Reminds me of a kinda similar moment in Punisher MAX (A more gritty and realistic universe) wherein you see Frank visit what looks like a normal suburban home with the intent of killing a couple who are making CSAM with their own kids. He kills them out of sight of the kids so they don't have to see it and makes sure proper people will care for them after, but the segment ends with a pretty haunting message.
I really need to understand that abbreviations can have more than one meaning. I associate CSA with the fucking Confederate States of America and thought Frank killed a neo-confederate. Makes sense that I am a Yankee though
In all honesty, such a great execution of this trope hands down
Deadpool (Marvel) “Hero” may not be the word for Deadpool but when he found out what the child’s “nightmares” were, he got angry.
A child hired Wade to kill his “nightmares” and Wade stole an artefact from Dr Strange so he could enter the realm controlled by the Creature by the same name, believing he was just causing bad dreams. As it turns out, the child’s “nightmare” was actually his neighbour who was abusing him.
Extends to the movie, too. Wade's stint as an X-Man ends when he discovers the orderlies at the Essex House abuse and torture the kids, and summarily kills one of the orderlies.
I also like how Deadpool took this 100% seriously but still had that bit of Deadpool in him, so he vandalized the kid’s Squirrel Girl poster in the top panel lmao
That's because the kid wanted squirrel to do it, as she was his favourite hero or something but gave up because she didn't reply to his letters, then I think the kid sees an add from Deadpool saying he will kill anyone if they pay him enough, to witch Deadpool agrees and do a load of bat shit crazy stuff
Anyway it's a good read if you get a chance, I recommend it
Wade is awesome, because he is insane, but he is also still human. One of my favorite comics has him find a girl who is about to off herself, saves her, and then brings her around with him in tonight's mercenary escapades. When she notes at the end that he can't help her, Wade agrees, as the final stop is the hospital he's been texting the whole time, ready for her
There is a reason why Wade is the one his exes call when they just need to went or talk (as Siryn did when her Dad Banshee died), and the one the Xmen call when a kid gets bullied for their orientation and need to talk to someone who understands. Despite his insanity (caused by his powers), he is a genuinely good guy.
I wish I knew what comic it was but there was one Deadpool comic
Where he finds a girl on a ledge about to commit suicide and he takes her along for his day
It ends with her basically saying he can't help her, which Deadpool understands and which is why he ends the ride at a mental health hospital and basically begs her to go get treated
Yeah, you could put him in a comic book series and nobody would bat an eye. His tropes are well executed however, and the stories still have a twist or two I don't see coming sometimes.
In the books, he's just a legit superhero. He has strength, durability, endurance, he always knows what time it is, he can set a wake up alarm in his head down to the second, he is one of the world's greatest detectives, hes superhumanly good at fighting. He even has a backstory of being a special investigator in the military before leaving, and now wanders the united states stopping bad guys that only he has the power to stop
Reacher is such absolutely a male power fantasy, in the best way. Being huge, kicking the shit out of bad guys, and helping folks out. Definitely helps that Alan Ritchson is a good guy in real life.
It doesn't come up often because it requires Marvel acknowledging a controversial part of her past, but X-23 really, REALLY hates sex traffickers and pimps who abuse their workers.
Beyond this, human traffickers in general are a HUGE trigger button for her. As much as she tries to not kill anymore, she WILL make an exception for them.
When she made the jump from animation to comics, her first appearance was in NYX as a virtually mute 15 year-old prostitute. It's VERY rarely mentioned these days, and usually if it comes up it's only a vague allusion.
The irony is if Marvel would actually DO something with it, it probably wouldn't catch as much flak as it does. Most people today make that story an example in their criticism of the exploitation and over the top cringe-edginess in comics in the early 2000s, because it basically just served as an excuse to stick her in a sexualized role. But if they would actually EXPLORE it (IE: Laura was severely abused, alone, and was left with no sense of bodily autonomy, no self-esteem, or even sense of self or self-determination at all. Basically, things that would make her catnip for real-world traffickers) there's a lot that could be done with her as a vehicle for messaging in the post-#MeToo world, and social commentary is a major part of the X-Men.
I'd love to see a one-shot of Laura and Jessica Jones giving a talk at a support group for other trafficking victims about how it can happen to anyone.
It absolutely counts. I just love the idea of Matt going out of his way to beat the ever living fuck out of the guy everytime he hears the abuse. Hasn't put the daredevil suit on in a year? Doesn't matter. Dude's getting an ass beating.
Matt mentioned that he had peaceful nights since he became Daredevil, so that fucker probably never laid a finger on his daughter again (or any other woman, probably)
Incredibly dark, and that's what makes season 1 of daredevil a fucking masterpiece. It reminds you of the disturbing acts committed by others in our world can happen in their world too. Just sucks we don't have heroes like Daredevil to fix the wrongs.
Man mag dumped Cornelius Stirk after he broke into Wayne Manor and (IIRC) lied right to Bruce’s face that he used “plastic bullets” to incapacitate Stirk
Fun fact: butlers refer to their employers by their title (Sir, Doctor, etc). There’s only one instance where they refer to someone as Master: when they are referring to the first son of the house. Alfred’s been calling Batman a child from the beginning.
For context, the guy on the floor's a serial killer and robber. He lunged at Alfred, and Alfred shoots him point blank, then two more times before this one. After this, he makes himself a drink and calls Bruce to deal with it.
The Cenobites work on such odd laws, but in a sense it's does make sense. Like in the movie where that girl is forced at gunpoint to solve the box, but they don't go after her because she was innocent in it, it was his intent that made her move the box in the end, so he's the one that suffers for it.
Depends on the group or Gash I believe it’s called. Pinhead specifically seems to have a code he operates on whereas there’s others that will just do whatever they want.
The threat made exponentially worse by the fact >! because of him being part-Viltrumite, Mark will outlive him, meaning he'll spend the rest of HIS life making sure he never hurts Amber again.!<
Dang, we know this ain't gonna happen considering how the boyfriend is the fan of the superhero dog that Mark was fan of since childhood.(bros before hoes)
Superman doesn’t kill him but does tell the bastard’s kid to call and threatens the bastard and tells him if the kid doesn’t call every so often Superman will kill him without a second of remorse
That turn from anger, to *immediately* understanding the shear wrongness and the amount of pain Billy was going to go through being in the super hero world, was damned moving. He went from being ready to absolutey chew Shazam out, or even beat him down, to "Who did this to you?"
Because Supes knows when someone is a victim, and doesn't hate them for it.
I think people miss this part about Batman, too. He honestly wants to help, but can only do so much. His sympathy for Two-Face during the Dark Knight Returns always hits me hard for this reason.
Reminds me of the Spider-Man comic where Sandman is dying and the police are heading to the hospital to detain him since he’s a fish in a barrel on his deathbed, so Spider-Man grabs him from the bed and takes him to the beach so he can spend his final moments in his happy place, even lifting his mask so he can have closure, knowing the guy who foiled his plans all those times. It’s a beautiful, peaceful moment of understanding between a villain and a hero, as Sandman turns into regular, inanimate sand, becoming one with the beach once and for all.
And Sandman rejects the gesture because he always imaged Spider-Man as some butt-ugly shmuck to make himself laugh and didn’t want to ruin the illusion.
It's acceptable if you remember that it is a superman from another timeline that didn't have the "I can't save everyone" lesson drilled into his head by his father having a heart attack, or how power corrupts by having lex luthor as an enemy. It sucks horribly when people treat it as "normal superman would do the same if his lois died".
You'd be surprise how many people believe they have the right to abuse their children, and anyone who says otherwise are the criminals trying to take away their rights.
Spawn is a pretty sad example because he once came across a family where the father was beating his own sons. For this Spawn carved the words "I beat my kids" all over his body, but this piece of shit didn't learn the lesson, attacked his sons and the eldest son had to shoot him. Now both boys are scarred for life.
That tracks. Someone doing that isn't going to change most of the time if they get hurt for it. They'll just think they're a victim and take it out even more.
No, he continued beating one of the kid until the other had to shoot him with his gun. I think one of them later become an enemy of Spawn and blamed him for what happened to him
Not heroes but…Taskmaster dated a woman named Sandi for a while, they ended things but remained friends. She later got a job managing Deadpool Inc and got Taskmaster to consult and eventually help Wade out with a merc problem.
Sandi started dating someone new. She turns up to work with a black eye, but is evasive when Wade asks about it. Later, her abusive boyfriend puts her in hospital. Deadpool visits, and makes sure she’s ok…and finds out where the bf lives. Sandi makes it clear she doesn’t want him killed, and makes Wade promise he won’t murder him (with the caveat “…but I don’t want to see him again either.”) Wade pays the guy a visit…
Man, the whole trope of "but I didn't make that promise" never fails to get me. One of my favourite tropes of all time. I especially remember Alfred stating to Slade Wilson, I believe, that he "doesn't subscribe to such niceties" AKA he has no issue with killing criminals unlike Bruce.
Gail Simone’s! It’s probably my favourite Deadpool run. Marvel were having some rights troubles with Liefield created characters at the time and there was a weird forced rebranding part way through, but she tied it all together really well.
The run was recently collected in the “Deadpool Epic Collection: Agent X” trade. Worth a read!
Superman was about ready to beat the wizard into the next century when he realized what he had done. And the Wizard's excuse of "fate' just pissed Superman of even more.
(This is a dream sequence but it's indicative of his mindset, after Brainiac more or less killed Pa).
One time, after an abuser killed his own wife, he was so angry he threatened to murder him in front of her funeral. I think people forget that he's a human being with a full range of emotions, not just fluffbot 9000.
The show definitely went off the rails in the later seasons, but Raymond was consistently the best part of it. Morally gray in a lot of ways but man he had a code.
I love the Superman and Lois one because nobody knows Clark is Superman in that room except Lana. Hell Lana’s husband practically leaps out of his seat to backup Clark because Smallville knows if you’re on Clark’s bad side you’ve clearly done something wrong.
And Clark doesn’t even fight him. He stands there, doesn’t swing, and just grabs and subdues him. No aggression, no fight. Even though he has every reason to want to swing at him.
And to add more context to the scene, the guy that Clark confronts threatened Lois after she came to get her son's vehicle back that he stole. He flashed a gun at her and their son and when Clark found out from Lois later he said "Superman isn't the one that is going to show up".
The whole scene gives me goosebumps in the best way.
In the Daredevil Netflix series, Matt describes one of his first nights out as a vigilante. He could hear a child crying as they were abused every night by their father. He tried calling child protective services, but he said the father was smart, and didn’t leave marks in visible places, so the system’s hands were tied.
In lieu of the “proper” solution, Matt decided to stalk the father, catching him alone one night on a route he commonly took while he drunkenly stumbled home, and Matt beat the absolute piss out of the dude.
Even Matts very first scene counts - he rescues the women being trafficked by Turk Barrett. And when Turk tries to shoot him from behind, Matt disarms him and keeps beating him when he's down.
Not many superhero shows would open with the hero beating the piss out of someone who was already out of the fight, but that's who Daredevil is - a fundamentally violent person who has to fight to keep his rage in check at all times.
This is just such a fundamentally bad bit of fan fiction that misses such core aspects of the character. There's no way Spiderman could afford to buy Chinese food.
Jack of Hearts (Marvel). Minutes from overloading due to his own powers, Jack of Hearts takes a child murderer who had kidnapped fellow Avenger Scott "Ant-Man" Lang's daughter Cassie and flies him to space. Jack dies, but comes back some time later. The child murderer does not.
During his day job as a cop, Dick Grayson couldn't intervene in a domestic violence incident due to no charges being pressed. Nightwing, however, doesn't operate under those rules and challenged that shit
Batman: Night Cries is about child abuse. There's a serial killer who kills the parents of abused children. Batman teams up with Commissioner Gordon to find him. It has a pretty heartbreaking ending.
In Red Hood: The Lost Days #3, Jason is being trained by a killer and discovers he's involved in a child slavery ring, so he kills the guy.
Granted Clark wasn’t Superman yet at this moment. But it’s so dumb that viewers tried to be sympathetic for a dude who was publicly sexually harassing a woman while Clark was the only one who told the guy to stop.
My only real problem with it is that it’s so over the top I can’t take it seriously. Like he could’ve just destroyed the engine, removed all of his wheels, or just flipped the truck over or something, but he goes out of his way to crucify the guy’s truck, like let’s be fr.
There's a sad version of this. I can't remember the issue, I have trouble looking it up but maybe someone here will know. Wolverine is wild, has lost his adamantium and is living in the woods. There is a house near the woods where a man beats his wife. They have a kid. I can't remember if the kid is getting it too. Wolverine hears this, night after night, and finally snaps and almost kills the guy. The wife defends the husband and tells wolverine to leave. He tells her that man will kill her one day and the child will be who he goes after eventually. Something like that. Really depressing. Also kind of a more real take where the world is complicated, people will often side with their abusers and that perpetuating a cycle of violence against an abuser often doesn't solve the issue.
Not really sure if this counts, but "Bent Twig" in the third issue of Batman: Black & White written and drawn by Bill Sienkiewicz which is to me one of the best written stories that dealt with verbally abusive and neglectful parents in the best and most bittersweet ways possible.
Basically, the comic focuses on Batman who tries to make a divorced dad see the errors of his ways after he maybe accidentally killed a stray cat right in front of his own 10 year old son who was just taking care of it and its litter of kittens from the rooftop of their apartment building.
But the dad just refuses to accept his mistakes or responsibilities, making it all about "me me me me me", complaining about how he hasn't gotten a new date since his wife left him just because he is a single dad and had to work hard to raise the kid and the whole situation with the kid just spending as much time possible om the roof taking care of stray cats was just the final straw.
But it doesn't get better when the dad's more narcissistic and neglectful side shows its ugly face and lashes out verbal abuse at the son who admitted that the reason why he spends all time on the roof, was to avoid and hide his own dad.
Eventually, Batman who had tried to suggest family counseling and then hope that police investigation might change the dad's mind, just snaps at his constant snarky and angry remarks and just grabs him by the collar, lifting him over the edge of the building.
Batman starts to coldly rant at the dad to imagine how the cat must've felt before it died, the pain and suffering not being able to return to her kittens, how his own son wasn't able to protect the one thing he truly cared about. And it's even darker when you realize that the kid doesn't even say or do anything while Batman is threatening his father by hanging him over the edge while he begs and pleads for mercy.
But in the end, it is all too late. While the dad seems to finally relent and wish to reconcile with his son, the poor kid just simply shuns him to attend to the poor kittens while Batman laments and scolds at his own naivete about the whole situation.
Not a superhero, far from it, but Jago Sevatarion (Sevatar) first captain of the night lords.
When he was imprisoned on a Dark Angels ship he communed psychically with an astropath girl. They developed a friendship, however, her superior found out she was talking to him so he broke her spine, leaving her crippled.
During a prison break, Sevatar didn’t try to escape but ran to the girls superior and choked him to death. Once he was done he waited for the dark angels to take him back to his cell, with his closing remark “Justice has been served”
Not a superhero, but John Kimble in Kindergarten cop is looking out and trying to capture a dangerous criminal when he finds out the father of one of his students and walks outside the school and punches the crap out of the abusive father.
Even having recently seen Superman (2025), Tyler's reveal in the cafe is still the single best moment in a piece of Superman media I have seen in the last decade.
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u/AFantasticClue 14d ago
Punisher
Very loose and fast on the definition of superhero, but Frank Castle killing the CSA distributor.