History AndIMustScream / ComicBooks

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[[folder:Other]]

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* In ''ComicBook/{{PS238}}'', the front lawn of Excelsior Public School is 'haunted' by the ghost of a Native American metahuman who was cursed his tribe's medicine man for something bad he once did. The curse states he can't move from his location, his spirit can't pass on, nor can he remember anything he was proud of while alive (including his name, his own nature, or exactly what he did), and only performing an act of pure altruism that saves someone's life can free him. He's not exactly 'tormented' by it, but he is very resigned to his fate, very, ''very'' bored and would like nothing better than to atone.
* In Archie's new horror-based ''ComicBook/ChillingAdventuresOfSabrina'' comic, Sabrina's father is turned into a tree. It's currently unknown if he's lucid in this state or not.
* ''ComicBook/SonicTheHedgehogArchieComics'': In addition to robotization, this is the fate of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Dimitri]], when Lien-Da [[KlingonPromotion usurps his position as Grand Master]]. She disables his ability to move, leaving only his robotic head, then sticks him in a box, gleefully telling him his battery will run down in a few months. He does eventually get rescued.
** In a later comic, it's revealed that this is how Dr. Eggman punishes [[YouHaveFailedMe robots and roboticized Mobians that fail him]]; he activates a failsafe in their cybernetics, leaving them paralysed but perfectly aware, and then locks them away in a pitch-black storage room. He intends to let them out once they've "learned their lesson"... in about fifty years or so.
* In ''ComicBook/AthenaVoltaire and the Isle of the Dead'', de Vargas tells the story of someone who was effectively immortal, but who was chained in the hold of a ship when it sank. He was down there for years.

* The barbarian hero Dax the Warrior from Warren Publishing's Eerie magazine suffered this fate. In his final story, wounded in battle, Dax encounters Death, but spurns him with his desire to keep living. It isn't until Death is gone that it is revealed that Dax has been left completely paralyzed by the blow he has suffered.

* ''ComicBook/BlakeAndMortimer'': In ''The Curse of the Thirty Denarii'', Judas is the Wandering Jew. God cursed him to wander the Earth with everyone shunning him. 200 years after Jesus' crucifixion, feeling his death is near, he confesses to a Christian priest who he really is. After his passing, the priest has him buried far away from his community. In the 20th century, Blake and Mortimer open his grave, but Judas is still flesh and blood. His body was actually too frail to move, talk or eat, meaning he was buried alive for nearly 2000 years!
* ''ComicBook/PeterCannonThunderbolt2019'': Thunderbolt's version of Sabu attempted to escape from his fate as the only other inhabitant of a dead world, alongside the insane Thunderbolt himself, by suicide. Thunderbolt punished him by transforming him into a robot who cannot harm himself. It's a borderline instance of the trope, in that Sabu can speak -- but the only person he gets to talk to is Thunderbolt.

* A temporary variation occurs in the first issue of the Creator/ECComics publication ComicBook/WeirdFantasy. Roger Harvey was in a car crash when two scientists stole his brain. He was just a brain in a jar for four months, which he thought was much longer and suffered during, until the scientists added a mechanical ear. Then eyes. Then a vocal addition. Eventually he has a fully mechanical, and functioning body.

[[folder:DC Comics]]

* One of the many and varied punishments of the DCU's Hell is being turned into building materials. Every chance you just might be the fifth brick from the left staring down the line of demon urinals for the next billion and a half years.
* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'':
** In the Elseworlds storyline, ''ComicBook/BatmanVampire,'' Batman fights {{Dracula}} and is turned into a vampire to be able to fight him on equal terms. [[spoiler:However, eventually Gordon and Alfred are forced to stake him, as he begins to become more and more monstrous. Because they failed to chop his head off, the staking only paralyzes him... Batman remains conscious and aware even while his body decomposes. Needless to say, he's not happy when they unstake him.]]
** In another recent Batman story arc, ComicBook/TheJoker does this to Dr. Simon Hurt, who is immortal and has already pissed the Joker off on more than one occasion. Not only does Hurt accidentally slip on a banana peel and break his neck, Joker then injects him with Joker Venom and buries him alive. It gets even more disturbing when you remember precisely what Joker Venom ''does'' to its victims besides outright killing them. And since Hurt ''cannot'' die and the toxin presumably never wears off, he's stuck BuriedAlive while slowly going insane from the effects of Joker Venom, forced to laugh at himself for all eternity despite the pain he's in.
** During the ''Mud Pack'' storyline, Basil Karlo -the original Clayface- uses a formula made from the other villains who used the name Clayface, acquiring all their powers and becoming the Ultimate Clayface. At the end of the story, however, he loses control of his powers, and sinks into the earth, where he remains entombed for months. He eventually escapes, after odd energy from the gemstones in his tomb make him much stronger, reappearing during the ''ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand'' storyline. Batman probably describes what happened to him best:
--->'''Batman:''' Your ordeal has obviously driven you ''insane'', Karlo. [[FromBadToWorse Not that you were exactly lucid to begin with!]]
** ''ComicBook/BatmanEternal'': The villain got this. Lincoln March is captured by Court of Owls and is being put into a coffin with cooling tech similar to one that sustained Talon in Batman's cave... this tech completely paralizes him, but he still can see, and hear, and think... and they joke that they may return to him, in a decade or so. Bonus points to horror: as a child, Lincoln was paralized and tormented to see world, while unable to move... and he is going back to this state, only in eternal darkness.
** ''ComicBook/BatmanLastKnightOnEarth'': All Speed Force users have all somehow been merged into a Speed Force storm, rampaging across the wasteland and randomly aging anything caught in it. By all accounts, all of them are not only alive, but fully conscious as they uncontrollably become a weather phenomenon.
* ''ComicBook/CrisisOnInfiniteEarths'':
** This is Pariah's sad destiny, being teleported to various worlds as they are erased by the Anti-Monitor. He claims this is his penance for peering back into the beginning of time and causing his world to be destroyed and causing other worlds to be destroyed. [[spoiler:Turns out he's only responsible for the former - Anti-Monitor's been doing the others.]]
** The Anti-Monitor does this to Psycho Pirate, causing his face to temporarily disappear.
* ComicBook/TheFlash exacted revenge on teenage supervillain Inertia (the killer and clone of the previous Flash, this Flash's cousin) by essentially turning him into a living statue, putting him on display in the Flash Museum facing a statue of the Flash he killed. Inertia is still perfectly conscious and aware, and is unable to even close his eyes. Eventually, he recovered, although it's made him rather AxCrazy.
** Wally also ''unintentionally'' did this to [[EvilCounterpart Zoom]], believing that Zoom was just in suspended animation, not [[FateWorseThanDeath fully conscious and constantly reliving the worst moment of his life]]:
--->He won't have a gun. Trust me, Ashley... He won't have a gun. Trust me, Ashley... He won't have a gun. Trust me, Ashley... He won't have...
* In Creator/JackKirby's ''Fourth World'', aka the entire mythos surrounding ComicBook/{{Darkseid}} and the ComicBook/NewGods, anyone who attempts to penetrate the great wall that separates the universe from the Source [[spoiler:aka God]] is imprisoned on that wall as a hundred foot (or, depending on how you look at it, one hundred thousand mile) tall 'Promethean Giant'.
** Metron, the New Gods' boffin, however, states that due to their state, time passes at an incredibly slow rate for the giants, and millions of years pass as minutes.
* ''Franchise/GreenLantern'':
** In ''Green Lantern Vol. 4 #50'', it is revealed that ComicBook/{{Sinestro}} could still think while imprisoned as pure energy in the central battery.
--->'''Sinestro''': Do you know what it was like inside the battery, Jordan? Reduced to less than a thought in that limbo? It's like having a maddening itch you can never scratch... Because there's nothing there. There's no you. That's what it was like, Jordan. And it wasn't... ''' very... ''' ''' [[PunctuatedForEmphasis PLEASANT!]] '''
** Major Force, a minor GL villain and StuffedInTheFridge TropeNamer and enthusiast, gets this treatment. Since he is essentially immortal, Kyle puts him into a little green tennis ball and rackets him into the vastness of space.
--->'''Kyle Rayner''': Take it from me man, space is big. [[PunctuatedForEmphasis Really. Really. BIG]]. [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome Service]].
** A Sinestro Corps member called Maash has three heads. Two are psychopaths while the third is innocent and resents the atrocities his brothers do. Unfortunately, the innocent head has no control over their body.
** Larfleeze, aka Agent Orange, gains his constructs by killing people. It's implied, and later confirmed that they're not just constructs in the victim's likeness, but their souls forced to do Larfleeze's bidding.
** In the ''ComicBook/BlackestNight'' storyline, this is the fate of [[spoiler:all the resurrected heroes who have been claimed by Nekron. They're trapped in their own bodies as the Black ring uses them as a puppet, forcing them to destroy their friends. And all the while, their living form is being slowly eaten away by the death energy, turning them into a Black Lantern for real]].
** [[spoiler:Nekron's ultimate fate also counts. With his link to the living world sundered and cut off from the Anti Monitor's power, he was once again banished to his limbo dimension as a powerless spirit shrieking in the void.]]
** Krona tends to end up this way after defeats. Given his godlike powers and utter indestructibility, there's not much else you can do with him.
* The stand-alone story "The Death Clock" in ''[[http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/House_of_Mystery_Vol_1_214 House of Mystery #214]]'' featured a young man who comes into possession of a watch that shows what time you will die down to the second, after its original owner is killed right on time. When the man finds that his own date of death is decades into the future (he'd be in his early 90's), he embarks on a career as a daredevil, confident in the knowledge that he can't die before his time. However, his careless stunts causes several fatalities, and a revenge-driven widower attacks him with a grenade, which ends up blowing off his limbs and renders him blind and mute, leaving him helpless, blind and immovable in a hospital bed with nothing to do but count the seconds for the rest of his life. To drive the irony in further, one of his doctors picks up the watch and his time turns out to be the next day at midnight, [[http://barebonesez.blogspot.com.br/2014/09/ but the doctor has no idea of the clock's power]].
* ''Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'':
** After a TimeTravel mission gone awry, ComicBook/PlasticMan is left shattered into pieces and scattered across the ocean floor 3,000 years in the past. While the rest of the JLA get a direct route back to the present via magic, Plas has to take TheSlowPath. When his teammates finally retrieve him and put him back together, he reveals that not only was he conscious the whole time, but that the only sensation he felt was a constant itching.
** And in ''ComicBook/TheDarkKnightStrikesAgain'' he was forced into a pressurizing machine that held him in place and prevented any shapeshifting - or escape. [[GoMadFromTheIsolation This eventually drove him completely insane.]]
** The Queen of Fables was a villain who had formerly been trapped in a book of fairy tales, and could reshape reality to her whims using the same tales and other imaginative fantasy, turning Manhattan into an enchanted forest and cursing Wonder Woman with a thousand-year slumber. Wonder Woman recovered, however, and did away with the Queen by trapping her in a ''very'' different book, the U.S. Tax Code! (The idea was that she'd never find anything to use as a weapon in there, but no doubt she was ''not'' very happy.)
* The 11th issue of ''Police Comics'' featured ComicBook/PlasticMan battling Cyrus Smythe, a seventeenth century British chemist who's brain was still alive and conscious after his death. By the story's present time in the 1940's, Smythe's brain ends up being placed in the head of an injured soldier named Tad Wilkins, and he proceeds to finish the growth serum he worked on when he was alive, enabling him to become a towering giant. Plastic Man manages to kill him, but the brain of Cyrus Smythe still lives and promises to return.
* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'':
** In ''ComicBook/Superboy1994'', Kon-El is responsible for one of these. After Amanda Spence killed his first love Tana Moon, ComicBook/{{Superboy}} struggled with his desire to kill her on several occasions. The last time they fought, Spence had been technologically and biologically augmented to essentially be completely indestructible, and now no longer even needed to breathe. After Spence killed a clone created with some of Tana's DNA, and told Kon that she planned to have an endless supply to kill just for kicks, Kon flipped out, and launched her out of the ship they were fighting on and into space at about mach eleventy billion. Given how ridiculously vast outer space is, and the sheer unlikelihood of Spence ever being found by anyone or coming into contact with anything, and the fact that she essentially can't die and that her biology might make it so she can't freeze, it means that she's probably still floating around in the cold, vast emptiness of space alone and might do so for all of eternity.
** In the [[ComicBook/Supergirl2005 Post-Crisis universe]], ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} spent thirty years in suspended animation, curled-up in a tiny pod and trapped in Kryptonite which hurt her and poisoned her mind [[ComicBook/TheSupergirlFromKrypton until she finally landed on Earth]].
** [[ComicBook/Supergirl2011 Her Post-Flashpoint incarnation]] was captured by [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Simon Tycho]] and imprisoned in a stasis field near a chunk of kryptonite in ''ComicBook/LastDaughterOfKrypton''. She was feeling unbelievable pain, but she could not move away; neither to talk, scream or even cry.
** In ''[[ComicBook/Supergirl1982 Volume 2]]'', #20, Parasite absorbs Supergirl's powers and throws her in a flying metal coffin which floats about a mile straight up from solid ground. As he uses heat vision to seal her in, he warns that she has a little less than four minutes till her air runs out.
** In ''ComicBook/SupergirlCosmicAdventuresInThe8thGrade'', super-villain Belinda Zee is turned into a crystal statue. She cannot talk or move but she is fully sentient and -worst of all- she can feel pain.
** The original version of the PhantomZone fell into this trope. Phantom Zone prisoners couldn't even touch each other; they were condemned just to watch the material world until their sentences expired.
** In ''ComicBook/KryptoniteNevermore'', Superman is doused with magma and falls into the ocean. The water cools the magma, encasing Superman in a shroud of stone. He thinks he will be stuck there forever unless he is able to break out.
** In ''ComicBook/TheKingdom'', Superman in one of his many deaths at the hands of Gog was subject to being slowly transformed into Kryptonite after being chained to a planet with a special bomb attached to it that would recreate the destruction of Krypton.
** In ''Superman Vol 1 #282'', Superman tells the tale of a Kryptonian named Nam-Ek (no relation to planet Namek since this story was written ten years before the birth of the ''Franchise/DragonBall'' franchise) who managed to make himself immortal and indestructible. When Krypton exploded, he survived, and remained floating in lifeless space, alone forever.
--->'''Superman:''' Slowly, Nam-Ek realized that since he was immortal... he would remain there, suspended in space -- alone -- forever! And that's when he began to cry... And they say that somewhere in space... he is crying still...
** In ''ComicBook/StrangersAtTheHeartsCore'', Lesla-Lar's ghost takes over a ComicBook/{{Superboy}} robot to fight Supergirl. Nonetheless, the air pollution has damaged its delicate electronic circuits so badly the robot completely stops moving right away. Lesla spends several months trapped in an useless, immobile metal trap, unable to move or speak, and knowing nobody will come to rescue her because she is assumed to have died many years ago.
** In ''ComicBook/TheImmortalSuperman'', the titular hero travels to the year 801,970, and finds five astronauts floating in the space, frozen in life-support spheres. When Superman revives and takes the astronauts to safety, they reveal they have spent five thousand years encased in their preservo-spheres since their spaceship broke down.
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'':
** ''ComicBook/SensationComics'': Back in the Golden Age a magical wooden bangle is revealed to contain the siren Parthenope, who had been turned into a tree by Aphrodite in ancient times and stuck unable to do anything but aware of her surroundings for thousands of years.
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1942'': The Amazons put prisoners on Reformation Island in Aphrodite Girdles, which are essentially a downplayed version of GettingSmiliesPaintedOnYourSoul which ensure that they do not attack the guards or try to revolt. These are very much meant to be temporary measures, but Atomica proves such a remorseless, murderous and horrific individual who removes hers and tries to kill the Amazons that Aphrodite herself welds her into one which will force her to act benevolent and never harm another soul without removing her ability to think.
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': While a few of the souls beyond Doom's Doorway are free to run around hassling newcomers to their hearts' content so long as they don't try to actually escape beyond the door, most of them are saddled with this as punishment. Special mentions to the following:
*** Polyphemus the Cyclops, starved for eternity in a tiny cave, unable to [[ICannotSelfTerminate even kill himself]]. Oh, and he's still blind from that little gift Odysseus gave him.
*** ComicBook/{{Hercules|Unbound}}, frozen as [[TakenForGranite a massive statue]] but still able to feel every scratch and peck of the harpies that circle him daily. Oh, and he also has to support all of Themyscira on his shoulders.
** ''ComicBook/WonderWoman2011'': Everything in Hades is built with conscious souls, ''everything'' including bricks and trees and the souls there are under Hades' complete control. Supposedly the souls don't mind, but given this is claimed by a member of the Greek pantheon and the only soul there that is able to say anything about their situation finds it torturous it is far more likely very few of them are content with being used as building material and slaves.
* In the last issue of ''ComicBook/YoungJustice,'' Slobo was transported to the 853rd century by Darkseid's Omega Beams, and [[TakenForGranite turned to stone]] in the process, so he showed up in the "Young Justice Hall of Statues". The Future versions of Robin, ComicBook/{{Superboy}} and Impulse noticed the statue was new, and Robin said they would check it out after their mission. Slobo showed awareness when he thought "Oh frag," to himself. Luckily, Future Robin keep his promise and checked out the statue, used future tech to analyze it, saw that it was actually Slobo, and reversed his condition.
* Demonic possessors in ''ComicBook/CleanRoom'' can shift the flesh of their host like clay. One named the Surgeon prides himself on his creativity when he showcases his Pony Man, a man with a horse's head. The Pony Man's SingleTear affirms to the audience that there is still a thinking, feeling person inside the abomination.
* ''ComicBook/TheSandman'''s sister Delirium condemns one man to forever feel the sensation of insects crawling all over his skin. He's seen later strapped to a bed in an asylum, not daring to scream because he does not want the spiders he can feel crawling on his lips to fall in. What makes all of this worse is this isn't some sociopath baddy that the series generally has in spades; it's just a random traffic cop who was [[DisproportionateRetribution unfortunate enough]] to be the one to pull Delirium over.
* At the end of ''Final Ark'', ComicBook/CaptainCarrotAndHisAmazingZooCrew found themselves in a horrific and seemingly inescapable predicament being transformed into regular animals without their powers and unable to communicate with the humans of New Earth. Fortunately, Monitor Nix Uotan makes a point of restoring them fully in ''ComicBook/FinalCrisis''.
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[[folder:Marvel Comics]]

* The ''ComicBook/AlphaFlight'' villain Master of the World was a caveman dissected cell by cell by an alien LivingShip, and his mind trapped in the ship's computer for ''forty thousand years'', conscious the whole time, before he got control of the ship and had a new body grown.
* ComicBook/{{Carnage}}, a rogue of Comicbook/SpiderMan, was turned by the Silver Surfer into a statue that still lives and thinks, but cannot move, in order to arrest the rapid encroachment of stomach cancer into his body without the symbiote.
* In ''The ComicBook/UncannyXMen'', Doctor Doom once turned ComicBook/{{Storm}} into an organic chrome statue. She could not move but could still think. This turned into a case of UnstoppableRage because she is severely claustrophobic, and being unable to move made her completely insane. And her mutant powers were still working, so the claustrophobia manifested as a deadly storm overhead. Which expanded until it was a hurricane covering roughly half the planet. (By that point, even after Storm was freed, it was too large for her to control.)
** Creator/JossWhedon concluded his run on ''Astonishing X-Men'' by [[spoiler:permanently fusing ComicBook/KittyPryde with a gigantic bullet made of alien metal, after she phased it through the Earth in a HeroicSacrifice. The first issue of ''S.W.O.R.D.'' reveals that, over a year later, she's still alive and conscious, and getting further and further from home at apparently superluminal speeds.]] Although eventually she did [[spoiler:get back to Earth thanks to the actions of Magneto.]] She still can't scream. [[spoiler: She Got Better.]]
* In ''ComicBook/UltimateMarvel'', this is eventually revealed to be [[spoiler:Thanos']] EvilPlan, on a galactic scale: [[spoiler:he wants to make death something only he is allowed to experience, leaving the rest of the universe in an AndIMustScream state.]]
* At one point in continuity, all MarvelUniverse Skrulls lose their shapeshifting ability... and are stuck in whatever form they have at that moment, even those squeezed inside ''really tiny cracks and crevices''... One sleeper agent was in the shape of a lamp when the weapon was activated.
* New character Greymalkin from ''Young ComicBook/XMen'' has this as his origin story. He was buried alive by his abusive father roughly 200 years ago. The trauma caused his [[{{Mutants}} mutant]] powers to appear, and it just so happens said powers are superstrength and invincibility except in total darkness. The poor guy was buried alive, immobile, for 200 years until he was freed. Beast comments that it's amazing he kept his sanity.
* ''ComicBook/{{Runaways}}'':
** After meeting Gert's time traveling parents in the distant past and revealing to them what happens to them and their daughter, Nico casts a spell on them that [[spoiler:renders them unable to speak about or act upon the knowledge they learned from the kids and then sends them back to the time they left from]]. She even highlights it with the quote:
--->"On the outside they will be their normal selves but on the inside they will never stop screaming."
** Later, Molly is attacked by a super villain who is getting revenge for something her parents did to him. It apparently was some sort of attack with their psychic powers, which left him completely paralyzed (unable to even blink) and lasted until they died. In other words, he spent seventeen years in a hospital, unable to move, and at the complete mercy of the hospital staff.
* Magus from ''ComicBook/TheInfinityGauntlet'' and ComicBook/AdamWarlock / ComicBook/{{Thanos}} fame / infamy ended as this. Due to reality altering energies being unleashed as he held the incomplete Gauntlet, he ended up as an intangible, invisible, inaudible apparation. He can see others but not interact with them. Scream, but never be heard. ...Until [[ComicBook/CaptainMarVell Genis]]-Vell with his [[SpiderSense cosmic senses]] comes along, and a TimeyWimeyBall gets involved.
* This happened to the Juggernaut at the end of ''Amazing Spider-Man #230'', when Franchise/SpiderMan buried him in tons of concrete.
* The Deacon is paralyzed in the last issue of ''ComicBook/{{Ghost Rider}}s: Heaven's On Fire''. Total paralysis. He'll never move again. And he's going to spend his days in prison with the All-New Orb. Surely, this is a fate worse than death. This was actually ''intended'' as the ultimate punishment - rather than killing him and having him join his master Zadkiel, having him suffer through a pathetic life.
* In ''Mutopia X'', two of Kaufman's henchmen are walking inside a warehouse belonging to one of Kaufman's deposed drug gang rivals. One of the henchmen is talking about the deposed drug lord. The other henchman says, "What a terrible way to end your life." To which the other henchman replies "Who said anything about him being dead?" [[spoiler:He is being suspended on top of the warehouse by chains, and later gets horrific revenge on Kaufman in a method that is left to the reader's imagination]].
* In the alternate Marvel Universe ''Ruins'', the Gamma Bomb that turned Bruce Banner into [[ComicBook/IncredibleHulk the Hulk]] instead turned him into [[spoiler:a huge mass of gigantic tumors and horrific maiming all over the body, which Rick Jones claims is still being kept alive in a CIA facility]].
* In ''ComicBook/ImmortalHulk'' #2, Bruce Banner gets attacked by a MadScientist who used his research to become immortal but ended up turning into a creature resembling a Ghoul from ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' as a result. He used his son as a test subject but ended up accidentally killing him as a result, and buried him not knowing his corpse was radioactive and killing anyone who passed by it in the graveyard. To punish him the Hulk tears off his limbs and [[BuriedAlive buries him alive miles underground, unable to die]].
* In a ''ComicBook/GhostRider'' annual written by Warren Ellis, the Scarecrow (not the Batman villain) creates a haunted house sown together with live human beings. Upon defeating him, [[spoiler:Ghost Rider breaks every bone in the Scarecrow's body, then twists every bone in the Scarecrow's body so the bones will not heal properly, thus leaving the Scarecrow as a permanently paralyzed and disjointed mess.]] He later got better.
* In ''ComicBook/TheInfinityGauntlet'' mini-series, Thanos turns his granddaughter Nebula - who had been severely injured, but saved by one of Thanos' own henchmen, who got killed by his master for this kindness - into a floating near-corpse who is an intermediate state between life and death, not being allowed the luxury of death despite being twisted, broken and mutilated. [[spoiler:She got better.]]
* ComicBook/NewMutants: How do you deal with a sadistic person that can control people with her voice? [[spoiler: Simple. Use dark magic to completely remove her mouth, reducing her to a broken, weeping mess.]] Do not mess with Doug Ramsey. Seriously.
* Happens to ComicBook/{{Daredevil}} archenemy [[spoiler:Bullseye. Let's see...a demonically possessed Daredevil kills the guy in the ''Shadowlands'' story arc. Lady Bullseye manages to resurrect him, but he's completely paralyzed, has lost all his senses except his eyesight, and needs to be placed in an iron lung. Bullseye comes up with a rather elaborate plot to torment Daredevil and ultimately kill him. He fails and in the process loses his sense of sight. One of the most vicious, psychotic, and frightening villains in the Marvel Universe is now, in the words of Daredevil, "a living brain in a flesh and bone coffin."]]
* ''ComicBook/SpiderManReign'': The fate of the Kingpin, who is kept alive via an intravenous drip for ten years and paraded out once a year in front of the mayor who eats a steak in front of him.
* ComicBook/DoctorStrange isn't above inflicting this on his enemies. An amateur sorcerer sends his remote projection to blackmail Strange into giving up his chokehold on mystical knowledge, and Strange initially acquiesces. When the sorcerer projects himself again to reap his reward, his astral form is trapped in a small jar from which he can't escape. Strange places him among rows of identical jars and walks away from the sorcerer's panicked screaming.
** A professional thief shoots Dr. Strange and ransacks his home. When Strange catches up with the thief, he punishes him by trapping his physical body inside his own mind.
** In post-secret wars Marvel, magic has a serious cost. For Strange this takes the form of [[BodyHorror giant tumorous growths that plague his body like a cancer.]] In order to alleviate the worst of it, he passes off his own suffering onto [[spoiler: an artificial being he keeps locked in his basement.]] Later, Strange is forced into a prolong and desperate fight with [[TheFundamentalist The Empirikul, dimension-hopping and genetically enhanced super scientists who want to destroy all magic]]. When Strange is finally victorious, the Empirikul's leader [[spoiler:wakes up blindfolded and chained in a basement as Strange reads the spell of subsitution.]]
* Played for laughs with throwaway Deadpool villain The White Man. The White Man has Mandarin tech that allows his cane to turn people into stone; a fate he is subjected to when Deadpool, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist fight him in the 70's. He is unfrozen in the present day (Deadpool loves to mock comic book time) where it's revealed he was conscious and fully aware of his surroundings the entire time. He attempts to freeze Cage and Iron Fist and dump them in the ocean, but Iron Fist's students kick him in the balls, freeze him in a pose holding his crotch, and accidentally knock him overboard. The heroes assume he's dead while the White Man sinks to the bottom of the ocean and sinks into mud. He's not only still conscious, it's implied he's also constantly feeling the pain of having been freshly kicked in the nuts. He is eventually rescued... ''one million years later'', where an alien race picks him up on a long abandoned desolate Earth. By this point the White Man has long since gone gibbering insane and the aliens throw him in a zoo, assuming humans were an unintelligent species.
* In ''ComicBook/WhatIf'' vol. 2 #13, [[ComicBook/ProfessorX Charles Xavier]] rather than Cain Marko finds the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak and becomes TheJuggernaut, corrupting him into a mutant-supremacist supervillain. The issue ends with him ThrownOutTheAirlock and helplessly floating through space. As the Juggernaut, [[{{Immortality}} Xavier's immortal, indestructible body]] [[TheNeedless doesn't need air, food or water]] so he can survive this situation indefinitely. The ending narration is an IronicEcho of the Juggernaught's CatchPhrase, implying that he will float through space forever, fully conscious but powerless to '''do''' anything.
-->''He is the Juggernaut. He is possibly immortal. Definitely indestructible. And above all, unstoppable. Nothing can stop the Juggernaut. And nothing ever will."
* This is the sad fate of Franchise/IronMan villain Justin Hammer. After being harassed by Hammer messing with his hormones, Tony discovers and heads to a satellite where the villain, stricken with a terminal illness, is living out his last days. A series of missteps by Hammer's men causes him to fall into his pool and Tony uses a special cryo-capsule to freeze the water he's in before the two are sucked out into space. However, by the time S.H.I.E.L.D. could get up to pick up Hammer's men, Hammer himself had drifted off too far into space, his disease stabilized by the zero-gravity of space but never able to escape.

[[/folder]]

** In another recent Batman story arc, ComicBook/TheJoker does this to Dr. Hurt, who is immortal and has already pissed the Joker off on more than one occasion. Not only does Hurt accidentally slip on a banana peel and break his neck, Joker then injects him with Joker Venom and buries him alive. It gets even more disturbing when you remember precisely what Joker Venom ''does'' to its victims besides outright killing them. And since Hurt ''cannot'' die and the toxin presumably never wears off, he's stuck BuriedAlive while slowly going insane from the effects of Joker Venom, forced to laugh at himself for all eternity despite the pain he's in.

* The stand-alone story "The Death Clock" in [[http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/House_of_Mystery_Vol_1_214 ''House of Mystery'' #214]] featured a young man who comes into possession of a watch that shows what time you will die down to the second, after its original owner is killed right on time. When the man finds that his own date of death is decades into the future (he'd be in his early 90's), he embarks on a career as a daredevil, confident in the knowledge that he can't die before his time. However, his careless stunts causes several fatalities, and a revenge-driven widower attacks him with a grenade, which ends up blowing off his limbs and renders him blind and mute, leaving him helpless, blind and immovable in a hospital bed with nothing to do but count the seconds for the rest of his life. To drive the irony in further, one of his doctors picks up the watch and his time turns out to be the next day at midnight, [[http://barebonesez.blogspot.com.br/2014/09/ but the doctor has no idea of the clock's power]].

** ''ComicBook/BatmanLAstKnightOnEarth'': All Speed Force users have all somehow been merged into a Speed Force storm, rampaging across the wasteland and randomly aging anything caught in it. By all accounts, all of them are not only alive, but fully conscious as they uncontrollably become a weather phenomenon.

** This also happened to Basil Karlo, the original Clayface. During the ''Mud Pack'' storyline, he uses a formula made from the other villains who used the name Clayface, acquiring all their powers and becoming the Ultimate Clayface. At the end of the story, however, he loses control of his powers, and sinks into the earth, where he remains entombed for months. He eventually escapes, after odd energy from the gemstones in his tomb make him much stronger, reappearing during the ''ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand'' storyline. Batman probably describes what happened to him best:

** In ''Superman Vol 1 #282'', Superman tells the tale of a Kryptonian named Nam-Ek (yes, that is his name. And this story was written ten years before the birth of the Franchise/DragonBall franchise) who managed to make himself immortal and indestructible. When Krypton exploded, he survived, and remained floating in lifeless space, alone forever.

* New character Greymalkin from ''Young Comicbook/XMen'' has this as his origin story. He was buried alive by his abusive father roughly 200 years ago. The trauma caused his [[{{Mutants}} mutant]] powers to appear, and it just so happens said powers are superstrength and invincibility except in total darkness. The poor guy was buried alive, immobile, for 200 years until he was freed. Beast comments that it's amazing he kept his sanity.
* ''ComicBook/{{Runaways}}''

* The Deacon is paralyzed in the last issue of ''Comicbook/{{Ghost Rider}}s: Heaven's On Fire''. Total paralysis. He'll never move again. And he's going to spend his days in prison with the All-New Orb. Surely, this is a fate worse than death. This was actually ''intended'' as the ultimate punishment - rather than killing him and having him join his master Zadkiel, having him suffer through a pathetic life.

* In a ''Comicbook/GhostRider'' annual written by Warren Ellis, the Scarecrow (not the Batman villain) creates a haunted house sown together with live human beings. Upon defeating him, [[spoiler:Ghost Rider breaks every bone in the Scarecrow's body, then twists every bone in the Scarecrow's body so the bones will not heal properly, thus leaving the Scarecrow as a permanently paralyzed and disjointed mess.]] He later got better.

* Happens to Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} archenemy [[spoiler:Bullseye. Let's see...a demonically possessed Daredevil kills the guy in the ''Shadowlands'' story arc. Lady Bullseye manages to resurrect him, but he's completely paralyzed, has lost all his senses except his eyesight, and needs to be placed in an iron lung. Bullseye comes up with a rather elaborate plot to torment Daredevil and ultimately kill him. He fails and in the process loses his sense of sight. One of the most vicious, psychotic, and frightening villains in the Marvel Universe is now, in the words of Daredevil, "a living brain in a flesh and bone coffin."]]
* ''Comicbook/SpiderManReign'': The fate of the Kingpin, who is kept alive via an intravenous drip for ten years and paraded out once a year in front of the mayor who eats a steak in front of him.

** ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd''

* ''ComicBook/ArchieComicsSonicTheHedgehog'': In addition to robotization, this is the fate of [[WellIntentionedExtremist Dimitri]], when Lien-Da [[KlingonPromotion usurps his position as Grand Master]]. She disables his ability to move, leaving only his robotic head, then sticks him in a box, gleefully telling him his battery will run down in a few months. He does eventually get rescued.

* Buzzard from Comicbook/TheGoon In Heaps of Ruination. Blowing his own brains out with a gun didn't work, so he went to go be alone for eternity. "And Buzzard crawled into the earth at the roots of the tree. And there he lay. And he lived...and lived...and lived."

** This also happened to Basil Karlo, the original Clayface. During the ''Mud Pack'' storyline, he uses a formula made from the other villains who used the name Clayface, acquiring all their powers and becoming the Ultimate Clayface. At the end of the story, however, he loses control of his powers, and sinks into the earth, where he remains entombed for months. He eventually escapes, after odd energy from the gemstones in his tomb make him much stronger, reappearing during the ''No Man's Land'' storyline. Batman probably describes what happened to him best:

* In Creator/JackKirby's ''Fourth World'', aka the entire mythos surrounding {{ComicBook/Darkseid}} and the ComicBook/NewGods, anyone who attempts to penetrate the great wall that separates the universe from the Source [[spoiler:aka God]] is imprisoned on that wall as a hundred foot (or, depending on how you look at it, one hundred thousand mile) tall 'Promethean Giant'.

* In ''ComicBook/GreenLantern #50'', it is revealed that ComicBook/{{Sinestro}} could still think while imprisoned as pure energy in the central battery.
-->'''Sinestro''': Do you know what it was like inside the battery, Jordan? Reduced to less than a thought in that limbo? It's like having a maddening itch you can never scratch... Because there's nothing there. There's no you. That's what it was like, Jordan. And it wasn't... ''' very... ''' ''' [[PunctuatedForEmphasis PLEASANT!]] '''

*** [[spoiler:Nekron's ultimate fate also counts. With his link to the living world sundered and cut off from the Anti Monitor's power, he was once again banished to his limbo dimension as a powerless spirit shrieking in the void.]]
** DC megavillain Krona tends to end up this way after defeats. Given his godlike powers and utter indestructibility, there's not much else you can do with him.

* DC Comics' ComicBook/{{Superboy|1994}} (Kon-El) is, surprisingly, responsible for one of these, in his first ongoing. After Amanda Spence killed his first love Tana Moon, Superboy struggled with his desire to kill her on several occasions. The last time they fought, Spence had been technologically and biologically augmented to essentially be completely indestructible, and now no longer even needed to breathe. After Spence killed a clone created with some of Tana's DNA, and told Kon that she planned to have an endless supply to kill just for kicks, Kon flipped out, and launched her out of the ship they were fighting on and into space at about mach eleventy billion. Given how ridiculously vast outer space is, and the sheer unlikelihood of Spence ever being found by anyone or coming into contact with anything, and the fact that she essentially can't die and that her biology might make it so she can't freeze, it means that she's probably still floating around in the cold, vast emptiness of space alone and might do so for all of eternity.
* Comicbook/{{Supergirl}}:
** In the Post-Crisis universe, ''[[Comicbook/Supergirl2005 Kara]]'' spent thirty years in suspended animation, curled-up in a tiny pod and trapped in Kryptonite which hurt her and poisoned her mind.
** ''[[Comicbook/{{Supergirl 2011}} Post-Flashpoint Kara]]'' was captured by corrupt bussinessman Simon Tycho, who held her in a stasis beam near from a chunk of kryptonite. She was in incredible pain but she couldn't scream or even move.
** In ''[[Comicbook/{{Supergirl 1982}} Volume 2]]'', #20, Parasite absorbs Supergirl's powers and throws her in a flying metal coffin which floats about a mile straight up from solid ground. As he uses heat vision to seal her in, he warns that she has a little less than four minutes till her air runs out.
** In ''ComicBook/SupergirlCosmicAdventuresInThe8thGrade'', super-villain Belinda Zee is turned into a crystal statue. She cannot talk or move but she is fully sentient and -worst of all- she can feel pain.

** In comics of UsefulNotes/{{the Silver Age|of Comic Books}}, the original version of the Phantom Zone fell into this trope. Phantom Zone prisoners couldn't even touch each other; they were condemned just to watch the material world until their sentences expired.
** In ''Comicbook/KryptoniteNevermore'', Superman is doused with magma and falls into the ocean. The water cools the magma, encasing Superman in a shroud of stone. He thinks he will be stuck there forever unless he is able to break out.

* Magus from ComicBook/TheInfinityGauntlet and ComicBook/AdamWarlock / ComicBook/{{Thanos}} fame / infamy ended as this. Due to reality altering energies being unleashed as he held the incomplete Gauntlet, he ended up as an intangible, invisible, inaudible apparation. He can see others but not interact with them. Scream, but never be heard. ...Until [[ComicBook/CaptainMarVell Genis]]-Vell with his [[SpiderSense cosmic senses]] comes along, and a TimeyWimeyBall gets involved.

* In ''[[ComicBook/AthenaVoltaire Athena Voltaire and the Isle of the Dead]]'', de Vargas tells the story of someone who was effectively immortal, but who was chained in the hold of a ship when it sank. He was down there for years.

* In the comic ''Comicbook/{{WITCH}}.'' the girls can produce astral drops which replace them when they need to transform and help people. [[spoiler:They start to have their own emotions and lives. Then one of them is shown crying, stuck in the heart surrounded by darkness. And this is when they're not being used, which is a lot]].

* In ''ComicBook/WhatIf'' vol. 2 #13, [[Characters/XMenTheOriginalTeam Charles Xavier]] rather than Cain Marko finds the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak and becomes TheJuggernaut, corrupting him into a mutant-supremacist supervillain. The issue ends with him ThrownOutTheAirlock and helplessly floating through space. As the Juggernaut, [[{{Immortality}} Xavier's immortal, indestructible body]] [[TheNeedless doesn't need air, food or water]] so he can survive this situation indefinitely. The ending narration is an IronicEcho of the Juggernaught's CatchPhrase, implying that he will float through space forever, fully conscious but powerless to '''do''' anything.

* Surprisingly, happens in the Franchise/{{Archie|Comics}} Comic "Afterlife With Archie", a horror/zombie take on the classic characters. [[spoiler: As punishment for stealing the Necronomicon, Sabrina is cast into an empty dimension by her aunts (here a pair of horrible wraith-witches) after having her mouth removed via magic for a year. [[FromBadToWorse But it turns out that her true fate is even worse than that.]]]]

* In ''ComicBook/WhatIf'' vol. 2 #13, [[Characters/XMenTheOriginalTeam Charles Xavier]] rather than Cain Marko finds the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak and becomes TheJuggernaut, corrupting him into a mutant-supremacist supervillain. The issue ends with him ThrownOutTheAirlock and helplessly floating through space. As the Juggernaut, [[{{Immortality}} Xavier's immortal, indestructible body]] [[TheNeedless doesn't need air, food or water]] so he can survive this situation indefinitely. The ending narration is an IronicEcho of the Juggernaught's CatchPhrase, implying that he will float through space forever, fully conscious but powerless '''do''' anything.

* In ''ComicBook/WhatIf'' vol. 2 #13, [[Characters/XMenTheOriginalTeam Charles Xavier]] rather than Cain Marko finds the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak and becomes TheJuggernaut, corrupting him into a mutant-supremacist supervillain. The issue ends with him ThrownOutTheAirlock and helplessly floating through space. As the Juggernaut, [[{{Immortality}} Xavier's immortal, indestructible body]] doesn't need air, food or water so he can survive this situation indefinitely. The ending narration is an IronicEcho of the Juggernaught's CatchPhrase, implying that he will float through space forever, fully conscious but powerless '''do''' anything.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman'': Back in the Golden Age a magical wooden bangle is revealed to contain the siren Parthenope, who had been turned into a tree by Aphrodite in ancient times and stuck unable to do anything but aware of her surroundings for thousands of years.
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': While a few of the souls beyond Doom's Doorway are free to run around hassling newcomers to their hearts' content so long as they don't try to actually escape beyond the door, most of them are saddled with this as punishment. Special mentions to the following:
** Polyphemus the Cyclops, starved for eternity in a tiny cave, unable to [[ICannotSelfTerminate even kill himself]]. Oh, and he's still blind from that little gift Odysseus gave him.
** ComicBook/{{Hercules|Unbound}}, frozen as [[TakenForGranite a massive statue]] but still able to feel every scratch and peck of the harpies that circle him daily. Oh, and he also has to support all of Themyscira on his shoulders.
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman2011'': Everything in Hades is built with conscious souls, ''everything'' including bricks and trees and the souls there are under Hades' complete control. Supposedly the souls don't mind, but given this is claimed by a member of the Greek pantheon and the only soul there that is able to say anything about their situation finds it torturous it is far more likely very few of them are content with being used as building material and slaves.

[[AC:DC Comics]]

[[AC: Marvel Comics]]

[[AC:Other]]

* In GreenLantern #50, it is revealed that ComicBook/{{Sinestro}} could still think while imprisoned as pure energy in the central battery.

* In ''ComicBook/TheInfinityGauntlet'' mini-series, Thanos turns his daughter into a floating corpse who is an intermediate between life and death, not being allowed the luxury of death.

* In Creator/JackKirby's ''Fourth World'', aka the entire mythos surrounding {{ComicBook/Darkseid}} and the ComicBook/NewGods, anyone who attempts to penetrate the great wall that separates the universe from the Source [[spoiler:aka God]] is imprisoned on that wall as a hundred foot tall 'Promethean Giant'.

* In Archie's new horror-based Sabrina the Teenage Witch comic, Sabrina's father is turned into a tree. It's currently unknown if he's lucid in this state or not.

** In the ''ComicBook/JudgeDredd'' story arc "The Day The Law Died," [[TheCaligula Judge Cal's]] method of getting rid of the "worry wrinkles" of his closest aide, Judge Slocum, involved injecting Slocum with a paralyzing agent and, while he's still conscious, [[FingerForcedSmile molding a permanent wide grin on his face]] before dropping him in a sealed vat of vinegar for preservation... and the whole time we get to read Slocum's thoughts of sheer horror being beset on him while seeing him with such a stupid, big smile on his face.

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': While a few of the souls beyond Doom's Doorway are free to run around hassling newcomers to their hearts' content, most of them are saddled with this as punishment. Special mentions to the following:

** Hercules, frozen as [[TakenForGranite a massive statue]] but still able to feel every scratch and peck of the harpies that circle him daily. Oh, and he also has to support all of Themyscira on his shoulders.