Rogues, I'm also quite fond of the Pied Piper. Leaving aside the idea of Piper-as-Anti-Life, Piper has been through quite a lot that would tax anyone's sanity. He went straight, and unlike the other Rogues who went straight, his reform was not by way of mind****, if I remember correctly. But at the end of the day, the heroes never did trust him. They never let him turn over a new leaf. No one would give him a chance. And when he was thrust into a horrific situation beyond his control, Wally never even gave him a chance to be innocent, so he did what any guilty person would do. Truly a tragic figure, and at the moment of Trickster's death, there were no two more sympathetic villains than those two.
He blew that puppy up.
