The Most Powerful Justice League Dark Members

Well all know Wonder Woman, the Amazonian princess, pillar of the Justice League, and roundly beloved doer of daring deeds. Not exactly the Justice League Dark sort, one might imagine, but she is, in fact, as of James Tynion IV and Alvaro Martinez's 2018 Justice League Dark series revamp. The denizens of the DC universe are just as confused by this as anyone — the series opens with Zatanna explaining, apparently not for the first time, why she is averse to joining Diana's "mysterious magic Justice League" — but fate forces the team together when Wonder Woman herself becomes the problem in need of magical solving.

As flashbacks reveal, Diana was "witchmarked" as a girl by Hecate, goddess of magic, who buried a sliver of her own power within the girl's soul. Years pass, and eventually, Hecate comes to take her magic back, no matter the cost or consequence. All of this comes to a boil in "The Witching Hour," an event that sees Wonder Woman fall entirely under the spell of the villainous sorcerers Circe, only to throw it off with the help of the ragtag team she put together. Wonder Woman might not spend much time in the magical margins, but as a demi-goddess Amazon with divinely-endowed powers, she's powerful enough to take anything the occult might throw at her.

As a stage magician who's also an actual sorceress, Zatanna is one of the canniest characters in the DC universe. Justice League Dark manages to put her through her paces on both fronts, confronting her with magical horror that threatens her act and the primordial chaos from which all magic springs. Luckily, she's more than up to the task of righting what's gone wrong in the magical sphere while keeping her stage outfits as crisply ironed as ever, and if there was ever a female superhero who deserved her own movie, it would be her.

As a member of the homo magi race, Zatanna is genetically linked to magic, which she channels through backwards verbal commands. If Zatanna shouts "tlah," whatever threatens her is forced to halt, and what she commands can be pretty much anything. The limits of Zatanna's power have never been written in stone. She's used her powers to heal, transmute matter, wipe her enemies' minds, teleport, and lob energy blasts, plus there's a vast array of one-off commands. On occasion, her powers have bordered upon godly, as when she predicted the future, opened multiple portals in the space-time continuum, and taken down eons-old deities. Even keeping her from speaking her commands out loud, via gagging or magical mouth-erasing, can't stop her. She'll just write her commands in whatever's available, even if that's her own blood. The depths of Zatanna's powers are, essentially, fathomless. Luckily for the DC universe, she uses them for good.

Madame Xanadu has a long history with the mystic arts — among the longest of all Justice League Dark members, in fact. Her story begins in Camelot, where she was known as Nimue Inwudu, sister to the Lady of the Lake and Morgaine le Fey. Hers is a long and deeply-lived life, full of card games with Death itself, magical spats with Merlin, and stints in the courts of infamous monarchs. She's a survivor of the highest order, in no small part because her mastery of magic is very nearly total.

Teleportation, precognition (typically via her trademark tarot cards), immortality, and levitation are all within Madame Xanadu's abilities, all of which rest upon the foundation of her epoch-spanning life. Xanadu has seen empires rise and fall, ice ages form and melt, revolutions kindle and smolder. She's not easily swayed, nor easily fooled, especially given the fact that the future is far from opaque to her. On top of that, the heaviest hitters of the DC universe's dark side are all familiar to her, meaning few of them retain their ability to intimidate or frighten her into their doing. Etrigan, Jason Blood, the Spectre — all of these and more are known to her, providing her with knowledge, history, and lingering emotional ties that tend to prove useful in critical moments. Madame Xanadu has age, experience, and raw power on her side, plus a killer collection of magical ephemera on display at her ever-trusty fortune-telling parlor and curio shop.

Yeah, you read that right. There's exists a character named Detective Chimp, and he's one of the most powerful members of Justice League Dark. If you're thinking the name might be a clever bit of misdirection, you're wrong. He is, in fact, a sapient chimpanzee, dressed in exactly the sort of Sherlock Holmes-y outfit you might expect. His name is Bobo T. Chimpanzee, and he's not to be underestimated.

To begin with, he's one heck of a detective. Bobo possesses genius-level smarts by human standards, carefully honed by years of study and work. And his communicative abilities don't just cross the human-chimp barrier. Bobo can speak to any living creature in its own tongue, and he can speak every human language. This is impressive enough on its own, but Justice League Dark granted Bobo yet another gift in the legacy of the Nightmaster. A hero of the Dark Knights: Metal event, Nightmaster died protecting humanity and left his magical watering hole, the Oblivion Bar, to Bobo, alongside his Sword of Night, the title of the Nightmaster, and a sworn duty to protect Myrra, a magical realm outside of time. "They weren't thrilled when a talking monkey showed up," Bobo murmurs when pressed about Myrra's opinion of him, but the fact stands: Detective Chimp is now one of the smoothest sleuths in the DC universe, master of the magical world's meeting place, and Myrra's sworn defender.

Mindwarp doesn't much care for caution, wariness, or anything that keeps him from living life to the fullest. This doesn't mean he's anything approaching happy-go-lucky. On the contrary, he describes himself as an "existentialist killer," looking to spice up the slog of living with a pot of murder now and again. Mindwarp doesn't believe in life after death, inherent meaning, or really, much of anything beyond his unique abilities and what they can nab him. Which, given the abilities in question, can mean quite a lot.

Mindwarp can project himself beyond his body, in a form he describes as his "seizure soul." While his physical body lies inert, brain spasming between life and death, his soul goes traveling, as intangible as it needs to be, or when a knockout blow is needed, as physically solid. This allows him to grab just about anything he wants, which typically ends up meaning women, expensive watches, and a whole lot animal-print furnishings. He might be a lout, but his grim approach to life comes from an understandable place. Every projection of his seizure soul could cost him his life. A high cost indeed, but one that he's willing to pay, if not typically for the most noble goals.

When it comes to the Phantom Stranger, it's all in the name. A mysterious figure wielding nebulous powers, the Stranger is unique among the members of Justice League Dark — and indeed, all denizens of the DC universe — in that he has no specific origin. Many have been proposed, most of which imply that he's an immortal wanderer of the earth, condemned by divine powers to dwell among the humans from whom he stands eternally apart. His powers are similarly ill-defined, to the point that he might just be the most powerful Justice League Dark hero of all. In fact, he's one of the most powerful DC heroes period.

To catalog the Stranger's abilities is difficult. He seems to be able to do, effectively, anything. He can travel vast interstellar distances, transmute matter, manipulate dreams, animate the inanimate, and he appears to be effectively immortal. He's also apparently omniscient, remarking once that "nothing remains hidden to [him]." He walks the line between man and god, his only real weakness being his inability to act directly upon the events of history. He might know how they'll play out, what fates are in store, and what precisely is at stake, but he can only gesture, suggest, and warn those he seeks to help, and even then, often cryptically. Thus fares the Phantom Stranger — effectively divine, cosmically limited.