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Sadist / The DCU

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The DCU

  • Batman:
    • Providing the main page quote is the flagrantly Ax-Crazy Black Mask, an Evil Counterpart of Bruce Wayne who went crazy and turned to crime after failing as a Corrupt Corporate Executive. Becoming a mob boss was how he found success, but torture was where he really found his passion in life, especially after he started feuding with Catwoman. In one particularly horrifying storyline, Black Mask kidnaps Selina's sister and brother-in-law, torturing the latter with power tools and then forcing the former to eat pieces of her husband's corpse after he succumbed to his injuries, including his eyeballs. By the time Selina arrived her sister was driven thoroughly into insanity and her friend Holly Robinson was on the verge of meeting a similar fate. Black Mask gets his in the end though... sort of.
    • The Joker is typically characterized this way as well. His original Golden Age incarnation was out simply to kill people and terrorize the city, and many later versions are, if anything, worse. Sometimes subverted, however, in that he's not out to just hurt others for its own sake, but when it's funny to do so, and he's been known to spare people when he finds it funny. For instance, in Emperor Joker, he got annoyed when one of his minions killed Superman (who had been turned into a dog) because he didn't see any humor in it. In a Judge Dredd crossover, he also teamed up with the Dark Judges but quickly got bored with doing nothing other than killing people.
    • How much is a case of Depending on the Writer, but all versions of the Scarecrow have some kind of sadism in them. One doesn't devote himself to causing fear so wholeheartedly as he without enjoying the terror he brings.
    • Ironically enough given the above, some incarnations of Batman himself verge on this, in particular his notorious ASBAR incarnation who gleefully brutalizes criminals while calling them strange things such as "boy of mine". Predating ABSAR Bats is The Dark Knight Strikes Again, in which Batman declares with satisfaction that striking terror is the best part of his job. Interestingly enough, both of these stories were written by Frank Miller, though he is far from the only creator who has written Batman as being just as little too into beating up criminals.
  • The Midnighter is a violent anti-hero of the ASBAR Batman sort, being distinguished from the former by two traits: being an Empowered Badass Normal compared to Batsy's vanilla Badass Normal and being confirmed to be compared to Batsy (who has frequently been coded as such but would never be made one outright).
  • Superman:
    • Brainiac likes to play The Stoic, but occasionally lets it slip how much he enjoys causing others pain, being especially prone to a Psychotic Smirk while abducting planets. Brainiac 13 is particularly sadistic; he could have killed Superman instantly, but took the time to torture him to death, because in his own words: "I have run simulations of your death 1,098,288,546 times; this one is a particular favorite."
    • Darkseid is a sadist on a tyrannical scale. He has built a galaxy-spanning empire as well as a Religion of Evil entirely on the concept of spreading misery and suffering and his self-proclaimed right to control, dominate, and enslave all life in the universe. All of his underlings are absolutely terrified of him and he often has them tortured or killed for the most trivial offences — or for no offence at all.
    • Desaad, one of Darkseid’s minions, is actually the God of Sadism, though of the depraved spineless bully variety rather than the relentless force of evil his master embodies.
    • The Bronze Age Superman villain Mongul is a psychological sadist of the first degree, who in the Superman story For the Man Who Has Everything locked Superman into a mental delusion that he could only escape by throwing away the things he cares about most. Superman was less than happy with Mongul upon finally escaping.
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Volume 1:
      • Priscilla Rich (Cheetah) kidnaps Gail Young and Brenda West to "hunt" them for fun even after she has already terrified Gail into working for her and has enough blackmail on Brenda to force her to and tortures them supposedly to force them to see they have no choice but to work for her since they have no hope of outrunning and escaping her when such an action was entirely unnecessary and she straight up tells them she's doing it for her own enjoyment. She also turned away from killing Di when she had her asleep and at her mercy with a kife posed over her heart because she wanted her to suffer.
      • Queen Clea really likes watching captives be tortured to death. She will set things up so that prisoners who didn't bend to her will and submit to her during their first round of torture are killed in painful and creative ways, or put through some kind of dangerous gauntlet for her while she looks on.
    • Volume 3: Shortly after her first homicidal rampage Genocide realizes that there are things humans fear more than death and that she actually gets even more enjoyment out of causing suffering and pain than she does out of straight-up slaughtering people. This does not mean she now intends to allow her victims to live in the long run though.

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