Beware The Superman / Comic Books

• Superman:
  • Though the trope's name would instantly make you think of him, the titular Superman has dedicated his life to defying this trope. Unless it's an Elseworlds story, which has this trope as its point, Superman is almost always as responsible as he can be with his powers, and always lets people know that he's here to serve them, not the other way around. However, Elseworlds stories LOVE to play with Superman this way. One example of this is Regime Superman in Injustice: Gods Among Us who's a totalitarian ruler after the death of his Alternate Universe's Lois Lane.
  • What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way?: Subverted when the Man of Steel deals with a team known as "The Elite", who gleefully put people in harm's way with their methods of stopping threats and their flippant attitude to that. When Superman becomes their enemy by opposing their corrupt philosophies, he gets challenged to near-death to break his "outdated" values of truth and justice...and then he does, cruelly and systematically curb-stomping them to their (and the watching civilian population's) abject terror. Metatextually, the story is an examination on Superman's ideologies during The Dark Age of Comic Books where cruel anti-"heroism" like The Elite's actions were sincerely in vogue, challenging whether his straightforward, all-loving ideals still mattered. The answer it provides is a resounding yes: the ending reveals that Superman did intentionally brutalize and traumatize the heck out of The Elite, yet he does not kill them, because despite everything, he utterly refuses to make that choice. Laterally, this displays that had Supes not been an all-loving hero, everybody would be terrified of him.
  • At least All-Star Superman has inverted this by suggesting that anyone who gained Superman's powers would gain such a heightened sense of what it means to be alive and how living beings think, work and feel that it would be almost impossible not to become an altruist like Superman.
  • In Kryptonite Nevermore several characters argue the issue at several points:
    • Morgan Edge is not happy about Superman being immune to Kryptonite because he thinks absolute power corrupts absolutely.
      Lois: What've you got against Superman, sir?
      Morgan: The same thing I'd have against anyone supremely powerful... I don't trust anyone who can't be stopped! A wise man once said that "power corrupts... and absolute power corrupts absolutely!" How do we know Superman will be an exception?
    • Later Superman thinks he doesn't buy his reasoning:
      Superman: Morgan Edge was wrong! Power isn't corrupting... It's freeing me — to do unlimited good!
    • Later Superman recovers his powers thanks to Wonder Woman's mentor I-Ching... but he hasn't recovered from a brain injury, and he becomes cocky, arrogant, impulsive and short-tempered. Ching fears that Superman will go berserk unless they help him.
    • Finally, after having a horrible vision in which he accidentally destroys the planet, Superman does not want to get his full powers back.
      Ching: Perhaps I can transfer the powers you took from Superman back to him!
      Superman: No! I've seen the dangers having too much power... I am human — I can make mistakes!
  • Ironically inverted in The Nail. In an alternate universe, Clark Kent never becomes Superman. This means that there's no moral lighthouse to make the world realize that metahumans and superheroes aren't inherently dangerous, with the result that metahumans are viciously discriminated against and the Justice League are despised and distrusted. Funny how things work out, huh?
  • The Superman Adventures has an Animal Superhero example in "Old Wounds"-turns out that combining normal canine instincts with Superman's power set is a recipe for disaster.
  • In Supergirl story Supergirl: Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade Lena hates super-powered beings. Linda — alias Supergirl — tries to convince her that a person can have superpowers without being a jerk. Unfortunately, their schoolmates are determined to prove Linda wrong.
    Linda: Come on... It's not like everyone with super powers is a complete jerk... [...] Okay... See... He's not everybody. Some people are jerks no matter what. But that doesn't mean that we're suddenly going to be treated differently just because we don't have super powers.
  • In the Supergirl arc Red Daughter of Krypton, Hal Jordan admits that a kryptonian wearing a red lantern ring is quite possibly the most dangerous thing in the universe.
  • In The Supergirl Saga, the only Kryptonians left in the Pocket Universe after Superboy's departure from that world and subsequent death are the Phantom Zone criminals. Its Lex Luthor accidentally let loose three of them, which proceeded to terrorize that universe's Earth and its inhabitants, going so far as to eradicate all life on that world, leaving Lex Luthor and his resistance team in Smallville as the only survivors. And even they proved to be no match against the three criminals who have Superboy's power. Thus its Lex Luthor brought Superman from the mainstream DC Universe to deal with the rogue Kryptonians once and for all.
  • In The Immortal Superman, the Man of Steel travels to the far-flung future and learns three aliens named Naurons arrived in Earth in the ninety-thousandth century and used their powers to help people. Unfortunately, two of them were overwhelmed by their jealousy and started a fight over their female teammate (completely oblivious to her shouting them to stop). Their war lasted two days and turned the Earth's surface into a poisonous wasteland. Afterwards, they declared a truce and left Earth, but the damage was done, prompting Metropolis to ban the use of any super-power. Thirty thousand years later, the use of super-powers is still banned in Metropolis because of the Naurons.
  • Superman: Red Son plays with this trope, having Superman take a much more authoritative role in his world. He actually creates a paradise, as long as you don't have a problem with your every move being watched, your day optimally calculated for you, and your criminals brainwashed into Superman-loving servants of the state. This Trope eventually plays into his desire to quit as it made him reluctant to assume the role of world leader in the first place.
  • Reign of the Supermen featured The Eradicator, who was Superman with fewer moral constraints. For example. upon foiling a bank robber, he crushes the man's hands so that he'll never be able to crack a safe again.
  • In Superman vs. Shazam!, the two titular heroes are manipulated into fighting each other. Their battle is so destructive which they are deemed as a "menace to national security".
  • Lex Luthor invokes this thinking in Lex Luthor: Man of Steel, encouraging people to question Superman's supposed Omniscient Morality License when he, for instance, saves the Toyman from an angry mob, after the latter had seemingly blown up a daycare center killing about a hundred people, about 70 of whom were children. However, Luthor's real reason (or so he tells himself) for hating the hero is that Superman, whether he means to or not, by dint of his mere existence make all human progress irrelevant and thus serves as a crutch that we need to overcome. Of course, given that every single evil thing that happens in this comic — including the daycare center bombing (which Toyman insisted he was innocent of) — were orchestrated by Luthor himself, Lex is less The Cassandra he thinks he is and more the deluded egotistical sociopath he always is; coupled with his Improbably High I.Q. and his billion dollar corporate empire, this means that the only Superman humanity should be worried about is Lex Luthor himself.
  • In The Girl with the X-Ray Mind, Lex Luthor shows exactly what he would do if he had Superman's powers: bragging about his power, bullying and terrorizing helpless innocent people, and committing random acts of destruction.
  • "The Super-Steed of Steel": Comet the Super-Horse is mind-controlled into wreaking havoc across America, and no one can seem to stop him due to his Superman-level powers.
  • Superman (Brian Michael Bendis): The Planet Synmar granted one of their own, Eisno Alkor, with powers so that he could be to them what Superman was to Earth, making him the Synmar Utopica who served his planet faithfully for a long time. Eventually, Alkor turned against his own people and subjugated them forcefully, leading to him confronting Superman. From there on, Superman is the one who has to save Synmar from its own fallen savior who decided he'd rather rule over them with force.
• Ultraman and Black Adam are the Evil Counterparts to Superman and Captain Marvel, for starters.
• Badra, a Wonder Woman Vol 1 foe, was an early take on what might happen if a superpowered alien who was the last of their race and whose alien parents told them just how special and amazing they were landed on earth and was an entitled elitist who saw humans as beneath them and sought to recapture the glory of their destroyed homeworld. Diana sent her packing.
• The original version of Rob Liefeld's Supreme was essentially an incredibly arrogant, ruthless version of early Golden Age activist Superman. He killed terrorists, villains, and (in one particularly notorious case) government-sanctioned teams with impunity and gore. When this version was brought back at the beginning of Erik Larsen's run, he kills an invading army of villains in cold blood, depowers all the surviving Supremes from Alan Moore's run and embarks on a rampage of revenge against all the heroes (for not rescuing him)
• Marshal Law believes that ALL superheroes are exactly like this. Including him. As his Catchphrase says:
  Marshal Law: I'm a hero hunter. I hunt heroes. Haven't found any yet.
• The original Squadron Supreme's limited series has this as the central theme, with the superheroes taking over their world's United States after it's trashed by an alien mind-control menace, for the "greater good", of course. They do in fact succeed in eliminating poverty, war, and, though a (mostly) voluntary brain-modification unit, reforming most of the world's criminals. However, their own personal failings, rising team death count, and totalitarian underpinnings leave their attempt a failure, case in point being how their not-Green Arrow brainwashed their not-Black Canary to make sure she is always in love with him. He quickly regrets this but has to live with the consequences until he is discovered and expelled from the team.
• Twenty years later, the Justice League of America (of whom the Squadron were expies) would likewise have a major storyline, Identity Crisis (2004) involving using Zatanna's magical brainwashing on super-powered criminals, following Doctor Light's rape of Sue Dibny. Not surprisingly, the main holdout on each team who rejected the plan in horror (playing the role of team conscience) was essentially the same character (Batman and his Captain Ersatz, Nighthawk).
• J. Michael Straczynski's Supreme Power (and later Squadron Supreme) redid the Marvel classic Squadron Supreme to show a world where most supers are at least a bit more unhinged. Hyperion, while well-meaning, has been raised since birth to be the ultimate American patriot, and goes through a Heroic BSoD when he finds out. Zarda's a vampiric alien with little regard for human life and a stalker-like crush on Hyperion. Doctor Spectrum's being yanked around by an alien superweapon that occasionally takes over his mind. Nighthawk's a black vigilante with a strong antipathy for whites and a violent hatred for racists. Blur is (at first) a sellout who uses his powers for advertising. Arcanna wants to get rid of her powers. The Shape is a severely mentally handicapped super-strong juggernaut. Nuke is so dangerously radioactive that he must be sealed inside a lead suit. Master Menace is... well, a master of menace. Collateral damage is a major theme of the series, and there's been one mini where Hyperion goes insane and takes over the world.
  • A truly evil version of Hyperion shows up in Exiles as a reoccurring villain. In his own universe, Earth was completely destroyed in an attempt to fight him off. His only interest in travelling between dimensions is to find one that he can rule without too much effort. However, his ultimate defeat comes at the hands of two good counterparts who the Exiles have contacted, and who are very displeased.
  • JMS also plays with such a theme in Rising Stars; the Specials mostly mean well, but after All of the Other Reindeer turn against them, we start seeing some of the real damage they can do, especially after Critical Maas takes over Chicago. After the Surge, even the less aggressive ones tend to take what they want and ignore laws, just because they can.
• The Marvel Universe presented an example of this with Captain America - someone who is only barely above a Badass Normal when it comes to superhuman powers. Yeah, he is a Super-Soldier with peak human (occasionally a bit more) strength, agility, mental abilities and a Healing Factor, but that pales in comparison to the literal gods, monsters, mutants and other superhumans he works with. However, he turns out to have one major power that is terrifying in the hands of a villain - he is the most trusted, charismatic figure in the superhuman community. Most characters - including villains - respect him and are willing to take his word. Most heroes and anti-heroes will unhesitatingly follow him, considering him as the moral compass. This is normally a good thing, since Cap is normally the Superman level Incorruptible Pure Pureness guy and can be relied upon to stand on his principles no matter what. However, when due to Reality Warper shenanigans the heroic Steve Rogers is replaced by a fascist version, the level of trust he receives allows him to literally take over the world with little resistance. It takes the original heroic version of Steve Rogers returning to successfully defeat him. Cap's status as the moral center has been damaged in the wake of the HYDRA!Cap incident. While naturally devastated at the horror his other self created, and upset at losing the trust of several people he cared about, Steve admits that it is just as well that his Loved by All status has been ruined - no one person should have that much potential control over people.
• Miracleman portrays all its supers as at least a bit flawed, from the well-meaning but ultimately authoritarian Miracleman to the sociopathic Kid Miracleman, who destroys all of London For the Evulz.
• Whether or not The Authority are Earth's last line of defense against serious threats and a force for change, or a bunch of authoritarian despots who can't get outside their own heads, varies somewhat depending on who's writing which Wildstorm book this week. Much of the rest of the Wildstorm Universe is the same way. In Captain Atom: Armageddon, when Captain Atom turned up, he was horrified - and deeply, deeply displeased. Given that he's a reality warping Superman class Flying Brick, this did not end well for the Authority. In their original portrayal by Warren Ellis The Authority at least twice casually killed tons of civilian bystanders, who were guilty of nothing more than living under the rule of an Evil Overlord.
• Watchmen has only one superhero with actual superpowers, but the very existence and the enormous extent of Dr. Manhattan's powers almost leads to a nuclear war. Although benevolent enough by himself, he is very weak-willed and kills uncounted Vietcong in the Vietnam War and a solid number of American criminals (petty and otherwise) basically only because somebody told him to. Throughout all of this, he becomes progressively detached from humanity, at one point watching a pregnant woman being murdered without even attempting to interfere. It's also sort of like his powers of viewing the world non-temporally make him unable to intervene, because he already foresaw that he won't. The others, though baseline humans, aren't much better, being well-meaning-though-flawed everymen at best and nutbag mass murderers at worst, ultimately leading to their actions being outlawed unless specifically condoned by the US government. It is telling that it is the seemingly most benevolent of the superheroes, Ozymandias, who commits the largest atrocities, all in the name of saving the world from itself.
• In The DCU Multiverse Earth-3 and Anti-Earth are ruled by supervillain expies of Superheroes from Earth 1 or 2, and the only people capable of standing up to them are the superhero expies of the supervillains of Earth 1 or 2. Earth-8 is a Captain Ersatz of the Ultimate Marvel universe in which the "heroes" are ruthless control freaks, and the Captain Ersatz Marvel villains (the Extremists), while hardly heroic, are the closest thing they have to good guys.
• For that matter, some of the Ultimate Marvel heroes, especially The Ultimates, border on the edge of this trope themselves sometimes, except for Ultimate Spider-Man, who is still an idealistic teenager.
• The basic premise of Marvel Zombies is this borne of a Zombie Apocalypse. Almost all of the planet's heroes are now super-powered, flesh-eating monsters who hunt down and devour all life.
• Powers touches on this frequently, depicting most supers with feet of clay. A story involving the Superman Substitute named Supershock is a particularly good example — he develops a god complex, destroys the Vatican and the Gaza Strip after going off the rails, and it's revealed that as powerful as the world knew he was, his true power level has been underplayed to avoid worldwide panic.
• Kingdom Come:
  • This story is set in a future of The DCU wherein the next generation of superhumans took their cue from the Nineties Anti Heroes rather than 'outdated' heroes like Superman (who retired in disillusionment after one of them got off scot-free after murdering the Joker), with the result that the 'heroes' and 'villains' are more interested in recklessly kicking the tar out of each other than protecting the innocent. When The Capes do make a reappearance, their determination to rein in their more reckless brethren sees them quickly turn into Knight Templars. Unlike many of these universes, it's suggested that this one is at least partially the public's fault, as they overwhelmingly rejected the ideals of the old-fashioned heroes and placed their trust in the more 'modern' ones, only to learn too late what this meant.
    Magog: They chose the one who'd kill over the one who wouldn't. And now they're all dead.
  • Never mind that the final act of the story features Superman going into a blind rage at the governing powers. Just imagine that guy deciding to go on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against society. Fortunately, he gets talked down by someone who appeals to his older ways, but it's a close thing there.
• Flashpoint (DC Comics) has this as a scenario. The Atlanteans and Amazons are at war due to a convoluted, long-term plot by their leaders' Treacherous Advisors. Wonder Woman has taken over the UK, and Aquaman has sunken most of the European mainland in retaliation for Diana killing Mera. America is caught up in the paranoia that either of the parties may invade them some day (as Booster Gold can attest). Oh, and in a completely unrelated note, Grodd has taken control of Africa through continent-wide genocide.
  • In addition, this world has Subject Zero, a former U.S. Army soldier who became the first test subject of Project Superman, and had his powers augmented to the point of Nigh-Invulnerability. Due to him becoming increasingly unstable, he was locked down in the facility for twenty years and, when he broke out, he went on a rampage to prove himself as a hero. He is only stopped by Subject One — a.k.a. Kal-El.
• The End League. 12 years ago, a screw-up by Astonishman, the resident Superman Substitute, left the environment screwed up, 3 billion people dead, and 1 in 10,000 survivors with superpowers. In the present day, the Earth is dying, the starving masses are completely dependent on the supervillains who rule the world, and the surviving 10 heroes spend most of their time hiding in a bunker and scavenging for food.
• The motivation behind much of Batman's distrust of many superpowered heroes, including among the groups he belongs to, in modern interpretations of the character. There's also Jean-Paul Valley, the first long-term temp Batman — an unhinged former Knight Templar Super-Soldier who went so far down the Slippery Slope that Bruce had to take the mantle back by force.
  • Ironically a story of Superman/Batman comic has Bruce get Superman's power and became exactly this. He use his new powers to bring complete fear and order to Gotham's criminal underworld and eventually sets his sight to the world, but he became increasingly aggressive and nearly kills Bane and Catwoman. Superman and Zatanna restore him to normality.
• Earth X starts out with the premise that every human being in the Marvel Universe has mutated into supers. Most of them are, at best, apathetic everymen, and a substantial number are jerkasses. The original heroes have either succumbed to apathy or are fighting a doomed war against human self-destructiveness. And then it turns out that all of this is part of the Celestial Plan.
• In Irredeemable, the Plutonian went from Earth's mightiest and most beloved superhero to a mass murdering psychopath, pushed to the edge by a horrible combination of several factors (his pathological and desperate desire for everyone's unconditional love and approval, a very deeply messed up childhood, and just being Blessed with Suck). This comic was written by the same man who wrote Kingdom Come.
  • Before the Plutonian went full psycho, the only person capable of going toe-to-toe with him in a fight, Max Damage, was himself an embodiment of the trope. Max has his own excuse for it: he's incredibly strong and incredibly tough... but as a result his skin is insensitive and he can no longer feel anything. Sleeping resets his powers to baseline momentarily, but he's got to shave or... whatever else he wants to do and be able to feel it^note Sex. We're talking about sex.... as soon as he wakes up, because in less than an hour he's back to being invulnerable.
• Avatar Press:
  • Three mini-series Warren Ellis wrote for them fit this trope. Black Summer begins with one of the super-"heroes" murdering the president of the United States, No Hero which revolves around the world's premiere superhero team in reality controlling world politics from behind the scenes, and Supergod takes the position that superhumans (all artificially created, like biological nukes) are exactly that — inhuman, alien beings who have moved beyond human concepts of morality and even basic mindset, and range from Well-Intentioned Extremist Krishna (who enacts a holocaust in India with the intent of reducing the population to a level where everyone can enjoy a high-technological lifestyle) to Omnicidal Maniac Daijal who destroys most of the planet because he thinks utopia is too boring.
  • Kieron Gillen's Über, where Nazi Germany manages to create super soldiers in the dying days of World War II. Things go downhill from there fast.
• Frank Miller partially got in on the act in The Dark Knight Strikes Again: by the end of the series, variously due to needling from Batman and a series of Break the Cutie moments, Superman goes from a limp-wristed tool of the powers that be into the sort of personality who can say:
  Superman: Father. Mother. You were wrong. I will always treasure your memory, but you were wrong. I am subject to no man's laws. I am Superman.
  Superman: What shall we do with our planet, Lara?
• Marvel's The Sentry eventually developed into this. The big problem is that Sentry is a Superman-level person who also happens to be an agoraphobic schizophrenic. This is not a good combination. In fact this is so bad that his latent telepathic powers actually created his archenemy the Void, meaning that Sentry manages to be a double case of this trope through his sheer existence. Then they sort of... merged in the run up Siege, where he infamously ripped Ares in half. Most recently, he finally managed to cope with the Void first by a self-imposed exile in a coma in deep space thanks to Strange's help, then merging all three personas - beat-down and tired Rob Reynolds, the 'Golden Guardian of Good' Sentry, and the monstrous Void into someone more powerful than all three of them, who averages out as a disconcertingly amiable yet brutal anti-hero who casually tosses the Avengers around, then nearly destroys the Negative Zone while trying to come to terms with his new state of being.
• The Mighty features Alpha One, a superhero with abilities like Superman. At first, he seems like a really good man who's been using his powers to the fullest ability to protect and benefit mankind. Then his latest second-in-command finds out... he's been engineering catastrophes to take the "tragic victims" off for his genetic experiments. Turns out he's a sociopathic alien who was exiled for blithely suggesting you can kill 1 in 10 people if it will make life better for everyone else.
• Omni-Man/Nolan Grayson of Invincible was Earth's greatest protector, however he turned out to be a mole for the race of evil super powered Human Aliens known as the Viltrumites who wanted to conquer the Universe. However, this is eventually subverted when it turns out both Omni-Man and the majority of his species are actually the result of a poorly-conceived social engineering experiment to make the race "stronger", and many of them are torn between the quasi-Nazi ideology they've been brainwashed with, and their repressed desire for emotion and social and family bonding, which are all strictly forbidden by their society. Only a few are actually evil, and the rest quickly revert to forming normal emotional bonds when no longer under constant pressure to conform to social purity. Omni-Man himself basically had a nervous breakdown when torn between his obsession with his duty and the love for his human family, nearly murdering his own son whom he trained to be his successor. On the other hand, the emperor of Viltrum, Grand Regent Thragg, plays the trope very straight, having all of Omni-Man's worst traits and none of his redeeming qualities.
• Titan from Dark Horse Comics' Comics Greatest World imprint tried to act like a classic Superman, but the abuse he suffered during childhood, the trauma he suffered when he lost control of his powers during adolescence and the fact that most of the people he trusted and cared about manipulated him eventually caused him to suffer a mental breakdown, first against his former benefactors, then against the United States in general.
• A God Somewhere tells the story of how suddenly becoming the first and only person with superpowers, and the mass media attention that comes along with this, sets an ordinary, sane man of arguably above-average character on a path that ends with a large body count and his loved ones traumatized for life. Because the reader is never given a direct glimpse of what this man is thinking, the motives behind his unnecessarily horrific actions remain as mysterious to us as to the characters in the story. After a certain point, he seems to have lost touch with any recognizably human sort of morality.
• A recurring problem in the Marvel Universe. New York City in particular has been the epicenter for superhuman events from Galactus trying to devour the planet (on more than one occasion), demonic invasions and seemingly endless battles between superheroes and villains (or sometimes just between superheroes and other superheroes), aliens, the occasional giant monster of undefined origin and one instance where a Herald of the above-mentioned Galactus levitated Manhattan Island into orbit. Other examples include...
  • Magneto, who once blasted the entire planet with an EMP, has raised volcanoes on a whim and moved his giant space station around to anywhere he wants it. The Hulk has left trails of destruction across America countless times.
  • A prominent head of state goes by the name Doctor Doom and has successfully conquered the multiverse (or what was left of it, after the Incursions).
  • Oh, and there are multiple Reality Warpers, including the likes of Nate Grey, who can do it in their sleep.
    • Nate is a particular example, as he tended to act unilaterally from the start. Sure, he had the best of intentions and was generally a sweet kid, but he was obsessed with preventing another Age of Apocalypse, and was willing to do anything to that end. This progressed into his Shaman era, where he acted as protector of Earth from multiversal threats and eliminating people, especially mutants, who abused their powers. Later, he crossed the Despair Event Horizon, he decided to save the world whether it liked it or not, warping reality to that end, and effortlessly curbstomping multiple teams of X-Men who tried to stop him in the process (doubly worrying since they're the people who know him best and should be best able to stop him). He had a Heel Realization at the end of the following story, Age of X-Man, but even still — as Dark X-Men noted, he's an Omega Class mutant with a social conscience, which can be... disconcerting.
  • Oh, and the U.S. government has scary giant, purple robots flying around to "protect" the public from mutants. That any sane person does not live in a state of abject terror over all of this requires incredible powers of denial, a fact which has been lampshaded on many occasions.
  • Amusingly lampshaded during the Avengers/JLA crossover when some of the Marvel heroes arrive on the DC Earth and, after thwarting some criminals, are so stunned by people admiring and respecting superheroes that they're sure the JLA must have the entire population under some sort of dictatorial control.
  • Groups like the Friends of Humanity in the X-Men books believe this trope. While they're normal, they thrive on fear of mutants. Ironically, to even the playing field, they tend to rely on various high-tech weapons, many of which makes them more monstrous than the mutants they hate. Several prominent anti-mutant villains, such the infamous Reavers, are heavily modified cyborgs that are barely human anymore. One of the worst, and most hypocritical, are the U-Men; an organization which seeks to acquire super-powers by vivisecting mutants and grafting tissue, organs and limbs to themselves. Needless to say, they don't show up very often, because they're even Darker and Edgier than the Reavers.
  • Speaking of Magneto, he has an idealistic view of a world that is just like this. You should Beware The Superman because the human race is ready to die out. Mutants deserve to live as the supreme beings, towering over regular humans, operating on a "might makes right" principle (if humans do not have powers to defy mutantkind, then it is mutants who should inherit the Earth). House of M is the realization of this reality (unpowered humans have scattered while Magneto leads a world where mutantkind is the dominant species).
  • As of X-Men (2019), the X-Men themselves have decided to give the world a reason to Beware the Supermen. Apparently snapping after decades of persecution with no end in sight, they've created an island nation and invited every mutant, heroic and villainous, to come be part of their society. No non-mutants allowed, of course. And they've embraced Magneto's Super Supremacist dogma, too, going so far as to liberate murderous mutant villain Sabretooth from human custody because, as far as they're now concerned, mutants are above human laws and courts. If all that wasn't enough, they're also making deals with human governments to distribute mutant-made drugs to the population, taking a page in pharmaceutical population control out of Superior Iron Man's handbook. Suddenly all those human Strawman Political X-villains look like The Extremist Was Right... though later issues make matters more complicated, with Sabretooth's being acknowledged and his being made an example of (i.e., he won't end up in a human prison, but what happens is arguably worse — an And I Must Scream fate Buried Alive under Krakoa), while others explicitly reject Magneto's attitudes. However, a lot of issues are still structured to convey a kind of Grey-and-Gray Morality.
• Paperinik New Adventures plays with this trope by making it true for the main villains, the Evronians:
  1. Trauma, an Evronian general that was changed into a Super-Soldier and was later imprisoned in the prison world known as The Well (because you can't get out, but the Evronians will draw you out if they need you) for various insubordinations and outright mutiny justified by his superiority;
  2. Raghor, a Super-Soldier of a different breed (created in lab from Evronian DNA hybridized with that of the 'beasts of Ranghar'), who, like Trauma, commits various insubordinations and outright mutiny. But where Trauma was implied doing what he believed best for Evron, Rahor plans the genocide of the baseline Evrons and their replacement with the supposedly superior hybrids. Most of the hybrids are subdued when their imprisoned handlers break out from prison and activate a device that enforces their obedience (they had installed it after the initial mutiny, and failed to use it before being imprisoned only because caught by surprise), while Raghor escapes execution only because a pissed Xadhoom gets him first;
  3. Another super soldier, this time a cyborg, who committed unspecified crimes. Showing that the Evronians were smart enough to expect this, they immediately subdued him by activating his off switch and shipping him to The Well;
  4. Xadhoom, an alien scientist who became a Physical Goddess whose vendetta against Evron and the fact she's pretty much invincible made her the primary cause for Evronian horribly painful deaths, to the point that in her final appearance in body (in the same issue the Evronian Empire was broken by the loss of a good chunk of its population and pretty much all its rulers), three Evronian battlefleets barely slowed her down while she was PLAYING with them;
  5. Zoster, an Evronian survivor. After Xadhoom became a star to save the survivors of her people, he managed to steal a recording of her mind and was told how to get her Power (with capital P in the original), and, as soon as he successfully did it, he threatened the whole universe of destruction if they didn't submit. Thankfully, Xadhoom created the recording exactly for this occasion, and the recording not only didn't tell him that the Power contains the seed of its own destruction, but was gloating as he dissolved into nothingness.
• In All Fall Down, Siphon is arrested for involuntary manslaughter, and held in suspicion by a portion of the public throughout her career.
• In Animal Man, Grant Morrison did a potshot at the '80s with Overman, a Superman from an alternate Earth where all heroes were created by the government. Overman contracted an STD and went insane, murdering just about every hero who tried to stop him before deciding to commit suicide and destroy the world at the same time with a nuke. Psycho Pirate provides commentary on what a completely stupid idea Overman's world was and wondered who could've come up with it in the first place, or rather, why.
• Red Hood and the Outlaws: Jason has a respect for Superman as much as a surfer has for sharks. After having worked beside him after all those years ago has more or less taught him to be Properly Paranoid the second that the Kryptonian gets involved. Ironically the latest incident turned out to be a complete screw-up as Superman was trying to warn him and his friends about H'el, complete with his then girlfriend calling everyone involved an idiot for attacking without bothering to hear Superman out first.
• The DC New 52 reboot has most governments mistrustful of superheroes by default, Superman included. The Justice League of America (2013) was spun out for this explicit reason — they wanted a team under their direct control.
• Throne of Atlantis: All of America is afraid of Aquaman and Atlanteans in the aftermath of the Atlantean invasion. What was "lol talking to fish is stupid", just got turned into "These guys could sink us all!"
• Empowered kind of invokes this; most superheroes are media-attention-craving jerkasses and most supervillains seem to be Silver Age in their antics. However, there is a strong anti-superhuman sentiment because of the attitudes of the "Capes", good and evil, and this is a very dangerous attitude to hold. The heroes won't normally try anything against an anti-Capeist, but if pushed, they will push back. One oft-talked about background incident is San Antonio, where an anti-Cape conspiracy actually went on a Cape-killing spree. Capes from both sides of the ethical divide promptly retaliated; we don't know all the details, but we do know that even heroes didn't hesitate to kill the conspiracy members, and somehow it ended with the capes destroying the whole city by breaking the Earth's crust with an alien superweapon, an event officially explained away as a mysterious erupting volcano. We know of exactly one surviving anti-Cape from that day: Empowered's boyfriend, ThugBoy.
• This is the motivation behind the Headmaster of Praetorian Academy in PS238. He doesn't trust metahumanity (not unreasonably given one of his major political opponents was a telepath who manipulated his way into the US Presidency) and thinks the world is on track for a Goo-Goo-Godlike scenario — and what happens when the first true Reality Warper child has a temper tantrum? There's also an element of this in the United States government keeping a supply of argonite, the kryptonite analogue that can stop Atlas, the local Superman Substitute. Except it turns out the government manufactured the argonite as an all-purpose Flying Brick disabler, and his homeworld of Argos was never destroyed. But Argos is ruled by a repressive Fantastic Caste System where those with superpowers treat those without like garbage.
• The Ten-Seconders: A group of aliens crash-landed on Earth to escape a greater threat and posed as godlike superheroes to rule over humanity. These "Gods" then decided that humans were beneath them and proceed to wipe out their civilization.
• Subverted in Brat Pack with True-Man, a godlike being and Slumburg's only genuine hero. Otherwise, this is placed straight with the other superheroes being a gay pedophile, a klansman, a misandrist that literally castrates men for no real reason, and an unstable alcoholic whose antics get innocent people killed.
• In The Boys virtually all superheroes are narcissistic sociopaths and the Superman Substitute of the setting is a greedy, ruthless tyrant as well as a Big Bad. The only truly benevolent superheroes shown are Starlight, who hasn't been in the game long enough to be thoroughly corrupted, and the Superduper team, which is essentially a superhero equivalent of the short bus, consisting mostly of metahumans with marginal powers and various disorders.
• A great many supers are fully aware of how dangerous their powers can be and constantly keep this in mind, and in a sense are always in a state of Beware Of Themselves. Spider-Man is an excellent example. Peter is very aware that losing control for even a split-second could result in someone being killed or horribly injured, and therefore spends most of his time pulling his punches. Evil, alternate-reality versions of Spider-Man have been shown to make psychopaths like Bullseye or Sabertooth look like rank amateurs. He only really cuts loose against supers who can take it, such as the curb-stomp he inflicted on Titania when she made the mistake of pissing him off. Spider-Man has also straight up admitted that every super in the Marvel Universe is aware that a trusted friend in the community could go bad or be mind-controlled, so every hero has a plan to take down every other hero in case that ever happens.
• Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers (Boom! Studios): Lord Drakkon, the Tommy Oliver from an alternate dimension where he does not join the team and instead remained on the path of evil by his own choice. The end result is him becoming one of the most powerful villains in the history of Power Rangers where he conquers Earth with an iron fist. By weaponizing the Morphin Grid, he creates his own personal army of Rangers so much so that other supervillains are deathly afraid of him they avoid invading Drakkon's Earth while few others threw their lot with him to gain his trust and approval, paving way for his multiversal skirmish that kickstarted the Shattered Grid saga.
• The Rise And Fall Of Axiom has an alien couple take human forms, to act as superheroes. When his mate, Thena, is eliminated in a particle accelerator accident, Axiom decides to become an iron fisted dictator, in part frustrated by the inability of humans to comprehend the beauty of their alien forms.
• Simone from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as a vampire slayer. In "Slaypire", her goal is to turn Slayers into vampires.

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