Alas Poor Villain / Comic Books

• Batman: After gleefully spending The Killing Joke crippling Barbara Gordon and torturing her father James, The Joker starts off the story absolutely evil, but his last few monologues leading up to his defeat transform him into a sympathetic lunatic who truly does believe life is cruel and pointless, and that all of Batman's attempts to redeem him are hopeless. Instead of his typical Batman beatdown, he tearfully shares a joke with the Dark Knight, and the two of them actually laugh together in the rain while the cops arrive.
• Batwoman: Abbot, the werewolf leader of the Religion of Crime Cult. Throughout the series he saves Batwoman at least twice (though is at odds with her because he's a criminal who withheld information about her sister and was part of the cult that tried to kill her) and leads his troops into battle against Medusa's forces. Despite being afraid of Medusa and her power, he still chooses to stand with Batwoman, and tries attacking Medusa from behind. Medusa catches him, petrifies him, and shatters his body. Batwoman looks at his remains sadly, and later uses a piece of mirror to give Medusa the same fate.
• Captain America: When the first Porcupine (Alex Gentry) died helping take down the Serpent Society, Captain America was deeply saddened by his old foe's demise and even insisted on giving him a memorial in the Avengers Mansion, a right usually reserved for longtime Avengers and worldchanging heroes. Given that Porcupine was a Friendly Enemy to Cap at best and an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain at worst this isn't terribly surprising.
• G.I. Joe: When Destro was thought to have died, Snake-Eyes and Scarlett laid flowers at the place where he supposedly died.
  Lady Jaye: You fight somebody long enough, you get to know them... and after a while — you start to respect them.
• The Incredible Hulk: In Immortal Hulk, in sharp contrast to their earlier sadistic glee, the U-Foes almost come off as the victims when Joe Hulks out and fights them. Ironclad gets his hand broken and head smushed like Play-Doh, pleading for help all the while. X-Ray can only plead for Vector to do something to save their friend. When he does, Joe blinds him with sulfuric acid from Vapor. By the end, they're begging him to leave them alone.
• Invincible: Conquest is a bloodthirsty Viltrumite who's shown in every appearance to be a violent, sadistic brute who enjoys spilling as much blood as he can and destroying anything he can get his hands on. However, after his death, he's buried by Nolan who goes on to say with some sadness in his voice that Conquest was once a great warrior but one who eventually lost his way and at least deserves the dignity of a proper funeral.
• Kick-Ass:
  • John Genovese, sort of. Big Daddy drove him nearly to madness, and all because Big Daddy wanted to live his childhood fantasy and chose him as the villain.
  • Chris Genovese, who dies saving Mindy and asking her to apologize to his mother for ruining her life.
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
  • Mr. Hyde singing "You Should See Me Dance the Polka" as he jaunts off toward the tripod is particularly emotional when it hits you that, for all his unbridled depravity, you'll never experience his brilliantly dark humor again. Throw in his unrequited love for Mina, and it gets exponentially more difficult to read.
  • It's also a bit difficult not to feel bad for Moriarty, given the horrifying manner of his death.
• Marvel Adventures: Marvel Adventures Spider-Man gives the Grey Gargoyle this treatment. He's introduced stealing the Venus de Milo and petrifying and almost shattering Liz Allen. But when it's revealed the man he stole the statue for wants him to use his abilities on a model in order to give the statue arms, the Gargoyle refuses, petrifies his client, and tries to escape, but he loses his grip. Spidey shoots him a line to try and pull him up, but the Gargoyle accidentally turns the web into stone and falls to his doom. At the end of the issue, Spider-Man remarks that "In a world where issues always seem black and white, I guess it's appropriate that the Gargoyle...saw areas that were grey."
• Paperinik New Adventures: In one of the most somber moments of the series, the Duck Avenger is taken to the far future, where he meets the last Evronian. This evronian hopes to kill him now, to prevent the destruction of the Evronian Empire, but the Avenger survives. Realizing that the end of his empire truly is written, the last evronian boards a flying car and takes it into the atmosphere, knowing that it will kill him. The Avenger doesn't even try to stop him, knowing that he is lost, alone and tired, and wants nothing more than to finally die.
• Robin (1993): Young El gets this treatment when he gets pinned by a support beam in a building that is quickly flooding while Robin tries to save him. Tim can't lift the beam and El drowns to death when Tim's rebreather runs out. He's still a gang banger with at least one murder and six attempted murders to his name but Tim is crushed that he drowned while Tim was right there and helpless to save him, and his scared reaction when he realizes he's probably going to die reminds the reader he's just a teen the same age as Tim.
• Runaways: The Pride's demise at the end of the first arc. All the evil and bloodshed they did was to build a better world for their children (the heroes), and they're all unceremoniously slaughtered by the Gibborim after their plan fails. Special mention, though, goes to the Minorus, whose last act is to take a final stand against the Gibborim to save the Runaways, and the Yorkes, who sadly watch their daughter escape and reflect on their own descent into villainy.
  "So this is what we're reduced to, eh, mother?"
  "Yes, love. Empty nesters."
• Sin City: In the album Hell and Back, Wallace feels some pity after he kills Deliah, the contract killer who tried to seduce and kill him, calling her a "strange, sad creature" before silently closing her eyes.
• Spider-Man: Harry Osborn, the second Green Goblin in the later-retconned but still well-remembered story "Best of Enemies" in The Spectacular Spider-Man #200.
• The Transformers: Lord Zarak (A.K.A. Scorponok)'s death. This could seem to not count, since he was trying to stop Unicron, and therefore not dying in a villainous way, but remember that he was the Decepticon leader at that point.
• Asajj Ventress from Star Wars: The Clone Wars. She is given sympathetic qualities in the middle of the series, and her journey to sympathetic-ness is completed at the very end when her hero and mentor, Count Dooku, orders her shot to death because he can't be bothered to wait for her. She makes one last pitiful attempt to kill her nemesis, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and is cut down by Anakin. As she lies dying, she reaches out for Obi-Wan and tells him to watch the Galactic Core and Coruscant. Her final words finally reach this territory:
  Obi-Wan: I thought you'd use your dying breath to curse us.
  Asajj: Perhaps I have...or perhaps I just...hate Dooku more than I hate you....Or maybe...you were right about me...all along....
  • Then, it's subverted when the medical ship that her body was placed aboard mysteriously vanishes, and it's revealed that, terrible though her wounds were, it takes more than that to bring her down.
• Thanos: Thanos in the 70s crossover between The Avengers and Adam Warlock. He's an Omnicidal Maniac who wanted to destroy the entire galaxy to impress Mistress Death, but is turned to stone by Warlock. The last panel shows a tear rolling down his now-petrified face, mourning for his lost love. There's a good reason why he's pictured in the main page to this trope.
• Terra Obscura: Discussed and subverted. The Grim Reaper was once a great hero, but turned bad and ultimately died while attempting to assassinate some old friends for the mob. At the end of the first miniseries, he's buried with the other casualties of the story in a hero's graveyard, complete with a marble statue of himself for a tombstone. However, none of the heroes attending the funerals believe he deserves it — it's just a political move to keep his actions from ruining their reputations.
• Transformers: Last Bot Standing has the Visitor (Nitro) who is defeated and killed by Rodimus while trying to attack the town of Fembrance. Despite being one of a number of surviving Cybertronians (which in this distant future are now a Dying Race) who have adapted to continue surviving by converting organic lifeforms into “biofuel”, Nitro’s fate is still tragic, due to Nitro being motivated not by malice, but by desperation, and has his head torn off by Rodimus after begging for mercy during their fight.
• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers: The Decepticon Snare, The Predators security director, is stuck at G-9 under one of the most sadistic Decepticons ever, Overlord. Despite him, and many other troops, disturbed and uncomfortable with everything ^note  As security director he oversaw the torture and death of many Autobots, making it hard to scare or upset him, Snare throws a Spanner in the Works by freeing Impactor, and later leading some of the Autobot rescue team to save the rest of them. In the scuffle, he's shot and lies dying, asking Impactor to kill him before Overlord comes and finds what he's done. Impactor does so after thanking him.
• The Ultimates:
  • Red Skull, of all the people, gets this in his final issue. It turns out all he wanted was to use the Cosmic Cube to go back in time, prevent Cap from freezing, and then his parents (Steve and his then sweetheart, Gail) could marry and raise him themselves (since he utterly loathed his life as a Tyke Bomb). To his credit, he knew the evils he had committed, but by then, it was too late for him.
  • Abdul is given this treatment.
    Nick Fury: [to Cap] Skinny kid becomes a super-soldier to go off and fight the invading army. Guess that story pushes the right buttons for you, huh?
• Venom: The Crime Master at the end of Venom (Remender & Bunn). Not only does he get shot dead by his own sister but his last words, rather than swearing vengeance or cursing his enemies, are just this:
  "I was meant... for... something special..."
  • Toxin gets a similar reaction from Venom mainly because he was forced into the role and died before Venom could save him.
• Watchmen: Moloch. It was made more poignant because, on many levels, it had more to do with Rorschach than him. This part:
  Edgar Jacobi: Heh. Well, you know that kind of cancer that you get better from eventually?
  Rorschach: Yes.
  Edgar Jacobi: Well, that ain't the kind of cancer I got.
• Wolverine: Daken has done this twice. The first time, he broke down while dying, asking to see his father and apologising for placing a bomb at the Jean Grey Academy, before immolating himself with a bomb. The second, in which he inexplicably came back from the dead, involved him imagining how life could have been with his father and mother, had she not been murdered by Romulus. Wolverine is then forced to drown him to kill him, as by this point he is little more than a pawn for Sabretooth to use against him. Wolverine himself then breaks down, realising they could have had a happy life too. Considering Daken was The Sociopath most of the time... damn.
• X-Men: Claudine Renko, AKA Miss Sinister. Despite what she tries to do to X-23, it's still pretty easy to sympathize with Claudine: She's a victim of Sinister's experiments, and never volunteered to be the vessel by which he attempted to cheat death. On top of that, now he's Fighting from the Inside to steal her body as a Clone by Conversion, which will effectively kill Claudine in the process as he overwrites her mind and fully transforms her body into his. The poor woman just wants to survive with her mind her own.

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