10 Twisted Comic Book Telepaths You Don't Want Inside Your Head

3. Maxwell Lord (DC)

First Appearance: Justice League #1 Maxwell Lord is a genius businessman, and someone who developed mind-control powers in later life. He was introduced as a man with a good heart whose main flaw was that he was an opportunist who wouldn't hesitate to stoop quite low to gain an advantage if he had to. That said, he was instrumental in developing the Justice League into the Justice League International and was, as such, seen as more of a heroic character. That is, until his true colours came to light. Infinite Crisis was the point that showed just how devious Lord actually is. He had a deep-lying mistrust of superheroes and had been close to them in order to keep them in check. He decided that he wanted to exterminate them all and did his best to do exactly that. He did things like control Superman into brutally beating Batman (making him believe that the caped crusader was Brainiac) and later sent the Man of Steel after Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman made the discovery of Lord's antics and broke his neck, killing him. What made Lord most dangerous was twofold. First, he presented himself as a good man, allowing him to get close to the heroes he despised. Second, he could manipulate people in a non-obvious way - they would go about their daily lives as normal, without looking "zombie-like" whilst under his control. He would get nosebleeds when he controlled people as a side-effect and, when he was controlling large numbers of people, he'd bleed from his eyes. Given how awful he turned out to be, we don't really care.