10 Greatest Justice League Villains

The Justice League is the DC Multiverse’s foremost defense force. The League has combined the greatest superheroes into a powerful unit and when you have the most powerful, skilled, and accomplished heroes in creation, you need to have the best villains. The League has been around for a long time, and have faced everything from mad scientists to alien conquerors to multiversal predators. The League doesn’t have the kind of villain roster that a team like the X-Men has — Silver Age DC had a lot of cheese, especially the Justice League — but the best League villains are legends on a level that other villains rarely get to. The Justice League have faced foes unlike anything other teams have, their best enemies throwing attacks at them that have made their confrontations into the stuff of legend.

Some of the Justice League’s foes are teams, ones whose power level can devastate worlds. The League also faces off against powerful solo villains, and they are the scariest of all, would-be universal conquerors that can warp the fabric of time and space itself. These ten Justice League villains are the cream of the villainous crop, powerful, crafty enemies that would annihilate lesser teams.

Alexander Luthor

Alexander Luthor came from the pre-Crisis Earth-Three, the son of Lex Luthor launched from the planet as it was destroyed by the Anti-Monitor. Exposure to anti-matter gave him anti-matter powers, as well as allowing him to grow to adulthood in a few days. Luthor played a key role in helping defeat the Anti-Monitor, and was sent to a paradise dimension with Earth-Two Superman and Lois Lane and Superboy-Prime. However, Luthor and Prime were disgusted by the world that they helped steward to its birth, and Luthor came up with a plan once he learned that Prime could break out of the paradise dimension. Luthor pretended to be Lex Luthor and created the Society, making the villains his army. Meanwhile, he used Brother Eye and Eclipso to do his bidding, all while Prime moved planets and changed the center of the universe, leading to a war that kept the powers of the cosmos distracted. Luthor played everyone, including Earth-Two Superman and Power Girl, and proved to be one of the most diabolical villains the League ever faced. He orchestrated a plan that wrecked the entire superhero community, destroyed the Justice League, and ended up recreating the Multiverse. He may have only had one battle with the League, but what a battle it was.

Amanda Waller

Amanda Waller has just come off Absolute Power, a story where she made her ultimate assault against the superhero community, but she’s been a thorn in the side of the Justice League for ages. Waller hasn’t always been an active villain, but she’s one that is always in the background, ready to make things harder on the Justice League and their allies. Waller is the kind of general antagonist every team needs. She has a history with the most of the members of the team — and it’s never anything good — and she’s in a position where sometimes, helping her is the only way to save the day. Waller is always a threat, and she deserves her place among the Justice League’s greatest villains.

Vandal Savage

DC has several major immortals, but few of them have survived as long or been as dangerous as Vandal Savage. Savage was born a hundred thousand years ago, and found a meteorite that’s radiation give him immortality, superhuman physical capabilities, and enhanced intelligence. Savage has spent millennia amassing as much wealth and power as he can, and is one of the most dangerous humans on Earth. Savage has been a major villain in every era of DC, starting with Golden Age clashes with the Justice Society and moving to the present, battling multiple incarnations of the League. While Savage has often been a member of groups like the Secret Society of Supervillains and the Legion of Doom/Injustice League, he’s also attacked the League on his own multiple times. His best attack on the League came in the highly underrated DC One Million, where the Vandal Savage of the present and the Vandal Savage of the 853rd century both attacked at the same time. It shows exactly why Savage is such an amazing villain.

Despero

Despero was a villain that could have never grown past his beginnings as one of many alien conquerors that fought the League in the Silver Age, but he did. The fin-headed pink alien had three eyes, powerful psychic abilities, and a mid for strategy; a fine villain but nothing to write home about. Despero sort of faded away until the ’80s, when he was given a makeover into the massive mountain of alien muscle with insane telepathy he is today, the evil opposite of the Martian Manhunter. Despero tore through the JLI in his savage new form, and became a best of all time villain. Despero is a great villain, always a threat to the Justice League. The alien conqueror has grown far beyond what he started out as, and is now a wrecking ball that can smash the more powerful heroes in the DC Multiverse.

The Secret Society of Supervillains

The Secret Society of Supervillains sometimes gets lumped in with the Legion of Doom/Injustice League. However, the Secret Society of Supervillains is a very different team. They came of prominence in the Bronze Age comics of the 1970s, an assemblage of mostly B and C-list villains. Brought together by Darkseid, they eventually banded together with the greatest villains of Earth-Two, and battled the Justice League, the Justice Society, even the Crime Syndicate of Earth-Three. The Secret Society of Supervillains were the premiere Justice League villains of the Bronze Age, and even got their own short lived comic in the late ’70s DC Explosion, when the publisher flooded the market to compete with Marvel. The Secret Society of Supervillains was cancelled in the DC Implosion, and the Secret Society faded away since then. Members of the team have banded back together again, and Alexander Luthor’s Society was based on the team, but they’re a relic of an earlier time.

RELATED: 5 Justice League Characters Ruined by the DC Movies

Starro the Conqueror

Starro the Conqueror was the Justice League’s first villain, a massive alien being that only the most powerful heroes working together could stop. Starro is actually a member a race of giant starfishes, traveling the universe and conquering planets with its mind controlling spawn. Starro is a planetary level threat, and the League has often been the first line of defense against them. Sometimes, Starro is kaiju sized, and menaces cities. Sometimes, Starro is the size of cities, forcing the League to go above and beyond to defeat the monster. Starro prefers to use mind controlled hordes as its weapons, but it’s also monumentally strong, nearly completely invulnerable to attack — the eye thing from The Suicide Squad wouldn’t work on comic Starro even if Superman was going it, and has telepathic power levels on a scale that makes Martian Manhunter’s seem quaint. Starro can seem like something of a joke villain, but that’s not the case at all. Starro is a dangerous monster like few others. Plus, we got Jarro out of the equation — the spawn of a Starro that helped the League fight the Omega Titans in Justice League: No Justice (Starro from that story is awesome by the way, and the highlight of an awesome Justice League romp) who was adopted by the League and got really attached to Batman, eventually even wearing a Robin costume.

The Anti-Monitor

The Anti-Monitor has the greatest body count of any villain in comics, having destroyed countless universes in his rampage during Crisis on Infinite Earths. That story set up the Anti-Monitor as the ultimate villain, a monster bent on multiversal destruction. The Anti-Monitor isn’t an incredibly deep villain, but that doesn’t matter. He was a force unlike anything that any superheroes had ever faced when he showed up in 1985, and he’s become an iconic villain in the history of the DC Multiverse. Much like Alexander Luthor, he only has one story where he was the main villain, but that story is the best event comic of all time. The Anti-Monitor was the ultimate villain, death in beautiful George Perez-designed armor. There have been more powerful villains — Perpetua is more powerful — but none of them had the impact on both DC Comics and the comic industry. The Anti-Monitor paved the way for every powerful event villain and has an indelible place in the pantheon of the Justice League’s greatest enemies.

The Crime Syndicate

The Crime Syndicate were the second mutliversal team that the Justice League discovered. Earth-Three was a world where evil always won, and the Justice League had to call on their Earth-Two friends the Justice Society for help. That was the beginning of the Justice League’s wars against the Crime Syndicate, ones that would run through the Silver and Bronze Ages. It seemingly ended in Crisis on Infinite Earths with the death of the multiverse, but like most good Justice League things, Grant Morrison figured out how to bring them back in the post-Crisis DC Universe, in the classic JLA: Earth-2. There have been as many versions of the Crime Syndicate as there have been versions of the DC Multiverse and the team has always been a major threat to the Justice League. They’re the League’s evil mirror, which makes them an amazing villain to bounce off the multiverse’s greatest heroes.

The Legion of Doom/Injustice League

The Legion of Doom is an assemblage of the Justice League’s greatest villains. Usually led by Lex Luthor, it consists of the A-list villains of the DC Universe doing their best to try to destroy their foes. The Legion of Doom and the Injustice League (and the Injustice Gang, but that version was only used in two Morrison JLA classics — “Rock of Ages” and “World War Three”) are basically interchangeable down to the kind of big table they sit at when planning their crimes. The Legion of Doom name became famous because of the SuperFriends cartoons, and since then, the team has switched between the LoD and the Injustice League. The Legion of Doom has engaged the League in some amazing battles (go check out Justice, by Alex Ross, Jim Krueger, and Doug Braithewaite), and has even helped the League several times in books like Final Crisis and Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Legion of Doom was the main villain of Scott Snyder’s Justice League and has recently returned in Justice League Unlimited. They should be the League’s greatest enemies. They aren’t, but they should be.

Darkseid

Instead, Darkseid is. Darkseid is DC’s greatest villain and possibly the greatest villain in comics. Darkseid was created to be the big bad of the Fourth World saga, the brainchild of comics’ most fertile mind Jack Kirby. Darkseid is the God of Evil, a being obsessed with controlling the universe. While the New Gods are his main foes, and usually the main source of his attention as he searches for the Anti-Life Equation, which will allow him to control the minds of anyone exposed to it. Darkseid has often targeted the Earth, and when that happens, the Justice League gets involved. This was best shown in the 2008 classic known as Final Crisis, where he unleashed the Anti-Life Equation on the Earth, while breaking the League against the unyielding stone of his will. There are also classics like “Rock of Ages”, Cosmic Odyssey, and Legend. This list is full of villains who are the best of the best, and their threats can be as drastic as they come. However, none of them, with the exception of the Anti-Monitor (although Darkseid was able to actually hurt the Anti-Monitor at his strongest), can match Darkseid for sheer power, and none of them can match his malice. Darkseid is evil incarnate, and that’s what makes him such a great Justice League villain. He mirrors their virtue with his monstrous vice.