5 DC Characters With Origins So Brutal They Make Batman’s Look Almost Normal, But Took Them in Completely Different Directions

Batman‘s origin is one of the greatest in comics. By now, I’m pretty sure that the vast majority of people on Earth know the story of what happened to Thomas and Martha Wayne on that night in Crime Alley. That’s hyperbolic, obviously, but it’s not far from the truth. There are some superhero origins that are just plain perfect and Batman has one of them. Watching his parents gunned down in front of him changed him; some writers have posited that Batman came into existence on that night. Calling his origin brutal is something of an understatement; he was a small boy who watched his parents get shot and bleed out in front of him. It is seemingly the most tragic origin in DC Comics history.

There’s a reason I used the word “seemingly” in that last sentence up there. Looking at the history of the DC Multiverse, there are numerous other origins that are honestly just as tragic. Heroes and villains alike have more harrowing origins than the Dark Knight, each of them going in very different directions than he did. These five DC characters have more brutal origins than Batman, each of them quite different from the Caped Crusader.

5) Bane

Bane is one of Batman’s greatest villains. He was able to hand the Dark Knight some pretty heavy defeats over the years and it all came from his origin. As a young boy, Bane was sentenced to Santa Prisca’s most brutal prison because of the crimes of his father. His first cell would flood every night; he had to build up his body in order to make himself strong enough to keep from drowning at night. He had to constantly watch his back, as he made an easy target for the predators of the prison. He built himself into the toughest person there, physically and mentally powerful, able to take down anyone across from him. However, he didn’t use this skill to make sure that no one would have to go through what he did or take it out on the criminals or corrupt officials; he used it to become powerful. He made himself into what is essentially an evil Batman. He suffered greatly, but instead of becoming a Dark Knight, he became a masked monster.

4) Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor might not seem like he has a tragic origin, but he definitely does. Luthor’s father Lionel was an alcoholic tyrant, a genius who was tormented by his own failures, which he took out on Lex and his sister Lena. Lex had to protect his sister, taking the abuse for her, and developed a very hard outer skin because of his father’s treatment. This made it nearly impossible for him to keep friends; Clark Kent tried, but the damage Lionel had done to son was hard to overcome. He had the worst upbringing you can imagine; while he didn’t watch his parents die, he was a victim of his father’s monstrousness. He wanted to become better than his father and but he had internalized too much of the Luthor ego. While he briefly tried to be a superhero and protect Metropolis, he soon decided that he would rather be the most powerful man in the city, his great deeds making the people give him the love his father never did. He didn’t grown from his abuse, but allowed it to define him and mold him into something terrible.

3) Power Girl

Power Girl has been around for 50 years and is one of the most complex Kryptonians of them all, in more ways than one. Power Girl is Kara Zor-L, the cousin to Kal-L of Earth-Two’s Krypton. She was a teenager when Krypton was destroyed; she didn’t just lose her parents, she lost her entire family. She landed on Earth years after Kal; he had been Superman for decades and had married Lois Lane. The two of them raised her to be a superhero, but then she would lose them too, because of Crisis on Infinite Earths. For years, she couldn’t remember her actual origin and it tormented her. While both she and Batman became superheroes, they became two different kinds. Batman eschews connection but secretly pines for family. Power Girl tries to join families looking for a place to belong, trying to find the connections that she once had. They suffered two similar things and went in entirely different ways.

2) Supergirl

Supergirl and Power Girl have the same origin; they were both Kara, they both grew up on Krypton and they both lost everything they ever loved, launched to a new world. However, we know more about what happened to Supergirl and it was brutal. Her father was able to save Argo City, launching it into space, but there was a problem. The ground under the city had absorbed radiation from the destruction of the planet, becoming Kryptonite. Supergirl worked hard to put down a lead floor as she watched her people die of radiation sickness, famine, and a lack of medicine. Before her father launched her away, she witnessed horrific suffering; in many ways, what happened to her is much worse than what happened to Batman. However, she didn’t become some angry avenger of the night; she followed her cousin’s Superman example. She’s one of the best heroes out there, a pleasant, conscientious young woman who is ready with a smile and a joke. She suffered once and she’s not going to wallow in it.

1) Superman

Superman is the greatest hero in comics and is often looked at as the bright shining example of everything that Batman can’t be. Supes is another character with an origin that has written itself on the collective unconscious of humanity and there’s an argument for it being not as bad as Batman’s. Kal-El was a baby when he lost Krypton and his parents, while Batman was nine years old and watched his die. Kal landed in Kansas and was found by the Kents, which was the best thing that could have happened to him. However, he had to grow up knowing that he was completely alone in the universe. He lost an entire culture and had to grow up on a world where he could accidentally pulp anyone that he touched. He never let that loss define him, though, and he became arguably a better human being than Batman did. Batman allowed his losses to turn him to something inhuman, whereas Superman was able to turn his losses into gains and become the most human person on the planet, despite being an alien.

5 DC Cities Where Ordinary People Are Actually Safe (#1 Is the Least Surprising Ever)