The Top Five DC Villains

DC Comics have a strong philosophy that a hero is only as good as his villains, and a rogues gallery they take seriously enough that they've put bad guys on the Justice League and given supervillains their own documentary.

So...who are the worst of the worst?

Below, we'll name what we believe are the five greatest threats known to DC's heroes, along with a few graphic novels you can pick up to get a primer on each of them.

The Joker

Arguably the most well-known comic book villain in all of the American superhero canon, The Joker's biggest strength is his versatility.

Like his opponent Batman, The Joker has been portrayed in a number of different ways, often with widely-varied tones, looks and personalities.

In recent years, that's been chalked up to his psychosis, implying that his whole personality can shift on a whim.

He's also one of the few villains who can really get inside of Batman's head; as a child of the '90s, one of my first Batman stories was Knightfall, which brought the issue seen at right, in which an exhausted Batman has essentially a nervous breakdown and starts mercilessly pummeling The Joker while experiencing guilt for the death of Jason Todd, the second Robin, whom The Joker had murdered.

At present, The Joker's whereabouts are unknown. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo have taken the character into a deeper, more mythological place and, the last we knew, he and Batman had essentially died in one another's arms.

Still...Bruce Wayne appears to be alive again, so The Joker can't be far behind.

Recommended reading: Batman: A Death in the Family; The Joker: Death of the Family; Joker; Batman: The Man Who Laughs; The Joker: A Celebration of 75 Years

Lex Luthor

Is he a mad scientist? A white-collar criminal? A kryptonite-wielding maniac in a suit of armor? The leader of the Justice League?

The fact that Lex Luthor has managed to embody all of these things and only rarely has his history and characterization deteriorated into chaos tells you how strong the foundation is that writers are building on top of.

Other than Lois Lane, Lex Luthor's is the name most closely associated with Superman in the public imagination -- so much so that Man of Steel was the first live-action feature film since 1978's Superman: The Movie that didn't at least feature the character and even there, we had LexCorp signs and references all over the country.

Lex is an interesting nemesis for Superman because, as Geoff Johns has sometimes played with in Justice League, he's essentially an evil Batman. A brilliant mind and master strategist, much of what Luthor does for Superman is to give him a challenge he can't punch his way out of.

Recommended reading: Superman: The Man of Steel Volume 1; Luthor; Forever Evil; Superman: The Black Ring; Lex Luthor: Man of Steel

Catwoman

Yes, yes. We have two Batman villains.

Why? Because Batman has the best rogues gallery in comics, with the possible exception of Spider-Man. And Batman has bigger, more iconic villains than anybody else.

Catwoman, introduced shortly after Batman himself, is such a fascinating and complex character that she has had her own ongoing title more or less nonstop since the early '90s. A thief with a heart of gold, Catwoman was often depicted as essentially using her feminine wiles to seduce Batman in order to avoid capture until somebody decided there was more story to be told with the pair as a will-they-or-won't-they couple. Now, almost every new iteration of Catwoman introduced in any media has some kind of intimate relationship with Batman, often playing with the concept that she understands he's the smartest and toughest guy in town, so manipulation -- be it emotional or just strategic -- allows her to control him in a way that a punch to the face never could.

The character appears monthly in her own book, and during the Batman Eternal weekly series got a serious upgrade in the Gotham organized crime community that has been pushing her character forward since.

Recommended Reading: Catwoman: The Dark End of the Street; Catwoman: Selina's Big Score; Catwoman: When in Rome; Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper; Batman Eternal

Sinestro

If there's one thing DC does well, it's the "villain as a dark reflection of the hero" thing. From alternate-Earth characters who are actually evil versions of the hero to evil clones to baddies who share their nemesis' mythology and basic power set, there are a lot of them in the DC Universe.

Sinestro is arguably the one who has done the most with that role; Green Lantern's most notorious enemy (and for years the only Green Lantern villain many readers could name), he for years had the only "perfect" weapon against the Green Lantern Corps: A copy of their ring fashioned in the antimatter universe of Qward, which projected its hard light constructs in the color yellow and, as a bonus, didn't have the weakness to yellow that the Green Lantern rings had.

After years of being defeated on his own, Sinestro recently started mass-producing those yellow rings and handing them out to an army of his own, creating a "Sinestro Corps" to spread fear throughout the universe.

He currently appears monthly in his own, ongoing DC Comics series.

Recommended Reading: Green Lantern: Emerald Twilight; Green Lantern: Rebirth; Green Lantern: The Sinestro Corps War; Green Lantern: Sinestro

Reverse-Flash

While Professor Zoom/The Reverse Flash appears to be just another doppelganger-style villain, but he arguably has more in common with The Joker than Sinestro and Bizarro.

While many of The Flash's villains live by a code of honor that helps to keep his stories fairly light, The Reverse-Flash wants to flat-out murder him, and has often done some pretty despicable things, including killing The Flash's mother and (in a different version of the mythology) his wife.

There have been multiple characters to take on the name and role of the Reverse Flash throughout DC's publishing history, but the one most associated with the name -- and the one we're talking about above -- is Eobard Thawne, a villain from the future who comes back in time to battle The Flash. It was Thawne who appeared on The CW's The Flash this past season.

Recommended Reading: The Flash: Rebirth; The Flash: Reverse;Flashpoint; The Flash: The Return of Barry Allen; Showcase Presents The Trial of The Flash

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