TOP 20 MOST POWERFUL DC CHARACTERS

During the 80 years of its existence, the DC Universe saw hundreds of heroes and villains wage wars across space and time, with the reason often being some source of ultimate power. In a universe that contains both ancient aliens and all-powerful gods, it’s not that unusual for someone to achieve a level of might far beyond human and sometimes even meta-human reach. So today let’s celebrate those, whose powers are far too much, with this list of 20 most overpowered DC characters.

20. Superman

Many think that Superman is the strongest DC has to offer.

He has a super-power for every imaginable situation; he cannot be overpowered by villains.

Simply put — he’s a perfect human.

And, indeed, for most characters of the DC Universe Superman signifies an unreachable height. Even although the majority of his powers, acquired throughout the Golden and Silver Age, were later given to Supermen of parallel Universes, Earth Prime Superman is still incredibly strong. Owner of ubermensch strength and stamina, he can live forever and shoot lasers from his eyes. That’s much more than Batman (or hundreds of other characters) could ever achieve.

However, on the global DC scale The Man of Steel is small fry. He has glaring weaknesses, but more powerful beings can defeat him even through pure strength. So, with Superman standing firmly at the start of this list, let’s count those folks who dwarf him in power scale and could easily destroy our hero.

19. Doomsday

On the primal Krypton, Doomsday fought vicious beasts uncountable times: and he died and died and died yet again. Later, his remains were cloned to create a perfect copy. At some point, Doomsday broke the cycle. He murdered his creators and every living creature on Krypton. No more dying, he decided: it’s time to kill.

On Earth Doomsday sensed Superman’s presence and instinctively desired to destroy him. This confrontation resulted in the comics storyline “The Death of Superman.” Later, Superman came back to life, and Doomsday’s corpse was cast into a black hole. He still returned on numerous occasions, growing every time.

The fact that Doomsday’s body becomes even more invulnerable and indestructible with every death makes him incredibly dangerous and absurdly overpowered. He’s a rabid animal, ruled by instincts, and he refuses to be put to sleep. Is there a possibility that Doomsday will grow stronger than any other DC character? Possibly. Probably. Countless deaths later, but he will get there eventually.

18. Martian Manhunter

J’onn J’onzz is a weird mix of Batman and Superman. An alien, the last survivor of his kin. He’s a genius detective and tactician. He’s alone, even when surrounded by friends. He’s also overpowered to the point of earning the nickname “Swiss Army Knife Superhero.”

He has every power Superman has, and some extra too. Even such a simple ability as heat vision becomes incredibly complicated when Manhunter uses it. It shoots balls of energy, makes inflammable objects explode, allows Manhunter to see in different spectrums and even notice invisible beings. Think this is a strong ability? Look at his telekinesis, mind-reading, and shape-shifting.

The truth is, J’onzz can run JLA, or any other DC crime-fighting alliance, all by himself. Famously, he’s the only Justice League member that Superman really fears. And all his skills are only standard for a Martian. If his race were still alive, they’d be some of the scariest creatures in this Universe. Even worse, they’d live in extreme proximity to Earth.

17. Parallax

Parallax is an Emotional Entity, one of the eternal beings that give energy to Power Rings. Among them, Parallax is the most active and, maybe, the most evil as well. Parallax governs over fear and controls Yellow Rings, inducing paranoia in his enemies and followers alike.

What differentiates him from his “family” is the fact that he’s constantly in search of a new host. Parallax looks like a parasite and behaves like one. He attaches to a character, destroys his mind through fear and possesses him, like a puppet. So he can be as mighty as his host was before possession.

Combined with his absolute immortality and time/space manipulation abilities, this makes Parallax a formidable enemy and one of the most powerful entities in the paradigm. He’s among those few DC villains who will never be truly gone and destroyed.

16. Hal Jordan

The second human to ever hold the title of Green Lantern. As years went by, he fought increasingly stronger foes and took level upon level of coolness.

Since the Green Ring drains its might from user’s willpower, Jordan grows organically without learning radically new abilities. Every enemy only makes him stronger. From Sinestro and Parallax to recent threats like Nekron, foes overwhelm Jordan, only to be defeated by the surges of his undefeatable will. Hal even awakened the White Lantern that encompasses all of the EES. Even after this power fades, Jordan stays strong enough to create his new Ring from pure willpower.

Hal is clearly one of the most powerful characters in the DCU. But he is also an overwhelmingly positive character. His power stems only from his personal psychological strength, and that’s much more inspiring than it is frustrating.

15. Zattana Zatara

To honor her father, Zatanna often dresses like a stage magician and mixes her spells with parlor tricks. In truth, Zatanna is a Homo Magi and can use magic ever since her birth. Furthermore, her lineage includes few of the mightiest magicians in the history of DC Universe, like Cagliostro and Nostradamus.

During her continued membership in JLA Zatanna had complete control over the four essential elements — fire, water, earth and air. Later she reflected on how unfocused she was at that point in her life and how sloppy her magic was.

Time to level up! And after some training, Zatanna became capable of much more — light, shadow, time and space bend to her will. So now to beat Sups, all she has to do is to say the magic formula.

14. Neron

Neron is your typical Devil. He resides in Hell and grants wishes to mortals in exchange for their souls. Oh, and don’t be fooled by the fact that Neron is always surrounded by his underlings. He has the physical shape of a hyper-muscular barbarian overlord for a reason.

Neron became the ruler of Hell by being the strongest, the smartest and the most ruthless. As if that were not enough, he tried to rise even higher by feeding on The Spectre. He failed. Thrown down Hell’s dreadful hierarchy, Neron gained some valuable experience.

He escaped Inferno and spent years gaining knowledge and turning talented magicians into willing slaves. Nowadays, Hell has a new ruler, but Neron’s name is still spoken with fear and admiration.

13. Imperiex

Imperiex was a living supercomputer energy being. It was fine-tuned to detect mistakes in the essence of the cosmos, and then eradicate them in the ultimate manner: by destroying the Universe and remaking it from scratch.

Of course, to complete this goal, Imperiex was made as overpowered as possible. Not that he had special features, no. He was simply more sturdy and destructive than any other imaginable being. He was such a danger to the Universe that Lex Luthor and Darkseid had to establish an alliance with JLA to defend the world together. Superman dove straight into the Sun to gain more power, and still could not beat this monster.

The colossal Imperiex would not be defeated by any reasonable means, so the only thing that the protectors of Earth could do was open a portal straight to the Big Bang, shove Imperiex into it and hope for the best.

12. Captain Marvel AKA Shazam!

Each of the letters in Shazam’s name corresponds to a name of a different Greek mythological entity (Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, Mercury). Just by calling his name Shazam invokes a whole pantheon and gathers its powers in his body. This makes him super-strong, super-fast, super-resistant, super-lucky, super-everything. Hell, Shazam even reformed after being completely ripped apart by the vacuum of outer space. Marvelous.

Shazam also practices magic, and magic in DC comics has significant advantages over any other power. The combination of divine guidance and wizardry made Shazam so overpowered that his only rival was the other Shazam, who invoked Egyptian gods.

Shazam was repeatedly killed and devoid of his powers just to hold him from solving every major crisis by himself. The sole battle that really challenged him was his bout with The Spectre, and he lost that one only because The Spectre is even more overpowered.

11. Superboy Prime

Superboy Prime hauls from Earth Prime, our world in the DC Universe. He left his dimension after meeting the Superman from Earth One. Soon after that, the Crisis on Infinite Earths struck, erasing Earth Prime forever.

Superboy couldn’t get over that. His grief progressed. Finally, he entered a state of childish anger and frustration and then took it all out on fellow superheroes.

An incredibly overpowered and bloodthirsty version of Superman, Prime wasn’t the deepest character, but he was certainly entertaining. Immune to reality-changing forces, kryptonite and magic, he tested DC superheroes to their limit. In the end, Superboy came to his senses, felt overwhelmed with regret and directly asked writers to never use his character again. Also, here’s a cherry on top: in a separate timeline this guy could use every superhuman ability in the Universe.

Whoops! Where did the rest go? Yes, we said that it’s gonna be 20 most overpowered DC superheroes but we wanted to know if you enjoyed the first part of the list. If you did — head over to our website for the complete list. The most overpowered character would be somewhat…unusual.