"You are no man. You are a demon! A peddler of children! YOU STEAL CHILDHOOD ITSELF!"
— Rhama Bgyn, to William X. Malady, Batman: The Ultimate Evil
Given the source material, it comes as no surprise that literature based on The DCU feature heinous villains.
Within each category, works are listed by publication date unless noted. Works do not share a continuity unless noted.
Examples related to video games go here.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
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Examples
- Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu, by Devin Grayson & Flint Dille:
- Sin Tzu, unlike the original, more generic video game iteration, is portrayed in the novel as a sociopathic mass murderer who views compassion and love as weaknesses, abandoned and possibly murdered the only woman he ever loved to prove his point. An assassin who takes joy in his various atrocities, Sin Tzu eventually betrayed his own cult and drove them all to tear each other apart upon gaining power of his own. Becoming a warlord and tyrant obsessed with nothing more than conquest and destruction, Sin Tzu has killed thousands across Asia in his march towards domination, enslaving and "reeducating" entire countries at a time. Upon arriving in Gotham City, Sin Tzu unleashes thousands of criminals onto the streets, using his power to make them even more vicious so as to spread mass death and destruction. Siccing some of Batman's worst foes on him, and turning the rest into living trophies, Sin Tzu ultimately plans to murder Batman and ensure that every last one of his thousands of minions are killed in a blaze of glory just to illustrate the latest chapter of his self-written book.
- Jonathan Crane, aka the Scarecrow, is a fear-loving sadist who becomes one of Sin Tzu's "generals" in his war on Gotham. Locked away in Arkham Asylum for his latest crime of forcing dozens of innocent college students to tear each other apart, Crane escapes Arkham and leads a group of criminals he drives insane to march on Gotham, where Crane sprays countless people with his patented Fear Gas, driving them to get into bloodbaths with each other. Spraying and terrorizing Commissioner James Gordon, he forces Batman to watch just because the man is Batman's best friend.
- Constantine, by John Shirley: Mammon, son of Satan and worse than in the film, decides to kick-start the apocalypse and bring Hell on Earth. To do so, he takes possession of the scavenger Francesco, corrupts him with false promises of power and luxury, and drives him into a killing spree, claiming the life of ten people. He also sends assassins after Constantine and his allies. Abducting the psychic Angela Dodson, Mammon attempts to break her will by forcing her to watch human misery and crimes, and when this fails, offers her to be raped by Francesco. Eventually to rise on Earth, he takes possession of her body and attempts to have her sacrificed by his accomplice Gabriel.
- The Dark Knight Trilogy, by Dennis O'Neil (Batman Begins & The Dark Knight) & Greg Cox (The Dark Knight Rises): Jonathan Crane, aka the Scarecrow, started out using several of his students as test subjects, driving them mad in the process. In the present, Crane allies with the League of Shadows, creating and supplying them with Fear Gas so as to unleash it onto Gotham and drive the city to tear itself apart. Along the way, Crane performs more experiments in fear on his hapless patients at Arkham; orders the murder of a nosy attorney; and drives his partner, Carmine Falcone, insane to silence him. During the attack on Gotham, Crane led a prison riot, murdered a police officer, and tried to run down Rachel Dawes and a child she is protecting. Crane then becomes a drug dealer and kills a junkie as a test run for a lethal hallucinogen. In his final appearance, Crane takes a spot in Bane's conquered, anarchy-filled Gotham, presiding over a Kangaroo Court where everyone from corrupt politicians to innocent people are forced to walk across the icy river of Gotham, invariable leading to their deaths as they break through the ice, much to Crane's delight.
- Superman Returns, by Marv Wolfman: Lex Luthor is a far more serious, depraved threat than in the film. Locked in prison after various crimes against humanity, notably attempting to assassinate the President of the United States and nearly wiping California and millions of lives off the map just for greed, Luthor escapes confinement and ruins an elderly woman's life before conning her out of her fortune. With his newfound resources, Luthor gets his hands on Krypton crystals, testing them out and causing citywide chaos throughout Metropolis that he giddily enjoys. Ultimately planning to use the crystals to form a new island that will never cease to grow, Luthor proudly brags that billions will die as his "new continent" overtakes and destroys entire countries, remarking that the countless lives lost deserve their fate for not appreciating his genius. Luthor hates Superman with such vitriol that he tries to murder Lois Lane and her five-year-old son just to spite the hero, and, after depowering Superman, Luthor spends several minutes brutally torturing and beating him to a bloody, broken pulp, taking sick pleasure out of his coming triumph.
- Batman: Arkham Knight: Dr. Jonathan Crane, aka the Scarecrow, is even worse than his already-despicable game counterpart. Seeking revenge against Batman, Scarecrow uses his fear toxin on a diner full of innocents as a demonstration, prompting an evacuation of the city. Scarecrow uses the evacuation to build a bomb big enough to cover the East Coast in fear toxin, though he settles for just covering the entire city when Batman intervenes. After gassing Batman and making him hallucinate Barbara Gordon's suicide, Scarecrow uses the Cloudburst device to cover the city in toxin and drive everyone within to murderous fear, turning hundreds of thousands of civilians into feral murderers; along the way, his forces put down any civilian resistance with lethal force, and he later reveals that he specifically tailored his toxin to bring out Batman's infected blood and turn him into Joker. After destroying Gotham's hope by unmasking Batman as Bruce Wayne, Scarecrow not only intends to take this global so that he can weed out those he deems weak and create a new generation that sees him as a master, but he also looks forward to gassing other heroes like Superman and the Flash and watching the carnage they would unleash.
- Shazam!: The (Deluxe) Junior Novel, by Calliope Glass: Dr. Thaddeus Sivana is portrayed worse in the novel than in the film. Bullied and disrespected as a child by his family, Sivana was offered a chance at heroic power by the Wizard, but instead tried to embrace the Seven Deadly Sins for their darker, more ambitious power. Rejected by the Wizard for this evil in his heart, Sivana grew up scouring for ways to return to the Sins, and upon finding a way, he immediately embraces the Sins into himself to become a god. Sivana proceeds to slaughter the dozens of people at a Christmas party held by his family, and then tears his way through a mall, endangering many civilians while trying to kill Shazam. Taking Billy Batson's, aka Shazam's, foster siblings hostage and threatening them with torture and death, Sivana hopes to drain Shazam of his powers and then run rampant on Earth as an all-powerful being. Sivana is fully onboard with the Sins's plans to wipe out mankind, and even when Billy tries to empathize with Sivana's past, Sivana just cruelly taunts the boy and reiterates that he was never a "good" person, just one who wanted power.
Batman (examples that fit another tree better go there instead)
Examples
- The Further Adventures of The Joker's "Bone", by Will Murray: The Joker is once again presented as a sadistic Serial Killer. Seemingly wanting to discover Batman's true identity, Joker goes to the house of a millionaire named Archie Bittner, blowing up Bittner's security guard and kidnapping Bittner. Joker takes over the airwaves and removes Bittner's face on live TV, saying he will do this to another person every night till Batman reveals his identity. Joker kidnaps two other people and removes their faces. Joker attempts to do the same thing to Commissioner Gordon, but Batman saves Gordon and drives the Joker off. In the end it is revealed that Joker had no interest in Batman's identity and went on this killing spree for fun.
- The Batman Murders, by Craig Shaw Gardner: The Joker is once again Batman's Arch-Enemy and a cruel psychopath. Joker has been kidnapping civilians and has a scientist torture and brainwash them until they think they are Batman. Joker than has the fake Batmen try to stop a robbery and die in the process and is keeping several of his victims imprisoned in a makeshift prison until he is ready to use them. Joker also sets up a cult to help generate money, with the cult psychologically torturing its members until they become mind-warped zombies. Joker, growing bored, decides to turn people into Jokers, transforming some of his goons into Jokers. After failing to capture Commissioner Gordon, Joker captures Dick Grayson, transforms him into a Joker, and has him fight Batman.
- The Ultimate Evil, by Andrew Vachss: William X. Malady is the leader of a child pornography ring. When Thomas and Martha Wayne started investigating his crimes, Malady hires a killer to gun them down, after which he fled to Gotham City. 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 to use them as sex slaves and selling them to pedophiles all across the world. In order to prevent moles from infiltrating his organization, he has instituted an initiation protocol where, if one wishes to gain access, they must rape a child on film.
- The Stone King, by Alan Grant: The Stone King was an ancient shaman from neolithic times who became obsessed with power. Forsaking the ways of his people, the Stone King demanded they worship him as a god, sacrificing innocents to his name and even demanding they sacrifice children to him. After being entombed, his spirit is awakened and goes on a killing spree, even paralyzing members of the League with pure fear. It is revealed the Stone King plans to cleanse the earth of all he sees as unworthy, using primordial energies to trigger earthquakes, volcanoes and more that will kill every living thing on the planet in order to reclaim his lost godhood.
- The Forensic Files of Batman's "Cutting and Culling", by Doug Moench: Anton Zsasz is a sadomasochistic Serial Killer obsessed with pain and blood. A maniac who has butchered over 60 confirmed victims—with hundreds more implied—Zsasz's method involves torturously suspending his victims in the air for days, then stabbing them to death and showering in their blood before carving a tally mark into his body. Having carved a path of death across the country, Zsasz continues his spree in Gotham to claim half a dozen more women before Batman catches him, set to become one of Batman's most depraved villains in the coming future.
- Del Rey Books' trilogy:
- Dead White, by John Shirley: White Eyes, also known as "Big White", real name Hiram Bunch, 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 the 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.
- Inferno, by Alex Irvine:
- Enfer is a disgraced, pyromaniacal firefighter who attempts to take out his narcissistic frustrations on the city of Gotham as a whole. Enfer sets fires to blaze through Gotham in a serial arsonist spree that claims hundreds, luring firefighters into buildings solely to burn them alive and torching Arkham Asylum itself to unleash the Joker upon Gotham. Frustrated that the Joker is sucking up attention for his actions, Enfer firebombs four novelty shops around the city with many more perishing in the blazes, eventually revealing his master plan to let a storm of mechanical robots called Krawlors descend on Gotham and burn it all to ashes in spiteful revenge.
- The Joker himself gets busy to a new crime spree the instant he's free from Arkham Asylum, previously guilty of having starved over forty people to death after experimenting on them with Joker Juice and establishing himself again by raiding the Batcave and leaving Alfred in a rigged Death Trap for Batman to find. Dressing up as Batman, the Joker goes for a "joy ride" while running down people in the Batmobile; sets up an ambush whereupon he has almost every officer on the scene killed for a giggle; kills and poses the bodies of five goons harassing a waitress, before driving the woman to broken catatonia for a giggle anyways; and attempts to toss a young child off a building in front of Batman. Even casually shrugging off the unintentional massacre of an entire family by one of his goons who mistakes his order, Joker ultimately attempts to hijack the late Enfer's scheme by instead employing the Krawlors to gas all of Gotham with his Joker Venom.
- Harley Quinn: Mad Love, by Paul Dini & Pat Cadigan: Bruno Delvecchio is a particularly brutal mob boss who helped shape Harleen Quinzel into the supervillain she becomes. After Harleen's father steals from Delvecchio, Delvecchio has him beaten and tortured before leaving him to be locked in prison, after which he kidnaps his daughter Harleen. Delvecchio plans to lure Harleen's mother to him with her fortune, kill the woman, then sell Harleen to a pedophilic criminal, something Delvecchio reveals he has done before to other children.
Others
Examples
- Last Son of Krypton: Towbee the Minstrel is a seemingly harmless and obnoxious villain, who is secretly The Master, a powerful intergalactic real estate tycoon. The Master steals a time snatcher device from a scientist and uses it to take planets from the future so that he can sell them in the present. The planets are fundamentally unstable and will disappear in 100 years, eventually killing anyone who has settled on those planets. The Master hears of a prophecy of a tyrant taking over part of the galaxy and plans to be that tyrant. The Master plans to use the time snatcher to harness the power of black holes to separate a large part of the galaxy called the Galactic Arm from the rest of the universe, so that the Guardians of the Universe cannot stop his plans for conquest. Eventually, the Master arrives on Earth and plans to take over Earth's telecommunications systems and use it to mind control humanity, wanting to make humanity into an army of conquest that will help conquer the Galactic Arm.
- Superman: Miracle Monday: C.W. Saturn, a demon from Hell and the chief servant of Samael, is introduced torturing 666 condemned souls. Samael tasks Saturn with breaking Superman's spirit, for 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 earthquake 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 posseses Kristen Wells, Clark Kent's new coworker. In Wells's body, at first 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 win.
- Super Powers Which Way Books Gamebooks:
- Supergirl: The Girl of Steel: Brainiac, an evil android that wants to conquer the universe, is a dark presence in an otherwise lighthearted book. Brainiac captures Superman and lures Supergirl to a planet he is slowly cooking with red sun radiation rays. If Supergirl confronts Brainiac in his ship, he plans to capture Supergirl and experiment on her and Superman. If Supergirl frees Brainiac's alien prisoners and lets them bring her to him, Brainiac kills them without a second thought. If Supergirl confronts Brainiac on the planet, Supergirl finds that the population of the planet, a race of sapient rat creatures called Ridents, are being starved due to Brainiac's experiments destroying most of the food and the water on the planet. Brainiac is also capturing some of the Ridents and is using them as slaves, forcing them to work in a mine and dig up a jewel that could grant him untold power.
- Batman: Doomsday Prophecy:
- The Joker is as deadly as ever. In one story path, Joker sends Batman threatening messages through the Gotham Gazette newspaper, announcing his intentions to kill Batman and destroy Gotham City, by killing half the city's population. Joker attempts this by delivering enough poison to the citizens of Gotham City, either by dumping chemicals into the city's water supply; adding poison to the Gotham gas line; or using planes to spread poison across Gotham City.
- The Riddler, threatening to "end Batman", kidnaps Commissioner Gordon and attempts to use a Car Bomb to kill him and Batman. Later, Riddler lures Batman to Washington DC, where he kidnaps an actor dressed as Batman and threatens to drop him from a great height if Batman does not reveal his secret identity. But his worst act is luring Batman to a puppet show called The Riddle, held in a children's theater. Riddler sets the theater on fire, willing to let the children in the audience die, just to get the better of Batman.
- John Constantine, Hellblazer novels by John Shirley:
- War Lord: Dyzigi, actually the demon G'Broag'Fram, fosters much of the conflict of the Servants of Transfiguration in his bid to cause a global war. Keeping the owner of the body he possesses in constant torment within him, Dyzigi orders wide bloodshed and terrorism as one of the heads of the SOT, and furthermore captures and abominates Josef Mengele into a psychic abomination he keeps in a jar, feeding it with severed heads. Dyzigi initially captures a young woman named Mercury for her psychic powers, tormenting her with apocalyptic visions—before deciding to have her killed when she becomes a liability, allowing his compatriot to rape her beforehand before tracking her down when she escapes and massacring an entire camp of Sudanese soldiers. Dyzigi's ultimate goal is to kickstart a third World War and devastate the planet, killing billions, all for the prospect of a subrealm as a reward from his master Nergal.
- Subterranean: Iain Culley, a centuries-old sorcerer known as the Gloomlord, captured and tortured a powerful elemental known as Lord Stone to master an underground kingdom. Keeping humans enslaved below ground, used as labor and eventual food when their use runs out, Culley intends on expanding the kingdom. Starting by sinking the village Tonsell-By-The-Sea, Culley reveals he powers his kingdom and fuels his eternal youth by locking victims in devices that leech off their power and vitality, keeping them alive and in horrible pain. Not content with this kingdom, Culley intends to develop a plague to poison the earth's oceans, killing countless millions while forcing everyone else underground to be his slaves.
- Lois Lane trilogy, by Gwenda Bond: Steve Jenkins, debuting in the first book, Fallout, is the CEO of a corporation called Advanced Research Labs. Jenkins uses Mind Control technology hidden in video game headsets to mind-control several teenagers into becoming a Hive Mind called the Warheads. Jenkins wants to sell the Warheads to the US military so that they direct US soldiers on the battlefield, not caring that the Warheads are forcibly assimilating other teenagers into their collective. After Lois Lane frees the Warheads from the Hive Mind and reveals Jenkins's scheme to the public, he loses his company but stays out of jail. In the third book, Triple Threat, Jenkins lures several homeless teenagers into his service by giving them food and shelter, then has a scientist named Dabney Donovan experiment on the teenagers in order to give them superpowers. Jenkins plans to sell these super-powered teenagers to the US military. Jenkins captures Lois and orders Donovan to experiment on her so that she will be forced to join his team, in order to force her father, General Sam Lane, into letting his team into the military. When Lois escapes and reveals Jenkins's new scheme, he forces his superpowered teenage team to defend him from the authorities at all costs, not caring if they or civilians get harmed in the process.
- DC Icons series:
- Superman: Dawnbreaker, by Matt de la Peña: Corey Mankins is the heir to the powerful Mankins Corporation, and Dr. Wesley is the company's lead scientist. Though the Mankins Corporation seems benevolent and seems to be adding to Smallville's economy and performing charitable deeds, Corey Mankins and Dr. Wesley are secretly engaged in sinister deeds. They have been buying farms to collect the kryptonite meteors beneath them. They have also been secretly kidnapping Mexican immigrants and experimenting on them with a combination of kryptonite and a steroid called Dawnbreaker. Corey Mankins and Dr. Wesley want to turn their victims into Super Soldiers so they can sell them to the highest bidder, using drugs and propaganda to break their free will. When Lana Lang confronts Corey Mankins about this, Corey kidnaps her and plans to set off a bomb during a festival at Smallville's town square, willing to kill hundreds to distract authorities from their human experimentation operation.
- Black Canary: Breaking Silence, by Alexandra Monir: Chester Cobblepot is the nephew of the criminal mastermind the Penguin and is even viler than his uncle. Twenty years ago, Cobblepot assisted the Court of Owls in a coup, killing most of the superheroes and transforming Gotham City into a dictatorship, with Cobblepot being made mayor for life. Cobblepot is an extreme misogynist, denying women any sort of rights, even making it illegal for women to play music. Cobblepot has anyone who defies the Court of Owls arrested and sent to Arkham Asylum, where they are tortured to death. Cobblepot has several of the corpses displayed in a secret room under Arkham and experiments with the dead bodies, transforming them into the Court of Owls's undead soldiers, the Talons, forcing his dead victims to become instruments of his will.
- Harley Quinn series, by Rachael Allen:
- Reckoning: Dr. Aaron Nelson seems to be a kindly professor at Gotham University who encourages a young Harleen Quinzel and other young women to excel in science, but is actually a repulsive sexual predator. Dr. Nelson has been receiving fear gas from an unknown party at Arkham Asylum in exchange for blood samples. Nelson schedules interviews with young female co-eds, promising to help them with scholarships, then in private, Nelson sprays them with fear gas and rapes them. The fear gas leaves Nelson's victims too scared to testify against him, with the fear gas causing permanent psychological damage.
- Ravenous: Dr. Jonathan Crane is the director of Arkham Asylum and a professor of psychology at Gotham University. Crane is secretly the Scarecrow, a psychopath who experiments on the Arkham Asylum inmates by exposing them to his fear gas. Scarecrow gave his fear gas to Dr. Aaron Nelson, allowing him to prey on young women at Gotham University in exchange for blood samples from his victims. Scarecrow is also experimenting on patients at Arkham Acres, a sister facility to Arkham Asylum that treats non-violent mentally ill people. Scarecrow exposes Arkham Acres patients to his fear gas, to the point they are having heart attacks. Scarecrow is also developing mind-control chips and plans to sell them to Human Traffickers.
