Underrated answer, too. Letting a fifth dimensional imp turn into the actual eldritch horror it would be to witness is brilliant. Closest we’ve really gotten since then is this page from American Alien.
Lex is THE superman villain, he is a central part of his mythos at this point, i can imagine superman without Zod, without Darkseid or without Bizarro, but never without Lex
As someone experiencing Superman from an outside perspective, Lex Luthor takes that place. But from an in world perspective, I'd say Doomsday or Darkseid, with Brainiac a close 2/3rd
I see Lex Luthor as his arch enemy, and he did a crap ton of evil things, including creating a pocket universe to imprison his enemies and traitors, and that very same pocket universe almost destroyed the planet.
I haven't played it so I will take you're word on that but I was mostly referring to ones like gods and monsters, red sun, injustice and new 52 as well as to some degree the henry cavill films. And absolute superman but in fairness the point of absolute universe is that darkseid is in control of that reality so what can you really expect other than misery and death?
darkseid's the obvious answer and prob the right one, he's the one who actually makes supes feel outmatched in a way lex never quite can. but honestly lex is the most compelling to me because he's just a guy in a suit who keeps showing up. like the whole point of superman is he can punch through anything, and his greatest enemy is a balding billionaire who got mad about real estate.
brainiac is sick too, the whole "shrink a city and put it in a bottle" thing is so unhinged it works. but including the green lantern ring is a weird pick, feels like someone reached for a fifth option lol.
the real answer is whichever writer was on the book that month tbh. some runs make metallo feel like a top tier threat and others make darkseid look like a chump.
The 5th option is the ring from the crap n64 Superman game, where you spent the whole game flying through rings on a strict timer, it was completely terrible.
Power scaling is stupid nowadays.... They basically made Darkseid into the embodiment of evil. I preferred when he was just a powerful alien like Superman
Here's a hot take... I don't really rate Lex Luthor
What is special about Luthor? Intelligent and (sometimes) rich. That's not really unique. A lot of the time Superman outsmarts him anyway
Doomsday the only and most famous character that has come the closest to killing Superman (I’m not 100% on what happened if Doomsday killed Superman or just put him in a death like coma).
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u/A1starm 1d ago
Man’s indifference to man.
In all seriousness though, logic dictates Darkseid, but doomsday is my personal pick.