The Toyman

A criminal mastermind who turned the concept of childhood innocence on its head, the Toyman first clashed with Superman using elaborate, deadly toys and gadgets as his weapons of choice — proving that playthings could be surprisingly dangerous tools for villainy.

Few Golden Age villains have proven as delightfully enduring as The Toyman, who first bedeviled the Man of Steel back in 1945 in the pages of Superman #32, dreamed up by the legendary Bill Finger and Sam Citron. Over an extraordinary eight decades, this whimsical menace has remained a fixture of DC's universe, turning up across Superman, Adventures of Superman, and Batman — sharing panels with the likes of Superman, Batman, and Green Lantern. There's something irresistibly unsettling about a villain built around the innocence of playthings, and that tension has clearly kept readers and creators coming back to The Toyman again and again since the Golden Age. With nearly 40 catalog appearances spanning from the 1940s all the way to the present day, this is one classic DC rogue well worth tracking down.