7 DC Villains Who are the Definition of Pure Evil (And Number 1 Isn’t the Joker)
DC Comics has some of the most iconic and dangerous villains in all of fiction. Many of these superpowered criminals have become household names because of how much they embody true evil. While there are plenty of villains with sympathetic backstories or understandable motives, others love spreading misery and death for the sake of it. From serial killers to cosmic dictators, DC Comics is home to some villains who are the textbook definition of irredeemable. Because of the countless atrocities they commit and their complete lack of empathy for those they harm and kill, these DC villains are bad to the bone.
DC Comics is home to the most virtuous and pure hearted of heroes. So naturally, the DC Multiverse is also plagued by some of the most vile and twisted villains of all time.
7) Victor Zsasz
Gotham is full of colorful costumed crooks with crazy gimmicks and gadgets, constantly running rampant through the streets. However, where most of these villains seek money, power, attention, or Batman’s destruction, Victor Zsasz is simply a straightforward sadistic serial killer. He has no greater ambitions than just to kill anyone who crosses his path, including children. The closest thing Zsasz has to a motive is the belief that life is meaningless, and therefore he’s “saving” people from their pointless lives. Still, the sheer glee Zsasz has when he’s carving up people makes it clear that he’s mostly committing these murders because he enjoys seeing the life drain from people’s terrified eyes. Zsasz takes such pride in his kills that he carves a tally mark into his skin for every life he’s taken. And with hundreds of tally marks etched across his body, Zsasz is among the most notorious and brutal serial killers Gotham City has ever seen, and that’s saying a lot.
6) Reverse-Flash
There’s perhaps no person more petty and obsessively vindictive in comic book history than Eobard Thawne, aka the Reverse-Flash. The textbook definition of a toxic fanboy: Thawne was so obsessed with Barry Allen that it led him to use his mastery of time travel to forcibly insert himself into his hero’s life, making it an unending hell. By manipulating Barry’s childhood, Reverse-Flash erased the hero’s childhood friend from existence, killed his dog, burned his house down, and even murdered his mother and framed his father for the crime. Of course, Reverse-Flash didn’t limit his crimes to the past, as he famously killed Barry’s wife, Iris. Barry isn’t the only one who has felt the wrath of the Reverse-Flash. By manipulating his own history, Reverse-Flash has killed everyone who ever got in his way, including his own family. Reverse-Flash truly believes that his purpose in life, and the only way to get Barry to notice him, is to spend every waking moment torturing the hero’s friends and family.
5) Joker
The Joker is the most notorious criminal the world has ever seen, with a body count in the thousands. The Clown Prince of Crime is a true agent of chaos who lives to spread misery and death because he thinks it’s hilarious. The Joker has committed some of the most horrendous and infamous crimes committed by any supervillain in history, including murdering Jason Todd and paralyzing Barbara Gordon. Not only will the Joker break his victims physically, but he’ll often attack their psychological weaknesses to drive them mad, as he did to Harley Quinn and attempted to do to Jim Gordon. Whenever people discuss villains the heroes should kill, the Joker is always the first example they cite because he’s such an amoral, psychopathic, cynical monster who has ruined countless lives to satisfy his sadistic sense of humor. The Joker embodies some of the darkest aspects of humanity and won’t rest until Batman and the rest of Gotham have twisted smiles on their faces.
4) Batman Who Laughs
If you thought the Joker was bad, imagine a version with all the skills and intelligence of Batman. Hailing from the Dark Multiverse, the Batman Who Laughs is a version of the Dark Knight who was infected with Joker Venom. Having adopted his archenemy’s sadistic sense of humor, the Batman Who Laughs gunned down the Bat-Family, forced Superman to kill his own family, and wiped out all life on his Earth. With such a twisted resume, the bat god Barbatos made the Batman Who Laughs the leader of his invasion of the positive universe. The Batman Who Laughs was so evil that Batman had to work with the Joker to fight him. This twisted version of the Caped Crusader lived only to destroy or corrupt everything in his path, with his ultimate goal being the destruction of all of existence. By harnessing the power of a version of Batman imbued with Doctor Manhattan’s abilities, the Batman Who Laughs transformed himself into the omnipotent Darkest Knight and threatened to annihilate the multiverse. The Batman Who Laughs is the ultimate symbol of nihilism in DC Comics.
3) Trigon
It should probably go without saying that a demon lord who has conquered and destroyed countless worlds doesn’t have redeeming qualities. Once an alien conqueror, Trigon encountered a group of beings called the Divine who sought to contain all the evil energy in the universe with an energy called the Heart of Darkness. However, when the Divine reached Trigon’s planet, Trigon literally ate the Heart of Darkness and absorbed the evil of nearly a hundred galaxies. With his power and thirst for conquest increased to a near-infinite degree, Trigon spread his evil across numerous universes until he was banished to the Hell-like dimension of Azarath, which he promptly conquered. Trigon is so evil that he views his own daughter, Raven, as nothing more than a tool and gateway for him to enter the main DC Universe. Trigon is a demon of unbelievable cruelty who seeks to turn all of creation into a hellish kingdom where he rules supreme.
2) Anti-Monitor
No villain in all of DC Comics has a higher body count than the Anti-Monitor. A being of pure antimatter and the ruler of the antimatter universe, this omnipotent force of pure destruction waged war against the entire multiverse during the Crisis on Infinite Earths event. With no regard for life, the Anti-Monitor sent numerous indestructible waves of antimatter that eradicated everything in their path. Trillions upon trillions of universes were snuffed out, with the Anti-Monitor not showing even a fraction of remorse for all the lives he took in his genocidal conquest. Where once the multiverse was teeming with infinite worlds, the Anti-Monitor only failed to destroy the last four. Countless iconic heroes fell to the Anti-Monitor, including Supergirl. Even when the Anti-Monitor was on death’s door, he still desperately tried to kill the heroes who opposed him. The Anti-Monitor is a near-unstoppable force of pure destruction that would gladly annihilate all of existence if it meant that he was victorious.
1) Darkseid
Darkseid isn’t just a villain with evil traits; he is literally the concept of evil given physical form. With a true form existing within the higher dimension of Fourth World, Darkseid is the New God of Evil, with every cruel deed, selfish action, and hateful thought in the multiverse being extensions of his will. Darkseid views gods and mortals alike as mere pawns who must have their free will stripped from them so that they may eternally worship him as their one true master. Darkseid rules over the hellish world of Apokolips with an iron fist and doesn’t think twice about eradicating his most loyal family members and servants on a whim. All Darkseid cares is about is conquering the multiverse and reshaping it in his twisted image. Those who face the depths of Darkseid’s cruelty will eternally scream for a death that will never be granted. Darkseid is incapable of being a good person because it’s antithetical to his very nature and role in the cosmos.
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