As all of you now probably know, I am a DC fanboy. I love DC Comics. They have in my mind the absolute finest comics you will find. Therefore I thought it would be a cool idea to submit my thoughts on who's my favorite heroes and villains in a series, now beginning with the villains.
My criteria for the villains is based on my opinions, and I try to justify the choices somewhat. One of the things I tried to do is to find characters that I respect, not necessarily like that much. They had to be interesting of course.
To me the villains and heroes would need to have a rich story, some being pioneers or starting an archetype of comic character. Some would just be too plain cool to not include, too damn intriguing. And almost every single one of them have achieved legendary status in the comic book world.
Now I know I can't possibly make every one of you good folks agree with my choices. I am fully aware that I might make some people angry but I've tried to be reasonable. The choices have been tough and I hope you will somewhat agree with me.
DC Comics has made something out of the ordinary that everyone tried to replicate but never succeeded. So in the end it's about homage to the single greatest comic book company ever. So here it is, my choices 20 to 16.
20. The Riddler: Edward Nygma is an eccentric genius who turned to a life of crime because of his enormous ego’s need for a challenge.
His childhood was full of failures; his mom was never there for him and his father was abusive. So many failed him as young but the game of the mind remained his best friend throughout life, in good and bad.
His father never believed him when Edward passed every test. And for that he was beaten repeatedly. Out of this terrible injustice Edward developed a compulsion for intellectual games, the need for riddles.
His early, honest career was as a carnival performer, using his skill of mind to fool the crowds. No one would ever win. After a while he just couldn’t take it anymore. He needed an opponent to match his intellect and intelligence, and eventually he found one in the Batman.
The Riddler appeared in Detective Comics #140 in October 1948 and has had different personalities ranging from a playful trickster to a mastermind criminal suffering from an incredible obsessive compulsion.
He has had a bunch of great stories in the Batman comics and only a selected few villains can match his impressive schemes. The Riddler is also one of the very privileged criminals in the world who has deduced Batman’s true identity but don’t worry; he can’t spill the info since what good is a riddle that every villain in Gotham knows?
Edward Nygma is a tragic criminal in the DC universe without a doubt. This became even more evident to me in an issue of Gotham Adventures:
“You don’t understand… I really didn’t want to leave you any clues. I really planned never to go back to Arkham Asylum. But I left you a clue anyway. So I… I have to go back there. Because I might need help. I… I might actually be crazy.”
For the Riddler it was never about the money, it was never about the killing and crime, it was always about the need to prove his intellectual superiority.
19. The Scarecrow: “Mind over matter “– These words could not be truer for Dr. Jonathan Crane.
He was deserted by his father before he was born. And his mother did not love him and left him in the care of his abusive religious great grandmother. As a little boy he was locked into a broken-down church full of birds, the memories of this event would haunt him for the rest of his life.
As a teen he was taunted because of his extremely thin build and was called Scarecrow for this. His rage and lust for revenge would build up in him the following years. After high school he began studying psychology.
His professor and colleagues always felt that Crane was focusing too much on the aspect of fear. One day Crane wanted to become the professor of psychologist at the University of Gotham, a position he couldn’t get. He then turned his focus on the power of chemistry and how hallucinogens could affect the mind. He began experimenting on his toxins and eventually tested them on people and made the term “scared to death” a reality. A reality that would kill his professor. Finally Crane became the professor of psychology. Now he had his professor’s resources to learn about the nature of fear.
After an accident demonstration about fear, he was dismissed as professor. He soon killed the people responsible and then moved on to a life crime. He remembered the taunts at school and took the name of Scarecrow and never looked back.
Jonathan Crane knows the mind to be an unbelievable place where many strange things reside, especially the horrors. Anyone who stands in his way will experience their fears come true. A method has shown time and time again to be extremely effective.
His approach for theatrics is identical to a certain Gotham guardian, which makes it next to impossible to scare him. However Scarecrow has in turn used Batman’s greatest weapon against him, a feat he has done since his first appearance in World’s Finest Comics #3 in 1941.
Once again a little boy is turned into a life of crime by an abusive past. Psychologists turned psychopaths is an extremely dangerous combination. And Dr. Crane knows this. He also knows fear to be a potent source of power, if not the biggest.
18. Black Manta: Who’s Aquaman’s arch nemesis? If you were to say the Ocean Master you wouldn’t be wrong, until Adventure Comics #452 in 1977. After that issue there was no doubt who was Arthur “Orin” Curry’s arch nemesis: Black Manta.
Whereas the Ocean Master is mighty, Black Manta is simply wicked and dangerous.
Why you say? I’ll tell you why: he killed an infant! He actually took the life of a truly innocent being. And as you probably understand, it was Aquaman’s child. He kidnapped and killed Aquaman’s two year old son! That’s just damnable. There are not many villains in the DC universe that are so depraved.
This is why I choose Black Manta at rank 18. Bizarro was originally the true contender for this spot but I had to choose Black Manta. Bizarro is just ‘misunderstood’ to some degree. Black Manta is vicious and sick. And wait, there is more!
Black Manta’s killing of the heir of Atlantis would forever change the “ridiculous” Aquaman. And what a change it was: he became incredible darker with unhealthy doses of cynicism and depression.
This event in Aquaman’s life would cause the downfall of Aquaman’s kingdom and his wife Mera. The loss of their child gave Mera a nervous breakdown. She left Aquaman, blaming him for the death of their child, claiming his weak genes the reason.
One might now ask why Black Manta did this, who is he and what did Aquaman do to deserve such a fate?
His first appearance was in Aquaman #35 in 1967, though his origin (the first) wasn’t revealed until about 30 years later. As a boy, David loved the sea. The endless horizon and its waves and winds. Unfortunately he was kidnapped. David became a victim of rape and forced to work on a ship for an unspecified amount of time.
Onboard the ship he witness the might of Aquaman with dolphins and he desperately tried signal him for help without luck. One day during his escape he was forced to killing one of his tormentors. The sea which was such a beautiful place had become a desert full with the skeletons. In his frustration and bottomless anger he saw Aquaman as the incarnation of the sea made flesh. So David decided he had to kill him.
He made a technological suit based on the appearance of a Manta. Then he began his career as Black Manta: the arch nemesis to the king of the seas.
17. Deathstroke: Slade Wilson was sixteen years old when he first enlisted in the US army and he has ever since been someone you don’t want to meet on bad grounds.
Let me put this real easy: you don’t want to fight Deathstroke! A lot of you will probably scream at this article for me saying this but anyone who can rival the Dark Knight’s fighting skills, tactics and intelligence is a force to be reckoned with.
There I said it! If you want protection this is the guy to go to. Strike that, Deathstroke is the ONLY guy to go to! This was proven in Identity Crisis when Doctor Light enlisted his services. Elongated Man, the Flash, Zatanna, Hawkman, Green Arrow, Black Canary, the Atom and Green Lantern took on Deathstroke together and had an extremely hard time defeating him! If it weren’t for Oliver Queen thrusting his arrow into Deathstroke’s eye they would’ve had an even harder time.
After serving in Korea he received the rank of Major. Soon after he met Captain Adeline Kane who was tasked with training young soldiers in new fighting techniques. Captain Kane was amazed over how skilled Slade Wilson was. They fell in love and she became pregnant with their first child, Grant.
Slade then volunteered for an experimental program designed to manipulate the adrenal gland of soldiers so they would resist truth serums. The experiment failed and he fell into a coma. When Slade awoke he was smarter, faster, stronger and more agile than ever. He had become a super solider.
However, the experiment had a serious drawback for Slade as he couldn’t get reassigned into the army.
He became depressed, without the army he was lost. He could no more serve his country, his dream was dead. He turned to hunting which was not much of a challenge for a man of his abilities. Soon Adeline was pregnant with their second son, Joseph. Then tragedy struck.
A group of mercenaries broke into Wilsons home and kidnapped their second son.
Wilson then admitted to his wife that he was in fact one of the world’s greatest assassins: Deathstroke the Terminator.
He went after the mercenaries and realized that it was the plan of the Jackal. Jackal wanted information about a client but Deathstroke refused. He gambled that he could reach his son before Jackal gave the order of killing him. He did save his son but at a cost: Joseph had his vocal cord destroyed by one of the mercenaries.
Deathstroke took him to the hospital where his wife tried to kill him in anger. She took out his right eye. His confidence in his physical abilities didn’t falter at all. He would make it a point not to hide his “impaired vision” by marking half of his mask black where he was blind.
His first appearance was in The New Teen Titans #2 in 1980 and has ever since been ranked as one of the greatest villains of all time. Deathstroke is also a deep character because of his morality. He is a villain but has been shown be walking in shades of gray. He has been occasionally a hero, aiding the Titans or acting on his own to help others.
Because of this, DC’s deadliest assassin is a most intriguing character.
16. Black Mask: Gotham City has a one of DC’s greatest rogues. This villain is a testament to that.
Roman Sionis aka Black Mask is a sadistic killing psychopath who is one of the greatest (worst) crime lords Gotham has ever seen. If you make one mistake working for him, he will kill you. If you do your job right, he will kill you. If you don’t do anything, he will kill you.
Roman Sionis was born into one of Gotham’s wealthy families. A family more interested in their social status and friends than their son who was dropped on his head after birth. His mother and father just didn’t care about him.
Because of the family’s status young Roman was forced to become friends with Bruce Wayne. His parents hated the Wayne’s but they still associated with them. Their hypocrisy had a deep impact on him and he grew to hate and resent his parents and the “masks” they wore in public.
After graduating high school, he was given a high ranking position inside his father’s company, Janus Cosmetics. There he fell in love with Circe, a working class secretary. His parents didn’t approve and they wanted it ended. Roman, with all his built up anger through the years burst and burned down the family mansion, killing his parents in the process. He chooses ebony coffins for the funeral; his parents were empty inside, a black vacuum.
He inherited the family fortune and Janus Cosmetics, and gets engaged to Circe. He then runs the business into the ground with a toxin scandal which disfigured hundreds of woman.
Circe leaves him and Wayne Enterprise buys Janus Cosmetics. Roman then has had enough.
He goes to the family mausoleum and breaks open his mother’s coffin lid, carves a mask from it, becoming Black Mask.
From here on out he started the False Face Society, every member needed a mask. He then beings his crusade against Bruce Wayne by abducting Wayne Enterprise employees. Once captured he use the acid make up that made his company go bankrupt. Then its Circe time: he horribly disfigures her in an attempt to reunite their relationship. As you can guess it doesn’t go the way he “hoped”. She goes on to commit suicide and Black Mask begins talking with a mannequin after the loss.
Batman finally caught up with him in the ruins of the Sionis mansion and in a desperate attempt to escape the world’s greatest detective, he sets fire to the place once more but is almost killed by it. He is saved by Batman but his mask has now been burned into his face, leaving him disfigured. This turns the already mad Black Mask into a borderline psychopath.
Now, you really don’t need me telling you that a guy who kills his parents and carves a mask out of one of their coffins is unbalanced but Black Mask, oh man!
For this reason, he is one of my favorite Gotham rogues. He truly is a different class of villain.
You got your decent crooks, insane criminals and then you have Black Mask.
Though one of the most interesting villains in the DC universe, Black Mask entered Gotham City in Batman #386, August 1985. Roman Sionis had a good 21 years before being killed by Gotham’s favorite pussycat. The second Black Mask is good but no way near Sionis.
Now I want to hear you opinions on my ranking though it isn't a lot to go on.
And until next time: BEWARE MY POWER!