Top 10 DC Comics Villains

Left to right: Dr. Sivana, Captain Cold, Gorilla Grodd,

Talia and Ra's al Ghul, The Penguin, The Joker, Mirror Master,

Lex Luthor, the Trickster, Mr. Element, Catwoman,

Mr. Mxyzptlk, The Scarecrow, The Riddler, Abra Kadabra.

Dishonorable Mention: Darkseid, the Anti-Monitor, Mongul, Ares and Brainiac. As evil as they are, Darkseid, the Anti-Monitor and Mongul know nothing but the desire for conquest. Ares, the Greek god of war and arguably the most significant villain to Wonder Woman, is every bit as "locked into" his role. And Brainiac is an artificial intelligence. Though he thinks on his own, he's still basically running a program. They're actually pretty boring as villains go.

Somewhat Honorable Mention: Selina Kyle, Catwoman, sometimes nemesis and sometimes love interest of Bruce Wayne, the Batman. If you only know her from the 1966-68 Batman TV show, where she was played by Julie Newmar and later Eartha Kitt -- and, in the 1966 film version, by Lee Meriwether -- where she was only a villain, despite her flirting with Batman, then you should give her another look.

She isn't so much a villain as an "anti-hero." She has played both sides. Like Britt Reid, the Green Hornet, she has played the villain to other villains to undermine them from the inside. And, many times, she has proven to be a valuable asset to Batman.

Now, the Top 10:

10. Pamela Isley, Poison Ivy, enemy of Batman. A scientist who, having been empowered by an elemental force, can control plants, became an ecoterrorist. She's the opposite of the corporate polluters she hates: She wants to save the Earth, but doesn't care who has to die to achieve this. Her goal is worthy, but her methods are unacceptable.

9. Albert Desmond, who was first Mr. Element, then Dr. Alchemy, enemy of The Flash. Desmond debuted as a chemist who, in a split personality, developed the identity of Mr. Element, developing an "elemental gun" that could change an object's chemical composition. (The so-called Silver Age of Comics, 1956 to 1973, liked to talk about science, but wasn't very good at observing the laws of physics.)

While in prison, he learned of the existence of the Philosopher's Stone, which could do what his gun could, and more efficiently. Upon his release, he found the Stone, stole it, and created the new persona of Dr. Alchemy.

As various versions of The Flash have sometimes been able to do with the villains in the "Flash Rogues Gallery," Barry Allen got Desmond to go straight. But he had an "astral twin": Alvin Desmond, named nearly the same, born at the exact same time, and also with what would now be called disassociative identity disorder, but also with a psychic link to Albert. He took on the Dr. Alchemy identity, and, without Albert's original personality to morally ground him, became a more dangerous foe.

In a story titled "The Good, the Bad, and the Unexpected," Albert (in this case, "The Unexpected") was unfairly accused of Alvin's crimes. So he resumed his Mr. Element identity, and helped The Flash take the 2nd Dr. Alchemy down.

8. David Hyde, Black Manta, arch-enemy of Aquaman. His origin has been tinkered with a few times. The current version has him as the younger half of father & son crooks, and he blames Aquaman for saving him but not his father from a disaster.

But he is always portrayed as a ruthless underwater mercenary, with a black insect-headed costume (even though the manta ray is a very different-looking creature), particularly focused on Aquaman. In some versions, as Aquaman failed to save Black Manta's father, Black Manta killed Arthur Curry Jr., son of Aquaman and Mera.

In the Super Friends cartoon of the 1970s, he was simply "Manta," and his armor was orange, but he was no less evil, and no less difficult for Aquaman and the other Super Friends (Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, and the Wonder Twins) to defeat.

7. Harvey Dent, Two-Face, enemy of Batman. Once Gotham City's crusading District Attorney, and an ally of Police Commissioner Jim Gordon, and of the hero in both his businessman Bruce Wayne and crimefighter Batman personae -- he didn't know they were the same man -- half of his face was scarred by acid.

As a result, he developed the persona of Two-Face, who believed there was no such thing as justice, only chance. He had a two-headed silver dollar, and he took a knife and scarred one side of the coin. (In some versions of his origin, the coin was scarred by the same acid that ruined his face.) If the scarred side came up when he flipped it, he would commit a crime; but if the clean side came up, he wouldn't.

The 2nd Robin, Jason Todd -- who did not yet know that Dent had killed his father, gangster Willis Todd, but Batman did know -- asked how he could prepare for an opponent that unpredictable. Batman explained that Dent was actually their most predictable opponent, because his crimes were always based around the number 2, or duality in some form. Typical of this: He robbed the box office at the ballpark when the Gotham Goliaths played the Minnesota Twins, with 2 outs in the bottom half of the 2nd inning of the 2nd game of a doubleheader. Batman once set a trap for him by having a casino pay out a jackpot of $22 million -- money donated by Bruce Wayne, of course.

To make matters worse, there was a second Two-Face. Within the comics' universe, a TV-movie was made about the case, and the actor playing Dent, Paul Sloane, got mistakenly hit with real acid instead of water, and took up Two-Face's persona. The only way Batman could tell them apart was that Dent was righthanded, and Sloane was lefthanded. Sloane's damage was less severe, and he was cured in both face and mind. Dent has occasionally been cured, but has always had the Two-Face personality take over again.

Why do I put Two-Face on this list? Why not The Penguin? Because he's just a gangster with a theme. The film Batman Returns and the TV shows Gotham and The Penguin (the latter, a spinoff of the 2022 film The Batman) have tried to make him more interesting, but they didn't work for me.

Why not The Riddler? He's a bit more interesting, because he's more of an intellectual challenge for Batman -- although I did notice that, in the 1966-68 TV series, Robin (Dick Grayson) solved more of the riddles than Batman did. But he's not as unhinged, and thus as dangerous, as Two-Face, let alone the Joker.

Why not Bane, the man who "broke the Bat"? Certainly, he's more of a threat, but he's rather boring. Even in The Dark Knight Rises, when he was tied to Ra's al Ghul and his League of Shadows (which he previously was not in the comics), he wasn't that interesting.

6. Thaal Sinestro, arch-enemy of the Green Lantern Corps. Willpower is the green on the Lantern spectrum, and fear is the yellow on it. Once the leader of the Corps, and mentor of Earth's main Lantern, Hal Jordan, he believed that, in order to truly face all enemies, the Corps had to fully understand fear. The Guardians of the Universe, who ran the Corps, refused to accept this, and expelled him. So he became a Yellow Lantern, but it corrupted him. And, in most versions, the Green Lantern power ring is ineffective against the color yellow.

(On Earth-2, their Green Lantern, Alan Scott, got his power from plant life, and thus his ring couldn't be used against anything plant-related, including wood, leading to him occasionally getting hit with wooden objects.)

Turning against the Corps, with all his knowledge of them, made Sinestro not only a particularly effective counterpoint to the Corps, it made him, in effect, their "Anakin Skywalker," even though the character was created in 1961, 16 years before the debut of Star Wars, and 19 years before Anakin's betrayal and conversion to Darth Vader was known. On top of that, Sinestro is usually shown with pointed ears, which speaks more to the Vulcans and Romulans of Star Trek than Star Wars, even though he is frequently highly illogical.

5. Slade Wilson, Deathstroke, arch-enemy of, collectively, the Teen Titans. He's an anti-Captain America: First he was in the U.S. Army, then he received a "super-soldier serum," giving him vastly heightened strength, speed and reflexes. He became a mercenary, and is considered the top assassin in the DC Universe. The Marvel anti-hero Deadpool is considered a ripoff of Deathstroke, to the point where his real name is Wade Wilson.

Deathstroke has fought Batman and Green Arrow, and in the Arrowverse, where Green Arrow was the stand-in for Batman, he and Deathstroke fought each other. In the comics, Deathstroke's vendetta against the Titans began when he swore revenge for the death of his eldest son Grant, a villain who used the name Ravager. His other 2 children, Jericho and Rose, would go on to join the Titans to oppose him, with Rose even taking on the Ravager identity.

4. Ra's al-Ghul, enemy of Batman. This character was created in 1971, and was thus unavailable for the Adam West TV series. Centuries old, and revived from many deaths thanks to a Lazarus Pit, Ra's al-Ghul (Arabic for "The Demon's Head") runs the League of Assassins (known in The Dark Knight 

Trilogy as the League of Shadows), which has found every succeeding world civilization to be corrupt, and has tried to bring it down, becoming responsible for the Sack of Rome in AD 410, the fall of Camelot in 537, the Norman Conquest in 1066, the Black Death in 1340s Europe, the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Reign of Terror in France in the 1790s, and World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution in the 1910s.

Ra's (usually pronounced "Rahz," but, to match the language, it should be "Raysh"), like Deathstroke and Captain America, has more-than-human strength and reflexes, if not on a truly superhuman level, and is one of the world's deadliest physical combatants, having had the time to master multiple martial arts and hand weapons.

He considers Batman's hometown of Gotham City to be the most corrupt place on Earth (there is some reason to think so), and has specifically targeted it for destruction, seeing Batman, whose secret identity of Bruce Wayne he figured out, as a not merely a worthy opponent, calling him "Detective," but as a possible successor to lead the League of Assassins, through marriage to his daughter, Talia.

Talia, nearly as much of a physical marvel as her father, is fine with this, as she is in love with Bruce. Bruce, whose feelings for her conflict with those of his other main love interest, Catwoman, can't resist her, and she kept the birth of their son, Damian Wayne, secret from him for years. Damian was raised to be his grandfather's successor and a great assassin, flying in the face of Batman's no-kill rule. But when Talia introduced Damian to Bruce, Bruce took him in, set him straight (mostly), and made him the latest in a series of Robins.

In the Arrowverse, given their refusal to use Batman, Ra's al-Ghul became the arch-nemesis of Green Arrow.

3. Lex Luthor, arch-enemy of Superman. Superman is unusual among superheroes in that, while he does have opponents who wear costumes and develop themes based on their powers and/or personalities, his Number 1 opponent is a mortal man without powers.

From 1940 to 1985, Luthor was usually portrayed as a stereotypical "mad scientist," who wanted to control the world, not such much out of greed or a lust for power, but because he thought he could run it better. And Superman stood in his way.

Eventually, he was given a backstory to explain his specific hatred of Superman: They had grown up together in Smallville, and were friends. One day, the teenage Luthor made a mistake in his lab, and Superboy, as Clark Kent's costumed identity was then known, blew out the fire, but the fumes caused Luthor's hair to fall out, and he blamed Superboy, not his own mistake, for this. And so, his schemes to stop him were personal, unlike his schemes to "take over the world." (This would be copied in Marvel, with Victor Von Doom/Dr. Doom blaming former friend Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic for his facial scarring, rather than his own mistake.)

After Crisis On Infinite Earths in 1985, there was a complete reboot of DC Comics. Now, Luthor was several years older than Superman, and a contemporary and rival of Daily Planet publisher Perry White. And, like the Marvel superhero Iron Man, he seemed a variation on science wizard Howard Hughes.

This version of him hated Superman not just because he was now getting the headlines in the Planet that Luthor himself used to get, but because Luthor believed that the best of humanity -- himself, and people like him -- should be the best of Earth, not some super-powered alien "interloper."

Wanting to "save humanity" is just Lex's excuse for why he wants to eliminate Superman. If Lex's goal was to save humanity, he wouldn't kill people to achieve his sub-goals, be they building a new machine to help humanity, or synthesizing a helpful new drug, or building a factory to employ thousands of people. If he wanted to do those things, he'd just do them. And if he had to kill people to achieve them, being supposedly one of the smartest people alive -- he confesses that Batman is the only man he considers to be smarter than himself -- he'd find a way around killing to achieve them.

In All-Star Superman, Superman points out that, once Lex became as rich as he is, he could have "saved humanity," whatever those words meant to him, any time he wanted to. And he hasn't even tried. Some of the other brilliant scientists in the DC canon have tried, with limited success, particularly on a local scale (Bruce Wayne, a.k.a. Batman, in Gotham City; Oliver Queen, a.k.a. Green Arrow, in Star City, and so on). Luthor simply uses his genius and his resources for his own benefit.

2. Jack Napier, the Joker, arch-enemy of Batman. Whereas even Luthor would do the right thing if he thought he could benefit from it, the Joker only does things to make himself laugh. And, despite recent adaptations of Luthor as shown in the TV series Superman & Lois and in the 2025 Superman film, the Joker is even more sadistic, determined to prove that, as happened to him, all it takes is one truly bad day to drive a good man insane.

The fact that he was -- depending on the telling; as he put it, "If I have to choose my story, I prefer multiple choice!" -- already a small-time crook, either by choice or forced into it, and was disfigured and shocked into adopting his Joker persona as a result of a confrontation with Batman, makes it all the more poignant: Inadvertently, Batman created his arch-enemy, and he knows it. (The 2019 and 2024 Joker films go against this idea.)

The 1989 Batman film took this to the next level, showing that Napier was not only a gangster and a rotten guy long before he became the Joker, he was also the man who killed Thomas and Martha Wayne in front of a child Bruce. As Batman told him at the film's climax: "I made you? You made me first." This is the only version of the story where the Waynes' killer becomes the Joker: In most versions, it's Joe Chill, who is depicted as either a small-time hood who gets scared, and thus his mugging of the Waynes goes horribly wrong; or a Mob hitman, carrying out the vendetta of a boss that Dr. Wayne offended.

Two oddities, both from movies. In the Tim Burton movies, had the Penguin's plan succeeded, his death toll of over 100,000 would have been greater than any plan yet seen from any live-action version of the Joker. And in the film version of Watchmen, a hero-turned-antihero named the Comedian ends up killing more people, including more innocent people, than any version of the Joker.

So who could be worse than all of these, including Luthor and the Joker? In my opinion, this guy:

1. Eobard Thawne, Professor Zoom, the Reverse-Flash, arch-enemy of Barry Allen, the 2nd Flash. In the 25th Century, Thawne started out admiring the 20th Century hero, The Flash. He wanted to be like Barry Allen. So he found a way to give himself super-speed. Then, just as he's about to debut as his era's speedster hero, Allen comes from the past and saves the people Thawne was supposed to save. Though Barry didn't yet know Thawne existed, Thawne took his action as a deeply personal affront, and began to hate The Flash, and would occasionally go back to the 20th Century to make his life miserable.

He was responsible for the death of Barry's wife, Iris West, although she later returned from the dead. Not satisfied with this, Flash canon was rewritten so that Thawne became Barry's "Joe Chill," but with a twist: He went back further in time, killing Barry's mother Nora, and getting Barry's father Henry blamed for the murder, making Barry "lose" both parents as a boy. But instead of becoming embittered and a villain, Barry still sought justice and became a hero, and still stopped Thawne every time.

In 2011, deciding they needed another reboot, the suits at DC allowed the Flashpoint story: Barry went back in time and saved his mother, but it messed up the entire world. As Barry said in the 2023 Flash film, "I broke the universe!" In the comics version, adapted to an animated film, Thawne decided to lecture him over this:

Yes, Thawne. You are the villain. Barry was not a villain, just a well-intentioned fool.

Tell me, Thawne, when have you ever tried to save a life, instead of end one, or make one miserable? (The Arrowverse's series The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow tried to redeem him this way, but it rang hollow.)

Lex Luthor was an abused kid who lost his hair. The Joker and Two-Face were disfigured and lost everything. Mr. Element/Dr. Alchemy was already mentally ill. Black Manta lost his father, although he blamed the wrong person. Ra's al-Ghul and Poison Ivy want to save the world, though they try it with psychotic methods. Even Sinestro had a point, that no one was willing to listen to, and felt rejected by his own people.

What's your excuse for being a villainous son of a bitch, Thawne? A man who didn't even know you existed at that point, and thus wasn't trying to hurt you, hurt your feelings. He hurt your pride. That's it.

In a way, Thawne, you're even worse than Darkseid, Mongul and Brainiac. Trying to conquer is all they know. You should have been smarter than that. But you weren't. In your origin, you're the worst DC villain of them all. You are the villain.

September 8, 1973: "Super Friends" Premieres

Left to right: Wonder Dog, Aquaman, Robin, Batman,

Superman, Wonder Woman, Wendy and Marvin.

Note the early '70s bell-bottom pants on both teenagers.

September 8, 1973, 50 years ago: Super Friends premieres on ABC, based on the superheroes of DC Comics. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, it runs in one form or another until 1986. The animation was crude by today's standards, but, as a kid, I didn't care.

The original series, narrated by Ted Knight, a.k.a. Ted Baxter of The Mary Tyler Moore Show -- "Later, at the Hall of Justice... " -- was kid-centric. Wendy Harris (voiced by Sherry Alberoni) and Marvin White (Frank Welker) were ordinary teenagers, who had no powers, but considered themselves superheroes, or at least detectives, in training.

They had a dog named Wonder Dog (also voiced by Welker, who specialized in voicing cartoon dogs), whose only special abilities were a higher intelligence than most dogs and, sort of, the ability to talk. They were taken in by the Super Friends, who can be recognized as a subset of the Justice League.

It's understandable that the show used Superman (Danny Dark), Batman (Olan Soule), Robin (Casey Kasem) and Wonder Woman (Shannon Farnon). After all, Kal-El/Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne and Princess Diana of Themiscyra/Diana Prince are what are now called "the DC Trinity"; and, as the original Robin, Dick Grayson was Batman's sidekick. It had only been 5 years since the Adam West Batman series had gone off the air, and this version of the Dynamic Duo was more like West and Burt Ward than like later "Dark Knights" and their "Boy Wonders."

Less obvious as a choice to round out the main superhero cast was Aquaman (Norman Alden). For those of you who only know later versions, showing him with long hair and looking more like Marvel Comics' Thor -- or in the darker-skinned, dark-haired, long-haired, tattooed version played by Jason Momoa in the DC Extended Universe movies -- his appearance as a very pale white man with short but curly hair might seem like an anachronism.

There were occasional visits from other superheroes. Knight also voiced The Flash. Alden also voiced Green Arrow and Plastic Man. But each of these characters appeared in only one episode. In flashback sequences, we saw Superman's Kryptonian parents, Jor-El (Kasem) and Lara (Farnon); and his earthly parents, Jonathan Kent (Soule) and Martha Kent (Farnon again).

In later versions, Dark would also play Batman's ally, Gotham City Police Commissioner James Gordon. Farnon would also play Wonder Woman's mother, Queen Hippolyta; Superman's girlfriend and Daily Planet co-worker, Lois Lane; and, from Greek mythology, goddess of love Aphrodite and monster Medusa.

Super Friends taught me to read closing credits. I noticed that Robin sounded an awful lot like Shaggy from Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? So I looked at the credits of both shows, and wrote them down, and found two names in common: Kasem and Welker. When I found out from other shows that Welker was also the voices of Fred from Scooby, Astro from The Jetsons, Dynomutt the Dog Wonder (with Laugh-In's Gary Owens as the Batman-like Blue Falcon) and the title character in Jabberjaw, that narrowed him down to Marvin and Wonder Dog, and showed me that Kasem was Robin.

In the 1976-77 TV season, ABC's The Krofft Supershow had Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, played by soap opera star Deidre Hall and car pitchwoman (as "Mean Mary Jean") Judy Strangis, respectively. This show copied Wonder Woman by having female superheroes, copied Batman by having an older hero and a younger sidekick with a corny catchphrase ("Electra-Wow!"), and copied Superman by making them reporters in civilian life. And Alden, the voice of Aquaman, played Frank Heflin, who was less their version of Batman and Robin's butler/all-around tech whiz Alfred than he was Oscar Goldman to their Six Million Dollar Man and Bionic Woman.

Only one season of 16 episodes of Super Friends was made, although they continued to be shown in reruns. But the ABC success of Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman series and Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, and The Shazam/Isis Hour on CBS, gave ABC and Hanna-Barbera the idea to try again.

In 1977, they brought us The All-New Super Friends Hour. Noting that the core audience was a little older, Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog were phased out. Phased in were the Wonder Twins. They were teenagers, from the planet Exor, and they were obviously geared toward not just older kids and teenagers, but Trekkies, because they looked like Vulcans: Vaguely Asian faces, the same hairstyles, and pointed ears.

Left to right: Batman, Robin, Gleek, Zan,

Jayna, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Superman

Unlike Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog, Zan (Michael Bell) and Jayna (Liberty Williams) had powers. Not a mind-meld or a nerve pinch like Vulcans. When they touched their hands, and said, "Wonder Twin powers, activate!" Jayna could say, "Shape of... " any animal, and transform into that animal. Zan could say, "Form of... " any version of water, from ice to boiling water to fog to a solid wall of liquid water.

Suddenly, Aquaman's sea-based powers didn't seem so silly: Zan was mainly comic relief. But if that wasn't enough, they had a pet monkey named Gleek (also voiced by Bell), with a rubber tail that could be used as a weapon and, if he spun it in the air like a helicopter's rotor, he could use to fly.

It still wasn't a full Justice League of America, but there were, again, cameos from other heroes, usually one guest appearance per episode. Barney Phillips took over as The Flash (the Barry Allen version). Michael Rye voiced Green Lantern (the Hal Jordan version). Jack Angel voiced Hawkman, and Farnon voiced Hawkgirl (never "Hawkwoman"). Wally Burr voiced The Atom.

Then there were the heroes created just for this series, having never before appeared in comic books. This was an attempt to appear diverse, or, as we would now say, multicultural. But the characters, all too often, seemed like stereotypes anyway.

While there were black superheroes before this, including DC's electric-powered Black Lightning and the John Stewart version of Green Lantern, they didn't use any of them for Super Friends. They wanted to use Black Lightning, but there was a legal wrinkle that prevented them from doing so. So, they created Black Vulcan (Buster Jones). No, it wasn't a black version of Star Trek's Mr. Spock: Basically, he was Black Lightning, with electric powers and a somewhat different black-and-gold costume. That and the name allowed them to meet the legal requirements. (The original Vulcan was the Roman name for the god of fire, known as Hephaestus to the ancient Greeks.)

The Asian hero was Samurai (also Jack Angel), who had wind-based powers, similar to the DC character Red Tornado. And there was a Native American hero, Apache Chief (also Michael Rye). He could grow to enormous size, which also gave him super strength and near-invulnerability. But their costumes were little better than how John Wayne would have imagined their peoples.

Clockwise from top: Superman, Hawkman, Samurai, Green Lantern,

Robin, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash,

Jayna, Zan, Gleek, Black Vulcan and Apache Chief.

The Hall of Justice was based on Union Terminal in Cincinnati,

hometown of the owners of Hanna-Barbera Productions,

Taft Broadcasting (and related to President William Howard Taft).

For the 1978-79 season, Challenge of the Superfriends (one word) was made. Now, the denizens of the Hall of Justice are a full 11-member Justice League of America (JLA): Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Black Vulcan, Samurai and Apache Chief. (But no Green Arrow, Plastic Man, Hawkgirl or Wonder Twins. By this point, Plastic Man had gotten his own show.)

And now, they had regular enemies, with a headquarters looking like Star Wars character Darth Vader's helmet (come on, let's call a spade a spade) rising out of a swamp: The Legion of Doom. Its members:

* Lex Luthor (Stanley Jones), arch-enemy of Superman. (In this series, Jones also did the voices of Superman's fathers, Jor-El and Jonathan Kent. What Sigmund Freud would have thought of that, I have no idea.)

* Bizarro (Bill Callaway), imperfect duplicate of Superman.

* Brainiac (Ted Cassidy, formerly Lurch on The Addams Family and the narrator of the opening sequence to CBS' The Incredible Hulk), robotic enemy of Superman. (Cassidy died of heart trouble during the season, only 46 years old.)

* Mr. Mxyzptlk (another Frank Welker role), magical enemy of Superman.

* Solomon Grundy (Jimmy Weldon), an incredibly strong and durable zombielike creature that debuted in the 1940s as an enemy of the "Golden Age" Green Lantern, Alan Scott, but later became an enemy of Superman and, occasionally, other heroes.

* The Toyman (another Frank Welker role), enemy of Superman, but hardly on the same level as the preceding.

* The Riddler (Michael Bell, also Zan and Gleek), enemy of Batman. (The Riddler was chosen because they couldn't get the legal rights to use the Joker or the Penguin. It's just as well: The Riddler is smarter than either one.)

* The Scarecrow (Don Messick), enemy of Batman. (Messick was also the original voice of Scooby-Doo.)

* The Cheetah (Marlene Aragon), catlike arch-enemy of Wonder Woman.

* Black Manta (also Ted Cassidy), arch-enemy of Aquaman.

* Sinestro (also Don Messick), arch-enemy of Green Lantern.

* Gorilla Grodd (Stanley Ralph Ross), a member of The Flash's "Rogues Gallery." (Ross had been a writer on the 1966-68 Batman series, and a co-creator of the 1975-79 Wonder Woman series.)

* Captain Cold (Dick Ryal), also a Flash enemy. (In a flashback sequence, Ryal also voiced Abin Sur, the dying Green Lantern who gave his power ring to Hal Jordan.)

* The Pied Piper (Bob Hastings), also a Flash enemy.

* Giganta (Ruth Forman), a giantess created for the series. Being a woman, she would seem to be an opponent for Wonder Woman. However, an episode explained that she got her powers at the same time, and from the same source, that Apache Chief got his, making for a dual origin story.

New versions of the series would continue until 1986, by which point I was too old to watch. But there would be live-action versions to come, with Superman getting 4 movies and 2 TV shows (Superboy and Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, plus a Supergirl movie), Batman getting 4 movies, and The Flash getting a single-season TV series on CBS. There would be the NBC special Legends of the Superheroes in 1979, which had the first live-action versions of The Flash, Green Lantern, The Atom and Hawkman. However, a typically small TV special-effects budget rendered it ridiculous.

Superman: The Movie came out in late 1978, and when Lois Lane (Margot Kidder) meets Superman (Christopher Reeve) for the first time, she asks him, "Who are you?" Not yet having been named Superman (in this version, it was Lois who gave him the name in her article), he says simply, "A friend." It may not have been intentional, but, in hindsight, it seems like an "Easter Egg" for Super Friends fans like me.

In 1992, Batman: The Animated Series would launch "The DC Animated Universe," which ran until 2006. Among the other series included in it were Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, Batman Beyond (set in a future with an elderly Bruce Wayne training a teenager, Terry McGinnis, to be a new, updated Batman, rather than the latest in a long line of Robins), Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. These shows were definitely meant for older kids, who would understand the dark themes of the Batman mythos, not little kids.

A 1997 Justice League of America movie would have only second-tier heroes, including the first live-action version of J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter, because getting the legal rights to use Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman would have been prohibitively expensive. Between 2005 and 2010, The CW's Superman prequel series Smallville would feature the first live-action versions of Aquaman, Green Arrow, and the Wonder Twins, plus new versions of some other heroes.

And, in 2020, in the last episode of The CW's Crisis On Infinite Earths, a Justice League consisting of Superman (Tyler Hoechlin), Supergirl (Melissa Benoist), Batwoman (Ruby Rose), The Flash (Grant Gustin), the White Canary (Caity Lotz), the Martian Manhunter (Dorian Harewood) and Black Lightning (Cress Williams) gathered for the first time, with an empty seat at the table in memory of Green Arrow (Stephen Amell), who had sacrificed his life to restart the multiverse.

Their building looked like the Hall of Justice. And at the end, while the old Super Friends theme played, the camera panned up to an open cage marked "GLEEK." I have to say, despite having just turned 50, I got a kick out of that.

Top 10 Most Tenuous Superhero Secret Identities

Note: I'm limiting this to DC Comics. Most Marvel heroes seem to have had their identities exposed at some point, some by their own choice.

Honorable Mention: Aquaman. Although he has a civilian name, Arthur Curry, he doesn't really have a civilian life. So the fact that he doesn't wear any kind of mask doesn't really affect his secret identity: He doesn't need to keep it a secret.

10. Tie: Starfire and Beast Boy/Changeling. These 2 members of the Teen Titans (or just "The Titans") have a distinct disadvantage, having unusual skin color: Starfire, a.k.a. Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran, has orange skin and bright green eyes, like all Tamarans. Her civilian identity of model Kory Anders tries to get around this by appeared to have used too many tanning beds. But Garfield "Gar" Logan seems never to have found a way to hide his green skin.

The TV show Titans mostly got around this. Kory was played by a black actress, Anna Diop, and her natural color was kept; so her hair, always drawn as a different shade of orange from the character's skin, didn't seem so odd. Gar was played by Ryan Potter, and given an appearance similar to the Joker: Green hair, and skin that, while not fully white, was whiter than what we normally call Caucasians. But that could be explained by his simply being a kid who dyed his hair.

9. Robin and...

8. Batman. Even on the 1966-68 TV series, the connection was made: Batman needs a lot of money to fund his gadgets, therefore he must be a rich guy, around a certain age, living in Gotham City. Narrow it down to that, and see which ones are especially motivated to fight crime. Bruce Wayne was a kid when his (at least, locally) famous parents were murdered right in front of him. There you go.

It's easy to rationalize that, even with that motivation, Bruce might not be Batman, he might only be funding him. Still, if you were to find a way to neutralize Bruce Wayne, then you can go some ways in neutralizing Batman, even if you don't know they're the same guy. The Joker did this in the recent Joker War storyline. (He knows the dual identity in some versions, but not others.)

Also, Bruce Wayne has a teenage ward, Dick Grayson. Batman has a teenage sidekick, Robin. Dick eventually left the role, leading to a series of Robins. Still, if you already suspect that Bruce has a direct connection to Batman, a succession of Robins could be easy to match to a succession of children, surrogate (Dick, Jason Todd, Tim Drake) or biological (Damian Wayne).

7. Green Lantern. Yes, Hal Jordan wears a mask, but he also always wears the power ring. He never takes it off.

As for the other Earth-based GLs: Alan Scott, Kyle Rayner, Simon Baz and Jo Mullein wear masks; Guy Gardner and John Stewart don't; and Jessica Cruz wears a Green Lantern tattoo over her right eye when she's in costume, making for a half-mask.

6. Wonder Woman. In "man's world," she uses the name "Diana Prince." Anyone who already knows that Wonder Woman is Princess Diana of Themiscyra (known in pre-Crisis continuity as "Paradise Island") will be able to make the connection.

In the 1975-79 TV series starring Lynda Carter, Wonder Woman wore glasses as Diana Prince, and this was carried over into the comics, both before and after Crisis. But it shouldn't have worked for her any more than it did for Superman. And in the DCEU, both in Wonder Woman 1984 and in Justice League, set in 2017, Gal Gadot's version doesn't use glasses.

And, like the 1977-79 version of Lynda Carter's character, she didn't adopt a new name at a point when the Diana Prince of the previous era should have been too old to look so young. There is a big difference between 1918 and 1984 (DCEU, so "the two Diana Princes" could have been believed to be grandmother and granddaughter), but not so much between 1945 and 1977 (TV), or between 1984 and 2016 (DCEU). Batman found a 1918 photo of her, and made the connection. You don't have to be "the world's greatest detective" to do that.

Honorable Mention: Wonder Girl. Neither of the women who've used that name and been trained by Wonder Woman, Donna Troy and Cassandra "Cassie" Sandsmark, have worn masks.

5. Superman. Honorable Mention: Supergirl. This is the most-cited example: Glasses shouldn't be enough. The early writers tried to get around this by making Superman raise his voice an octave while playing Clark Kent, and by slouching, so that Clark seems shorter than Superman.

But in post-Crisis continuity, Clark is less "mild-mannered," and more assertive. On Lois & Clark, Teri Hatcher's Lois noticed that Dean Cain's Clark was pretty buff, but it still took her 2 full seasons to make the connection.

The comics have further explanation for why people don't make the connection. One is that most people don't realize that Superman even has a secret identity. Another is that, when he knows he's facing still or television cameras, Superman uses an identity-obscuring trick he learned from...

4. The Flash of Earth-2. Jay Garrick doesn't even wear glasses, let alone a mask. Just a hat. He hides his identity by vibrating his face so fast that nobody can get a clear photograph of him. But all anybody needs is for him to forget to do that once, and his cover is blown.

(UPDATE: In the 2025 Superman film, the superheroes in the Justice Gang know Superman's true identity. Green Lantern Guy Gardner, played by Nathan Fillion, suggests that, as Clark, he wears "hypno-glasses," to make people see Clark and Superman as 2 different people.)

3. Mary Marvel. Saying, "Shazam!" ages her from teenager to adult, as with her foster brother (biological brother in pre-Crisis continuity) Billy Batson, a.k.a. Captain Marvel, a.k.a. Shazam. And it makes her physically stronger and more fit. But it doesn't alter her appearance beyond that. And she literally uses her real name in her superhero codename. That's very risky.

Marvel Comics have had characters named Ms. Marvel since 1977, but neither DC nor the Shazam Family's previous publisher, Fawcett Comics, ever thought to call Mary "Miss Marvel."

2. Black Canary. Dinah Lance doesn't wear a mask, a hat, or a hood. Her only concession to her secret identity is a blonde wig, as she's a natural brunette.

It is somewhat appropriate that the only DC hero whose secret identity is more tenuous is that of the hero she romanced and eventually married:

1. Green Arrow. Aside from his modus operandi, that of being an archer, what's GA best known for? His blonde Van Dyke beard, first drawn by Neal Adams in 1969, in the same story where GA started dating Black Canary. Oliver Queen, prominent Star City businessman (who, in some versions, has even served as the city's Mayor), has a Van Dyke beard. Hello?

The CW's Arrowverse came close to getting around this: While Stephen Amell's Ollie had a beard, it wasn't as distinctive as a Van Dyke; and wearing a hood instead of a Robin Hood-style cap, as GA has usually done post-Crisis, did more to disguise his identity. And he tended to operate mainly at night, like every version of Batman but the 1966-68 TV version, with darkness helping to obscure his identity. Still, anybody who met both Ollie and Green Arrow wouldn't have had to think too hard to make the connection.

This is my biggest problem with the current Superman & Lois TV series: Tyler Hoechlin never seems to shave. Superman shouldn't have stubble. Yet he has it, as both Clark and Superman. 

Risky mistake, and a rookie mistake, from a guy who's clearly been at this game long enough to have been Superman for a few years before marrying Lois Lane, and to now have sons old enough to drive (and fly).

Top 10 Reasons Why the Snyderverse Stinks

Note: Despite the headline date, I'm writing this after having seen the film The Flash, which premiered on June 16, 2023.

June 14, 2013, 10 years ago: The film Man of Steel premieres, directed by Zack Snyder, and starring Henry Cavill as Kal-El, a.k.a. Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman. It began the "Snyderverse" series of movies, based on the superhero stories of DC Comics. Rather loosely based, in my opinion.

The Snyderverse bred a group of fanboys -- and they were mostly teenage boys and young men, too young to remember Christopher Reeve playing Superman and Michael Keaton playing Batman -- who decided that this was the only version of superheroes that mattered. That previous versions of Superman were "boring," and that previous versions of Batman, even Christian Bale's recent "Dark Knight," weren't dark enough. And that the "Arrowverse" group of TV shows on The CW network wasn't good enough.

In the words of the immortal Gene Wilder, "You know, morons."

Man of Steel -- or "Man of Stool," as those of us who think it's shit like to call it, and I will hereafter abbreviate it as MoS -- was a crime against the character of Superman. The 2016 follow-up, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (BvS from here on out), was worse. Snyder fanboys told us to wait for the "Extended Edition." All that version did was make a very long, very bad movie longer and worse.

BvS' only saving grace was the introduction of Israeli actress Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman. Even the brief glimpse of Ezra Miller as the Flash only helped to confuse things.

Indeed, in most of these cases, the problem isn't with the actors. Henry Cavill as Superman and Ben Affleck as Batman played the characters as they were written. The problem is with, as Snyder fanboys like to say, his overall vision, which stinks. I don't mean it "sucks." I mean it smells bad.

But before I explain why -- not that I expect Snyder fanboys to understand; as the saying goes, "I can explain it for you, but I can't understand it for you" -- let me give 3 things I liked about the Snyderverse.

1. S Means Hope. Superman has always been a symbol of hope. In the Snyderverse, the crest on his chest, previously always meant to be an "S" for "Superman," was rewritten to be the symbol for "hope" in Kryptonese.

Even with this, though, the Snyderverse was surpassed by the Arrowverse. In their version of Crisis On Infinite Earths (2019), Brandon Routh again played the Superman he played in Superman Returns (2006), which we were led to believe was the Superman from the Superman movies that starred Christopher Reeve (1978-87). But a terrorist attack by the Joker (described, but not named, for legal reasons) killed Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, and many other Daily Planet employees, meaning that this Superman lost so much of what had made him human. Still, he hung on to what he had left.

He wears an S-crest similar to the one that a potential future Superman wore in the 1996 graphic novel Kingdom Come. (Hence, his world was labeled "Earth-96.") He says to another Earth's Lois Lane, played by Elizabeth Tulloch, who went on to reprise the role in the CW series Superman & Lois (which debuted on The CW in 2021):

Superman: When I put this on, this crest, I made a promise: To keep fighting, no matter what.

Lois: Hey, why'd you add black to it?

Superman: Because, Lois, even in the darkest times, hope cuts through. Hope is the light that lifts us out of the darkness.

In so doing, the Arrowverse got Superman right in 30 seconds. Zack Snyder, if you count his cut of Justice League, had a shade under 9 hours to get Superman right, and either failed, or refused.

2. The Original Warrior Princess. There are many reasons to appreciate the 1975-79 TV version of Wonder Woman, as played by Lynda Carter. But even then, when I was a little kid, it occurred to me that she'd have to be really fast to block bullets with those bracelets, which looked too small. Instead, Gal Gadot's Snyderverse version wore gauntlets, which covered almost her entire forearms, and made much more sense when it came to blocking bullets.

Also, because The New Original Wonder Woman was aimed at a family audience, Carter rarely threw punches or engaged in real fights, and never killed anyone. Most of the time, she grabbed her opponents and simply tossed them aside, or, from a distance, threw the Lasso of Hestia around them. She was a symbol of restraint and, where possible, peace. This would later be matched by a line that Diana delivered in the comics: "Don't kill if you can wound, don't wound if you can subdue, don't subdue if you can pacify, and don't raise your hand at all until you've first extended it."

While I liked Gadot's gauntlets, I wasn't crazy about the rest of her costume redesign. (Not that it was her redesign: She didn't design it.) I didn't like that her tiara now pointed down instead of up, and, as with all the heroes' costumes, it was in darker shades of its traditional colors. It reminded me of Xena: Warrior Princess.

But the DCEU films also reminded us that Diana is a warrior, and handy with any weapon, especially a sword. Given that her show was in the 1970s, and it was for kids as much as for adults, Carter was never allowed to show Diana's full fighting potential; Gadot was. The fact that Carter gave Gadot her full approval -- something Reeve, already dead, couldn't give to Cavill -- went a long way toward establishing Gadot's credibility with moviegoers.

3. The Redemption of Aquaman. Jason Momoa, a Native Hawaiian, looks nothing like the traditional Arthur Curry, a.k.a. Aquaman, who has short, curly blond hair, and is clean-shaven. The version from the comics, and seen in the Super Friends cartoons (1973-86), has often been mocked as "the guy who talks to fish" -- even as that power, even then, was frequently shown to be rather handy. And he could fly. And he was very strong, if not on the same level as Superman or even Wonder Woman.

Indeed, if we were in the interregnum between Batman and Robin (1997) and the preparations for Batman Begins (2005), and it were the beginning of a chance to make DC movies, and I were going to cast Momoa (who was 24 in 2003, when Batman Begins got started), I would cast him as Katar Hol, a.k.a. Carter Hall, a.k.a. Hawkman, the very buff Thanagarian warrior whose original version went back to ancient Egypt. He would have kicked ass in that role.

But he did kick ass as Aquaman. The DCEU showed us just how powerful the character can truly be: He went toe-to-toe with Steppenwolf in Justice League: The Whedon Cut (2017, JLWC from here on out), and led an army (navy? marines?) to victory in his standalone film, which showed him totally proving worthy of his royal heritage. Even the much-mocked scene in JLWC, where Aquaman, not knowing he's sitting on Wonder Woman's lasso, lets the truth fly, ennobles the character.

Still...

The Top 10 Reasons Why the Snyderverse Stinks

Honorable Mention: Lois Lane. Amy Adams is a good actress. And one of the few things I like about the Superman section of the Snyderverse is that she figured out that Clark was a hero not only before he could tell her, but before he had even put on the Superman costume for the first time, thus saving the storyline of Lois trying to figure out that Clark was Superman, which took some truly stupid turns in the comics, and didn't work very well in Superman II (1981), either.

But Adams is a redhead, like Lana Lang; not a brunette, like Lois. This is a minor gripe, so I'm not putting it in the Top 10. (When The Adventures of Superman went to color in 1954, we saw that their Lois, Noel Neill, was a redhead.) Certainly, she was better in the role than was Kate Bosworth, who was way too young to play a veteran reporter with a 5-year-old child in Superman Returns.

10. Jimmy Olsen is wasted. In more ways than one. And I don't mean he's "drunk." In the comics, he was the Daily Planet's teenage photographer, befriended by Clark Kent and Lois Lane, and grudgingly accepted but often bullied by editor Perry White.

Most live-action versions have embraced this: John Hamilton's Perry to Jack Larson's Jimmy in The Adventures of Superman (1952-58), Jackie Cooper's Perry to Marc McClure's Jimmy in the Chris Reeve movies, and Lane Smith's Perry to first Michael Landes (1993-94) and then Justin Whalin (1994-97) on Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.

Jimmy Olsen wasn't in MoS. In BvS, we find out that Jimmy is an undercover CIA operative, probably around the same age as Lois and Clark. He gets his cover blown, and he's killed. That's it for him. He's a lousy CIA agent, he never works for the Planet, and he never becomes "Superman's Pal." In fact, there's no evidence that the DCEU's Superman and Jimmy even met.

9. The Flash is comic relief. In his comics introduction, Barry Allen was already a "police scientist," the kind of character who would later be represented by the likes of Gary Dourdan's Warrick Brown on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation and Pauley Perrette's Abby Sciuto on NCIS. In other words, he's old enough to have gotten his doctorate, and had been helping to solve crimes even before he got his powers. He had a sense of humor (although that was, typical for superheroes of the time, more common in his sidekick, Wally West, a.k.a. Kid Flash), but, mostly, he was a serious man.

The Snyderverse Flash, played by Ezra Miller, was first shown in, well, a flash during a time-travel attempt, already a grown man, trying to contact a past version of Batman in BvS. He gets a very brief scene in Suicide Squad (2016), apprehending Captain Boomerang (Jai Courtney). But we don't really see him until JLWC: He's a teenage goofball who happens to be the fastest man alive. He provides much of the film's silliness, mostly in his interactions with Batman and Aquaman.

The fanboys demanded the release of "Zack Snyder's Justice League," a.k.a. The Snyder Cut (ZSJL from here on out), swearing it existed prior to Snyder leaving the project due to the tragic death of his daughter. They demanded the completion of "his overall vision." Their online harassment of Warner Brothers led the studio to contact Snyder, whose Cut did not yet exist, and they let him finish it, resulting in a 4-hour HBO Max miniseries rather than a theatrical release.

They took a bad movie, a.k.a. Josstice League, and made it much longer, much darker, and much worse, worse than MoS, though not quite as bad as BvS, which is so bad, it makes the 1997 Batman and Robin look like Citizen Kane, and the 1987 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace look like The Godfather.

But ZSJL did make the Flash better, giving him the chance to travel through time and prevent the failure of Victor Stone, a.k.a. Cyborg (Ray Fisher), to prevent the destruction of Earth. It's one of the few good things about the film.

The subsequent Flash film, while full of serious things, leaned on the humor more than was necessary. When the Flash tells Batman's right-hand man Alfred Pennyworth (Jeremy Irons) that he feels like "the janitor of the Justice League," it's silly -- even though he has a point. Both JLWC and ZSJL made Barry a kid who, while smart, really didn't know what he was doing. Half the Flash movie was basically Barry Age 28 telling Barry Age 18, "I'm showing you this the easy way, so you don't have to learn it the hard way like I did."

8. What Snyder did with the Joker. The character was written as more of a gangster type than he's usually portrayed. That wasn't the problem: The 4 traditional Batman villains, the ones most often shown in the 1966-68 TV show -- the Joker, the Penguin, the Riddler and Catwoman -- were, on that show, and in the comics before that, traditionally shown as gangsters whose identities, costumes, gadgets, henchmen, etc. had a theme.

But what the hell was up with the teeth? And the tattoos? I've said before that Heath Ledger's character in the 2008 film The Dark Knight seemed, to me, not so much like the actual Joker, but more like someone who was masquerading as his interpretation of the original Joker, whom Batman had defeated many years earlier, and had come close to getting it right, but was a little off. But only a little: He wasn't a better Joker than Jack Nicholson was in Batman (1989), but for overall performance, he earned that posthumous Oscar.

Whereas, as played by Jared Leto in Suicide Squad and in the Knightmare sequence at the end of ZSJL, this Joker was a lot more than a little off. And I don't mean "a little crazy." After all, craziness is the Joker's thing. I mean that it seemed like Snyder was trying to make a Joker for a new generation, and, instead, came up with what Epic Rap Battles of History called someone who looked like rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine.

7. What Snyder did with Lex Luthor. Jesse Eisenberg might have been a good Joker. Some people have suggested that he would have been good the Riddler. But as Luthor? No way. He was far removed from even the somewhat jokey Gene Hackman version in the Reeve films, let alone the more serious versions played by John Shea on Lois & Clark, Michael Rosenbaum on Smallville (2001-11) and Kevin Spacey in Superman Returns, and, since BvS, also by Jon Cryer in the Arrowverse. (UPDATE: And also different from Michael Cudlitz in Superman and Lois.)

And while the land-grab plans of both 1978 Luthor and 2006 Luthor are dumb in hindsight, why would 2016 Luthor create Doomsday? If he wants someone, or something, to kill Superman, why would he create something that was, for all intents and purposes, Superman without the moral code, at least equal in power, more willing to kill, and totally out of his control, or anybody else's control? After all, if there's one thing a rich person values more than money, it's control.

It's possible that someone as ridiculous as Eisenberg's Luthor could have made billions of dollars. But anybody that ridiculous would have been killed by his rivals before he could become the threat that Luthor usually represents.

Disclaimer: Jesse Eisenberg and I are from the same town: East Brunswick, New Jersey. But we have never met. My assessment of his version of the character is not based on any personal issue. Or even with his portrayal. Again, he played the character as it was written, very well. The problem was with the writing.

6. Dick Grayson is the Robin that the Joker killed. This precludes any future Robins: No Jason Todd, no Tim Drake, no Stephanie Brown. Snyder's Batman suggests Frank Miller's Batman, opening the possibility of Carrie Kelley. And there is nothing that can rule out Ra's al-Ghul, and therefore Talia al-Ghul, and therefore Damian Wayne. But the existences of Carrie and Damian aren't suggested, either. 

Furthermore, no more Dick means no development into Nightwing. It also means no Teen Titans, which gets backed up by the fact that no younger sidekicks are suggested at any point in this films. (Cyborg started as a Titan. How he got promoted to the Justice League, I don't know. And this version of the Flash sure seems a lot more like Wally West, who was Kid Flash before he was Flash III, than Barry Allen, Flash II.)

One defense that has been marshaled is that only the loss of his first and favorite "son" could turn Bruce into the man he is in BvS, one who has forsaken his code against lethal force. But that opens a whole other can of worms: If this Batman kills, and does so because the Joker killed Robin, wouldn't that have made him kill the Joker before he killed anybody else? In the Knightmare at the end of ZSJL, he tells Joker, "Make no mistake, I will fucking kill you" -- the 1st F-bomb in any DC superhero movie. Big talk for a man who knows that the Joker killed Dick, and did nothing about it at the time.

5. Wonder Woman fights the wrong war. Setting the 1st Gal Gadot movie in late 1918, toward the end of World War I, would only have worked without the World War II background of the character, which was established when the character was created, during World War II.

And it forces the question: If WWI was serious enough for her to leave Themiscyra, why wasn't the even more serious WWII enough to bring her back? She thought humanity was worth saving in 1918, in 1984, and in 2016. Did she not think so in 1941? This plot hole is big enough to fly an invisible plane through.

4. Daddy Issues. Superheroes being inspired to fight for justice due to the death of their father (or father figure) is a common trope. The Flash and Marvel's Hulk are among the few motivated by the death of their mother: The former saw his father falsely accused of the murder, while the latter's father actually did do it. Batman and Marvel's Iron Man are among the few motivated by the death of both parents. (Marvel's Spider-Man lost both parents before he was old enough to remember them, so it was Aunt May and Uncle Ben who raised him, and it's Uncle Ben's murder that motivates him.)

So there was no way around the death of Batman's father, Thomas Wayne; or the incarceration of the Flash's father, Henry Allen. Superman lost both birth parents, Jor-El and Lara, in the destruction of Krypton; if, when and how he loses his Earthly parents, Jonathan and Martha Kent, depends on the storyteller.

Snyder made Jonathan Kent a jerk. More on that later. And look at what happens to the fathers of the other 3 Justice League members in the Snyderverse:

* Wonder Woman: She never had a father until DC's 2011 "New 52" reboot, where, instead of being molded from clay by the Amazons' Queen Hippolyta and given life by the ancient Greek gods, she is the product of an affair between Hippolyta and Zeus, the King of those gods. The Snyderverse follows this difference, which may explain her more militaristic attitude in the films, although she still becomes an advocate for peace and love.

* Aquaman: Arthur's father, Thomas Curry, was portrayed as a noble man in the comics, worthy of the love of Atlanna, the Queen of Atlantis, who becomes the father of Arthur, the future Aquaman. Tom teaches Arthur in much the same way that Jonathan Kent taught Clark, and Thomas Wayne taught Bruce, before their respective deaths. But the Snyderverse portrays Thomas as a bit less noble, and a heavy drinker.

Interestingly, while the Snyderverse has been much-mocked for "Save Martha!" pointing out that Ma Kent and Mrs. Wayne shared the name, there's mention of the fathers of Batman and Aquaman sharing a name.

* Cyborg: Victor has a complicated relationship with his father, Dr. Silas Stone, a brilliant scientist who means well, but Victor doesn't see it that way. Eventually, they reconcile shortly before Silas dies. In JLWC, when the Flash says he can't save all the people that Steppenwolf is threatening, Batman says, "Save one." The idea being that, with his speed, the Flash can save one at a time. The first one he saves, not that he knows it at the time, is Silas, who is still alive at the end of the film, reconciled with Victor. But in ZSJL, the character is killed off halfway through. Needless deaths, I suppose, is part of Snyder's "overall vision."

I can find no reason for this: If there is any conflict between Snyder and his father, Ed Snyder, an executive recruiter from Green Bay, Wisconsin, it hasn't been made public. Zack himself seems to take fatherhood seriously, having 8 kids, and taking time off from filmmaking after his teenage daughter's suicide. But his films have "daddy issues" beyond what superheroes usually have. They make the ones Aaron Sorkin gave his characters on The West Wing look minor by comparison.

3. 3-D: Death, Destruction and Darkness. Snyder learned the wrong lesson from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (1986) and Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-12): He put the emphasis not on the Knight, but on the Dark.

The 1st time we saw Superman fight General Zod, in Superman II, it happened on 42nd Street in Midtown Manhattan in downtown Metropolis. And how many people were killed? Seeing it again with adult eyes, and estimating based on the damage to buildings and cars, I'm going to say around 100. Given the damage from the Superman vs. Zod fight in MoS, someone estimated that the death toll in Metropolis was about 120,000 -- or 40 "9/11s." Someone else called it "disaster porn."

Snyder also doubled down on the darkness for Batman, showing him as a killer, almost bloodthirsty, even willing to kill Superman, when we all know -- as former Batman nemesis Jack Nicholson said in a different role, "deep down, in places you don't like to talk about at parties" -- that there's no way that Batman could beat Superman.

(No, Kryptonite is not an "ace in the hole." Kryptonite doesn't kill a Kryptonian immediately. He could lose 99 percent of his strength, and still fight through his pain, and knock an Earthman's head off with one punch.)

And, of course, the Knightmare sequences of BvS and ZSJL. Snyder so badly wants to have Superman go to the Dark Side, become evil, serve Darkseid, and enslave the world, while his dark-but-shining hero Batman (who, let's face it, does not shine in any of his movies), rather than Superman, represents the last, best hope of humanity.

I've saved my 2 biggest criticisms for what Snyder did with the 2 biggest heroes in DC Comics:

2. Batman goes too far. I understand why Superman had to kill General Zod (Michael Shannon) at the end of MoS. But Snyder made Batman a homicidal maniac, willing to kill some bad guys, willing to brand some others. That's right: Brand, with a hot iron.

1. Superman is more like Batman, and it's Jonathan Kent's fault. So this is 1A. and 1B.

Jonathan and Martha Kent taught their adoptive son Clark right from wrong. He's super-powered because he's a Kryptonian on Earth. But he's Superman because he's a Kent. Without Jonathan and Martha, or another pair of parents like them, there is no Clark; without Clark, there is no Superman, just a guy with powers, acting on what he thinks is right -- which might be right, but, as with such characters as Homelander (Antony Starr on The Boys) or Omni-Man (voiced by J.K. Simmons on Invincible), might not be.

Snyder had Jonathan (Kevin Costner) tell Clark to hide his powers, even if people died as a result. Since Superman: The Movie (1978) established that Smallville is in Kansas, and every iteration of Superman since (including the post-Crisis On Infinite Earths comics from 1985 onward) has followed this, they are in "Tornado Alley." Clark could easily save his father from a tornado -- Costner was 57 when filming the scene, and the character may have been more than 10 years younger -- but his father waves him off, to tell him to let him die. No other version of Jonathan would have ever told Superman to sacrifice anyone's life, even his.

Cavill's Superman was as whiny and moody as Hayden Christensen's Anakin Skywalker was in Episodes II & III of Star Wars. He's not a "wooden actor," as many Lucasians complain. He played the part as it was written.

I've often joked that Cavill is so wooden, the power ring of Alan Scott, the Earth-2 Green Lantern, wouldn't work on him. But that's not it. Cavill played Clark Kent as a reluctant hero. The reason for this is that Costner's version of Jonathan was totally opposed to previous portrayals, such as those of Glenn Ford (1978), Eddie Jones (Lois & Clark), and John Schneider (showing more depth in Smallville than he ever showed as Bo Duke on The Dukes of Hazzard).

Ford's version told Clark, "What I know, son, is that you are here for a reason. I don't know what that reason is, but I can tell you this: It's not to score touchdowns." That was believable. There's no way Jonathan Kent would ever tell his son, essentially, "Let them die." Or even, "Let me die."

*

And how has Snyder responded to criticisms like these? Like an ass:

It's a cool point of view to be like, "My heroes are still innocent. My heroes didn't fucking lie to America. My heroes didn't embezzle money from their corporations. My heroes didn't fucking commit any atrocities." That's cool. But you're living in a fucking dream world.

Yeah, well, Zacky boy, I'd rather live in my dream world than in your Knightmare.

Sure, we like to see explosions, and it was cool to see Chris Reeve catch the TV antenna from the Empire State Building (how'd that get in Metropolis?) in Superman II, and then use it to temporarily trap Non (Jack O'Halloran). But do we really want to think about the 100 or so people who must have died in the battle with 1981 Zod, let alone the 100,000 or more who may have been killed by 2013 Zod? No, we don't.

We go to Batman movies to see a guy carry out our fantasies of kicking criminals' asses. But we know, in the end, as Batman does, that this is not an end in and of itself. We go to Superman movies to see Superman save people. We go to see him stop needless destruction, not to avenge it, and certainly not to cause it. We go to see him face Lex Luthor, Brainiac, ordinary bank robbers, what have you, and, in effect, give them Gandalf's message from Lord of the Rings: "You shall not pass!" And then insure that they don't pass. That's why DC's hero group is called the Justice League, while Marvel's is called the Avengers.

In other words, just as J.J. Abrams' take on Star Trek is designed to appeal to people who don't like Star Trek, and want a Captain James T. Kirk who blows shit up and takes alien women to bed, without all that high-minded pontificating about peace and man's place in the stars, Man of Steel was designed to make Superman appeal to Batman fans.

Superman isn't supposed to appeal to Batman fans. He's supposed to appeal to fans of superheroes -- and so is Batman. It's like being a fan of a sport first, and your own team second: A Yankee fan like me, for example, should appreciate a great performance by a player on another team: "Hey, did you hear, while Aaron Judge was hitting 2 home runs last night, Clayton Kershaw pitched a no-hitter?" Even if it's against your own team: "Man, we couldn't get that guy out. No wonder he was named the MVP last season. He totally deserves it again."

As I've said before: If I want to see a Batman story, I'll read or watch a Batman story. When I see Superman, I want to see a man acting in the name of hope. We watch Batman to watch him kick ass; we watch Superman to watch him "fight a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way."

People who prefer Superman to Batman do so because he's not dark, disturbed and brooding; and, indeed, embraces his role as protector of Metropolis, Earth as a whole when necessary, even (in some versions) planets he'd never even heard of before. We prefer Superman because, even more than the symbol on his chest as a Kryptonian word, he means "hope."

The DC Comics Film Universe: How It Should Have Happened

Left to right: Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern; Barry Allen, the Flash;

Clark Kent, Superman; Bruce Wayne, Batman; Diana Prince, Wonder Woman;

Arthur Curry, Aquaman; and J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter.

They are generally considered to be the 7 founding members

of the Justice League of America, DC Comics' top superhero team.

In 2007, following the success of Batman Begins, Warner Brothers was ready to make a Justice League film. However, it would star someone other than Christian Bale, star of Batman Begins, as Batman. And it would star someone other than Brandon Routh, star of the recent but less successful Superman Returns, as Superman.

One thing led to another, and the project got delayed, and delayed, and delayed, and finally dropped.

At first, the director was supposed to be Jason Reitman, who had recently directed Juno. He dropped out, and was replaced by George Miller, best known for the Mad Max films, an older director who was a contemporary of Jason's father, Ivan Reitman. But it never happened.

The stars were supposed to be as follows: D.J. Cotrona as Superman, Armie Hammer as Batman, Meghan Gale as Wonder Woman, Santiago Cabrera as Aquaman, Adam Brody as The Flash, Lonnie Lynn (a.k.a. the rapper Common) as the John Stewart version of Green Lantern, and Hugh Keays-Byrne as the Martian Manhunter.

(In hindsight, casting Hammer as Batman would have ended up very problematic, and not just because he did a terrible job as the Lone Ranger in Disney's 2013 film. Also, in the 2019 film Shazam!, Brody played the adult, super-powered version of Freddy Freeman, a character formerly known as Captain Marvel Jr.; and Cotrona played the adult version of another of Billy Batson's foster brothers, Pedro Peña.)

As villains, Jay Baruchel would have played Maxwell Lord, on the heels of Lord being the lead villain in DC's recent Identity Crisis storyline; and Teresa Palmer would have played Talia al Ghul, daughter of Ra's al Ghul and occasional girlfriend of Batman. (As with everything else about Batman, his love-life has always been complicated.)

DC had a chance to get a "cinematic universe" going before Marvel Comics did with Iron Man in 2008. Here's how they should have done it:

* Let Batman Begins start it in 2005, as actually happened, with Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman.

* Release a Superman film in 2006, as actually happened -- but not Superman Returns. Instead, totally start over, as was done with Man of Steel in 2013. This film could have kept that title -- and only that title.

Otherwise, basically do a remake of the film that started it all, the 1978 Superman starring Christopher Reeve, to which Superman Returns tried so hard to pay tribute, and succeeded in part, but not quite -- much as Star Wars' Episode VII was a redo of IV, VIII was of V, and IX was of VI.

At the time, Routh was 27 years old, a little too young to play a veteran superhero; and Kate Bosworth was 23, too young to play Lois Lane as we usually see her, and way too young to play a seasoned reporter with a 5-year-old child. But they would have been the ideal ages to play Clark Kent and Lois as being early in their careers.

Again, in hindsight, Kevin Spacey is a problem. Compared to how hokey Gene Hackman played Lex Luthor from 1978 to 1987, Spacey did for the character what Jack Nicholson did for the Joker in the 1989 Batman: He reminded us that this guy is a killer, and was meant to be scary.

This problem is easy to correct: Frank Langella, who played Perry White, had previously played villains ranging from Count Dracula to Richard Nixon (and subsequently reprised his Broadway role for the film version of Frost/Nixon). He should have been Luthor.

So who plays Perry? Laurence Fishburne plays him in the real-life DCEU. Perry has always been depicted as middle-aged man who was once a poor kid from Metropolis (or, sometimes, the real city of Chicago) who made good. By 2006, a black man with that background running "a great metropolitan newspaper" would no longer have seemed odd. So we move Fishburne up.

* 2007 would have brought the first Wonder Woman film. Gale would have been 32, about right to play Princess Diana of Themiscyra/Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. 

Chris Pine was 27, so he would already be a good choice to play Steve Trevor. Anything to keep him from playing "Captain Jerk" in J.J. Abrams' blasphemous Star Trek films. (Gal Gadot was only 22 at the time.) 

It would have been set in World War II, like her early comics and the 1st season (1976-77) of the TV show starring Lynda Carter. 

Setting the 1st Gadot movie during World War I would only have worked without the World War II background of the character, which was established when the character was created, during World War II. And it forces the question: If WWI was serious enough for her to leave Themiscyra, why wasn't the even more serious WWII enough to bring her back? Setting her origin story not in The Great War, a.k.a. The War To End All Wars, but rather in The Big One, fixes this plot hole, which is big enough to fly an invisible plane through.

* 2008 would have been the key year. We get the 2nd Batman film, The Dark Knight, going just the way we remember, with Heath Ledger as the Joker and Aaron Eckhardt as Harvey Dent/Two-Face. We get a 2nd Superman film, possibly remaking Superman II with the Phantom Zone villains: "Kneel before Zod!" We get a Flash film, with Brody as Barry Allen.

And we get an Aquaman film. Alan Ritchson, who played Arthur Curry on Smallville, and now plays Hank Hall/Hawk on Titans, could have been cast. Certainly, he looks more like the blond character seen in the comics than does the native Hawaiian Jason Momoa.

With his physique, Momoa would have been a good choice to play Katar Hol/Carter Hall/Hawkman. Likewise, Morena Baccarin, who has voiced Black Canary, Talia al Ghul and Cheetah in the DC Animated Universe, would be a good Shayera Thal, later Shayera Hol, a.k.a. Shiera Hall, a.k.a. Hawkwoman. (She would never be "Hawkgirl" in this series.)

* 2009 brings us the 2nd Wonder Woman film. Still set in World War II, it would set up the idea of the Justice League by introducing the superhero team of the 1940s, the Justice Society of America. 

The "Golden Age" versions of the Flash (Jay Garrick), Green Lantern (Alan Scott) and the Atom (Al Pratt) could be shown, along with Dr. Fate, Dr. Mid-Nite, Hourman, Wildcat, the Sandman and Starman. John Wesley Shipp, who starred in the 1990-91 Flash TV show as Barry Allen, and now plays Garrick on the current TV version, and absolutely should have been cast as Garrick at this point. The aforementioned Hawks can also be introduced here. Otherwise, these roles are open to speculation.

This film could show the JSA as vital in winning the war, but also show the sacrifice of Steve Trevor that leads Diana to retreat to her island -- for a while.

The year could also have given Green Arrow a film, with Justin Hartley playing him as he was doing on Smallville.

* With Green Lantern established, we get the film with Ryan Reynolds as the Hal Jordan version a year earlier, in 2010. The only thing that really bothered me about that film was the CGI'ed GL costumes. They were very distracting. What pairing up with Blake Lively as Carol Ferris, not yet an onscreen Star Sapphire, a year earlier would have done to his marriage to Marvel Comics heroine Scarlett Johansson, I don't know.

We also get a film for the Ray Palmer version of the Atom, although, with Routh occupied as Superman, he couldn't play the Atom, too.

A 3rd Batman movie could be set a year after Bruce letting Batman take the fall for Dent's crimes, looking like he's finally settling down with a girlfriend, Selena Kyle, whom he does not yet know is also Catwoman; nor does she yet know that he was Batman. They go to the circus together, and witness the murder of the Flying Graysons, thus bringing Bruce out of retirement, finding a way to restore Batman's good name, and introducing Dick Grayson as Robin; while Catwoman is also involved, and the "I love you but I must defeat you" relationship develops.

* 2011 brings us Flash II: Flashpoint. When Barry returns from fixing his timeline mess, he tells the other heroes what that other world was like, and says it's better if they work as a team when necessary.

* So here we go. July 1, 2011 -- a Friday, with the 4th on the following Monday, making for a three-and-a-half-day weekend. Justice League premieres. 

Basically, it's the story we got with The Dark Knight Rises, a film that should have had people asking, "Are there no other superheroes in this world who could have helped Batman save Gotham City?" Certainly, Ra's al Ghul has been a worthy opponent for the Justice League in the comics, without taking the easy way out by going directly to Darkseid, or indirectly to him through the middleman, Steppenwolf.

This time, Bruce figures out he needs help before Bane can break his back -- but that still happens before the others can properly respond to his call for aid. So the heroes figure out where Ra's' League of Shadows prison is, and they break him out. Whether his paralysis gets cured through Themiscyran or Atlantean medicine (Wonder Woman's people or Aquaman's) is negotiable.

Ultimately, Batman still beats Bane, and is still betrayed by Ra's' daughter Talia, in spite of her having fallen in love with him. However, it is Superman who gets the nuke off Earth, thus closing the plot hole of "But that bomb was still awfully close to Gotham City when it went off, so a lot of people are going to get cancer."

In so doing, this attracts the attention of Darkseid, setting up future movies. Bale could have continued as Batman, with a Robin. Gale could have continued as Wonder Woman, in the present day, with Pine playing a grandson of Trevor (as opposed to Lyle Waggoner playing father and son on the 1970s TV show).

Batgirl can be introduced, and we could have a movie showing Dick putting the Robin role aside to become Nightwing and form the Teen Titans, succeeded as Robin by Jason Todd. A subsequent film could combine the two great Batman graphic novels of 1988: The Killing Joke, in which the Joker shoots Barbara Gordon, paralyzing her and leading to her transition from Batgirl to Oracle; and A Death in the Family, in which the Joker kills Jason.

This would be followed by A Lonely Place of Dying, where the Bat-family, with new addition Tim Drake, confronts Batman and shows him that he's not alone, nor should he be. So Bruce accepts Tim as the 3rd Robin.

The Green Lantern films could have introduced the Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, etc. versions. A Green Arrow sequel could have introduced Dinah Lance, a.k.a. Black Canary, classically GA's girlfriend and later wife, matching the comics, instead of what the TV version did, killing her off and having Oliver Queen instead marry Felicity Smoak, who in the comics was connected to the hero Firestorm.

Captain Marvel/Shazam could be introduced. And here's an idea: Since Wonder Woman is being played by Gale, Gal Gadot, who would be 26 by this point and thus age-appropriate for the character, can play Zatanna, the Mistress of Magic. After her 1st film, she becomes a permanent Justice League member.

Should we tempt fate twice over? By doing Superman III again, and by putting Eddie Murphy in the Richard Pryor role, and maybe getting it right this time? Or should the new Superman III be a totally different story? Certainly, with Trump and Putin in office from January 20, 2017 onward, a film version of the Lex 2000 storyline would make sense, and so would the original series' title: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace.

Identity Crisis could be adapted for the 3rd Justice League film, with Zatanna's role leading to her pairing up in a later film titled Justice League Dark with her ex, John Constantine, as well as Dr. Fate, maybe the Phantom Stranger and the Spectre, and others.

A 4th Wonder Woman film could feature the death of Queen Hippolyta, with Diana, Steve, and their daughter, Lyta Trevor, returning to Themiscyra, with Diana as Queen, and Donna Troy, Wonder Girl of the Titans, becoming the new Wonder Woman. And the torches could also be passed in Metropolis (with Clark and Lois now married and raising son Jon) and Gotham (with Bruce and Selina now married, while Nightwing leads Tim/Robin III and the rest of the Titans in cleaning up Gotham).

The CW's Arrowverse could begin on time in 2012, totally separate from the DC Cinematic Universe, with Stephen Amell starring in Arrow, and play out as it actually has, leading up to a Crisis On Infinite Earths in 2019 with some of the aforementioned actors. And an Infinity Inc. film, featuring descendants of the JSA, could premiere, side-by-side with the Arrowverse's Stargirl series.

Where does that leave Henry Cavill? He can still play The Witcher, and maybe replace Daniel Craig as James Bond. Ben Affleck? After the 2003 film Daredevil, he should never have been allowed to play another superhero. So he's out. He'd be better as a villain, anyway. Maybe Maxwell Lord.

No Suicide Squad. Ever. No The Suicide Squad, either. And absolutely no Jared Leto. Never mind how stupid his version of the Joker was: I don't want to see him in any role. We could have a Birds of Prey, where Harley Quinn teams up with the Huntress, Black Canary (when she's not saving Star City alongside hubby Green Arrow), and perhaps a S.T.A.R. Labs-healed Batgirl. Or maybe Batwoman (Kate Kate) gets launched with this project, with her standalone film either preceding or following.

And, at some point, I'd like to see a Green Hornet film, or even a TV series, to wipe the horrible memory of the 2011 Seth Rogen film away. If Spider-Man can be restarted 3 times in a span of 13 years (Tobey Maguire in 2002, Andrew Garfield in 2012, Tom Holland in 2016), we can have a 2nd Green Hornet within 5 years.

To summarize: 

2005 Batman Begins 

2006 Superman: Man of Steel 

2007 Wonder Woman

2008 The Dark Knight (Batman II), The Flash, Aquaman

2009 Wonder Woman: Justice Society, Green Arrow, Superman II: The Zod Conspiracy, The Hawks (Hawkman & Hawkwoman)

2010 The Dark Knight and the Boy Wonder (Dick Grayson becomes Robin), Green Lantern, The Atom

2011 Batgirl, Flash II: Flashpoint (Introduces Wally West as Kid Flash), Justice League, Aquaman II

2012 Wonder Woman III (Introduces Steve III and Donna Troy as Wonder Girl), Titans (Dick becomes Nightwing, Jason Todd becomes Robin), Green Arrow and Black Canary (also introduces Roy Harper as Speedy, later renamed Arsenal)

2013 Batman: A Death in the Family (Joker shoots Barbara and kills Jason), Green Lantern II (Introduces Guy Gardner and John Stewart, Carol Ferris becomes Star Sapphire), Shazam!

2014 Superman III: Brainiac, Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying (Tim Drake becomes Robin), Zatanna, Justice League II: Apokolips

2015 Aquaman III, Atom II (Introduces Ryan Choi as Ray Palmer's assistant & eventual successor), Green Arrow III, Titans II: The Deathstroke Challenge

2016 The Green Hornet, Flash III: Zoom (Barry sacrifices himself, Wally becomes the new Flash), Shazam II: Fury of the Gods, Green Lantern III (Introduces Kyle Rayner as Hal goes rogue following the destruction of Coast City)

2017 Batman: Son of the Demon (Introduces Damian Wayne, Bruce and Talia's son, causing tension between a now-married Bruce and Selina, Bruce straightens him out and makes him the new Robin as Tim joins the Titans full-time), Wonder Woman IV (Hippolyta dies, Diana becomes Queen, Donna becomes Wonder Woman, Cassandra Sandsmark introduced as the new Wonder Girl), Justice League III: Identity Crisis

2018 Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Batwoman (Kate Kane becomes the Scarlet Knight, with Ryan Wilder as her "Robin")

2019 Wonder Woman IV, Justice League Dark, Atom III (Ryan takes over as the Atom)

2020 Birds of Prey, Infinity, Inc.

2021 (Delayed due to COVID): Superman V: Grandson of Krypton, Shazam III: The Return of Black Adam, Titans III

2022 (At the time of this writing, still in the future, also delayed due to COVID): The Green Hornet Strikes Again, Batwoman II, Flash IV 

And so on. Or, to put it another way:

Batman: 2005, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2017

Superman: 2006, 2009, 2014, 2018, 2021

Wonder Woman: 2007, 2009, 2012, 2017, 2019

Flash: 2008, 2011, 2016, 2022

Aquaman: 2008, 2011, 2015

Green Arrow: 2009, 2012, 2015

Hawks: 2009

Green Lantern: 2010, 2013, 2016

Atom: 2010, 2015, 2019

Batgirl/Birds of Prey: 2011, 2020

Justice League: 2011, 2014, 2017, 2019

Titans: 2012, 2015, 2021

Shazam!: 2013, 2016, 2021

Zatanna: 2014

Green Hornet: 2016, 2022

Batwoman: 2018, 2022

Infinity, Inc.: 2020

There's the plan. All we need now is for the Legends of Tomorrow to take the Waverider back to 2004 and set it up.