History PayEvilUntoEvil / ComicBooks

* ''ComicBook/ThePunisher'':
** This is the justification of The Punisher, who brutally kills criminals as seen on trope's main page image. How this is received depends on where in the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the comic he's appearing in is. But one thing's for sure. If he has you on his list, he will kick you when you are down. And shoot you. And throw a grenade on you. And push you in front of a moving subway train. And pull out all your teeth while you're tied to a dentist's chair. And run you over with his car, then back up and run you over again. And tie you to a chair and set you on fire. And hook your balls up to a car battery, turn the ignition key until you've shit all over yourself, and then turn the key some more. If you're on his list, you deserve everything he does to you. So don't get on Frank's list.
** The [[ComicBook/ThePunisherMAX MAX]] arc "The Slavers" is one of the more infamous examples of this trope. In it, Castle's fighting a group of war criminals turned human traffickers who do horrible, horrible things to their captives. When Castle finds one of the three ringleaders of the operation, he douses the guy with fuel and burns him alive. Let's just say Castle spends the rest of the arc using other inventive methods to mete out payback.
*** The other two ringleaders (one of which is the fuel-doused one's son) were also disposed of in very graphic ways. The woman responsible for the more practical aspects (such as having the girls raped for twenty-four hours so they don't even think of rebelling) was thrown against a shatterproof window face-first multiple times till ''the window frame broke'', [[DestinationDefenestration making her do a swan dive many stories high.]] The son ended up getting drugged, dragged out into the wilderness, his stomach slit open, and hung from his own entrails on a tree branch. [[spoiler:Then Frank '''WOKE HIM UP''' before letting him bleed out.]]
--->"It had been a long, long time since I hated anyone the way I hated them."
** Lampshaded in ''ComicBook/ThePunisherWelcomeBackFrank'', where a victim that he left helpless in a gasoline-doused house is screaming that he's no different from her. The Punisher turns back to the mansion with a grenade, calmly replies "Tell me something I don't know," and pulls the pin.
** Nicky Cavella digs up the Punisher's family and pisses on their bones, believing this will enrage Frank and make him easier to kill. [[GoneHorriblyRight Well, it definitely did the first part]]. Frank hits every Mafia operation ''even harder'' until Cavella is abandoned by his own troops, realizing how useless he is, and Frank leaves him to die over several days of a gutshot wound. During Frank's rampage, the city is torn between letting Frank do his thing and actually upholding the law, and settle for reburying Frank's family (Cavella gets taken out quickly after).
* ComicBook/TheSpectre. Depending on the writer, it's usually somewhere between "implied" and "outright stated, there on page 2" that the Spectre is the embodiment of the wrath of God, and he's usually more than willing to outright torture people that "deserve it." In the darker arcs, it's made clear that as far as the Spectre is concerned, ''everybody'' "deserves it" (in the "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" sense) and it's fortunate for humanity that he's actually ''holding/being held back'' most of the time.
* ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'':

* Every time ComicBook/{{Magneto}} clashes with anti-mutant hate groups. Magneto is Jewish and survived the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. The ComicBook/RedSkull is a Nazi. While working together during ''ComicBook/ActsOfVengeance'', Magneto decided to get some revenge on the Red Skull, beating the living crap out of him and leaving him in a SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere with some jugs of water and his own thoughts.
* ''Franchise/TheFlash'': When Bart Allen [[spoiler:ended his tenure as the Flash by dying]], Wally West [[spoiler:reappeared and took down Bart's nemesis]] Inertia. The punishment? [[spoiler:[[AndIMustScream Wally froze Inertia in time, but left his mind running.]] Then he stuck him on display in the Flash Museum, forcing Inertia to forever ''stare'' at statues of Bart.]] Wally later had an ''internal'' WhatTheHellHero moment, when he thought about what he'd done.
* Marv of ''ComicBook/SinCity'' inflicts on various criminals horrible torture which would maybe even make [[Series/TwentyFour Jack Bauer]] sick. He's kind of like Series/{{Dexter}} in being a pretty messed up person himself. But when the SociopathicHero brutally tortures and dismembers the bad guys, few readers will shed a tear. {{Lampshade|Hanging}}d in the [[Film/SinCity film]], when Marv remarks "I love hitmen. No matter what you do to them, you don't feel bad."
* Rorschach from ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' has this as his MO, although he ranks sex along with murder on the scale of morality, and proceeds to break a guy's fingers just for calling attention to the fact that he is, uh, hygienically challenged.
** To provide some context, he'd gone into an apparently-random dive bar to try and get information out of the patrons, and the crack about his hygiene was why he picked on that ''particular'' guy. (This worked about as well as you might expect.)
** And in his monologues he implies that this is his ''standard'' method for gathering information: walk into some underworld dive, and break bones of random people until someone confesses ''something''.
** Rorscharch's shifting inkblot mask also symbolically adds to this, with his mask being a direct representation of how he sees the world: through an extreme filter of Black and White. In his words, "there is no bullshit grey", a crime is a crime no matter how small and must be rightfully punished.
** Granted the guy ''is'' AxCrazy, so we're not supposed to think it's okay.
** The clearest example is the incident that drives Rorschach AxCrazy. [[spoiler: He tracks a child abductor to his home, only to find out that the abductor has murdered the little girl he kidnapped, chopped her corpse into pieces, and fed the remains to his dogs. Rorschach responds by killing the dogs, waiting for the kidnapper to return home, throwing his dead dogs at him, beating him half to death, then handcuffing him in place and killing him as he screams for mercy and begs to simply be arrested (the method differs here; in the comic, he burns the house down, cooking the man alive, while in the movie, he simply splits the guy's head open repeatedly with the same meat cleaver as he growls, "''Men'' get arrested, ''dogs'' get '''put down'''!")]]
* In ''ComicBook/{{Miracleman}}'', Johnny Bates performs his final transformation into Kid Miracleman while being raped by a bully, then spends about three seconds paying evil unto evil before paying evil unto just about everyone else.
* One of the ComicBook/GhostRider's powers is the penance stare; he can cause a villain exactly as much pain as the villain has inflicted upon innocents. Usually, this ends up [[MindRape leaving the villain catatonic]].
* Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} does this to [[spoiler: Bullseye]] when he attacks Hell's Kitchen again. His solution? Break his arms and impale him with a sai. Also functions as a KarmicDeath after what happened with ComicBook/{{Elektra}}, who wields sai as her weapons.
* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'':
** Back in the 1970s comics, Clark Kent had a co-worker named Steve Lombard, who was a little bit of a bully, generally in the form of "practical jokes" such as using a fountain pen to spray ink all over someone's face. For reasons one hopes are obvious, they tended to backfire when he attempted to pull them on Clark (or anyone else when Clark was around). Not very high on the evil scale, of course, but without Steve's initial malicious intent Superman would have quickly come to look like a first-class jerk.
** In the "ComicBook/SupermanAndSpiderMan" crossover, Peter Parker is not amused when he realizes Steve Lombard played a "Kick Me" prank on him, so he coats Steve's couch in webbing, ensuring that the Daily Planet's bully will be unable to stand up for one hour.
** ''ComicBook/SupermanBirthright'': Superman intervenes in a school shooting and tracks down the dealer who illegally sold guns to the perpetrators:
--->'''Superman:''' One minute ago, I saw a little girl screaming because she was staring down the barrel of a gun. She was nine, and she will remember it for the rest of her life.\\
''He fires a gun at the dealer, [[BulletCatch catching the bullet]] [[SuperSpeed just in time]].''\\
'''Superman:''' Now you will, too.
** ''ComicBook/TheKryptonChronicles'', which tells the history of Krypton and the House of El, provides another example. During Val-El's ship journey, his brother Tro-El attempted to take over the ships to become a pirate. His mutiny failed, and it was agreed to give Tro and his followers the same punishment they had in store for Val and his loyal sailors: marooning them in the island of Bokos, which would become an island of thieves.
** In ''ComicBook/ActionComics'' #338, ComicBook/{{Supergirl}} gets stalked by an alien named Raspor, who -falsely- claims he destroyed Krypton with a planetary bomb at the behest of the warlords of planet Gryyk. Incensed, Supergirl tricks Raspor into travelling to a deserted world where she leaves him stranded after revealing there's another Gryykian planetary bomb buried deep underground (she previously defused the bomb but Raspor doesn't know that).
--->'''Supergirl:''' "When I learned how you wiped out Krypton, I remembered Superman telling me about this planet and its hidden N-Bomb, as well as that mento-machine data! So I decided to fake my love for you in order to lure you here and give you a taste of what you did to the billions of Kryptonians you killed!"
* In ''ComicBook/AmericanVampire'', you have [[spoiler: Pearl's revenge on the Hollywood Coven]]. Not to mention what [[spoiler: Hattie]] ends up doing to the vamps keeping her prisoner...
* What is considered ComicBook/{{Cyclops}}' MoralEventHorizon by many is when he formed ComicBook/XForce to do this. To provide context, following ''Decimation'', the Purifiers had started a war against what was left of the world's mutants, almost all of whom had taken refuge in the X-Mansion. They started by attacking the children, brutally murdering many and causing a lot of pain to many more, driving Dust to question her faith. When ComicBook/{{Hope|Summers}} was born and people realized that she was the mutant Messiah, The Purifiers decided to kill her, so Cyclops formed X-Force and sent them out to stop them, any means necessary. The team basically goes around killing madmen who pose great risk to the rest of the mutant population or humanity in general. Once Mutant births start happening again and people start developing mutant powers following the death of Purifier leader Bastion, Cyclops disbands them so they can go back to the way things were. Many still consider this a dick move of his, but in retrospect, had he not done this, many more would have died and the Purifiers may have in fact killed them all. InUniverse, however, many still dislike him doing this, but that dislike mostly boils down to him not telling anyone about it and recruiting relative innocents (along with someone [[DefusingTheTykeBomb being actively rehabilitated]]) for the wetwork.
* In the NinetiesAntiHero version, ComicBook/{{Morbius}} the Living Vampire uses this as a solution to slake his bloodthirst, figuring that if he needs to kill, he'll kill serious criminals.
* V from ''ComicBook/VForVendetta'' personally murders every single staff member of the concentration camp where he was imprisoned, as well as a few other people, and commits terrorist attacks against the fascist regime that has taken over Britain. The moral ambiguity does not go unmentioned, but the people who he kills are honestly very bad people.
* ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'' likes to use this to justify his many, many murders--and the way he tortures his victims beforehand. Sometimes, it [[AssholeVictim really is justified]], in the cases of a [[PapaWolf paedophile]] and a [[EvenEvilHasStandards rapist]]. Sometimes, it's because [[ComicalOverreacting he got called a mean name]] or [[DisproportionateRetribution hates someone's tie]]. Sometimes, he accidentally grabs a legitimately good person [[IgnoredEpiphany and kills him anyway]]. He's not exactly sane, though readers [[VillainProtagonist somehow]] end up rooting for him anyway (or just [[BlackComedy laughing]] at [[HumansAreBastards the carnage]]).
* Deconstructed in ''Franchise/GreenLantern'': Amon Sur fled from the ''ComicBook/SinestroCorpsWar'' and went to the recently deceased Green Lantern Ke'Haan's home world, killing his family. The Green Lantern Laira, who was in love with Ke'Haan, killed Amon when he smugly surrendered. She is promptly arrested, because, bastard or no, she murdered a surrendering enemy in cold blood, and the Lanterns realized now that with the rings authorized for lethal force, they could easily abuse their power like she did.

* The post-ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis version of ComicBook/{{Checkmate}} began on this note, with the supposedly heroic organization, which included a DarkerAndEdgier version of the JLA eye candy character Fire, committing cold-blooded killings against the terrorist organization KOBRA. This is in fact a major plot element of the first story arc, as traditionalist characters such as the original Franchise/GreenLantern tended to call Checkmate up on this. Afterwards, however, this aspect of the organization faded into the background and later issues tended not to focus on the "wet work" aspect of Checkmate.

* ComicBook/{{X 23}}'s whole life has revolved around this:
** This was also an incidental reason for her creation in the first place: While many of the Facility's clients for her services were certainly bad men (among the bidders shown in one conference are Mr. Sinister, ComicBook/DoctorDoom, and the freakin' ''ComicBook/RedSkull''), many of her targets ended up being rather bad men (dictators, drug czars, etc.) as well. Sarah also uses her [[spoiler: to track down and murder the serial killer who abducted her niece]], while [[spoiler: Rice sends her to kill Sutter, who may not have abused her himself, but he sure as hell enabled everything]].
** Though she was bred to be an emotionless killing machine and racked up a body count in the ''hundreds'' by the time she was a teenager, she was also horrifically tortured and abused by the Facility, the organization which created her. Her mother, the geneticist who created her, finally had enough, and [[TheDogBitesBack turned Laura loose against them]]. Dialog in ''Target X'' suggests that she slaughtered everyone in the installation housing her. This would mean not just the surgical head, (who Laura beat to death bare-handed over '''''ten fucking minutes''''') guards and scientists, but the receptionists, janitorial staff. ''Everyone''. Of course, this ''was'' an organization that performed human experimentation, sold Laura's services to people like ''the Kingpin'', and were preparing to breed an ''army'' of clones to sell to anyone with the cash.
** After her escape, Laura's cold detachment towards killing and torturing her enemies means she does this ''a lot'' when her friends and teammates are unwilling to do so themselves, which except when she's serving on X-Force (a whole ''team'' of X-Men like ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} who are willing to pay evil unto evil) is pretty much all the time. Not that she doesn't [[WhatTheHellHero get called out on her methods]].
* ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'' has no problem going after villains using similar tactics or even worse, as among other things, the Midnighter smashed a ship into Kaizen Gamorra's tower (after plowing it through a street first) just to take him out, they invaded another universe's Earth and destroyed that world's Italy and London to cripple an invading force after an attempted invasion, and had a scene where Midnighter confronts the man who is implied to have raped Apollo and it's similarly implied Midnighter was going to use a jackhammer to return the favor.
* Prior to the 2000s, the island nation of Genosha in ''ComicBook/XMen'' was a brutal place that enslaved its mutant population and treated them horribly. This ultimately led to its downfall in the 1993 "Bloodties" event, when the malevolent Fabian Cortez was able to play on lingering resentment amongst the mutant populace - newly freed after "X-Tinction" - to provoke them to a bloody rebellion. When ComicBook/{{Magneto}} was given dominion over the still war-wracked island in 1999's "Magneto Rex", he sat back and encouraged the mutants to exterminate and expel all of Genosha's native human population, who had profited so much from the misery of its mutants.
* In ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis'', the bad guys use the radiation-powered supervillain Chemo to reduce the entire city of Bludhaven to a bombed-out wasteland. Bludhaven just so happens to be one of the most corrupt cities in the US (even worse than '''''Gotham'''''), and its destruction is immediately preceded by scenes of how horrible virtually everyone in it is, including a panel of the mayor taking bribes from supervillains.
** This mindset was darkly invoked by Titans villainess Cheshire years earlier when she dropped a nuclear bomb on the country of Qurac to show she was willing to do it. She then gloated about Qurac being openly acknowledged as the "terrorist capital of the world," laughing at the idea that those who would shame her for her actions would also be secretly glad she did it. Rather tellingly, Cheshire received far more backlash for nuking Qurac than the Brotherhood of Evil and the Secret Society did for nuking Bludhaven.
* ComicBook/UltimateMarvel

* In ''ComicBook/BeastsOfBurden'', a pack of ghost puppies kills their killer.
* ''ComicBook/ArchieVsPredatorII'': After Cheryl and Jason Blossom set off a gas leak in order to blow up the school, they refuse to help Reggie try to rescue anyone else from the Predators. In response, Reggie barricades the boiler room door to keep them from escaping.
* ''ComicBook/{{Deadpool}}'': Deadpool does this to a psychiatrist who manipulated one of his clients, a very confused teenage girl, into having sex with him. The girl ended up killing herself. The psychiatrist thought he'd covered his tracks and was in the clear...until Deadpool found out it about it. Deadpool took his time with the guy.
--->'''Psychiatrist''': No! You don't understand! She wanted to be with me, she begged me to do it!
--->'''Deadpool''': (Holding up a sharp knife) Really? Kind of like the way you're begging me right now?
* 'ComicBook/SupremePower'': Whilst on a mission in the Middle East, the Squadron comes across a young girl, traumatized by how [[HonorRelatedAbuse her father and male relatives stoned her mother and sisters to death after invading soldiers raped them]]. This trigger's [[PsychoLesbian Inertia's]] BerserkButton, reminding her of her own DarkAndTroubledPast, and the [[SuperStrength super-strong]] woman promptly finds the girl's male relatives, buries them up to their necks in the soil, and presents the girl with a length of steel fencepole so that she can do with them as she wills. As Inertia walks off, sound-effects make it clear that the girl is literally bashing the brains out of every last one of the men.

** This was also an incidental reason for her creation in the first place: While many of the Facility's clients for her services were certainly bad men (among the bidders shown in one conference are Mr. Sinister, ComicBook/DoctorDoom, and the freakin' ''ComicBook/RedSkull''), many of her targets ended up being rather bad men (dictators, drug czars, etc.) as well. Sarah also uses her [[spoiler: to track down and murder the serial killer who abducted her niece]], while [[spoiler: Rice sending her to kill Sutter crosses over with KickTheSonOfABitch, as Sutter may not have abused her himself, but he sure as hell enabled everything]].

* ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'' has no problem going after villains using similar tactics, as among other things, the Midnighter smashed a ship into they invaded another universe's Earth and destroyed that world's Italy to cripple an invading force after an attempted invasion, and had a scene where Midnighter confronts the man who is implied to have raped Apollo and it's similarly implied Midnighter was going to use a jackhammer to return the favor.

** This mindset was darkly invoked by Titans villainess Cheshire years earlier when she dropped a nuclear bomb on the country of Qurac to show she was willing to do it. She then gloated about Qurac being openly acknowledged as the "terrorist capital of the world," laughing at the idea that those who would shame her for her actions would also be secretly glad she did it. Rather tellingly, Cheshire received far more backlash for nuking Qurac than the Fearsome Five and the Secret Society did for nuking Bludhaven.

* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'':

** A more serious version appears in ''ComicBook/SupermanBirthright'', after Superman intervenes in a school shooting and tracks down the dealer who illegally sold guns to the perpetrators:

* Comicbook/{{Daredevil}} does this to [[spoiler: Bullseye]] when he attacks Hell's Kitchen again. His solution? Break his arms and impale him with a sai. Also functions as a KarmicDeath after what happened with ComicBook/{{Elektra}}, who wields sai as her WeaponOfChoice.

* ''ComicBook/Deadpool'': Deadpool does this to a psychiatrist who manipulated one of his clients, a very confused teenage girl, into having sex with him. The girl ended up killing herself. The psychiatrist thought he'd covered his tracks and was in the clear...until Deadpool found out it about it. Deadpool took his time with the guy.

** After her escape, Laura's cold detachment towards killing and torturing her enemies means she does this ''a lot'' when her friends and teammates are unwilling to do so themselves, which except when she's serving on X-Force (a whole ''team'' of X-Men like Franchise/{{Wolverine}} who are willing to pay evil unto evil) is pretty much all the time. Not that she doesn't [[WhatTheHellHero get called out on her methods]].

** Lampshaded in ''ComicBook/WelcomeBackFrank'', where a victim that he left helpless in a gasoline-doused house is screaming that he's no different from her. The Punisher turns back to the mansion with a grenade, calmly replies "Tell me something I don't know," and pulls the pin.

** Two contrasting examples would be ''ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand'' and ''[[YetAnotherChristmasCarol Noel.]]'' Particularly notable is the example of [[YouKilledMyFather Joe Chill]]: On one occasion, Batman scared him to almost lunacy, and after revealing his secret identity to him, he brought his gun to him so he would [[DrivenToSuicide blow his own brains out]] before the other criminals would kill him in retaliation.

** This is the justification of The Punisher, who brutally kills criminals as seen on trope's main page image. How this is received depends on where in the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the comic he's appearing in is. But one thing's for sure. If he has you on his list, he will kick you when you are down. And shoot you. And throw a grenade on you. And push you in front of a moving subway train. And pull out all your teeth while you're tied to a dentist's chair. And run you over with his car, then back up and run you over again. And hook your balls up to a car battery, turn the ignition key until you've shit all over yourself, and then turn the key some more. If you're on his list, you deserve everything he does to you. So don't get on Frank's list.

** Nicky Cavella digs up the Punisher's family and pisses on their bones, believing this will enrage Frank and make him easier to kill. Instead, Frank hits every Mafia operation ''even harder'' until Cavella is abandoned by his own troops, realizing how useless he is, and Frank leaves him to die over several days of a gutshot wound. During Frank's rampage, the city is torn between letting Frank do his thing and actually upholding the law, and settle for reburying Frank's family (Cavella gets taken out quickly after).
* ComicBook/TheSpectre. Depending on the writer, it's usually somewhere between "implied" and "outright stated, there on page 2" that the Spectre is the embodiment of the wrath of God, and he's usually more than willing to outright torture people that "deserve it." In the darker arcs, it's made clear that as far as the Spectre is concerned, ''everybody'' "deserves it" (in the "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" sense) and he's actually ''holding/being held back'' most of the time.

* ''Franchise/TheFlash'': When Bart Allen [[spoiler:ended his tenure as the Flash by dying]], Wally West [[spoiler:reappeared and took down Bart's nemesis]] Inertia. The punishment? [[spoiler:[[AndIMustScream Wally froze Inertia in time, but left his mind running. Then he stuck him on display in the Flash Museum, forcing Inertia to forever STARE at statues of Bart.]]]] Wally later had an ''internal'' WhatTheHellHero moment, when he thought about what he'd done.

** The other two ringleaders (one of which is the fuel-doused one's son) were also disposed of in very graphic ways. The woman responsible for the more practical aspects (such as having the girls raped for twenty-four hours so they don't even think of rebelling) was thrown against a shatterproof window face-first multiple times till ''the window frame broke'', [[DestinationDefenestration making her do a swan dive many stories high.]] The son ended up getting drugged, dragged out into the wilderness, his stomach slit open, and hung from his own entrails on a tree branch. [[spoiler:Then Frank '''WOKE HIM UP''' before letting him bleed out.]]

** This is the justification of The Punisher, who brutally guns down criminals. How this is received depends on where in the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the comic he's appearing in is. But one thing's for sure. If he has you on his list, he will kick you when you are down. And shoot you. And throw a grenade on you. And push you in front of a moving subway train. And pull out all your teeth while you're tied to a dentist's chair. And run you over with his car, then back up and run you over again. And hook your balls up to a car battery, turn the ignition key until you've shit all over yourself, and then turn the key some more. If you're on his list, you deserve everything he does to you. So don't get on Frank's list.

* On the DC side of things, ComicBook/TheSpectre is pretty much the poster boy for this trope. Depending on the writer, it's usually somewhere between "implied" and "outright stated, there on page 2" that the Spectre is the embodiment of the wrath of God, and he's usually more than willing to outright torture people that "deserve it." In the darker arcs, it's made clear that as far as the Spectre is concerned, ''everybody'' "deserves it" (in the "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" sense) and he's actually ''holding/being held back'' most of the time.
* Played with Franchise/{{Batman}}, [[TerrorHero surprisingly.]] His MO involves terrorizing criminals and pummeling them within an inch of their lives, but he (generally) refuses to kill, and he does indeed have a very strong belief in justice, and believes that you can't fix the system if you yourself are hindering it. Of course, this all depends on the writer. Sometimes he's a borderline outlaw who doesn't give a damn about the law, and will even beat the hell out of petty criminals. But other times he will having varying levels of tolerance towards certain criminals. Two contrasting examples would be ''ComicBook/BatmanNoMansLand'' and ''[[YetAnotherChristmasCarol Noel.]]'' Particularly notable is the example of [[YouKilledMyFather Joe Chill]]: On one occasion, Batman scared him to almost lunacy, and after revealing his secret identity to him, he brought his gun to him so he would [[DrivenToSuicide blow his own brains out]] before the other criminals would kill him in retaliation.
* [[ComicBook/RedHood Jason Todd]] tended toward this attitude during [[RecklessSidekick his career as Robin]]. Since he came {{back from the|Dead}} {{dead|Sidekick}}, he's denied Batman's ThouShaltNotKill rule and considers himself [[TheUnfettered Batman as he should be.]]

* Rorschach from ''Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}'' has this as his MO, although he ranks sex along with murder on the scale of morality, and proceeds to break a guy's fingers just for calling attention to the fact that he is, uh, hygienically challenged.

* One of the Comicbook/GhostRider's powers is the penance stare; he can cause a villain exactly as much pain as the villain has inflicted upon innocents. Usually, this ends up [[MindRape leaving the villain catatonic]].

** In ''ComicBook/ActionComics'' #338, Supergirl gets stalked by an alien named Raspor, who -falsely- claims he destroyed Krypton with a planetary bomb at the behest of the warlords of planet Gryyk. Incensed, Supergirl tricks Raspor into travelling to a deserted world where she leaves him stranded after revealing there's another Gryykian planetary bomb buried deep underground (she previously defused the bomb but Raspor doesn't know that).

* ''ComicBook/TheAuthority'' has no problem going after villains using similar tactics, as among other things, the Midnighter smashed a ship into they invaded another universe's Earth and destroyed that countries Italy to cripple an invading force after an attempted invasion, and had a scene where Midnighter confronts the man who is implied to have raped Apollo and it's similarly implied Midnighter was going to use a jackhammer to return the favor.

* In ''Comicbook/InfiniteCrisis'', the bad guys use the radiation-powered supervillain Chemo to reduce the entire city of Bludhaven to a bombed-out wasteland. Bludhaven just so happens to be one of the most corrupt cities in the US (even worse than '''''Gotham'''''), and its destruction is immediately preceded by scenes of how horrible virtually everyone in it is, including a panel of the mayor taking bribes from supervillains.

* This is the justification of Comicbook/ThePunisher, who brutally guns down criminals. How this is received depends on where in the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism the comic he's appearing in is. But one thing's for sure. If he has you on his list, he will kick you when you are down. And shoot you. And throw a grenade on you. And push you in front of a moving subway train. And pull out all your teeth while you're tied to a dentist's chair. And run you over with his car, then back up and run you over again. And hook your balls up to a car battery, turn the ignition key until you've shit all over yourself, and then turn the key some more. If you're on his list, you deserve everything he does to you. So don't get on Frank's list.
** The [[Comicbook/ThePunisherMAX MAX]] arc "The Slavers" is one of the more infamous examples of this trope. In it, Castle's fighting a group of war criminals turned human traffickers who do horrible, horrible things to their captives. When Castle finds one of the three ringleaders of the operation, he douses the guy with fuel and burns him alive. Let's just say Castle spends the rest of the arc using other inventive methods to mete out payback.
*** The other two ringleaders (one of which is the fuel-doused one's son) were also disposed of in very graphic ways. The woman responsible for the more practical aspects (such as having the girls raped for twenty-four hours so they don't even think of rebelling) was thrown against a shatterproof window face-first multiple times till ''the window frame broke'', [[DestinationDefenestration making her do a swan dive many stories high.]] The son ended up getting drugged, dragged out into the wilderness, his stomach slit open, and hung from his own entrails on a tree branch. [[spoiler:Then Frank '''WOKE HIM UP''' before letting him bleed out.]]
*** "It had been a long, long time since I hated anyone the way I hated them."
** Lampshaded in "Comicbook/WelcomeBackFrank", where a victim that he left helpless in a gasoline-doused house is screaming that he's no different from her. The Punisher turns back to the mansion with a grenade, calmly replies "Tell me something I don't know," and pulls the pin.

* So according to Wiki/{{Wikipedia}}, when [[Franchise/TheFlash Bart Allen]] [[spoiler:ended his tenure as the Flash by dying]], Wally West [[spoiler:reappeared and took down Bart's nemesis]] Inertia. The punishment? [[spoiler:[[AndIMustScream Wally froze Inertia in time, but left his mind running. Then he stuck him on display in the Flash Museum, forcing Inertia to forever STARE at statues of Bart.]]]] How is that NOT cruel and unusual?
** Wally later had an ''internal'' WhatTheHellHero moment, when he thought about what he'd done.

* Back in the 1970s comics, Franchise/{{Superman}} in his Clark Kent persona had a co-worker named Steve Lombard, who was a little bit of a bully, generally in the form of "practical jokes" such as using a fountain pen to spray ink all over someone's face. For reasons one hopes are obvious, they tended to backfire when he attempted to pull them on Clark (or anyone else when Clark was around). Not very high on the evil scale, of course, but without Steve's initial malicious intent Superman would have quickly come to look like a first-class jerk.

* In the ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse this is the modus operandi of Paperinik (Donald's superhero/antihero alter ego). Even if he stops well short of killing or crippling, Duckburg's entire criminal underworld is absolutely ''terrified'' of him because of the savage and humiliating beatings he inflicts whatever criminal is stupid enough to resist... And at the same time rely on him as a protector from anyone, hero or otherwise, that goes overboard, as Paperinik will then turn his attention on ''them''.

* ''ComicBook/TheUltimates'': "NAKED GUY THINK HULK STUPID? NAKED GUY THINK HULK NOT FIND OUT ABOUT AFFAIR? HULK SHOWS NAKED GUY WHAT HAPPENS WHEN HE TOUCHES BANNER'S GIRLFRIEND. HULK TOUCH NAKED GUY LIKE NAKED GUY WAS TOUCHING BETTY!"