DC Comics and supervillains have gone hand in hand for decades. The publisher created many of the first supervillains, taking cues from the bad guys of the various pulp genres that formed the basis of the superhero. Over the years, they’ve created some of the most iconic supervillains ever, legends that have inspired everyone that came after them. Villains like Lex Luthor and the Joker have been influencing supervillains for decades, to the extent that nearly every supervillain you can name has been inspired by them in some ways. Darkseid is considered by many fans to be the epitome of what a villain should be, the ultimate evil of superhero comics. These three are just the tip of the iceberg; DC has the greatest villains you can imagine.
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Looking at DC’s roster of bad guys, there are some who jump to the top of the heap. They’re the legends, the antagonists that every hero fears. There’s one, though, that can be considered the ultimate villain, both by readers and by the heroes in-universe – the Anti-Monitor. The Anti-Monitor is one of the most important characters in the history of the comic industry, created to bring about the greatest change in the history of the comic industry. He was built into the ultimate threat, the perfect evil, the beast that everyone feared. However, that’s not really the case anymore. The Anti-Monitor has fallen from his formerly lofty pedestal, with DC creating – then squandering – the greatest supervillain ever.
The Anti-Monitor Was Supervillain Perfection
Crisis on Infinite Earth is the best event comic ever, as well as one of the most important. In the early ’80s, DC wanted to figure out a way to beat Marvel in sales and they decided that their multiverse was one of the big things holding them back. This led to planning the blockbuster series, which end the multiverse and Marvel up DC’s superheroes and supervillains. DC had some amazing and powerful villains, but Crisis was going to need something different. It was going to need the kind of villain that could credibly threaten the entire multiverse and the best way to get that was to just create a new one.
The Anti-Monitor isn’t exactly a deep villain, especially in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Readers were told that he’s the evil anti-matter version of the Monitor and he wanted to destroy the positive matter universes because he hated his brother. That was pretty much all there was to the character back then and it showed that brevity is the soul of wit. He was positioned as the ultimate evil, a force of destruction unlike anything that readers had seen before and it worked. Writer Marv Wolfman did a fantastic job of building up his threat, with George Perez’s Darth Vader on steroids armor making him a chilling presence on the page. He was powerful enough to kill Kryptonians with his bare hands and had spent millennia preparing himself for this final assault. He was the perfect monster for the story.
While he was defeated in Crisis, that was the entire point of the villain. He was a new kind of supervillain – the all-powerful event villain – and DC was able to sell him perfectly. They gave him some major kills and the highest body count in DC history. He was the monster that almost destroyed everything and in the years after Crisis, he was built up even more, spoken of in hushed tones by the most powerful heroes and villains. The heroes considered him their greatest enemy, the one who almost destroyed them and it helped build up his legend even more. He was the perfect one and done villain, a portrait of ultimate evil who fueled the biggest story in comic history.
Things would have been fine if DC would have kept him dead, but that’s one of the problems with superhero comics. It’s a business predicated on nostalgia and when Crisis‘s anniversary came along, it led to the return of the character. Honestly, things were fine for the first few years, but that was mostly because he mostly appeared in the background of stories like “The Sinestro Corps War”. It was his return in the New 52 that did most of the damage.
The thing about the Anti-Monitor is that he’s the perfect villain of a story where he’s the big bad. However, put him in any other story and he loses his luster. Part of this is because of his simplicity, but a big part is because he has to lose more. His legend was partly built because he spanked the heroes for 11 issues and only lost in the last one. He was seemingly unstoppable, and once you took that away from him, he lost what made him special, something compounded when Perpetua was introduced and he was made her son. It demystified his mythos, which was really all he had left. They had built the ultimate evil but were able to make him just another evil.
DC Went to the Anti-Monitor Well Too Many Times in the 21st Century
The Anti-Monitor was created to be the villain for the biggest story in DC history and he was perfect for that. He was built into an implacable force of destruction, one that the heroes would probably never be able to beat again because of Crisis‘s destruction of the DC Multiverse. Even destroyed, he was feared and his legend grew. However, this is American superhero comics, and they just can’t leave well enough alone. The villain was brought back and has been on a cycle of diminishing returns ever since.
It’s not so much that they’ve changed anything about the character, it’s just that using him outside of the very particular parameters he was created for expose the weaknesses of the villain. He’s a bad guy that was made to be the final boss, so bringing him into stories where he wasn’t the final boss didn’t really work. It’s gotten to the point where the villain is no longer the feared legend he was, but just another old event villain who has been brought back too many times. Overexposure can doom a character and it worked its foul magic on the Anti-Monitor.
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