DC Comics has recently revamped their history with New History of the DC Universe, a four-issue series that gave readers the canon timeline of the publisher in 2025. It was fun to take a walk back through the history of the DC Universe, and it revealed a fact that is sometimes easy to forget — the publisher has some of the oldest villains in comics. Over the decades, creators have made all kinds of villains, and many of them are ancient. Some of them are older than the Earth itself, and some of them have existed for as long as humanity has.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Many of DC Comics’ most popular villains are some of the oldest villains in comics. They’ve existed for longer than entire iterations of the universe, and have influenced events on a scale that is frankly unimaginable. These are the ten oldest DC villains, ancient terrors that have eons of evil experience.
10) Solaris the Tyrant Sun from DC One Million
DC One Million is an amazing story, and it introduced readers to one of the best villains that no one ever uses. Solaris the Tyrant Sun is a solar computer with all the powers of a star that is also a giant computer with unimaginable processing power. When readers met the villain, he was in the 853rd century, and he was created in the present in the series itself. So, the version of the villain we saw was over 85,000 years old. Also in the story was the next oldest villain on this list, the two of them using their years of experiences against the heroes.
9) Vandal Savage
The Justice League faces some powerful villains, and one of the oldest of them is Vandal Savage. Savage was once a caveman. He watched a star fall to Earth and he and his brother went to look for it. They found it and were blasted with energy, becoming immortal superhumans. One became Vandal Savage and the other became Immortal Man. Since then, Savage has traveled the world, learning its secrets, gathering powers and resources, and making a nuisance of himself. He’s currently somewhere around a hundred thousand years old. We’ve seen older versions of him in various futures, with DC One Million giving us a near 200,000 year old villain.
8) Darkseid
Darkseid is considered DC’s greatest villain, and has been challenging the heroes since he was created by Jack Kirby. The lord of Apokolips is from the Fourth World of gods, and it’s honestly kind of hard to figure out exactly how old he is. He’s definitely been around longer than a hundred thousand years, or at least that’s how it seems. He’s old and powerful, a dark threat, and one of the most dangerous beings ever. Born Uxas, he’s had a quite a trip to the top, and is currently again devastating the universe with his fiendish intellect and limitless evil power.
7) Yuga Khan
Yuga Khan is another god of the Fourth World, and was also once the lord of Apokolips. Khan is the father of Darkseid, and ruled before his son ever existed. He’s one of the most feared beings in the history of the universe, and was so powerful that Darkseid had to make sure that his father was imprisoned in the Source Wall at the edge of existence after he stole Apokolips from daddy dearest. Khan would eventually escape, and New Genesis and Apokolips alike feared this ancient evil deity.
6) Mageddon
The existence of the Fourth World means that there was a Third World of gods before it and so on, meaning anything from those worlds would be older than Darkseid and his father Yuga Khan. Readers have encountered very few beings from these worlds, but we did eventually meet a monster created in one of the old worlds of the gods: Mageddon. It was created by the gods of one of the older worlds (we never really find out which; I assumed it’s the Third World, but I could be wrong) as the ultimate weapon and it succeeded in ending its war, slinking away into the Underverse before returning to destroy everything again. The heroes were able to defeat it, but only by empowering the entire Earth and recruiting them for the fight.
5) Nekron
Okay, so now we’re getting to the real old beings. DC has several different personifications of death. There’s Death of the Endless, but she’s not really a villain. Most death avatars, though, are emanations of her, which would makes them all pretty old. However, the individual ones all come into existence at different times, and Nekron is one of these. He’s almost certainly very old — he definitely existed before the Earth was around, since he bunted the Life entity and it went into the Earth at some point, and the Guardians of the Universe know about him, so he’s almost certainly billions of years old.
4) Anti-Monitor
Crisis on Infinite Earths is amazing, and it introduced readers to one of the oldest characters in comics. The Anti-Monitor has been around since the dawn of the multiverse, and was partly responsible for the existence of the all things, an unimaginably ancient force of destruction and power. He’s since returned from his defeat at the end of Crisis, and is billions upon billions of years old. He has jumped sides, and was almost heroic for a short time, but he’s still mostly known for being a villain.
3) Perpetua
Perpetua is a Hand, and one of the most powerful characters in DC Comics history, if not the most powerful. She helped create the multiverse, and weaponized it to destroy the creations of the other Hands, leading to her imprisonment in the Source Wall. She also was fruitful beyond creating the multiverse, as she is the mother of the Anti-Monitor, the Monitor, and the World-Forger. She is unfathomably old. It’s hard to know how long she existed before her act of creation, but it’s a good bet that it’s a very, very long time, the kind of number that has letters, decimals, and “to the power of” in the name.
2) Neron
Okay, so the Hands created the Multiverse, but DC Comics does have something before the Hands and that’s the Presence (who I think is an emanation of the Source or is the Source). The Presence created everything, and is basically the Judeo-Christian God. Hell and the Silver City exist. An argument can be made that the Hands are older and created numerous versions of the Presence for their multiverses, but I’ve always gathered first there was the Presence, then there was the angels, then there was the fall, and then there was the makers. That would make Neron, a lord of Hell, one of the oldest villains ever. That would also mean that other characters from DC’s Hell would also be this old, but Neron is the one who gets the nod for all of them but his head honcho.
1) Lucifer Morningstar
Lucifer Morningstar is the oldest villain in the DC Multiverse. He was one of the first beings created by the Presence, and was the partner of the creator of all things. He eventually rebelled, and many of his fellow angels went with him. Hell was created at the end of the war, as Lucifer and his army were thrown out of the Silver City. We’ve seen several versions of Lucifer over the years (for example, the Vertigo series having Lucifer was originally the lord of Hell in the regular DC Comics universe, but far from the only Morningstar we’ve seen in DC), and they are the first enemy, the most ancient source of evil in all existence.
Who are your favorite old villains? Leave comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
Most Viewed
-
Image courtesy of Netflix -
A Nintendo 64 console over a collage of game box art from the system's library. -
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
