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Better Than It Sounds / Comic Books

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Comic books are not just kids' stories, I swear! They're a viable art form capable of telling mature stories with deep characters. Just look at these examples! I'm not crazy! I swear!

Please sort entries alphabetically to avoid duplicates.
  • Action Philosophers!: A comic book about the life stories of famous philosophers.
  • Albedo: Erma Felna EDF: The feature series is a Funny Animal science fiction military series where every major adventure ends with a serious discussion of its sociopolitical ramifications.
  • All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder: A rich man kidnaps a young boy, age 12, and tries to make him live in a cave eating rats.
  • American Born Chinese: The heartwarming stories of, respectively, a Chinese boy, a Chinese stereotype and a talking monkey.
  • American Splendor: A grumpy file clerk and jazz fan tells stories about his own life and thoughts.
  • Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld: A story about a girl whose age swaps back and forth between teenager and adult while she fights evil wizards in a magical land.
  • Animal Man (1988): A C-List superhero from the '60's goes through a literal life crisis and has to deal with his existence via Rage Against the Author.
  • Annihilation: C-List superheroes fight bugs in space.
  • Anya's Ghost: A Russian high school student becomes friends with a dead American girl.
  • Aquaman: The adventures of the mutant bastard child of a sailor and a mermaid.
  • Archie Comics: A blonde and a brunette fight over a redhead.
    • Archie Meets the Punisher: A gun-toting vigilante teams up with a teenager to capture a criminal who's escaped to idyllic small town America.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): A team of anthropomorphic animals led by a blue mammal fight a psychotic fatman for the fate of their world.
  • Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth: A man remodels his house, then his family dies and he goes insane. Decades later, a clown and his crazy friends take over the house and invite a vigilante who likes to dress up to visit. Hilarity ensues.
  • Associated Student Bodies: College kid from conservative family gets stuck in gay dorm.
  • Asterix: The adventures of old-fashioned Frenchmen with a penchant for fighting and pork.
  • Astro City: A guy who is depressed because of overwork, homesickness and lack of romance, a ten year old girl who doesn't know what hopscotch is, a guy who beats people up while dressed as a clown, a metallic former crook, a teenager who dresses as an altar boy because he's annoyed at his dead father and other inhabitants of the same city have adventures and are psychoanalyzed.
  • The Authority: A bunch of popular superhero ripoffs want to make the world a better place by killing people.
  • The Avengers: A man with mechanical armour, a steroid-enhanced man in an American flag get up, the God of Agriculture, and other costumed cuckoos get together to fight the forces of evil.
    • Rich guy starts a private paramilitary group out of his spare rooms, staffs it with his friends. He is persistently vindicated.
  • Avengers: The Initiative: Superheroes go to Boot Camp.
  • Baby Blues: An early 90s couple have trouble raising their babies.
  • The Backstagers: A group of stagehands at an all-male high school's drama club experience supernatural goings-on backstage.
  • Bamse: An athletic-performance-enhancing drug using bear and a narcoleptic tortoise forces their anxiety riddled bunny friend on adventures.
  • Batman: Rich kid watches his parents get shot. Decides to squander their fortune by building himself a rocket powered car and becoming a vigilante. His arch-nemesis is a drugged-up clown.
    • Alternative: Rich man beats up the poor, the insane, and a clown.
    • Alternative: Rich guy dresses up like a bat, lives with a kid in short shorts, and fights the mentally compromised.
    • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: A 55-year-old billionaire with a death wish fights a gang of mutants, a homosexual clown, and a Physical God with the help of a 13-year-old girl.
    • Knightfall: Luchador on super steroids breaks rich guy's back so psychopath can take over. Rich guy gets better and kicks out the psychopath.
    • Batman: No Man's Land: Rich guy slums it out for a year after earthquake wrecks city.
    • Batgirl: Abused and learning-disabled runaway girl finds a constructive outlet for her death wish.
    • Batman And Robin: An acrobat and his Tyke Bomb stepbrother fight the mentally ill, estranged family members, and sometimes a mentally ill estranged family member.
    • Battle For The Cowl: Brothers fight over their apparently dead step-father's stuff.
  • Bianca: Little Lost Lamb: Ringing Bell with furries.
  • Birds of Prey: A paraplegic, a screamer, and a crossbow-enthusiast develop a social club.
    • Alternative: A librarian, a florist, and a schoolteacher team up to fight crime.
  • Blacksad: A feline detective in a world of furries must solve cases of murder, racism, and the rather gritty realities of life, while dealing with a hygiene-challenged sidekick. Originally in French.
  • Bloom County: A naive talking penguin and his woodland creature friends hang out with a boy in glasses, another boy who wants to be a ballerina, and a Vietnam Vet.
  • Blue Beetle:
    • Ted Kord: Batman without the psychological problems.
    • 2006 series: A high school kid who wants to be a dentist teams up with a homicidal alien superweapon, and fights an array of villains with the assistance of his family and friends.
  • Blue Is the Warmest Color: Woman reads her dead girlfriend's diary about embracing that she's lesbian.
  • Bone: A slacker, a corrupt politician, and a literature buff are chased into the desert and plunge into a valley, where they meet a queen and princess who specialize in cows and fight a crazy old woman who spits out bugs.
    • Alternatively, The Lord of the Rings meets Moby-Dick meets The Smurfs.
    • Alternatively: Three tiny white guys travel with a lady and her grandma. Locusts are a problem, but they're not attacking crops.
  • The Boondocks: An angry black kid with a huge afro bitches about the current black celebrities. Also his brother is an 8-year-old gangsta.
  • Booster Gold: A disgraced athlete travels through time to make money.
  • Brother Juniper: The day-to-day life of a joyful monk.
  • Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire: On a lawless world, a man protects a woman from religious fanatics, prevents a kidnapping, stops a hijacking, and works to save the population of a doomed world. It's a comedy.
    • Buck Godot, zap gun for hire: Psmith: Love blossoms amidst assassination attempts by a stubborn drunk.
    • Buck Godot, zap gun for hire: The Gallimaufry: Tax law causes a man to visit a brothel.
  • Bullet Points: What happens if Professor Erskine gets shot one day earlier.
  • Cable & Deadpool: Cyborg Mutie Jesus and a brain-damaged, motormouthed mercenary have morally questionable adventures that involve one of them turning into goo and the other eating him, then vomiting him back up. Hijinx ensue!
  • The Beano Calamity James: A bucktoothed youth is subjected to the most painful and humiliating situations imaginable. His talking pet lemming finds this hilarious.
  • Calvin and Hobbes: A boy and his talking stuffed animal travel through time and discuss politics.
  • Captain America: Scrawny shrimp is rejected from the army, takes drugs and becomes icon of America.
  • Captain Atom (1987): A Vietnam veteran tries to reconnect with his now-adult children after having been absent from their lives since they were babies, and also tries to get over his dead wife. He falls in love with and eventually marries a terrorist.
  • Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!: An anthropomorphic talking rabbit becomes a superhero, and forms a superhero team (who're also talking animals) consisting of: a pastiche of Burt Reynolds, a gossip columnist, an out-of-work Southerner, an occultist martial arts instructor (who's also from the South), and a Midwestern steel mill worker. Eventually a high school basketball player and a conservative radio talk show host also join the team.
  • Catwoman: A crazy cat lady goes running around the city waving a whip.
  • Cerebus the Aardvark: A funny animal sets out on an adventure that is really just a thinly-veiled way for the author to work through his beliefs. Then the author goes apewire and everything gets really, really weird.
  • Chew: A Chinese man eats things.
  • Avengers: The Children's Crusade: Gay mutie loses control of his powers and finds out his mom is marrying a supervillain.
  • Civil War (2006): Concerned citizens protest government legislation. Things go out of hand. YouTube and MySpace are somehow involved.
  • Civil War II: College student sees the future, causes billionaire and military woman to fight over profiling.
  • Close To Home: Everyday life is really, really weird.
  • Cocco Bill: Italian western comic. With animals who smoke. And other absurdities. And No Fourth Wall.
    • Alternatively, a guy who likes tea shoots people.
  • Concrete: A man gets his brain transplanted into a stone body by aliens.
  • Conqueror of the Barren Earth: A being from another planet conquers the Earth. She sacks cities and towns that have never attacked her or given her any offense. She betrays and murders her husband, who loves and adores her, once he has outlived his usefulness. The story implies that once she takes over the world, she will then use Earth as a power base from which she will attempt to conquer the rest of the galaxy. She is the hero of the story.
  • Cosmic Odyssey: The god-like ruler of an alternate universe made of anti-matter wants to destroy the main DC universe, so a powerful, mysterious being who up until that time had been known as an antagonist or villain gathers a bunch of DC superheroes to fight said god-like anti-matter being. It is revealed in the course of the story that the anti-matter being had attempted to destroy the positive-matter universe once before, but had been locked away, but that, at some point before the beginning of the story, a brilliant scientist had inadvertently released said anti-matter being, an event which did serious psychological damage to said brilliant scientist. The heroes successfully team up to defeat the threat, although they take some fatalities in the process, and, in the end, the good guys only prevail with the help of Darkseid, who is instrumental in defeating the anti-matter being in the final confrontation within his anti-matter universe. Is not Crisis on Infinite Earths.
  • A Couple of Guys: A gay middle-aged couple and their friends deal with life in New York City. One of the couple often has conversations with his own Good Angel, Bad Angel pair.
  • Creature Feature: A series based around the band of the same name about two young men going on misadventures together. The series thrives on Black Comedy and humor that Crosses the Line Twice.
  • Crisis on Infinite Earths: A man and his counterpart decide to end their long feud, getting many people involved. This destroys most of existence. The survivors don't remember most of this after the fact.
    • Infinite Crisis: The few people who did remember that fight are pissed off by the fact that no one else does and that they are all too Darker and Edgier than they used to be. A teenage boy becomes one of the most dangerous threats to all of existence, but is very whiny.
    • 52: While the real stars of the DCU are Put on a Bus, minor side characters you barely recognize have their own struggles, sometimes against their own alter egos. Culminates in an epic battle against a sarcastic butterfly for the fate of something which hadn't existed for over twenty years.
    • Final Crisis: Turns out the original man and his counterpart weren't exactly who we thought they were. The real man is now a threat to that thing that hadn't existed for over twenty years and more. Only one or two (relatively) small group(s) of people know about this; everyone else is distracted by the more immediate, yet equally serious threat of an old man destroying everything by sitting in a chair, who eventually kills Batman. Needs to be read a few times to be understood completely.
      • Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds: The teenage boy discovers that people don't think too highly of him in the future and decides that just being whiny about this won't do much, so he decides to make people respect him. Two previously dead characters are brought back by three versions of the same team (who have never met prior) to stop the teenage boy. The teenage boy manages to get back to home, but wants to go back since people think he's a psycho.
  • Crossed: A Gorn-laden Take That! at survivalists who expect walkers and get Reavers.
  • The Crow: Goth guy avenges his girlfriend with the help of a bird that may or may not be a hallucination.
  • Daredevil: A blind man beats up ninjas, assassins, hitmen, and mobs. They cannot hurt him, so they kill his girlfriend instead.
  • Dark Empire: A Magnificent Bastard who was thrown down a shaft six years ago comes Back from the Dead.
  • Dark Nights: Metal: Evil versions of a rich guy try to drag Earth into a dark universe.
  • Dark Reign: After he kills the leader of an alien invasion, a man who's secretly an insane supervillain is put in charge of the nation's new top crime-fighting agency.
  • Darkhawk: Teenager finds an amulet that allows him to transform into an alien android and uses his powers to fight crime while trying to keep his family from falling apart at the seams.
  • DC Rebirth: Speedster that fell out of continuity comes back, starts to fix continuity by existing.
    • The Button: Rich guy and speedster try to solve mystery of a small trinket.
    • The Oz Effect: Mystery man gives immigrant crisis of faith.
    • Doomsday Clock: Superheroes go looking for God in another universe.
    • Dark Nights: Death Metal: Nihilistic rich clown decides to become God. Greek woman stops to stop him and inadvertently fixes all continuity problems.
  • Deadly Class: Nihilistic teen joins a school for assassins. Much violence and drug-induced philosophy ensues.
  • Deadpool: A cancer patient gets healing superpowers that leave him deformed and crazy, so he kills people for money and never shuts up. He has No Fourth Wall.
  • Dick Tracy: A dude always dressed in yellow and armed with gadgets that are almost ridiculous pursues people easily identified by their hideous deformities.
  • Disney Mouse and Duck Comics: Classic cartoon characters do interesting stuff.
    • ''Uncle Scrooge'': An obscenely rich old man pays his nephew and his nephew's nephews an absurdly small wage to, alternately, guard his house or accompany him around the world on bizarre adventures. Occasionally they battle a gang of identical masked idiots who have numbers instead of names.
    • The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: A Promoted Fanboy's combination of a bunch of old comic book stories about a cheapskate.
      • The Last Of The Clan McDuck: A Scottish kid's life is changed by an American coin.
      • The Master of the Mississippi: A teenager, his card shark uncle, and the grandfather of a future colleague — they fight crime. And get muddy.
      • The Buckaroo of the Badlands: A Scottish cowboy befriends Teddy Roosevelt.
      • The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark: Cattle rustling in Java.
      • The Raider Of The Copper Hill: A copper miner gives up copper mining.
      • The New Laird of Castle McDuck: A near-death experience inspires a Scotsman to take up gold mining.
      • The Terror of the Transvaal: A Boer teaches a gold miner how to be cynical and mistrusting.
      • The Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never: A duck turns down a chance to be a jerk and get rich.
      • King of the Klondike: A prospector is kidnapped, a piano is thrown, and a riverboat is destroyed.
      • The Prisoner of White Agony Creek: Funny Animals have hatesex.
      • Hearts of the Yukon: Gal tries to make up with her ex by having him arrested.
      • The Billionaire of Dismal Downs: Rich Scotsman finds out You Can't Go Home Again.
      • The Raider of Fort Duckberg: Rich Scotsman and his sisters fight the American military over a run-down fort.
      • The Sharpie of the Culebra Cut: Rich Scotsman accidentally thwarts a military coup in Central America after he gets into a fistfight with Theodore Roosevelt.
      • The Empire-Builder from Calisota: A zombie chases a duck as punishment for an Out-of-Character Moment.
      • The Richest Duck in the World: A Retired Badass, his smallest fan, and Single Minded Triplets — they fight crime and plan to fight more.
    • Ultraheroes: Various superheroes and supervillains from the main universe (and some guys that usually don't have superpowers but now they do because yes) fight each other for the pieces of a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
    • Wizards of Mickey: A good wizard, a wizard with late-effect spells and a wizard who wants to do something different than being a wizard try to collect magic diamonds. In season 2, the good wizard becomes an evil tyrant, then snaps back and builds a Humongous Mecha to fight dragons. In Season 3, a giant worm drains the magic away from the diamonds, and the worm is later defeated from a lich by making it cry. In season 4, they discover that the diamonds are actually eggs for giant bugs (which are referred to by everyone as spiders even when they're clearly not).
  • DMZ: A photographer goes to New York City; turns out it's not such a great place.
  • Doctor Strange: Surgeon attempts to get his hands treated and ends up becoming the most powerful sorcerer on the planet.
  • Doom Patrol: People with unfortunate medical/metaphysical conditions save the world repeatedly, but people mostly don't notice.
  • Dork Tower: A bunch of nerds bicker with each other and play role-playing games with a muskrat. One of them has the hots for a Perky Goth.
  • Earth 2: A group of good-natured people try to replace their fallen heroes.
  • Earth X: Everybody gains superpowers, but are powerless to stop an egg from hatching.
  • ElfQuest: Elves go on a quest. Um, did I make that one too easy?
    • Magitek aliens go looking for their old spaceship and otherwise adventure.
  • Empowered: An artist best known for his print adaptations of a Japanese cartoon decides to base an ongoing superhero series on a set of soft-porn bondage sketches he did on commission. The titular heroine is aware of this and not really thrilled by it. The art of the final, published comic is uninked, uncolored pencil sketches.
    • Half dark and brooding tale of corruption and bloodshed, half silly fanservice comedy.
  • The Eternal Smile: A fantasy hero's life falls apart because of an anachronism, an Uncle Scrooge knock-off discovers his life is a lie, and a shy office worker gains self-confidence after falling for a classic Internet scam.
  • The Eye of Mongombo: After getting fired from his teaching job, a two-fisted adventurer decides to seek a legendary treasure but ends up as a waterfowl.
  • Fables: A Massive Multiplayer Crossover featuring characters from Fairy Tales and folklore, who are forced out of their homelands by a ruthless dictator and take refuge in New York City.
  • The Family Upstairs: A guy tries to drive his noisy neighbors as mad as they've driven him. Those Two Guys eventually get their own strip.
  • Fantastic Four: A nerd, his girlfriend, her brother and the nerd's best friend live together and spend their time bickering and fighting the Nerd's insecure college rival, who really doesn't know how to let go of a grudge.
  • The Far Side: Weird things happen to animals and fat people with glasses.
  • Fell: A good cop tries to make a difference in a bad city. He doesn't.
  • Fish Police: An alcoholic fish, who may have once been a human, has to solve crimes.
  • The Flash: One habitually late forensic scientist has lab accident in thunderstorm, starts running faster.
    • Wally West: kid with hero complex gets struck by lightning and chemicals and goes real fast, then real slow (relatively speaking), then real fast, then REALLY fast, then has a suit made out of "goes fast".
    • Jay Garrick: A man breaths in hard water vapors, then starts to run really fast.
    • Professor Zoom: man blames hard life on historical figure, sets out to murder him.
  • Forever Evil (2013): Villains from another universe take over the world, and can only be stopped by villains from the main universe.
  • Foxtrot: A nerd, his siblings, and his pet reptile discuss current things.
  • Frazz: An elementary school janitor ex-musician philosophises with the students.
    • If you want people to actually give it a try, tell them it's when Calvin gets older and becomes a school employee.
  • Fritz the Cat: A Funny Animal feline con artist goes on wild adventures and has a lot of sex. Crows stand in for African Americans. Created as the result of an early form of what later became the Furry Fandom.
  • From The Dust: The Book of Mormon...retold WITH FURRIES! (No, really.)
  • Garfield: The everyday life of a lazy, gluttonous Deadpan Snarker who lives with a perennial loser and his dumb friend, usually with No Fourth Wall. Some think he may have died 20 years ago.
  • Garfield Minus Garfield: Perhaps the most iconic, well-known newspaper comic strip character outside of Snoopy is removed from his own strip. Predictably, this makes the strip a lot less funny.
  • Get Fuzzy: Similar to the above comic, but the Deadpan Snarker is NOT lazy nor gluttonous.
  • Global Frequency: Heroes "R" Us with crowdsourcing.
  • Goldie Vance: The daughter of a hotel manager and a fashion model/mermaid takes a side gig as a junior detective where she solves mysteries, races fast cars, and falls in love with the cute rocker chick at her local record store.
  • The Goon: A thug and his pupilless sidekick fight an army of zombies created by Rumpelstiltskin.
  • Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks: A bully gets a spaceship stuck up his nose, and teams up with a geek to get it out. He pays the geek back by using animal crackers and a donut to help the geek deal with his daddy issues.
  • Gotham Central: Police officers fight crime while dealing with the interference of an obsessed billionaire.
  • Gotham City Garage: Girls who are able to fly ride bikes to get around and fight over scraps.
  • Great Lakes Avengers: A guy discovers he's immortal and teams up with a mute dinosaur, a 2-dimensional man, the grim reaper and a bulimic fat chick to fight crime. There are lots of squirrels and murders. They fight crime, and a guy in bondage gear who likes to dress up as the leader of a small European country.
  • Green Arrow: An aging hunter gets involved in political situations and cheats on his girlfriend.
    • The team is a lady who wears fishnets to work, a (former?) Buddhist, an AIDS patient, and a LIBERAL! Cool huh?
  • Green Lantern: The adventures of various humans who serve as troopers of a stateless police force wearing the ultimate in functional jewelry and use their imagination to fight crime.
    • Alan Scott: A railroad engineer finds a magic rock the stateless police force threw away.
    • Hal Jordan: A test pilot is inducted into the stateless police.
    • Kyle Rayner: A random guy is given jewelry and decides to join the police.
    • Green Lantern: Rebirth: The most famous human (who had been dead for years) comes back in a way that retcons his Face–Heel Turn so his character assassination could be reversed. This does not get rid of any of the other humans (especially his replacement) and helps the police force get rebuilt.
    • Sinestro Corps War: The police force is attacked by newly formed counterpart group with robots whose leaders are a disgruntled ex-cop, a cyborg, a whiny teenage boy and some dead guy's newly reborn evil counterpart (see entries above for latter two). Many asses are kicked in the process.
    • Blackest Night: Death is tired of being cheated by superheroes and decides to destroy all life in the universe with the aid of a necrophiliac and the power of some dead guy's evil counterpart. Everyone decides to stop fighting each other to prevent this from occurring.
    • Rise of the Third Army: The police force's leaders decide to fire the whole force and replace them with an army that absorbs everything, powered by a Sealed Evil in a Can.
    • Wrath of the First Lantern: The Sealed Evil in a Can gets loose and decides to screw with everyone by Rewriting Reality for kicks.
    • ''Lights Out'': The police force, now under the leadership of the most famous human member, fight an ecoterrorist.
  • ’’Grendel’’: Author/assassin/crime lord fights lycanthrope. He ends up being killed by lycanthrope, but his legacy is carried first by his adoptive granddaughter and then her boyfriend. Centuries later, a millionaire uses that legacy to battle vampires.
  • Groo the Wanderer: A well-meaning idiot causes mayhem wherever he goes.
    • Deadpool would be a good guess.
    • This troper thought you meant a graphic novel adaptation of The Phantom Menace.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: A bunch of people from around the solar system of various backgrounds band together to fight injustice.
    • Guardians of the Galaxy (1990) vol.1: A telekinetic astronaut who's been frozen for a thousand years, a walking mass of muscle, a man made out of crystal, an alien who shoots arrows, a girl who's permanently on fire, and a bodysharing couple have adventures across the galaxy in the 31st century. Despite living in the future, become the inspiration for the spaceman and his friends.
    • Guardians of the Galaxy (2008) vol.2: After the galaxy survives a pair of wars, a spaceman puts together a team consisting of a living tree, a talking raccoon, a space madonna, a mass murderer, a femme fatale, and a resurrected space wizard with the intent of preemptively keeping the peace. They run the operation out of a base with a psychic cosmonaut dog as the head of security.
    • Guardians of the Galaxy vol.3: The spaceman manages to escape somehow from being sealed in a can, and recruits the mass murderer, the femme fatale, the talking raccoon, the living tree, and a narcissist in powered armor to help him deal with his jerkass father, who ran out on his mother. They're later joined by a stripperiffic angel, a paraplegic with a brain-eating symbiote, and an amnesiac pilot.
  • Hack/Slash: Goth girl with a troubled past involving an overbearing mother and her gas mask wearing sidekick raised by a butcher travel around the country fighting dead people.
  • Hellblazer: A con man repeatedly escapes the consequences of associating with demons. His friends do not.
  • Hellboy: A demonic pancake-enthusiast fights Nazis and magic things.
    • This troper once had to explain to a friend what Hellboy: The Conqueror Worm is about. "Well.. it's about a demon working for a secret agency, that fights space-nazis who are trying to summon an ancient god/s by using the dead to communicate with space-ghost-aliens. It's WAY better than it sounds." Also in these few pages he fights a cyborg gorilla, undead, a floating head in a jar, frog-people and a giant space-worm with the help of a pyrokinetic psychic, a homunculus and an alien disguised as a soldier.
    • This troper once fell asleep on the couch in his sharehouse, and woke up to find his housemates halfway through the sequel, where a demon and a fish-man are singing Barry Manilow, asking 'what the f—k are we watching?' came with hilarious results as the group realised at that moment they were in an extreme example of this trope.
    • B.P.R.D.: Pancake-enthusiast's friends fight evil frogs.
  • Holy Terror: A vigilante and a catburglar fight terrorists.
  • Hopeless Savages: What if Sid and Nancy had settled down and had kids.
  • Horndog: The strange life of a Funny Animal dog whose life revolves around cannabis and sex. Black cats stand in for African Americans.
  • Howard the Duck: A free-thinker gets stuck in Cleveland and has to take on strange jobs to make ends meet while he and his roommate make pointed commentary about life in The '70s.
  • Huntress: A woman who is a cross between Batman and The Godfather kills gangsters to avenge her family, even though she herself killed her own father and betrayed her uncle.
    • Alternatively: An elegant dark-haired lady goes on a murder spree with an anachronistic weapon.
    • Originally, the daughter of an alternate Earth's wealthy superhero and a cat burglar, before being replaced by the above version.
  • Identity Crisis (2004): Years after the fact, a group of co-workers face the consequences of a cover-up while one of them re-unites with his ex-wife.
  • The Incredible Hulk: Stupidity during a nuclear test gives a scientist severe anger management issues.
    • Immortal Hulk: The scientist's anger management problems and other psychological issues are explored in depth, in a way that turns his narrative into a horror story.
  • The Infinity Gauntlet: A nihilist tries to make a woman love him, but ultimately sets himself up for defeat.
    • Or: Guy who can't take a hint keeps trying to impress his lady friend by killing half the universe, curb stomping anyone who faces him and creating a castle in her image with his new toy even though she stopped being interested in him because of said toy.
  • Invincible: A teenager fights his dad after finding out that he's been living a double-life. The dad skips town, and his son has to take over the family business. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance.
  • The Invisibles: This 59-issue comic series is a retelling of Philip K. Dick's last 9 seconds before he died.
    • Or: A diverse group of people take drugs and discuss political philosophy
  • Iron Man: Drunken, selfish, narcissistic industrialist builds a mechanical outfit to keep his heart beating and fights crime on the side.
  • Irredeemable: Superman Substitute works out his frustrations.
  • It's A Bird...: Comic artist contemplates turning down plum job because of personal issues.
  • Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: A skinny goth philosophizes about the human condition while killing people and drawing comics about a crazy, foul-mouthed stick figure. Also there might or might not be a monster in his basement, and his best friend is a dead rabbit.
  • Judge Dredd: A complete fascist rides around on a motorbike beating the snot out of half the criminals he encounters and executing the rest with a massive gun.
  • Justice League of America: An optimistic farm boy who wants to help people, a cynical rich kid with mental issues, a girl unsure about the world from growing up in an all-girl commune, a laid-back chemist, an arrogant pilot who wants to overcome his fear, a guy torn between two places in his life and a lonely old man are the world's greatest heroes.
  • Justice Society of America: Octogenarian superheroes and a bunch of their legacies (including at least three teenage girls) fight Nazis and the legacies of supervillains.
  • Kingdom Come: Superman retires because he thinks the world doesn't need him. He is wrong.
    • Alternatively, a bunch of old superheroes complain about the current generation and how things were better when they were fighting crime.
  • Krazy Kat: Mouse goes to jail for feeding a cat's head trauma addiction.
  • Kyles Bed And Breakfast: Soap opera goings-on at a gay-owned bed and breakfast where half the guests look like models. The owner enjoys making pancakes.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: A neurotic divorcee, her drug-addict boyfriend and their murderous, amoral sidekicks run black ops for The Empire while a math teacher battles a crimelord over the right to take over the world. Then the aliens attack.
    • Alternately, A Massive Multiplayer Crossover with characters from Victorian-era novels, several of whom form a team of troubleshooters in the service of Great Britain.
  • Legion of Super-Heroes: A bunch of overachieving teenagers from the future have goofy nicknames and can't decide on which costumes to wear.
  • Liō: Weird and often macabre stuff happens to a mute boy.
  • Lobo: An alien biker bags up villains with gory and funny results.
  • Locke & Key: A group of kids try to stop a psychopathic villain who uses his Magical Keys to find more Magical Keys.
  • Loyola Chin and the San Peligran Order: Cornbread leads a teenage girl to fall in and out of love with a eugenicist who looks like Dr. Manhattan. This eventually helps restore her faith in God.
  • Lucifer: A Wicked Cultured man, tired of being blamed for things he didn't do, gives up his position and travels the world.
  • Lucky Luke: A cowboy with movements independent from those of his shadow who lives in an anachronistic western-ish world and who is apparently one of the few sane men in the world. He often fights and defeats four dumb criminals who are one slightly taller than the other (and all have the same face).
  • Lumberjanes: A group of friends have adventures at a Girl Scouts-esque summer camp where bizarre supernatural things happen daily.
  • Mafalda: Girl complains about world politics... and soup.
  • Magneto: Bizarrely Aryan-seeming Jewish guy attempts to deal with his traumatic past by attempting to destroy humanity and making genetic freaks into the new dominant species. Meanwhile, his half-Roma daughter and son hate his guts.
  • Manhunter (DC Comics): A divorced attorney takes on a second job.
  • Marvel 1602: In XVIIth century Europe, a group of people with strange powers get intertwined with events of international politics. And they save the universe.
  • Marvels: A photographer loses an eye while documenting vigilante activity.
  • Maus: The Holocaust with... we would say Funny Animals (or Funny Aminals), but that just doesn't work.
  • The Mighty Thor: The made-up adventures of a god that nobody has worshipped in hundreds of years.
  • Monster Allergy: Invisible criminals are sent to rehab for crimes such as farting or playing the violin badly. Said rehab is in the house of a kid who is allergic to invisible criminals.
  • Monstress: Very angry teen with one arm and a foul mouth travels a war-torn fantasy Asia stand-in, accompanied by a fox girl, a talking cat, and the Eldritch Abomination that lives in her arm stump.
  • Moomin: Stories about a tax evader family where the father makes illegal moonshine among other things, his wife lets her son and his friends do whatever they want (including underage smoking and drinking), and their son regularly tries to murder people for interacting with his girlfriend and moons the reader at the start of every story. Also includes things like random talking helicopters and the son trying to kill himself because he has no family. Oh, and the characters originate from one of the most wholesome children's book series ever, and the comic was originally written by the writer of said books.
  • Moon Knight: A mercenary finds religion.
    • Moon Knight (2021): Mercenary goes to therapy and makes new friends while continuing to carry out his religious duties.
  • The Multiversity: A group of characters take storytelling way too seriously. Or not seriously enough.
  • Mutts: Unconventional friends try to understand the people around them.
  • Nextwave: Government employees read their employer's financial information, steal a business vehicle, and go off to violate their now-former boss's purchasing agreements.
  • New Mutants: A vietnamese refugee with psychic powers, a Noble Savage who can project contructs of people's desires and nightmares, a living solar battery who gets powerful, a scottish werewolf who self-hates herself and a cole miner's son who can't control his trajectory are recruited by a bald man to replace his former team while dealing with their own angst.
  • New Super-Man: China makes a living Superman ripoff.
  • ‘’Ninja High School’’: A high school student is the target of romantic affection by two girls: one is from a powerful family of spies and assassins and the other comes from a powerful empire. Hilarity ensues.
  • Nodwick: D&D characters hire Only Sane Man short guy to carry their loot. He dies and comes back frequently.
  • Non Sequitur: A young girl discusses with her friend, a talking horse, regular schemes of world domination.
  • Omaha the Cat Dancer: A Funny Animal sexually explicit Soap Opera about a feline stripper and her friends told with a sex-positive feminist point of view.
  • Paperinik New Adventures: A Funny Animal created 80 years ago finds the toys of a rich reluctant Mad Scientist. He uses them to dress up and fight crime and aliens.
  • Patsy Walker: Archie Comics copycat becomes a superhero after taking a copycat costume from a crate. Both her husbands become exes from Hell, in one case literal.
  • Peanuts: The everyday life of a boy who fails at everything, his weird friends, and his delusional dog. The dog's best friend is his paruline ex-secretary.
    • OR: The story of a boy who fails at everything and is mocked by the whole world, while being observed by a dog and a bird who sit atop a doghouse.
    • OR: The story of a boy who fails at everything, his younger sister, and his much more successful friends: A classical musician, a psychiatrist, a philosopher, an athlete, a scholar, and most famously of all, a man of many talents (but most often a novelist) and his assistant who live with the boy.
    • Alternately, a boy tries and fails to kick a football.
  • Pearls Before Swine: Animals with no expressions are used to make Puns.
  • Persepolis: A girl is forced to leave her country for her own good. When she is forced to come back, she decides she should leave her country for her own good again.
  • Phoebe and Her Unicorn: A girl is best friends with a Unicorn.
  • Phonogram: Rue Britannia: Indie music snob with magical powers attempts to stop Disco Dans from rewriting his musical tastes.
  • Planetary: A hero from the Thirties discovers that a hero from the Sixties is secretly a villain from the Fifties. The hero joins up with a dude with ADD and a woman with ADHD. They fight crime by digging things up.
  • Pluggers: A Funny Animal comic on suburban life. Most romances are interspecies.
  • Popeye: A violent, ill-tempered, and somewhat insane chain-smoker physically assaults anyone who gets in his way. If fighting normally proves ineffective, he will consume a container of performance-enhancing substance (in the athletic sense), which he typically keeps on his person, which inevitably allows him to curb-stomp anyone he wishes in any way he wants. Parents largely consider him a good role model for children.
  • Power Girl: Superman with tits fights super intelligent gorilla, alien 70s porn star, and bestiality fetishists.
  • Powerless: The Marvel Universe, only without anyone having powers.
  • Preacher: An extremely charismatic priest, his girlfriend, and his alcoholic best friend take a cross-country trip/crime spree.
  • The Pro: Hooker with superpowers teams up with Justice League rip offs. Fights crime. Urinates on villain. Saves world.
  • The Professor's Daughter: An Egyptologist's only child falls in love with a dead guy. Murder and mayhem ensues, including the dead guy getting drunk on tea and Queen Victoria being thrown in a river by the dead guy's father.
  • Proposition Player: A gambler wins a bet and gets hounded by lots of people trying to get at his winnings, including an overweight man, a hellish woman, and two talking crows.
  • The Punisher: A Vietnam vet gets upset when his family's picnic is ruined.
    • Alternatively: PTSD-afflicted widower/veteran attempts to self-medicate while wearing military-goth-fetish clothing. His self-medication is sometimes enabled by a dude named after a piece of technology (except for the multiple times when the widower/veteran acts like a diva and gets mad at him for stupid reasons). The PTSD-afflicted widower/veteran's mental health never improves. Ever.
  • Quantum and Woody: A buddy comedy about two MacGuffin bonded superheroes and their goat.
  • Queen and Country: A spy deals with job stress by drinking.
  • The Question (1987): A journalist/gambler examines various philosophies after a near death experience.
  • Rapunzel's Revenge: Long-haired Action Girl and her wacky sidekick team up to take down an Evil Overlord in a fantasy Old West setting.
  • Red (2003): An old guy shoots a bunch of his former co-workers while talking about the mistakes that were made in the cold war. It has almost nothing to do with the movie they made of it.
  • Red Robin: A teenager in denial about his stepdad's death runs away from home and fights assassins. Turns out he's correct.
  • Rex Libris: A look at the daily life of a librarian.
  • Rocketship Rodents: All-male Funny Animal crew have erotic Flash Gordon-esque adventures in space, watch equally Ho Yay-loaded Doctor Who parody.
  • Ronin (1983): A samurai's master is killed in a whore house. Samurai comes back to life but not really in the future and fights his master's killer with a science babe.
  • Runaways: Five teenagers have a spat with their parents and run away from home.
  • Sam & Max: Freelance Police: A pistol-packing dog and rabbit annoy everyone they come across.
  • The Sandman (1989): Emo Kid breaks out of prison, gets his jewelry off some weirdos, gets into trouble thanks to a Pretty Boy and tries to get his sister to accept him.
    • Or: A depressed workaholic stages an elaborate suicide. His family doesn't really care.
  • Sandman Mystery Theatre: An insomniac tries to fight crimes that are mostly incest related.
  • Savage Avengers: A group of very marketable edgy characters form an edgy team that has a name that sounds like a parody of itself.
  • Savage Dragon: A green strong guy becomes a police officer and fights supervillains and monsters. There is no Status Quo.
  • Scott Pilgrim: A guy from Toronto falls in love with a girl from New York and decides to prove his love for her by systematically killing everyone else who ever loved her. It's a comedy.
  • Secret Empire: Legendary hero turns his back on all of his ideals and tries to rule the world.
  • Secret Six (2008): A hitman, a bifauxnen lesbian, a recovering drug addict, a dominatrix banshee, a feral animal activist, and an insane contortionist try to make money. And they eat eggs.
  • Secret Warriors: A tough old man recruits a bunch of youngsters who nobody's ever heard of before to fight terrorists.
  • The Sentry: Superman Substitute with emotional problems.
  • Seven Soldiers: A team of superheroes who never actually meet fight to save the world from fairies.
  • Shazam!/Captain Marvel: Orphan kid inadvertently crushes an old man to death in an abandoned subway tunnel, and becomes a champion for Good as a result.
  • She-Hulk: The second-strongest member of the Avengers becomes an attorney and participates in lengthy superhuman court proceedings.
    • Or: Woman turns green after blood transfusion.
  • Sherman's Lagoon: A fat shark, with a naggy wife, converses with a misanthropic turtle and Jerkass Hermit Crab who's the mayor.
  • Silver Surfer: A political exile loses his job and complains loquaciously about the foolishness of the residents of his new location.
  • Sin City: The adventures of a collection of psychopaths in a dark city composed entirely of grimy back alleys and populated entirely by prostitutes, other psychopaths and Film Noir cliches.
  • The Sinister Man: A Jerkass makes people's lives miserable.
    • The Sinister Woman: A complete bitch makes people's lives miserable.
  • Six-Gun Gorilla: An out-of-work librarian and his imaginary friend bring an end to a civil war after becoming reality-TV stars.
  • Sky Doll: A clockwork mannequin wonders about the nature of her existence. We wonder if the next issue will ever come out.
  • Sleepwalker: Alien from another dimension gets trapped in the mind of a human college student, and manifests in our world to fight crime when the human sleeps.
  • Snarked!: A pair of beach-bums living in a world inspired by Alice's Adventures in Wonderland get dragged into helping two bossy kids look for a long-lost relative.
  • Spawn: Man gets a new job, and frequently battles co-workers and people from a rival company. His main rival moonlights as a clown.
  • Spider-Girl: Teenager tries running the family business, finds it's harder than she thought. Sometimes dad comes back and helps out.
  • Spider-Man: Nerdy journalist fights crime with the help of a radioactive spider and his own brand of super-glue.
  • Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane: A teenage girl nurses a crush on a boy whose name she doesn't know (although maybe she does) whilst having to deal with high school and the complicated relationships she has with her best friends.
  • Spy vs. Spy: Two groups of secret agents Gambit Pileup each other to death. The presence of a woman makes them Too Dumb to Live.
  • Squee: The story of a little boy who is the neighbor of a homicidal maniac, has neglectful parents, and his only friends are a talking teddy bear that is a "Trauma sponge" and the son of Satan.
  • Starman (DC Comics): An antiques collector tries to impress his father by taking on his brother's old job.
  • Static: Teenager in Detroit gains electrical super powers and fights crime while learning that being a superhero makes life harder and strains relationships.
  • Steady Beat: Girl discovers her sister is a lesbian and it turns out the world has more ghey people than you think. She meets a hot Jewish guy who hits on her except he doesn't.
  • Strangers in Paradise: Ambiguously Gay Artist pines after her fat-ass roommate who's being stalked by her Jerkass Casanova Wannabe lawyer ex-boyfriend (Who dumped her 'cause she wouldn't put out). Meanwhile the Dogged Nice Guy spends nearly ten freaking years chasing after the Artist, who most certainly Does Not Like Men. Worth the time to read it? You tell me.
  • Suicide Squad: Things go wrong with a federal prison's work release program.
  • Superboy: Depending on version:
    • The adventures of a superhero during his childhood and teen years, as he protects his small Midwestern hometown from an absurd number of alien invasions, robberies, and villains. Also part of a team of teenage superheroes that operate 1000 years in the future.
    • Superboy (1994): The adventures of the clone of a superhero and said superhero's archenemy. Said clone fights crime.
    • Jonathan Samuel Kent: The adventures of the son of a superhero and a newspaper reporter, as he fights crime.
  • Supergirl: Teenager Superman with tits, skirt and a ton of issues tries to prove that she is her own person.
  • Supergod: Various Mad Scientist creations — among them Robot Krishna and Giant Space Mushroom Man — feud amongst themselves while one of the Mad Scientists rants about religion.
  • Superman: Orphaned immigrant gets a job as an investigative journalist and works with a fellow reporter to expose corruption and injustice. Though he mostly gets the job done outside his working hours.
  • The Sword: A family complains to their neighbors about the amount of noise they are making at a party. This leads to a millennia-long blood feud that ultimately leads to both families killing each other off.
  • Tales of the Jedi: The mastermind behind Dark Empire teams up with the author of the Jedi Academy Trilogy books to flesh out the text pages of Dark Empire.
  • Teen Titans: A star of an ice pun film, a skank alien, an angsty robot, a child of a demon, a brunette amazon, a green skinned prankster and Nebraska boy gather in an elaborate clubhouse.
    • Tiny Titans: Young sidekicks go to elementary school.
    • Teen Titans (Kami Garcia): Superpowered teenagers deal with their personal issues while being hunted by a divorced war veteran.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage): Four unusual looking teenagers live in the sewers of New York City with their adoptive dad. This dad teaches his kids how to take revenge on a guy who wronged him several years ago.
  • The Thanos Imperative: A team of cosmic superheroes try to stop their counterparts from an alternate universe from making it so that everybody gets to live forever.
  • Therefore Repent: A couple survives the Rapture only to discover that all the Christians that thought they were being bodily taken up to heaven have suffocated to death and now form an orbital ring of corpses.
  • Thunderbolts: Confidence trick is dropped once the involved end up liking their new jobs.
  • The Tick: The adventures of an escapee from a mental institution and a bored accountant.
  • Tintin: Freakishly talented, seemingly ageless guy goes everywhere with a hairy old drunk and a dog.
    • The Calculus Affair: An entire nation conspires against a reporter and a deaf old man and loses.
  • Tovarich: The actions of a Dirty Communist Magnificent Bastard.
  • Transmetropolitan: A drug addict attempts to make the world a better place by swearing a lot and shooting people. The president is not pleased.
  • Trinity War: A manipulative Evil Brit and his social club trick three groups of heroes into fighting over a woman's box.
  • The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: A computer science major with the proportional strength, speed, and agility of a squirrel (and ability to talk to said animals) becomes a superheroine capable of defeating A-list villains.
  • The Unbelievable Gwenpool: Girl enters her favorite comic book, decides to kill and explode things for the lulz. Based on a cover gag that turned popular with cosplayers.
  • Usagi Yojimbo: A Funny Animal version of Feudal Japan where the hero is a rabbit who is tougher than most.
  • V for Vendetta: A psycho declares war on the government. He may or may not be right to do so.
    • Alternately: Crazy guy dresses up in a purple wig, Guy Fawkes mask and Badass Cape and gallivants around London talking like an eccentric English professor and blowing stuff up.
  • The Vision (2015): A suburban housewife kicks ass and takes names while her husband is at work. Alternately: After a prior failed marriage, a man just wants a happy family and a house in the suburbs. It isn't quite that easy.
  • The Walking Dead: People attempt to defy mortality. It rarely works.
  • Watchmen: A group of really screwed-up losers investigate a murder whilst a big blue naked man contemplates the nature of time and space. Then a giant Space Squid kills most of New York.
    • Alternately: Washed-up former celebrities deal with their sexual identities on the eve of the apocalypse.
    • OR, a group of people have fun playing superhero, until a real superhero shows up and ruins everything.
    • OR, guy spends twenty years cooking elaborate seafood dish, invites friends over for party. They arrive late.
  • We 3: Three weapons specialists leave their current job. Their bosses aren't happy about it.
  • When the Wind Blows: Your grandparents diligently prepare to survive World War III, then slowly die.
  • Witchblade: NYC cop destroys crime and clothing with help from her magical bling, then is knocked up by a supernatural mafioso.
  • Wolverine: Amnesiac from Canada travels the world, admires the sights and sounds, and has a drink with his Cajun friend every once in a while.
    • OR: Cranky, old man beats people up during his downtime.
  • Wonder Woman: A bondage enthusiast hailing from a society composed entirely of (presumably) lesbians attempts to bring peace to the world by beating people up and subjecting them to her slightly kinky tie-up games.
  • X-Men: A bald old man in a wheelchair who likes watching teenagers sweat founds a school for people with genetic abnormalities. They fly everywhere in a supersonic jet and fight giant robots, a fat guy with a big appetite, and a magnetic Holocaust survivor. Or: a school principal tells his minority students they can improve their reputations by beating up others in their ethnic group.
    • New X-Men: A vomiting woman, a self-loathing birdman, a Chinese immigrant with a helmet, and a French assassin all help a legitimate school fight crime.
    • X-Men (2019): Characters talk politics and philosophy in between pages upon pages of data entries.
  • Y: The Last Man: The only guy in town and his monkey are dragged all the way around the world by a cloning expert and a secret agent so secret she doesn't have a name.
  • Young Avengers: An angry black super soldier, a sassy archer, a gay reality warper, his alien boyfriend, a robot with emotions, and a superhero's daughter cause chaos (often unintentionally).
    • Second series: The sassy archer, the gay reality warper with his alien boyfriend, an angry lesbian Flying Brick, an alien blond guy, and a black genius are trolled by their god of chaos teammate, who fails at evil at the most unexpected times.
  • Young Justice: A geeky ninja, a KidAnova clone, a boy with the world's shortest attention span, an amnesiac ghost, a girl with super strength, an archer with an overbearing mom, and a robot hang out in a mountain and have wacky adventures.
  • Zerogirl: An outcast teenager has a crush on her school counselor and fights square people with circles and blue slime that leaks from her feet.
  • Zits: Perpetual teenager whines intermittently on how it sucks to be 15.

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