DC Villains That Are Way Scarier Than Darkseid
Darkseid is a character with a rich backstory and one of DC Comics' biggest bads, if not the biggest ever. Not only is he individually capable of holding his own against Superman (thanks to his Omega Force-granted super strength, laser beams, and invulnerability), but he also commands legions of vicious, nightmarish armies from his home planet of Apokolips.
In his pursuit of the anti-life equation — which is kind of like if the six Infinity Stones were just one math formula — Darkseid has decimated worlds throughout the DC universe and would probably be the scariest DC villain if he existed in real life. But thanks to the rules of storytelling and fiction often being quite different from reality, the fear factor of a villain isn't always straightforward.
Depending on who's telling the story and what that story is trying to say, there are a lot of DC villains with the potential to be far more creepy, haunting, frightening, and scary than Darkseid.
The Batman Who Laughs
One exciting thing about adapting comic books for film and television is that there are thousands of incredible storylines for screenwriters to choose from. Of course, not every DC universe storyline is worth adapting. The idea of a multiverse has been alive and thriving in the world of DC for decades, allowing writers to explore wild stories without messing with the primary timeline's carefully coordinated canon. For example, one of the scariest villains ever created in the comics is The Batman Who Laughs — the Dark Multiverse's Earth-22 version of Batman.
In the Earth-22 timeline, the Joker discovers that Batman is secretly Bruce Wayne. He then kills many people in Bruce's life and releases gas throughout Gotham in order to infect and kill others with the same chemicals that turned him into the Joker. After watching children lose their parents to the gas, Bruce decides to finally take lethal action against the Joker. During their fight to the death, Joker releases his toxin so that Bruce is incited into madness against his will, and he essentially becomes a combination of himself and his nemesis.
After that, Bruce uses the gas to pervert his son Damian and create an army of "Rabid Robins" out of the Joker's child victims. Earth-22's Batman eventually makes his way to the primary timeline, where our Bruce is forced to confront what could happen to him should he lose sight of his principles.
Deathstroke
Don't let the orange and blue uniform fool you. Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, has a dark history and is one of the most ruthless villains in the DC Comics universe. Deathstroke was first introduced as a villain for the Teen Titans in 1980's "The New Teen Titans" #2. Wilson is a contract killer hired to take out the Titans by whatever means necessary. Just to be clear, that is the Teen Titans. Every single member of the team is under 20. Deathstroke's first and most prominent purpose in the DC universe is to murder a bunch of adolescents who can't even drink legally.
Aside from the fact that he beefs with teenagers, Deathstroke also has a brutal family history and a record of creepy behavior. During the Judas Contract storyline in "The New Teen Titans," Deathstroke manipulates a young woman named Terra into spying on the Titans for him. Terra isn't more than 15 years old when she's first taken in by Wilson, and they pursue a highly inappropriate relationship while he coaches her to befriend and then betray the rest of the Titans.
Deathstroke has also caused immeasurable pain for his own children, allowing his son Joseph's throat to be slashed (rather than reveal the name of a client) when he's just a boy and causing his daughter Rose a lot of emotional trauma. Deathstroke is scary because he has no ethical basis for the code of conduct by which he lives as a mercenary.
Granny Goodness
Granny Goodness could definitely be defined as an extension of Darkseid himself. On Apokolips, she's in charge of acquiring, retaining, programming, training, and deploying Darkseid's special forces, such as the Female Furies. She specializes in brainwashing and torture, preferring to acquire children when they are very young so that she can mold them into perfect soldiers for Apokolips. She also prides herself on her ability to imprison anyone and keep them trapped. One of the only people who's ever escaped one of her orphanages is Scott Free, aka Mister Miracle, who also brought the female fury Big Barda with him. It's an incredible feat and something that no one thought possible until Scott proved it could be done.
Granny Goodness seeks to make sure that all of her pupils will live, fight, and die for Darkseid to the point of manic devotion, and her title is a perversion of the idea that she's a caretaker for the children she acquires for her facilities. She hasn't been depicted in too many screen adaptations, but she is animated and voiced in the "Justice League: Unlimited" cartoon in a few different episodes, and even that version of her is almost too disturbing to watch or listen to. She's Darkseid's lieutenant, but somehow, she's still scarier than Darkseid — A bit like the Bellatrix to his Lord Voldemort.
Starro
2021's "The Suicide Squad," not to be confused with 2016's far inferior "Suicide Squad," is, funny, exciting, interesting, and, unlike many comic book films, it has a truly awesome (and actually terrifying) antagonist. DC's Starro has been around for a while, having been one of the first villains of the Justice League. And you know what never stops being creepy? A giant flesh monster with one enormous eye and five strange orifices that can also spew mini versions of itself to suction onto people's faces and take control of their minds.
Starro checks a lot of boxes. He's an alien from another world, which makes him a bona fide sci-fi villain. He's a gigantic, massively destructive monster. He's made out of a lot of gross-looking stuff — notably some soft and discolored flesh and a lot of eye jelly. And he can exert his will easily onto most other living things, which means that he comes with a zombie-esque army wherever he goes.
In the comic books, Starro isn't always just a gigantic monster. There are times when he's embodied only as a small version of himself stuck to the head of whatever person he's using as an avatar, and he's able to exercise his intellect and sentience in certain instances. He's scary in the comics and "The Suicide Squad," and he'll be scary any other time he's depicted in the future.
Vanessa Kapatelis's Silver Swan
The Silver Swan mantle has been held by a few different DC characters, but the most significant (and horrifying) version of the classic Wonder Woman villain is definitely that of Vanessa Kapatelis. When Diana of Themyscira first comes to America, she stays with a historian named Julia Kapatelis and her teenage daughter Vanessa. While Vanessa is initially jealous of Diana's beauty, she soon comes to think of her as an older sister. Diana eventually leaves the Kapatelises at the advice of Vanessa's therapist, hoping that the mysterious nightmares Vanessa has been having will abate with her absence.
Vanessa's nightmares and subsequent emotional volatility were orchestrated by Circe and Dr. Psycho (two of Wonder Woman's most prominent antagonists), and she falls into their trap, blaming Diana and her mother for her issues. Dr. Psycho and Circe then use mental and physical torture, brainwashing, and experimental cybernetics to transform Vanessa into the Silver Swan and send her after Diana.
The Silver Swan isn't scary like a lot of the villains on this list. She's obviously very sympathetic and ultimately not as brutal as most of them. But her origin story is horrifying. A teenage girl's emotional vulnerability is exploited, and she's turned into a monster. Circe and Psycho pick apart her mind and body, jamming in pieces of darkness and metal where there was once humanity and flesh.
Trigon
Trigon is more of a mystical villain than many of the beings on this list. In his own demon dimension, he rules millions of worlds and always seeks to conquer more, and even though he's never permanently succeeded in taking over Earth Prime, he's given teams like the Justice League and the Teen Titans a run for their money. Trigon is hellish, and his eyes are disconcerting. It's incredible that something as simple as giving him six eyes in two columns on his head can be such an effective way to build his menace, but it's honestly difficult to look straight at him in the comics because of them.
As a demon, Trigon has a big ol' human cult devoted to him and his glory. He's one of the most powerful beings in the DC universe, right up there with Darkseid and Parallax. Were it not for the efforts of his daughter, Raven, he would most likely have succeeded in conquering Earth. Raven was born to Trigon and a human woman named Arella who got mixed up with a cult called the Children of Blood. Trigon came to her pretending to be a handsome man and impregnated her with his daughter, who was born half human and half demon. Raven later reforms the Teen Titans to take Trigon down and dies in the process, though they ultimately succeed in destroying him.
Lex Luthor
Lex Luthor is a villain who needs no introduction. Aside, perhaps, from that of Batman and the Joker, the ever-present conflict between Superman and Lex is the most ubiquitous rivalry in comics. Superman represents what can happen if a person grows up with a wealth of love and virtue in their life. He's an all-powerful being who chooses to do good every day despite the fact that it would be so easy for him to do the opposite at any given moment. Luthor represents what can happen if a person grows up starved of love but granted every material comfort that human life has to offer.
If Lex Luthor were to stand next to Darkseid in a line-up, he obviously wouldn't be the most intimidating presence in the room. But Lex is scarier than Darkseid because he's so much more real. There's not much of a difference between Lex Luthor and the real-life billionaire villains who make reality so unbearable for so many out of selfishness and a lack of humanity. In fact, the real world is a little bit more doomed, because even though Lex Luthor is more openly villainous than our real-life corporate moguls, at least he can be foiled. There is no real-life equivalent of Superman. How's that for some existential dread?
Professor Pyg
Professor Pyg is one of the newest villains on this list but arguably the most traditionally creepy of them all. He was introduced to the main DC canon universe in 2009 in "Batman and Robin" #1, and he'd only just debuted as a character two years prior to that in an alternate-reality story in "Batman" #666. Like most of Batman's villains, Professor Pyg is more human than not but also more sadistic than a lot of beings much more powerful than himself (i.e. Darkseid).
Pyg, whose real name is Lazlo Valentin, begins his adult life as a scientist and eventually suffers a mental breakdown as a result of his work on a substance induces in him paranoid schizophrenia. "Professor Pyg" becomes Valentin's serial killer alter-ego, a man obsessed with perfection and committed to the mutilation of humans, whom he sees as deeply flawed and incapable of self-correction. Professor Pyg kidnaps people and turns them into "Dollotrons," which are human-automaton hybrids that he creates using terrifying surgical procedures. He retains complete control of his Dollotrons and has an unhealthy obsession with them.
Professor Pyg has been utilized a fair amount since his creation, but with such a new character, there are still so many possibilities for potential stories that could follow his particular brand of sadistic insanity. The pig mask alone is terrifying enough to have everyone buying nightlights should he ever be depicted in live action.
Parasite
Parasite, who was prominently featured in the 2020 animated film "Superman: Man of Tomorrow," is a villain with the ability to temporarily leach powers, life force, and knowledge from others. Rudy Jones, the most famous iteration of Parasite, was a janitor at S.T.A.R. labs when he was mentally manipulated into handling some kind of radioactive waste by Darkseid.
Aesthetically, most artists who tackle an illustration of Parasite tend to infuse him with attributes that are related to parasites and illness. Parasite is a jarring purple color, and when he's not horrifically large and meaty, he's usually withering away, which is what his victims look like if he's allowed to feed on them for long enough. He has an alien-esque face and a drippy quality, along with some very sharp, nasty teeth. All of this is to say that, even if his abilities weren't objectively terrifying, he's honestly scary enough just to look at.
In a world where a villain can simply touch Superman and absorb his power, anyone and everyone is in trouble. Parasite is scary in the way that vampires are scary — he takes away all of the parts of his victims that make them who they are until they're nothing but husks, and there's almost nothing that can be done to stop him aside from incapacitating him before he gets his hands on too many powers.
Parallax
This list would be incomplete without Parallax, aka the living embodiment of fear. In the DC Comics universe, colors correspond to raw emotional power where the Green Lantern corp is concerned. Green represents willpower, orange represents greed, pink represents love, etc. Yellow corresponds to fear, and those who wield the powers of the yellow lantern battery tend to serve as main antagonists to the Green Lantern Corp. Parallax is the embodiment of that lantern's central battery, and thus quite a fright.
Parallax is characterized as a demonic entity and has destroyed countless worlds by forcing their people to destroy themselves out of fear and paranoia. Often, Parallax acts as a parasite and is able to inhabit other living things, most famously possessing prominent Green Lantern Hal Jordan. Parallax actually spends years as a small force inside of Jordan, convincing him to doubt himself and slowly breaking down his willpower and ability to withstand fear.
How can Darkseid possibly be scarier than the sentient embodiment of fear itself? Parallax is both a cosmic, mass-destructive monster and the tiny voice inside of everyone's head telling them that something terrible will happen if they walk downstairs in the dark.
Vandal Savage
What's scarier than a near-invulnerable human being who's been alive for a thousand years? A near-invulnerable human being who's been alive for 50,000 years, of course! Vandal Savage is an immortal man who began his life as a Cro-Magnon warrior. After being exposed to some kind of alien meteorite, Savage developed immortality and enhanced healing abilities. He doesn't have powers beyond that, but he does have tens of thousands of years' worth of knowledge in science, tactics, strategy, martial arts, and many other useful and lethal skills.
When you add to those skills 50,000 years of life experience, you're bound to have a man who's gone mad in many respects and lost a lot of perspective as to the value of life and the goodness of humanity. This is a man who's lived through every terrible thing humanity ever did, and it's no wonder that he turns to a life of villainy. Savage has been a major antagonist to many superhero groups as well as other immortal (or regularly resurrected) beings who fight for light, such as Hawk Man and Hawk Woman or the Immortal Man. He's also made a point to keep track of his genetic descendants in case he ever needs replacement organs (ew). He's ruthless, brilliant, and absolutely ancient, and thus has the potential to be horrific.
The Joker
There's a reason that the Joker is one of the most well-known DC Comics characters and one of the most frequently adapted onscreen. He's terrifying in a way similar to Lex Luthor: There isn't that much that's preventing him from being real. Certainly, there's not really a catch-all toxic gas that's guaranteed to turn someone into a creatively horrific psychopath, but the Joker is what happens when someone becomes absolutely overcome by the spirit of hopelessness.
Joker believes that the chaos and evil that pervade humanity will always overcome any person's innate sense of goodness. Unlike nearly any other villain in comics, he has no real endgame. He has no desires or rules, nothing that he's hoping to accomplish aside from the destruction of Batman, and with him, hope.
The Joker has committed no shortage of heinous acts, and he's been especially ruthless toward the younger members of the Bat Family. He once shot Barbara Gordon, aka Batgirl, in the spine, permanently paralyzing her. He also beat Jason Todd almost to death with a crowbar and left him to die by explosion. Jason's death in "The Batman" issue #427 was also voted into reality by readers of comics (they were given a choice between saving Jason or allowing him to die), which is especially grotesque — that's exactly what the Joker would want and expect from humanity.