The 10 Most Iconic Justice League Villains of All Time, Ranked

The Justice League formed when the most powerful heroes in the DC Universe had to team up to beat someone that they couldn’t stop alone. The DC heroes were already overpowered, with Superman and Martian Manhunter among the most powerful beings in the universe, with Wonder Woman and Aquaman gaining in power over the years to almost equal them. Add in Batman’s unlimited resources and tactical planning, Green Lantern’s cosmic powers, and Flash’s world-breaking speed, and there aren’t many villains who could really give them problems. That meant DC had to come up with villains who could provide world-ending threats, and it created several of the most powerful villains comics had ever seen to challenge the Justice League.

From villains with the power to enslave humanity to aliens who can shrink entire cities and others who can erase the entire universe, here are the Justice League’s most powerful villains.

10) Vandal Savage

Vandal Savage debuted in Green Lantern #10 (1943) by Alfred Bester and Martin Nodell, in “The Man Who Wanted the World!” as a villain to Alan Scott’s Green Lantern. This makes him one of DC’s Golden Age villains who transferred over to the Silver Age. This makes sense because, for storyline purposes, he is one of DC’s oldest beings. He is a Cro-Magnon caveman named Vandar Adg who was bathed in the radiation of a mysterious meteor and granted immortality, and he claims to be over a million years old, although he is closer to 50,000 years old based on the actual history of humans.

When it comes to DC Comics, Vandal Savage claims to also be the architect of many of history’s most important events, a mastermind who has assumed several different historical figures throughout time. He has been a villain to both the Justice Society in the Golden Age and the Justice League in the Silver Age and beyond. He also has a daughter named Scandal Savage, who was part of Gail Simone’s Secret Six. Outside of comics, he also played an important role in the DCAU movie Justice League: Doom (2012).

9) Amazo

Amazo debuted in The Brave and the Bold #30 (1960) by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, the same creative team that created the Justice League two issues earlier. He was a robot built by the mad scientist Professor Ivo. What makes him such a dangerous villain for the Justice League is that his powers allow him to replicate the abilities of every Justice League member he meets. This means when new members arrive to help, Amazo becomes more powerful than before.

In his debut appearance, he had already absorbed the powers of the Justice League’s founding members. Amazo was not only one of DC’s first androids, but he was also a perfect early example of how one villain could test the might of the world’s most powerful superheroes. He also had a tragic backstory, as Ivo was trying to gain immortality when he accidentally destroyed his own mind, leading to his creation of Amazo. The Amazo in DC Comics post-New 52 is nothing like this original villain and is now only a virus that gives ordinary people powers before killing them.

8) Starro the Conqueror

Starro the Conqueror is the first villain that the Justice League fought in comics, although a later retcon showed they had a battle earlier, before this moment, against White Martians. Starro debuted in The Brave and the Bold #28 (1960) by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky. He is a giant, telepathic alien starfish who conquers worlds by attaching smaller starfish-shaped spores to victims’ faces, mind-controlling them into a hive collective. This debut appearance saw him use three giant mutated starfish to try to conquer Earth.

He is not only the first Justice League villain, but his mind-control powers allow him to remain a large-scale threat. Humorously, Starro was also a villain who ended up being defeated for the first time in a Silver Age plot twist, where a young boy named Snapper Carr was immune to the mind-control because Starro’s weakness was lime, so this helped the Justice League win and made Snapper a team mascot. Starro returned in Grant Morrison’s JLA run and was even the main villain in the DC movie The Suicide Squad.

7) Mongul

Mongul debuted in DC Comics Presents #27 (1980) by Len Wein and Jim Starlin. He was a giant alien warlord and tyrant ruler of the gladiatorial artificial planet Warworld. He is best known as one of DC’s most powerful cosmic powerhouses, who is often strong enough to give Superman and Green Lantern problems, forcing the entire Justice League into action. His most notable moment came when he worked with Cyborg Superman to destroy Coast City, killing seven million people, and pushing Hal Jordan to become the villain Parallax.

Mongul’s most famous moment came in one of the best Superman stories of all time, “For the Man Who Has Everything” (Superman Annual #11, 1985) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. In this story, he placed Superman in a hypnotic trance where he believed Krypton never died and lived in his imagination in this world where he never lost his family or his home. However, Batman, Robin, and Wonder Woman had to save him from Mongul, in a moment that freed him, but at a high cost of shattering his dream.

6) Legion of Doom

The Legion of Doom is one of the DC creations that didn’t start out in comics. Instead, the team debuted in the first episode of Challenge of the Super Friends (“Wanted: The Super Friends”), which premiered September 9, 1978. This made the team a creation for that cartoon, and the purpose was to be a dark mirror of the Super Friends, although Lex Luthor gathered together 13 supervillains throughout the show’s run. It then took almost two decades for them to debut in comics, when they finally debuted in Extreme Justice #16-18 (1996).

It was Scott Snyder and Jim Cheung who brought the team to prominence in modern times, following the events of Justice League: No Justice (2018), when he reformed the Legion of Doom. This happened in Justice League Vol. 4 #1 (2018) when Lex Luthor, Joker, Sinestro, Black Manta, Cheetah, and Gorilla Grodd all teamed up to oppose the Justice League once again.

5) Anti-Monitor

The Anti-Monitor was a villain so powerful that not even the Justice League could defeat him alone. He debuted in a shadowed cameo in Crisis on Infinite Earths #2 (1985), and he made his full appearance in Crisis on Infinite Earths #6 (1985) by Marv Wolfman, George Pérez, and Jerry Ordway. His true name is later revealed as Mobius. He is the main villain of that miniseries, and he was powerful enough to force a complete reboot and reset of the entire DC Universe when all was said and done.

Through that series, Anti-Monitor was powerful enough to cause the deaths of both Supergirl in Crisis #7 and Barry Allen’s Flash in Crisis #8, although the latter death was a sacrifice to set up Anti-Monitor’s defeat. After that series ended, Anti-Monitor was gone for a very long time, making him seem like a one-and-done threat. However, he returned in 2007 as the power behind the Sinestro Corps. More recently, Anti-Monitor and Darkseid went to war, with the Justice League caught in the middle.

4) The Crime Syndicate of America

Like the Legion of Doom, the Crime Syndicate of America was also a dark side of the Justice League, but this time it was in a more literal sense. The Crime Syndicate debuted in Justice League of America #29 (1964) by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, and they were evil parallel-universe counterparts of the Justice League, hailing from Earth-Three. The members included Ultraman (Superman), Owlman (Batman), Superwoman (Wonder Woman), Johnny Quick (Flash), and Power Ring (Green Lantern).

Their debut came when Ultraman learned about the other Earths and led his team across dimensions to attack the Justice League and Justice Society, and it took both superteams to stop the Crime Syndicate. This team also played into Crisis as the only superhero on Earth-Three was Alexander Luthor, a man who helped banish the Anti-Monitor. The Crime Syndicate returned in 2000 from Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely as they became antimatter-universe villains, and they were the catalyst of Forever Evil (2013-2014) by Geoff Johns and David Finch.

3) Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor debuted in Action Comics #23 (1940) by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster as an unnamed mad scientist. In the Golden Age, it was shown that Lex Luthor was a Superboy fan, but turned evil when he blamed Superboy for losing his hair after a rescue attempt during a fire. This led to him becoming the mad scientist for much of the Golden Age before turning into a maniacal businessman in the post-Crisis world.

Throughout his time in DC, Lex has led several Justice League villain teams, including the Injustice Gang, Injustice League, and Legion of Doom. It is Luthor’s money and his tactical genius that always ensure he is in control of these groups of supervillains. His power is greater than most, even though he has no superhuman abilities. This is because he was actually elected President of the United States in 2000, and he used his power to target superheroes like the Justice League.

2) Brainiac

Brainiac debuted in Action Comics #242 (1958) by Otto Binder and Al Plastino in “The Super-Duel in Space.” This was the same issue that introduced the bottled city of Kandor, which Brainiac had stolen from Krypton. This was his original purpose, as he collected cities, shrinking them and keeping them in his collection to preserve the memories, while all the people still lived inside those enclosures. He is an android-being from the planet Colu, and he has been a villain for both Superman and the Justice League.

Brainiac was part of the Legion of Doom in the Challenge of the Super Friends cartoon, and in the comics, he became so strong that the Justice League would often need to come to Superman’s aid when Brainiac arrived on Earth. The DC Universe has also seen several versions of Brainiac, from the robotic version to the humanoid version to the iconic look with the bald green head studded with red electrode nodes. There was even a heroic version years later when Brainiac 5 helped form the Legion of Super-Heroes.

1) Darkseid

Darkseid is the ultimate Justice League villain, a bad guy so powerful that even the Justice League can’t beat him on a regular basis and just has to rely on banishing him and hoping he won’t return. Debuted in a single-panel cameo in Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #134 (1970) by writer-artist Jack Kirby, and then made his first full appearance in Forever People #1 (1971), also by Kirby. He is the ruler of Apokolips, a hellish planet in the New Gods storyline.

His ultimate goal is to gain the Anti-Life Equation, which will allow him to take control over every sentient being. It was Darkseid who created the modern Justice League in the 1986-1987 “Legends” crossover series by John Ostrander, Len Wein, and John Byrne. He was the main villain in “Final Crisis,” which saw him finally seize the Anti-Life Equation and enslave humanity before Batman finally stopped him by breaking his no-guns rule. In the New 52, it was once again Darkseid that caused the Justice League to form again, before taking part in “Darkseid War,” where he went to battle with the Anti-Monitor.

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