This has been hard. I've had a lot of assignments to do(I'm new to university life) and therefore there is not as much of my writing in some of these descriptions(that's good!)
As I mentioned last time I did this, I am a proud DC fan boy. I love DC Comics. They have (in my mind) the absolute finest comics to offer. Therefore I thought it would be a cool idea to submit my thoughts on who's my favorite heroes and villains in a series. I am will now continue with the villains.
My criteria has been, well, my own. If you want to know a little bit more, check out the previous article. Now, lets go down to business.
DC Comics has made something out of the ordinary. Something that everybody tried to replicate but never succeeded in doing. So in the end this series is about homage to the single greatest comic book company ever.
So here it is, my choices 20 to 16:
15.
Two-Face: Harvey Dent was one of the few upstanding attorneys in Gotham City who only wanted to help. He soon became involved with Batman and became one of his closest allies in the fight for justice. But in the end he also would become one of Batman’s greatest failures and enemies. The tragedy leading to his corruption is a testament that the ever continued fight against evil has a price.
Harvey Dent did not have an easy childhood. He grew up in a lower class family and would always have a dislike for the upper-class citizens of Gotham. His violent and mentally ill father abused him as young. The favorite form of abuse was the simple flipping of coin; a double headed coin with the promise to spare the beating if it landed tails, which it never did.
The abuse and hardships of lower class would result in Dent developing a repressed mental illness, no unlike his father’s condition of schizophrenia. It would stay dormant for years to come, until a terrible accident would change Dent forever.
He would often read about corruption in the police and judges letting criminals of murder and conspiracy charges without even looking at the evidence during high school. And to his surprise there were not many who cared. After graduating he would come to a crossroad; what to was he going to make of himself?
The choices would eventually stand between law school and architecture. Not being able to decide he choose to let the fates decide so he flipped a coin; heads – law school, tails – architect. However, when the coin landed in the palm of his hand breaking news hit Gotham radio: Gotham City’s greatest citizens Thomas and Martha Wayne had been murdered.
Shocked by this appalling act and learning that their young son witnessed his parent’s murder in Park Row, he forgot to look at the coin. Gotham’s greatest had been killed by the city they tried to save. Dent decided there that he was going to law school; he was going to make a difference.
He was nicknamed “Apollo” by the media because of his good looks, his charm and his bravery on the war against corruption. The judges and other lawyers were afraid of him because of his judicial abilities and talents. When Batman came, Dent was one of the first to acknowledge to the public that he supported Batman’s intentions and actions, alongside Commissioner James Gordon. They soon would become allies and friends. Batman gave him criminals and irrefutable evidence and Dent would look them up. When Dent finally became the district attorney he posed an even greater threat to the criminal underworld. The crime lord Carmine Falcone had suffered under Dent’s fight on crime, losing henchmen and payments. They couldn’t touch Batman but they could get to Harvey Dent.
Falcone hired Mickey Sullivan to eliminate Dent but the attempt failed. After the attempt of his life, Dent forged a triumvirate with Batman and Commissioner Gordon. No matter how sleazy and dirty the criminals, they must never sink down to their level for then the battle of philosophy and morals would be lost.
When the mysterious killer known as Holiday begins killing Gotham’s organized crime scene during the Long Halloween storyline, a conflict arises between the two major crime lords Salvatore Maroni and Carmine Falcone, each believing that the Holiday killer is working for the other. After the killing of Maroni’s father by Holiday, Maroni makes a deal with Dent to give him everything he wants and needs on Falcone to make an arrest. But Maroni has a different intention: before the trial, he bribed Dent’s assistant to deliver him a package containing acid. Believing Dent to be Holiday, Maroni throws it in his face during trial. Harvey Dent is left horribly disfigured on the left side of his face and hand.
During his stay at the hospital, Harvey Dent descends into madness when he sees himself in a mirror. The abuse of his father finally took over him and his schizophrenic persona swallowed him whole. He becomes obsessed with duality and opposites. He escapes and finds his father’s coin. Dent adopts the fitting but morbid name of Two-Face; Forever in conflict with the other half of himself, he tosses coins to decide his actions. Batman didn’t figure out Maroni’s intention fast enough and would always blame himself for Harvey Dent’s corruption.
The thing I find so fascinating with Two-Face is that he is not 100% evil. Every time he hatches up a plan for a crime he will always flips his two headed coin. Simply leaving it up the coin to decide. He has also been shown to do good if the coin comes up right.
In Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth it is shown that Two-Face is totally dependent on the coin and can only use dual objects. If there are too many possible outcomes then he just turns comatose.
And over the years there have been several attempts to repair his facial scars as the acid incident was the catalyst that made his mental illness cross over. There have been signs of progress but he always goes back to his dual personas.
Harvey Dent/Two-Face entered Detective Comics #66 in 1942 and is one of the most recognizable and interesting villains in Gotham. My reason to putting him at rank 15 is the reason that everybody knows Two-Face. After Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, almost everybody knows of him. People remember him because he was the hero that ended up becoming the villain in the end. A terrible transition but so immensely fascinating.
Two-Face doesn’t have a plan to destroy the entire world and enslave the galaxy but he is very real.
What a different life Harvey Dent would’ve had if he’d only looked at the coin that fateful night of the Wayne murder. He’d been an architect instead.
14.
Bane: What to say, what to say indeed. Bane is one of Batman’s most intelligent and physically powerful foes. He is strong, really strong. And you probably can’t get bigger than Bane unless you have a Mr. Hyde side that turns into a gigantic green cucumber when angry.
Bane is a relative new character with first appearance in Batman: Vengeance of Bane in 1993. He would achieve eternal infamy after Batman: Knightfall where he would earn the nick name “The Man Who Broke the Bat”. Yes, he broke Batman, more precisely: he broke his back! HE BROKE HIS BACK!!! No one has achieved that feat. No single villain after has done what Bane did!
I am not such a Bane fan but no DC Comics fan can deny his impact. Because of this single achievement Bane is ranked nr. 14 on my list.
Born to serve the life sentence of his father, Bane’s childhood and early adult life were spent behind the walls of Peña Duro, a famous prison located in Santa Prisca. During his imprisonment he read a lot. He began working out at the prison’s gym and he fought almost every day so his fighting skills were exceptional. He committed his first murder at the age of eight, stabbing a criminal who wanted to use him to gain information about the prison. (Needless to say, there are not many 8 year olds who stabs somebody to death in prison – badass!)
Bane would become the king of the prison and the prison’s controllers noticed him. They eventually forced him to become a test subject for a mysterious drug known as Venom, which had killed every single subject it had been tried on. It nearly killed Bane, and “what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” is quite literary what happens.
He escapes Peña Duro to Gotham some years later with ambitions on destroying the arguably greatest fighter in the world: Batman. Bane destroyed the walls of Arkham Asylum, allowing all its inhabitants to roam the streets of Gotham freely. Batman spends three months rounding them up, barely standing after this incident he returns to Wayne Manor where Bane meets him. They fight, and the battle doesn’t last long before Batman is too tired to continue. Bane decides that to kill him would be too easy. He wanted to castrate him (not literary); breaking his back, leaving Batman ashamed and paraplegic.
Bane establishes himself as the ruler of Gotham’s underworld and anyone who dares to go against him is more than welcomed. Bruce Wayne passes on the mantle of Batman to Jean-Paul Valley, better known to some as Azrael. He is a corrupt version of Batman, allowing villains to die. He also refuses to recognize the boy wonder as his partner. He and Bane cross paths and thanks to Azrael’s combat suit he defeats Bane by severing the tubes that pumps Venom into his blood. He then gives Bane a savage beating, leaving in almost the same state as Bruce Wayne.
I know I probably should write a bit more about Bane but the rest isn’t as interesting I think. He turns somewhat good, then falls a bit back, then “good” again etc. What is interesting is that Bane did what nobody else could. And it’s a feat that no one has replicated ever since. Quite simply put, Bane is “The Man Who Broke the Bat.”
13.
Professor Zoom: I originally planned to have Brainiac here but I decided that Brainiac should be ranked higher and we needed a 'different' type of villain. And because of my Flash article I decided that a Flash villain was a necessity to include on this list.
In that article I confessed that I’ve never been a true Flash follower (it shames me to say) so I didn’t really know which villain would be more suitable for a Flash film. Gorilla Grodd seemed as the obvious choice but I just find him too comical. Captain Cold was a contender but I just felt he didn’t quite give me the epicness that this one Flash villain needed to be in a featured film and my “epic” villain list. Then lightning stroke. I had just read the Flash Rebirth. It was so clear: Professor Zoom, the reverse Flash, his true arch nemesis. I’ll try to keep this one as short as I can!
Eobard Thawne was a successful science teacher living in the 25th century. He longed for the heroic age of the 20th century where all the greatest heroes arose. The absolute greatest in his mind was Barry Allen, the second Flash. He was obsessed with Barry Allen, even talking about him as he was a good old friend of his. He eventually underwent an operation; make himself look more like Allen.
Then one fateful day, he came across Barry’s cosmic treadmill in an antique store. He killed the cashier and took it. Now he had an actual chance of meeting his beloved hero. All he needed was to duplicate the event that gave Flash his powers so he could run off to the 20th century. He eventually achieved a similar incident that gave him incredible powers at the cost of his whole fortune. However the treadmill, being out of use for centuries, miscalibrated and he arrived too late. Barry Allen had been dead some years and Wally West was the official Flash. The journey was pointless. In a moment of desperation he visited the Flash Museum and the fates presented him his fate: he was destined to become Flash’s greatest nemesis under the guise of Professor Zoom.
This news drove him over the edge. He didn’t want to be the villain but the hero. Too much overload for his mind; he lost it. He showed up at Barry Allen’s house dressed up as Barry. After pretending for several months to be Wally’s mentor a battle with Combine would change everything. After bragging that he killed the Flash, Thawne completely lost it. He attacked Combine and beat him halfway to death. Wally then truly realized that his mentor had not returned.
Thawne left Wally to die in the Combine trap, nobody could know his secret. At the museum he changed costumes to Professor Zoom’s yellow one and he accepted his fate. Wally escaped the Combine’s trap and met up with him. Wally tricked Zoom to returning to his own era on the cosmic treadmill. He lost his powerless and lost his memories of the trip to the past but his obsession for Barry Allen turned into anguish and hate.
He would then begin a career as a criminal in his own era. The police department and his fellow crooks knew him as the Professor due to his scientific leanings. Ever since his forgotten visit to the past, his admiration for the Flash had turned to extreme dislike but he was still his favorite character in the history of mankind. Everything Professor Zoom did was the exact opposite of Barry Allen. He was selfish, arrogant, narcissistic; a truly corrupt, twisted version of Flash.
There has since then been several different and conflicting accounts of how Eobard Thawne became the Reverse-Flash, but in every single one he is shown to be a sociopathic, crazed killer. Imagine having a stalker, but he wants to wear your face and steal your wife (not that “usual” stalkers are not crazy!).
In a storyline, Zoom falls in love with Barry’s wife Iris West. He gives her an ultimatum to either leave Barry or die. At a costume party the next day, Zoom asked Iris what she had decided. She slaps him, saying that even if she didn't love Barry so much, she would never let him lay a hand on her.
Zoom has one of his henchman drug Barry. Iris enters a room searching for a glass and water. Zoom is in the same room, only invisible because of his speed. He then vibrates his hand through Iris' skull, irreversibly damaging the molecular compositions in her brain. And framing a guy named Yorkin.
Zoom finally reveals himself to Barry claiming to know the killer of his wife. As usual, Zoom tricks Barry and leaves him for dead. In the end Barry deduces that Zoom did it and unfortunately for Zoom, Barry traps him in an extra-dimensional prison.
During his imprisonment Barry ends up engaged to Fiona Webb. Zoom escapes his extra-dimensional prison and shows up, claiming that he would once again kill the wife of the Flash. Barry chases him across the world. In the end, Zoom was about to kill Fiona, but Barry snaps his neck. And also fails to show up for his own wedding. The Flash is charged with manslaughter and goes on to face a long and hard trial.
As I am writing this very sentence I realize that I my “try to make it short” was not a very good one. The Flash and Professor Zoom has a very “delicate” relationship that contains a lot of incidents. And my English is terrible too, so please forgive me.
To hurt one of DC Comic’s absolute finest is feat not many really can do. Professor Zoom did it to one of the most human and righteous heroes of them all. He killed Barry Allen’s wife! It’s terrible! That automatically gets you ranked very, very high on everyone’s villain list. And the dearer the superhero, the higher the rank.
In the end, Professor Zoom is a time travelling, masquerading sociopathic stalker without regard to innocents or the law. He is the absolute antithesis of the Flash. I am sure that you realize as I do that there are different types of stalkers, and he is one of the very worst to have after you.
But don’t you worry, Professor Zoom returned to life in Blackest Night.
12.
Brainiac: When a comic book character is the origin of an eponymous to the word genius, then you know he must be the real deal, sort of. But trust me, Brainiac is the real deal. He is one of the greatest villains of Superman. Some even speculate that Brainiac had something to do with the destruction of Krypton, and this does not shock me at all.
Vril Dox was a Coluan scientist. He cloned himself to get a lab assistant; the clone would later be called Vril Dox II. He acquired a spaceship and went on a journey through space, acquiring knowledge and using his robotic drones to capture living organisms of various alien species. Along the way, he came to Krypton some time during the lifetime of General Zod, and kidnapped the entire city of Kandor, miniaturizing it in his spaceship. He also created a remote scout unit, which was programmed to think it was the original Vril Dox.
The remote scout unit came to Earth as a cloud of nanotechnological robots, and took over the body of sideshow mentalist Milton Fine, who worked under the alias "Brainiac". Needing cranial fluid to maintain his possession of Fine, Dox went on a murder spree. He discovered Fine had genuine psychic powers, which he frequently used on Superman.
Lex Luthor would capture Brainiac, but Brainiac used his powers to wrest control of Lexcorp away from him. Under his mental domination, Lexcorp scientists recreated his Coluan form. The diodes in his head now increased and stabilized his mental powers, as well as allowing him direct access to computer banks. He continued to plague Superman, using a combination of mental powers and computer control.
Following the loss of Milton Fine's body, Vril Dox would place his consciousness in a robot body he called Brainiac 2.5. He became briefly obsessed with gaining Superman's form.
Brainiac revealed he had placed a sleeper virus in Lexcorp's Y2K bug safeguards. This was intended to dramatically boost his abilities. Instead, it allowed Brainiac 13 to arrive from the 64th century. Brainiac 13 stole Brainiac's body and placed Brainiac's mind in the body of Lena Luthor. Brainiac 13 then converted Metropolis into a futuristic replica of itself; Lex Luthor traded his daughter, Lena Luthor, to Brainiac 13 in exchange for being given control of his B13 Technology. Brainiac 2.5 left with Brainiac 13.
During the Imperiex attack, Brainiac 13 and Brainiac 2.5 became involved. Although initially working against Imperiex with the heroes of Earth, they tried to double-cross them later on. However, this plan backfired; Brainiac 13 was sent back through time to die in the Big Bang and Brainiac 2.5 lost control of Lena Luthor. This copy of Brainiac is now considered dead.
When a Brainiac drone arrived on Earth searching for Kryptonians, Superman defeated it and brought it to the Fortress of Solitude. He mentions to Supergirl that Brainiac is an alien from the planet Colu and he has an extremely powerful telekinetic mind. The first time he encountered him, Brainiac possessed the mind of Milton Fine. Each time Brainiac has arrived, it's been through a different body, sometimes organic, sometimes robotic.
Supergirl is frightened of Brainiac as she knows of what he did to Kandor.
On his arrival on earth, Brainiac is invading Metropolis, Brainiac Kidnaps Superman and Supergirl, revealing the true source of Kara Zor-El (the coming of Argo City, where she escapes to the earth after his hometown was destroyed by Brainiac).
Kandor was rescued by Superman (Superman defeated Brainiac), leading next to the Fortress of Solitude, it reverts to the city, freeing the city at its original size. Later, with the conflicts in the land of Krypton, Kandor leaves the ground, creating a new planet in the solar system yet, far from land, the Colu technology develops the Kryptonian city, booted a new era, among the New Krypton.
Some say that Galactus from Marvel is the “Ender of Worlds.” Brainiac is the original ender of worlds, and has been so since 1958. There has been a lot of different version of him over the years, and there will surely come more.
To describe Brainiac in one word, I’d use the word parasite. He takes all, without giving. Well, the only thing he gives is death and destruction.
Of all the Superman villains (there are not so many good ones, really), Brainiac could do be a good possible villain in the new Superman reboot.
11.
Ra’s al Ghul: The Demon’s Head. An eco terrorist of grand proportions. Imagine Green Peace really abusing Bane’s Venom and being the son of the famous fascist Benito Mussolini, then multiply that by a thousand times, and will still getting a very understated picture of who Ra’s al Ghul is. To save the planet, he would kill every single last one of us, and he has done some “controlling” of the population a few times during his 700 year old life span. He is actually one of the few people in the world you can just look at and just go "hey, that guy's evil!"
This virtual immortality he has achieved is by the results of his secret “Lazarus Pits” which refuels life.
His greatest adversary is the Batman of Gotham. Ironically Bats is also the only man Ra’s deems eligible to marry his daughter. In many ways Ra’s al Ghul is an anti hero by definition since he wants the help the world but the mass genocides hold him back.
His want for this world’s betterment is something that Batman understand but they always come into conflict because of Ra’s radical view, if you will.
Ra's al Ghul was born for over 700 years ago to a tribe of nomads in a desert somewhere in Arabia, near a city whose inhabitants' ancestors have journeyed to the Arabian Peninsula from China. Ra's develops an interested in science from an early age. Being unable to learn any science living as a nomad, he abandons his tribe to live in the city, where he can conduct his scientific research. He becomes a physician and marries a woman named Sora, the love of his life.
Ra's then discovers the secret of the Lazarus Pit, and he saves a dying prince by lowering him into it. The prince, who is secretly a sadist, is then driven completely insane by the Lazarus Pit. He proceeds to strangle Sora, on whom he has already had his eye for some time. The King of the city then declares Ra's guilty of killing his own wife and sentences him to a slow, tortured death in a cage with his wife Sora's ever decaying corpse.
Ra's is then released by the son of an elderly blind woman who he failed to save. The son wanted to thank Ra's for at least easing his mother's suffering during her last few hours. Ra's and the son escape into the desert, seeking the very tribe that Ra's was born into. Ra's convinces the chief of his tribe, his uncle, to follow Ra's in his quest for revenge by promising the downfall of the king of the city. Ra’s then infects the prince with a deadly virus thanks the scientific knowledge he has acquired.
The king of the city comes to ask Ra's to cure the prince again; he apologize and confess he should never had let his son’s guilt pass onto Ra’s. Ra's however doesn’t care and kills both the king and the prince. Ra's then leads his tribe to raze the city to the ground and kill all of its inhabitants. Subsequently, Ra's declares himself the "Demon's Head”, Ra’s al Ghul.
The League of Assassins is eventually created.
As centuries pass, Ra’s destroys and rebuild several civilizations. He eventually comes the one of the most corrupted and criminally infested cities of all: Gotham. Here he is introduced the corrupted city’s champion named Batman. To him it’s clear that Batman is a worthy opponent, believing them only slightly different in their views (and after a story line involving the kidnapping of Robin), Ra’s offers Batman to become his heir, but Batman rejects his offer. At this moment Batman became Ra’s mortal enemy for defending a corrupt world.
Ra’s al Ghul has beaten the entire JLA by stealing Batman’s notes on every single superhero. And he has even gotten him kicked out of the JLA. He is almost always trying to do some global cleansing and always comes into conflict with Bat’s. He is a superb fighter and excellent in martial arts.
He is also interesting because he sees himself as a hero and the rest are villains. There are only ultimatums: you’re either with him or against him.
We must not forget that he is also the grandfather to Damian, Batman’s son with Talia al Ghul.
It’s safe to say that since his introduction in Batman #232 in June, 1971, he has been an essential Batman villain, will continue to be in the years to come.
Now I apologize for all grammar faults and things in that liking. English is not my first language.
Anyway, thank you for reading(the few of you who do!)
Now I want to hear you opinions on my ranking though it isn't a very lot to go on.
And until next time: BEWARE MY POWER!