There are a lot of heroes in DC Comics. With figures like Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, and countless more, there is always someone to fight for good and take up to defend the innocent against injustice as well as threats large and small. But while there is no shortage of good guys in the DC universe, there is also no shortage of bad guys as well and, sometimes, those bad guys look an awful lot like the heroes.
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You can blame it on the multiverse. For every heroic version of a character, there’s an evil, villainous one, too. Across the many realities in DC there are versions of the iconic heroes that aren’t just bad but downright wicked and some are more evil than others. While The Batman Who Laughs often comes to mind when thinking of evil versions of DC heroes, the truth is that there are many more evil takes on the good guys and here are five of the worst of the worst.
5) Hal Jordan
While Hal Jordan is one of the greatest of DC’s heroes as Green Lantern, he hasn’t always been purely a good guy — and we’re not talking about an alternative universe or reality version either. There was a time when Hal was an evil version himself. After his hometown of Coast City is destroyed by Mongul, Hal goes to some extreme methods to seek vengeance. This included killing most of the Green Lantern Corps and even threating to destroy the universe.
It’s later revealed that, during this time, Hal was corrupted by Parallax, an evil cosmic entity that warped him into this evil version of himself and Hal ended up on a journey of redemption. He’s back to being his heroic self these days, but the time he was full on evil (albeit by way of possession) still looms large when it comes to considering the worst alternate versions of heroes.
4) Sky Tyrant
Some would say that Hawkman is already a pretty scary hero, but Sky Tyrant is a completely different level of terrifying. While trying to unlock the memories of his various past lives, at some point he ends up infected by The Batman Who Laughs which leads to Carter slowly being corrupted into Sky Tyrant, the evil Earth-3 version of Hawkman.
As one of Ktar Deathbringer’s many reincarnations across time and space, Sky Tyrant is murderous and twistedly so, with his goal to kill as many people as he could to extend his reincarnation cycle. There’s even a point where Sky Tyrant tries to crash a passenger jet. Interestingly, Carter remains in Sky Tyrant’s mind and is able to fight with him for control of the body.
3) Doctor Hate
For as much as openly admit that I disliked the Knight Terror’s event, there was at least one “good” thing to come out of it and that’s Doctor Hate. While you would think that Doctor Hate is the evil version of Doctor Fate, you’d only be partially right. During Knight Terrors, Amanda Waller takes the Helmet of Fate and gives it to Raven’s darker, demonic half who, thanks to the Nightmare Stone, ends up transformed into Doctor Hate. The resulting figure is kind of a mashup of a dark Raven and Doctor Fate and that is doubly horrifying since it combines the powers of both.
Doctor Hate is a nightmare, no pun intended. She forces Beast Boy to spread the plague that turns people into anima-human hybrids (which gets us to the Titans: Beast World event) and perhaps worst of all, Doctor Hate helps Waller in her nefarious plans and, as far as I’m concerned, aiding and abetting Waller is just about as evil as you can get.
2) Superwoman
If you like the idea of heroes inverted to be villains, Earth-3 is probably the most interesting Earth in the entire DC multiverse for you. It’s the Earth where the Justice League is reimagined as the mafia-like Crime Syndicate with total control of the planet. It also has its own evil Trinity and while Ultra-Man (Superman) and Owlman (Batman) are truly terrible, it’s this world’s Wonder Woman, Superwoman, who is the worst.
A master manipulator, Superwoman is truly twisted and sadistic. As an inversion of Wonder Woman, Superwoman tortures her captives and enemies before killing them, taking sick pleasure in doing so. However, what makes this somehow even worse is that this isn’t a direct translation of Diana Prince/Wonder Woman into evil. Instead, Superwoman is an alternate version of Lois Lane, one who has Amazonian powers and somehow that makes it even worse.
1) Overman
This wouldn’t be a list of evil alternative versions of DC heroes if we didn’t include one of the Nazi versions which is why Overman takes our number one slot. Overman hails from Earth-X the world in the Multiverse where Nazi German won World War II leading to a fascist takeover of the world. On Earth-X, Kal-L was born on Krypton and sent in a rocket to Earth just like his Superman counterpart, but instead of landing in Kansas, he landed in Sudetenland. Raised as Karl Kant, he became the champion of the Fourth Reich and was instrumental in helping Hitler win the war.
There might be nothing more evil or grim than a fascist version of Superman. Earth-X is a horrible place, though the Freedom Fighters do their best to resist, and while Overman has on occasion worked with the heroes in larger events (namely Final Crisis where he helped fight Mandrakk), Overman is the complete opposite of a symbol of hope.
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