DC's villains have proven to be superlatively dangerous over the years. While the DC Multiverse is full of "normal" villains who depend on their brains and skills to defeat the heroes, superpowered villains use their powers against their heroic enemies. Superpowers are by their very nature nonsensical, but many of DC's villains take it to the next level.
There are plenty of DC villains out there whose powers are quite ridiculous. Whether it's the powers themselves, aspects of them, or how they got them, looking too closely at the powers of some DC villains shows how little they make sense.
10 Poison Ivy Getting A Connection To The Green Makes No Sense
Batman's superpowered foes challenge him in interesting ways, testing the Dark Knight. Poison Ivy in particular has been a lot harder to beat since she forged her connection with the Green. It allows her to control plant life around her, and she's even been able to create a new body from scratch. Ivy was always a big villain, but her powers took her to the next level.
That said, the origin of Poison Ivy's newest powers makes it all malarkey. Her love of and work with plants gave her this connection to Earth's life force, but if that's how easy it is to get the power of the Green, anyone can do it. Maybe The Green's just a sucker for a pretty face but countless groundskeepers and gardeners should have the power of the Green.
9 Clayface Somehow Copied Other Metahuman Powers
Over the years, eight different criminals have taken up the mantle of Clayface, but the most well-known to modern audiences is Matt Hagen, the second Clayface. Hagen was popularized in Batman: The Animated Series, although his origin on the show was basically Basil Karlo's, the first Clayface.
In the comics. Hagen gained his powers by being immersed in a pool of protoplasm. There was nothing special about it, which is weird enough, but the strangest aspect of Hagen's powers was his ability to copy other superhuman powers when he made himself look like other metahumans. Clayface's powers were supposed to let him look like other people, not become them.
8 Titano's Kryptonite Powers Should Kill Him
Titano is a giant chimpanzee who has fought Superman many times over the years. He's a kaiju-sized monster, with all the strength that implies, and has the agility of a chimp. At his size, this can cause massive amounts of damage. On top of that, he can fire off blasts of Kryptonite radiation, which has made him a particularly dangerous foe for Superman.
Titano's Kryptonite powers come with a problem, though. Kryptonite radiation is like any other radiation and causes cancer and death with long-term exposure. Titano's exposure to Kryptonite energy should have killed him ages ago.
7 The Source Of Doomsday's Power Is Nonsense
Among DC's scariest monsters, Doomsday deserves his reputation. He's the beast that killed Superman, making him the ultimate monster. He did it all with brute strength, bludgeoning the Man of Steel to death over the course of a long cross-country battle. Doomsday was able to accomplish this because he was an ancient Kryptonian bioweapon, made to destroy anything.
However, looking at the source of Doomsday's powers makes them fall apart. Basically, Kryptonian scientists took a boy and killed him. Then cloned him and killed the clone in a different way, ad nauseum. Somehow, this made the clones evolve, giving them strength, invulnerability, and bone spurs. Doomsday's origin sounds extremely metal but it's also completely ridiculous.
6 Darkseid's Omega Effect Only Kills Unimportant Characters
Darkseid is DC's greatest villain, an implacable force of corruption and evil. The Lord of Apokolips is the God of Evil, which explains his powers rather well; he's as powerful as a god should be. His most potent power is the Omega Effect, powerful eyebeams that follow a target anywhere and kill with one hit.
The problem with Darkseid's Omega Beams is they only kill minor characters. Darkseid is a god; if he has a power that's supposed to be a one-hit kill, it should be a one-hit kill regardless of the character he's using it on. Even unpowered characters like Batman have survived Omega blasts, making them a cool name without much substance.
5 Superboy-Prime's Powers Shouldn't Work Outside His Universe
Superboy-Prime is the strongest Superman villain. The pre-Crisis Kryptonian has the unbelievable power levels of the Silver Age Superman. He can move planets with ease, fly so fast he can break the time barrier and similarly impossible things. The fact that Kryptonian powers work at all doesn't make any sense, but that goes double for Prime.
Superboy-Prime has the same weakness to Kryptonite and magic as Superman, but can only be affected by magic and Kryptonite from his universe. The same rules should apply to yellow sunlight. Since DC claims the Earths of the Multiverse are all vibrating at different frequencies, that should affect yellow sunlight as well, making it unusable as Prime's power source.
4 Sinestro's Power Ring Was Wrecked By The Emotional Spectrum
Sinestro is Hal Jordan's greatest enemy; the two of them have clashed since Jordan learned the truth about Sinestro's fascist tendencies. Sinestro was stripped of his GL ring and went to Qward in the anti-matter universe, where he forged a yellow ring that worked by using fear. Eventually, he formed an entire Sinestro Corps of fear-powered Lanterns.
DC eventually explained that fear was a fundamental energy in the universe. Instead of the ring using yellow energy that the wielder could mold through fear, the yellow energy was fear. So why did Sinestro even need a ring? Many beings in the cosmos are afraid or can cause great fear. They should be able to tap into this energy without rings.
3 Gorilla Grodd's Telepathy Never Really Fit The Character
Gorilla Grodd is the Flash's most savage enemy. Unlike the rest of his people in Gorilla City, Grodd is monstrous, using his strength and telepathic power to conquer everything in his way. He's battled the Flashes, both Barry and Wally, many times and has been a member of every major DC supervillain team.
Grodd's telepathy is the power that pushes the character into nonsensical territory. An intelligent gorilla with super strength and agility makes a kind of sense. Giving him telepathic powers takes the whole thing in a strange direction, as Grodd is an inherently physical character and telepathy doesn't fit his gimmick.
2 Reverse-Flash's Negative Speed Force Has Never Made Sense
The Reverse-Flash is the Flash's most powerful villain. Eobard Thawne has been battling Barry Allen for years, out to completely destroy the man he once revered. It was later revealed that Thawne's speed powers came from the Negative Speed Force, the anti-matter to the Speed Force's matter as it were, giving him powers Allen didn't have.
However, right from the start, Reverse-Flash's powers made no sense. The opposite of the Speed Force should have been something like the Still Force, which would debut later. Somehow, Thawne's red lightning was able to eat other speedsters, but not Barry since that would have ruined the plot. Thawne was also able to change the timestream as much as he wanted, something few other speedsters could do, no matter how fast they ran.
1 Eclipso Shouldn't Have Powers At All
Among DC's most powerful magic users, Eclipso is rightly feared. The former Angel of Wrath is immensely powerful and crafty, with the power to beat the most powerful teams of heroes and control the minds of anyone around him. Eclipso also knows amazing magic and at one point was even more powerful than he is today.
As the Angel of Wrath, Eclipso enjoyed destroying mortals too much, so he was robbed of his role and imprisoned in the Heart of Darkness diamond. He lost a lot of his powers, but why does he still have any? God easily could have just taken away all of Eclipso's supernatural status. The fact he still has powers makes no sense.