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Ah... The villains. It has been said that a hero is only as good as his villains. I'd say that that applies to comic universes as well. And the DCU certainly has its fair share of excellent bad guys. Let's talk about some of my favorites, shall we?

Doctor Polaris -- Oh dear me. What can I say about Doctor Polaris? The DCU's master of magnetism was fifty kinds of fun.

First of all, he had multiple personalities. Sure, there are plenty of DCU villains with MPD (Rose and Thorn, The Ventriloquist, etc.) but Doctor Polaris was truly the greatest. He was among the most deranged of DC's psychopaths. Only Polaris hated himself enough to create a female alternate personality whose sole purpose was to allow him to kick the crap out of himself. Now that's impressive.

And the costume. Ye gods, it's beautiful in a twisted way. The helmet with the weird fins. The knee-high boots. The fingerless gloves. The stylishly parted hair. The man was a walking nightmare, but somehow he managed to pull it off.

And Doc Polaris also scores points for actually being a doctor. There are plenty of people who call themselves "doctors" in the DCU, but Polaris is one of the few who actually had a medical degree.

Not that you'd have wanted him to perform any surgery. His magnetic powers made him potentially one of the most powerful villains in the DCU (as seen by his induction into the scary strike team in Infinite Crisis #1). He could do more than just mess with metal. The entire electromagnetic spectrum was open to him. That means heat, light, radiation -- all were at the Doc's beck and call.

You may have noticed the disturbing trend of the past tense in this missive. That's because dear Doctor Polaris bit the big one in the afore mentioned Infinite Crisis #1. At least he went out with style: he got blown up by the Human Bomb in spectacular fashion. He will be missed.