"Slave queen of a nation of slaves. Your children will live and they will die by the grace of the fist of man."
"[There was] An extra factor... an extra mind... one I couldn't manipulate... by standard means... your unborn baby's mind! Oh, how fortunate I didn't kill you before, Helen. There may be... great opportunity in this... setback. What... inspiration. I have created so many great masterpieces from without, but never from within. Never upon such an unmarked canvas. Oh yes... it will be beautiful. 'Madonna and Child' by Dr. Psycho. Portrait of a mother... maddened to death by the dreams of her unborn."
— Doctor Psycho, Vol. 2, issue #55—"Psycho Path"
Wonder Woman is one of the oldest superheroes in the DC Universe, an unfaltering figure of compassion who will always stand up for those in need. Some of the Amazing Amazon's cruelest enemies, however, refuse any overture at peace or love, and are utterly irredeemable.
This is for the comics only. Other examples for the franchise can be found elsewhere:
- Examples from animated works (and related comics) can be found here.
- Examples from the DC Extended Universe can be found here.
- Examples from video games (and related comics) can be found here.
- The 2011 pilot can be found here.
- Examples from unproduced scripts can be found here.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
Pre-Crisis
- Vol. 1: Cylvia Cyber, also known as Doctor Cyber, is the leader of an unnamed Nebulous Evil Organization who was defeated by Wonder Woman after slaughtering a monastery full of monks just to get the valuables inside and staging a jewel heist in London. Returning to destroy Hong Kong and blackmail the world with Earthquake machines, Cyber was disfigured by a member of Tiger Tong after she had the group killed for no longer being of use to her. Irrationally blaming Diana for this, she ordered the Earthquake Machine she placed across the world to be activated and tried to kill Diana herself, but was thought dead when one of the machines she was near exploded. Surviving and desiring to regain her beauty, Cyber returned multiple times to abduct women to transplant her brain into them, trying this on both Diana and Donna Troy, and fatally extracted information from a famous cosmetician in an attempt to graft Diana's face onto her own. Escaping custody and disguising herself as Diana, Cyber broke into the Pentagon and stole America's nuclear launch codes, planning to start a nuclear war and frame Diana for the deed.
Post-Crisis
Vol. 2 (primarily) Examples
- Edgar Cizko, better known as the infamous Doctor Psycho, is the epitome of a Depraved Dwarf and a raging misogynist with a long and memorable rap sheet. Psycho introduced himself by psychically torturing a guidance counselor who confronts him over subtly manipulating the minds of a school's students and attempting to murder her and her unborn baby in the process. After this incident, Psycho would go on to wreak swaths of death and mayhem with his powers, often teaming up with others, racking up a count of driving and attempting to drive people to suicide on numerous occasions, molesting and raping women he fancies, going on a psychotic rampage after being called "normal" and, in possibly his worst moment, hypnotizing an entire crowd of people into partially cannibalizing each other. Psycho, aroused by this, allowed the people to live as an act of sheer torture, even condemning them to feel his own sexual pleasure as their own. A man whose diminutive, nonthreatening stature is vastly disproportionate to his evil, Psycho is one of Diana's most shamelessly wicked rogues.
- 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, the original Doctor Poison, 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 released 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 Pocket Dimension of Skartaris, requesting that any prisoners they took be turned over to her for further use in her experiments. Using drugs and prolonged torture, Poison transformed her victims into living zombies, and forced them to battle their friends and relatives when Skartaris rose up against Clea's despotic regime. When Trinity betrayed Clea and attempted to eliminate all sapient life in Skartaris, Poison tried to prevent Wonder Woman from stopping Trinity, hoping to see the dimension destroyed by Trinity's new virus; she later willingly loaned her talents to the collective responsible for producing the monster Genocide. Obsessed with producing the perfect toxic agents and little else, and making her appearance as horrible as possible in order to maximize fear in her victims, Doctor Poison II 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 another round of 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.
- Artemis: Requiem: Dalkriig-Hath is a lord of Hell who rules over thousands of souls with torturous cruelty. Hath keeps a harem of women for him to rape and torture at his leisure, subjecting Artemis herself to this fate. When his top general Belyllioth loses in a fight, Hath has her whipped thousands of times as punishment, and then tries to sentence Wonder Woman to the same fate when she saves the general. Having manipulated the Hellender team into unwittingly doing his bidding, Hath sends many demons to terrorize humanity before opening a portal to Earth and immediately slaughtering most of the Hellenders. Hath then proclaims his intent to create a new horrific kingdom of Hell on Earth itself by killing thousands of humans and using their souls as his meat puppets, and in the process Hath hopes to recapture an escaped Artemis to rape her into submission once again.
Other Continuities
DC Graphic Novels for Young Adults imprint (formerly DC Ink)
- Tempest Tossed: Chip Drygion, head of Drygion Inc., is behind a scheme to use the city's waste disposal as a way to kidnap young girls and teenagers and sell them as sex slaves out of the city. A fiendish man, Drygion plans to pave over and buy out the local community where Diana is staying it to make it easier for his operation to continue. When Diana comes to rescue his victims, Drygion takes her friend Riassa hostage but not before having her beaten, declaring she'll come with him or he'll shoot her friend in front of her.
- Nubia: Real One: Wayland Carson is a racist student at Nubia's school who breaks the arm of the girl who rejected him. Beaten by Nubia after he forcibly kisses her friend Quisha, Wayland and his friends manipulate the police into attacking protesters at Quisha's Black Lives Matter protest, resulting in two people being severely injured. Wayland brings a gun to school to kill Quisha for rejecting him, trying to kill Nubia as well after she gets in his way.
- Amazonia: King "Jack Planters" is actually Jack the Ripper, who manages to weasel his way into the kingship of England. Jack accomplished this by wiping out the entire Royal Family in an explosion, leaving only one paralyzed, mute survivor that Jack kept alive purely to torment the man with his inability to reveal the truth. Jack immediately plunges England into war with France while reducing women to second-class citizens. A raving, bloodthirsty misogynist who wants to turn all of England into a "Ripper's world", Jack has his inner circle hunt down and butcher captured women for sport, trying to make Diana the centerpiece of one of these gruesome hunts. Jack doesn't even care about his own son beyond molding him into an equally misogynistic heir, and boats that he remorselessly slaughtered his own wife soon after the boy's birth.
- Justice Riders: Maxwell Lord is a greedy robber baron with a sinister scheme. Wiping out Sheriff Diana Prince's hometown, Paradise, along with everyone in it, Lord goes on to massacre at least another five towns in the way of him laying his railroad to California. When Diana confronts Lord for destroying Paradise, he reveals he believes profit justifies any action he takes, even toying with the idea of conquering California and wiping out the population to replace them with his robotic minions.
Others
Examples
- Earth One Volume One: Hercules is a savage misogynist who is responsible for the trauma of the Amazons, as well as Diana's father. Attacking the Amazons and stripping them of power and agency, Hercules rapes Hyppolyta, attempting to force her to be his personal Sex Slave while giving the remainder of the Amazons to his men to suffer the same, boasting that their children will live and die by his grace.
- Just Imagine... Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe: 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.
- The Legend of Wonder Woman (2016): Ares, the God of War, seeks to bring about horrific carnage across the globe in order to rule over the lifeless wastelands that will remain. Intent on bringing about this great calamity by awakening an ancient Manhunter from beyond the stars, Ares empowers the Duke of Deception to raise undead armies and terrorize Allied soldiers with maddening illusions, using the champion's grief to manipulate him into slaughtering thousands and fueling the resurrection of the fallen Titan. Ares aids the Nazis in fanning the flames of World War II to spread spiritual corruption to Themyscira, resulting in the island's magical creatures descending into bloodthirsty rage, and works to ensure the Amazons will not be spared the Manhunter's wrath by defiling their magical defenses with the senseless murder of the innocent Steve Trevor. On the eve of the war's end, Ares has the Duke of Deception sacrifice hundreds of innocents to finally revive the Manhunter so that all life may be cleansed in fire and darkness.
- Tales from the Dark Multiverse: War of the Gods: Hecate is the Mother of Magic, who managed to orchestrate the war between the gods and another conflict between humanity and Amazons, which led to many deaths. Using Phobos to bombard Themyscira and kill countless Amazons, Hecate used Wonder Woman's anger to possess her, later on slaughtering the Greek pantheon, and then using Amazons to take over Washington, D.C. Luring superheroes to herself to brutally kill many of them, Hecate gleefully announced her intention to raze the world, as soon as she gets enough power.
- The True Amazon: Herakles, fabled son of Zeus, is depicted as a vicious brute devoid of his redeeming qualities from traditional myth. Approached to conquer the Amazons so as to deter women from following their ways, Herakles became obsessed with the idea of taking Queen Hippolyta as his prisoner and claiming her Golden Girdle, challenging her to a duel and murdering her companion Aella when she meets him in single combat in her place. Herakles' armies proceed to wage bloody war on the Amazons, with the mighty son of Zeus intent on strapping them all in chains for his men to do with as they please.
- Wonder Woman/Conan, written by Gail Simone:
- The Corvidae sisters, Lila and Anive, are ancient immortals bored with most of existence. Finding joy in gambling, the duo set up friends, brothers or even nations to war against one another while they enjoy the duels. Helping to manage slave pits where fights to the death happen frequently, the duo attempt to set Conan and Diana to a deathmatch. When they refuse, the two decide to annihilate the city of Shamar and kill every last man, woman and child, even trying to have the slaves murdered before the heroes as an act of sheer spite.
- The sadistic slaver Dellos is the chief minion of the Corvidae who forces slaves into duels to the death for the sake of bloodsport. A vicious murderer even outside the Corvidae's order, Dellos savagely abuses his slaves, forcing Conan and Wonder Woman to duel when he realizes Conan has mistaken Wonder Woman for his lost love. On the Corvidae's initiative, Dellos attempts to massacre every slave at the end, young and old.
