10 Best Legacy Villains From DC Comics, Ranked

DC Comics has long been all about legacy. The publisher started publishing comics in the Golden Age of comics, creating mantles like Green Lantern, the Flash, the Atom, the Sandman, Mister Terrific, and Doctor Mid-Nite. When DC revitalized their superhero comics in the Silver Age, they put new characters into the mantles, and the legacy hero was born. Over the years, we’ve seen all kinds of amazing legacy heroes, characters who take up familiar names and costumes and take them to the next level. Legacy is very important to the heroes, but they aren’t the only ones who have them. Villains have legacies too.

Legacy villains may seem rare, but there are way more out there than most readers realize. Not all of them have been successful over the years, but some of them have been able to join the ranks of DC’s greatest villains. These ten DC legacy villains are the best, taking the sins of the past and bringing them into the present.

10) Mongul

Mongul is one of the most dangerous villains in the DC Multiverse and the lord of Warworld, a planet that plies the spaceways attacking anything in its path. Mongul isn’t a name, but a title; it’s the Warzoon (the name for those who live on the planet) who has been able to defeat all of the rest of them to take power. There have been at least three Monguls over the decades, with the last appearing in the excellent “Warworld Saga”, and a Mongal appearing in the early ’00s. The Monguls are exceedingly dangerous, and it’s only a matter of time before a new one shows up to terrorize the universe.

9) The Trickster

Flash’s Rogues is the best supervillain team ever, with several legacy villains in its ranks. The Trickster is one of the best of them. The first Trickster was Jesse James, using a variety of weaponized pranks against the Scarlet Speedster. He’d get replaced by the younger Axel Walker, who brought more high tech trickery to the role. Walker disappeared after Flashpoint, with James becoming the main Trickster all over again. The Trickster seems lame, but has always been better than he gets credit for.

8) Grail

Wonder Woman’s villains aren’t the most powerful, but there are few of them who can match Grail. She’s the daughter of Darkseid and the Amazon Myrina, an assassin for the island of Themyscira, part of prophecy that spelled doom for her father and possibly the Earth. Darkseid has several children, but Grail is the best of them. She’s powerful like Kalibak, but is actually enjoyable to read about. She’s more than capable of challenging the most powerful heroes and is one of the few characters from the New 52 to stay around in the form she was created in. She could be a legend if given the right spotlight.

7) Scandal Savage

Vandal Savage is one of the Justice League’s greatest villains. He’s been around for over a hundred thousand years, and has created a secret empire of resources and weapons. He was loath to give any of it away, and his daughter Scandal Savage had to make her own way in the world. She was a mainstay of the Secret Six, a team of villains who did good while looking out for themselves, and she knocked it out of the park. Scandal is a villain that could easily take her father’s place or make her own name, which is everything you could want from a legacy villain.

6) Clayface

Clayface is about to make his big screen debut, but he’s a more complex character than most fans realize. There have been six different villainous Clayfaces over the years: Basil Karlo, Matt Hagan, Preston Payne, Sondra Fuller, Cassius Payne, and Katherine Karlo. The most well-known one is Matt Hagan. Hagan was the one that an entire generation of fans were exposed to in Batman: The Animated Series, and this has made him into the most popular version of the villain. He’s the most iconic of the Clayfaces, and has had quite a career battling Batman and his allies.

5) Blockbuster

The first Blockbuster was Mark Desmond, a chemist who made a formula that made him super strong and invulnerable but also took away his intellect. He’d eventually die of a heart attack because of the formulation, and his brother Roland decided to take a new version of the formula, gaining the power but keeping his smarts. He became the chief crime boss of Bludhaven, battling Nightwing and becoming the hero’s arch-enemy. He’s basically an even more powerful version of the Kingpin, and has starred in a lot of really cool Nightwing stories.

4) Zoom

Wally West is the greatest Flash, and he mostly inherited the villains of his uncle Barry when he started riding the lightning as the world’s fastest man. However, he did have some villains of his own, and one of them took up the mantle of Barry Allen’s greatest foe, the Reverse Flash: Zoom. Hunter Zolomon was paralyzed as a member of the FBI and tried to convince Wally, who he had met working with the Keystone City Police, to go back in time and change his past. West refused, and Zolomon tried to use the Cosmic Treadmill himself. The chronal energies made him into Zoom, giving him the power to control time around him. This allowed him to move as fast as he wanted to and he decided to use his powers to make heroes better in the most brutal way possible. He and West had some hellacious battles, but he faded away when Barry went back to being the Scarlet Speedster. Wally is back to being the Flash, so maybe we’ll get to see him soon.

3) Reverse Flash

Most fans don’t realize that Reverse Flash is a legacy villain, but he is. It all started in the Golden Age, with the Flash villain Rival. He wore the same costume as Jay Garrick, but darker, and when Barry Allen took over as the Scarlet Speedster, they gave him a new Rival. This was the Reverse Flash, a man from the future who was obsessed with Allen, copied his powers, and came back in time. He’s earned the title of “greatest hater in the DC Multiverse”, which is saying something in a universe where Lex Luthor is around. He’s not a traditional legacy villain, and he’s become one of the greatest in DC Comics.

2) Mirror Master

The first Mirror Master was Sam Scudder, but he ended up dying in Crisis on Infinite Earths, killed when the villains tried to stop Krona from seeing the beginning of existence (it’s too complicated to get into now). However, the Mirror Master would re-appear in the pages of Animal Man, when Scottish superstar Grant Morrison made a Scottish version of the villain, mercenary Evan McCulloch. Being Scottish made him better than the original, and it’s gotten to the point that even classic Flash fans prefer him to Scudder.

1) Talia al Ghul

Ra’s al Ghul has been one of the most dangerous men on the planet for hundreds of years, using the immortality given to him by the Lazarus Pits to create a power of base with the League of Assassins. He’s had numerous children over the years, with the most well-known being Talia al Ghul. Talia and Batman fell in love in her first appearance, and since then have both battled each other and worked together. She’s the mother of Damian Wayne, and always plays a big spot in any story she shows up in. She’s become an icon, and has even taken her father’s place several times, proving to everyone that she’s a worthy heir to the Demon’s Head.

Who’s your favorite DC legacy villain? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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