5 DC Villains Readers Love to Hate (and One of Them Is Technically a Two-Time Oscar Winner)

DC Comics has created villains that are a cut above the rest. If you love supervillains, then you owe the creators of DC a huge debt of gratitude. They were the first in the superhero game and quickly realized that they were going to need villains who were just as great as their heroes to make the whole thing work. Since then, the publisher has been creating the biggest villainous icons in comics. You could make the argument that Marvel villains like Doctor Doom, Green Goblin, and Thanos are “better”, to which I would reply that none of those villains would exist without Lex Luthor, the Joker, and Darkseid. DC villains have inspired all the rest, becoming icons in the balance.

Comic fans love villains. Sometimes, it’s the same kind of love as they have for the heroes. However, some villains are so reprehensible that fans hate them, and that hate has made them some of the most popular characters around. They’re the bad guys who commit the most horrid acts and they’ve rode their horrifying acts to superstardom. Fans love to hate these five DC villains, and one of them was able to ride their popularity to Academy Award gold twice.

5) Darkseid

Darkseid is the God of Evil, the darkest force in the DC Multiverse. The lord of Apokolips is the tiger force at the center of all things, that desire for control, to have what one wants over everyone else’s wishes, the monster that lives in all of our souls. He’s believes wholeheartedly that he’s the only being in the multiverse who deserves to have free will, his search for the Anti-Life Equation motivated by a desire to be the controlling force of all reality. To him, the burning hell that is Apokolips is what he desires for the rest of the multiverse, worlds full of slave ready to die for Darkseid.

Darkseid has become one of the most beloved villains in comic history. Jack Kirby created what is in a lot of ways the ultimate villain, a monster that every fans hates but can’t look away from. He isn’t some complex villain, there’s nothing tragic of sympathetic about him. He’s just the definition of evil in every way you can imagine and legions of readers follow the character with bated breath, waiting to see what horrors he’ll unleash on the multiverse next.

4) Reverse-Flash

The Reverse-Flash was once a rather simple villain. He was Barry Allen’s evil opposite, a sycophantic fan from the future who decided that he deserved the love and adulation that Allen got. He was positioned as his arch-nemesis and eventually, DC decided to underline this by having him kill Iris Allen, the wife of Barry. This brought him to the next level as a villain and he was about to try it again with Barry’s second wife when Allen broke his neck. He became a legend in the process, one that would fade away somewhat with the death of Barry Allen. Sometimes, a time-traveling version of him would show up, but for the most part, he was a part of the past.

All of that changed when he returned in The Flash: Rebirth (technically, he was resurrected in Blackest Night, but he immediately went back in time). He was given the power of the Negative Speed Force, which allowed him to travel through time and make changes. He used this to become the ultimate hater, going back in time and becoming the source of all of Barry’s problems. He’s become something of a meme at this point, a comically overwrought villain that does the most extreme evil you can imagine. Fans love him, because they know he’s going to do something wild every time he pops out of the timestream.

3) The Batman Who Laughs

The Batman Who Laughs is a hated villain nowadays. There’s this idea that after the character’s debut in Dark Knights: Metal, he was inescapable, with DC shoving him down our throats. The truth is somewhere in the middle; he was definitely being groomed to be the next big villain, but you actually had to go out of your way to get his adventures. The fans complaining are probably also the exact ones who made him as popular as he became, but let’s not talk about that right now. The Batman Who Laughs is the one character that seemingly no one wants back.

Other villains on this list got here because fans actually like them as characters. The Batman Who Laughs is here because it honestly feels like the people who hate him are more into hating him than anything else. BWL haters are some of the most fervent out there, but you get the feeling that most of these people are in it because it’s fun to hate on the villain. A surefire way to get upvotes is to write a long screed about the why he was the worst idea ever. He has something of an anti-fandom, a group devoted to hating him with all their hearts.

2) Sinestro

Sinestro is another villain in the Reverse-Flash vein. He was created to be the evil opposite of Hal Jordan, a disgraced former Green Lantern wielding a yellow fear-powered ring. He was the ultimate Green Lantern big bad and when he met his end at Jordan’s hands in “Emerald Twilight”, most fans probably figured that was all she wrote for the Korugaran; without Hal, you don’t really need him anymore. However, Hal’s return meant that Thaal wasn’t far behind and he’s since become a more popular villain than ever. Sinestro played a key role in the Geoff Johns’s multi-year Green Lantern epic, basically acting as a co-lead through a lot of it.

Sinestro was revealed to be more than just the evil guy who liked fear a lot. He was a being who believed in order and was willing to do anything to get it. This made him somewhat sympathetic; he was going to commit ghastly acts, but they were in service to making the universe a more orderly place. He’s basically a sympathetic fascist; he wants the right things for people, he just wants to get there in the worst ways, all while upholding a system of control in order to keep people from ever stepping out of line again. Fans love the complexities of the character, but hate the fact that he’s always going to fall into the trap of fascism.

1) The Joker

The Joker is Batman’s most storied foe and one of the most influential villains in the history of comics. He perfected the role of “arch-enemy”, becoming a chameleonic villain that could morph with the times. If you need campy Batman stories, he’s perfect. If you needed superhero weirdness, he’s the one you call on. If you need hard-boiled crime stories, he’s one of the best, and he’s works equally as well as an over the top supervillain. He can be grounded, he can be fantastic, he can be any type of antagonist you need him to be.

The Joker has everything that a villain needs to become beloved – he has a great name, a flawless look, an amazing personality, and that ability to change that has kept him on top. The Clown Prince of Crime is one of those villains who you can be completely tired of, and then he shows up again in a story that reminds you why you love him so much. We all complain about the Joker showing up too much, but the minute he does, we’re all lined up and ready for the insanity he’s about to unleash.

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