DC Comics has created some of the best villains ever, and one of them jumps to the top of the heap: Darkseid. Jack Kirby created the villain during his fruitful Silver/Bronze Age period, and wanted to make a bad guy that was the embodiment of everything evil in the world. He was the “tiger force at the center of all things”, the ultimate evil. Kirby hated fascists in general and Nazis in particular, and Darkseid was the ultimate representation of this. Kirby’s devil was also superlatively powerful, much like the evil inside of all humanity. Since then, he’s only become more and more powerful, and is often thought of as the greatest villain in the multiverse.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Darkseid is at his most powerful right now in DC K.O., and has created his own universe. However, as powerful as he is, he’s nowhere near the most powerful villain in the DC Multiverse. There are more formidable out there, and these seven are the most powerful villains that dwarf the might of Darkseid.
7) Neron
This one is debatable, but I think it stands. Neron first appeared in the rather underrated ’90s DC event Underworld Unleashed. He was a demon from Hell who was able to enhance the powers of villains. Like most beings of angelic heritage, Neron has vast reality altering powers. So, to the power-scaling: the Silver City and Hell are parts of the original creation, before the Fourth World. So, the beings of that time would be more powerful, even those of lesser orders like Neron. He is a Lord of Hell, all of whom are powerful on a whole other level compared to normal demons and angels. Maybe if he wasn’t in Hell, Darkseid could defeat him, but in Neron’s own realm in Hell, Darkseid wouldn’t have a chance.
6) Yuga Khan
Darkseid is the lord of evil of the Fourth World, but he isn’t the most powerful lord of evil. That’s his father, Yuga Khan. One of the things about Kirby’s Fourth World is that each subsequent generation of the gods is weaker than the one before it. So, while Darkseid was responsible for the death of his father, it wasn’t because he was more powerful; it was because he was smarter with his lesser power. Khan, in a straight battle, would destroy his son. Darkseid is a better God of Evil, but Khan was definitely more powerful.
5) Lucifer Morningstar
So, if I’m going to put Neron on the list, then I have to put his master on it as well. Lucifer Morningstar is the second most powerful being in creation, after the Presence. He was once the right hand of the divine, so beloved and powerful that he helped plan the creation. Honestly, I’m surprised that no one in DC has said that Darkseid is a reflection of Lucifer himself, powered by the first sinner, an emanation of the being who was the primal darkness. Darkseid is powerful, but even he can’t match the power of the Morningstar.
4) The Anti-Life Entity
Darkseid loves the Anti-Life Equation and would experiment with it when he could. This eventually led to Cosmic Odyseey, when Darkseid’s manipulations made it into an entity. It was so powerful that the God of Evil knew that he couldn’t defeat it (in this case, defeat it meant that he wanted to drain its power) by himself, so he recruited heroes from Earth and New Genesis. The Anti-Life Entity would have destroyed everything if it wasn’t for the combined forces of good and evil, and Darkseid knew that he could never tame it on his own.
3) The Anti-Monitor
Crisis on Infinite Earths is amazing. It was the biggest story ever, and I would argue it still is, and the story needed a villain that could fit a tale that combined the forces of four different Earths. The Anti-Monitor proved to be that villain. The very personification of anti-matter, he ate through the universes, destroying everything in his path. Darkseid stayed out of the fight because he knew that he would lose to the beast of entropy. He was able to hurt the monstrous villain in Crisis on Infinite Earths #12 with the Omega Effect, but in a one on one battle, he would never win. The New 52 Darkseid fell to the Anti-Monitor and Grail’s machinations, so that proves this point.
2) Perpetua
DC has many overpowered beings, but the most obscenely powerful, in a lot of ways, is Perpetua. She was a Hand, one of an order of beings that created multiverses. She created beings like Darkseid, so she was more powerful than him, simple as that. She can make anything she wants, and has access to the Source itself. She’s the parent of the Anti-Monitor and is even more powerful than he is. Darkseid also stayed out of her way, and let’s be real: if he thought he could beat her himself, he would have. Perpetua is another level from the lord of Apokolips.
1) The Great Darkness
The Great Darkness wasn’t an entity when it was first introduced in Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing (the particular story, “American Gothic”, is one of the greatest things you’ll ever read). It was just the void, ever encroaching, the end of all things, and it will always win eventually, but there were ways to slow it down. It wouldn’t be until the 2020s when it would gain actual entity status, as it was revealed to be the thing that moved the pieces of evil on the board of the multiverse. It was still sort of a “dumb” entity, in that it has no guiding intelligence and just moved forward inexorably, and was manipulated by Pariah in Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, who wanted to use it to destroy everything and then use the energy he pulled from the worlds to create a new one. However, it was nonetheless proved to be an entity of some sort. It was vastly more powerful than Darkseid, and that’s because it was just literal nothing.
What villains do you think are more powerful than Darkseid? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
Most Viewed
-
Image courtesy of Netflix -
Image courtesy of Bethesda -
Image courtesy of Nintendo
