10 Best New DC Characters Of The 21st Century

It may seem nowadays that there's an endless stream of speedsters in the DC Universe, but back in 2001 there was became a need for the third Flash (Wally West) to fight an adversary as great as Eobard Thawne was to his predecessor, Barry Allen. The vacuum created by Thawne's absence was eventually filled by Hunter Zolomon - a whole two years after his character's debut.

Before becoming Zoom, Zolomon was forced to bare tragedy after tragedy. At a young age, his father murders his mother, having already killed six other girls, before being shot in the head by police. The traumatising event left Zolomon obsessed with criminal psychology, eventually joining the FBI where he would meet his future wife, Ashley. After a mission goes wrong, leaving Ashley's father dead and Zolomon's hip fractured, Ashley abandons him and he is fired by the FBI.

Of course it doesn't stop there. Zolomon moves to the Police Department in Central City at a desk job, where he befriends Wally West. When West refuses to go back in time and erase these tragedies, Zolomon makes an oath to make Wally suffer.

At this point, it's time to accentuate these motivations, because it's Zolomon's reasoning that warrants his place in this list. He doesn't want to make Wally suffer out of a deluded form of revenge, he wants to create a tragedy in Wally's life in order to make him a better hero. Zolomon becomes convinced that - unlike Barry - Wally's smooth life prevents him from being fully compassionate to those that have suffered. In the moment, the reader is forced to consider the psychology of so many heroes, many being born from tragedy, and question whether or not that's who they would be without it.

Between the psychological reasoning and the sadistic imagery, Hunter Zolomon sets himself apart from, not just the other speedsters, but from all comic book villains.