I week or two ago I did my top 5 supernatural heroes, so doing the
villains seemed a natural. But it wasn’t so easy. This was a hard
category to research. Can you guess what came up every time I put
“Supernatural Villains” into google? Yeah. It’s pretty clear that while
the Supernatural Heroes of the DC Universe are big names and stand out,
the villains aren’t quite household names the same way.
I did manage to find five, so here we go in no particular order.
Solomon Grundy
This is a zombie super villain who was very powerful. And at the same
time was sort of tragic figure. I guess most zombies are. I first became
aware of him by his portrayal in the old Superfriends cartoon.Why did
they use him? Good question. (even dumber? He was in the live action
Legends of the Supeheroes. WTF??) Anyway after fighting the Golden Age
Green Lantern in the old days, he fought Superman and Batman before
getting all tied into the Swamp Thing’s mythos. There was a time when he
was loyal to Jade and even helped Infinity Inc, until he is tricked
into attacking and killing several member and became evil again. He also
appeared in the Batman story The Long Halloween which I considered
reviewing for this year. Maybe next year.
Silver Banshee
I talked about her before but this was a really badass villain. She was
created in the 80’s and quickly became one Superman’s more popular and
dangerous foes. Heck. she nearly killed him the first time they met! By
the way for those wondering, in that first issues the “ghost” Superman
was actually The Martian Manhunter using his shape changing abilities to
fool her. See her powers don’t work on the same person twice. She has
super strength and the ability to kill people just be wailing at them.
Geez! She has a long backstory which I wont bore with you here. Suffice
to say an attempt to use an old ritual to call forth supernatural powers
didn’t work so well for her. After fighting Superman a few times she ended up serving Blaze in hell. I didn’t realize how popular she was
until I saw her being portrayed on Smallville (and done very well by the
way). Plus there was a one shot based all around her which came out,
and should have been put on my Scary Superman Stories now that I think
of it..it was set on HALLOWEEN! Damn. I knew I missed one. Well, here’s
the cover call it an honorary mention I guess.
Dr.Destiny/The Floronic Man
I couldn’t decide so we have a tie. Both of these guys were just
criminal scientists at first, they didn’t start out being supernatural;
but ended up that way. Floro is a basic villain in the old days, calling
himself The Plant Master, who got a big make over. At fist he was just
Jason Woodrue who fought The Atom. Later he used an experimental formula
to transform his body into a plant/human hybrid, with his skin
resembling bark and his hair turning into leaves. He fought Green
Lantern and Wonder Woman. It was when he got involved with The Swamp
Thing that things got weird. He is driven insane by his contact with
“the green”. He was a hero briefly in the awful “New Guardians” series
before becoming a villain again. He cam merge with and mentally control
plant life. As for Dr.Destiny, he was also just another bad guy until a
device he created deprived him of his ability to dream. He turned into a
skeletal husk and went mad. He fought the JLA several tomes trying to
kill them n their dreams. In the pages pf the Sandman series he became
more than just a grade B villain.
Trigon
You want scary villains? This is a sadistic, cruel and powerful demon.
The backstory is…a little hard for me to explain here. Suffice to say
that he gave birth to Raven, by raping her mother!, and is the reason
she was so tormented. She spent her life trying to control the dark
forces within her, and at one point overpowered her. His powers are
virtually unlimited and he loves nothing more than to make people
suffer. The amazing thing? The was the first major villain to be faced
by The New Teen Titans. They beat him once,and then he came back in a
scary as hell storyline where he twisted the world into a version of
hell. I mean there was some scary stuff there, so much that I read the
trade reprint of those stories once and that was enough for me. They
keep trying to reboot the character, at one point there was a thing
about the Sons of Trigon, but this is one case where the original was so
badass that there is no way you can top it.
Eclipso
This is a villain I don’t love to hate, I just hate. Because he’s scary
as…you get it. Actually at first he was a “by the book” kind of villain
for Green Lantern. But then he got rebooted into something downright
bad-ass. He’s basically the anti-Spectre, the primordial manifestation
of God’s wrath. In the 90’s there was an even which ran through the
annuals called “Eclipso:The Darkness Within”. And seeing all these
heroes be eclipsed was a bit unnerving, and I didn’t even read all the
issues. He is a demon who had all kinds of dark powers. Eclipso went
through many hosts, some dumber than the others (Jean Loring? Really?)
but his most famous one is Bruce Gordon who he at first lived through.
He fought many heroes from Batman and the Outsiders to a version of
Starman no one remembers anymore. He is one of the few villains to from a
B villain o grade A uber badass, even getting his own series after that
even I mentioned ended. He has all kinds of magical powers and
abilities including possession.
Finally, with Halloween now less than a week away there was no better
way to end this article than to mention the scariest villain of them
all. He’s not “supernatural” but he is a cold blooded killer and is the
very embodiment of insanity.
Not sure if I will get anything else out before Saturday, so Happy Halloween!!
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