10 DC Characters Weaker Than Superman Who Could (In Theory) Kill Him

8. Zatanna

People often say that Superman's second major weakness is magic - that's wrong. It's not a specific weakness of his, it's just that he's no more invulnerable to it than the average person i.e. in the same way a shotgun blast to the face would kill me, magic can kill Superman - it doesn't mean shotguns are specifically a "weakness" of mine.

That said, the fact that he isn't specifically invulnerable to it means that someone who possesses enough of it could indeed kill him. Zatanna is a character whose magic is pretty potent and the specific nature of her spells mean that she could quite easily kill the man of steel. She is a member of the Homo Magi race (DC's name for magically empowered humans) and as such is genetically gifted with great magical talent. She has a vast number of spells at her disposal, which she usually casts by speaking backwards (so, for example, if she wants to put someone to sleep using magic, she would say "peels").

However, the backwards-speaking is not always necessary for her to cast spells. With that in mind, being so powerful, simply saying "eid" ("die" backwards) to Superman should cause him to collapse dead on the spot (or "edicius timmoc", which is "commit suicide" backwards, or any derivation of such a spell). Of course, Zatanna is one of many magic users in the DC universe who could, in theory, kill Superman, but in this instance we're using her as the poster-girl. Of course, physically, she doesn't even come close to Superman and at base level the man of steel is considerably more powerful than her, but she definitely has it in her to finish him off.