DC Comics has created many of the greatest villains of all time, and have from the beginning. In the Golden Age, villains like Lex Luthor, the Joker, the Ultra-Humanite, Two-Face, Catwoman, and more became some of the greatest villains of all-time. Even if DC had only created their legendary Golden Age villains, they’d have some of the best, but they’ve continued creating amazing villains ever since. These villains have become legends, many of them becoming household names. Even the ones that aren’t as well-known are still pretty amazing, giving readers some brilliant stories. However, not every DC villain is created equal.
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Not every villain can be the best. Some of them are merely good, others are mediocre, and then, of course, there’s the terrible villains. They’re bad for a variety of reasons, and these ten DC villains are the worst.
10) Atrocitus
The Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum is a mixed blessing for Green Lantern comics. The various Lantern Corps have starred in some great stories, and introduced readers to some great characters, but it’s also become too prevalent in the comics, and has lost what made it special. This brings us to Atrocitus. The leader of the Red Lanterns is a powerful being, hailing from the planet Ysmault, but he’s really just a cool-looking villain with nothing else going on. There’s nothing interesting about him; his entire personality is just rage and revenge. He can be a potent threat, but that doesn’t mean that it’s fun to read about him. He’s generic, from his personality to his look.
9) The Anti-Monitor
Crisis on Infinite Earths is amazing, the first major event comic that actually meant something. It’s main villain was the Anti-Monitor, a being who wanted to destroy everything. He was a simplistic “evil for the sake of being evil” villain, and he worked in the story he premiered in. However, let’s be real — the Anti-Monitor isn’t a great villain. He’s just evil and powerful. He’s gotten even worse over the years, as DC continually brings him back for no reason but nostalgia. It was exciting to see him show up in a story at first, but now it’s just groan-inducing. On top of that, the publisher keeps changing his origin, trying to do something interesting and new with him, but consistently failing.
8) Doctor Hate
Doctor Hate had a lot of potential. The villain first appeared as one of Amanda Waller’s lackeys in Titans: Beast World. However, as cool as the evil doctor seemed, it was soon revealed that the character was just fancy set dressing for a rehash. See, Doctor Hate wasn’t some cool villain, maybe a villainous version of Doctor Fate out to destroy the heroes. No, this was just yet another version of evil Raven in a helmet. It was such a bad reveal and it ruined the awesome idea of this very cool-looking villain. Maybe one day, we’ll get an actual good version of this villain, but until then, she’s one of the worst villains ever.
7) Professor Ivo
Professor Ivo is an old school mad scientist villain, known for creating robots. He created Amazo, one of the Justice League’s most underrated villains, and helped co-create Tomorrow Woman with T.O. Morrow. The evil genius is obsessed with immortality and has experimented on himself numerous times, deforming his body. There’s really nothing else to him as a character other than that. He’s not actually much of a threat to anyone without his robotic servants, and seeing as how they’re always defeated, he’s really no threat at all. He’s not interesting and there’s no way for him to actually win. He’s not even the best mad roboticist; that’s Morrow. He’s just sort of there, and it’s honestly better when he’s not.
6) Prankster
Superman has some amazing villains, but not all of them can be winners. Prankster is the perfect example of this. The villain basically just uses powerful pranks against Superman, taking classic gags and adding deadly high technology to them. That’s it. He’s basically a lamer version of Toyman, and he’s one of several villains who does the exact same thing, like the Trickster. He’s the definition of an old school lame villain; back when comics were written for little kids, he was a villain that could work, but that was a very long time ago. Now, he’s just there, and even when he’s amped up with more powerful tech, there’s nothing really interesting about him.
5) Nekron
Blackest Night was an amazing event, but its quality had nothing to do with the main villain. Nekron is one of many personifications of feath in the DC Multiverse, having fought against the Green Lantern Corps for years before it was revealed that he was the leader of the Black Lantern Corps. Nekron looks amazing, but he’s another villain that has nothing going on inside of him. He’s just a different looking grim reaper, an evil monster who represents death. No one ever remembers who he is or something he said; we don’t care about his origin t all. He was cool in Blackest Night, but that was the first time he was cool at all. It definitely was also the last time.
4) White Rabbit
White Rabbit is a terrible villain. She doesn’t have any superpowers. She isn’t from some other dimension based on Wonderland. She’s just a pretty woman in a skimpy costume. Sex appeal is a fine aspect of any character, but when sex appeal is all a character is, it’s a waste. This is White Rabbit in a nutshell. She shows up, readers oogle her, and then she gets beat. That’s basically every White Rabbit story. There’s no reason for her to exist, other than as a joke character we can laugh at every few years before she’s packed away again.
3) Kanjar Ro
The Justice League has battled numerous alien warlords over the team’s existence. Some of these alien conquerors are awesome, and some of them aren’t. Kanjar Ro is in the aren’t column. Ro usually has some kind of powerful weapon, often the Gamma Gong (which freezes the people around him) and an army on his side. He’s sold as some kind of evil super-genius strategist, and yet constantly get smacked around by every hero that gets in his way. DC has been able to take some of their lame Silver Age villains and modernize them, like Depsero, but it doesn’t matter what they do with him; he’s unsalvageable. There’s nothing good about the villain to begin with, so it doesn’t matter how modernized he gets. He’s just always bad.
2) Perpetua
Perpetua has one of the highest body counts in DC Comics, but that doesn’t mean she’s cool. Perpetua is a Hand, part of an order of beings who create multiverses. She decided that she wanted to be the only Hand and rule all of creation, weaponizing her multiverse (which was the DC Multiverse), and was defeated. When the Source Wall was broken, she came back, and eventually succeeded in taking over everything, before being betrayed and killed by the Batman Who Laughs. Perpetua has the same problem as the Anti-Monitor; she’s just evil with no other personality. In fact, she’s worse than the Anti-Monitor because she’s the exact same type of character, except more powerful. She was created for the purpose of being more powerful than the most powerful villain the heroes had faced before her, and there’s nothing interesting about that.
1) The Batman Who Laughs
Batman can be a pretty annoying character because he always wins. It’s absurd that he can beat characters like Superman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, or any of the powerful beings he has defeated in the past. This is why the Batman Who Laughs is such a terrible villain. He’s just Batman and Joker mixed together, with a sky high body count and plans to kill everyone. Now, if he was just a Batman villain or something like that, that would be fine. However, he was pushed to the moon and made into a villain that was a danger to the entire multiverse, and then he made himself into a god by implanting his brain into the body of Doctor Bathattan (yes, really). He’s an absurd villain, and his over-exposure is why so many readers came to hate him despite his pretty cool beginning.
Who do you think is the worst DC villain? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
