5 Superman Villains Who Are Actually Sympathetic (& 5 Who Are Pure Evil) - CBR - Comic Book Resources

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Superman is widely considered DC Comics' greatest hero. He is almost undeniably the most powerful hero, and that makes giving him a strong group of villains to face a challenging task. Superman either has to face almost godlike beings to give him any problems at all, or very smart villains that test his mettle and use gimmicks like Kryptonite to give them a fighting chance.

However, through the years, Superman has also had to face his fair share of sympathetic villains, bad guys who never meant to be evil but ended up straying from the path and found themselves on the wrong side of the Man of Steel. On the other hand, other Superman villains are as evil as anyone in comics, men that he has to defeat for all humankind's safety.

10 Sympathetic - Bizarro

Bizarro is one of the most sympathetic Superman villains of all-time because he only wants to be a hero. In both his original form as an imperfect duplicate of Superman and his more recent version, a flawed clone created by Lex Luger, Bizarro never means harm.

Bizarro is the opposite of Superman and even speaks in a backward manner. However, he wants to save people; he just can't figure out the right way to do it. Bizarro is one of those cases where Superman doesn't want to beat him, he just wants to stop him and possibly even help him in the end.

9 Evil - General Zod

General Zod is one of Superman's toughest villains since he is a fellow Kryptonian. Unlike Superman, who was sent to Earth as a baby and raised on a farm, Zod was a military general on Krypton and is a master in the ways of war.

From his days on Krypton, Zod was a bad guy as he tried to take over the planet. He eventually found himself imprisoned in the Phantom Zone, and years later, when he escaped, he set his sights on taking over Earth. He is a conqueror.

8 Sympathetic - The Microwave Man

Microwave Man was not only a sympathetic villain but a tragic one as well. He was a classic Superman villain who had the powers of a microwave, which was still a mysterious new invention at the time of his debut.

He was almost unbeatable, and then he left Earth. What made him sympathetic was when he returned as an old man and battled Superman once again, it turned out he was dying of cancer from the exposure to microwaves— and when Superman learned this, he pretended that Microwave Man beat him so the man could die happy.

7 Evil - Brainiac

Brainiac is one of Superman's most famed alien villains, a collector and mastermind who has caused the Man of Steel a lot of pain. Brainiac has one goal in mind: He sets out to collect cities from different worlds to preserve them, so when the worlds die, something remains.

That might not be so bad, but this means the people in the cities he collects spend the rest of their lives in a glass jar. This included Supergirl's home city of Kandor, and Brainiac then tried to take Metropolis, but Superman has routinely stopped him.

6 Sympathetic - Bloodsport

Movie fans will meet Bloodsport when The Suicide Squad arrives in theaters, as James Gunn cast Idris Elba to play the former Superman villain. Bloodsport was a tragic figure, a man who Lex Luthor used to try to kill Superman.

The problem is that Bloodsport was a mentally disturbed man who had a blood vendetta since he was a draft dodger in Vietnam, and his brother went in his place and ended up losing his arms and legs. He talked his brother down, and Bloodsport ended up institutionalized.

5 Evil - Darkseid

Darkseid is as evil as they come. He is a tyrannical ruler of Apokolips and is a merciless monster, with only one goal in mind. He sets out to conquer other worlds and has taken out several worlds throughout the multiverse.

He has tried to conquer Earth more than once, and Darkseid is so powerful that it usually takes the combined efforts of the entire Justice League to stop him. The problem is that they rarely ever beat him and just have to slow him down and send him back to where he came from.

4 Sympathetic - Superboy-Prime

Superboy-Prime might seem as evil as they come, but there is something sad about the story of the Kal-El of Earth-Prime. He was, at one time, a good kid named Clark Kent who idolized Superman. On his Earth, he thought he was a normal kid who read comic books about the exploits of the fictional hero Superman.

However, Clark never realized that he was the same Clark Kent, but just on a parallel Earth. One day he met Superman, who ended up displaced from his world, and then Clark's powers manifested in his world. He helped save the world in Crisis on Infinite Earths, but his prize was being imprisoned in the Paradise Dimension where he slowly went insane and wanted to escape. When he did, his mind was gone, and Superboy-Prime became one of the universe's deadliest villains.

3 Evil - Doomsday

Doomsday might be considered a sympathetic villain. When he was a baby, he was repeatedly killed in various ways because his creator gave him the unique attribute of never dying the same way twice. However, he was created to be a killing machine and never felt or cared about his deaths. As a fully-formed monster, Doomsday had one mission— to destroy. When he killed Superman in one of the biggest comic book events of all time, the monster's name went down in history.

2 Sympathetic - Lex Luthor

Is Lex Luthor the evil mastermind of the DC Universe, or is he a misunderstood and sympathetic figure? They say the best villains are the ones who are the heroes in their own stories. That is Lex Luthor.

He never wanted to be a villain. He wanted to be the man who saved the planet, and he saw the alien Superman as a threat to the world's safety. Luthor set out to vanquish Superman, becoming one of the most dangerous villains on the planet. Still, his only goal was to protect the world that didn't know it needed him.

1 Evil - Mongul

Mongul is an alien tyrant, making him very similar to Darkseid. He rules Warworld and was, at one time, a member of the Sinestro Corps. From a young age, Mongul believed that only the strong should rule, and the weak should cower before them and serve their every need.

He spent much of his adulthood conquering worlds and ruling them with an iron fist. Throughout his entire lifetime, Mongul commented that only one man in the entire universe was ever able to beat him: Superman.

NEXT: DC: 5 Reasons Lex Luthor Can Conquer The Marvel Universe (& 5 Reasons He Couldn't)

Next The Phoenix Force Vs The Power Cosmic: Which Is More Powerful?

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Shawn S. Lealos (885 Articles Published)

Shawn S. Lealos is a freelance writer who received his Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the University of Oklahoma with a minor in Film Studies. He has worked as a journalist for 25 years, starting in newspapers and magazines before moving to online media as the world changed. Shawn is a former member of the Society of Professional Journalists and a current voting member of the Oklahoma Film Critics Circle. He has work published on websites like The Huffington Post, Time Warner Cable, Yahoo Movies, The Movie Network, Chud, Renegade Cinema, 411mania, and Monsters & Critics. Shawn is also a published author, with a non-fiction book about the Stephen King Dollar Baby Filmmakers and has begun work on a new fiction series as well. Visit Shawn Lealos' website to learn more about his novel writing and follow him on Twitter @sslealos.