Casual readers of comics or those that mainly watch movie adaptations may think DC is limited in the number of characters it has to work with. In truth, there are over 10,000 named characters in DC Comics, many of which readers have never heard of and will most likely never see again.
Superheroes are often designed to stick around, possibly helm their own line of books if they’re popular enough. Villains, on the other hand, are viewed as more disposable. Some show up for one or two story arcs and then disappear entirely, and writers aren’t afraid to make them as weird as possible. For every Joker, there are at least 50 villains nobody remembers, sporting wacky powers that make no sense.
10 Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man is Exactly What He Sounds Like
Part tree, part rock, and part Velociraptor, Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man is one of the weirdest characters out there. As his name implies, he has the power to change his body into any form of animal, vegetable, or mineral. This makes it all the stranger that he usually chooses to walk around as a strange amalgam of the three, with a bit of his original human body still showing.
While Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man has started to claw, branch, and rock-climb his way out of obscurity, appearing in the live-action Doom Patrol series, he is still the type of character that the average superhero fan would have no idea about. Like the minerals he turns into, readers need to start digging deeper into comics to find something this weird.
9 Tattooed Man Has Cool Powers and a Terrible Name
While Tattoed Man’s ability to create magical projections of his tattoos is cool and visually impressive, he suffers from very poor branding. Superhero and supervillain names often give readers an idea of what a character does. Green Arrow dresses in green and shoots arrows, The Riddler tells riddles. This makes the choice to call a character simply “Tattooed Man” a little baffling.
There have been several villains who have taken up the mantle of Tattooed Man, but none of them have really achieved the level of popularity that would make them a household name. Perhaps a name change would help.
8 Rictus’ Powers Included Him Vanishing From Comics
A relatively recent, but still obscure, character, Rictus feels a lot like the writers were making up his powerset as his short appearance in Red Hood and the Outlaws went along. The source of his powers is said to come from cybernetic enhancements, which give him the power to seemingly do whatever the writers needed him to do at any given moment.
Need a reason for a fight to go on for a while? Rictus mentions that he no longer gets tired. Does Rictus need to fly? His cybernetic enhancements can shift his density, which doesn’t explain how he can propel himself through the air. It seems readers weren’t meant to think too hard about this character, and apparently they didn’t since he quickly vanished after only appearing in 9 issues.
7 The Scales are Stacked Against Libra
Having lost both of his parents in “balance-related accidents,” Justin Ballantine became obsessed with the concept of equilibrium. As a counterbalance to the goodness of superhero teams, Libra has led several supervillain teams. At his most successful he even absorbed the powers of the Flash and Superman using a device he called the Energy Transmortifier.
Things only got stranger for Libra as time went on. At one point his essence was scattered and absorbed by the universe. Later, Desaad reassembled Libra into a New God of Apokolips. For such a powerful character, Libra has remained relatively unknown to casual comics fans. Perhaps he believes being both powerful and popular would tip the scales too far in his favor.
6 Skyhook Was Too Dark For His Own Good
Skyhook is an unsettling villain, not just in his appearance, but in his methods of villainy. Originally a serial killer known as Uncle Hook in 1880s London, being burned alive didn’t stop Skyhook. In fact, they only enhanced his abilities by turning him into a spikey white bat creature that could turn the children he kidnapped into similar beasts.
Skyhook has been largely absent from comics since the 1980s, only reappearing recently in some issues of Nightwing and Superwoman. Like other characters from the Dark Age of comics, he might have been a little too bleak of a concept for his own good.
5 Inque Has Yet to Make a Splash
Inque, like Harley Quinn, actually debuted in animation before making her way into the comics. Unlike Harley, this Batman Beyond villain has not enjoyed the same surge of popularity.
While comic books have plenty of shapeshifters and blob monsters, what makes Inque weirder than the others is her unique physiology. Any amount of her form that is separated from her main body still remains in contact with, and can even experience the pain of, the original body.
4 Fisherman Got Tangled Up in Aquaman’s Image Problem
When Fisherman first appeared in Aquaman back in 1965, he was just a normal guy who used a variety of gadgets. However, even the most casual fans know that Aquaman has a bit of an image problem, and seeing him get wrapped up in fishing line was not going to help with that.
In an effort to reinvent Fisherman to make him a more serious threat, it was revealed that his helmet was actually a Lovecraftian parasite that granted him superpowers. This added a weird new angle to this once very simple villain, but it wasn’t enough to elevate him out of obscurity.
3 Onomatopoeia Can’t Be Adapted
Onomatopoeia is one of the stranger Green Arrow villains, and that’s saying a lot when one of Green Arrow’s villains just makes people dizzy. He is a skilled fighter, but only seems to possess one real superpower: the ability to perfectly mimic the sounds around him. This villain earns his name by speaking only in onomatopoeias while fighting, a very fun gimmick as readers see him mimic the “blam” of firing guns and “fwushhh” of raging fires.
While a favorite of hardcore fans, Onomatopoeia has yet to go mainstream. One of the best ways for obscure comic book characters to gain popularity is to be adapted into a major live-action project. Unfortunately for Onomatopoeia, his creator, Kevin Smith, doesn’t think he could be accurately portrayed in any medium but comics.
2 Magpie Died Too Soon
A thief named after a bird obsessed with shiny things, Magpie might seem like a pretty basic supervillain. What makes her more interesting is her ability to create booby-trapped copies of whatever steals, leaving behind unpleasant surprises for her victims. Having her retain the bird-like obsession with shiny objects is also a weird quirk to give the character to make her stand out.
Fortunately for Magpie, she managed to gain a little more notice due to her appearance in one of the most recent incarnations of the Suicide Squad. Unfortunately for Magpie, she was killed off in the first issue, leaving most readers to just remember her as that weird bird girl who died.
1 Porcelain’s Concept Was Too Brittle
A member of the New 52 Secret Six, Porcelain stands out as having one of the weirdest and also most useless superpowers ever created. They have the ability to make objects more brittle, and they carry a large hammer to help break said objects.
Porcelain’s power is already only good in highly specific circumstances and is made even worse when it’s revealed it only works on already solid objects. While some obscure villains suffer from poor marketing or by being attached to lesser heroes, Porcelain seems to have been discarded for the lack of foresight put into their power set. This is especially disappointing, given they are one of the very few non-binary characters in comics.