Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Though people may go for Lex Luthor, I always thought one of Superman's most powerful (and believable) villain was the Parasite. He only seemed to be defeated because of absorbing too much energy.

By "believable villian" I mean someone/thing(!) who was evenly matched Superman, and didn't have such outlandish powers. So, I wouldn't include Mr Mxyzptlk, because (in principle) he should be more powerful than Superman.

(In fairness, I guess I'm really restricting myself to villians from the 60's-70's).

Composite Superman should be up there. but he's not very believable.

 Darksied is one. As far as strength goes, he is probably on par with Superman. Plus, he is a God after all.

Having just read "The Last Secret Identity", King Kosmos, should be included.

Was he too powerful though? It was only with the help of "Superwoman of Metropolis" (otherwise known as Kristin Wells from the 29th century) that he managed to overcome him.

It was alluded that Superman would meet him again. Did he?

Bizzaro am imperfect version of Superman... him am not strong as Superman

I always regarded Bizzaro as mis-guided rather than evil or as a villain

I'd go with the Anti-Monitor. He fought the Spectre to a stand-still. And he was easily the most evil villain to ever plague the DCU.

Actually, that's a good point.  Logically shouldn't Bizarro be non-super?  Or perhaps even handicapped?

That's like the Seinfeld episode where Elaine starts pointing out that Bizarro should be black or live underwater

What about Bizarnage?  :o

Has anyone ever considered Brainiac as a Super Powerful Villain? Brainiac is the perfect combination of Superman's awesome strength and Lex Luthor's evil genius.

I don't think so. He's an imperfect imperfect duplicate.

AMAZO writes:


Ah, beat me to it, did they?  I never could watch "Seinfeld," it just annoyed the heck out of me.  Everyone on that show bugged me in the same way Roseanne Barr/Arnold/Whatever did on her show; they always telegraphed the jokes with a look that says, "watch me say this next line...this is gonna be so witty..."  Bleh.  Everyone, that is, except Michael Richards, who played his spastic dufus character from the old "Fridays" sketch show, a caricature so incongruously over-the-top it was like writing Woody Woodpecker into "Friends".

On the other hand, I understand they did squeeze in a lot of pre-Crisis Superman lore, so kudos for spreading the faith, I guess.


NotSuper writes:

Good point.  Though later writers went way overboard making everything about Bizarro and his world the "opposite" of Superman and Earth, in point of fact Bizarro is a pretty faithful copy of Superman down to the physique and even costume; he's just mentally deficient and has a chalky, craggy epidermis.

If he was the opposite of Superman, he'd be non-powered and female. 

Or Tom Welling.  (That's right I said it!)  :P

Someone could probably write a scholarly article on how the concept of "opposite" creeped into Bizarro...or really if "opposite" applies to people at all.  8)

Actually, if Bizarro was Superman's complete opposite, he wouldn't exist at all. If Superman exists then (being his opposite) Bizarro shouldn't exist.

Imperiex should be right up there in my opinion. And General Zod.

Myxyzptlk anyday. He is immortal and can do anything!Anything at all!Well, he's not really a viilian, more like a pest.In Whatever happened To The Man Of Tommorow, he is evil.I guess composite supermAN, BUt he's unrealistic, only appeared twice, and needs to recharge frequently.I guess doomsday.

I've always been a fan of Metallo. A guy who's not far from Superman in the strength department, and maybe even gains an advantage in the Kryptonite factor. My favorite Metallo is probably the one from Superman / Batman Public enemies...

I also love Brainiac, especially the Bronze Age one, the totally pure evil robot one. He was pretty great. Not that I don't like other Brainiacs, he's just my favorite.

Superman is a hard guy to come up with enemies for. Some of my favorites are just gangsters, Golden Age or Intergang, or anything in between.

He is supposed to fight crime, not just super-terrorists and extra-dimensional monsters.

Well, I guess "realistic" leaves out Composite Superman. 

How about Mongul? 

I also always thought that Faora was quite a scary and formidable villian, given her hatred of men, her obedience to Zod, and most importantly, her knowledge of Horo-Kanu. 

I always enjoyed Alan Moore's version of Bizarro, who realised that he had to kill himself since Superman is alive. Last words: "Hello, Superman. Hello."

As for the most powerful Superman villain, well, I would have thought that General Zod and his lot had pretty much cornered the market. Or Vartox, who wasn't exactly a villain, but was fantastic and why isn't he around any more? Oddly enough, I rather liked the John Byrne revamp of Luthor as the Kingpin because it made a lot of sense: here was someone Superman couldn't do anything about because his power was that of a man behind a big desk.

The most powerful Superman villains would be a creative and editorial team that doesn't understand the character.

Heh Heh.Touche