DC Comics has a certain reputation among superhero fans, creating heroes and villains that are much more powerful than their marvelous counterparts. Even back in the Golden Age, DC had powerful heroes and villains. People like to talk about how Superman wasn’t as powerful, but he was surrounded by heroes like the Spectre, Doctor Fate, and Green Lantern, all who could do basically anything they wanted at any time. Nearly every superpowered hero seemed to have super strength, and powers levels just kept increasing into the Silver Age, when the heroes of the DC Multiverse would reach their apex of power. Superman was throwing planets and flying through time, the Flash was powerful enough to transcend time and space, and villains like Brainiac were shrinking entire planets. All of that is before we get into villains like the Anti-Monitor.
Powers levels went down after Crisis on Infinite Earths, but they eventually started buoying back up as time went on. Nowadays, it’s closer to the days of the Silver Age, when the powers of heroes was whatever they needed to win the day, and the villains were just a little more powerful in order to challenge the heroes. These seven DC characters are among the most overpowered out there, and the fact that they’re so common in DC stories shows just how ridiculous the power levels of the DC Multiverse can be.
7) Wally West
This entry could really go to any of the Flashes, but Wally has been the fastest, most powerful Flash for a long time. Wally West’s power level is kind of insane to think about. He was the first Flash to learn the secret Speed Force and mastered the use of its powers in ways that no one else had before. Wally was able to pull feats of speed that other speedsters could only dream of, and was able to use the energy of the Speed Force in ways that were impossible for anyone else. Wally was the first person to master draining an object of its speed, a power he taught to every speedster that could do it. Wally could completely remove the Speed Force from someone, freezing them like a statue. He ran many, many times the speed of light, and can pull off the infinite mass punch, an attack that could basically kill just about anything the Justice League or he faces. He was able to become so fast that he could transcend Zoom’s ability to manipulate the speed that time moved at. Wally gained the ability to make duplicates of himself, all with his power level. Wally West is massively OP for a hero that is always around. He could beat most threats to the world all on his own.
6) Swamp Thing
Alan Moore made many characters great, but the first in the United States was Swamp Thing. Moore increased Swamp Thing’s powers to ridiculous levels. Making him the Avatar of the Green made him into a near unstoppable force of nature. The only way to actually affect him was to affect the energy wavelength that his consciousness operated on, otherwise he could move from any plant and grown it into whatever form he wanted, all while controlling all the plant life in his general vicinity. Swamp Thing has been shown beating Superman on numerous occasions, using the power of the Earth against Krypton’s most powerful man. Swamp Thing has tackled demons and monstrous forces of decay, operating on a scale that most heroes wouldn’t understand. Swamp Thing’s power level are far beyond the stratosphere; he hasn’t been in any actual danger in ages.
5) Superman
Superman and overpowered go together like chocolate and peanut butter, and have for decades. As referenced above, Superman wasn’t unstoppably powerful right away. Instead, he grew in power as creators threw more and more powerful foes at him until he reached the heights of his power in the Silver Age. Since then, Superman’s power has waxed and waned in main continuity, but he’s usually capable of still moving planets and has the potential to be a time-traveling, reality altering god like the Prime Superman is if he spends enough time under yellow sunlight. Superman is as powerful as the story needs him to be, which means that sometimes you’re getting a reasonably powered Superman and other times you’re getting a Superman who could destroy galaxies by sneezing (I’m pretty sure that actually happened in the Silver Age). Superman has faced the greatest threats and always come through, his power levels morphing whenever they need to. Superman is the definition of an overpowered hero, but luckily he’s one of the best.
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4) Doctor Manhattan
Doctor Manhattan was the only superpowered being on his Earth, gaining complete control over matter and physics. Doctor Manhattan could take apart things with a glance and was obsessed with the workings of the universe, using his powers to do experiments he never would have been able to do as a human. Doctor Manhattan’s power level grew as he came to understand more of how everything worked, and the way he perceives time means that he technically knows everything that he’s ever going to know in the past, present, and future. By the end of Watchmen, Doctor Manhattan had survived being disassembled at a molecular level for the second time and decided that he was going to explore the universe, perhaps even create some humans. This led him to the Bleed, where he passed into the DC Multiverse and reached his ultimate form. He used his powers to change space and time, removing elements from existence and using the multiverse as his petri dish, creating the New 52. This is an insane amount of power, much further beyond anything he had while he was in Watchmen. Doctor Manhattan was one of the most powerful beings to ever pass through the DC Multiverse, an all-powerful god of science missing the one thing the DC Multiverse gave him — wonder.
3) Darkseid
Darkseid is the God of Evil, a living force of entropy and control. Darkseid has one desire in all creation — to gain control of the Anti-Life Equation and take control of every living thing. Darkseid wants to be the only free will in existence, using his power to chain everything to himself. Darkseid is both a physical being of immense power, able to singlehandedly defeat any and all of Earth’s superheroes in physical combat, and a being that is enmeshed in the fabric of the DC Multiverse. You can kill Darkseid’s body, it is possible. However, you can’t kill Darkseid because he is in everything. Everyone who misuses their power to hurt others is one of Darkseid’s people. Darkseid is always there, ready to be recruited into whatever big event that creators need him for. Darkseid is constantly an existential force of destruction, and when he gets the Anti-Life Equation, he’s pretty close to unstoppable. Darkseid is just that kind of villain, an overpowered force of destruction unlike anything that the universe has ever seen.
2) The Anti-Monitor
The Anti-Monitor kicked off a fine tradition of villains who were powerful enough to destroy universes. Comics are full of villains with high kill counts, but the Anti-Monitor easily takes the cake. He destroyed every universe he came across for ages, winnowing down the Multiverse in a bid to gain enough of it to transform into anti-matter and flood all of reality. The Anti-Monitor is more powerful than the mightiest Kryptonian and can create entire armies of lackies from his shadow. He is in charge of the antimatter universe of Qward, where the Weaponeers create weapons for him that can destroy universes with one shot. He can release waves of anti-matter that can burn away everything in their path. The Anti-Monitor is basically as powerful as whatever story calls him to be, and makes even the most powerful Marvel villains look like child’s play. Sure, Galactus eats planets and chews up Celestials, but the Anti-Monitor was able to destroy entire universes and wrestle with the Spectre, a reality-altering titan, defeating him handily, and creating an entire universe as a trap for the heroes. That’s an insane amount of power, but that’s just what the Anti-Monitor at full power can do.
1) Perpetua
The cosmology of the DC Multiverse is frankly insane. There’s the various gods of the different worlds, there the Presence and his angels and Lucifer and his demons. There’s the Endless, the New Gods of New Genesis and Apokolips, and survivors of elder gods’ old wars littered across the multiverse. There’s the Monitors, the Anti-Monitor, the World-Forger. There’s the Gentry and the Empty Hand. There’s the Great Darkness. Greater than all of these, though, are the Hands. The Hands build multiverses, creating little infinite clusters of space time all over creation. Long ago, one Hand created a multiverse meant to conquer all of the other ones. This was Perpetua and her creation was the DC Multiverse. The other Hands banded together and imprisoned her beyond the Source Wall, but she was able to break when the Justice League broke open the Wall in Justice League: No Exit. Perpetua saw her creation and wanted control of it back, so she worked with Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom, as well as the Batman Who Laughs, in a bid to spread doom through the galaxy, making veryone chose her darkness. Perpetua is powerful enough to create entire multiverses. Her weapon of choice is throwing planets at foes of her scale. Perpetua’s powers are on a scale that can be hard to grasp, and it was only thanks to the actions of many, many beings that the DC Multiverse, and the greater Omniverse, was able to survive Perpetua’s wrath.
What DC characters do you think are the most overpowered? Sound off in the comments below.
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