September is Villains Month according to DC, so what better way to celebrate it than to start listing my top favorite DC villains of all time. I will be posting my favorite DC villains throughout the month, just not every day as I did so with the Heroes.
And with that said, let’s kick start this list with:
While I knew of his existence beforehand, it was through “Superman: The Animated Series” that I truly learned about this character. I loved how they introduced him through the episode with in a similar fashion to the way Ra’s al Ghul was introduced years prior in “Batman: The Animated Series,” but it was really his work at the tail end of “Father’s Day” and then everything in “Apokolips Now” that made me love the character. He was a villain that was not meant to be trifled with. He was a true threat, even more so than the likes of Brainiac, and throughout the series, Superman never truly defeated him. I also love the fact that he does not have to have some complicated backstory to be evil, he just is evil, and at times, that is a better threat than someone who has a motive to be a villain.
Afterwards, it seemed like Darkseid became an even bigger threat throughout the DC universe as he and his minions started becoming big time villains throughout the more recent books with Darkseid being the main villain in “Final Crisis.” In fact, even in the New 52 reboot Darkseid essentially became the first villain the Justice League fought against.
I enjoyed what I have read from Jack Kirby’s original comics, and while I would love to have seen what Kirby had in store as far as a conclusion goes, in some ways, there were huge benefits for there not being one. Who knows if Darkseid would have been around past the 70s had Kirby completed his “Fourth Worlds” storyline. Sure, being dead is never really gone forever in the world of comic books, but you never know what would have been in store for the tyrannical god in Kirby’s original vision.
Nevertheless, outside of Darkseid’s psychopathic desires to destroy all life, I also love the amount of characters that resolve around him. Be it Granny Goodness and her insane Furies, Steppenwolf, who is Darkseid’s uncle, to his sons Kalibak and Orion, and all of those that surround even New Genesis such as Mr. Miracle, Metron, and Big Barda. Even Apokolips has an interesting mythology about it and its origins. Jack Kirby was a genius when he created this character and it was nice to see even more genius used when it came to Bruce Timm and his gang to utilize it.