The First 10 Members of Justice League Dark, Ranked by Power

While the Justice League of America built its original team out of DC Comics’ most powerful superheroes, Justice League Dark was a spinoff team that consisted of the magical and supernatural heroes in the comic book line. Justice League Dark debuted in Justice League Dark #1 (2011) as part of DC’s New 52 relaunch, by Peter Milligan and Mikel Janin. The team was assembled by Madame Xanadu after a vision that the Enchantress would kill her fellow heroes. The founding roster included Shade the Changing Man, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Zatanna, and John Constantine, a mix of Vertigo-rooted heroes and mainline DC magicians that had never been put on a team together before. They quickly became one of DC’s most popular teams.

The members of Justice League Dark include a possessing ghost, a government-built shapeshifter, and a reality-warping alien. Here is a look at the first 10 members of the team, ranked by power, starting with the founding members and going to the “Rise of the Vampires” storyline, where the 10th member joined the team.

10) Deadman (Boston Brand)

DC re-introduced Deadman in The New 52 as a founding member of Justice League Dark in Justice League Dark #1. Just like his classic origin, Boston Brand is a murdered aerialist whose spirit was given purpose by the Hindu goddess Rama Kushna. Deadman is an invisible, intangible ghost with flight and the ability to possess any living body and use its physical skills and memories. While this is a useful tactic, the fact that he is dead and his only power is possession limits what he can do, because strong-willed targets can throw him out, and his ghost form cannot directly harm anyone. That makes him the least powerful of the original 10 Justice League Dark members.

9) Madame Xanadu (Nimue Inwudu)

Madame Xanadu is the founder and recruiter of the New 52 Justice League Dark, first appearing in Justice League Dark #1. It was her vision that the Enchantress would kill the Justice League, so she went to the mystical heroes for help. She is an immortal sorceress drawn from Arthurian myth, trained by Merlin, wielding tarot-card precognition, teleportation, mystic wards, levitation, and centuries of occult lore. Her abilities lean toward foresight and ritual rather than raw battlefield offense, but she is the strategic leader of the team. Her precognition abilities started the team, but fell short of those of other early members in overall power levels.

8) Frankenstein (the Agent of SHADE)

Frankenstein first helped the team in Justice League Dark Annual #1 (2013), and he ended up joining the team officially in Justice League Dark #14 (2013). Originally, Frankenstein was from Grant Morrison and Doug Mahnke’s Seven Soldiers and his own Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE series. He is functionally immortal, has superhuman strength, needs no food or sleep, and can graft new limbs to replace damaged ones. He is the grunt front-line fighter for Justice League Dark, and he is strong enough to go head-to-head with anyone, as he showed when he fought Faust’s monster Necro alongside the team.

7) Black Orchid (Alba Garcia)

Alba Garcia debuts as the new Black Orchid in Justice League Dark #9 (2012), a storyline where Jeff Lemire took over as the main writer and rebuilt the team around an ARGUS mandate. She was assigned to the team as an ARGUS agent by Steve Trevor to keep an eye on Constantine, and she joined at the same time as when the team met and rescued Doctor Mist. A former army private whose arms had been amputated, she was rebuilt as a shapeshifter who channels the Green (plant life like Swamp Thing) and the Red (animal life like Animal Man). Her abilities include shapeshifting, enhanced strength, limited flight, and elastic limb manipulation.

6) Andrew Bennett (I, Vampire)

Andrew Bennett, the centuries-old vampire from Joshua Hale Fialkov’s I, Vampire series, joins Justice League Dark in the “Rise of the Vampires” crossover (Justice League Dark #7-8 and I, Vampire #7-8, 2012), brought in as a favor to Constantine. He was the 10th overall member to join the team. His powers are classic elder-vampire: super strength, immortality, healing, hypnosis, transformation into mist, bat, or wolf, the ability to turn others, and the New 52 ability to sway humans and rewrite their memories. After “Rise of the Vampires,” he returns from the afterlife, wielding new magical abilities: resurrection, freezing enemies, and dark-magic absorption. He left the team in Justice League Dark #14 and returned later as a recurring member.

5) John Constantine

John Constantine is a former Vertigo character who made his way to the DC mainline, and in the New 52, he was a founding member of the Justice League Dark. He only joined when Xanadu and Shade convinced him that the Enchantress threat is bigger than his usual self-interest. He is a top-tier sorcerer whose ranking is held back not by power ceiling but by his preference for cons, leverage, and sacrifice rather than direct magical combat. However, when called on, he is extremely powerful. He has hellfire conjuration, electrical blasts, transmutation, binding sigils he claims are strong enough to kill a god, and an encyclopedic command of demonic, faerie, and occult lore. He is why the Justice League Dark stopped Enchantress when he bound her to June Moone again, saving the world.

4) Doctor Mist (Nommo Balewa)

Doctor Mist debuted in Justice League Dark when the ARGUS storyline started, as the supernatural expert for ARGUS. Nommo Balewa is an African wizard-king who is over 10,000 years old, and whose connection to the mystical Flame of Life puts him in a different tier from the human magicians around him. His powers include immortality, illusion casting, reality alteration, summoning, telekinesis, telepathy, energy projection, magic absorption, eldritch blasts, force fields, and healing. He can do feats of magic that Constantine can only dream about. However, his time on the team ended when it was revealed he was working with Felix Faust, who promised to resurrect Mist’s deceased wife. He left in Justice League Dark #11 (2012).

3) Zatanna

Zatanna Zatara is a founding member of Justice League Dark, brought in by Madame Xanadu to stop the Enchantress. Her backward-speech sorcery is one of the most flexible magic systems in DC, although this also limited her for years, as she would lose her powers if she were gagged. However, that power limitation has been removed, and she can actually use her powers now by using sign language. Her feats of power are incredible, as she casts an ancient-gods ritual to permanently undo Alec Holland’s transformation into Swamp Thing, blasts and cages the Nightmare Nurse, and destroys swarms of Time Gremlins and patches ruptures in the timestream.

2) Enchantress (June Moone)

Enchantress was one of the most powerful members of the Suicide Squad’s first lineup, and is also one of the Justice League Dark’s most powerful original members. However, she started this series as the main villain, and Madame Xanadu saw her killing the Justice League, forcing the new team’s formation. When unleashed, Enchantress is powerful enough to overpower Superman, Wonder Woman, and Cyborg. Her powers can force the entire population of Earth into a rage, atmokinesis that can cover the planet in storms, eldritch blasts, and molecular reconstruction. She ended up part of the team when Constantine was able to rebind the Enchantress entity to June Moone once again.

1) Shade, the Changing Man (Rac Shade)

Rac Shade is another founding member of Justice League Dark and is the most powerful supernatural hero on the team. Peter Milligan, the writer of Justice League Dark, was also the writer of Shade, the Changing Man in Vertigo, and he brought the character into the DC mainline in the New 52 to serve on the team. His powers come from the M-Vest (the Madness-Vest), which is a reality-altering device, not a spell. It operates outside the rules of magic that the rest of the team is bound by. He is an alien from the planet Meta, and his only limitations come when Shade is emotionally distressed, in which case the M-Vest responds unpredictably. Shade is not only the most powerful Justice League Dark member, but the most dangerous.

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