Underrated Superman villains?

Who are the most underrated Superman villains?

Conduit: the man who figured out Clark Kent was Superman and hunted him down. Scary dude considering Clark had nowhere to hide from an enemy armed with Kryptonite. Also a skilled spy who could figure out when to find Clark unprotected by his friends and challenged Superman to a fight .

Hank Henshaw: the original Cyborg Superman. The new Zor-el cyborg Superman was nerfed and got beat up by just Supergirl and stomped by Superdoom, the original Henshaw beat up the entire Superman family all at once (Superboy, Eradicator,Supergirl, Steel)

Doomsday: pre-flashpoint. Nuff said

Hercules; adversary of Superman in the Silver Age, also was in JSA Thy Kingdom Come to the alternate Superman and his younger counterpart.

braniac. I think he could be as menacing and cool as the joker. I think he´s superman´s true archnemisis, not Lex Luthor.

@jphulk26: He certainly is interesting. I would like to see more of him, as well as see Superman take him without the Doomsday power boost.

helspont comes to mind. parasite too.

Looking forward to a second appearance.

Parasite for sure, guy can take powers and abilities from almost anyone, in the right situation he could easily be more powerful than Superman meaning a battle of wits could be explored, Parasite will gaining memories of those he drains is driven by his hunger for power and Superman is the ultimate meal in his eyes.

Metallo also could be made into so much more. He is a machine, he can be upgraded and improved beyond the guy with a kryptonite heart, give him energy shields, faster processing speed meaning he can see and keep up with speedsters, a field like kryptonite blast. ect. Really take him to 11 and he could be a dangerous foe for Kryptonian's and other heroes.

Parasite

Metallo

Bizarro

Mr. Mxyzptlk

Livewire

Livewire needs some love! I think TV show Supergirl might get her some if she becomes a recurring villain, if she could become intangible energy she would be quite hard to catch or contain. Plus you could really have fun with her powers/abilites and how she uses them.

@titanbreaker: she can already pretty much travel all over the power grid, heck she can control the whole city power grid, and maybe more.

Parasite. He is never really taken as that serious of a threat but he is very powerful.

This is very true but writers seem determined to take what should be a really hard foe to catch for anyone save another energy manipulator into a Batgirl foe.

@titanbreaker: Yeah, some things I don't like about the DCNU or DCYou. Hard villains to catch tend to be good because it changes the focus from kicking ass to outsmarting them and protecting bystanders. Livewire wasn't the most powerful, but she was essentially tough to catch and put bystanders in danger.

Braniac and metallo

I don't see Brainiac as underrated by DC.

@dernman: me either, especially with the power he showed in Doomed, as good or as bad as people wish to view that story arc.

He has appeared more than even Luthor in terms of stories from the New 52.

He is a brawler, he is inherently boring.

There are only so many stories you can do with him without changing him to his core.

Its the same reason Metallo, Doomsday, K-man and many other Superman villains don't have any good stories centered around them and their best appearances are supporting roles.

They just aren't arch-villain material.

@squalleon: Liked the animated Parasite (Superman: The Animated Series) better than the comics one. He didn't just go for power, he actually could somewhat strategize who to target for taking powers. He also had a nice voice for him too with Brion James. Plus watching him get covered in the toxic waste was good in a creepy kind of way. Gave me some nightmares watching it happen. Too bad you can't really do this in comics, but the appearance of a man was cool, as opposed to a monster with teeth.

I personally find him equally boring to his comic version. Now with boring I mean the character can't be much since he is one-dimensional. He can have one, two good stories but that's it after those its rinse and repeat. How many Parasite absorbs a different kind of powers stories can you read before you get bored of the formula.

His best story imo is one from Superman Adventures where he absorbs Mxyzptlk's powers. But even that just follows the same formula, Parasite appears, absorbs powers, Superman has to make him exhaust said powers.

I prefer the monster design just because being a purple human is just too convenient. It just doesn't sit well with me. While the monster forms, shows better the character's animalistic side and primitive need for "food".

@squalleon: True, he could only do so much with the various powers he could absorb before getting redundant, however, he had some nice episodes where he tracked down And attacked Superman at his apartment (Identity Crisis right there) and he also had memory and knowledge absorption as canon in the DCAU, meaning that unless you really messed him up, he gets more intelligent and strategic from absorbing people, not just powerful, he gets your secret identity, he gets part of your personality, kind of like Rogue from X-Men. He locked up Superman in a room to keep draining him for sustained nourishment. I am aware that he would have gotten more redundant if he appeared more, but I would probably say the same eventually for enough of any villain, Luthor included, such as "Haven't I seen this deathtrap before?"

As for the appearance, well we have our own tastes, and that is about it.

He loses that knowledge etc. after the power is drained.So we return to have him draw power, rinse and repeat. That being said, absorbing the knowledge, memories and the rest was an interesting twist.

Luthor can never get redundant (in logical limits of course). Its the reason he was such a prominent player in both TAS and JL and of course the movies. Even though the Tas version was born out of Byrne's version which was very limited in scope.

@squalleon: They played it right and had Luthor cameo in half the episodes he was in, which was a good move IMHO. I am not sure what to think of Eisenberg in DOJ, and I didn't care much for the Superman Returns Lex Luthor much at all.

• I don't care about DoJ. I am not hyped, I don't expect, I don't nothing. Maybe it will be good, but I doubt it. Even from the trailer you can see the lack of subtlety in the symbolism and the "dark' feel makes it more cheesy.
• It was Kevin Spacey playing Gene Hackman playing Lex Luthor. It was obvious that this would fail. And it is a shame because Spacey could be a great Luthor.

@theincrediblesuperhulk8642 said:

Livewire is not Superman-tier, and never was. That's why she's been shuffled off to being an actual dangerous for for Batgirl.

Having Livewire fight Superman is like having Dr. Octopus fight Blue Beetle.

@squalleon:

I'm sorry, but I'll have to disagree with you. I think that Metallo, Livewire, Parasite, Atomic Skull, etc, all have the potential to be much more than just 'brawler' villains, as you put it, as long as a little more imagination is employed with the characters and their colorful history.

To be fair, her original incarnation on the animated series did pretty well against Superman. Yes, that was a heavily nerfed version, but that doesn't inherently change the physics.

Livewire was essentially intangible and harmful to touch when she wanted to be, and no amount of power you have changes that. The thought of Superman being susceptible to high voltages shouldn't be totally out of the question either. Not only that, but she had potential, at least from a personality standpoint.

Even if she were to team-up with someone like Metallo or Conduit to give them a boost, it's not like she should just be reduced to jobbing to Batgirl.

I actually hope they do a story with Conduit and make him more of a recurring villain post-Flashpoint. Truth would have been a solid way to bring him into the Superman stories, given that him having access to resources to plague Superman and then learning that Superman and Clark Kent are the same person, it'd work pretty well I think.

Team him up with Metallo and maybe Nimrod and they could be a powerful team to deal with for Superman with their strength, resources, and tactical know-how.

@scouterv:

^ My man!

But anyway yeah. I think a lot of them are underrated. Blaze and Satanus, for instance, are demons. Magic! Something Superman is weak against!

And Metallo, and Livewire . . . Metallo should logically be much more of a threat than is depicted. Not only is he nearly as strong as Superman on his own, but he also has KRYPTONITE as his power source. He could be Doomsday before Doomsday even shows up. And, as the character John Corben is commonly depicted as an American soldier, there's a lot of angles you could take with that. He doesn't need to necessarily be a 'heartless killer'; you could explore his sense of duty, any PTSD, give him some pathos and humanity. Give him proficiency in a fighting style. Explore how he would react to having a machine body that can't feel. Explore why he would hate Superman.

Speaking of machine, goddammit, give him an upgrade. Super-fast processing mind on par with speedsters! Kryptonite chest beam! Kryptonite eye beams! Rocket feet! He doesn't need to be a giant, malleable demon machine, but you have a lot of room for a guy like that.

With Livewire, you could do some of the same. Explore how this spunky, brash, rude woman would react to being a nigh-energy-being. Her powers not only allow her to be difficult to contain, but, hey, who says high-voltage shouldn't hurt Superman? I assume he's 75% water, too. She could hit him with lightning strikes!

And for God's sake, give them friends at some point.

@scouterv@tvoodoo

People like Livewire and Metallo really aren't credible threats to Superman. And when you treat them like they are – all you do is make Supes look like an ineffective twat.

At the very least they need super-speed or some other gimmick that prevents Superman from just putting them in jail (or whatever equivalent he whips up) or outer space in a literal blink of an eye. (I mean sure, if it’s them sitting around cooking up traps etc, that’s a different story.) You could probably justify Livewire being elusive enough, but I only see her as being a threat to otherpeople.

It’s like SA Hercules, who someone mentioned earlier. He wasn’t a threat to Supes, because all he had was super-strength, and he was humiliated. So he had to go complain to his gods and get some more magic power-ups – and even then he couldn’t beat Supes directly. Whenever these ancient heroes popped up, they always had to get zapped with some extra powers or show up in numbers. It was the special magic powers or situations that made these fights cool.

And you can run into problems that way too, when it comes to guys like Metallo.

For example, if Metallo gets super-speed just by having some expensive Earth tech put in him – then what the heck is even cool about Supes, if you can just mass-produce him in a factory? Hercules worked because he had to get gods involved, and there were no long-term implications. Cyborg-Superman works as well, because he's a kryptonian cyborg.

To make Metallo an at least semi-credible foe, he should at least have a kryptonite force-field, and some other gimmicks like teleportation. Something that doesn’t require any super-performance on his part.And he'd be someone that's doing things like breaking into banks and taunting Supes to stop him. There’s no way he should be able to directly contest with Supes in any other way.

(Well, now that I think of it, if Luthor rigs more (irreplaceable?) Brainiac tech for Metallo maybe it's workable. He could have automatic Superman-tracking k-laser turrets, invisible (except to X-Ray?) mines, and weapons of that sort someone like Corben could make use of in his schemes. And/or Brainiac transmogrified him into a kryptonian-level "living machine" and his mental/physical functions are thus all sped up by the kryptonite. And kryptonite's "rare", so it works on that level too. So maybe I was wrong. It can be worked along with the other stuff, and there are some cool possibilities.)

But lightning is lame. Even GA Superman happily tanked ridiculous amounts of electric energy. That's the kind of stuff he laughs at. “It tickles.”

We need to look much higher for direct Superman level foes. Like properly cosmic threats, not earth-based ones. The Star-Devouring Lion of Horsehead Nebula with thunder shrieks and worm-hole generating farts that are the terror of a thousand systems! Give him foes worthy of myth and song, if Superman’s going to be taking them one-on-one seriously and without handicap. Something that makes him look good to fight. Standing there shielding his eyes against a windy cosmic death-storm while barren planetoids are exploding behind him and space itself is being torn asunder.

When it comes to “Earth-based threats” - instead of concentrating on “what can hurt Superman besides kryptonite?” just concentrate on the people he’s trying to protect. You can’t beat down Supes, but you can tie his girlfriend to some rail-road tracks and prance off with the loot while twirling your moustache.

That’s the whole point of things like Damsels in Distress. The hero is practically invincible in these situations - what he needs is a cute girl to impress with his spectacularness, or to lure him into a diabolical trap.

Batman

@scouterv said:

It should be, because not even the Golden Age version of Superman was weak to electricity. It's just a cheap loophole to avoid thinking too hard about what foes can give him a hard time. I mean, if we're gonna settle for that, why not just forget the whole bullet-proof thing and make Superman vulnerable to a large enough caliber of bullet?

And Livewire didn't last long exactly because she had no interesting personality to speak of. She has the exact same retarded reason for hating Superman that every lame-ass Marvel villain does for hating heroes in general - some stuff went wrong, so she blames the guy who tried to save her. There's no depth there.

Better that she actually make a credible, high-tier threat to Batgirl, than a D-List annoyance to Superman.

@OrangeBat: Well, he actually was vulnerable to a big enough caliber of bullet. That's how that Bloodshot guy was able to hurt him; well, that and he sometimes used kryptonite bullets.

@supermudz:

Well, sure, if you say so . . . But I don't really see what use a cyborg dude would have for robbing banks. He needn't be just a typical Snidely Whiplash "MYEHEHEHE" bad guy.

Possibly, also put in mind that movies tend to dispose of villains because they are of limited continuity. There's generally only so many movies in a cinematic universe, so villains die off at the end of live action flicks. I know that someone else has already mentioned Conduit. Which is an interesting villain because he was a matter of identity crisis for Superman, knowing that Clark Kent was Superman and able to track and hunt Superman. Plus, the villains you mentioned either were or would be henchmen to him as the Mastermind. Plus, he was already featured as his younger self in Man of Steel.

Could Metallo be intelligent or tactical? If they wanted to write him that way for the movie, all the more power to them.

How far are you willing to change the characters until they aren't themselves anymore? Personally I feel they should be the Anti-Superman Squad under a mastermind, rather than changing them to the point that they are unrecognizable.

Eh....

@squalleon: Well, sure, I would, as long as the changes make sense and do not take away from the character in general. Development is good. I already illustrated some ways they could improve Metallo earlier in the thread.

Speaking of which, when you remember Metallo used to be a scientist named George who looked like a bootleg Doctor Doom (what with the armored suit and green cape), the whole 'changing the character to the point they become unrecognizable' thing becomes sorta moot . . .

Not really...that's my point actually. The character changed so drastically that only the name is the same.

How far are you willing to change the characters? That's what I said. Can you do it? Sure. Should you? There is the question.

Would you love Metallo the same if he was changed back to a scientist? No,because he would be a different character altogether just with the same name.

So you pretty much agree that these characters have no potential, if you are willing to change them so much.

@squalleon: . . . No potential?

Look, dude, if you start out with crap, you can only do better. You can take elements that worked and develop them further.

@squalleon: I try to think of it like this: what is Metallo? He's a super-cyborg powered by kryptonite. Okay. Now, why would he be like that? Who would make a kryptonite cyborg and why? What was he like originally? What does he want? How would he react to being a cyborg? Why is he an enemy? Why is his power source kryptonite? Etc, etc. You get an assload of questions ripe for exploring.

You missed the point. If you are willing to change the characters so drastically, you never did like them in the first place.

So these characters aren't underrated, (the whole point of the thread) they are bad characters, that need overhauls to be made relevant.

@squalleon: Is that what happened to characters like the Joker, then?

Volcana. I think a good way you could bring her in is to let her have her original powers from the series in addition to being able to emit Red Sun radiation. That would make her more than an incredible threat to Superman.

Joker was great from the beginning. Wrong example. When O'Neil revamped him, he just returned him to his GA origins.
But again, you missed the point.

Adding mythology and changing the characters is different. The point of this thread is which character is already great but not as popular. Not who can became.

I wanna see more of that new god who made Superman do a porno.

@squalleon: Well, that's a matter of opinion. He started out as a mirthless serial killer. We've seen a wide variety of interpretations since then, so at least a few people must have seen things they'd wanted to change. But, anyway. That kind of thinking can be applied to nearly any character.

I just think a cyborg with a kryptonite heart could be so much more of a Superman foe, and a character, as long as a little more imagination is employed.

@black_claw:

A red sun powered Volcana, huh? It's just as well that she and Superman became allies in the animated series, lol.

We don't see enough red sun being used to fight Superman. That's why, on that note, I'd like to also suggest Luminus. His suit could radiate the red sun spectrum and he could go transparent and teleport. Rad.

You aren't adding anything to the convo, especially when you compare a vaguely defined Joker to established characters and then mix alternative iterations to fit your argument.We have also seen many iterations of Metallo etc. The characters though always have the same core. Also O'Neil himself said he just returned the element of the serial killer to the Joker and combined it with the SA clown qualities.

And to close the discussion, making Metallo/Doomsday/Parasite a returning villain for 30+ years didn't make them much better or very interesting. And I hardly believe its only the writers' fault.

@squalleon: Yikes, sorry. If you say so, dude.

I didn't mean to come out hostile if I did.