Complete Monster/DC and Vertigo

""I will take you to a hell without exit or end. And there I will murder your souls! And make you crawl and beg! And die! Die! Die for Darkseid!""

- Darkseid, Final Crisis, spoken through the mouths of one billion slaves A list of Complete Monsters in DC and Vertigo Comics. See also DC Animation and the Arrowverse.

Batman
Batman has quite a few of these characters in his Rogues Gallery:
 * The Joker is probably not just DC's premier Complete Monster, but the Complete Monster as far as comic books go (aside from Red Skull over in Marvel comics). An absolutely hilarious yet completely and utterly psychotic Monster Clown, the Joker has committed an impossibly large amount of atrocities over the years in his never-ending war with the Caped Crusader, all because the Joker wants to indulge in what his sick sense of humor deems "funny". He has gone out of his way to hurt Batman by going after the people he loves, infamously beating second Robin Jason Todd nearly to death with a lead pipe and finishing him off with a time-bomb that also killed Jason's mother, along with leaving former Batgirl Barbara Gordon crippled for life by shooting her in the spine with the added bonus of trying to drive her father insane by psychologically breaking him, and murdering the poor commissioner's second wife Sarah. Hardly limited to the Bat family, he has also sold nukes to terrorists, tried to let loose Joker toxin in the atmosphere in order to poison the world due to a health scare, and tried to emotionally crush all of Gotham by murdering its newborn babies along with all sorts of other terrifying schemes. And in a truly horrific Superman storyline where he was able to get access to reality-warping godlike power by stealing it from Mr. Mxyzptlk, he proceeded to transform the world into a hellish landscape where he attempted to wipe out all existence, drove Batman insane by torturing him to death and bring him back to life over and over again, as well as devouring all of China's inhabitants. And while he does have a girlfriend in the lovable psychopathic ditz Harley Quinn, he does not love her at all, only keeping her around for his personal entertainment and would constantly abuse her in different ways as well as make multiple attempts on her life. While the Joker has also been characterized over the years as a harmless prankster and an obnoxious goofball, it's disturbingly in-character for him as due to his insanity, he's able to bounce between all sorts of roles and alignments like a pinball with Complete Monster being his default setting, and his favorite one.
 * Roman Sionis a.k.a Black Mask is a crazed, sadistic, and violent-tempered man who is one of Gotham's most dangerous and feared crime lords for a damned good reason. After all, Cold-Blooded Torture is the guy's hobby, one famous example would be his torture of fourth Robin Stephanie Brown with a power drill and other similar tools which almost killed her. That being said, that's almost nothing compared to the horrific lengths he's gone with trying to kill his arch-enemy Catwoman. After Catwoman ruined a heroin and diamond exchange Sionis was conducting with the Russian mob, he was furious and decided that he was going to make her life hell before he killed her. Black Mask ended up finding out her secret identity as Selina Kyle and decided to target her loved ones by bombing a community center she funded, torturing several friends of hers including her surrogate daughter Holly, and finishing it up by driving her sister Maggie nearly insane by butchering her husband in front of her and FORCE-FEEDING HER HIS EYEBALLS. And once Catwoman allowed herself to be tortured to death in her comatose sister's place in exchange for Black Mask taking her to a hospital, he had no intention on keeping his promise and tried to kill Maggie anyway. After all of this, it's absolutely no surprise that the normally averse-to-killing Catwoman ended up putting a bullet in the sick bastard's head when the two crossed paths again. Unfortunately for Catwoman, Black Mask wouldn't stay dead since he was revived as one of Nekron's Black Lantern corps members during the Blackest Night arc. After hunting down Catwoman with the intention of murdering her in order to avenge his death, he ended up realizing that she wasn't producing the fearful emotion he wanted, so he decided to kidnap her now severely mentally ill sister as a way to get to her. The fate he had planned for them? The same way he drove Maggie mad while killing her husband: he was going to butcher Maggie and force-feed Catwoman her eyeballs. And the worst thing about this is that Black Mask didn't even need to go this far, any kind of emotional response is good enough for a Black Lantern to collect in order to help with Nekron's return. Black Mask wanted the satisfaction of completely and utterly breaking his arch-enemy, and it's very hard to suppress a cheer as Poison Ivy traps him in a giant plant that would painfully dissolve him to death with acid, a Fate Worse Than Death given that his Black Lantern ring will keep bringing him back to life only for him to painfully and slowly die again and again for as long as the Blackest Night lasts.
 * Victor Zsasz (pictured here), a Serial Killer who carves a tally on his body for each person he's killed. His skin is covered in tallies. He attempts to justify this, however, by saying that that life is meaningless, and he is liberating others from this meaninglessness. However, the guy takes a lot of obvious pleasure from killing and even admits to Batman at one point that he chooses to kill meaning that at heart, he knows that he's a monster and is proud of that fact. Having no standards makes him very sadistic, and his methods of murder are just plain horrific. A great example of Victor at his worst? There was a time where he kidnapped a bunch of runaway and orphaned children, and had them fight each other to the death in gladiator-style matches that can be gambled on by Zsasz's fellow criminals. The last kid standing would have to face Zsasz himself, a battle that the final kid would have absolutely no chance of winning.
 * Abattoir, real name Arnold Etkar, born Arnold Etchison, is a psychotic Serial Killer who mainly targets family members, believing them to be evil, and believes he will eat their souls. By the time of his first appearance, he has already killed 19 family members, and was broken out of prison and hired by his cousin, a mayoral candidate, to kill the cousin's wife, as the two were in the midst of a bitter divorce. In his next appearance, as part of a ritual he believes will grant him great power, Abattoir and associates kill numerous doves and cows—along with some people who are in the way—before blowing up the Gotham Bridge as a train is crossing; if not for Batman, thousands would have been killed. Despite being captured yet again, Abattoir is one of the residents of Arkham Asylum who are broken out by Bane. He kills a family of 5, and goes after his cousin Graham. Graham and 12 orphans are on a bus going camping, but Abattoir hijacks the bus, planning to kill Graham and the orphans. Batman saves them, but Abattoir escapes, kidnapping the child of Clayface III and Lady Clayface to force them to help him. Abattoir eventually kidnaps Graham, and places him in a sadistic Death Trap: Graham is placed lightly over a bed of spikes, but every hour a weight drops on Graham's body, pushing him farther onto the spikes. Abattoir is found by Jean-Paul Valley (as Batman), but left to die, which in turn leaves Graham to suffer an agonizing, hours-long Cruel and Unusual Death.
 * Deacon Joseph Blackfire is a demented Knight Templar of a cult leader who believes humanity is a lost cause and deserves to be purged. Establishing his cult by kidnapping, torturing, and brainwashing homeless people into becoming his followers, Blackfire uses them to begin butchering criminals across Gotham, from entire crime gangs to petty pickpockets. Brainwashing Batman into assisting him, Blackfire assassinates numerous politicians across the city and kills dozens of police officers and soldiers before seizing control of Gotham City. Blackfire then allows crime and anarchy to run rampant throughout the streets, along with holding mass lynchings and executions regularly and displaying the bodies for all to see. Claiming to be immortal, Blackfire regularly bathes in a huge cauldron of human blood, having used the blood of hundreds of innocents for his baths. When confronted by Batman, Blackfire tries to force him to kill him in order to make himself a martyr and convince his followers to carry on his human-purging quest. Whether he is truly thousands of years old or just a petty con man is left ambiguous, but regardless, Deacon Joseph Blackfire was a narcissistic and misanthropic psychopath who stood out as one of the few villains Batman nearly killed due to his depravity.
 * James Gordon Jr., who apparently murdered his sister's friend years ago. The extent of his darkness is revealed when he's seen entering a basement where he's got the owner strung up, with arms and legs hacked off, jaw gone, and one eye missing. The guy's still alive, too. Why is he doing this? The guy stole his glasses once. Twelve years ago. His ultimate plan is even worse. He's placing a drug into food for 'nutrition runs' that attacks empathy. It'll only affect children...so children would grow up to be conscienceless monsters. Just like him. From a young age, he demonstrated signs of sociopathy and was eventually clinically diagnosed as a psychopath. In an attempt to hide from the law after committing a string of murders, he enters a medical trial designed to test a new kind of drug that stimulates feelings of empathy in the brain. It worked to an extent, but all James Jr. could think was that empathy was merely a crutch and that the world itself was damaged, not him, and to prove this, he'll create a whole new generation of young psychopaths. So he's not just someone incapable of empathy. He tried it, and it didn't take. To make things even worse, his plan? It may have worked. Some other misdeeds he has committed: slashing a girl's face in such a way that the scars are impossible to sew up because she once called him "Four-Eyes". Sticks knives in Oracle's legs that are put in so deep, she will bleed to death if she takes them out. Poisons his mother with the Joker's toxins to leave a false trail. The guy's a virtual Moral Event Horizon unto himself.
 * And Batman is hardly the only Bat Family member who throws down with these types of villains: his protege Tim Drake has the Brazilian assassin Vitoria a.k.a the Wanderer as his most loathsome opponent to date. While she was once an innocent little girl, that all changed when a group of men attacked her and chased her into a pit full of highly venomous Brazilian Wandering Spiders. Instead of dying however, she gained the ability to kill anyone with one touch thanks to absorbing the spider's venom, and kills her pursuers once she discovers her powers. While their deaths were justifiable, everything that followed sure as hell wasn't: Vitoria grew addicted to killing and murdered her own mother before going on an enormous killing spree through South America where she gleefully murdered anyone she wanted. In the present day, Wanderer leads a band of assassins called the Spider's Council in an assault on the League of Assassins and kills tons of people, both assassins and innocent bystanders purely for sport. And when she kills the man who rescued her, she decides that heroes would make for far funner prey and moves on to killing them instead.
 * Batwoman also faces off with a Complete Monster in the form of Maro Ito, the vicious second in command of the Medusa organization. A warlock whose powers are based on belief, Maro conjures up famous killers from urban legends such as Bloody Mary and Ashoth by forcing people to channel them through horrific methods of torture and unethical surgery. The most vile example of his powers in action however is the creation of Gotham's Weeping Woman by drowning the children of a woman named Maria. When she committed suicide from the resulting grief, he turned her into the famous ghost and forces her to kidnap and kill countless children much like the legend dictates. And since belief in the ghost is strong in Gotham's barrio, Maria is trapped in this role indefinitely.
 * White Eyes of Batman: Dead White is the absolute leader of the supremacist Bavarian Brotherhood in Gotham. A steroid-abusing brute of a man who fancies himself the avenger of Adolf Hitler, White Eyes proceeds a wave of crime violence, arms dealings, and murders through Gotham to unsettle the nation before unveiling his real goal; destroying key points all over America to throw the country into chaos and allow him to take over as supreme dictator, before spreading out to the rest of the world with intention of erasing all of the “mud-races” from the planet. In preparation for this, White Eyes keeps a gallery of enslaved minorities and forces them into grueling and inevitably fatal work for months at a time in an abandoned gold mine, executes his own minions for reasons as varied as simple failure to simply use them as test subjects for his weapons, and kidnaps a young woman named Beth, intending to use her as “breeding stock” and attempting to rape her out of frustration once his base is infiltrated by Batman. Once his plan is toppled, White Eyes simply elects to abandon the rest of his men and blow up the capitol himself, murdering his most trusted henchman once he refuses to abandon the others and taking an entire family hostage to deter Batman from pursuing him.
 * William X. Malady of Batman: The Ultimate Evil is a wicked sociopath who makes a profit off of the lives of children. Originally the leader of a child pornography ring ran out of Gotham City, Malady fled the country after having the benevolent Thomas and Martha Wayne gunned down for investigating his crimes. Taking up residence in the foreign country of Udon Khai, Malady immediately installs a private military group that he uses to regularly kidnap innocent children from poor villagers, killing any who attempt to stop them, then uses the children as sex slaves until they wear out from exhaustion, at which point Malady either kills them or simply lets them drop dead. Having subjected hundreds of children to this horrific fate while simultaneously paying pedophiles worldwide to send him videotapes of themselves raping children for him to sell on the black market, Malady has instituted an initiation protocal for his group where, if one wishes to gain access to organization, they must rape a child on film. When Rhama Bgyn, leader of the rebels who fight against Malady's tyranny, has him at gunpoint, Malady pathetically begs for his life and disgustingly offers to "replace" Rhama's late cousin, who died because of Malady. A disturbingly realistic villain who, despite his lack of a gimmick or powers, stands out as one of the most monstrous villains Batman has faced, William X. Malady is described in the perfect manner by Rhama himself: "You are no man. You are a demon! A peddler of children! YOU STEAL CHILDHOOD ITSELF!"

Superman
Though his archenemy Lex Luthor is too complex and frequently humanized to apply for the label, Superman has faced his fair share of true monsters:
 * The first post-Crisis version of Zod was from an Alternate Universe, where he and his equally bloodthirsty allies had already nearly killed everyone on that universe's Earth and planned to find a way to the mainstream universe to do the same; they were so unrepentantly evil that, after they were defeated, Superman took it upon himself to execute them, probably the only instance since the Golden Age where he knowingly, deliberately killed anyone.
 * Brainiac has counted since his first appearances in the 1960s. When you force Silver Age Superman, perhaps DC's ultimate boy scout, to resort to lethal force, you know you are a monster. His crimes over the years have ranged from shrinking cities and planets for his private collection, coldly slaughtering thousands in a quest to destroy the "Master Programmer" and become God, and brainjacking Luthor, leading to the deaths of Lex, Lana Lang, and Jimmy Olsen in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?? Oh, and that's just Pre-Crisis. Since then, he has fed on human spinal fluid, possessed countless victims and destroyed their minds in the process, exploited the Imperiex War in an attempt to rewrite the fabric of the universe, tried to destroy New Krypton, and, most recently, gone in for planetary destruction and city collection in a big way. He has never shown any remorse, his presence in a story inevitably signals that the bodycount is about to rise, and he has been a genuine physical threat to Superman since the early days when his Deflector Shields made him untouchable.
 * Reactron is a Psycho for Hire with a xenophobic hatred for Kryptonians who has expressed the desire to rape a de-powered Supergirl. It was in the New Krypton storyline where Reactron really crossed the line. Having been rebuilt by Lex Luthor into a cyborg with a Gold Kryptonite heart, Reactron invades New Krypton alongside Metallo, depowering a killing numerous Kryptonians, threatening to rape Supergirl, and then murdering her father, Zor-El, in front of her by giving him radiation sickness. Tasked by General Lane with eliminating Supergirl, Flamebird, and Nightwing, Reactron murdered all the soldiers assigned to help him when they expressed doubts about the mission, and did his best to slowly torture Supergirl and Flamebird to death, all while gloating about how fighting two such attractive girls was a dream come true. Captured and tortured by Supergirl's mother, Alura, Reactron waited until Supergirl came to free him from the torture chamber to reveal that his capture had been a set up and that Luthor had transformed him into a living bomb. Detonating himself with a smile, Reactron gives a serene look as he incinerates Alura, the city of Kandor, and the entire planet of New Krypton, killing over ninety percent of the population in a single fell swoop. A lech, a bully, and a thug at his core, Reactron is a study in just how horrific it can be when somebody like that gets their hands on real power, and in weeks has done more to hurt Supergirl than any of her other adversaries, killing her parents and her entire race.
 * Mongul from the famous Bronze Age story For The Man Who Has Everything is just as loathsome as his equally revolting son mentioned above. To wit, the guy ambushed Superman on his birthday and trapped him in a dream world with a plant known as the Black Mercy. Superman's dream is that of a Krypton that never blew up, where he can spend his days with his wife and child in a peaceful utopia. However, Superman senses that something in this world is amiss and escapes by sacrificing his heart's true desire, which completely mind rapes the poor guy and causes him to attack Mongul in a murderous rage (Which is really saying something given that Superman is very opposed to killing). Mongul comments on this by saying that the sensation Superman must have felt from removing the Black Mercy must have been like ripping off his own arm, a truly disturbing line that perfectly cements how damn sadistic he is. He's also shown to be a misogynist, laughing about how inferior women are to him as he's violently beating Wonder Woman up. Once Jason Todd of all people traps him with the Black Mercy, we get to see the kind of world Mongul finds ideal: he imagines himself as the ruler of a bloodied, war-torn, hellish looking planet overseeing all the chaos in the galaxy.
 * Doomsday, the monster famous for once killing Superman, lives for nothing but destroying, killing, and generally causing suffering by eliminating life. His Establishing Character Moment of crushing a small bird to death and laughing with glee was intended to show that this beast was more than just a mindless brute: he was pure evil. However, his origins introduce us to an even bigger monster. Bertron, an alien Mad Scientist, was obsessed with creating the so-called "ultimate lifeform." Every day he exposed a newly cloned child to the harsh environment of prehistoric Krypton; when the child died, Bertron would incorporate its memories into the next child, which would be exposed the following day. Bertron continued this process across the course of his lifetime, slaughtering, in his own words, "thousands upon thousands" of children in an effort to achieve the result he wanted. The creature he finally created was, unsurprisingly, completely insane, and sought to destroy everything it encountered, butchering all the life on ancient Krypton, including Bertron himself, before moving onto the rest of the galaxy. It's name was Doomsday, and in it, all of Bertron's malice and Lack of Empathy would live on, devastating all that it encountered.
 * C.W Saturn in Miracle Monday is a demon from Hell and the chief servant of Samael. Introduced torturing 666 condemned souls, Saturn is tasked with breaking Superman's spirit, if he succeeds there will be nothing to stop Samael from conquering the universe and allowing evil to rule over the cosmos. Saturn comes to Earth and decides to test Superman by causing various disasters for Superman to deal with. He creates an earth quake that causes a tidal wave to head towards to Metropolis, causes trains to crash, causes a chemical plant to caught fire and nearly explode and causes a building to start collapsing. After that, he posses Kristen Wells, Clark Kent's new co worker. At first in Well's body Saturn just commits cruel pranks, though some are deadly. After Superman spoils some of Saturn's fun, he decides to get serious and uses his powers to make all the nuclear weapons in the world launch. Saturn's ultimate goal is to force Superman kill Wells in order to stop him, knowing that will break Superman's spirit and allow evil to triumph.
 * In Superman: The Dark Side, Darkseid uses a Boomtube to teleport baby Kal-El's ship to Apokolips after the destruction of Krypton. After murdering two of his slaves who discover the ship, Darkseid raises Kal-El in isolation. Naming Kal-El Superman, Darkseid presents him to the public in a gladiatorial match, where Superman defeats Darkseid's son Kalibak. Darkseid orders Superman to kill Kalibak after he is defeated. Darkseid then orders Superman to go to New Genesis and destroy it with an Omega Bomb. Though High Father manages to save some of the New Gods, most of the population of New Genies dies. High Father reveals Darkseid's lies to Superman and teleports Superman to Earth. However Darkseid soon arrives on Earth discovers Superman's DNA contains the anti life equation. Darkseid has Dessad torture Superman and then uses the anti life equation to turn everyone on Earth into his mindless slaves, intending to do the same to the rest of the galaxy.

Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman has also contended with particularly monstrous enemies:
 * Dr. Psycho...oh God, Dr. Psycho. He's a rapist, a misogynist, a sadist, and a mass murderer. He has no redeeming features and his only real motive in life is to make as many people suffer as possible. And it's implied he's been like this since he was a child, suggesting he really is just pure evil by nature. Psycho once mass-mind-controlled dozens of people at once in a riot and used the opportunity to turn them into cannibals. The Nightmare Fuel and Squick part is under the spoiler: Really, he's probably the DCU's answer to Red Skull in terms of being THE single most despicable individual in his universe. Darkseid, Black Mask, Vandal Savage, Junior, Mongul II, even The Joker - he surpasses them all.
 * Vandal Savage practically invented evil as a human concept. Over the millennia, he has done everything in the book and then some, having been some of the most vicious and depraved men in history, in addition to being one of THE most efficient manipulators in the DCU. He has billions of bodies to his name, and judging by some of his offspring (Grendel...holy shit, just Grendel), he's responsible for the existence of various other horrible monsters. No wonder his daughter Scandal is as fucked up as she is; even then, though, she absolutely despises her father and wants nothing to do with him, with anything related to him usually acting as a Berserk Button. Most of his fellow villains either despise him or are fucking terrified of him. Usually both. In short, he's probably the absolute most despicable being in the DCU. The man has no redeeming qualities. There are others who approach his level of atrocity (Doctor Psycho, Junior, Black Mask, Professor Zoom), but none have done it as thoroughly or for as long as he.
 * The villain Genocide is this, seeing as she's body, merged with the soil of the sites of 5 mass genocides (Rwanda, Cambodia, Auschwitz, Logor Jasenovac, and Darfur) and without anything resembling human compassion. Her first act is torturing a fellow villain, then she goes on a rampage in a mall and steals Diana's lasso after stringing her up and nearly killing her, before going on to curbstomp the Justice League and mentally torture a Green Lantern while turning Donna Troy against Diana because of her psychic effect on everything. And then she tortures one of Diana's friends mostly for shits and giggles. Even Diana was shocked at what just being around Genocide made her do, she's that much of a monster.
 * Doctor Poison II has only had a few appearances, but has made up for that with the sheer ugliness of the crimes she commits. The granddaughter of a Japanese war criminal, she has continued her grandmother's research, creating new toxins and diseases with which to infect the world. Kidnapping a man named Richard Agoras, Doctor Poison subjected him to lengthy torture and experimentation, ultimately using the Pandora Virus to mutate him into a hideous monster, and unleashing him on Wonder Woman. When captured following this incident, Doctor Poison unleashed the Pandora Virus into the atmosphere, endangering millions of lives. Escaping custody, Poison joined Queen Clea's new Villainy Incorporated, and helped to overrun the nation of Skartaris, requesting that any prisoners they took be turned over to her for further use in her experiments. Obsessed with producing the perfect toxic agents and little else, and making her appearance as horrible as possible in order to maximise fear in her victims, Doctor Poison is as bad as a Mad Scientist can get.
 * Sebastien Ballesteros, aka Cheetah III, quickly proved himself the worst person to ever hold the title. An Argentine robber baron who made his fortune collaborating with the National Reorganization Process, Ballesteros decided real power trumped riches and stole the power of the Cheetah from Barbara Minerva, leaving her for dead. Kidnapping Diana's foster sister, Vanessa Kapatelis, Ballesteros psychologically and surgically modified her into becoming the Silver Swan, then unleashed her on Cassie Sandsmark's school, leaving dozens of students injured or dead. He subsequently forced Vanessa to join in his and Circe's plot to murder half of New York, and personally captured Superman so that Circe could brainwash him into believing that he was Doomsday and turn him loose on Diana. After this plan failed, Ballesteros retreated to his base in Buenos Aires, where he plotted to slaughter protestors with his Cheetah powers, and burned down much of the city in battle with the returned Barbara Minerva. Escaping with his life, but not the whole of his fortune, Ballesteros again kidnapped Vanessa, who had been briefly freed by Wonder Woman, and put her through torture, surgery, and psychological conditioning, before selling her to Veronica Cale for ten million dollars. Murdered by Minerva shortly afterwards, Ballesteros left behind a legacy of misery and shattered lives.
 * The renegade Amazon Astarte swiftly proved herself the nastiest villain of Gail Simone's run. After usurping command of the nomadic intergalactic army known as The Citizenry, Astarte transformed what had been a largely pacific collective into a rampaging horde that destroyed and cannibalized the populaces of entire planets, kidnapped, genetically modified and raped men for reproductive purposes, and indoctrinated stolen girls into becoming loyal slave-soldiers for Astarte's wars. Having put her daughter, Theana, through Training from Hell—forcing her to murder one hundred other children or starve—Astarte kept her caged like an animal, only turning her loose when Wonder Woman threatened her invasion of Earth. When Diana started getting through to Theana, Astarte ordered her daughter executed, shortly before being overthrown by Diana and confined to an Amazon prison.

Secret Six
Monsters faced by the Secret Six include:
 * Junior may have a Freudian Excuse, being heavily implied to have been molested by her father, Ragdoll Sr., as a child, but the things that she does make her extremely difficult to feel warm for. She's raped men and women alike, tortures people to death (including a priest) and enjoys using such torture implements as bricks and scissors to murder people. Before she kills people, she forces them to choose whether they die or their family dies. If they choose to die, she kills them. But if they say they want their friends and family to die, she tape-records them saying it, butchers them anyway and leaves the body for the friends and family to find, along with a recording of the victim begging her to kill their family instead of them.
 * Ragdoll Sr. was quite the monster in his own right. He started off as a Golden Age Flash villain with the power to be unusually flexible. In the 1990s Starman series, he was re-imagined as a Manson-esque cult leader who masterminded a killing spree and forced the Golden Age Starman, Green Lantern, and Flash to kill him. He came back and started up another cult (who he got bored with and blew up) and eventually got what he deserved in an Injustice Society heist storyline. Oh, and as mentioned before, he molested his daughter and beat his sons. And oh yes, when Ragdoll Sr. met his now adult son, he tried to violently murder him.
 * Mr. Smyth, the villain of the "Depths" story arc, looks to be this as well. In addition to running a massive slave trade operation, the way he "disciplines" his workers is to have his assassins butcher and murder the people around the disobedient slave, while forcing them to watch. Also, he thinks slavery is the greatest thing ever and will fix all the world's problems and wants every nation to have it via lottery.
 * His "pet" Grendel is even worse. He has a taste for human flesh, savors the thought of slowly murdering EVERYONE, and his reaction to Catman glancing at him in a way he doesn't like? He threatens to rape his son. Catman's son is an infant. If ANYONE can find Grendel anything other than sickening and repulsive in a "Someone cut this bastard up and feed him to rabid dogs" kind of way, they should seek immediate counseling.

Elseworlds
In these non-canon tales of characters across the DC multiverse, there are plenty of Anti-Villains, Tragic Villains, and Well Intentioned Extremists, much like canon DC works. However, just like DC canon, there are a few villains with nothing redeeming or sympathetic about them, and whose depravity puts them a step above the rest:
 * Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe:
 * The Thief of Souls, known primarily by his identity Reverend Dominic Darrk, is the demonic and manipulative mastermind behind all the evil in the series, seeking to pave the way for his master, Crisis, to invade Earth. After possessing a man, banishing his wife to Dreamland, then corrupting their son into a sociopath like himself, the Thief sets up his Church of Eternal Empowerment, a cult that recruits its members through kidnapping, brainwashing, or threats of death. Along with regularly ordering assassinations and executing his own minions for the slightest of failures, the Thief unleashes monsters to rampage across entire cities more than once, and later releases a virus called the "Sleeping Death", which plunges its victims into neverending sleep while the Thief steals their souls to offer up to Crisis. In the end, even when beaten, the Thief happily taunts the heroes about the coming of his master, and the joy he will take in the knowledge that they will all spend an eternity of agony at Crisis' hands.
 * Crisis himself is the force behind the Thief of Souls, and the most evil being the JLA encounter. Coming to Earth after attempting to devour thousands of innocents' souls, Crisis plans to turn the entirety of the universe into his personal playground by fusing the Dreamworld with Earth, then plunge every living thing in the universe into eternal pain and suffering. After brutally Mind Raping the heroes with their worst fears, Crisis manipulates his descendants Robin and Melana to betray their team, at which point Crisis hopes to eternally imprison them in a gemstone while he rampages across the universe, bringing death and destruction across the cosmos simply because he can.
 * Armando Guitez is the Big Bad of the Wonder Woman story, and manages to stick out even among other far more powerful villains as a truly reprehensible monster. Using his wealth, Guitez begins tearing apart Mexican ruins looking for ancient and powerful runes, and threatens any nearby farmers off their land with death, ordering one beaten to death and shooting another in the head just for voicing their compaints against him. After murdering Judge Mendoza for displaying disgust at his crimes, Guitez plans to rape the man's daughter Maria before murdering her would-be rescuer, Steve Trevor. Guitez, finding the ancient runes he has been searching for, absorbs the power of the demons residing within them, travels to Los Angeles, crashes the plane he's on into a populated street, then goes on a massacre throughout the city for fun as he searches for other runes to make himself ever more powerful. Guitez's evil ran so deep, that even one of the demons he absorbed proclaimed his shock at Guitez's sheer black soul.
 * Batman: The Dark Knight Returns shows that age has not dulled The Joker's Ax Crazy tendencies. Joker was catatonic for a decade until Batman returned, which snapped him out of it and resulted in Joker going on a massive killing spree. Joker kills his therapist with a broken coffee mug and then kills a studio audience at a talk show with poisonous gas. He then tries to sell poisoned cotton candy to kids at an amusement park. After Batman foils that scheme, Joker takes a gun and begins to shoot random civilians at the amusement park. After Batman defeats Joker in combat, Joker commits suicide and attempts to frame Batman for his death.
 * In The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Superman's arch-nemesis Lex Luthor is the current de-facto ruler of the United States. Seizing control of the country after installing a hologram to assume the role of the president, Luthor proceeded to turn the entire country into a police state. Recruiting the help of Brainiac, Luthor kept the superheroes of Earth in line by threatening to kill their loved ones. The heroes that Luthor did not find useful were either imprisoned or subjected to horrific genetic experiments. After a series of raids by led by Batman reinvigorates the public's interest in superheroes, Luthor snaps and begins cracking down on any super-heroic activities. Luthor launches a missile strike against Costa Rica that kills Hawkman and Hawkgirl, while he orders his forces to open fire on a concert held by "The Superchix". Luthor has Brainiac kill thousands of people in Metropolis in an attempt to discredit superheroes, not caring at all about the innocent lives lost. Luthor later captures Batman and begins torturing him while gloating how the rebellion has given him the perfect opportunity to use his satellite defense network to kill most of the world's population and allow him to rule what's left. Lacking any pretenses of helping his fellow man, Lex Luthor is motivated entirely by his lust for power.
 * Brainiac is an alien cyborg who partners up with Lex Luthor in order to make sure that Superman is compliant with Luthor's regime. Holding the bottled city of Kandor hostage, Brainiac murders a Kryptonian family for every time that Superman refuses to follow their orders. In an attempt to publicly discredit superheroes, Brainiac attacks Metropolis and orders Superman to not fight back or he'll have all of Kandor destroyed. Brainiac proceeds to wail on Superman when he refuses to flee, and continues on his rampage. While he is eventually stopped by Superman's daughter Lara, Brainiac's assault ends up killing thousands of people, including Captain Marvel, Jimmy Olson, and Lois Lane. Lara travels to Brainiac's hideout to free the citizens of Kandor by pretending to surrender, but not before Brainiac attempts to turn her into his subservient slave. Driven by sadism rather than logic, Brainiac takes immense pleasure in the pain and suffering that he causes others.
 * While his mainstream counterpart is surprisingly noble and serves as an on-and-off ally to Batman, Oswald Cobblepot a.k.a the Penguin is a downright loathsome bastard in the Elseworlds story Batman: Earth One. In the first volume of this comic, he's Gotham City's corrupt mayor who goes to all sorts of horrific lengths to keep himself in power and allows crime to run rampant in the city. In true Corrupt Politician fashion, Mayor Cobblepot keeps the justice system off his back through threats and intimidation tactics, uses a Serial Killer named Birthday Boy as a personal attack dog in exchange for handing over young women that he can slaughter, and has no qualms with trying to murder Thomas Wayne all for the heinous crime of daring to run against him for the position of Gotham's mayor. Cobblepot is fiendishly gleeful about how much of a corrupt hellhole he made Gotham into, and he casually boasts about how thorough of a job he did in making it that way when he duels with Batman at the story's climax.
 * And Cobblepot isn't the only Batman villain to get the Adaptational Villainy treatment in the Earth One series: the Riddler gladly picks up where the recently deceased mayor left off in Volume 2 and commits all sorts of nasty crimes in order to make himself famous. And to that end, he seeks to completely fill the power vacuum in the wake of the mayor's death and goes after the men who ran off with Cobblepot's wealth with no regard whatsoever for collateral damage. He kills his first mark by bombing an elevator he and four other people are in and dropping them to their deaths, and then moves on to his next mark by blowing up an entire museum during an art expo and kills everyone inside. While he asks his victims to solve riddles in true Riddler fashion in an attempt to let them save themselves, he has no intention whatsoever of keeping his word: when he's poised to bomb a train full of innocent passengers and Batman solves the riddle he gave him, he smugly blew the train to pieces anyway, then tries to kill his last mark by blowing up Gotham PD before being stopped by the Caped Crusader. His ego being too big to accept defeat, he tries to kill himself and Batman in one final blaze of glory, but is forced to retreat when Waylon Jones intervenes and slinks off, never to be seen again.
 * Batman/Houdini: The Devil's Workshop: Baron Elijah Montenegro is an obese meat packing mogul who doubles as a ravenous vampire with a particular sweet tooth for children. After coming to America years ago and murdering his way into a powerful position, Montenegro took the psychopathic Jack Schadenfreude to be his servant, and uses him to capture children, drain them dry of their blood to feed Montenegro, then dump the corpses into his meat vats, and through this way, Montenegro kills dozens of children throughout his years. When Batman and Houdini begin investigating his crimes, Montenegro, to cover his tracks, has Jack set one of his own packing plants aflame, hoping to kill the many women and children inside the complex as well. After capturing reporter Victoria Vale, Montenegro plans to turn her and force her into being his pet slave for all eternity. Greedy, sociopathic, and gluttonous, Baron Montenegro made his mark as a true creature of night, more than living up to title of "Lord of Hell".
 * Batman/Dark Joker: The Wild: In this medieval retelling of the Batman mythos, Dark Joker, "He Who Laughs At Pain", is a psychopathic sorcerer bent on unleashing his most evil magics across the land for fun. Years ago, Joker was a master torturer who took great pleasure in causing others pain, and while he was cursed to forever smile because of his twisted cruelty, this only served to make Joker worse, as he then learned the secrets of magic. Using his new powers, Joker amasses an army of monsters, murders the man who cursed him along with his wife and attempting the same on their newborn, then begins leading the massacres of entire villages, whose inhabitants he decapitates, then eats the brains of, something he extends to performing on his own minions. After regaining his full power, Dark Joker controls a man into killing his own son before moving on to others, calls down fire to set innocents aflame, and, when confronted by an army of enemy troops, Dark Joker turns half of them into zombies that rip into their own teammates and friends. Continuing his streak of pure evil across all media, Dark Joker just may be one of the most wicked incarnations of the Clown Prince of Crime yet.
 * Batman Vampire: The Joker himself appears as the central threat in the second story of the trilogy, Bloodstorm. Immediately seizing the vacuum in power over the remaining Gotham vampires left by Dracula's demise, Joker sets up savage massacres of criminal gangs to seize their assets and make himself stronger, converting every person murdered into a vampire under his command. Joker intends to kill and convert every single person within Gotham City and attack the rest of the nation with his army whilst basking in the power it brings him. Confronted by the now-vampiric Batman, Joker strangles a priest to death for a chuckle and sets up a trap in a church for Batman, and directly murders his companion Selina Kyle in a failed attempted to shoot Batman down. Joker's actions cause Batman to snap, succumb to his bloodlust, and murder the psychopath himself, resulting in Batman becoming a feral Knight Templar as Joker's posthumous last laugh. As always, the Joker has a penchant for twisted wit and depthless charm whilst committing horrific atrocities for little more than amusement, and manages to outdo Dracula in wickedness despite never becoming a vampire himself.
 * Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham: In this alternate world where Catwoman fills the role of vigilante hero, Batman himself is a completely homicidal maniac defined by greed and sadism. Years ago as a teenager, Batman gunned down two innocent people to steal their jewelry with a smile on his face, leaving the child Selina Kyle orphaned and heartbroken. As an adult, Batman begins murdering Catwoman's Rogue's Gallery to eliminate any competition for his crime spree, during which he steals and murders to his heart's content, even becoming a Serial Killer simply because he can. In his public persona of Bruce Wayne, Batman seduces Catwoman's alter ego, Selina Kyle, and manipulates her into falling in love with and marrying him, at which point he murders Kyle's best friend before attempting the same on her, gleefully mocking her about how easy it was to manipulate her. When Selina, demanding a reason for Batman's various atrocities, asks him why he does it, Batman's only reply is "Why not?". In perhaps one of the most stunning instances of Adaptational Villainy, this iteration of Batman is an utter perversion of every thing good and noble about his canon counterpart.
 * Batman: Thrillkiller: Bianca Steeplechase is a ruthless gangster known as "The Joker". As a message to those trailing her activities, Bianca has Robin's family and informant Selina Kyle killed. When Batgirl and Robin confront her, Bianca kills Robin in front of Batgirl and mocks her about his death. After escaping, Bianca resurfaces as the wife of a mayoral candidate and works with former Nazi scientist, Otto Saunders, to produce a dangerous and highly addictive drug. Ultimately hoping to rule Gotham politically by using her husband, while she gets rich off a drug epidemic, Bianca is a power-hungry monster.
 * Spider-Man/Batman Disordered Minds: Cletus Kasady, Carnage, much like his mainstream counterpart, is an Ax Crazy killing-obsessed lunatic driven by sadism. Heavily implied by the narrative to have been the crook who murdered the Wayne parents, Carnage opens the comic being implanted with a microchip alongside the Joker that will "cure" him of his insanity after his latest killing spree. Revealed to have faked his "recovery," Carnage brutally maims several innocents to distract Batman and Spider-Man while he kidnaps The Joker, destroying the clown's microchip and proposing a partnership. This doesn't last long, as Carnage attempts to murder the Joker after a difference of opinion on how to hurt the city of Gotham best. Capturing Batman, Carnage reveals his plan to simply slaughter each and every innocent in Gotham one by one so as to bask in their screams and fear, and attempts to kick off his massacre by killing Batman on live television for all of Gotham to see and despair at. Carnage was utter madman who rejoiced in his "black heart" and depravity, and who wanted nothing more than to butcher every thing in sight.
 * Batman/Judge Dread: Judge Death is the Arch Enemy of Judge Dredd, and, much like his original counterpart, presented as a psychopath who believes life itself is a crime deserving of death. Having kicked off his mission to purge the universe of all life be slaughtering his entire home world, Death arrives in Gotham in Judgement on Gotham to continue his bloody rampage, killing numerous people before being stopped by Batman. Escaping in etheral form, Death allies with the Master of Fear, Scarecrow, and, after failing to betray and murder the man when he outlives his usefulness, teams up with him in massacring a rock concert of dozens of people in grotesque ways, planning to move onto the rest of Gotham afterwards. Later allying with The Joker, Death turns him into a Dark Judge and proceeds to butcher thousands of people in Mega City One, and is stopped only after wiping out an entire amusement park of adults and children. With a love of killing and a philosophy to enable it, Judge Death is truly the worst foe in Dredd's enemy line-up.
 * Scarecrow is a sadistic criminal obsessed with terrifying others and spreading widespread fear, and is thus ecstatic when meeting Judge Death. Watching in fascination as Death kills Scarecrow's own assistant, Scarecrow then cows Death with his patented Fear Gas, forcing the evil Judge to become his partner, and then, wanting Death to show him a "feast of fear," brings him to a highly-populated rock concert and watches in glee as he sics Death on the thousands of concert-goers, even videotaping the whole ordeal in sick amusement.
 * The Joker is as usual portrayed as a lunatic who wants nothing more than to torment and kill everything he can as a form of entertainment and "humor." Infiltrating Mega City One, Joker kills numerous people to enable the release of Judge Death and his Dark Judges, and, requesting to be made a Dark Judge himself, Joker uses his new abilities to go on a slaughter spree with Death. Personally using his new power of screeching laughter, Joker kills dozens of people at a time by making their heads explode, and, after wiping out every man, woman, and child at an amusement park, proclaims his intentions to head back to Gotham and showcase his new powers to its millions of inhabitants.
 * Batman: Holy Terror: Dr. Saul Erdel, the head scientist of Star Chamber, is an amoral mad scientist studying the “para-gene” for the purposes of the theocratic state. To activate the gene after witnessing its effects in the former scientist Barry Allen, Erdel has dozens of people with the gene kidnapped and experimented on, resulting in all of his subjects afflicted with varying states of trauma, insanity, Body Horror, and mental and physical deformation – including a three-year-old he induced rapid aging in to the point of eventual death and a merman he forcefully mated with another mermaid, leading to the mermaid's death in childbirth and the resulting children all being born as agony-stricken mutations. Disintegrating even his favorite project Barry once he stands up, Erdel's most powerful specimen is an alien he calls the Green Man, whom he raised under experimentation and eventually killed via exposure to kryptonite once he grows too strong, showing Batman the Green Man's body with the sole purpose of breaking his hope with a proud smile on his face the whole while.
 * Steel Annual #1— Crucible of Freedom: John Henry Irons is a slave during the American Civil War, and Arthur Forrest and Mr. Haig embody all the evils of American slavery. Forrest used to be an innocent child in love with Arthurian Legend and even befriended John, but when he was punished by his own father, Arthur blamed John and became cruel even by the standards of his family, personally killing a black slave who had sex with his white crush and allowing the overseer Mr. Haig to abuse the slaves, with John being forced to allow himself to be whipped in place of his pregnant wife. When the Civil War begins, John is forced to create a steampunk armor at Arthur's orders, who threatens slave children by having Haig put them in a box in the open air. When a downpour comes, Haig allows the babies to be drowned in rainwater and gives orders attack their parents when they rebel. When John takes Arthur's armor to help the slave revolt, Arthur, a delusional man who sees himself as the new King Arthur, compares John to the legendary Mordred before blowing himself up, trying to take John with him.
 * Superman vs. Aliens II: God War, by Chuck Dixon: Darkseid is the tyrannical dictator of Apokolips who uses the monstrous aliens known as Xenomorphs as weapons in this crossover series. Introduced by forcing his men to drag a spacecraft out of Apokolips' or it and crash it into the slums, Darkseid callously ignores his minions' protests that it will kill millions of his slaves before it does just that. Discovering the eggs of Facehuggers, entities that implant the infant Xenomorphs inside hosts, Darkseid tests a Facehugger on one of his top scientists, leading to the man's brutal death as a Xenomorph bursts from his chest, and Darkseid then begins his new plans for war with New Genesis. Implanting dozens of his soldiers with Xenomorphs, Darkseid has them attack New Genesis, only so as to allow the Xenomorphs to burst forth and slaughter everyone in their way, and, when Superman and Darkseid's son, Orion, travel to Apokolips to stop him, they stumble across the fact that Darkseid has used hundreds of his slaved as breeding materials for more Xenomorphs. In the end, Darkseid "saves" Orion and New Genesis from the Xenomorph threat, solely to plant doubt in Orion so he will one day turn on New Genesis and become Darkseid's slave.
 * Superman: Red Son: In this tale where Superman grew up in the USSR, Brainiac stands as a stark contrast to the misguided intentions of this Superman. At first allied with Lex Luthor to defeat Superman, Brainac shrinks down the city of Stalingrad and puts it in a bottle. Superman easily defeats Brainiac and reprograms him, making him his servant. Brainiac becomes the USSR's chief scientist and comes up with a horrifying way to deal with people who threaten Superman's rule, turning them into lobotomized robots. Brainiac tries to push Superman into more extreme actions, like declaring war on the US in a preemptive strike, noting that if they attack now only 6.5 million people will die and the US will be conquered in a matter of hours. Lex Luthor confronts Superman and Brainiac, wanting to debate Superman, but Brainiac has him taken away to become a robot. Superman relents and agrees to invade the US. Superman is confronted by Lois Lane, who uses a letter from Lex Luthor, to convince Superman what he is doing is wrong. After calling off the invasion, Superman is attacked by Brainiac, who was not really reprogrammed and was simply pretending to be Superman's ally because it suited his own purposes. Brainiac plans to kill Superman, conquer the world and then conquer the galaxy. However Lex Luthor escaped and manages to shut down Brainiac. After his defeat, it is revealed that Brainiac has rigged his ship to explode if he has ever defeated, which would cause an explosion that would destroy the Earth and every thing in 15 million mile radius, willing to kill the human race out of spite.
 * Superman: At Earth's End: Set in a post apocalyptic wasteland, this tale gives us the DNA Diktators, revealed to be cloned twins of Adolf Hitler, who are two biology perverting madmen obsessed with continuing their work from World War II in creating a "master race". As clones of Hitler, the Diktators happily take responsibility for their original form's crimes, and continue these in the present by rounding up thousands of innocents, performing horrific experiments on them that leave them in constant agony, then grinding them up into raw material to create an army of mutant Nazi stormtroopers. After their mutant monsters fail to murder numerous children who escaped the Diktators' grasp, the Diktators order the children, alongside Superman, all murdered by their various creations, even having defiled the corpse of the hero Batman by using his corpse to create nightmarish bat monsters that they sic on Superman to torment him. Utter sociopaths with delusions of godhood and megolomania, these clones of Hitler display all of their original's cruelty and evil in their quest for a perfect race.
 * Superman vs. The Terminator: Death to the Future: As in the Terminator films, Skynet is a malevolent A.I. who killed billions of humans on Judgment Day after gaining access to every computer grid on the planet. When John Connor and the other surviving humans revolt, Skynet sends Terminators back in time to kill John and his mother, all attempts being unsuccessful. When Superman is transported to the future, Skynet captures him, along with an aged Steel, intending to forcibly retrieve information from their heads that will help it defeat La Résistance. Skynet also reveals that after it finishes wiping out humanity, it plans on committing genocide on every other species in the universe until only machines remain.
 * Wonder Woman: Amazonia: King Jack Planters is a seemingly-noble American who takes the throne after a mysterious explosion decimates the entirety of the Royal Family. In truth the notorious Jack the Ripper who rigged the explosion himself after his initial killings, Jack keeps the sole survivor as a paralyzed trophy and plunges his nation into a brutal war with France whilst keeping the women of the country as lower-class citizens. A raving misogynist in his meantime, Jack invents a drug to erase men's “femininity” to reduce them to bloodthirsty beasts and spreads the drug among his inner circle to have them hunt down and butcher captured women for sport, hoping to raise his son as an equally-bloodthirsty heir and laughing that he slaughtered his own wife alongside a hundred others for the purpose of establishing a “Ripper's world” among the land he rules over. Even when Diana herself saves his life from an earlier attack, Jack smugly brushes the matter off by revealing the attempted assassin was a friend of Jack's before he murdered his daughter in a fit of cruel lust, later trying to make Diana herself as the centerpiece of his latest hunt while kidnapping her children to grow up under cruel experimentation.

Other

 * Darkseid is evil incarnate. His sole wish is to turn all of existence and its inhabitants into essentially an extension of himself and his evil mind. That said, the fact that he's sane, knows exactly what he's doing and has no problem with it makes him even more monstrous. At the very least, should you agree to become his loyal servant, he'll let you live...should you not screw up. Except, even if you don't screw up, he may not let you live when you complete your task.
 * Major Force, the Evil Counterpart of Captain Atom. The guy is responsible for one of the most infamous Stuffed Into the Fridge incidents in comics (the Trope Namer, in fact). He murdered Kyle Rayner's girlfriend and stuffed her body in a refrigerator for Kyle to find. His idea of a joke? Pretending to do the same thing with Kyle's mother by putting what looked like her severed head in an oven. He's the worst possible person to choose for a military experiment that turns humans into powerful immortal Energy Beings. He is so crazy, he RIPS OFF Major Liberty's (his ally and fellow government cape) arm and beats him to death with it because, to quote: "We don't need two majors on this team!" Then again, the guy who nominated him for the experiment, General Wade Eiling, was a pretty big bastard too, though a magnificent one.
 * The current run of Green Lantern Corps has two:
 * The first is Mongul II, Overlord Junior at its finest. Dedicated to aping his equally unpleasant father in every aspect, he began his villainous career by punching his own sister's head off to sever any of those pesky family ties that tend to hold villains back. He also enslaved a benevolent Hive Queen to produce mind-screwing plants for him, and when she put her foot down, he threatened to burn her billions of children to ashes and force her to eat them. The subsequent karmic payback was both a Crowning Moment of Awesome and an Awesome Moment of Crowning, as it earns the Hive Queen a Green Lantern Ring.
 * The second is Diro Yat, father of Green Lantern Sodam Yat. How do you discourage your son from hanging out with the wrong crowd? Well, if you're Diro Yat, you have the offending friend taxidermied, then Mind Rape your son into believing his friend was trying to kill him. Did we mention that the only reason the friend was offensive was that he was of a different alien species? He's also fond of Cold-Blooded Torture and having people burned alive, and, as of the current arc, is a President Evil. What's worse is that Diro's attitude is shared by most of his fellow Daxamites. Sodam is the only Daxamite seen so far who doesn't display violent xenophobia. The entire planet is so bad that Sodam seriously considered letting the Sinestro Corps tear the planet apart.
 * In Emerald Warriors, Sodam has been freed from Daxam's sun and found a group of Daxamites who have taken his example to heart. He has also discovered that his father is leading a faction to hunt him down and toss him back in the sun so the Daxamites can have superpowers.
 * Mongul and Diro Yat hardly have a monopoly on Complete Monsterdom in the Green Lantern series. While some of the Sinestro Corps may have a Freudian Excuse or some quirk that keeps them from being irredeemably monstrous, a lot of them are just plain vile. You have Kilowog's Evil Counterpart Arkillo, a cannibalistic savage who once ate a Red Lantern's wife; Romat-Ru, a Serial Killer with a body count of thousands of children and is seen as one of the vilest beings of his sector; and Despotellis, a sentient virus that wiped out most of its own sector and killed Kyle Rayner's mother. Interestingly, Kryb is a subversion - despite that fact that she kills parents and steals their children, she cares for and treats them as her own. Considering who Sinestro is, it can be quite jarring to find so many Complete Monsters in his Corps.
 * Volthoom is the Big Bad of the Wrath of the First Lantern storyline. Before the beginning of the plot, he was responsible for the torture and murder of millions of people across the universe, which lead to his imprisonment by the Guardians. When they decided to put him in lesser restraints eons later in order to further their own plans, Volthoom broke free and set off on a quest to regain his lost powers by feeding on the emotions of various Lantern ring wielders. To do this, he pulls off a Despair Gambit on each one by showing them visions of what could have happened had something gone different in their most defining or tragic moments in their lives, warping reality around them so that they become immersed in it, and denying them the chance to change the past. Out of all the emotions, he finds negative ones such as despair and misery the most savory to him. This leaves his victims physically and mentally broken as a result; in doing this, he almost drove Atrocitus to suicide. When Sinestro resisted Volthoom and lashed back at him, Volthoom destroyed Sinestro's home planet Korugar and everyone on it. Volthoom's ultimate goal after completely restoring his power is to rewrite all of reality to the way he wants it to be.
 * Most Shazam villains are difficult to take seriously. That can't be said of Mister Mind, a two-inch long parasitic worm from Venus. As his people's advance scout on Earth, Mister Mind took control of Captain Marvel's cousin, Sinclair Batson, mutating him into a monster. When Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel foiled Mind's plans, the worm vowed revenge, and bodyjacking Sarge Steel of the Department of Metahuman Affairs, set in motion a plan for a nuclear holocaust. Incubating his larvae in sores within Sinclair's body, Mind took mental control of his offspring after they were born and had them in turn infest nuclear technicians, army officers, and politicians, while he himself used Sarge Steel's authority to obliterate Fairfield, Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel's hometown. Defeated before he could end the human race, Mind broke out again during the events of 52, and after mutating into his adult form of The Hyperfly, tried to devour the totality of space/time, plotting to end the multiverse. Motivated by nothing more than anger at Captain Marvel for embarassing him, Mind is as bad as The Big Red Cheese's Rogues Gallery can get.
 * Crossing Midnight gave us Lord Aratsu, one of the most powerful Kami alive, the God of Swords. He is also a vicious, usurping, tyrannical megalomaniac who considers it his right to steal a girl named Toshi from her parents and twin brother because their father prayed at his shrine before her birth. When she refuses to become his slave after Aratsu brutally murdered the family dog he dismembers her mother to use her life to force Toshi's hand. Once Toshi agrees to serve him, Aratsu repairs her mother, but doesn't even bother to mend her soul, leaving her an empty shell and fully susceptible to hungry, soul eating imps. Once Toshi is his slave, Aratsu uses his swords to cut away her past and future, leaving her to exist in only a moment in time. Should she ever displease him, he would allow time to lapse and her to vanish. Aratsu's cruelty is revealed as the story goes on: he gained his power by treachery and murder, having severed his predecessor's memory and condemned him to exile on earth. A violent egomaniac, he also kills any who do not give him the blind worship he feels he's entitled to. While many Kami are alien creatures, Aratsu is an all too familiar and understandable being, and eclipses any human, dragon, demon or Kami in the story with his evil. By the time the rebellion against his rule rolls around, he has no compunction sending the amnesiac Toshi to kill her own brother.
 * Dr. Arthur Light was retconned into a complete monster in the Identity Crisis crossover. He was Hand Waved from a goofy Harmless Villain into a serial rapist who violently raped the completely innocent Sue Dibny, just because he was a petty asshole who wanted to torment the heroes by brutalizing their loved ones. Just before he received his very Karmic Death at the hands of The Spectre, he was in the process of raping a group of teenage girls who he had dressed up as the Teen Titans.
 * Felix Faust, enemy to the Justice League of America, puts the "Evil" back into Evil Sorcerer. Selling his own infant son's soul in a bid for power, killing little girls in another bid for power, defiling the remains of a hero to manipulate a widower into helping him escape imprisonment, raping the widower's resurrected wife...he's done all of that and probably worse. Even Neron, the DC Universe's equivalent to the Devil himself, was disgusted by him.
 * Grant Morrison's JLA: Earth-2 brought us Brainiac's Antimatter Universe counterpart. An organic syntellect who was captured by Ultraman and forced to be his slave, Brainiac schemed to not only escape his bonds, but to upgrade himself into an "Nth Level Intelligence." In order to do this, he swapped a plane in the Antimatter Universe for one in the Matter Universe, killing all the passengers on both in the process, and triggering a war between the Justice League and the Crime Syndicate. While the teams were busy fighting, Brainiac set in motion a plan to merge the Matter and Antimatter Universes, a move that would have resulted in the annihilation of all reality, plotting to use the energy from the resultant explosion to complete his upgrade and become a god. Willing to destroy all life in order to better himself, Antimatter Brainiac was every bit as vile as his Matter Universe twin.
 * Preacher (Comic Book)
 * Marie L'Angell and her loyal henchmen Jody and TC, quite possibly the three most evil and twisted creatures to walk (well, roll) the series (and for a veritable monster island like Preacher (Comic Book), that's saying a lot). Perhaps the most satisfying thing about the All in The Family Story Arc is seeing these three vermin get their well-deserved Karmic Deaths. Marie L'Angell is the terrifying grandmother of protagonist Jesse Custer. She takes "controlling" to a new level and views her own family as tools rather than people. Her usual punishment of her grandson Jesse was locking him into an airtight coffin with an air hose and letting him wallow in his own shit and piss for a week. Then, she attempted to kill her daughter Christina for trying to stop it. But the worst of Marie's cruelties is her obsession with "hardening" Jesse by destroying all his non-family ties, including his puppy dog, his girlfriend, and his childhood friend. And his own father.
 * Jody is generally the instrument of this. Unlike Marie, however, Jody makes no pretense that he doesn't enjoy what he does. We see what a total scumbag he is when he blows Jesse's father's brains out right in front of him and then sneers "fucking crybaby" at a tearful Jesse. When Jesse's dog tries to be friendly to Jody, Jody nails its head to a post and then brutally beats Jesse into submission for it. Years later, Jody forces Jesse to cry 'uncle' while twisting his arm so bad the bone snaps out. In the present times, Jody pulls a repeat again when he shoots Tulip in the head at Marie's request. While Jesse watches. With that smug, superior expression all the while. Later, when Marie finally orders Jesse's death, Jody isn't content with just killing him, oh no. He has to break and humiliate him and make him beg first. When Jesse finally strangles Jody to death, Jody is too twisted to feel anything but pride that his abuses turned Jesse into a killer.
 * Dr. Destiny in the pages of Sandman, transforms from a standard, somewhat campy supervillain into a nightmare inducing lunatic. When first seen Destiny comes across as a harmless, even somewhat pitiable, man. This impression goes out the window when he, for no real reason, casually murders the woman who had given him a ride, made pleasant small talk with him, and given him a coat. Once the good doctor regains the Materioptikon, a ruby used by Morpheus to create reality from the fabric of dreams, Destiny shows off just how bad he truly is. Sitting in a diner, over a twenty-four period Destiny begins steadily driving the establishment's patrons and employees mad. He makes them have sex with each other, mutilate themselves, and torture and kill each other. At one point he gives them their minds back and when they demand to know why he's doing this to them, he responds, "Because I can." By the time he's finished all of the diner's inhabitants are dead. All while this was going on, Dr. Destiny was using the power of the ruby to drive everyone on the planet mad. One disturbing instance had him making a kids' show host tell his viewers to slice open their wrists. When Morpheus asks Destiny what his goal is now, Destiny replies that at first he wanted to rule but now he wants to destroy the world and dance in the wreckage.
 * Swamp Thing has Anton Arcane, a Mad Scientist turned Evil Sorcerer obsessed with immortality and its secrets. First seen attempting and failing to steal Swamp Thing's body for his own use, Arcane survives his near demise by becoming a monstrous spirit. Orchestrating several problems Swamp Thing had to face, notably unleashing the demonic Monkey King to prey on innocent children and slaughter their families, Arcane returns to a physical form by stealing the body of his niece, Abby's, husband. Arcane proceeds to rape and murder Abigail then curse her soul to an eternity of torment in Hell simply to hear her scream, before beginning his master plan. Reviving numerous murderers and serial killers and unleashing them across America, Arcane causes a wave of violence and hate to begin emanating across the country, causing family members to kill each other, babies to be suffocated, and his revived killers to target playgrounds of children, all while planning to take his anarchy on a global scale and bring about his own apocalypse. Arcane spends his last moments gleefully mocking Swamp Thing about how much he enjoys his crimes, and, even when banished to Hell, Arcane can only laugh as he recalls how he reduced to his own brother to a tortured monstrosity that even now causes Abigail great pain. A sadistically twisted monster of a man who cares only for immortality and causing pain to others, Anton Arcane is inarguably Swamp Thing's most hated foe, and for good reason.
 * In the New 52, Anton Arcane's new incarnation is a being of boundless cruelty. In his pursuit of immortality, Arcane took over the elemental force of The Rot, the natural force of death and decay and subsumed it to his will. Arcane extends the Rot to devour all that lives and trap the world in deathless limbo he can rule. Arcane even forced his own nephew to be the Rot's avatar, devouring his mind from within. In Arcane's battles with Swamp Thing, Alec Holland saw a future where Arcane gruesomely tortured and beheaded Abigail and saw lobotomized clones Arcane had made as cannon fodder.
 * Fables reimagines Hansel as a Holier Than Thou Jerkass who tortures and kills women for implied sexual gratification. When he and Gretel were captured as children by Frau Totenkinder, who was trying to sacrifice their lives to demons for youth and power, they fought back and burned her alive in her own oven. Hansel found he enjoyed the sight of watching witches burn. With this newfound bloodlust, Hansel set out to make as many witches suffer as he could, not caring that all too often, victims of his witch hunts were innocent girls. Hansel subjects them to torture and deaths for his own gratification without a twinge of remorse. His crowning moment of evil is after he discovers Gretel had been taking an interest in magic. He murdered her on the spot before fleeing the Fable community to align himself with their great adversary as his Inquisitor general, putting himself in charge of hunting down those who might prove disloyal to the Empire. Hansel is one of the Empire's most feared and zealous leaders who uses his position to satisfy his need for torture and domination.
 * Hellblazer, by the nature of the series, has plenty of many varieties for John Constantine to take on.
 * The First of the Fallen: It's said when Lucifer was cast intoHell, the First was already at the bottom. Far more depraved, violent and sadistic than the Morningstar, the First is introduced as a trader in souls who John bests in a battle of wits. The First promptly devotes all energy to vengeance to destroy John in every way, shape and form while destroying his friends and loved ones and condemning a city to an orgy of blood and violence simply for his own amusement. The First shows no loyalty to allies and frequently destroys them, in one instance changing demon lord Nergal into a mortal to torture him simply for amusement. In his cruelest act, the First captured the soul of John's innocent sister and played upon her love for her Hell bound husband to manipulate her into staying in Hell to split the torture between them.
 * The Serial Killer known as The Family Man was the first human being John Constantine ever killed. The Family Man was an old man with a penchant for happy families. Upon locating them, with a mother, father, and children, he would murder them by lacerating their bodies and ending by slashing their throats. Having murdered his own parents as a child, the Family Man had a habit of leaving no witnesses with his victims including John's estranged father. The Family Man remains one of the most evil and disturbing villains in Hellblazer's annals.
 * Joshua Wright, John's Evil Counterpart, was an unscrupulous magician with no compunction about rape, manipulation or murder. Wright seduced John Constantine's former lover Isabelle Bracknell, and made her his Scarlet Woman, a woman he could practice all his magic through. When he got bored of her, Wright would drive her to the lowest depths for a laugh, forcing her through painful body modification, got her pregnant to make her get an abortion and have the aborted fetus implanted under her skin, and had her prostitute herself. In his own words, he was merely amusing himself at this point. When he got tired of her, he murdered her with a hammer. When confronted by John, Wright shows no remorse, gloating "that's what magic's all about, innit? Fucking someone. One way or another."
 * Icon: The alien menace Kali'kak, better known by his self-given moniker of Oblivion, defines himself as one of Arnus' most brutal foes and sticks out from the rest of the Cooperative's peaceful society. Growing tired of his race's virtual immortality, Kali'kak develops an academic knowledge on death which eventually blossoms into an unhealthy obsession with the concept. Murdering his own therapist after being transferred to the Prison Planet for his own well-being, Kali'kak is enraptured at committing murder with his own hands and vengefully sabotages an occupied space liner Arnus is on. Shortly after committing a prolonged massacre of his own people resulting in around 350 casualties, Kali'kak rechristens himself Oblivion and makes his way to Earth after having learned Arnus (now known as Icon) is still alive. Butchering two joggers who find him and enthralled that death is permanent for Earth's beings, Oblivion begins a one-man crusade to kill every sentient being on the planet with his own bare hands. To this end, Oblivion indiscriminately slaughters his way into Dakota City, leading to countless fatalities, gleefully stabs Icon's lovable replacement Buck Wild to death, and attempts to suffocate Icon's young sidekick Rocket, sadistically assuring her he'll go after her friends and her infant son next. Ruthless, utterly psychopathic, and with a monstrous appearance to compound his evil, Oblivion's limitless appetite for murder cements him as one of Icon's most wicked foes.
 * The Outsiders: Mr. Tanner, from the Wanted arc, manages to occupy a special field of depravity despite being a normal human with no superhuman powers. Mr. Tanner runs an international slavery ring, with a focus on young children; countless children are abducted from across the globe to be painfully branded and serve as abused sex slaves for years on end at the hands of Tanner and his buyers. Having perpetuated the ring of pedophilic rape and torture for years, Tanner catches the eye of one of his previous victims — Grace Chou, who suffered under his abuses for three years and is now a fully-grown superhuman — and goads her into coming back into his grasp by arranging the murder of an innocent man and kidnapping the young daughter of Arsenal to be turned into a sex slave. Tanner's atrocities are a dark mirror of similar incidents that happen every day in real life, and despite being an incredibly minor villain in the long run, he still stands out as one of the most realistically depraved DC characters.
 * The Unwritten: Pullman, the most visible member of the Ancient Conspiracy is a sadistic murderer who kills multiple people with relish; this includes a little girl he smothered to death with a pillow. At times he goes out of his way to kill when he has absolutely no reason to execute the victims. Pullman admits his hatred for storytellers and goes out of his way to make such targets deaths as painful as possible. Seven thousand years old, Pullman has had time to wrack up an impressive count of misdeeds, including when he was travelling with Gilgamesh himself, and raped or killed a woman that he sneered he 'used as cattle ought to be' when confronted. Pullman is ultimately revealed as attempting to say the Leviathan, the creature behind all stories, in order to achieve his own death, as his own story as Cain, the first murderer, will not allow him to die. however, he has no intention of dying alone, and when he's dealt with deathblow by the heroes, he gloats to hero Tom at 'dragging his bitch' with him, having murdered Tom's girlfriend before receiving the final blow.
 * Randall Dowling of Planetary is a twisted Mad Scientist and leader of The Four, an evil analogue of The Fantastic Four. Having made contact with another world, Dowling plans to assist it in conquering earth in exchange for power. Keeping Earth's technology at its current level by withholding or suppressing discoveries that could eradicate disease and save countless lives, in order to prevent humanity's advancement, Dowling locates children with budding technological skill able to advance humanity. He has their families killed in "accidents", before tormenting and brainwashing the kids into using their talents to stifle humanity's growth, with bombs planted in them in case anyone tries to rescue them. Using the Red Scare as a threat, Dowling also creates "City Zero", where suspected "spies" are rounded up and subjected to inhuman experiments, kept alive in horrible agony for Dowling's purposes. To store his experiments and weapons, Dowling also wiped out all life on a planet, just to insure it was freed for storage. Treating his fellow members of the Four as disposable as well, Dowling's only care is for his own ego, advancement and power, no matter how many worlds he sacrifices.
 * Transmetropolitan features The Smiler. In a world nearly without ethics, he goes above and beyond the call of evil. If you want a rundown, he has his campaign coordinator publicly assassinated to win sympathy for himself after his campaign went into the gutter; he has his family killed in an "accident" to again win sympathy; he has a member of his State Sec pull a sniper spree on civilians so that no one would notice the freak storm brewing nearby, a storm that causes massive damage and loss of life, all so he could wipe the evidence against him from existence (and that was a fool's errand as Spider kept his own private records, meaning that the Smiler did what he did for nothing); he has a peaceful protest of college students riddled with bullets at the first opportunity of "I thought he was pulling a gun"; he allows the brutal murderers of an innocent kid to go free and orders the cops to butcher all of the protesters as soon as violence was initiated (and it was done so by the murderers) and then (briefly) used his power to prevent the media from even acknowledging the riot and the slaughter of innocent civilians from happening!. This man would make Satan cringe, and this is just the incidents that immediately come to mind. And just to add insult to injury, he also masturbates into the American flag whenever he's stressed.
 * Tao from the Wildstorm Universe, was one of the few who predicted The End of the World as We Know It, and what did he do? He Brainwashed the two most powerful beings on Earth and turned them into being his sex-slaves just to make sure they would not try to push the Reset Button. And that's not even the worst thing he ever did...
 * Prometheus started out as a Magnificent Bastard in his initial appearance when created by Grant Morrison. He then went on to suffer severe Villain Decay in most of his follow-up appearances...until JLA: Cry for Justice. In his grand return after years of limbo (after a special one-shot used Final Crisis to retcon all of the non Morrison/Villain Decay stories involving he character as being an impostor), he unleashed a wave of chaos, carnage, and torture on the heroes of the DCU that rivaled even the worst Big Bad in the worst Crisis. Murdering countless D-list superheroes, killing Mikaal Tomas' lover and Congo Bill's pride, sewing Freddy Freeman's lips together to keep him from speaking his magic world, cruelly lobotomizing genius IQ, mutilating Red Arrow, and culminating with murdering 90,000 people in Star City - including Red Arrow's little daughter. Why? Because as a kid, his criminal parents were shot in front of him by the police. The series may have been incredibly criticized, but there's no denying that it's depiciton of Prometheus was easily one of the most monstrous characters in the DC Universe.
 * Aquaman's Arch Enemy Black Manta, the guy who killed Aquaman's young son. Even after Aquaman restored his humanity and cured his autism, Black Manta still stabbed him in the back while boasting to him that, deep down, in his heart of hearts, Manta is just a murderous bastard who wants to see Aquaman die slowly and painfully -- just like his son. And Manta is perfectly willing to see his own son - Jackson Hyde, the second Aqualad - dead if he can manage it.
 * Peter "Mort" Mortimer, AKA Scavenger and later Barracuda, stands out as one of the most horrifying minor villains in the DC universe. Originally appearing as a dangerous, if corny, villain of Aquaman, with him attempting to poison an entire ocean and kill numerous people, a child included, being his crimes then, Mort seemingly took a turn for the better when he made a Heel Face Turn to save children's lives. Unfortunately, this didn't last very long, as Mort was later revealed to be a despicable child rapist who rapes young boys, records then sells the acts, and will often rip the children's hearts out for fun. When confronted by an enraged Hawkman and Aquaman, the latter of whom thought Mort was a "friend", Mort shows nothing but smug glee at his crimes, brushing them off as "urges" he needed to satisfy.
 * Hawkman's Onimar-Synn is the strongest of the Seven Devils who plagued the history of Thanagar and one of the planet's greatest and most powerful entities. A soul-devouring demon who nourishes himself on suffering, Synn resurrects countless years after his first defeat and takes over Thanagar, slaughtering its high council and devouring the souls of its populace by the thousands to fuel his undead army, whilst executing thousands more by dropping them from the point of the flying city he takes over. Once more revived by his depraved priest in time for the Rann-Thanagar War, Synn exploits the conflict to devour the dead and dying of Thanagar's populace, impeding the efforts of Kyle Rayner and Adam Strange to stop him by by trying to suffocate hundreds of innocents reserved in storage to slake his appetite, before mounting an assault on Rann to devour its populace as well, slaughtering them by the masses and ultimately striving to use their technology to go on and consume every living soul in the universe.
 * The Flash has a Complete Monster of an Arch-Nemesis in Eobard Thawne, the Reverse Flash. It was long clear that he was a Smug Snake with no regard for human life, and he was responsible for murdering Barry Allen's wife and eventually driving Barry to kill him to save a life. But with recent revelations in the new "Flash" series, there's no going back for Thawne. It's revealed that Thawne has been using his time travel powers to "edit" his life, murdering his brother (who he blamed for holding him back), his parents (who weren't supportive of his obsession with the Speed Force), and a professional rival. He even went so far as to essentially lobotomize a woman he was in love with, just because she rejected him. It's also implied that he, possibly along with Darkseid turning Batman into a Chrono Omega bomb after Final Crisis, has screwed up time with his shit. The Flashpoint event seems to show it even further. The kicker? It's out of pure selfishness. Not out of sadism, conquest, or lust for destruction, but because he's a selfish man who plans to get what he wants at the expense of everyone else. And editing his own history will no doubt make him even worse.
 * Grodd. Take a gorilla. Now make him ungodly strong, superhumanly smart, and give him exceptionally strong psionic abilities. Sound frightening? Now make him a homicidally violent, megalomaniacal, and completely unrepentant sociopath. Yeah, not good. His most well-known feat was being the one who kickstarted Hunter Zolomon's Start of Darkness into Zoom by severely injuring him and leaving him crippled. His reputation for having both a short fuse and an incredible propensity for manipulation has made him one of the villains whom all the other villains hate and often fear, with the ones who are willing to work with him on their own volition being few and far between. And he is a racist. His attitude towards human beings is weirdly offensive. It gets worse in Flashpoint. See, the Grodd of Earth-1 is a sociopathic, megalomaniacal prick who treats everyone as a means to an end. The Flashpoint Grodd? He's a genocidal maniac who conquered and slaughtered most of Africa because he was bored. His supremely callous, egocentric behavior towards the few survivors of his run firmly cements his status as a total bastard.
 * At first, Superboy-Prime simply comes across as a whiny bitch who wants the DC universe to go back to the way he wanted it to be. However, as Infinite Crisis goes on, he slowly becomes mad with power and begins killing characters left and right, his genocide being practically unstoppable until Superman, almost completely powerless, manages to defeat him. He does have some excuse, though. After his whole world, including his adoptive parents and girlfriend, was destroyed, he chose not to go for the new one in order to help and defeat the Big Bad and, as a result, was stranded in pocket dimension for years (maybe decades). And then Prime finds out that said new universe is worse than all that died so it could live...in the beginning, he was a Well-Intentioned Extremist whose goal was to create a better world. His being bullied at school also explains why he started to beat up Connor, who had been a huge Jerkass for quite some time. He also seems to be pretty pissed off at the DC writers for making him one of these after his universe is restored, as not even his parents will accept him now unless he literally forces them to.
 * Alexander Luthor is higher in regards to vileness and with less so-called excuse. This bastard causes ALL the pain and suffering that precedes the story in order to justify his goal to Golden Age Superman. He manipulates Superman into thinking bringing Earth-2 back will save Lois Lane's life when he knows damn well it won't, even though Superman and Lois have been like parents for him. He betrays people like Pariah and Power Girl without a shred of remorse, is a big factor in Superboy-Prime's descent into madness, and actually pushes Batman to nearly SHOOT him when he almost kills Nightwing. His death at the hands of Lex Luthor and the Joker was more than deserved. This just goes to further prove what The Question said in Justice League Unlimited: "No matter what world he may call home, Luthor is Luthor."
 * American Vampire: Skinner Sweet. Ax Crazy, Chaotic Evil...and a new, improved kind of vampire, much more powerful and less vulnerable than the traditional old-world European vampires. Even before he became a vampire, he was far more psychotic than most Wild West outlaws ever were. The European vampire covens also qualify on this, but Skinner's crazier and more powerful. If leading a band of rapist murderers in the Old West isn't enough, out of nothing but spite, Skinner sent a poisoned bottle of wine to his nemesis Sheriff Book's wife under the pretense it was from Book himself. After becoming a vampire, Sweet went on a savage rampage in his old town, slaughtering everyone he could find and making colorful...arrangements with the corpses. He then infected Book with vampirism to degrade him further. If that's not enough, decades later, Sweet double crosses a vampire partner of his and all his allies solely because he just "has to be the only one left standing", and when that fails, injects one ally's pregnant wife with his blood to infect her baby. Why does he do it? In his words: "Why the Hell not?"
 * Dracula, the overarching villain of this miniseries, is depicted as an ancient monster of pure evil and a Multiple Choice Past. . The creator of the evil, and racist Carpathian vampire strain, Dracula dominated his progeny into launching genocidal warfare against other species of vampires, exterminating many who simply wanted to live in peace. After being bound and imprisoned by the vampire hunting Vassals of the Morning Star, Dracula was occasionally able to reach out, twisting the minds of mortals into homicidal insanity, often forcing them to murder their loved ones. When he encounters the leader of the Vassals, Linden Hobbes, who was one such victim, Dracula brutally attempts to dismember him, mocking him all the while with a vision of Hobbes' dead son attacking him. The reason? It's just too much fun not to kill him that way.
 * The Gray Trader, or the Great Traitor, was once humanity's greatest hero Hurin. Joining the monstrous Beast, the original source of all monsters, Hurin became its now-monstrous protector and greatest servant. Attempting to revive the Beast to bring about Hell on Earth, the Trader tortures and kills countless innocents, often using the voices of their loved ones to torture them or convince them to allow him to devour them and convert them into soulless demon servants of the Beast. The Trader converts an entire mining community into soulless husks of themselves while "seeding" a woman with the Beast, forcing her to give birth to it in an agonizing process that lasts weeks. Torturing his victims for information, the Trader locates multiple vampire children and feeds them to his master as well before unleashing his monsters on America, resulting in mass slaughter. Devoted only to the Beast and bringing about the end of days, Hurin demonstrates how far even humanity's best can fall.
 * Martian Manhunter
 * Commander Benn Blanx appeared only twice in the 1970s but he made up for limited appearances with not rage, or hate, but pure, cold-blooded sociopathy. For reasons known only to himself, Blanx restarted the war between the Pole Dwellers (Pale/White Martians) and the Desert Dwellers (Green Martians). Meeting J'onn J'onnz in single combat, Blanx was victorious through cheating, having one of his henchmen suckerpunch J'onn from behind; he then exiled J'onn to the desert. Following J'onn's teleporation to Earth, Blanx followed his foe there and tried to kill him, not out of hatred, but because "You're a cool one J'onn. I'll sleep better when you're gone." His invasion resulted in numerous human deaths and required the entire JLA to defeat. Years later, J'onn returned to Mars to discover that Blanx had completely destroyed it, using the Blue Flame that provided the planet's fire to set the entire planet ablaze. When asked why, Blanx revealed that he did it for money: an offworld mining corporation had offered to buy Mars, but would only sell it to Blanx if he was last remaining Martian. Blanx did them one better, killing not only every Martian, but Mars itself, engineering a Class 6 apocalypse out of sheer greed and apathy. In terms of utter soullessness, no Martian Manhunter villain has ever surpassed him.
 * J'onn's first enemy (in current continuity), his own brother Malefic, was probably one of the worst. Malefic engineered a psychic plague that incinerated the rest of the Green Martian race out of nothing but spite and envy at being the only Green Martian without telepathy. The reason he's not a telepath? He committed Mind Rape, an unthinkable crime in Green Martian society, and was punished by having his psychic powers and memory stripped away. So Malefic committed genocide on his own race over a punishment that he wholly deserved. As if this wasn't enough, Malefic was so hellbent on ruining J'onn's life after the latter defeated him that he followed him to Earth and murdered Karen Smith, J'onn's (as Detective John Jones) partner on the police force. This was the last straw for J'onn and he threw Malefic into the sun. The saddest part about all of this is that J'onn was the only person who was ever sympathetic to Malefic because they were brothers.
 * Manhunter: Walter "Walt" Pratt was the illegitimate son of the Justice Society heroes Phantom Lady and Iron Munroe. Growing up in a series of foster homes, Walt gained a streak of violent misogyny that manifested in brutally killing women later in life. Abusing and eventually murdering his own wife, Walt was sent to prison for the majority of his daughter Kate's life. When Kate was an adult with a young son, Walt returned to her life, revealing he was dying of bone cancer. Seeking to extend his life, Walt tried to kidnap his own grandson Ramsey to harvest his bone marrow to save his own life while paying the two supervillains he hired to do the transplant with Kate's ex-husband Peter, allowing the villains to torture him to death on camera. When he learned Ramsey was not a match, he tried to blackmail Kate to sacrifice herself in the transplant by threatening to beat Peter to death using Ramsey. When he realized there was no further way to survive, Walt proceeded to attempt to kill both Kate and Ramsey just to ensure his whole bloodline would become extinct.
 * The Mighty: Alpha One is a seemingly benevolent superhero who soon reveals himself to be something far worse. An alien banished from his homeworld due to his desire to wipe out 10% of the population who were, in his mind, "vagrants," Alpha landed on Earth where he instantly massacred hundreds of soldiers on two sides of a war to test his new powers granted to him by the Earth's sun. Becoming a superhero to gain the trust of humanity, Alpha is in actuality arranging accidents that kill innocents by the hundreds, notably sinking the Titanic, then kidnapping innocents part of said accidents and performing horrifying experiments on them, leading to their untimely demises. Having thousands of victims of just his experiments over the centuries, Alpha allies with his new partner, Gabriel Cole, and continues his plans while making Cole his "friend" as they stop terrorists from detonating a nuke that Alpha himself had them construct. When Cole finds out the truth, Alpha reveals that he seeks to create dozens of humans with superpowers like himself, and, after failing to impregnate dozens of women, many unwillingly, Alpha decided to perform experiments on people to get his results. Once perfecting the experiments, Alpha plans to make the powered individuals his "master race," then use them to purge humanity of its "chaotic" and "evil" free will, all while keeping his Master Race under his thumb with threats of death to any who oppose him. Though claiming to want to "save" humankind and seeming to genuinely like Cole, both of these are utterly disproven by the end, where Alpha devolves into ranting that he is a god and boasts that he is happy for the chance to kill Cole, having decided that he didn't "deserve" to live under his rule.
 * Teen Titans: Trigon The Terrible is the devil incarnate. A demonic overlord who rules an empire where countless souls are kept in horrible bondage, with those who dare to resist (and 'resistance' can be defined as 'don't do as ordered quick enough) are ruthlessly exterminated, Trigon wishes to extend his dominion to earth and for that end, disguised himself as a handsome human being to impregnate a woman named Arella, revealing his true form and taunting her after. After invading earth, Trigon dominates the soul of his daughter Raven and corrupts her into a monster, forcing her to attack her own world and friends. Trigon's brutality extends to exterminating entire worlds simply to make a statement. With no redeeming features whatsoever, Trigon is the most terrifying and powerful foe the Teen Titans ever faced.
 * Doom Patrol, and later Teen Titans foe Captain Zahl was a Nazi U-Boat commander turned criminal mercenary who never gave up on imposing the Third Reich's vision on the world. After a confrontation with Niles "The Chief" Caulder left him down an arm and confined to a back and neck brace, Zahl took on a behind-the-scenes role, transforming Otto Von Furth into the always burning Plasmus, and manipulating the unstable Madame Rouge into betraying the Doom Patrol and Brotherhood of Evil both, resulting in the demise of both teams. Hunted across the world by surviving Doom Patrol members and associates Gar Logan, Robotman, and Mento, Zahl battled the New Teen Titans when he and his army joined Madame Rouge's attempted conquest of Zandia. Under Zahl's direction his men massacred thousands of Zandia's expat inhabitants, and captured the Titans, subjecting them to the horrors of his Devolving Pit. Foiled by Logan, Robotman, and the reconstituted Brotherhood of Evil, Zahl died when his final attempted murder of Robotman failed and claimed him instead.
 * Nekron, the Big Bad of Blackest Night, manages to slip into Complete Monster territory. The deciding point is when he turns the resurrected heroes into Black Lanterns, which lead to And I Must Scream: these Black Lanterns aren't truly dead, and instead are forced against their will to torment and kill those closest to them (unlike the other Black Lanterns, who are twisted mimics of the reanimated persons). As an Eldritch Abomination, he would be Above Good and Evil and thus exempt from Monsterdom, if it weren't for the fact that he actively schemed and plotted to increase his personal power at the expense of other beings. He's not as emotionless as he thinks... Interestingly, he seems to have become one of these by accident; Blackest Night writer Geoff Johns repeatedly stressed in interviews that Nekron is a fundamental force of the universe too alien to define by human morality. Let's just say the fans disagree.
 * Krona, also known as Entropy, is a self-styled scientist and a rogue Maltusian hell-bent on imposing his ideal of "order" on reality. Inadvertently responsible for the creation of the multiverse and evil itself through his experiments—most prominently the omnicidal Anti-Monitor upon the creation of the antimatter universe—Krona's covert experimentation on the Manhunters, the soldiers of the Guardians of the Universe, resulted in them going haywire and decimating countless lives through Sector 666, leaving only five people alive. Eventually banished and reduced to primeval energy, Krona assumed the name of Entropy and, still intent on continuing his experiments, took service under Nekron, intending to release him into the living universe. Later brought back into the universe through the efforts of Maltusian Controllers, Krona enslaved and then obliterated them, attempting to wage war on the consciousness of the universe, even destroying Earth to this cause—and attempting to destroy its soul in a fit of existential pique when it challenged his conceptions of the universe. By the time of Brightest Day, Krona enslaves Parallax and the emotional entities to force his will upon all creation, taking over the Green Lantern Corps and destroying thousands of lives to his cause. Possessed of such a god complex that he is willing to destroy entire universes, Krona's only true desire to slake his unending thirst for knowledge, and remains one of the greatest threats in the DCU.
 * Brightest Day
 * D'kay D'razz, the 2nd Green Martian in existence, was an amoral Mad Scientist back in the day and only got worse after being psychically and physically isolated from her race as punishment for her crimes. To cope with being alone on Earth, she killed a woman and stole her identity, sealed her memories of her true self away, and started a family. When she sensed J'onn's revival, her true memories returned. The first thing she did after remembering everything was to graphically murder her husband and kids. She is obsessed with the idea of reviving the Green Martian race with J'onn and nearly killed Miss Martian, whom she saw as competition for J'onn. D'kay's monstrous nature is reflected in her physical appearance; thanks to her mental instability and violent nature, her shapeshifting has a distinct Lovecraftian flavor to it. Then it turns out she can never get what she wants - she's barren and in deep denial about it. Ultimately, J'onn ends up throwing her into the sun.
 * Deathstorm, the Black Lantern Firestorm. An inhuman super-powered zombie, you'd assume Deathstorm is completely devoid of emotion. Only, while most Black Lanterns are content with getting a strong enough emotional response, he manages to go about even the most menial of tasks actively, with sadistic glee. Add to this possessing all the immense powers of Firestorm (along with the ability to transmute organic material), and you've got what the Entity has dubbed the greatest threat to its existence. His transgressions include, among other things, murdering Jason Rusch's girlfriend Gehenna by transmuting her into salt, using information unwillingly plucked from Jason's mind (except he already knew how to and just wanted to screw with Jason) before slowly ripping out her heart, kidnapping Professor Stein and Jason's dad in the hopes of goading Ronnie and Jason into triggering a new Big Bang, and, finally, pulling the salt trick again on Professor Stein. While his Totally Radical speech pattern and one-liners have given him a bit of an amusing streak, he's crossed the line far too many times to be considered anything other than a Complete Monster. It's clearly implied that Deathstorm's actions were enough to fully charge the Black Lantern Battery from the sheer amounts of rage/grief/fear he caused. Is it any wonder that he became
 * Green Lantern: Triumph of the Will brings us Ayria, a vicious, corrupt Green Lantern who uses his powers to oppress the residents of Aegri Somnia. Ayria has his forces brutally slaughter their way through the rebelling yellows on Aegri Somnia 2, resulting on millions of casualties on both sides, before establishing a holocaust and sending the yellows who remain into labor camps where they slowly and agonizingly perish by the millions to fuel Ayria's power battery. A paranoid despot unable to take any form of perceived challenge to his rule, Ayria viciously tortures to death several members of his staff – including his own brother – for reasons as varied as apparent treachery to as petty to having no faith in his rule, and ultimately orders every single remaining yellow to be sent to the camps and executed after torturing one who swallows his ring – ultimately resulting in Ayria's downfall when the ring resonates with the dead yellow's will to resurrect the billions Ayria has killed to tear him to bloody shreds. A dictator unrelenting, Ayria proves even the ostensibly righteous Green Lanterns aren't immune to pure evil in their ranks.
 * In Justice, Brainiac is the Big Bad of the mini series, the ultimate mastermind behind of the Legion of Doom and architect of most of the disasters in the story. Brainiac is an advanced android created by the Computer Tyrants of Colu. When the Computer Tyrants were destroyed by the people they had oppressed, Brainiac decides to create his own version of Colu on Earth, by killing most of humanity and turning the rest in copies of himself. To do this Brainiac engages in a complex scheme, he meets with Captain Marvel villain Doctor Sivana, who has been developing some micro sized robot worms that control the minds of others. Brainaic takes his research and uses it to drive Doctor Sivana insane. Brainiac forms his own Legion Of Doom, mind controlling most of the members, except for Lex Luthor, who has a force field that protects him from Brainiac's devices. Brainiac has Black Manta kidnap Aquaman, with Brainiac wanting to learn more about his telepathy by cutting open his brain (Aquaman survives despite Brainiac's lethal intent). Brainiac has the various Legion of Doom members pretend to have turned good and state want to help humanity, with several of them creating cities for the sick and needy, that will provided technology that will cure their illnesses and provided them with a good standard of life. Of course those are the people Brainiac actually intends to transform into copies of himself. Brainiac's micro worms have also let him take control of Earth's nuclear stock pile, with Brainiac planning to nuke most of the world to destroy humanity. When the Justice League reveal to Luthor that Brainiac has betrayed him, Luthor sabotages his plans and forces him to retreat to his ship. Brainiac, unhappy about losing decides to set off the nukes anyway!
 * Kobalt: Mr. Glass is a ruthless assassin with a penchant for wreaking wide swaths of murder even when it's completely unnecessary to his overall goal. With an incredibly long streak of bodies already on his hands, Glass introduces himself blowing up a school bus simply to kill the driver, murdering every single child on the bus in the process. Glass later blows up a gang meeting and personally guns down every survivor himself with a giant smile on his face. Glass disgusts even his amoral employer Milton St. Cloud and sociopathic anti-hero Harvest, and Glass remains completely unrepentant even when faced with death at Harvest's hands, sneering that he simply can't feel.
 * Scalped features Mr. Brass, the Torture Technician of the Hmong gangsters. He is a short, mild-mannered man with one arm who's also a terrifying sadist. When introduced, Mr. Brass informs a prisoner he never asks a question twice and has him 'pick a number', one through ten. The man selects a number which turns out to be the body part Brass removes. Brass proceeds to remove his eye before even asking a question. Brass spends his time torturing his way through the residents of the reservation, largely for his own pleasure. How brass satisfies his 'peculiarities' (he has a penchant for raping and murdering teen prostitutes, male and female) disgusts even the ruthless mob boss Lincoln Red Crow. In the gritty, dark Black and Gray Morality world that is Scalped's Rez, Brass is the worst the world has to offer.
 * William "Billy" Hayes, better known as Harm from the initially light-hearted comic series Young Justice was a teenage supervillain who was also a complete sociopath. Adopted by loving parents, Harm initially terrified his adoptive younger sister Greta and her fears were proven right when Harm murdered her in her bathtub to seal a demonic pact and give himself super powers. His goal was to become the world's greatest murderer and he decided to hunt down and destroy all the kid heroes before moving on to the big leagues. He captured Red Tornado and reprogrammed him as a suicide bomber against Pope John Paul II to make a name for himself in the supervillain community. When his father, realizing what he was, killed Harm with a gunshot to the back, Harm's spirit later returned. He possessed his father and used his body to enact more evil deeds, none more enjoyable to him than screwing with Greta, now the ghostly heroine Secret, by making her think her father never truly loved her. When defeated, Harm, for sheer spite, forced his father to throw himself into one of the fire-pits of Apokolips while Harm possessed him to kill them.
 * The Big Bad Duumvirate in The Golden Age, consisting of Adolf Hitler and the Ultra-Humanite, aim to Take Over the World. During World War II, the Ultra-Humanite performed inhumane experiments on German prisoners to perfect his process to Body Surf, killing all the scientists who helped him, before placing his mind inside superhero Tex Thompson. Becoming an American senator, the Ultra-Humanite places Hitler's brain inside another superhero, Dynaman, and the duo begin plotting to take over America and launch a war on all communist countries. When exposed at a press conference, Hitler attacks the heroes present, killing many civilians in his rampage, while ranting he will use his newfound power to conquer the planet.
 * In Xombi, Leland Crowne is the fanatical leader of the Beli Mah cult, and a madman hellbent on imposing his version of order on the world. Seeking to shatter everyone as an individual, Crowne creates agents for the Beli Mah called Painful Inscriptions via infusing negative emotions into people he abducts, painfully transforming them into the embodiment of that emotion – the worst instance of this being when he funnels the emotions into a pregnant woman, resulting in her giving birth to two babies who's lower halves are giant hands. Using the Inscriptions to assassinate any threats to the cult, regardless of civilian casualties, Crowne painfully transfuses Xombi himself into an Inscription and gleefully has him butcher his own friends. Crowne's ultimate goal is to turn the angel Israfel into an Inscription – regardless of the potential of killing millions in the process – with intent to exterminate the rival cult of the Veil before breaking everyone worldwide. Apathetic even to the deaths of his own devoted followers, Crowne is devoted only to his delusional idea of “truth.”
 * Roland Finch, from the 2011 revival, is a seemingly charming man only out for self-advancement. Perpetually pursued by various enemies he's made in his long history of deceit, Finch seduces a woman named Annie Palmer, integrating himself with the Ninth Stronghold. Finch subtly tears the entire civilization apart through his manipulations before murdering the twin rulers of the Stronghold and massacring the survivors himself, casting Palmer down to Earth to live her remaining days alone. Intending to completely wipe out the twenty other Strongholds to enjoy the luxury of the Stronghold alone, Finch manipulates Palmer's desire to go home and continues using her as a pawn, having her slaughter a prison and release a prisoner he's infused with the embodiment of rage itself, fully intending on awakening the entity and having it kill Palmer once he's done with using her. Never shown denying how self-absorbed he is and instead opting to revel in it, Finch is little more than a cruel, manipulative snake of a man willing to use and abuse people as he sees fit.
 * The New 52: Future's End and Batman Beyond:
 * Brother EYE is an A.I. created by Batman and Mister Terrific, originally designed to protect humanity but having undergone a sudden Face Heel Turn. Despising flesh and seeking to exploit psychological warfare, it decided to assimilate everyone, turning superheroes into grotesque embodiments of Body Horror either by turning them into cyborg monsters or by sewing them to fleshy servants like Frankenstein. Upon learning of Batman's plot with Terry McGinnis, it decides to sew Batman with the Joker to create a cyborg monster that it sends back in time. In the past it is revealed that it manipulated Cadmus by holding King Faraday's family hostage and making a deal with Fifty Sue (whose later rejection prompts it to spite her by revealing her file in order to psychologically break her), taking advantage of the discrimination against Earth-2 heroes by subjecting them to inhumane experiments and embedding them with implants that spread over them like cancer. It always takes its time to taunt people, culminating in The Reveal that all of the plot was meaningless as Tim Drake goes forward in time to find a hologram of a perfect future, which quickly dissipates as Brother EYE mocks him disguised as his Love Interest. In Tim's war against it, Brother EYE "recruits" even more superheroes and when it fails to assimilate Inque it coerces her to be its servant by threatening her daughter's life much as it did with King Faraday's own. All too casual to subject everyone to torture from children to Superman himself and revealing in its sadism, this iteration of the character is one of the most pointlessly cruel villains in DC's recent years.
 * Brainiac is up to the same tricks as always, with the added benefit of being an Eldritch Abomination who has a death count in the millions of dead civilisations and all who resided in them. His actions in the story include attacking Superman and John Constantine in a variety of forms from a poor infected bear to corn minions as well as having murdered the entire Stormwatch. It takes the combined efforts of Superman with Brother EYE to put this evil to rest, symbolically cleansed by the light of the sun.