10 DC Villains That Actually Got Better When They Became Heroes

DC Comics has given readers some of the most iconic villains in pop culture history. If you look at most comic bad guys from publishers beyond DC, you can see where they were inspired by their best of all time antagonists. Villains have changed a lot over the decades and one of the biggest changes is the possibility of redemption. DC has been around for almost 90 years, so they have to keep characters fresh somehow and for villains, that’s often been redemption. It allows readers to see them in new lights, and has led to numerous great stories over the years. While not every redemption story is great, the ones that work are amazing.

One of the most interesting things about redeeming villains is when it improves the character. For some bad guys, becoming a hero makes them cooler than they were before. These seven DC villains got better when they became heroes, showing that there was more to them than met the eye.

10) Bane

Bane is one of Batman’s great villains, but when it comes right down to it, he’s not the most interesting bad guy. He’s basically evil Batman, a peerless hand to hand combatant who is also a master of strategy, and his stories as a villain all seem to go the same way. However, in the mid to late ’00s, the villain joined the cast of Secret Six and fans loved him. The title dug into him in ways readers had never seen before, and helped make him popular again after years of stories that just didn’t work for readers. It was the most interesting time in his existence and it’s a shame it didn’t last longer.

9) Two-Face

Two-Face is a character of duality, and makes for an excellent villain. However, Harvey Dent started out as a good man who wanted to help people, so there have been several times over the decades that he has been redeemed, in great stories like “Face the Face”, where he was left in charge of protecting Gotham while Batman was away with Dick Grayson and Tim Drake. Seeing the villain as a hero is great because it forms the other half of the character that we were always told about. We get to see Harvey in charge, and Harvey is a cool character.

8) Major Disaster

Major Disaster was a D-list Green Lantern villain with the ability to create natural disasters. He was a character who definitely could have been a big deal if used right, but he was never given the shot and became one of many lower-level DC scrub bad guys. However, he was given a chance to shine in Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke’s underrated JLA run, when he joined the team. Kelly gave him more of an everyman side, a small-time crook given a chance to make up for his sins. Unfortunately, other creators never picked up this version of the villain and he’s faded away. That’s a shame, because he was an awesome hero.

7) Deathstroke

Deathstroke the Terminator became one of the most popular villains in comics because of New Teen Titans, and it was honestly only a matter of time before he was “redeemed”. He’s since become a villain who is constantly going back and forth on the morality spectrum. Sometimes, he’s an anti-hero with his own series and other times he’s back to trying to kill the Teen Titans. This has allowed readers to get a better understanding of who he is, and he definitely is more interesting as an anti-hero because creators are able to highlight the contradictions of the character in ways they can’t when he’s just a villain.

6) Catman

Catman was introduced as a Batman villain, one of many bad guys who would ape parts of the Dark Knight to make them work. However, he never got the popularity of fellow feline felon Catwoman, and became an obscure nobody. He was played a bit role in best of all time Green Arrow story “The Archer’s Quest”, re-introducing him to new readers, before showing up again in Villains United, one of the stories that built towards Infinite Crisis. Fans loved him an anti-hero and he went on to co-star in Secret Six. The only time the character has ever been popular was when he was a hero, and the fact they keep making him a villain again makes no sense.

5) Sinestro

Sinestro is the most storied Green Lantern villain. He was the alien who trained Hal Jordan to become a Lantern, and was lauded as the best of the Corps. However, he was secretly running his sector like a fascist dictatorship, leading to him being kicked out of the Lanterns and becoming Jordan’s greatest foe. Sinestro became a hero during Blackest Night, helping fight the Black Lantern Corps and would become the star of Green Lantern when the New 52 started. Sinestro is a great villain, but we got to see more of his nuances as a hero and it made him a character that was popular enough to helm his own solo book twice. Honestly, it would be awesome if they went in the Deathstroke direction with him, sometimes giving him an anti-hero comic and other times using him as a villain.

4) Doomsday

Doomsday is the monster who killed Superman, and that’s basically all that there was to his character up until recently. He was more of a plot device than a character, dropped into books as a threat that needed to stopped. However, all of that changed in 2024. We met a version of the beast from the future, one who had continued evolving and became the Time Trapper. He allied himself with Superman, asking the hero to kill him so he could become a god and save the universe from the coming of Darkseid, still helping the Man of Steel after he refused. He played a huge role in DC K.O., sacrificing himself to give Supes the power to defeat the Final God. It was the best stretch of the character ever.

3) Black Adam

Black Adam was one of the main villains of Captain Marvel/Shazam/the Captain, and for a long time that was a problem. The good captain was never as popular as he once was back in the Fawcett Publications days of the Golden Age, nor were his villains. All of that changed in the late ’90s. After being rebooted in the criminally underrated Powers of Shazam!, he was brought into JSA when writer Geoff Johns joined the book and became one of the most popular characters in DC’s most popular team book of the ’00s. He became an anti-hero of sorts, a man who wanted to do good but did it in the most violent ways possible, led astray by his temper and old-fashioned morals. He’s starred in numerous great stories, and works so much better as an anti-hero/anti-villain type of character than a straight up villain.

2) Harley Quinn

Harley Quinn first appeared as the Joker’s chief henchwoman and girlfreidn in Batman: The Animated Series, making a splash with fans. She got her first comic in 1994’s The Batman Adventures: Mad Love and would soon join the DC Universe. She was positioned as an anti-hero pretty quickly thanks to her popularity, getting her own solo book in the year 2000, and since then has been taken further and further away from her villainous roots. As a hero, she’s become one of the most popular characters in comics, an icon that no one ever expected.

1) Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor is DC’s most unhinged genius and a supervillain that has birthed a thousand wannabes. His hatred of Superman is one of the most powerful forces in existence, and readers have gotten hundreds of stories with the two fighting. However, Lex gets really interesting when he’s being heroic. Luthor wants everyone to love him, and has tried being an hero numerous times. It honestly works way better than anyone could have expected. Watching him dealing with Superman and the other heroes he’s fought for years as an ally is a lot of fun, as evidenced by Superman (Vol. 6), the current volume of the book. As a villain, he’s kind of limited but as a hero, there’s something special to him, allowing creators to dig deeper into him than they otherwise would.

What DC villains do you think are better as heroes? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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