Wonder Woman is one of the most popular and beloved characters in all of comics, being the archetypal superheroine that all others strive to live up to. She is a member of DC’s Trinity, and so stands shoulder to shoulder with Batman and Superman as the height of heroism in the DC Universe. And yet, despite her undeniable status as one of the greats, her supervillain lineup is one of the weakest in all of DC Comics. Not just that these characters are weak physically, although that is a problem for a decent portion of them, but also that her rogues gallery lacks any of the impact or staying power that Wonder Woman’s contemporaries have. Wonder Woman’s villain cast is weak, and that’s a major problem.
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Wonder Woman’s Villains are Forgettable
Despite the fact that she is the most famous superheroine of all time and has stood as a core member of the Justice League since its founding, she lacks the famous rogues galleries that the superheroes around her have. Batman has possibly the most famous rogues of all time, everyone knows plenty of Superman’s enemies, and even characters like the Flash have pretty famous villains they battle against. Joker, Bane, Lex Luthor, Bizarro, Reverse Flash, Gorilla Grodd, everyone knows these supervillains, even people who aren’t fans of the character. Now take a look at who Wonder Woman fights on a regular basis. Honest to God, if I asked a random person off the street to name ten Batman villains I bet they could, but I think they’d struggle to name even five of Wonder Woman’s rogues.
This isn’t to say that Wonder Woman has zero memorable villains. Everyone who’s heard of Diana has heard of her incredible rivalry and friendship with Cheetah, and evil gods like Ares are always going to be remembered for their incredible stances against the Princess of Themyscira. There’s Grail, the daughter of Darkseid, and the Sovereign who are two newer villains I guarantee are instant classics that will be showing up in plenty of incredible Wonder Woman comics in the future. But what about the supervillains beyond them, or the classic WWII baddies she would fight? I refuse to believe the majority of people knew who Dr. Psycho was before the Harley Quinn TV show. And who are the others she traditionally fights? Well, when Tom King assembled Wonder Woman’s own version of the Sinister Six, he included some of the above classics, alongside Wonder Woman’s other memorable villains like Silver Swan and Giganta, but he also included Angle Man. Nobody knew who Angle Man was prior to King’s run.
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But that’s just Tom King’s love of highlighting and reinventing obscure characters, like he did with Kite Man, right? That’s a nice thought, until you realize that when you Google Wonder Woman’s villains one of the top responses is Maxwell Lord. Wonder Woman famously only fought him once, when she snapped his neck. She has some classic villains that she goes up against, but she deserves to have a cast that is iconic like Batman’s.
Wonder Woman’s Villains are Physically Weak
One of the contributing factors to Wonder Woman’s rogues gallery being so forgettable is that a large majority of them are far weaker than a character who can go toe to toe with Superman should have to contend with. Every superhero has a laundry list of forgettable and weak villains, that’s just a byproduct of living through the Silver Age, but it really feels like Wonder Woman has a disproportionate amount of them. For every Circe there’s a Mouse Man, Hypnota, and Doctor Poison. I’m not saying that any of these villains are bad characters, I love all of them, but the majority of them are far from physical matches for Wonder Woman. Most are nowhere even close to approaching her level of strength.
It also really seems like Wonder Woman has a disproportionate amount of sorcerers, necromancers, and mind controllers in her gallery. The majority of her villains lack the ability to hit as hard as Wonder Woman. That’s not inherently a bad thing. After all, Superman is renowned for his unmatched strength, and his greatest enemy is Lex Luthor, who is a normal man in terms of power. However, the Man of Steel has dozens of villains who can match him blow for blow. Wonder Woman doesn’t. Besides the standouts like gods and Cheeta, I fully believe a more street-level hero like Batman could defeat about eighty percent of Wonder Woman’s villains. When you’re a hero as strong as Wonder Woman, that’s a clear sign you’re being underutilized.
Wonder Woman is one of the strongest and most skilled fighters in the DC Universe, but she rarely gets a chance to show what she can do. That is entirely the fault of her villains, the majority of which work best from behind the scenes, and would crumble from less than three hits from the Princess of the Amazons. She deserves to fight people as iconic and tough as she is, but she almost always has to settle for less with her rogues gallery. Wonder Woman needs a revamp of her villains, or at least for them to get major boosts to their power and charisma. There’s plenty of potential in all of them, it just has to be unleashed.
