50 Greatest Super Villains In Comic Book History

50. Anti-Monitor

(Write-up by Nick Tylwalk, Bam Smack Pow Editor)

Despite a silly name and a so-so character design (which was actually even worse when he first appeared), the Anti-Monitor blew my mind as a kid. Here was a villain so powerful that even all the super heroes from worlds throughout the DC Multiverse were barely enough to stand up to him. And his scheme wasn’t something as mundane as taking over the world. No, the Anti-Monitor wanted to destroy everything, annihilating universe after universe with his seemingly unstoppable wave of anti-matter.

That was heady stuff for a young comics reader. It also helped that the story in which he played a central role, Crisis on Infinite Earths, was a tale told on a scale unheard of at the time of its 1985 publication. Not only did it tinker with the very fabric of DC continuity, which changed radically in its aftermath, it killed off several beloved characters in ways that were truly heroic. Both the Flash and Supergirl were among the casualties of the battle to stop the Anti-Monitor, and their deaths held up surprisingly long by today’s standards.

It’s true that Anti-Monitor was basically a zero in the personality department, and even his place in the cosmic pecking order took a drastic step downward when Blackest Night made him the pawn of another villain. That wasn’t really his fault, nor was the fact that he was basically a one-trick pony. You made your move to destroy the multiverse and insert yourself as the creator of a brand new universe, and you failed. What else you got?

I wouldn’t ever expect to see this guy pop up in any Warner Bros. movies, and he’s not likely to come up in conversation with more casual fans, but given his historical significance to super hero comics, I was glad to see Anti-Monitor squeeze onto the last spot on this list.

Next: No. 49: Gamma rays gone bad