Explore the darkest side of beloved superheroes in comic books, from alternate universe versions of heroes to characters that undergo a complete personality shift to become villains.
When it comes to comics, the heroes are arguably the best part. They’re the good guys you get to root for, to look up to when you’re a kid as they suit up to take on threats and save the world.
But another part of what makes comics great is that there is no shortage of alternatives. Be it an alternate reality, a different timeline, or even different versions of beloved characters, comics do a great job of giving us a glimpse at the “what if” of it all. That means that, sometimes, we get dark versions of our beloved heroes and while they are all a little unsettling, there are just some that are just darker than others.
Here are the five darkest versions of beloved and iconic superheroes in comics. Some of these are alternative universe versions of the good guys while, in some cases, these are moments in time where the hero slipped into doing bad things that had major impact on their stories for a long, long time.
You could probably argue that this isn’t really a “dark” version of a hero because it’s simply a facet of Sentry, but considering that The Void is, in a lot of respects, his own entity we’re going to count it. While Robert Reynolds is a hero as Sentry with incredible superpowers, the dark side of his powers, The Void, is just as powerful and perhaps more so with some additional abilities—and none of them pleasant.
What makes The Void such a dark version of a beloved hero, in our book is that Sentry is often battling that aspect of himself. It’s even been said that for every good thing Sentry does, The Void tries to do something evil—and that’s terrifying. Sue Storm is an incredible character and a beloved hero, but her dark side doesn’t get nearly the credit she deserves.
First appearing when the Fantastic Four battled the Psycho-Man and Hate-Monger, Malice is the manifestation of everything dark about the Invisible Woman. She maintains Sue’s powers but is far more aggressive with them and can even create spikes and explosions. Perhaps more unsettling is that she’s even turned on her team. She’s cold, she’s crazy powerful, and she shouldn’t be messed with.
Less a dark alternative to Scarlet Witch, this is a rare case where a hero turns dark and in this case, may never be fully redeemed in the eyes of some. In 2004’s Avengers Disassembled, Wanda Maximoff has a complete mental breakdown after her suppressed memories of her lost twin children is triggered. Deeply traumatized, her chaos magic and reality-warping abilities go uncontrolled leading to her going completely crazy and even attacking her teammates.
It all lead to the House of M event and the infamous “No more mutants” that devastated mutant kind. You might be surprised that The Batman Who Laughs isn’t number one on this list. He is, after all he is a twisted, villainous version of Batman who is more like a twisted hybrid of the Dark Knight and the Joker.
He’s Batman’s worst nightmare made real, essentially but for all of that, there’s one dark take on a hero that is darker. Still, The Batman Who Laughs has done some horrific things, mainly launching a full-on assault on the main universe’s Batman as he plans to infect everyone in his wake with Joker Toxin.
One could argue that The Batman Who Laughs is way darker than Injustice Superman, but we disagree and for one big reason: Superman is such a symbol of goodness and hope that the idea of a version of Superman so twisted and broken that he becomes the villain is just bleak. After being tricked by the Joker into destroying Metropolis and killing Lois Lane, this Superman completely snaps emotionally and ends up turning into a devastating, ruthless, brutal dictator in the name of peace, a peace he maintains through fear.
He’s the antithesis of Superman as we know him and that makes him the darkest of them all.
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