DC has a host of heroes, villains, sidekicks, and henchmen, not to mention gods and goddess that it would take a few encyclopedias to cover. But in the last decade alone, DC has debuted of some characters that are powerful enough to shake reality, and stand with the biggest heavyweights of the DC Universe.
Every comic label has their staples, and DC wouldn’t be DC unless it had Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, among others. But the legacy lives on through powerful new faces in DC’s roster, and these most powerful new DC characters introduced in the lasdt decade.
15 Swamp Thing’s New Host Shows Potential
It’s a rite of passage for a costume to pass between many hands after a tragic death. But for a long time, Swamp Thing was only Alec Holland. That is, until Levi Kamei turned up to show fans just how powerful Swamp Thing could be, with his innate connection to the Green that makes him a beacon of creation and flora manipulation.
As an avatar of the Green, Levi is practically immortal, and can switch between his human form and his swamp form at will. The new Swamp Thing’s powers are still being discovered and mastered, but he stands poised to become even more powerful than the original Swamp Thing. After all, he has complete control over all plant life in the universe, making him less an avatar of the Green and more of a complete plant god reborn as a human.
14 Damage Gives Doomsday a Run For His Money
In the wake of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Dark NightsL Metal event and in the fresh bloom of DC’s New Age of Heroes, Damage debuted as DC’s long-awaited answer to the Hulk. There is a long list of borrowing that DC and Marvel have done from each other, but with Damage being a soldier whose entire physiology changed due to an experimental serum, the likenesses are a little too close to be called a coincidence.
Damage is practically invulnerable, and has even been able to fell Superman with a punch. The Doomsday-like extent of his strength were yet to be explored as his title was soon canceled, leaving fans to wonder just how powerful Damage was.
13 Sideways Is Essential To DC’s Multiverse
There’s no question that Sideways is a Spider-Man looking hero, albeit possessed with a very different power. With the ability to teleport between dimensions, it didn’t take long for this new hero to end up being vitally important to DC, considering how many dimension-clashing crises DC seems to have these days. It isn’t just leaping either, as he can manipulate black holes and has superhuman strength, proving he isn’t just DC’s doorman.
Sideways proved crucial to the Justice League in Dark Crisis, and woefully underappreciated at the same time. Sideways’ powers means he’s destined to return in DC’s future when travel is needed from one event to another. Hopefully, he’ll be able to take on a larger role along the way.
12 Lobo’s Daughter Crush is Just as Strong as Her Dad
Fan-favorite anti-hero and space bounty hunter Lobo is a fourth-wall-breaking killer with a bad mouth, and a bad attitude. But his daughter Crush is just as bad, reckless, and dangerous as her father, leading to plenty of tumbles and near-fatal collisions. But the “Main Man” and his daughter were able to reconcile in their father/daughter Crush/Lobo miniseries, which made Crush even more of a powerhouse than before.
Like any hero with a healing factor, Crush is nearly impossible to kill, as she will always return to her peak form just before death. Even though she’s only half-Czarnian, Crush follows along in the vein of other legacy heroes that surpass their parents by strength of will alone.
11 Trinity Is Soon To Make Her Official Debut
Superman has a son (and a few clones), Batman has a whole host of orphans that make up his Bat-Family. So even if Diana has had a few worthy successors throughout comic history, it’s time for Wonder Woman to have a biological descendant to call her own. Enter Trinity, who is coming soon to DC’s Universe.
Trinity’s story is currently told primarily through future glimpses in Tom King and Daniel Sempere’s Wonder Woman, but Trinity is slated to finally make her official debut, aloowing comic fans to see just how powerful this new hero really is. Named after the iconic relationship between the Big Three of DC (Wonder Woman, Batman, and Superman) Trinity has a major relationship with Damian Wayne and Jon Kent as Superman that will help anchor DC’s future.
10 Dreamer Is DC’s Best Hope of Keeping the Future Alive
Precognition is a superpower of unique potency, and Dreamer has it in spades. Dreamer can not only see visions of the future in her dreams, but she can access dreams in a way that allows her to blast dream energy in explosive bursts, and create constructs out of them. She’s not just a mystic, but a brilliant fighter in peak shape.
This friend of Superman has kept him and his friends from death multiple times, and has quickly moved from a side character to an essential part of DC lore. She had a blooming part in the Absolute Power event as Amanda Waller blackmailed her into submission against her allies. With the power of future-telling, Dreamer is practically too powerful, but her precognition didn’t save her from her own supposed sacrifice.
9 Yara Flor Takes the Wonder Woman Mythos To The Next Level
This ally of Wonder Woman is the most powerful Amazon warrior DC fans have had the pleasure to meet. As a Brazilian-Amazonian demigod, Yara Flor is a full-blown warrior, not a fish-out-of-water in the world of men. Her time as ‘Wonder Girl’ showed fans a darker side of the Wonder Woman mythos, clashing with gods, and even training with the gods on Mount Olympus (something not even something Wonder Woman has enjoyed).
Yara Flor presents a new vision of Wonder Girl for a modern age, steeped in the Brazilian history of the Amazons, and the mythological stories of her people. Yara Flor is ready for battle, and her debut ushered in a new era of Wonder Woman where the Amazonians are a new kind of force to be reckoned with.
8 Brainiac Queen Topples the DC Universe
It’s not often that villains topple the entire DC Universe, but Brainiac Queen is up to the challenge. A relatively new character with a twist on the lore of one of Superman’s oldest villains, she not only decimates an entire planet and its race, she defeats Superman and ushers in the events of Absolute Power. Villains aren’t all punching and superpowers, and Brainiac Queen proves careful planning can topple an empire.
Even worse, Brainiac Queen took Jonathan Kent under her control, and transformed him into a cyborg. With Amanda Waller at the helm, this ultimate supervillain is the bane of DC, and already established as one of the worst villains Superman and company have faced.
7 City Boy Has The Most Unique Power in Comics
One of the most interesting powers to come out of recent comics, City Boy’s powers are all in the name: the ability to communicate with buildings and see the past and the future within them. City Boy is an urban protagonist for a modern era that is powerful enough to be the next Superman. While Superman can hear the heartbeats of every living being on earth, City Boy goes further and is powered by the full consciousness of his city.
Darkseid even tried to recruit City Boy, as every hero and villain of DC started to realize he’s not just a kid and may hold the whole world in his hand – or the city, at least. Hearkening back to Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run, which featured a sentient town as a main character, City Boy is an urban hero that speaks for his entire city as it speaks through him in turn.
6 Failsafe Is Batman, If His Justice Had No Limits
It’s not DC unless there’s some version of Batman present. Batman’s known for his many contingency plans, but most often, they come to fruition by accident, tearing apart the very Justice League. One of the newest contingency plans was a full character named Failsafe – only, he was meant to be the first contingency plan for Batman. Should Batman ever breach his no-kill rule, Failsafe was there to take down Batman and stop his killing spree. Unfortunately, Batman had to be there to stop Failsafe’s version of justice.
Failsafe merged with Batman’s alternate personality, Zur-En-Arrh, and became a sort of Gotham dictator that thought of himself as the absolute peak of what Batman is supposed to be: dark justice and no mercy. Failsafe became the very thing Batman was trying to avoid. He’s such a powerful character that his merciless victory made the Justice League look absolutely pathetic, not to mention his hand in the event of Absolute Power.
5 The Upside-Down Man Is DC’s Nightmare Being
More than just a villain, this character is an ultra-powerful Lovecraftian horror. One of the Otherkind, the Upside-Down Man is a terrifying being of pure horror that represents all the dark and twisted possibilities of magic in the DC Universe. Made from pure magic, there is practically nothing that the Upside-Down Man can’t do, such as molecular reconstruction, cosmic awareness, and interdimensional travel.
Heroes with a major tie to magic, like Zatanna, Dr. Fate, and Constantine, are practically useless in a fight against this interdimensional, immortal being whose entire existence is owed to magic – not only that but the dark side of magic, as a sort of complementary equation. If there is beauty in the DC Universe, there must be the equal and opposite reaction of pure horror, and the Upside-Down Man is that horror.
4 The Imps of the Fifth Dimension Assemble An Impressive Justice League
More powerful than any roster the Justice League has conjured yet, this smattering of fifth-dimensional imps are the most powerful the Justice League has ever been. Constantly seen as tricksters with unbelievable powers to warp reality, the likes of Bat-Mite, Nite-Mite, and Mister Mxyztplk, are undoubtedly practical gods of DC, if they ever cared to act like it. Godhood never really suited them or seemed like fun.
Instead, they are fourth-wall breaking imps that like instead to prank heroes and mess with the universe when it suits their own design. They are more like super-powerful fans sometimes dipping into comics to change continuity to better aid their taste. And when they banded together to fight Doom-Mite, they showed a version of the Justice League at its peak, breaking fourth-walls and bending reality to whatever they wanted it to be.
3 Jon Kent is Even More Powerful Than Superman
Even if Superman is unmatched, Jon Kent as Superman’s son just might go above and beyond by showing he can more than take on his father’s mantle. With all the same powers of the Man of Steel and all the same heart, Jon Kent has been a major force for keeping the legacy of Superman alive and keeping the symbol of hope in the sky when his father wasn’t strong enough to keep going.
But it doesn’t stop there, because even Superman himself has said that Jon Kent may just surpass Superman in strength and skill. He even has a few powers Superman doesn’t, like a special heat vision unique to Jon. He even once sun-dipped in a show of power that even Superman wouldn’t do. If this is the future of DC, then comics are in good hands with this new Superman, Jon Kent.
2 Erebos Is the DC’s God of Absolute Darkness
Erebos is the darkness at the end of everything. There are many gods that the Justice League pits themselves against, but this god of darkness and oblivion trumps anything the heroes of DC know. Even Darkseid and his Anti-Life equation cower before this being who is the Anti-Life given physical form. Named after the primordial Greek god of the same name, Erebos represents not only what awaits after death but what came before life.
In DCeased: War of the Undead Gods #8 by Tom Taylor, Trevor Hairsine, Lucas Meyer, Andy Lanning, and Rain Beredo, the Anti-Life equation making zombies of the DC Universe is shown to not be a mathematical equation at all but a being of pure darkness and utter cosmic horror. The threat he posed to the entire universe was so great that Darkseid joined the Justice League to battle him.
1 DC Fights Its Very Own Creator: The Goddess Perpetua
The heroes of DC have gone up against some powerful villains, like Darkseid or Eclipso, but even the antagonist of the New Gods is nothing compared to the creator of the multiverse itself. Perpetua is a celestial and omnipotent being in DC that is responsible for the creation of the DC multiverse, until she was imprisoned. When the Batman Who Laughs teamed up with her in the events of Hell Arisen, by James Tynion, Steve Epting, Nick Filardi, and Travis Lanham, these dark gods spelled absolute doom for DC.
No one has quite caused such a cataclysmic event like Perpetua, considering only she can totally destroy a multiverse she is responsible for creating. Perpetua is the answer to all of DC’s retcon issues and also DC’s biggest secret.When the Justice League fought against her, it wasn’t an even battle – they were fighting their creator. And there will be many more, even after Perpetua, as DC continues to fill its roster of powerful heroes never before seen in comics.
