Smug Snakes in The DCU.
- Amanda Waller is generally professional, but if someone who defied her falls into her web, she isn't above a spot of gloating. Memorably, at the end of Justice League vs. Suicide Squad, Waller initially refuses to even consider allowing the League to take away Killer Frost... until Batman admits that despite his original doubts, he might have been wrong about the Squad's value. Waller takes a moment to process this, then decides the whole fiasco was Worth It just to hear Batman acknowledge one mistake, and happily allows Frost to leave. She's fairly sure Frost's going to end up in Belle Reve one way or the other, anyway, and the entire conflict was in her favor anyway, as she got control of the assets of Checkmate after capturing Max Lord.
- Batman:
- Drug kingpin Milo Lewes, the villain of the classic story "Death Strikes At Midnight And Three", is a textbook example. Lewes portrays himself as an Evil Genius and Man of Wealth and Taste, bragging about graduating magna cum laude from the Sorbonne, showing off his knowledge of French wines, and comparing himself to the likes of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and Erwin Rommel. Even when Batman destroys his drug ring, Lewes confidently thinks that his name will be revered by the congnoscenti of the salons, and plans to taunt Batman from his new hideout. The story ends with Batman confronting Lewes in his getaway plane:Milo Lewes recognized the voice coming from the speaker and considered bolting through the escape hatch, or charging the pilot's compartment, or drawing his Llama automatic. But he did none of those things. Instead, he struggled to control a whimper. To beg. To crawl.
- Detective Comics (Rebirth) has Colony Prime. He's convinced of his superiority to Batman due to spending years studying him, and barely even considers Batwoman worth his time.
- Drug kingpin Milo Lewes, the villain of the classic story "Death Strikes At Midnight And Three", is a textbook example. Lewes portrays himself as an Evil Genius and Man of Wealth and Taste, bragging about graduating magna cum laude from the Sorbonne, showing off his knowledge of French wines, and comparing himself to the likes of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and Erwin Rommel. Even when Batman destroys his drug ring, Lewes confidently thinks that his name will be revered by the congnoscenti of the salons, and plans to taunt Batman from his new hideout. The story ends with Batman confronting Lewes in his getaway plane:
- Grayven, the 3rd son of Darkseid, who is as treacherous as Desaad, as prideful as Darkseid himself...and less competent than Kalibak. Nearly every scheme he masterminds fails miserably yet he still truly believes it is his destiny to overthrow Darkseid. Let's put it this way: Darkseid holds Kalibak in higher regard than Grayven, and he likes Kalibak less than Orion, who hates him and wants him dead.
- Comic Cavalcade: In the Wonder Woman feature Prof. Plasm's smug belief in his own intellect proves to be his undoing when his attempt to kill Steve Trevor and several others with a nitroglycerin-filled baseball leads to them being shaken out of their drug-induced stupor. The entire reason he turned villain was that he thought himself better and smarter than his employers and wanted to humiliate them.
- Green Lantern: The Controllers of the DC Universe become these in the prelude of Blackest Night. Their egos rival those of the Guardians' but where the Guardians succeeded in upholding order in the universe the Controllers' every attempt has failed miserably. During their expedition to retrieve the orange light of greed they make boasts about being as powerful as the Guardians themselves. Then Larfleeze eats them.
- Infinite Crisis: Alex Luthor is of the type that is possible to mistake for a The Chessmaster at first glance. An Alternate Universe counterpart of Lex Luthor with Reality Warper abilities and a serious bone to pick with how The DCU works, the man gets four whole miniseries leading up to the Crisis Crossover proper detailing his massive scheme, with pawns ranging from a frail old woman all the way up to The Spectre himself. In the name of remodeling the universe into a "perfect" one of his own design, he rallies almost every supervillain that ever lived behind him, wipes out all Earthly magic, and even has planets moved from their very axes. Yet in the end, his scheme gets too bloated even for him to control, and he ends up making a lot of classic villain mistakes: he doesn't count on how much DC's heroes will resist his "perfect world" pitch, he lets outside forces break through to his patsies (and they listen), he doesn't keep his Dragon on a short enough leash, and in general sorely underestimates the power of Heroic Resolve. His ultimate fate? Gunned down like a street punk in the slums of Metropolis by his main-universe counterpart and The Joker, who knew he would fail the whole time and were just waiting to strike until he did.
- Kanjar Ro, a Silver Age foe of the Justice League of America and intergalactic pirate, fits this trope.
- Jack Kirby's New Gods mythos: Desaad, Darkseid's majordomo/torturer, and Glorious Godfrey, Darkseid's PR man, who tends to show up as a very-punchable political news commentator.
- Superman:
- 'Nasty' Luthor is an obnoxious, condescending bully who plagued Linda Danvers for a while during the late Silver Age, scheming to out her Secret Identity or get her fired from her job at the very least. However, although she is manipulative, conniving and a Luthor, she is not her uncle, her first scheme backfired badly, and she only succeeded at driving Supergirl mad. In Demon Spawn, when Supergirl is rescuing her, she takes advantage of her closeness to tug at her hair, thinking Supergirl wears a wig... and it is Linda the one wears a wig.
- In Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade, Belinda Zee is a smug, arrogant and scheming bully who is determined to ruin Supergirl's life. However she is too arrogant and prone to not thinking things through, which means her plans often backfire. She's brainwashed into acting like a duck in the second issue, and in the fourth issue she gets attacked by Streaky the Super-Cat. She's then turned into a statue by Mr. Mxyzptlk in issue six.
- Mongul was inspired by Thanos from Marvel Comics who in turn was inspired by Darkseid though Mongul comes off as a vaguely pathetic shadow of Darkseid. While he is as strong as Superman and very intelligent, he is too petty and shortsighted for grandscale galactic conquests. His constant sneering, combined with his repeated, humiliating defeats at Superman's hands result in a thoroughly un-magnificent bastard. Nevertheless, Alan Moore manages to evolve Mongul into a Complete Monster in For the Man Who Has Everything.
- In Krypton No More, Superman and Supergirl fight Protector, an one-time villain who has a cool power but is arrogant, cocky, and underestimates his enemies. He picks a fight with Superman, and when he loses badly, he runs away and begs an ally to help him.
- Post-Crisis Reactron's Kryptonite-powered suit and his army training make him dangerous and formidable enough to kill dozens of Kryptonians during New Krypton's opening arc. However he treats everyone -including his would-be allies- as dirt, he always underestimates his enemies, is prone to wasting time gloating and playing cat-and-mouse games, and proves to be a dirty coward when push comes to shove. So, in Who is Superwoman? he gets humiliated by Superwoman when his Kryptonite blasts prove to be ineffectual against her, and loses against Supergirl because he's eager to fight her hand-to-hand instead of using his energy blasters from afar, even after she's shown to be a good melee fighter. And in The Hunt for Reactron, when his suit gets crushed by Flamebird, he surrenders, begs for mercy and claims he was just following orders.
- Brainiac, sometimes. He's an incredibly competent Chessmaster (at times even better than Luthor), but is arrogant, and has great difficulty innovating or dealing with the unexpected. How well he handles this depends on the the writer.
- Simon Tycho is a manipulative corrupt businessman and arms dealer, who albeit cunning, tends to overestimate his own smarts and resourcefulness a lot. In Last Daughter of Krypton, he thought kidnapping a Kryptonian girl and pilfering her techonology was a good idea. When she breaks free -thanks to one mook taking issue with his boss torturing a girl- and starts wrecking his base, Tycho does nothing but frantically shout at his soldiers "Take her down!". He ends up with half body scorched because he refuses to evacuate and admit he has been "defeated by a little girl" when the place is exploding around him.
- In Crucible, Roho was too arrogant, smug and stupidly overconfident to be an effective threat. His villain squad has the chance to kill Supergirl's team off after winning their first bout, but he leaves the heroes alive because he wants to make them suffer later. As a result of it, Supergirl and her group track Roho's group down, now aware of their enemies' powers and abilities, and they utterly slaughter his squad and force him to flee. Shortly after Roho decides to fight Supergirl hand to hand with predictable results, and he has to be bailed out by the Big Bad himself. To top it off, he's beaten off panel during the final battle.
- Way of the World: Dolok talks a big game about being an undefeatable and unstoppable space conqueror, and he has a decent powerset -flight, capability to survive in space...- but as soon as he comes across a Green Lantern who can counteract his powers, his only recourse is to run away using his time-travelling device. And when Supergirl shows she has figured out a way to counteract his runaway tactics, his only strategy is attempting to flee over and again because he cannot fight her.
