Reviews by Kyle Ellis

Good ol' Hank Henshaw, managing to get into both Superman and Green Lantern's Rogues' Gallery is no small feat. Suffering from a cosmic accident that left Hank cursed with immortality, and drove his wife to madness, The Cyborg is a tragic figure who elicits our sympathies to a point. And then we realize just how evil he truly is.

Hank made his first appearance in Reign of the Supermen, soon after Kal-El's death by Doomsday's hands. If Hank wanted people to really believe he was Supes resurrected…ish, then he should have came up with a better look than half Last Son and half T-800. But in the end, convincing the President that he was Supes' heir was just one step toward his end game, which climaxed with his role in the destruction of Coast City, Hal Jordan's hometown.

Downloading his consciousness into a device planted on Doomsday is just one of the reasons why Hank is still alive and plaguing Superman; he may not have Anti-Monitor epic consequences for his villainy, but he is consistent. Which means he's most likely not going anywhere. Like he said himself during the Sinestro Corps campaign against the GL corps: "Over the years, I have been detonated, burned and disintegrated. Yet I continue to survive."

First Appearance: Batman: Vengeance of Bane #1
Best Writer: Chuck Dixon
Best Artist: Brian Bolland

Like The Joker, the scariest thing about Bane is his motives (or lack thereof). The beastly man infamously put Batman out of commission in the Knightfall comics, forcing a broken Bruce Wayne to let Jean-Paul Valley take over the Dark Knight mantle. Bane’s a terrifying foe, born in darkness and raised to thrive on terror—not endure it. As badly as he was botched in Batman and Robin, his first on-screen appearance, Tom Hardy later knocked the role out of the park in The Dark Knight Rises. — Tyler Kane

He might not be as tall as King Kong, or as talented a stage performer as Mighty Joe Young, but Flash comic villain Gorilla Grodd has one over on his big-screen cousins. This would-be world-conquering ape was granted extraordinary intellect and powerful psionic abilities after he and his tribe were exposed to a space-rock (an alien spacecraft in the character's retconned origin) that crashed into the African jungle.

Grodd's lust for power pits him against Solovar, ape-leader of the utopian Gorilla City. When Solovar is captured by humans, Grodd tracks him to Central City (with sinister intentions, of course) where he runs afoul of The Flash.

Since first appearing in The Flash #106 (May 1959), Grodd has assumed a dominate role in the DC Universe. He was once a leader in the short-lived Secret Society of Super-Villains, and is one of the few baddies to have nearly incapacitated Superman.

Much of Grodd's existence has been spent imprisoned in Gorilla City, but he's had little trouble breaking out at will -- seeking freedom each time he formulates another sinister plan to destroy humankind and take over the world. On numerous occasions, Grodd has sought out his old foe, The Flash, in hopes of killing him before he could foil his plans.

Over the years, Grodd has become more and more savage. In an especially gruesome incident, he ravages the African city of Kinshasa (see JLA Classified #103) and eats many of the inhabitants.

Outside of the comics realm, Gorilla Grodd is a recurring villain in the DC Animated Universe, and was featured in the Justice League Heroes videogame.

With a name like Vandal Savage, this guy isn't cut out for being anything else but a villain. Or in his case, a supervillain whose crimes date back, well, before we even wrote dates down.

An equal-opportunity offender to a range of superheroes (Flash, the JSA and Martian Manhunter to name a few), Savage's immortality has allowed him to become quite the foe in the DC Universe. His violence is only matched by his brilliance; a tactician who comes close to matching Luthor's superior intellect. In between becoming a founding member of the Injustice Society and the events of Final Crisis, Savage found time to travel through time, and target the legacies and blood ties of several Golden Age superheroes.

Vandal Savage's genius is a product of a millennia of combat and warfare; a life spent defying boundaries and redefining what a threat really is. In short, he is a very bad man whose only limit is that he has none.

The X-Men have faced a lot of enemies who fear them simply for being different, but most of these foes have some sort of humanity that can be appealed to or reasoned with. Not so for the Sentinels. Giant, powerful robots, the Sentinels are perhaps the most frightening symbol of hatred against Mutants - machines created to hunt down those born different.

In their very first appearance, the Sentinels decided that the best way to protect humanity was to rule over it and that inclination was taken to its limit in the classic "Days of Future Past" story. There, we saw a future where the Sentinels are essentially the masters of humans and the scourge of Mutants, keeping them locked up in internment camps or simply murdering them outright. Who can forget the visual of a Sentinel disintegrating Wolverine himself?

Though they're mostly known for their uniformity and lack of individuality, there have been a couple of notable Sentinels, including their leader Master Mold and one particularly nasty version from the "Days of Future Past" timeline, Nimrod, who followed Rachel Summers back through time. Eventually, Master Mold and Nimrod would bizarrely be fused into another great X-Men threat, Bastian, whose seemingly human guise allowed him to spearhead Operation: Zero Tolerance, one of the most vicious government programs aimed against Mutants.

The X-Men version of the Terminators, the Sentinels are highly symbolic of the fear and hate Mutants must face.

Shredder, AKA Oroku Saki, is the arch-nemesis of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and their rat-master Splinter. A master in the art of Ninjutsu, Shredder is the leader of the Foot Clan, a fearsome group of warriors and assassins involved in organized crime.

In the original Mirage Comics, revered ninja Hamato Yoshi, once owner of Splinter (pre-mutation), played a key role in Shredder's corruption when he killed his brother in a feud over a woman. Hellbent on revenge, Shredder rose up through the ranks of the Foot Clan and ultimately travelled to New York where he destroyed the powerful Yoshi.

What Shredder didn't count on (we don't really blame him), is that Yoshi's pet rat would mutate into anthropomorphic form and become Sensei to a group of highly-skilled turtle ninjas (also anthropomorphic) and seek to avenge his death.

The Turtles' actually defeated Shredder during their first encounter with him, but a Foot Clan mystic brought the villain back to life using the worms that fed on his body. And lest you forget, the reanimated worm-Shredder's defeat was only short-lived, as he was brought back to life yet again as a Shark-like monster.

Shredder's classic look is samurai-inspired armor, with metal plaques on his shoulders, forearms, hands, and shins. The armor, creator Kevin Eastman says, was inspired by cheese graters. He sports a cape. And Shredder's face, except for his eyes, is obscured by a metal mask.

The Archie Comics version of Shredder, whom most children of the '80s would have come to know before discovering Eastman and Peter Laird's early work, is more of a goofball bad guy.

These issues were initially based on the animated series which saw Shredder take on several different wacky incarnations, including the Ch'rell Utrom version (a gooey stomach-brain creature who lived inside a fighting robot), in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles animated series.

Shredder has appeared in all of the original TMNT videogames, often as the "boss" of the final level.

Helmut J. Zemo, the son of Baron Heinrich Zemo, followed in his father's footsteps to become a supervillain. How proud he must be. Beginning his career as an engineer, he was livid when he heard the news that Captain America was coming out of retirement. Why was he so mad? Oh, Mr. America sort of killed his father.

He started out under the moniker The Phoenix, not to be confused with Jean Grey, and quickly captured Captain America. He then accidentally fell into a vat of boiling Adhesive X (the most powerful bonding agent invented) and was thought to be dead. He wasn't. He just looked like a wax figure. Think Joan Rivers.

Years later, he appeared again, allied with Primus, and kidnapped Captain America's friend Arnold Roth to lure the hero into a trap. It didn't work. Later, Zemo was trained under the tutelage of Red Skull and his daughter Mother Superior. Apparently he has a thing for kidnapping Captain America's friends since his buddy David Cox was next. This time, he brainwashed Cox and got him to battle the Captain.

Zemo even once formed an updated version of the group Masters of Evil. They invaded the Avengers Mansion, capturing Captain America and the Black Knight and brutally beating Hercules and Jarvis, in one of the Avengers darkest hours. He then subsequently fell off the roof. He also fell into a volcano once.

Excluding all the falling, Zemo is known for being a genius, skilled in combat and is an excellent marksman. The Moonstones even granted Helmut superhuman powers including but not limited to light and gravity manipulation, molecular phasing, flight and the ability to create spatial warps. In recent years, his plans grew more diabolical, including his formation of the Thunderbolts - in actuality all members of the Masters of Evil, whom Zemo had pose as superheroes in order to conquer from within the system. While that plan ultimately failed, the Thunderbolts have continued on, in various incarnations - some seemingly noble, others extremely dangerous.