who rules the world?

[crispy snax]

something ive allways wondered about DCU... who actually runs it? uncovering world controlling orginisations is pretty cliche and has happenned several times, but ive allways wondered whos on top.. potential crown grabbers would include:

Vandal Savage: appeared post crisis as the leader of the the Illuminiati, not to mention he is allways shouting his mouth off at how influential he has been in the past

Dr Mist: in an issue of "secret origins" i think it was stated that after the collapse of Kor, he tried to rebuild the world as he saw fit, he also had connections to age old group called the leymen (possible opponents for the Illuminati? i havent read too much on these guys)

Manhunters: robot precursors to the GL corps, came to earth in 1066, and controlled the world since then, interestingly often had agents on both sides of conflicts

The council: only started in the fifties, these were the guys that cloned the paul kirk manhunter, but they claimed to have controlled world events while they operated

the brujeria (misspelt but i dont have my swamp things on me): weird, satanist-type cult which used the Crisis on Infinite Earths to start a war between heaven and hell, at one point swamp thing asks Constantine if they want to control the world, constantine replies that they do own the world, but want to control the spirit world.

seven unknown men: appeared in the recent seven solders miniseries, at one point claimed to plan to control the rise and fall of civilisations, seemed to work on a more metaphysical level to myself.

thats all i can think of, anyone have anymore? i wonder how these guys all fit together, but i guess its an "opposing cells" sort of thing, where these groups are fighting each other for control, and maybe some of them are fronts for others (for example, i think the council could easily be a front for manhunters)

just something i felt i need to share, since it buzzes in my head alot when im bored at work... and i need to feel that bordom with random stuff

[TELLE]

Other powerful groups and secret societies that I can think of:

-Justice League
-Lords of Order and Chaos
-The Hive (secret criminal org from New Teen Titans)
-Project Cadmus
-The U.S. Government
-Luthor/Luthorcorp

[ShinDangaioh]

Don't forget the Entropy demons and the cult of Kobra

[TELLE]

S.T.A.R. Labs seem to have their fingers in many pies as well....

Wayne Industries?

[Uncle Mxy]

Ra's al Ghul

[JulianPerez]

I don't know if any one single person or organization rules the world on DC-Earth. Comics in shared universes have a problem with something like that, a single ruler or a single solitary source of evil. There are at least a dozen creatures claiming to be Satan on Marvel-Earth, after all.

Heck, the first thing that happens to any evil organization in comics is it breaks up. HIVE stayed together, but then again Hydra and A.I.M. were always most interesting when it was more compact, more like terrorist cells than an army under Baron Strucker or Madame Hydra.

[TELLE]

From those old GI Joe cartoons it always boggled my mind how COBRA couldn't actually achieve anything, with all the lasers and firepower they had --not to mention the money it must have took to keep a standing army fully supplied for years.  Surely they could have taken over IRAQ or something like that...