To my mind, the world of comic books is very much akin to world of Metal Gear Solid. By this, I mean there’s a whole heaping helping of melodrama and intrigue going on, and it can get quite heavy at times… but just when it’s about to, an equal portion of utter ridiculousness is added to the mix.

The fact of the matter is, not all comic book characters are created equal. Not even remotely close. With some heroes, like Superman or the Hulk, we know that they’re not messing around. They’re true icons, formidable powerhouses, and they’re genuinely intimidating for any villain to face.

The same is true of supervillains, of course. Take somebody like Thanos, Magneto, the Joker or Hela. These are supervillains done right. Like the ghastly-demon-from-the-depth-of-Beelezebub’s-lavatory monster in a horror movie, these are foes to fear, and to respect.

You can’t hit that bullseye every time, though. As we saw in our rundown of Marvel’s most questionable supervillains, some are just not up to the standard. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you create a bad guy who can transform themselves into ice cream (any flavour of ice cream, mark you, which is a neat party trick at the very least) and melt their way between the cracks under doors.

So, your move, DC. What skeletons do you have in your closet who can compete with that? Buckle up for some of the weakest and most embarrassing DC supervillains you ever did see.

25 Now THAT’S A Spiffy-Looking Villain

You know, there’s something about Ye Olde British cavaliers that I just can’t help but admire. The jaunty caps with the feathers, the capes, the general foppery… people just aren’t extra anymore, and it’s a real shame.

One DC villain who totally feels me on that is the Cavalier, who first appeared in 1943 in Detective Comics #81. This nemesis of Batman just completely rocked the Zorro getup, and you’ve got to appreciate that.

While he had no true superpowers (neither does Batman himself, but that’s a can of worms I don’t want spilling all over my shoes), the short-lived Cavalier was handy in a fight, and his rapier fired electrified blasts. He’s quite dang bad though, let’s be honest with ourselves.

24 Ten Eyes Are Better Than Two (Apparently)

Ah, yes. You’d better prepare yourself for this one. This is an origin story for the ages, right here.

Philip Reardon was a special forces soldier, whose vision was damaged by shrapnel from a grenade. Later becoming a security guard, a bright light aggravated his injury during an encounter with Batman, leaving Reardon permanently blind in both eyes.

His ophthalmologist, Dr. Engstrom, decided that the best course of action would be to reconnect Philip’s optic nerves to the sensory cells in his fingertips, giving his ten eyes and the ability to see through his hands (only through his hands).

Nope, I don’t know how or why the flying heckola this happened, but it certainly did.

23 What’s With All The Gorillas?

As all long-time DC fans will know, the acclaimed publisher has always had a bit of a thing for gorillas. It’s just one of those facts of life you come to accept, like that delivery you’ve been waiting in for will arrive exactly as you sit down on the toilet seat. It’s just the way things work.

Now that we’ve accepted that, we can appreciate the absurd likes of Gorilla Boss. This supervillain came to be after a gangster’s brain was implanted in a huge gorilla’s body. I mean, sure, he’s got superhuman strength and resilience, but… we’re jumping the shark a little here, surely?

22 The Greatest Enemy Of All: Math

That’s right. If you’re anything like me, you probably feel that you know your way around words rather well, but numbers? Nope. Nopeity Nopeity Nopeola. Numbers do not cooperate for me. They never have and they never will. I just cannot do math.

With that said, I’m sure you can understand why I’d have a mortal fear of our next farcical supervillain: Angle Man.

This nemesis of Wonder Woman was best represented in the Bronze Age, when he was given a weapon dubbed the ‘Angler’ to wield. This looked like a harmless triangle (the jingly musical instrument), but could warp special relationships and dimensions, even teleport people.

Having said all of that, though, I think they should’ve really gone for a supervillain that would frighten more than just myself.

21 So Many Sirens

In Greek mythology, the Siren is an iconic image. Various accounts give different descriptions, but all follow the same basic pattern: a creature that resembles a cross between a woman and a bird, which beguiles sailors with beautiful music and lures them to danger.

In the DC world, several different takes on the Siren also exist. The most unfortunate of these was probably the one played by Joan Collins in the Batman episode ‘Wail of the Siren.’ Collins’s character was named Lorelei Circe, a famous singer and one-time ally of the Riddler who wanted to become Gotham’s greatest villainess. Needless to say, that didn’t quite work out for her.

20 Welcome To Bizarro World

Another of the more common traits of comic books is just how dang difficult they are to keep up with. You stop to blink, and suddenly eighteen new parallel universes and nine new Netflix series have been released.

Continuity, as such, is a difficult concept. DC, arguably, takes this even further than Marvel does, what with the Bizarro World and such. This is where Batzarro came from, a peculiar reversed take on Batman. Now a supervillain (and the one who shot his parents himself, this time), Batzarro refers to himself as the world’s worst detective. With that upside-down utility belt and odd speech pattern, that’s a tough one to argue.

19 You Won’t Be Walking In The Air With This Snowman

Now, maybe I’m the one in the wrong here. Maybe I’ve been jaded on the whole icy supervillain shtick by Mr. Freeze. I feel like that would be totally justified if it were the case. After all, there are only so many super cheesy Arnold Schwarzenegger puns about cooling off and breaking the ice a man can take.

Maybe. I can’t help but feel that Blue Snowman is just plain bad, though. Another of Wonder Woman’s foes, this is actually a woman, Byrna Brilyant, dressed as a snowman. The daughter of a brrliant scientist, she’s armed with his patented creation, blue snow, which is powerful enough to freeze anything on contact.

I suppose that’s mildly disconcerting, but she’s still pretty questionable.

18 Now THAT’S An Incentive For A Crime Spree

If you’ve watched the likes of NCIS, you’ll know that a lot of serial criminals tend to act out particular patterns or themes. This is convenient when it comes to trying to apprehend them, and it also often throws up an opportunity for a cool nickname based on their MO.

Which brings us to the ridiculous Polka-Dot Man.

His big idea was to launch a crime spree based around dots and spots, for reasons best known to himself.

He was a modest threat, with the peculiar transforming dots on his costume (which could detach to form weapons or even an escape vehicle), even succeeding in briefly defeating and capturing Robin.

In the end, though, his true sucky colours were revealed.

17 Fighting Kites With Kites

Now, see, here’s the thing with Batman. We’ve already touched on the fact that he doesn’t actually have any true superpowers, which is why Lucius Fox and co are over there making all kinds of fancy gadgetry for him.

This is also why nutty gimmicks like Kite Man can prove effective against him. What is Charles Brown’s big villainous hook? Kites, that’s what. Kite Man got the better of the bat once, using said kites to fly fellow villains out of prison. Batman only triumphed by using kites of his own.

16 The Figure Skating Supervillain

Now, on hearing a name like Golden Glider, DC newbies might be expecting another formidable sky-based foe. It’s quite a gnarly-sounding name, whichever way you slice it.

The truth is, sadly, nothing nearly as cool as that. Lisa Snart, the Golden Glider, is a figure skater. She becomes an archenemy of the Flash after her lover, the Top, was lost in a duel with the superhero speedster.

Originally, she was armed only with ice-producing skates that enabled her to skate along thin air, but was later given additional powers in the New 52. An astral body and physical form combo raised her profile a bit, but she’s still ultimately forgotten.

15 Watch Out For The Mushroom Cloud

Ah, yes. Now we’re talking. With a super-threatening name like Nuclear Man, surely we’re onto a winner here?

Oh, wait. This was the guy from Superman IV: The Quest For Peace, utterly awful contender for worst movie ever made. See, that’s where a little background knowledge pays off. You might have expected great things from Nuclear Man.

In reality, we’re dealing with a super-shonky creation of Lux Luthor’s, who made this supervillain in his lab using Superman’s DNA. He boasted powers comparable to (and even more potent than, in some cases) Superman’s own, true enough, but only when exposed to sunlight. He also primarily fought with his radioactive fingernails, which… well, that sucks.

14 My, Grandma, What neat Goggles You Have

Now, Zeiss is a Batman villain I can definitely appreciate. I really, really can.

He’s a little obscure, true enough, but he’s equipped to oppose the Bat in a way that a lot of his other opponents aren’t.

Sharing a similar origin story to Batman’s own, Philo Zeiss lost his parents and was inducted into the mob. He underwent surgery to enhance his reflexes and perception, which meant that he needed those characteristic goggles to prevent his senses being overwhelmed.

Zeiss has come close to defeating Batman and Catwoman in hand-to-hand combat, but is always foiled by his obsession with a vengeance on his archenemy, which prevents him from seeing the bigger picture.

13 Would You Like Any Sauces? HECK YES!

As I say, supervillains are not created equal. Sometimes, there’s a concept that you just know you shouldn’t actually develop into a character, but you go right ahead and do it anyway. This is how that melty ice cream dude came about, and it’s also the reason for the brilliantly ridiculous Condiment King’s existence.

Comic relief characters can be super important, as we all know, but this villain from Batman: The Animated Series took things just a little too far. Even if his condiment guns can cause anaphylactic shock, there’s no excuse for dialogue like, “I knew you’d ketchup to me sooner or later. How I relished this meeting.” No excuse. Ever.

12 So He’s… A Tar Pit?

You’ve got to admire comic creators. Like all great writers, storylines and possibilities seem to come to them out of no-dang-where. They just sit there at their desks, and great works of literature gradually and painstakingly materialize.

I just can’t imagine how the concepts for some of the more absurd villains come about. Except like this:

“How about ‘Tar Pit?’ He’s projected his mind into a… tar pit, and he’s… a tar pit.”

“Holy heckola, give this man a raise RIGHT NOW.”

That’s right. Another foe of the Flash, Tar Pit was once Joey Monteleone, the younger brother of a crime boss. Joey found that he had the superpower of inhabiting inanimate objects with his mind, which he happily did until his mind became trapped in a pool of tar.

As Tar Pit, he’s incredibly dangerous and largely invulnerable, but I just can’t get away from that absurd premise.

11 I Hear There Are Alligators Down There

Over his long life, the Dark Knight has had a whole host of villains to deal with. Some, like the Joker, have risen to become the stuff of comic book legend. Others have had just a minor part to play, and are now largely forgotten.

One of the more interesting also-rans was the Sewer King. This curious character combines elements of Peter Pan and Oliver Twist, creating a pirate-looking villain who dwells in the sewer system, sending out an army of orphan children to steal for him.

He also has crocodiles and alligators under his command, which makes him sound much more threatening than he has any right to.

10 NOW You’re Playing With Power!

So far over the course of this rundown, we haven’t really seen too many truly SUPER supervillains.

You know, sometimes the farcical likes of Kite Man and a figure skater just don’t quite cut it.

How about a truly formidable cosmic being, for once?

Right on cue, here comes Agamemno. This cosmic being is the son of the first sentient being created after the Big Bang, which ruled the galaxy for eons before a band of younger cosmic beings deposed him. Agamemno fled, feeling some kind of way about the whole sorry mess.

His campaign to wrest back control of the universe could have ended in grisly fashion, but instead he preferred to spend his time messing around and putting the minds of superheroes in supervillains’ bodies. Dang it, Agamemno, you wacky prankster.

9 You’re Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

Here’s another villain that I sure as heckles do find a little frightening. I was unfortunate enough to have watched Jaws at a far younger age than I probably should have, and successfully birthed a lifelong fear of sharks in the process. Yay, me!

The Great White Shark, however, can only elicit a mild level of discomfort even in me. Financier Warren White earned his nickname for being ruthless with money, embezzling from his clients. Unpopular even with the other residents of Arkham, he is locked in a freezer and disfigured, giving him a terrible case of frostbite which results in a distinctly shark-esque appearance. He has no real superpowers, beyond ‘looking dang scary.’

8 The Man In The Mirror

As comic book fans will know, heroes and villains alike have to have a hook. What would Captain America be without his shield? Flash without his speed? Thor without his hammer? Darn well nothing, that’s what they would be. Unless we’re talking about cheesy character development scenes where they have to earn their signature powers back.

Our next villain, Mirror Man, has a bit of problem on that score. His USP (read: mirrors) is already done much better by a more popular villain, Mirror Master. Not to mention the fact that Mirror Man is infinitely lamer, being obsessed with discovering and uncovering Batman’s true identity. Don’t go thinking he’s cool by mistaking him for Mirror Master, because he definitely isn’t.

7 I See You!

I suppose, if we’re really being pernickety about it, it’s tough to characterize Peek-a-Boo as a supervillain in the strictest sense. After all, her origin story is touching and poignant, if completely absurd.

Lashawn Baez was a medical student when her father fell ill. Desperate to give him the kidney transplant he needed, the operation somehow activated her superpower, teleportation. While this sure is a neat one to have, Peek-a-Boo’s is strictly limited in range. She also causes dangerous implosions after teleporting, which she cannot control.

It’s unique, at any rate, but it’s totally impractical and kind of useless in the long run.

6 Erasing The Evidence

The difficulty, with all of these many and varied characters flying around, is to truly stand out. I guess a lot these villains and heroes wouldn’t have such bizarre concepts if that wasn’t the case. In a crime-tastic city like Gotham, for instance, your own schemes would barely be noticed if you weren’t really doing something different.

Find your niche and own it, that’s the key. The Eraser certainly found another way to do that. His specialty was not his own crimes, but helping others with theirs. For a 20% cut, the Eraser would erase the evidence of their crimes (footprints, fingerprints and such).

Literally; he dressed as a huge yellow pencil and removed the evidence using the eraser on his head.

Yep. This is a real thing. Did he also wear pencil-point shoes that emitted sleeping gas? You’re darn right he did.