8 Comic Book Characters That Broke Superman

3. Darkseid - Superman: The Animated Series

Superman Darkseid Legacy
Warner Bros.

Superman: The Animated Series is all kinds of underrated. Yes, it may not be consistent as Batman: The Animated Series or even its successor shows Batman Beyond and Justice League, but it wasn't short of some tremendous arcs - especially the ones that drew upon Jack Kirby's Fourth World.

STAS could trace its roots back to John Byrne's run on the character, and one of the best elements it took was the feud between Supes and Darkseid. The show goes to some tremendously dark places over the course of its three season run, and nowhere more-so when Darkseid's concerned.

In Season 2, the Lord of Apokolips leads an all out invasion of Earth, starting with Metropolis. Superman is there to meet him, and so are the boys in blue of the SCU, led by Dan Turpin, whose visual appearance and personality in the series were based on Darkseid creator and comics King himself, Jack Kirby.

As New Genesis arrives to scare Darkseid off Earth, he fires one last shot that kills Turpin, which causes Superman to fly into a fit of rage. The moment is SO shocking, while the funeral that follows also serves as a fitting tribute to Kirby's comics career.

Darkseid proves to be the source of much of Superman's anguish over the entire DCAU, culminating in one final battle in Justice League Unlimited where Supes refuses to hold back his power any longer. An all-time great sequence, from an all-time great show.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.