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Ever since Superman debuted in 1938’s Action Comics #1, superheroes have been the primary draw of comic books. Since then, superheroes have spread into every type of popular culture, from TV and movies to toys and video games. But here’s the secret about superheroes: most of us aren’t coming just for the good guys. The heroes only matter to the degree that they have interesting people to fight, and that’s where the bad guys come in. The great heroes have some great enemies: Captain America and Red Skull, the Avengers and the Masters of Evil, Wonder Woman and Circe.
But the legends have legendary enemies, collections of antagonists that they’ve collected over the years. With that in mind, we’ve decided to rank the 10 best hater groups in the history of comics. By limiting it to just 10, we’ve had to leave off some impressively evil alliances—the foes of Dick Tracy, Captain America, and the Justice League just missed the list. But in the face of such awfulness, we had to go with only the best of the worst.
10. Green Lantern
Even though he’s getting a prestige HBO show and at least one member of the Green Lantern Corps has been part of the Justice League since its inception, Green Lantern has always been a B-tier member of the DC Universe. For that reason, some readers too easily skip over the many enemies who don’t beware the Green Lantern’s power. Also, it doesn’t help that the past 20 years of Green Lantern stories have been mostly about dealing with people who have rings of a different color (something discussed in detail in the latest entry of Den of Geek‘s comics newsletter—subscribe here!).
Still, look a little deeper, and you’ll find some formidable foes fighting the Green Lantern Corps. There is, of course, Sinestro, the former Green Lantern who manages to be complex and sympathetic despite looking like the actual devil. But then you have weirdos like Black Hand, once a sniveling rich guy and now a zombie necromancer, and the huge-headed psychic Hector Hammond. Even lesser entries like Goldface, Shark, and Doctor Polaris have their moments. And, yes, despite all this writer’s grouching, the additional Corps did give us Atrocitus, the rage-filled survivor who became the founder of the Red Lantern Corps.
9. Fantastic Four
At a fundamental level, the Fantastic Four aren’t superheroes; they’re scientists and explorers, which almost makes the concept of supervillains extraneous to their function. Notice the word “almost,” because the FF have racked up an impressive array of baddies over the year, including two of the greatest: Doctor Doom and Galactus. Galactus is pure Jack Kirby goodness, a godlike figure who must endlessly feed on the energy of planets as a punishment for his hubris as a scientist. Doctor Doom is simply the greatest villain in all of fiction, a character who somehow becomes more grounded and three-dimensional the more over-the-top that he’s written.
But beyond those two, the FF still find plenty to tangle with. Their adventures into the Negative Zone bring them face-to-face with Annihilus, the Living Death Who Walks, and his rival Blastaar, a lion-man wearing hot pants. Only the Fantastic Four would have to deal with oddballs like the Mad Thinker, a beefy dude with the ability to think crazy thoughts and hangs out with the Awesome Android, or Red Ghost, a Soviet scientist who commands an army of Super Apes. They may not be the coolest bad guys on this list, but the Fantastic Four might have the most unique group of enemies.
8. Hulk
For a guy defined by his anger, the Hulk doesn’t really go around looking for fights. Instead, he mostly wants to be left alone, something that the puny army, the puny Avengers, and even puny Banner refuse to do. Thus, even when he loses his cool and ends up leveling an entire town, Hulk remains pretty sympathetic and his enemies are numerous. Even better, his enemies are pretty interesting. He has a host of gamma-irradiated rivals, such as the Leader and the Abomination, as well his chief antagonist General Thunderbolt Ross, who recently has become the Red Hulk.
However, since Peter David’s defining run revealed the Hulk to be manifestations of Banner’s personality, the Hulk’s worst enemy might be the Hulk himself. Professor Hulk sees the Incredible Hulk as his antithesis, and the grey-hued Joe Fixit as a different personality altogether. Then, there are the more monstrous forms of the Hulk revealed in Al Ewing and Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s runs, the Devil Hulk and the Infernal Hulk, green terrors who would challenge any hero and make a nightmare for the Hulk.
7. The Tick
As a parody, the Tick could easily have just fought riffs on established characters, a goofy version of Doctor Doom or Lex Luthor. But instead, the Tick creator Ben Edlund uses his absurd world to fill it with equally odd villains, the exact type of people who would dare to go toe-to-toe with the nigh-invulnerable Tick and his chum, Arthur.
Most casual fans will know the Tick’s enemies from the various television adaptations, people such as the moon-obsessed gangster Chairface Chippendale or the malevolent the Terror. Those guys do appear in the comics as well, as does the original Tick, Barry, a fantastic arch-enemy. But the comics also have some great additions who never really made it into an adaptation, including the gargantuan Man-Eating Cow, the Chainsaw Vigilante, and, of course, so many ninjas. That said, the cartoons did give us the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight, perhaps the most perfect supervillain to ever exist.
6. Superman
For the longest time, people complained that Superman is just too powerful to be featured in a good story. If he’s perfectly good and perfectly strong, what could possibly challenge him? And if nothing can challenge him, where’s the tension? Those complaints clearly came from people who don’t know much about Superman, because even though he as among the most powerful superheroes, and even though he remains a paragon of goodness, Superman regularly deals with some incredible foes.
Of course, we all know about Lex Luthor and Doomsday, the twin poles of brain versus brawn. Go a little deeper, and you’ll find Brainaic, an alien scientist who collects lost civilizations, Metallo, whose Kryptonite heart immediately creates problems, and the Kryptonian General Zod. But the most interesting enemies are those who challenge Superman on something other than brawn, like the trickster Mister Mxyzptlk, the troubled Rampage, or the cursed Silver Banshee. Superman bests them all, but these villains are more than enough to ensure that the never-ending battle for truth, justice, and a better tomorrow is a battle indeed.
5. Spider-Man
Spider-Man is defined by his suffering. So, of course, he has a host of baddies to give the web-head headaches. In fact, Spidey’s enemies are so awful that they’ve been banding together as the Sinister Six since almost the beginning, and even that group didn’t include his arch-enemy Green Goblin. Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Kraven the Hunter have been at the center of some of the best superhero stories ever told, and even the bottom-rung bad guys—from the Kangaroo to Puma to the Prowler—have had some great stories themselves.
Really, the biggest knock against Spider-Man’s enemies is that the original Steve Ditko creations loom so large that it’s hard for new additions to stand out. Furthermore, when someone like Venom and now even Carnage gets some traction, they soon become anti-heroes, if not full-on heroes, thus diminishing their power. Then again, Peter Parker did recently cross paths with Paul, and it’s hard to think of a comic book character more hated than Paul, so maybe Spidey’s rogues gallery is growing after all.
4. X-Men
Given that they fight to save a world that fears and hates them, all of society counts as the enemy of the X-Men. Fortunately, writers have endeavored to be more specific than that, pitting the team against a surprising range of assailants. Of course, the best remain those who have a bond with the X-Men, but simply manifest their goals in different ways, such as the three-dimensional Magneto or even Sebastian Shaw and his elite among the Hellfire Club.
But the X-Men have plenty of more simplistic bad guys who make for good stories, just by virtue of being weird or just downright evil. The Sentinels and Bastion always pose a threat, and Arcade is perhaps the most realistic depiction of a rich person in the history of comics. Graydon Creed, Reverend Stryker, and Senator Kelly simply hate the X-Men for existing. And then there are the enemies that the X-Men made during the first half of Chris Claremont’s run, back when he could take the mutants from genre to genre and set them against the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, the Xenomorph-like Brood, or the mutant dinosaur Sauron. Turns out, the X-Men run into fear and hatred everywhere they go.
3. Captain Marvel
To be clear, we’re not referring here to any of the Marvel heroes’ bad guys, none of the people who fight Mar-Vell or Carol Danvers. Instead, we’re talking about the original Captain Marvel, the DC Comics character who serves as the alter-ego of young Billy Batson and who has lately gone by the moniker the Captain or Shazam. That Captain Marvel has the first great rogues gallery in superhero history, one that laid the groundwork for supervillains to come.
How great are Captain Marvel’s enemies? They’re so good that they formed a group called the Monster Society of Evil. They include Doctor Sivana, the original mad scientist baddie, who predates even Lex Luthor. They include Mister Mind, a telepathic space worm who wears a little radio around his neck. They include Captain Nazi, a guy who just hurls the elderly into space because he’s a Nazi and all Nazis are evil. And yes, they include Black Adam, a guy who is so powerful that he can change the balance of power in the DC Universe. This wonderful mix of baddies all came together in the Golden Age, and while I would usually knock a line-up for not evolving over time, in this case, Captain Marvel’s foundational enemies just proves how important they are to the history of the medium.
2. Batman
The average person would probably say that Batman has the best rogue’s gallery and while the popular opinion often has it wrong, they have it mostly right in this case. Batman has an incredible collection of bad guys, enough to fill every inch of Arkham Asylum. The top-level of Batman’s enemies have earned their infamy, defining characters like the Joker, Ra’s al Ghul, and the Penguin. Catwoman, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn have managed to become more heroic without becoming less interesting, still ready to give the Dark Knight trouble on any occasion.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Batman is that he continues to get new and compelling enemies as the years go on. Even characters who started out pretty one-note, such as Bane and Hush, have become complex and compelling. Professor Pyg and Mister Bloom already have had great stories, despite debuting within the past twenty years. On top of it all, the villains have proven endlessly mutable and open for reinterpretation, as Absolute Batman proves each month. In short, it would take a perfect set of villains to outdo the inmates of Arkham.
1. The Flash
Do you know what we call the Flash’s enemies? The Rogues. When ranking rogues’ galleries, how do you do better than a group that is just called the Rogues? More impressively, the Rogues earn their name not by being the coolest or most impressive batch of villains, but by being the most interesting. The main group includes Captain Cold, Heat Wave, Trickster, Weather Wizard, Mirror Master, Captain Boomerang, and the Golden Glider. Not the most imposing group, especially against a guy who can move faster than thought, but they earn his respect because they do the job. The Rogues aren’t evil or depraved; they’re just blue-collar guys doing work, and not pushing things too far (except for that one time they all decided to kill Bart Allen, but we’ve all agreed to forget about that).
But if that’s not your speed (pun intended!), and you want your bad guys to be bloodthirsty, the Flash still has you covered. He goes up against Professor Zoom and the Reverse Flash, murderers who use their speed to mock everything Flash has accomplished. He battles Gorilla Grodd, a psychic simian bent on world conquest. And he has truly nasty foes, from the Golden Age monster the Shade to the deadly Black Flash. The Flash offers every type of challenge, making his rogues gallery the best (worst) in the business.
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