5 DC Villains Who Defied Their Evil Natures, Including Pop Culture’s Most Famous Villainous Ex

DC Comics has created some amazing villains over the decades. Bad guys like Lex Luthor, the Ultra-Humanite, the Joker, Vandal Savage, Per Degaton, Two-Face, Cheetah, and loads more first appeard in the Golden Age, setting the standards for what supervillains would be in the days to come. The rise of Marvel would lead the publisher to have to change their ways, taking their heroes and villains in new directions. Eventually, we’d slowly but surely start to get villain redemptions. It started small, mostly with low-level villains or bad guys who were made to become heroes, but eventually big-name supervillains would start to get redemptions, adding complexity to their characters.

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Not every villain redemption works; sometimes, a character is just too good of a villain to be a cool hero. Other times, though, it works out perfectly. The redeemed villains made great heroes; even when they went back to villainy, fans look back fondly at their time as heroes. These five DC Comics villains were able to become superheroes, and one of them has become the most popular ex-girlfriend ever.

5) Lex Luthor

Lex Luthor is DC’s most unhinged genius and I’m sure a lot of people find it weird that he’s on this list. Luthor is one of the greatest supervillains ever created, if not the best. Without Lex, so many other supervillains wouldn’t exist; if you love Doctor Doom, you better realize how much he owes to Superman’s greatest foe. One of the reasons why Luthor has been able to stay relevant for almost a hundred years is because he’s one of the mutable characters in the comic industry. He has such a rich history that you can use him in just about any role in a comic.

Lex has gotten a few redemptions over the years, especially in the last ten years. In fact, he’s right now a member of the Justice League and helping foil Darkseid’s latest plot. He’s been working with the heroes for the last few years and it’s been fantastic. Heroic Lex Luthor is such a great character; the way that he plays off the heroes is fantastic. Lex as a hero is a strange idea but it works out way better than anyone would have expected.

4) Catman

Catman is sort of like Batman, if he wasn’t all that great at his job. He was a rich man who decided to use his love of cats and his fortune to become a criminal, battling against Batman with cat-themed weapons and technology. He came about in the Silver Age, when gimmick villains like him were the rule, but he was never really meant to be a major villain. He would show up in a single issue story, get his butt kicked, and then go back to obscurity. He’d come back to prominence in Green Arrow‘s “The Archer’s Quest”, which lead to him joining the Secret Six in Villains United.

This was the move that made Catman cool, finally. He was perfect for the team and would go on to become one of the major members of the group. Fans really liked him and he got even more attention than ever. He’s come out as bisexual, leading to the fan-favorite Cat-Shot ship (Catman and Deadshot). Catman was a character who could have faded away and no one would have missed him but his redemption showed that there are no bad characters.

3) Black Adam

Black Adam was introduced waaay back in the Golden Age of comics. He was one of several evil opposites of the original Captain Marvel (seriously, his rogues gallery has several bad guys who use a magic word to gain a variety of superpowers); in his case, he was the former champion of the Wizard Shazam, except the power made him evil. He’d spend years as a villain, but all of that would change in the late ’90s. The character became an anti-hero and ended up in the Justice Society’s orbit.

Adam wanted to be a hero again and went back to using his violent ways. He freed his home country of Khandaq and took it over, creating a haven for any metahuman that didn’t like the rules. Black Adam’s redemption made him more popular than ever, leading to the movie that destroyed his fortunes as a character. However, comic fans still love Black Adam, with many of us waiting for his next big push (until then, the Christopher Priest/Rafa Sandoval 12-issue maxiseries from 2022 will have to do; it was fantastic).

2) Catwoman

Catwoman is one of the first major Batman villains, first appearing alongside the Joker in Batman #1. She was played as a femme fatale immediately, given a flirty relationship with the Dark Knight. Over the decades, this would transform and the two would become on-again, off-again lovers, with Selina’s lifestyle causing them to break-up (except on Earth-Two, where they ended up getting married and having a child). However, Batman Returns made Catwoman more popular than ever, along with Batman: The Animated Series, and she was given her first solo ongoing series, one that would begin her redemption in earnest. She was still a thief, she just stole from the people who could afford it.

Since then, she’s become a part of that raft of female characters who always have their own solo books. Her books usually sell rather well, too; her current solo series has been running longer without being restarted than nearly every Marvel series being published. She’s become the most popular ex-girlfriend of Batman, making her the most popular ex-girlfriend ever.

1) Harley Quinn

DC has introduced lots of characters outside comics, but none of them have reached the level of Harley Quinn. Quinn was first introduced in the seminal Batman: The Animated Series, voiced by Arlene Sorkin, as the Joker’s girlfriend/head henchwoman, quickly becoming one of the show’s most beloved character. She’d make her comic debut in Batman: Mad Love, which took place in the animated series continuity, and would make her DCU debut during “No Man’s Land”. Since then, she’s gotten more and more popular, to the extent that she’s been positioned alongside icons like Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Nightwing as the most well-known DC characters.

Harley became one of the superhero poster children of Hot Topic, helping her become even more popular than ever with younger generation. Her current relationship with Poison Ivy is one of the most beloved ships in DC history and her solo books always sell rather well. She’s become one of the biggest icons in comics and her redemption will always be one of the smartest decisions that DC ever made.

What are your favorite DC villain redemptions? Anyone you think that I should have included? Sound off in the comment section below.

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