Image Comics has some villains whose power makes many in Marvel and DC pale in comparison. In 1992, several high-profile artists broke away from Marvel Comics and founded Image Comics, a company where they published creator-owned properties where they kept all copyrights. The three creators who launched the company included Todd McFarlane (Spider-Man), Rob Liefeld (X-Force), and Jim Lee (The X-Men). Together, they built a juggernaut that remains popular to this day, with creators like Erik Larsen, Robert Kirkman, and Mark Millar adding titles that sold as well as, if not better, than titles from the big two comic book companies.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Looking back over the three-plus decades of Image Comics, here are the most powerful villains introduced in that comic book line
10) Nemesis
Mark Millar is the man behind the Marvel Comics “Civil War” series, and he ended up going on to make creator-owned comics that have made him a very successful man over the years. Comics like Kick-Ass and Wanted have become big-screen movies, but one of his more dangerous works still hasn’t been adapted for a movie or streaming series. In 2010, Millar and Steve McNiven introduced the world to Nemesis, with the question being, what if Batman were a villain?
It should be noted that Nemesis debuted at Marvel’s Icon imprint, but it ended up moving over to Image Comics before jumping to Dark Horse. The joke is that Batman is smart and wealthy enough to have a way to beat any villain. Nemesis’s main power is the same, with a high intellect and a never-ending supply of money, but he chooses to become a criminal and terrorist with his gifts. His power was shown in Image Comics, where the 2023 reboot brought a new Nemesis into the Millarworld, where Nemesis and Wanted’s Wesley Gibson killed most of the other heroes there from titles like Kick-Ass and Kingsman. Even though time travel shenanigans reversed things, it was still an impressive feat.
9) Angstrom Levy
Angstrom Levy is a villain from the world of Robert Kirkman’s Invincible. He debuted in Invincible #16 (2004) by Kirkman and Ryan Ottley. Levy is a villain who is recognizable for his grotesquely enlarged head. His power is dimensional manipulation, opening portals across countless parallel universes, so his danger comes from intellect and multiversal reach rather than raw strength. He wasn’t really a villain at first, but it was an accident caused by Mark Grayson that turned him evil
A botched experiment merged the knowledge and psyches of his multiversal counterparts into his mind and hideously deformed and maddened him, resulting in his obsession with killing Invincible since it was Mark whom he blamed for the incident. His biggest move in the comics killed hundreds of thousands of people. He unleashed evil alternate-universe versions of Invincible into Mark’s world, and by the time Mark stopped them, they had already devastated his home
8) Ananke
Ananke is the main villain in The Wicked + The Divine (2014-2019) by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie. The story follows a teenager named Laura as she communicates with the Pantheon, a group of 12 people who realize they are reincarnated gods. They gain superpowers and fame thanks to this, but the twist is that they will die in two years as something known as the Recurrence. This leads to Ananke, who, it turns out, is the reason for the Recurrence
Ananke is the ancient guide of the Recurrence, which takes place every 90 years, and this is a cycle Ananke has overseen for millennia. The twist is that the sacrifices that led to the deaths of the Pantheon members were all lies, and Ananke was actually murdering the gods each recurrence to keep her immortality. Her power was immense, with her beheading Lucifer as well as killing every single incarnation of Persephone. This series featured her final run before she finally fell to the gods
7) Mammon
Mammon is one of the high hell-lords in Spawn, and he debuted in Spawn#87 (1999) by Brian Holguin and Greg Capullo. He was the near-omnipotent ruler of the Ninth Sphere of Hell, outclassing Malebolgia, who is dismissed as “a fly in comparison.” He is also a master manipulator behind many of the series’ key events. His backstory sees him as one of The Forgotten, the angelic muses who stayed loyal to God but refused to fight in the War in Heaven. Unlike the others, Mammon was cast into Hell.
He proved his power early on when he seized his throne by killing the previous Ninth-Sphere ruler, Thurifer, and ruled for roughly 20,000 years. Unlike many of the hell-lords in Spawn, he is presented as a suave, gentleman-dealmaker who buys souls, the schemer to Malebolgia’s brute. However, his long-game was to seek the Throne of Creation to remake the universe in his image, although only Satan can grant certain powers, weakening his role
6) The Violator (The Clown)
Easily, one of the most famous of the Image Comics villains is The Violator from Spawn. He is the demonic servant of Malebolgia and Spawn’s recurring tormentor, debuting in Spawn #2 (1992) by Todd McFarlane. He is best known for his squat and foul-mouthed Clown disguise. The Violator is a shape-shifter whose true form is a towering demon. He is the eldest of the five Phlebiac Brothers, demons tasked with mentoring and corrupting new Hellspawn
He has super strength, regeneration, and transformation between the diminutive Clown and his monstrous Violator beast form. He can also alter his size, teleport, breathe fire, raise the dead, possess living bodies, and create demonic mutations. He also has a healing factor that makes him essentially immortal. Only a Hellspawn, an angel, or heavenly weapons can kill him. He remains popular thanks to the 1997 Spawn movie with John Leguizamo in the role, as well as the later HBO animated series
5) The Collector
The Collector is a Chew villain, created by John Layman and Rob Guillory. Chew is a series that introduces heroes and villains whose powers are based on eating certain foods. He is a recurring antagonist in the series, a cibopath who gets psychic impressions from what he eats. The scariest thing about him is that he murders and eats other food-powered people to permanently collect their abilities, becoming more powerful the longer he kills
He pretends to be a vampire, drinking victims’ blood to learn about them, and is hunted across the series by FDA agent Tony Chu (another cibopath). His cruelest kill targets a beloved member of Tony Chu’s family, his twin sister, in one of the series’ most shocking moments. What makes him important is that he kills across the entire 60-issue series, and he is the big boss that Chu has to find and beat before moving on to face his rival, Savoy. Collector’s power levels in the end were very high since he had killed and collected powers from countless cibopaths.
4) Conquest
Conquest is a villain from Invincible. He debuted in Invincible #61 (2009) by Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley as an elite, ancient Viltrumite enforcer who heads to Earth to force Mark to help his people in their goal to conquer the planet. Conquest is one of the oldest and strongest Viltrumites, noted for a cybernetic prosthetic arm and for treating combat as pure joy. He was the most physically dangerous one-on-one threat Mark faced before Thragg arrived
Among the most gruesome battles in the Invincible series, Conquest breaks Mark’s leg, impales and nearly kills Atom Eve, and beats Mark to near-death. Atom Eve resurrects herself, and Mark ends up forced to headbutt Conquest into unconsciousness, leaving him temporarily disfigured. Atom Eve’s near-death experience and Mark’s furious self-sacrifice show the extent of Conquest’s powers. Conquest was also a big part of the Invincibleanimated series, voiced by Jeffrey Dean Morgan, as it detailed much of this same story.
3) Malebolgia
Malebolgia was the first main antagonist of the Spawnseries at Image Comics. He debuted in Spawn#1 (1992) by Todd McFarlane as a major Lord of Hell ruling the Eighth Circle. He is the one who made the deal to have Al Simmons’ best friend kill him so that Al could return as a Hellspawn for Malebolgia. This made him Spawn’s creator, as well as his greatest and most personal enemy
For power, Malebolgia has mastery of necroplasm. He is the being who creates Hellspawn, including turning murdered mercenary Al Simmons into Spawn. Other powers include raising the dead, matter manipulation, super strength, and inducing hallucinations. He had ruled for roughly 70,000 years, amassing an undead army for the war against Heaven, one he intended to grow larger than anything Heaven, or he himself, could handle. His power was shown at its height when he killed Angela with her own weapon.
2) Satan
The most powerful villain in Spawn comics is Satan. He is the supreme ruler of Hell. For most of the series, it looked like Malebolgia was the Devil, but Satan is revealed as the true Prince of Darkness above every other hell-lord, including Malebolgia and Mammon. His power is roughly equal and opposite to God himself, the two effectively being the dual apex forces of the Spawn cosmology. In fact, the series eventually had God and Satan go to war with each other, and both were on equal ground
He debuted in the background in Spawn #158, and he was part of the apocalyptic endgame. His most important moment came in the “Armageddon” storyline, which ran from Spawn #150-164 by David Hine and Philip Tan, when Satan’s and God’s armies both converged to destroy Spawn, and Al Simmons tapped the power granted by Mother to wipe out both sides. Satan and God are depicted as so powerful that, with their armies gone, they battle alone on Earth and kill Spawn before Spawn resurrects everyone.
1) Grand Regent Thragg
The most powerful villain in all of Image Comics is Grand Regent Thragg from Invincible. His first appearance was in Invincible Returns #1 (2010) by Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley. He was the ruler of the Viltrum Empire and the main antagonist of the back half of Invincible. Thragg is explicitly written as the single most powerful Viltrumite, stronger than Omni-Man (Nolan) and Mark combined
Like all Viltrumites, he has the ability of flight, near-invulnerability, and planet-breaking strength taken to the franchise’s absolute ceiling. He was Regent under Emperor Argall and effectively ruled Viltrum, later allying with and breeding an army from the insectoid Thraxans, fathering thousands of children. His most powerful moment was when he tore out Omni-Man’s heart, killing Nolan in Invincible #141, and then threw his own children at Mark as living projectiles, where they splattered because Mark was too durable to be hurt by them. Mark had to drag him into the sun to finally kill him.
What do you think? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
7 Most Powerful Characters in Valiant Comics, Ranked by Power Level
