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The Twelve All-Time Coolest DC Comics SUPER-VILLAINS
(Part Two)
Call me old-fashioned, if you like... but: I've always been a stone, outright sucker for "... And Then I'm Gonna Ruuuuuuuule the World" -type super-villains.
Crazed, frothing Nazi soldiers, in World War Two-era comics; Sax Rohmer's
sly and imperturbable Fu Manchu; Marvel Comics' rendition of Vlad
Dracul, as explicated within the pages of THE
TOMB OF DRACULA. You get the picture. 
DC's most relentlessly intriguing entry in the Would-Be World Conquerors Soapbox Derby was the staggeringly monomaniacal Ra's al Ghul. [See cover, below]
The Messianic Meta-Stinker (created by the all-time bestest BATMAN team of Dennis O'Neil [writer] and Neal Adams [artist]) had so many things going right for him, conceptually, that the real shocker would have been if he hadn't vaulted to the tip-topmost of the "Bat- Baddies" hierarchy in short order. First and foremost of these was his primary motivation for striving after Ultimate Rule: he wanted to take over the world... in order to save it.
(It seemed that Mama al Ghul's onliest child had determined -- after
long decades of careful studying, re: Why the World Is So Gosh-Darned
Fouled Up, Anyways -- that the baseline underlying "cause" for all the
world's problems was, quite simply, an over-abundance of seriously unnecessary
people. This, of course, is not an altogether unreasonable
assumption to hold dear and true, for anyone who's spent more than fifteen consecutive
minutes in any AOL "chat room." I'm just sayin', is all.)
(Being a devout believer in the principle of Occam's Razor -- i.e., "the simplest solution is, all things being equal, the best solution" -- he figured that a worldwide population of three billion (give or take) could readily stand to be pared down to a lean, mean one-third of that. Just for starters, mind.)
Too: Ol' Ra's had himself a daughter -- the curvaceous Talia
al Ghul -- who (you should only pardon the expression) put the voom
in va-va-voom -- and had her own ideas and agenda, re: I
Wonder Why They Call It "the Bat-Pole," Anyway. That always lent
the storytelling proceedings a fair amount of oomph, as well.
Yet another "fun" world-conquering type was the chill and implacable Kobra.
This guy adored himself so thoroughly and unrelentingly,
his high school prom date was a hand mirror.
This, however, was only to be expected, as his early childhood had consisted
of being hailed by similarly snakeskin-suited (and doggedly servile) goons the
world over as "the Lord Naja-Naga"... which (translated roughly) parses into: "He Who Is Predestined By All the Gods To Step On My Head Whenever He Jolly
Well Feels Like It." So: you have to make some allowances,
here.
The neat little conceptual "twist" to this character was this: he was actually one sibling out of a pair of twins...
... and: the two of them -- slavering ubertyrant-to-be and wholly unsuspecting college student demi-"slacker" -- were psionically linked to one another. [See cover reproduction, at the top of this page]
In other words: whatever injury or malady one of the brothers felt... they both felt.
Series scripter (and co-creator) Marty Pasko had all sorts of fun riffing with this clever little conceit, as both Kobra and his (quasi-)hapless sibling each kept attempting to (*kaff*kaff) "neutralize" one another... without actually taking things That One Little Step Too Far, in so doing.
This is a villain who needs to be utilized and seen far, far more frequently than he is, within the DC universe proper.
I've already covered this next character, somewhat, within the context of
THE NEW GODS... and Kirby's "Fourth World" page, elsewhere
on this site... but: I'm always willing to talk about Jack "King" Kirby's
ultimate villain -- the craggy, calculating cosmic monstrosity known as Darkseid
-- just a little bit more.
Darkseid's overriding motivation, back in the day, was his single-minded pursuit of something called "the Anti-Life Equation." Full possession (and accompanying comprehension) of this mega-concept would enable anyone utilizing same to Wipe Out Everything, Everywhere... which is pretty much the way I always end up feeling, whenever I happen to espy people in big, ugly hats and checkered flannel shirts "line dancing" across my television screen, come to think.
The very cool-cooler-coolest thing about Ol' Purple Puss was this: he was meaner and tougher than anybody else in the entire UNIVERSE. DC allowed the character to pretty much run roughshod all over the various heroes (and heroines) in their collective storytelling stables.
Superman...? Kicked his red-and-blue butt for him... and made him like it, by golly!
Green Lantern...? Folded him up like a Sears lawn chair.
Darkseid was The Baddest of the Bad. That's it. That's all.
Moving into the final quarter, here: we have the frigid femme fatale known as Killer Frost.
Created by longtime comics scribe Gerry Conway
(anybody know whatever happened to that guy, incidentally...?), The Sub-Zero
Slattern had it all, dream date-wise: brainy; beautiful; and, boy,
could she ever whip up one mean muthah of a Baked Alaska.
Just one little, itsy-bitsy, teensy-tiny el problemo, here:
"Killer Frost" earned her especial sobriquet by dint of her peculiar ideological idee fixe: Death, Death and More Death To Anything That Even Looks Like It Might Be Male.
Yup. You got it: a flash-frozen Andrea Dworkin.
Given that most comic book super-villainesses generally spend an inordinate amount of their time sulkily obsessing over the masculine charms of their respective super-hero foemen ("We shouldn't be fighting, you and I; we should be rutting like crazed minks, is what we SHOULD be doing.") ... the notion that one of these might actually assume so diametrically opposite a stance was as much sheer fun, story-wise, as it was (ultimately) innovative and refreshing.
Besides: Frost's regular sparring partner was the adolescent Firestorm...
and he had a flaming, firey head, for cryin' out loud. That's just
gotta be one mondo "turn-off"... y'know?
For sheer, horrifying inhumanity -- an alien sense of cold, clinically dispassionate "other"-ness -- The Floronic Man (as interpreted, chiefly, by SWAMP THING scribe Alan Moore) will give you your money's worth, and then some.
This haughty plant/human hybrid has never been used to more brilliant storytelling effect than by the aforementioned Moore, in a jaw-droppingly powerful tale detailing the Floronic Man's one-man (or one-thing) takeover of a small Louisiana town (SWAMP THING #23-24). Here, the character was finally promoted from the pallid rank-and-file of the super- villainous "also-rans" of the DCU, and straightaway exalted into the rarefied strata of Indisputably Classic Comic Book Nasties.
(It should be noted, here, that Alan Moore had a positive genius for drilling beneath the conceptual surface of pre-existing "B"-list baddies, and investing them with new and potent motivations and cachet. He performed equally impressive feats of interpretive legerdemain, at various stops along the way, with Clayface III; Mr. Mxyzptlk; and a host of other all-but-forgotten characters, as well. His unique "takes" on these characters -- as well as others -- remain definitive ones.)
Last batter up: the tortured, emotionally conflicted sociopath known (and still fondly remembered) by all true connoisseurs of the crazed as Deadshot... and SUICIDE SQUAD scrivener John Ostrander's brilliant (re-)interpretation of same. [See cover, below]
As brilliantly adduced by the good Mr. Ostrander (he of GRIMJACK fame; may he only live to pen yet another thousand or so comics stories, in the years to come), the character of Floyd Lawton -- a shockingly amoral assassin- for-hire with a powerful streak of self-loathing (as well as a concomitant "death wish") -- was hag-ridden by emotional demons so unspeakable and unrelenting, he actually came off as being (ultimately) more sympathetic to the reader than most of the super-heroes with whom he regularly found himself in cold-blooded contention.
Of particular interest to any reader(s) intrigued enough to investigate further are the (still massively undervalued) four issues of the DEADSHOT limited series, written (with characteristic craft and intelligence) by Ostrander and solidly, sensibly rendered by the little-appreciated Luke McDonnell. A self-contained "stand alone" saga, said series plumbs every last conceivable emotional nook and cranny of the black, awful "dead zone" that is Floyd Lawton's inner landscape: a wasteland wherein the word "family" is the ultimate epithet, and "love" nothing more than rank superstition... if not heresy outright.
You need these comics, in particular. My solemn oath on it.
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