10 Worst Villain Costumes in DC

DC Comics has created some of the greatest costumes in the history of comics. As the creator of the superhero, DC set the guidelines for the hero and villain costumes that would come in the ensuing decades. DC costumes have helped define the various eras of comics, and many of the greatest of all time have come from the publisher. One place where DC does especially well is with villain costumes. DC has created some of the most iconic looks for their supervillains, and it’s honestly pretty hard to find too many terrible villain costumes in DC Comics. However, hard to find doesn’t mean impossible, and there are definitely some very bad villain costumes in the publisher’s history.

Many of DC’s greatest villains have some pretty iconic costumes, which can be a problem when the publisher decides to update them. Most of the bad costumes on this list are going to come from these “upgrades”, but there are also some really bad original costumes as well. These ten DC villain costumes are the worst around, giving some of the most dangerous villains in comics look that are honestly pretty laughable.

10) New 52 Desaad

So, I don’t know whether this is going to count, because the costume itself is pretty much the same, but it’s never sat right with me (most of the New 52 redesigns of the New Gods are really bad in my opinion). Desaad is the chief torturer of Darkseid, as well as an evil genius. Desaad is charged with two things — breaking anyone that Darkseid wants him to and creating new weapons. Desaad was a robed man with a drawn, evil face. He was ugly, but there was still a humanity to him, which I always figured creator Jack Kirby meant to show that even the most evil monsters look like us. The New 52 kept the robe, but it made him into a literal monster. This was such an on the nose way to portray the character and it takes away any cleverness of the look. Desaad is a monster, but the point was that he was a human monster. This is one of those changes that never made sense, and treated the readers like they weren’t smart enough to see Desaad and know he was evil without making him into a complete monster.

9) ’90s Dr. Light

Dr. Light has had an interesting villain career. He started out as a Justice League level foe, but all of that changed when he became something of a joke, losing to the scrubs and the kids. The ’90s would see DC try to make Dr. Light important again, with him getting an all-new costume that is so ’90-riffic it’s not funny. Dr. Light’s original costume was of its time, but it also looked really good. The new one sees the whole thing complicated more, and it just doesn’t look very good. It’s a perfect example of an overdesigned costume, one that tries to do too much. Dr. Light’s original costume was great; it was simple and got the point across. The new costume looked like trash and it would be left in the ’90s when Dr. Light was brought back in Identity Crisis.

8) The Original Killer Frost Costume

Killer Frost was meant to be one of Firestorm’s main villains back in the day. He had fire in his name, she had frost, it was a nice little dichotomy. However, there was basically no thought put into her costume. Killer Frost was just given a regular dress to wear as her costume. That’s it. Now, Killer Frost was often played as the kind of villain who wanted the hero to go out with her, so I guess it sort of makes sense from that perspective — that she’s wearing her best clothes so that Firestorm will like her — however, that’s just not a very good design for a villain’s costume. Killer Frost would get some good costumes in the years to come (well, mostly just her current one; her bathing suit costumes also don’t really make a lot of sense in my opinion), but her first one just doesn’t really work as something that a powerful supervillain would wear.

7) The Original Mordru Costume

The Legion of Superheroes’ best days are seemingly behind them, which is a shame because there is a veritable army of compelling characters from their far-flung future. One of them has been brought to the present day, and it’s mostly been pretty awesome — the Lord of Chaos known as Mordru. This younger version of Mordru looks awesome, which is a great change of pace from the original, future Mordru. It’s that hat. Headpieces in comics can work very well (just look at nearly every Jack Kirby design), but Mordru’s hat is terrible. Plus, instead of going with something standard, like wizard robes, they gave him a tunic and some tights. It’s such a bad design, making Mordru look more silly than he does evil. All in all, it’s a bad look for a very cool villain, which is always terrible when it happens.

6) Sinestro Corps Superboy-Prime

Superboy-Prime wore the Superman costume for his first several appearances, which is one of the best costumes in comic history. After being trapped in the Speed Force in Infinite Crisis #4, he returned in a suit of armor built from the Anti-Monitor’s corpse and the combination of the armor and Superman costume was fantastic. After Infinite Crisis, Superboy-Prime returned as a member of the Sinestro Corps and got a Sinestro Corps costume. Now, the Sinestro Corps costume is pretty good, it just doesn’t look very good on Superboy-Prime. This is definitely a downgrade when it comes right down to it; Superboy-Prime already had a best of all time costume. Giving him this new costume fit the story, but it didn’t look right on him. It gets even worse when the last chapter of “The Sinestro Corps War” hit and he was somehow wearing the pants from his old Superman costume, even through he had been wearing the new costume while fighting Sodam Yat.

5) “War of Jokes and Riddles” Riddler

The Riddler has some amazing costumes. For years, it was impossible to find a bad Riddler costume, from the green suit with the pork pie hat to the various pairs of tights with question marks on them all looking sensational. Then “The War of Jokes and Riddles” happened. This story took the classic green suit and hat combo and tweaked it. Apparently, DC wanted to make the Riddler a more physical character, so they opened up his shirt to show off his suddenly shredded physique and gave him a question mark scar on his chest. DC has tried to redefine the Riddler several times over the years, but this was the worst one. The whole combo is terrible, and it took one of Riddler’s best looks and made it into something terrible.

4) New 52 Black Adam

Black Adam’s original look is amazing. The simple black body suit with the lightning bolt emblem and the gold accoutrements was sensational. The New 52 saw DC modernizing the costumes of their characters, and the bug struck Black Adam, unfortunately. What we got was complete and total trash. First off, it did the weird texture thing that all New 52 costumes had, which made the costumes look too busy. Next, it gave Black Adam the same kind of cape that Shazam had, which didn’t really fit who the character was at all — some characters look good with a cape, but not Black Adam. Finally, it gave him a more modern looking lightning emblem, which doesn’t make sense. Since Teth Adam was an older servant of the Wizard, giving him an emblem that looked like it came from the modern day just doesn’t fit his story at all. It’s another example of taking a costume that was basically perfect, and changing it to “fit the times”. However, all that did was ruin a classic.

3) Bronze Age Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor is the evil super genius, and he’s had some pretty good looks over the years. I love Lex Luthor’s various anti-Superman armors, as well as his costume from All-Star Superman or his Apex Lex look. He always looks good in the suits. However, his Bronze Age costume is just really, really bad. Maybe it’s because I grew up with business suit Lex, who would don the armor at times when he needed to get his hands dirty, but Lex in a real supervillain costume just never made any sense to me. Everything about it is kind of bad. There’s the flaired collar, the cylinders that I guess were meant to hold tech but look stupid, and the bandolier. It doesn’t really fit who Lex is, and it’s a good thing that it’s gone.

2) Cyborg Brainiac

Superman works best in sci-fi stories, and the best villain for that is Brainiac. Brainac is a villain in the Lex Luthor mold, one who is mentally powerful where Superman is physically powerful. He shrank the Kryptonian city of Kandor, and went after Superman when he realized he existed. Brainiac was all about outsmarting his foe and using powerful technology. Throughout the Silver Age of comics, Brainiac was a green skinned alien in a costume that wasn’t bad but wasn’t great either. It worked though. Then, in the Bronze Age he got a new robot form and it’s honestly pretty bad. It’s a basic evil cyborg design, except that it has a bigger head because Brainiac’s smart. It was a weird decision to make with the character, and it never really looked right. This doesn’t really feel like the kind of thing that Brainiac would ever design for himself, and it’s so basic. Later cyborg Brainiac designs were much better than this one, although his current look is easily his best.

1) New 52 Darkseid

Darkseid’s original design was perfect. The romper (sometimes with a skirt, sometimes without one), the headpiece, and the thigh high boots never should have worked together, but did. There was no reason to change it, and DC was able to resist the temptation to do so until the New 52. Darkseid was given armor for some reason (a common trope in the New 52) and it just never looked right. Darkseid doesn’t need armor; there was something frightening about the fact that Darkseid fought in that old costume. It showed that he had no fear. Putting him in armor was supposed to make him look tougher, but it honestly did the opposite. Darkseid has changed a lot. Most of those changes have good. This costume change was the opposite of good, though.

What are your least favorite DC villain costumes? Sound off in the comments below.

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