10 Times Comics Made Terrible Villains Great
5. Black Hand - Blackest Night
Black Hand was a weird mishmash of ideas. Instead of having any sort of hand-related powers, he was a scientist who got his name from being the black sheep of the Hand family. He also believed that all old sayings were true for some reason and would let that shape his plans.
Despite professing to be “the criminal who cannot fail”, Black Hand’s plan to steal Green Lantern’s power failed when Hal exploited his weakness to being punched in the face. He would go on to top this by quitting villainy to open an adult theatre, then having a breakdown and going back to villainy only to have his hand turned to coal by The Spectre.
The only way for Green Lantern writer Geoff Johns to fix the character was to completely rewrite him. Black Hand became a death-obsessed nutjob and serial murderer who slept in an open grave.
As part of the Blackest Night event, he killed himself and came back as head of the Black Lanterns. Leading an army of superpowered zombies, he attacked DC’s heroes with their lost loved ones and summoned the dark god Nekron, who nearly wiped out all life on the planet.