History BrokenAesop / Comicbooks

* The plot of the 2021 ''ComicBook/AmethystPrincessOfGemworld'' series is about the SpoiledBrat protagonist maturing as a person and fixing her mistakes. The problem is the main conflict is caused by the [[CosmicKeystone Amethyst Keystone]] being damaged, which her brother did not her. Yet, both the story and characters, including Amethyst herself, treat the situation [[InformedWrongness as if it was all her fault]]. Meanwhile, the brother gets [[KarmaHoudini no blame]] despite [[TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt nearly dooming the world]].

** Furthermore, even if you ignore evil mutants who use their powers for terrorism, it's not uncommon for a mutant's powers to get out of control and end up hurting or killing a lot of people or causing a ton of property damage, giving humans a valid reason for not wanting them around or wanting to deactivate the X-Gene through various means. Even worse, for all their talk about wanting equality with mankind, we almost never see the X-Men try and welcome regular humans be around them. And they don't really try to make the few humans who do try to be around them feel welcome. For example, the Xavier Institute once employed a regular human nurse named Annie. At one point when they needed her help with a group of crucified mutants, Jean Grey used her telepathy to call her and was [[WhatTheHellHero annoyed when she panicked after hearing Jean's voice in her head without any warning]] and the group talked down to her for being human. Similarly, after M-Day, many mutants lost their powers, including members of the New Mutants and other X-Men affiliated teams. What was the X-Men's response to this? Oh, sorry, you're not a mutant anymore so we're not going to help or protect you anymore. Many newly-powerless former mutants were booted from Xavier Mansion, often with the only place for them to go to be return to their abusive parents. They were promptly captured by anti-mutant extremists and most were murdered.

** One ''Superman'' annual has a BadFuture where Superman starts acting more authoritarian after the death of Lois, until his actions lead to the death of a criminal. The government sends in Batman to apprehend him and show him he"s wrong. The moral is obviously meant to be against that brutal approach to crimefighting. Except Batman is wearing the armor and using the tactics he used in ''ComicBook/TheDarkKnightReturns'' - a comic about a BadFuture where Batman started acting more authoritarian, his actions led to the death of a criminal, and the government sent in Superman to take him down, and his actions were portrayed as generally in the right. The heavy homage causes the moral to come across as more "Batman is always right, [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality even when he's taking the exact opposite position that he did last time.]]"

* In ''ComicBook/RunawaysRainbowRowell'' #11, Nico extracts an apology from Klara for her past homophobia, which would be all well and good, except that this comes in the middle of Gert baselessly accusing Klara's [[HasTwoMommies foster dads]] of being evil.

* ''ComicBook/TheBoys'' is centered around the idea that superheroes are unneeded and would be a terrible thing to have in real life. This entire message is undercut by the titular main characters being a group who has superpowers themselves, and in fact fit superhero archetypes closer than the characters who are supposed to be deconstructions of superheroes. The [[Series/TheBoys2019 live-action adaptation]] attempts to rectify this by having most of the main crew as {{Badass Normal}}s, but it falls flat there as well since their quest to take down the Supers is only made possible by friendly external forces on the same physical or political power level as them.
** The "superheroes are useless" angle oscillates wildly, as the story wants to treat them as a danger to democratic society whilst also making the vast majority appear useless and weak. Aside from [[FlyingBrick flying bricks]] like Homelander, Stormfront and [[spoiler: Black Noir]], almost all superheroes are regular humans with a not-too-useful secondary power (and a ''VERY'' silly costume, of course).
*** The waters get muddied even further here when Hughie meets [[spoiler: Mallory, the first leader of The Boys, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure that Vogelbaum's work on Compound V would only give mediocre results.]] In other words, one of the reasons that superheroes are so useless is that [[spoiler: a guy who hated superheroes made sure that they would be.]]
** Billy’s final victory over [[spoiler:Black Noir]] is clearly meant to show the ultimate superiority of MugglePower over superpowers, as [[spoiler:Noir]] is brought down by a hail of bullets from US Marines, with Billy landing the killing blow. However, again, the only reason that the Marines are even capable of hurting him is that [[spoiler:Homelander]], a superhero, had critically injured and half-killed him first, and Billy wouldn’t have been able to harm him at all if he didn’t have SuperStrength.
** At one point, the series criticizes the superhero industry's usage of RapeAsDrama for its characters, which can be hard to take seriously when one considers that Butcher's primary plot is avenging his wife, who was raped by Homelander[[spoiler: (actually Black Noir)]].
** Billy’s claims of how ridiculous superhero costumes look become a tad hypocritical when The Boys are the ones wearing matching black clothes and trenchcoats.

* ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' has a rare in-universe example. The Kipling-quoting "Indian Gentleman" tells his companions a tale he hopes will "prove" that women are inherently evil in "Hob's Leviathan." But [[GreyAndGrayMorality the men in the story are no angels themselves]], and as his shipmate Hob [[LampshadeHanging points out]], the sum Aesop of the story seems to be more along the lines of "men and women are ''both'' capable of deeply hurting each other."

* The whole concept of "Normal Badass" became this over time: "normal" characters (without superpowers) blatantly displaying superhuman physical and mental feats and everyone automatically saying that this is something that all human beings can achieve with dedication. . It gets even worse when the character doesn't even show that he is as skilled as claimed but everyone still praises him. Most famous/infamous example: Batman becoming blatantly superhuman both physically and mentally, mastering EVERY field of expertise in existence and inventing new ones with no dedication just to show how awesome he is (Always attributing this to the years of dedication he had to become Batman), defeating superhuman beings (Without any tactical planning), fighting LITERAL armies of superpowered beings and soldiers trained only in hand-to-hand combat (WHAT?), somehow physically keeping up the most powerful members of the Justice League and even surpassing them on a few occasions (HOW ABSURD), being practically clairvoyant in his contingency plans (Which proves extremely obvious time and time again), all repeatedly stating that he is the most skilled investigator of the world (When it fails to unravel cases that are obvious even to readers), etc. All of these completely illogical cases are instantly chalked up to how "badass" he is, when really it's a painfully obvious case of Plot Armor that makes him survive and succeed as a superhero.

** The original five X-Men were a group of young, white, privileged Americans who attended an exclusive private school. Additionally, four of them were very conventionally attractive and Beast, who was supposed to be the “freak” of the group, was UglyCute at worst pre-secondary mutation. This all made the discrimination analogy ring fairly hollow. Marvel seems to have actually realised this, and when the new team was introduced in 1975, it included a more diverse roster including: Thunderbird, a Native man; Storm, a black African woman; and Nightcrawler, a German man who looked like a blue demon. Though this still didn't help much with the fact that the cast was more or less all good looking- Storm is one of the most beautiful of all X-Men and Nightcrawler is a CuteMonsterBoy. Even Thunderbird was fairly handsome in an angry, brooding sort of way.

** Talking of M-Day, the meta reasoning for it, according to Joe Quesada, was a belief that many recent stories had focused on a nascent mutant culture with a few million members worldwide, and therefore it was becoming unbelievable that mutants were still persecuted [[note]]to put this into perspective, there were about 17 million Jewish people worldwide prior to World War 2[[/note]]. Ignore for a moment how completely clueless it is to claim that if you have a distinct culture or more than a few hundred members (something true of nearly every minority in history), you can't be prejudiced against, this actually broke the racism metaphor the other way. The evil of forming an opinion on all members of a community doesn't seem nearly as significant when it's a community so small that the majority of them live in the same mansion; it's like going from "I hate Jews" to "I hate the people in my apartment building."

** The issues leading up to ''Flashpoint'' demonstrated that Thawne was an incredibly dangerous and crafty opponent to the degree the entire Flash Family was needed to take him down. With that in mind, Barry should've known better than to try and stop Thawne by himself and should've also thought out what would happen by fighting him in the timestream. If there was any aesop to be found, it should've been about Barry getting help from his family and making a plan to undo Nora's death to avoid such complications.

* The whole concept of "Normal Badass" went into this: "Normal" characters without superpowers blatantly displaying superhuman physical and mental feats and everyone automatically saying it shows that it's one thing all human beings can achieve. Example: Batman becoming blatantly superhuman both physically and mentally, mastering EVERY field of expertise in existence and inventing new ones without any dedication just to show how awesome he is, defeating superhuman beings without any planning, fighting LITERAL armies of superpowered alien beings and trained soldiers, somehow managing to physically keep up with the most powerful members of the Justice League, etc. All of these completely illogical cases are instantly chalked up to how "Badass" he is, when it's actually a painfully obvious case of Plot Armor and other nonsense.

* ''ComicBook/TheBoys'' is centered around the idea that superheroes are unneeded and would be a terrible thing to have in real life. This entire message is undercut by the titular main characters being a group who has superpowers themselves, and in fact fit superhero archetypes closer than the characters who are supposed to be deconstructions of superheroes. The [[Series/TheBoys2019 live-action adaptation]] attempts to rectify this by making the main crew {{Badass Normal}}s, but it falls flat there as well since their quest to take down the Supers is only made possible by friendly external forces on the same physical or political power level as them.

** ''Batman: War Games'', and its follow up ''War Crimes'' seems to have the aesop that teenagers shouldn't be superheroes, because they might screw up and get killed. Except, despite the brutal death of Spoiler, both Tim Drake and [[ComicBook/{{Batgirl}} Cassandra Cain]] (who were the same age as Stephanie Brown) continue to operate, except now they move to Bludhaven, a city that is ''worse'' than Gotham. On top of that, Steph's actions were in response to the emotional abuse Batman put her through ever since he met her (namely, repeatedly taking her under his wing then firing her and telling her she's terrible for making [[DoubleStandard the same mistakes he forgives the boy Robins for]]), on top of her already present issues with wanting to prove herself, and she was only able to cause the gangwar that lead to her death because Batman, despite ''firing her'', then gave her unsupervised access to his computer where he kept his contingency plans (while never giving her the information she'd need to do them right, info that even ''Catwoman'' knew, stuff he ''should'' have given to her while she was ComicBook/{{Robin}}), basically meaning Batman took an emotionally vulnerable young girl, made her ''more'' emotionally unstable, then gave her the tools to either fix or destroy the city without the knowledge on ''how to use them''. Essentially, the aesop isn't so much as 'kids shouldn't be superheroes', its that 'kids should only be superheroes [[SpaceWhaleAesop if Batman likes them]]'.

** Also, there's a comment about Supergirl's actions as a superhero was an abuse of power, acting outside the law, only to disregard this and comment about how inefficient police work is and how much more effective she was as a superpowered vigilante and how she should go back to being a vigilante. Then it breaks ''that'' aesop because standard police work (like forensics) did more to uncover what happened to ComicBook/TheAtom than vigilantism.

* Similar to ''Marshal Law'' above, ''ComicBook/TheBoys'' is centered around the idea that superheroes are unneeded and would be a terrible thing to have in real life. This entire message is undercut by the titular main characters being a group who has superpowers themselves, and in fact fit superhero archetypes closer than the characters who are supposed to be deconstructions of superheroes. The [[Series/TheBoys2019 live-action adaptation]] attempts to rectify this by making the main crew {{Badass Normal}}s, but it falls flat there as well since their quest to take down the Supers is only made possible by friendly external forces on the same physical or political power level as them.
* ''ComicBook/MarvelAdventures ComicBook/SpiderMan'' #39 has a foreign exchange student named Kristoff show up at Peter's school, and make a speech about how, unlike many of his countrymen, he doesn't hate America. Peter shows him around, and they talk until it's revealed that Kristoff is from Latveria, home of Doctor Doom. Peter freaks out a bit but accepts him for it. Then the ComicBook/FantasticFour show up, attacking Kristoff seemingly just because of his Latverian origin, calling him a "potential threat to national security", and taking him away. So, it turns out that he's just a normal, nice kid and the Aesop is that ethnic prejudice is wrong, right? ... well, no, because it turns out that he was ActuallyADoombot, and Spidey and the FF have to beat him up. So, the Aesop is that you should never trust people from enemy countries, even when they seem to be perfectly nice, and that it's totally logical to seize and search people who ''might'' be a problem.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Melusine}}: The War without Magic'' has two broken ones:

* From way back in The Golden Age we had ''Pep Comics #23'' where one story's villain was "the World's Ugliest Man," a sideshow freak who couldn't take the humiliation anymore and set out to murder handsome men. The hero acknowledged he was a TragicVillain, but ended the story by saying "no matter what the reason, you can't take the law into your own hands!" Said hero, mind, is a masked vigilante who called himself the Hangman, and he adopted the identity to avenge his brother who'd been killed by gangsters. And the reason said brother was murdered by gangsters was that he was a masked vigilante himself, the Comet, who also spent his career on the run from the police. So we have a guy saying it's wrong to take the law into your own hands, who not only does exactly that on a regular basis, he does it because he inherited the mission from his brother who also did the exact same thing on a regular basis (and was specifically a wanted man, so there's pretty much no way to say they weren't defying the proper authorities). That's not an easy moral for superheroes at the best of times, but it's hard to think of a more hypocritical example. And that's not the only Hangman story with a tragic figure as a villain and the same moral of not taking the law into your own hands at the end, meaning the writers missed the hypocrisy of that moral multiple times!

** ''ComicBook/SupermanAtEarthsEnd'' has one of these. Superman loses (most of) his powers and has to rely on a gigantic machine gun to solve his problems. After using his gun to kill two Hitlers and a Batman zombie ([[ItMakesSenseInContext don't ask]]) he tells his allies (some little kids with guns) that he's dying. The little kids then bawl and say that guns killed Superman before throwing all of their guns into a bonfire. Of course, no one bothers to point out that guns also saved the kids from two Hitlers and a Batman zombie! Worse is the fact that Superman himself admitted that the only thing keeping all these kids alive in this AfterTheEnd [[CrapsackWorld GOTHAM]] was those guns. And Batman, for God knows what reason, has the gun that killed his parents proudly displayed in his batcave - it's even labeled [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "THE GUN THAT KILLED MY PARENTS"]]. For someone who despises guns like Batman does, it makes you wonder why he spent time locating the gun in the first place.

** Creator/JamesMcAvoy said he actually kept this in mind while portraying Xavier in ''Film/XMenFirstClass''. He pointed out that Xavier is a well-meaning, but ultimately misguided liberal, as he still has tons of societal advantages (especially considering the time period the film is set in) given that he's white, heterosexual, male, and extremely wealthy. He certainly doesn't have to put up with the same bigotry many mutants face (hell, the same bigotry many ''real world'' minorities still face), which causes his message of peace to ring if not false, at least simplistic to many.
** Also, compare Xavier's powerset to those of characters like Rogue, Toad, or Cyclops. Xavier has telepathy -- a power that he can [[PowerIncontinence control perfectly]], that has absolutely ''no'' negative effects on him physically or mentally, that is a massive benefit to his life, and cannot be detected by normal humans. In comparison? Rogue's powers kill anyone she has physical contact with. She cannot control this or stop it in any way, and has resigned herself to being isolated from her peers. Her powers have drastically injured her self-esteem and social life. Toad's [[http://marvel.com/universe/Toad mutation]] turned him into an ugly, lizardlike humanoid and made him the subject of severe bullying from other children. Cyclops projects a continuous wave of destructive energy from his eyes and relies on special glasses just to live a normal life. Even ''Phoenix'', another telepath, is often overwhelmed by the thoughts of others -- to the point of mental instability. Looking at the general trend of mutant powers, it's hard not to think that Xavier ''really'' lucked out where the SuperpowerLottery was concerned.

** The general moral of the conflict between the X-Men and WellIntentionedExtremist mutant groups seems to be something of an analogy for [[WeAreStrugglingTogether real-life conflicts between activists]], such as UsefulNotes/MalcolmX versus UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr, with the appealing but ultimately destructive radical on one end and the more incremental but successful moderate on the other. The problem comes when, after years of continuity, the above strategy has shown very little success in actually winning people over; every other storyline still seems to deal with mutants being nearly exterminated and the government still barely tolerates the X-Men, making it seem like the more radical groups might have a better idea. This overlaps a bit with CluelessAesop, as people familiar with the real MLK can tell you he wasn't nearly the moderate TheThemeParkVersion of him would imply: while he ''did'' criticize black nationalists and more radical activists, he also spoke out against people calling for more "slow and steady" progress and saw the philosophy as a dead end.

** The entire story of Genosha is this. Originally a green and prosperous African island, Genosha was at one point stated outright to be "the most technologically advanced society on Earth," surpassing similar trailblazing countries such as Latveria and Wakanda. The catch? All that advancement was built entirely off the backs of mutant slave labor, and mutants were not only a slave underclass in Genosha, they were put through a dehumanizing regimen that sealed them inside artificial bodysuits that recycled their own waste, wiped them of all their memories, and programmed them to each be subservient to the magistrates of the island nation. The X-Men put an end to this and freed Genosha's slave population, but all that did was plunge the country into a years-long civil war. Seeing this, ComicBook/{{Magneto}} decided to come in and install himself as the island's leader, which in theory would have granted mutants a sanctuary nation of their own for the very first time... except that Magneto screwed things up even more horribly than the civil war did, things got ''[[UpToEleven even worse]]'' between the humans and the mutants, and ultimately all 16 million of Genosha's mutants were slaughtered by Sentinels. Later superhuman conflicts killed off the island's remaining population completely. Saying things would have been better off if a bunch of slavers had kept power is a terrible thing, but thanks to bad writing and this trope it's unfortunately the truth where Genosha is concerned.

* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'':
** ''Batman: War Games'', and its follow up ''War Crimes'' seems to have the aesop that teenagers shouldn't be superheroes, because they might screw up and get killed. Except, despite the brutal death of Spoiler, both [[ComicBook/RobinSeries Tim Drake]] and [[ComicBook/Batgirl2000 Cassandra Cain]] (who were the same age as Stephanie) continue to operate, except now they move to Bludhaven, a city that is ''worse'' than Gotham. On top of that, Steph's actions were in response to the emotional abuse Batman put her through ever since he met her (namely, repeatedly taking her under his wing then firing her and telling her she's terrible for making [[DoubleStandard the same mistakes he forgives the boy Robins for]]), on top of her already present issues with wanting to prove herself, and she was only able to cause the gangwar that lead to her death because Batman, despite ''firing her'', then gave her unsupervised access to his computer where he kept his contingency plans (while never giving her the information she'd need to do them right, info that even ''Catwoman'' knew, stuff he ''should'' have given to her while she was Robin), basically meaning Batman took an emotionally vulnerable young girl, made her ''more'' emotionally unstable, then gave her the tools to either fix or destroy the city without the knowledge on ''how to use them''. Essentially, the aesop isn't so much as 'kids shouldn't be superheroes', its that 'kids should only be superheroes [[SpaceWhaleAesop if Batman likes them]]'.

* ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'' is a comic that is meant to be, at its core, about how the idea that comics need to "return" to some prior era to fix their problems is wrong. Unfortunately, most of this is also punctuated by a very heavy implication that anything ''after'' that given era is an aberrant deviation: for instance, it's offhandedly claimed that various Post-Crisis {{Legacy Character}}s wouldn't have been from the original DCU, and the comic itself kills off dozens of CListFodder characters (including wiping out the Blood Pack in one panel), most of whom were introduced post-Crisis and go largely unmourned. The claims that the villains are wrong to believe that the current world is flawed for its violence, mass deaths, and increasingly morally-grey heroes is also undermined by the fact that all their criticisms, in-universe, are completely accurate; the DCU had been getting increasingly DarkerAndEdgier and BloodierAndGorier, and ''Infinite Crisis'' was something of a watershed moment in both categories, with multiple characters being brutally ripped apart on-panel. While the book ends on a note that the heroes will resolve to be better in the aftermath and make a more optimistic and honorable world without needing the universe reorganized along strict moral lines, it comes across as hollow when the next few years would feature even more mass death, gore, and violence, along with the universe being increasingly restructured to match the pre-Crisis status quo ([[UnderminedByReality largely by the architects of]] ''Infinite Crisis'', no less).

** Also, compare Xavier's powerset to those of characters like Rogue, Toad, or Cyclops. Xavier has telepathy -- a power that he can [[PowerIncontinence control perfectly]], that has absolutely ''no'' negative effects on him physically or mentally, that is a massive benefit to his life, and cannot be detected by normal humans. In comparison? Rogue's powers kill anyone she has physical contact with. She cannot control this or stop it in any way, and has resigned herself to being isolated from her peers. Her powers have drastically injured her self-esteem and social life. Toad's [[http://marvel.com/universe/Toad mutation]] turned him into an ugly, lizardlike humanoid and made him the subject of severe bullying from other children. Cyclops projects a continuous wave of destructive energy from his eyes and relies on special glasses just to live a normal life. Even ''Phoenix'', another telepath, is often overwhelmed by the thoughts of others -- to the point of mental instability. Looking at the [[MurphysLaw general trend]] of mutant powers, it's hard not to think that Xavier ''really'' lucked out where the SuperpowerLottery was concerned.

** The crux of the comic is that superheroes are bad, nowhere as heroic as real heroes, and promote the idea that violence is the best option. The titular protagonist isn't exempt from this, when called out for how his actions inspire people to acts of just the characters he fights against, he doesn't deny. The problem is that while the comic criticizes superheroes for resorting to violence, some the "real heroes" it praises are soldiers who fought in war, ie, people who took part in horrific acts of violence. Some storylines will criticize the army but the message is dropped whenever the comic feels like mocking superheroes by saying they are an insult to the real heroes.

* ''ComicBook/MarvelAdventures Comicbook/SpiderMan'' #39 has a foreign exchange student named Kristoff show up at Peter's school, and make a speech about how, unlike many of his countrymen, he doesn't hate America. Peter shows him around, and they talk until it's revealed that Kristoff is from Latveria, home of Doctor Doom. Peter freaks out a bit but accepts him for it. Then the Comicbook/FantasticFour show up, attacking Kristoff seemingly just because of his Latverian origin, calling him a "potential threat to national security", and taking him away. So, it turns out that he's just a normal, nice kid and the Aesop is that ethnic prejudice is wrong, right? ... well, no, because it turns out that he was ActuallyADoombot, and Spidey and the FF have to beat him up. So, the Aesop is that you should never trust people from enemy countries, even when they seem to be perfectly nice, and that it's totally logical to seize and search people who ''might'' be a problem.

** [[spoiler:The next day, Mélusine's teacher was moved by her words of wisdom and bestow her the title of graduate witch, saying she has nothing to new to teach her. Mélusine's friends take her to a lake to celebrate her graduation. However, Mathys, the student everyone bullied and who's magic was the only one functionning isn't among her band of friends.]]

* In ''ComicBook/RainbowRowellsRunaways'' #11, Nico extracts an apology from Klara for her past homophobia, which would be all well and good, except that this comes in the middle of Gert baselessly accusing Klara's [[HasTwoMommies foster dads]] of being evil.

** Despite trying to lecture the world about how great mutants were and how they should be allowed to embrace their identities, Xavier spent most of his life masquerading as a normal human who just happened to be a mutant expert. Xavier only involuntarily "outed" himself during Creator/GrantMorrison's ''Comicbook/NewXMen'' run when he was possessed by his evil twin.

* Similar to ''Marshal Law'', superhero satire ''ComicBook/TheBoys'' has basically exactly the same problem with sexual content; it treats the homophobia of various villains like Swingwing as bad, but it also can't resist showing the villains as evil or disgusting by giving them fetishes. It asks us to both accept that disliking gay people makes you a bad person, and that enjoying masochism or transgender prostitutes makes you worthy of mockery and disgust.
** ''The Boys'' is centered around the idea that superheroes are unneeded and would be a terrible thing to have in real life. This entire message is undercut by the titular main characters being a group who has superpowers themselves, and in fact fit superhero archtypes closer than the characters who are supposed to be deconstructions of superheroes.

* ''ComicBook/MarvelAdventures Comicbook/SpiderMan'' # 39 has a foreign exchange student named Kristoff show up at Peter's school, and make a speech about how, unlike many of his countrymen, he doesn't hate America. Peter shows him around, and they talk until it's revealed that Kristoff is from Latveria, home of Doctor Doom. Peter freaks out a bit but accepts him for it. Then the Comicbook/FantasticFour show up, attacking Kristoff seemingly just because of his Latverian origin, calling him a "potential threat to national security", and taking him away. So, it turns out that he's just a normal, nice kid and the Aesop is that ethnic prejudice is wrong, right? ... well, no, because it turns out that he was ActuallyADoombot, and Spidey and the FF have to beat him up. So, the Aesop is that you should never trust people from enemy countries, even when they seem to be perfectly nice, and that it's totally logical to seize and search people who ''might'' be a problem.

** In ''Classic X-Men'' #13, Jean Grey and Misty Knight (they were roommates at the time) go boating with some friends and end up saving a pod of dolphins from a shark. However, Misty was led to believe it was a ''human'' family in danger and was upset to find out she risked her life for "fish." Jean corrects her that dolphins are mammals and quite intelligent, and that she telepathically sensed the mother's distress and felt compelled to help. Intelligent or not, dolphins are still natural prey for sharks. Plus, dolphins are carnivores themselves; rescuing one type of marine predator while forcing another to go hungry suggests that it's okay to interfere with nature if it means saving "cute" animals from "scary" ones. Misty was absolutely correct in thinking they should have never gotten involved, but Jean shuts her down.

*** This is a common issue in ''Batman'' comics, and superhero comics in general, when they attempt to provide the moral that [[NeverBeAHero "vigilante justice is bad"]] - overlapping with FantasticAesop. It's true that in real life, attempting to be a vigilante on the level of Batman is a terrible idea, but when it's a fundamental fact of the genre that vigilante justice not only works, but is usually the only way to solve the problem, any reader can look at Leslie Thompkins ranting to Batman about how he shouldn't be putting these people in danger and taking the law into his own hands, and then recall the seventeen times that year alone that Batman's activities saved the entire city, country, or ''the entire planet''.

* ''Comicbook/SupermanAtEarthsEnd'' has one of these. Franchise/{{Superman}} loses (most of) his powers and has to rely on a gigantic machine gun to solve his problems. After using his gun to kill two Hitlers and a Batman zombie ([[ItMakesSenseInContext don't ask]]) he tells his allies (some little kids with guns) that he's dying. The little kids then bawl and say that guns killed Superman before throwing all of their guns into a bonfire. Of course, no one bothers to point out that guns also saved the kids from two Hitlers and a Batman zombie!
** Worse is the fact that Superman himself admitted that the only thing keeping all these kids alive in this AfterTheEnd [[CrapsackWorld GOTHAM]] was those guns.
** Batman, for God knows what reason, has the gun that killed his parents proudly displayed in his batcave - it's even labeled [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "THE GUN THAT KILLED MY PARENTS"]]. For someone who despises guns like Batman does, it makes you wonder why he spent time locating the gun in the first place.
* One ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'' annual has a BadFuture where Superman starts acting more authoritarian after the death of Lois, until his actions lead to the death of a criminal. The government sends in Batman to apprehend him and show him he"s wrong. The moral is obviously meant to be against that brutal approach to crimefighting. Except Batman is wearing the armor and using the tactics he used in ''ComicBook/TheDarkKnightReturns'' - a comic about a BadFuture where Batman started acting more authoritarian, his actions led to the death of a criminal, and the government sent in Superman to take him down, and his actions were portrayed as generally in the right. The heavy homage causes the moral to come across as more "Batman is always right, [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality even when he's taking the exact opposite position that he did last time.]]"

** In ''Classic X-Men'' #13, Jean Grey and Misty Knight (they were roommates at the time) go boating with some friends and end up saving a pod of dolphins from a shark. However, Misty was led to believe it was a ''human'' family in danger and was upset to find out she risked her life for "fish." Jean corrects her that dolphins are mammals and quite intelligent, and that she telepathically sensed the mother's distress and felt compelled to help. Intelligent or not, dolphins are still natural prey for sharks. Plus, dolphins are predators themselves; rescuing one while forcing the other to go hungry suggests that it's okay to interfere with nature if it means saving "cute" animals from "scary" ones. Misty was absolutely correct in thinking they should have never gotten involved, but Jean shuts her down.

** In ''Classic X-Men'' #13, Jean Grey and Misty Knight (they were roommates at the time) go boating with some friends and end up saving a pod of dolphins from a shark. However, Misty was led to believe it was a ''human'' family in danger and was upset to find out she risked her life for "fish." Jean corrects her that dolphins are mammals and quite intelligent, and that she telepathically sensed the mother's distress and felt compelled to help. Intelligent or not, dolphins are still natural prey for sharks. Plus, dolphins are predators themselves; saving one type of marine predator while forcing another to go hungry suggests that it's okay to interfere with nature if it means saving "cute" animals from "scary" ones. Misty was absolutely correct in thinking they should have never gotten involved, but Jean shuts her down.