History UnbuiltTrope / ComicBooks

** While deconstructing [[TheCape traditional superheroes]], the comic managed to deconstruct the [[NinetiesAntiHero '90s anti-hero]] in ''[[TheEighties the '80s]]''. [[spoiler:At one point Marshal Law accuses the Public Spirit, a Superman [[CaptainErsatz analog]], of inspiring an entire generation of heroes to go to war in the Zone, in what can only be described as "Super-Nam". The Public Spirit turns this around by telling Law that Law's own vigilante actions have also inspired people, except in a more horrific manner. The Spirit then reveals that Law inspired the main villain to take up his actions in the first place, thus completing the cycle]]. The comic then concludes that the differences between traditional superheroes and grim anti-heroes are superficial; Marshal Law is just as bad as, if not worse than, the Public Spirit.

* The ''ComicBook/SuicideSquad'' is one of the most famous cases of AnyoneCanDie in comic book history, were the team is composed of CListFodder supervillains who can casually die in any mision without slowing down the team, and are employed precisely [[WeHaveReserves because of how expendable they are.]] Must be a shocker when you read Jon Ostrander's [[MyRealDaddy classic run]] and find out that the team actually is composed mostly of superheroes or decent people: The team included the likes of ComicBook/{{Vixen}}, [[ComicBook/ShadeTheChangingMan the Ditko-era Shade]], ComicBook/BlackOrchid, Nemesis, Oracle (She actually debuted here) and Nightshade, who are all classical superheroes. Heck, about half of the villains in the Squad (Bronze Tiger, Deadshot, Punch and Jewelee, the Atom...) are pretty decent people, unlike the current {{Villain Protagonist}}s. Also, the team's casualties weren't nearly as bad as today's standards: You'd be surprised to find that it's not weird for the team to partake on various missions without a single casualty, and the one time only Rick Flag survived it was his DespairEventHorizon and Amanda Waller was actually horrified (She was actually a JerkWithAHeartOfGold who wasn't afraid to fight the government and felt guilt for each death of the team, odd right?).

** Buddy switches to a leather jacket and a more CivvieSpandex look, which was common among anti-heroes who "weren't like the superheroes from comic books". This, however, is both presented [[PlayedForLaughs laughs]] ([[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments And for cuteness]]) and given an actually pretty reasonable explanation for the costume switch: Buddy needed pockets to carry his keys or notes from his wife. Besides, The jacket is not even real leather, since Animal Man is a vegetarian
*** Also, he averts MovieSuperheroesWearBlack before there was any superhero movies! The jacket is light blue and yellow and serves to add more detail to his also colorful spandex (Which he still wears). The intention of the costume change isn't to make Buddy look "serious" or to distance him from his superhero roots, but rather to make him more distinctive and make him pop from the page [[spoiler: (Which is specially useful on the final issues, where he is the only character rendered in colour).]]

** And the intelligent, wheelchair-bound leader of the team being less benevolent than he appears and having a darker, manipulative side is something the series had done long before [[Creator/MarvelComics Marvel]] started doing it with Charles Xavier.

* Many installments of the Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse Franchise feature SchizoTech, featuring futuristic technology alongside medieval style kingdoms, swords and other low-tech weaponry. However, the original minicomics explained that the advanced technology was the result of [[TheGreatOffscreenWar the "Great Wars"]] between [[AdvancedAncientHumans members of an advanced ancient race]], meaning Eternia is a ScavengerWorld AfterTheEnd.

* ComicBook/WonderWoman was one of the first superheroes (if not '''''the''''' first) to be drawn explicitly from ancient mythology, predating the likes of [[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor]] and [[ComicBook/TheIncredibleHercules Hercules]] by decades. But unlike most later superhero comics that used the idea, early ''Wonder Woman'' comics were '''not''' a straight-faced tribute to their source material; they were actually a proudly irreverent [[GenreDeconstruction deconstruction]] of [[Myth/ClassicalMythology classical Greek myths]] that confronted their [[ValuesDissonance outdated morals]] head-on, sometimes in ways that can still seem brazenly subversive by today's standards. To whit: Diana's original backstory is an explicitly revisionist take on the Greek legend of Heracles and Hippolyta where Hippolyta is portrayed as the ''hero'' of the story, while Heracles is depicted as a brutish and dimwitted misogynist--and instead of Heracles slaying Hippolyta after taking her precious girdle, Hippolyta takes it back and leads her fellow Amazons to a new island homeland where they can be free from the control of men. Creator/WilliamMoultonMarston pretty openly envisioned ''Wonder Woman'' as a platform for his feminist beliefs, and conveyed many of those beliefs by framing the series as a more progressive modern alternative to the male-dominated stories of the ancient world.

** Most of this is because comics were only just escaping the influence of pulp fiction. The Golden Age also straddled the same time period as the [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII second World War]]. When your countrymen are killing and dying on foreign shores to protect life and liberty, it makes sense that your comic book heroes would kill and die too. This can be overstated, though, particularly with regard to the most famous superhero characters. For instance, as [[Podcast/WarRocketAjax professional Batmanologist Chris Sims]] has noted, "Sure, Franchise/{{Batman}} might’ve fought vampires and carried a gun for like three issues, but by the end of that first year, it was all cat-wrestling and trips to Storybook Land."

** Golden Age Franchise/{{Superman}} stories surprisingly have more in common with modern Superman than their Silver Age counterparts, in that Superman was portrayed more as a defender of the common man than the super powered lawman he later evolved into, and stories often had political and social themes to them. In general, many characters treated Supes as a thorn in the side of the establishment, just as one might expect they would in RealLife.

* The original Clone Saga by Creator/GerryConway (not to be confused by the more famous and proverbial [[ComicBook/TheCloneSaga clone saga]] that came in the 90s) of ''Franchise/SpiderMan'' actually is a pointed satire about DeathIsCheap, attempting to reverse the past, and fixating on TheLostLenore beyond the point of healthiness:

* ''ComicBook/TheNightGwenStacyDied'' is often cited as one of the earliest and most famous instances of StuffedIntoTheFridge, predating the {{Trope Namer|s}} by 21 years. It embodies many of the misogynistic hallmarks of the trope: Gwen has no agency of her own, barely has any lines before she dies, her plotline gets completely unresolved, she's not even the most important female character of the titular story (that's Mary Jane), it was done by [[ComicBook/NormanOsborn Green Goblin]] to spite Franchise/SpiderMan, and Spidey even ([[ValuesDissonance rather uncomfortably for modern audiences]]) refers to her as "my woman" even after she dies. However, unlike the many, ''many'' derided examples it inspired, this one in particular stands out positively and is seen as a good story even now for two primary reasons. The first is that Gwen's death has meaningful consequences for Spider-Man, both the mythos and the character, becoming a ShockingDefeatLegacy that inspired Spidey to be a better hero. Gwen herself is treated as TheLostLenore and ''not'' a DisposableLoveInterest, as it took years for Spidey to fully accept her death, and even after Mary Jane became his SecondLove, he will always mourn Gwen with the utmost respect, compared to the usual example of a fridged character being mostly forgotten and replaced. There's a very, ''very'' good reason why the story named ILetGwenStacyDie, instead of the incident being known as "Dropped From a Bridge".

* ComicBook/{{Azrael}} from ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' was one of the first examples, and probably the most famous, of the AntiHeroSubstitute, taking over from Bruce Wayne when Wayne was temporarily paralyzed. He's depicted as a violent, mentally unstable sociopath and egotist who's doing more harm than good with his brutal and militaristic methods of crime fighting. By the end of the arc he's become the BigBad whom the original Batman must put down before his extremism destroys Gotham. WordOfGod confirms that the entire arc was preplanned to demonstrate to over-excited [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] fanboys that a totally ruthless and brutal Batman was a bad idea. The fact that we have a full trope page for AntiHeroSubstitute should tell you about how well the message went over.

** The story also features Lois Lane and the entire staff of the Daily Planet getting killed by the Joker, one of the first stories to do that. In modern comics this would send Superman on a killing spree and would be [[{{Franchise/Injustice}} the beginning of his]] FaceHeelTurn. Instead, he is clearly full of grief but makes sure to track the Joker and bring him to the proper authorities, and he wouldn't have retired if it weren't for Magog killing the clown. His reitrement is more the culmination of his friends and wife dying, the public's already growing distrust of heroes, his frustration for letting Magog kill the Joker and multiple other factors, whereas these days it seems Supes is just one Lois away from becoming an OmnicidalManiac.

** Speaking of, the man this trope is named after doesn't truly fit this mold either. After all, Lex Luthor is the CEO of LexCorp, which means he already uses his genius to make mountains of money. It's just he puts some of that money and the best of his inventions into trying to be the better of Superman, which is treated as a pathological and philosophical need for him to succeed at.

** If you read the very first Batman/Joker story, it almost looks like someone decided to actually combine the violence and murder of [[Creator/FrankMiller Frank Miller's]] ''Comicbook/BatmanTheDarkKnightReturns'' with the campiness of [[Series/Batman1966 the Adam West version]]. (This was also before writer Bill Finger decided NOT to have the Joker be one of the villains that spew terrible puns.) It has simplistic art and bad dialogue, but people actually die laughing with huge unnatural smiles on their faces. It also has the Joker painting his face with flesh-colored makeup, which many have thought was created for the 1989 Creator/TimBurton [[Film/Batman1989 film]] (and in the comic, the makeup is ''not'' a PaperThinDisguise, but actually works).

** It also works as a {{Deconstruction}} of the CapeBusters comics that came after it. The cape busters in ''Comicbook/TheBoys'' and ''Stormwatch: Team Achilles'' are generally heroic and have actual superpowers, which can lead to {{Broken Aesop}}s since their comics revolve around the dangerous nature of superheroes, yet said cape busters are superheroes in all but name. On the other hand, Marshal Law [[LampshadeHanging acknowledges]] that he is a HunterOfHisOwnKind. Not only that but Law is portrayed rather negatively and is sometimes called a fascist by the other characters, given his [[PuttingOnTheReich pseudo-Nazi]] costume and [[{{Sadist}} admitted obsession for brutalizing other superheroes]]; furthermore, Commissioner [=McGland=], Law's superior, views Marshal Law as another tool to ensure the dystopian status quo of San Futuro. In short, despite Law's occupation as a cape buster, Marshal Law is part of the superhero problem rather than the solution to it.

* Creator/JackKirby's ''Comicbook/{{OMAC}}'' seemed to utterly defy classification when it hit the stands in 1974, and didn't make it to nine issues. The series has since established a cult following, who have placed it firmly into the {{Cyberpunk}} genre: ten years before ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'', you had a hero who gained his powers from an AI satellite, put in place to hold off nuclear exchanges and nullify attempts at corporate espionage. Long before ''Film/BladeRunner'' and ''Anime/GhostInTheShell'' popularized the concept, OMAC was showing sympathy to RidiculouslyHumanRobots and discussing ideas like memory and identity in a world where a person's memories can be removed or rewritten. The cover of the first issue, showing a weird anti-erotic robot woman in a box with her face where her crotch should be, could be seen as a condemnation of the excesses of Internet porn, decades before there was porn on the Internet. [[http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.com/2011/10/omac-2011-versus-omac-1974-smiths_09.html One blogger]] even pointed out that it actually analyzed cyberpunk themes more than the 2011 reboot.

* Comicbook/{{Azrael}} from ''Franchise/{{Batman}}'' was one of the first examples, and probably the most famous, of the AntiHeroSubstitute, taking over from Bruce Wayne when Wayne was temporarily paralyzed. He's depicted as a violent, mentally unstable sociopath and egotist who's doing more harm than good with his brutal and militaristic methods of crime fighting. By the end of the arc he's become the BigBad whom the original Batman must put down before his extremism destroys Gotham. WordOfGod confirms that the entire arc was preplanned to demonstrate to over-excited [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Age]] fanboys that a totally ruthless and brutal Batman was a bad idea. The fact that we have a full trope page for AntiHeroSubstitute should tell you about how well the message went over.

* While the ''[[ComicBook/TheAmazingSpiderManLeeAndDitko Lee-Dikto Spider-Man]]'' run codified the idea of a [[WakeUpGoToSchoolSaveTheWorld teenage superhero in high school]], very little of the run actually deals with high school. One reason is that Peter's intelligent enough to get good grades despite his role as Spider-Man. Another is that Peter is far too much of a loner, and his classmates too mean and judgmental, for him to hang out with other students. Peter even graduates by issue 28. Most of the stories follow Peter working at the Daily Bugle and trying to earn a living, or working as Spider-Man. Later high school superhero stories, as well as [[Comicbook/UltimateSpiderMan later]] [[Comicbook/SpiderManLovesMaryJane adaptations]], would put much more emphasis on the heroes' high school career and social life.

* ComicBook/WonderWoman was one of the first superheroes (if not '''''the''''' first) to be drawn explicitly from ancient mythology, predating the likes of ComicBook/{{Thor}} and ComicBook/{{the Incredible Hercules}} by decades. But unlike most later superhero comics that used the idea, early ''Wonder Woman'' comics were '''not''' a straight-faced tribute to their source material; they were actually a proudly irreverent [[GenreDeconstruction deconstruction]] of [[Myth/ClassicalMythology classical Greek myths]] that confronted their [[ValuesDissonance outdated morals]] head-on, sometimes in ways that can still seem brazenly subversive by today's standards. To whit: Diana's original backstory is an explicitly revisionist take on the Greek legend of Heracles and Hippolyta where Hippolyta is portrayed as the ''hero'' of the story, while Heracles is depicted as a brutish and dimwitted misogynist--and instead of Heracles slaying Hippolyta after taking her precious girdle, Hippolyta takes it back and leads her fellow Amazons to a new island homeland where they can be free from the control of men. Creator/WilliamMoultonMarston pretty openly envisioned ''Wonder Woman'' as a platform for his feminist beliefs, and conveyed many of those beliefs by framing the series as a more progressive modern alternative to the male-dominated stories of the ancient world.

** The story also features Lois Lane and the entire staff of the Daily Planet getting killed by the Joker, one of the first stories to do that. In modern comics this would send Superman on a killing spree and would be [[{{Franchise/Injustice}} the beginning of his]] FaceHeelTurn. Instead, he is clearly full of grief but makes sure to track the Joker and bring him to the proper authorities, and he wouldn't have retired if it weren't for Magog killing the clown.

** In that story, Prof. Miles Warren who became the Jackal (and who was intended as a one-time villain who died at the end of the story) is a stand-in for fans of Gwen Stacy who hounded Conway and others for killing off the character, and who likewise blamed Peter Parker and not the Green Goblin for her death. While the Gwen who came back is revealed later to be a clone, initially Peter and everyone assumed she was real, and Peter's still conflicted about Gwen's return because he's not [[CharacterDevelopment the same person]] who loved her anymore - he has moved on and his feelings for [[ComicBook/MaryJaneWatson MJ]] are stronger than his grief for Gwen, because unlike Miles Warren, who had a lecherous and creepy obsessive fixation for Gwen (putting her on a pedestal and fixating on her looks), Peter's at heart a normal and optimistic guy and indeed he overcomes his CloningBlues when he realizes that since he's now in love with Mary Jane, he's the real deal since the clones are all fixated on his past with Gwen.

* ''ComicBook/KingdomCome'' is seen as one of the comics that brought back idealistic heroes and rejected [[NinetiessAntiHero edgy violent vigilantes]], yet the comic portrays Superman's side as also flawed. For starters, the world has changed and Supes legitimately doesn't understand it due to his years of isolation. The 90s heroes also raise some valid points, mainly [[CardboardPrison how villains used to escape constantly from jail]] and how some of them, like the Joker, truly deserved to die, and the story ended with almost all metahumans dead and the remaining superheroes joining society. This makes the plot less BlackAndWhiteMorality and more BlackAndGreyMorality, since it makes sure to state that the old heroes were also flawed, but weren't as much as the new generation.

* ''ComicBook/KingdomCome'' is seen as one of the comics that brought back idealistic heroes and rejected [[90sAntiHero edgy violent vigilantes]], yet the comic portrays Superman's side as also flawed. For starters, the world has changed and Supes legitimately doesn't understand it due to his years of isolation. The 90s heroes also raise some valid points, mainly [[CardboardPrison how villains used to escape constantly from jail]] and how some of them, like the Joker, truly deserved to die, and the story ended with almost all metahumans dead and the remaining superheroes joining society. This makes the plot less BlackAndWhiteMorality and more BlackAndGreyMorality, since it makes sure to state that the old heroes were also flawed, but weren't as much as the new generation.

** On a similar note as the above mentioned example of ''ComicBook/TheDarkKnightReturns'', the story also features some elements that wouldn't be out of place in a Silver Age story. The Mad Hatter has a giant psychaedelic room with giant chess pieces and is sitting on a mushroom, and Batman defeats Dr. Destiny, an EvilCripple that can warp time and space by throwing him down some stairs, like if he was [[UltimateXMen Mr. Sinister]].

* ''ComicBook/BatmanArkhamAsylumASeriousHouseOnSeriousEarth'' is one of the first and most succesful [[{{Deconstruction}} deconstructions]] of the Batman mythos, analysing every character through a Jungian lense and in general is one of the [[DarkerAndEdgier darker and more macabre]] stories of the Dark Knight. However, you'd be surprised to see that it isn't really as the other future deconstructions.

** The story also features Lois Lane and the entire staff of the Daily Planet getting killed by the Joker, one of the first stories to do that. In modern comics this would send Superman on a killing spree and would be [[{{Franchise/Injustice}} the beginning of his]] HeelFaceTurn. Instead, he is clearly full of grief but makes sure to track the Joker and bring him to the proper authorities, and he wouldn't have retired if it weren't for Magog killing the clown.

** The story also features Lois Lane and the entire staff of the Daily Planet getting killed by the Joker, one of the first stories to do that. In modern comics this would send Superman on a killing spree and would be [[{{VideoGame/Injustice}} the beginning of his]] HeelFaceTurn. Instead, he is clearly full of grief but makes sure to track the Joker and bring him to the proper authorities, and he wouldn't have retired if it weren't for Magog killing the clown.

** The story also features Lois Lane and the entire staff of the Daily Planet getting killed by the Joker, one of the first stories to do that. In modern comics this would send Superman on a killing spree and would be [[VideoGame/Injustice the beginning of his]] HeelFaceTurn. Instead, he is clearly full of grief but makes sure to track the Joker and bring him to the proper authorities, and he wouldn't have retired if it weren't for Magog killing the clown.

* ''ComicBook/KingdomCome'' is seen as one of the comics that brought back idealistic heroes and rejected [[90sAntiHero edgy violent vigilantes]], yet the comic portrays Superman's side as also flawed. For starters, the world has changed and Supes legitimately doesn't understand it due to his years of isolation. The 90s heroes also raise some valid points, mainly [[CardboardPrision how villains used to escape constantly from jail]] and how some of them, like the Joker, truly deserved to die, and the story ended with almost all metahumans dead and the remaining superheroes joining society. This makes the plot less BlackAndWhiteMorality and more BlackAndGreyMorality, since it makes sure to state that the old heroes were also flawed, but weren't as much as the new generation.
** The story also features Lois Lane and the entire staff of the Daily Planet getting killed by the Joker, one of the first stories to do that. In modern comics this would send Superman on a killing spree and would be [[Franchise/Injustice the beginning of his]] HeelFaceTurn. Instead, he is clearly full of grief but makes sure to track the Joker and bring him to the proper authorities, and he wouldn't have retired if it weren't for Magog killing the clown.

** To a modern reader, Rorschach feels like a deconstruction of the NinetiesAntiHero, when he was largely the inspiration for many DarkerAndEdgier heroes whose creators [[MisaimedFandom missed the point]]--namely that Rorschach is a deranged sociopath with a child's grasp of right and wrong, and that he's kind of pathetic: he's a scruffy loner who lives alone in a squalid tenement building, he doesn't have any friends, and he spends his days beating up petty criminals because he's incapable of maintaining healthy relationships with other people. Even as a crimefighter, he's portrayed as kind of incompetent, with a mostly losing track record: he loses in a fight against the police, gets caught and unmasked, and fails to solve the mystery because of his EntertaininglyWrong conclusions; it's the more BoringButPractical-minded Nite Owl who actually manages to unmask Eddie Blake's murderer. Creator/AlanMoore is bemused that so many people consider what he thought was Rorschach's unattractive qualities (his paranoia, his propensity for violence and self-righteousness) heroic rather than tragic.

** Many stories following on from ''Watchmen'' involved deconstruction by way of SuperZeroes - ineffective "realistic" heroes that attempted to go against well-armed criminals with little more than some martial arts training, often exhibiting outdated values and grotesquely inflated opinions of their reach. Such a character does exist in ''Watchmen'' - Captain Metropolis, who is also an incredibly minor character in the overall narrative. In fact, the major characters in ''Watchmen'' are shown to be about as skilled or effective as any BadassNormal from DC or Marvel (recall how Dan and Laurie, after years of retirement and being easily the ''least'' enthusiastic about the superhero life, take out a whole gang of muggers with their ''bare hands''). The critique lay not in their incompetence, but in the fact that they simply operate on too small a scale to meaningfully affect anything or provide much benefit besides making themselves feel good.

** ''Watchmen'' is famous for being one of the first serious attempts at portraying superheroes realistically, and one of the first comic books ever to examine how the world might ''actually'' look if superheroes were real. But unlike virtually all of its imitators, it does this in the name of demonstrating how '''horribly''' incompatible the superhero genre really is with the real world: "[[NotSayingTheZWord costumed adventurers]]" are shown to be [[AwesomeButImpractical horribly impractical at everything except foiling petty crime]], most of them are (at best) slightly quixotic weirdos or (at worst) outright sociopaths who use crime-fighting as an outlet for their violent urges, it only takes around three decades before the US government denounces them as a threat to public safety and [[SurprisinglyRealisticOutcome declares them illegal]] (which occurs before the story proper even begins), and the story ultimately ends in tragedy after [[spoiler:one of them commits a horrific act of mass murder in the name of "saving the world"]]. If you go into the story expecting a "[[DarkerAndEdgier grim and gritty]]" elevation of superhero stories, you might be surprised to find that it's more of a ''very'' [[BlackComedy darkly comedic]] {{satire}} of them. Several critics have interpreted the series as (among other things) a thinly-veiled message to comic book creators about the inherent folly of trying to make the superhero genre "realistic"; [[MisaimedFandom very few creators heeded this message in the years to come]].

** To a modern reader, Rorschach feels like a deconstruction of the NinetiesAntiHero, when he was largely the inspiration for many DarkerAndEdgier heroes whose creators [[MisaimedFandom missed the point]]--namely that Rorschach is a deranged sociopath with a child's grasp of right and wrong, and that he's kind of incompetent: he loses in a fight against the police, gets caught and unmasked, and fails to solve the mystery because of his EntertaininglyWrong conclusions; it's the more BoringButPractical-minded Nite Owl who actually manages to take them to the bad guy's lair. Creator/AlanMoore is bemused that so many people consider what he thought was Rorschach's unattractive qualities--his paranoia, his propensity for violence and self-righteousness--heroic rather than tragic.

* Much like the relationship between Namor and Aquaman above, only with their respective companies reversed, the original ''ComicBook/DoomPatrol'' is often mistaken for a deconstruction of a [[ComicBook/XMen series]] that it actually [[OlderThanTheyThink preceded by several months.]] In contrast to the original X-Men, who were, with only a few exceptions, [[RubberForeheadAliens Rubber Forehead Mutants]] with maybe some strange hair but were otherwise [[InformedDeformity perfectly attractive]] people, the "World's Strangest Heroes" were genuinely deformed and unlucky dudes who [[CursedWithAwesome hated their own powers]] and suffered severely because of what had happened to them. In addition, the Patrol were not immune to prejudiced views themselves, and their kindly, wise, wheelchair-bound mentor [[spoiler: was actually a ManipulativeBastard who had directly engineered the accidents that gave them powers.]] At the end of the run, they were all killed off not by an all-powerful archvillain to save the entire world, but by a [[EvilCripple crippled]] [[EvilOldFolks old]] [[ThoseWackyNazis Nazi]], in the process of saving one tiny fishing town. Not only that, but the Doom Patrol actually at one point operated a school for young mutants. It's to the point that many modern readers think the Patrol ripped off ''X-Men'', when, if anything, it's likely to have been the other way around.