DC Comics is home to some of the most iconic and malevolent supervillains in history. And of course, part of what makes these villains so irredeemable is their complete disregard for the sanctity of life. Even worse, these psychopaths are often armed with enough firepower to effortlessly destroy planets, universes, and even the infinite multiverse. Whether as part of plans for multiversal conquest or just for the thrill of committing genocide, many of DC Comics’ most notorious bad guys have racked up practically incalculable body counts. These villains have painted the cosmos red with the blood of their innumerable victims.
Although criminals like the Joker are more well-known for their horrific atrocities, he’s still at the end of the day just a human who can only kill so many people. In contrast, these DC villains have spread death and destruction across universes.
If there’s anyone who deserves the title of DC Comics’ big bad, it’s Darkseid. The Lord of Apokolips is the literal personification of evil and won’t rest on his throne until all life in the multiverse is under his command. With his legions of Parademons, Darkseid has conquered countless worlds. Those who don’t bow to Darkseid’s will experience unimaginable torment before having their lives mercifully ended. Even those loyal to Darkseid will be slain at the slightest infraction. Many of Darkseid’s conquered worlds are terraformed into replicas of Apokolips, destroying their ecosystems and wiping out most of their populations. As part of his eternal war with the benevolent New Gods of New Genesis, Darkseid has personally butchered numerous deities. This doesn’t even include the billions who have died on the Absolute Earth thanks to Darkseid’s machinations. Darkseid is an eternally malevolent force of nature whose thirst for conquest has left numerous worlds lifeless.
Like Darkseid, Trigon is a villain described as evil incarnate. When he was just a child, the alien warlord Trigon eradicated all life on his home planet before spreading his destructive sadism to other universes. Trigon also gained a massive power-up when he absorbed the Heart of Darkness, which contained the evil energy of a hundred galaxies. Trigon is a cruel conqueror who has bathed countless worlds in fire and snuffed out entire galaxies like candles. Trigon’s crusade has led to him ruling over several universes which have hall had their populations significantly reduced because of his propensity for mass murder. Billions if not trillions of beings have been wiped out because of Trigon’s insatiable bloodlust. Trigon has even taken thousands of wives who almost all suffered excruciating deaths from carrying his demonic offspring. Trigon is a vile warlord who has turned several universes into Hell-like realms full of endless torture and death.
Superboy-Prime may have undergone a significant redemption arc in recent years to become the hero he’s always dreamed of, but that doesn’t wash the blood of trillions off his hands. The lone survivor of Earth-Prime after its destruction during the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the loss of his home, combined with watching his childhood heroes grow increasingly dark, caused Superboy-Prime to snap. Superboy-Prime is a being of incalculable destructive power whose attempts to create a perfect world caused him to destroy both Earths 15 and 51, ending the lives of trillions of innocent people. In addition to causing two cases of universal genocide, Superboy-Prime is responsible for massacring the Green Lantern Corps and instigating an intergalactic war between the alien planets Thanagar and Rann. Add in the murders of Superboy, Earth-2 Superman, and numerous Teen Titans, and Superboy-Prime’s genocidal villain campaign leaves him with much to atone for as a newly reformed hero.
Hailing from the planet Maltus billions of years ago, Krona was a member of the race that would eventually become the Guardians of the Universe. Krona was a scientist obsessed with understanding the nature of the universe and how it was created. But when one of his experiments accidentally created the infinite multiverse, the Guardians punished him by turning him into a being of pure energy and entropy. This punishment inadvertently made Krona unbelievably more powerful. Fueled by a desire for vengeance against the Guardians and his ongoing obsession with unlocking the secrets of existence, Krona has committed atrocities of cosmic proportions. Seeking to witness new universes being born, Krona began destroying universes so that they would hopefully reset. These experiments annihilated numerous universes and trillions of people, and they nearly destroyed both the DC and Marvel Universes. In trying to understand creation, Krona became a villain of pure destruction.
Ironically, the creator of the DC Multiverse was also responsible for its near total destruction. Perpetua is a member of an omnipotent race of beings known as the Hands who are tasked with crafting multiverses. Perpetua created the DC Multiverse as a weapon to be used in her war against the Hands. However, the Hands defeated her and sought to thwart her future plots by imprisoning her in the Source Wall. After breaking free of the Source Wall billions of years later, Perpetua sought to reestablish control over the multiverse that she had created so she could gain the power required to challenge the Hands once again. She wanted to destroy every universe that didn’t bow to her demands. Sparing only the most evil and twisted of universes, Perpetua reduced the local DC Multiverse from 52 Earths to only eight. Countless people died across the 44 other Earths to satiate Perpetua’s mad ambitions for Omniversal conquest.
When DC Comics sought to clean the board and erase its ever-expanding multiverse, they introduced a villain whose only purpose is to destroy everything. The Anti-Monitor is Perpetua’s son, the personification of antimatter, and the ruler of the antimatter universe. When he became aware of the positive multiverse, the Anti-Monitor decided to expand his domain. To do this, the Anti-Monitor unleashed numerous anti-matter waves that obliterated everything in their path, including entire universes. By the end of his cosmic crusade, the Anti-Monitor had reduced the multiverse from an infinite number of Earths to only five. By the smallest margin, the surviving heroes of the remaining Earths managed to defeat the Anti-Monitor and prevent him from extinguishing the last remnants of the positive multiverse. Still, even though he ultimately failed, the Anti-Monitor racked up one of the most horrific body counts of any character in modern fiction, with countless people on infinite worlds dead because of him.
For decades the Anti-Monitor’s spot as DC Comics’ most prolific mass murderer seemed impossible to duplicate, until the arrival of Pralaya. This ancient entity embodies the infinite void that existed before the Omniverse and creation itself. When Pralaya awoke to find her kingdom of nothingness teeming with matter and life, she swore to return all of existence to the endless void. With her legions of universe-devouring beasts called Time Gremlins, Pralaya wiped out not just the infinite Omniverse, but all of time, space, and other dimensions. Pralaya’s infinite wrath annihilated every mortal and god across all of reality. Only a handful of beings in all of existence survived this Omniversal genocide: the Justice League Dark, residing within the House of Mystery, and the Presence, the supreme god of DC Comics. Although Pralaya’s genocide was soon undone and all of creation was restored, she still, for a brief time, pulled off a feat of such extensive horror that no other DC villain has attained.
What do you think of these DC mass murderers? Leave a Comment below and join the conversation in the ComicBook Forum!
