Byronic Heroes in comic books.
- Aquaman:
- Arthur himself in The '90s and early on in New 52, with his intense, brooding attitude; annoyance at the world due to the lack of respect he receives; and definitely a troubled background full of loss, misery and intermittent periods of exile.
- Post-Flashpoint, Orm's Love Interest tells him "You always have to find some cause to martyr yourself for", which is probably the perfect definition of this trope. Deeply traumatic childhood, driven to do whatever is necessary to protect his kingdom, intensely charismatic and powerful leader, brooding, quick to anger, arrogant and deeply resentful towards those he feels have wronged him. His single minded focus on being a strong king for his people often results in him going too far and drives away everyone he cares about.
- Mera is prone to violent rage, keeps her true past secret even from the man she loves until she has no other choice, has no respect for any tradition or conventions and will break any rule that conflicts with doing what she believes is right.
- Batman: Depending on the Writer, the Bat Family are all Byronic heroes to an extent.
- Batman himself: traumatized as a child, he dedicated his life to a near-impossible mission of cleaning Gotham City of its criminal element, whose brooding, anti-social personality and obsessive, paranoid tendencies often push away those who befriend him, and while he fights for good, he's not really that much saner than the people he fights.
- Dick Grayson and Stephanie Brown are subversions. They've both been pushed to do what they do by tragic childhoods (Dick losing his parents when he was twelve, Steph living with an abusive criminal father), regularly go through traumatic experiences and troubled relationships, and have a handful of personal flaws, but are otherwise completely friendly, well adjusted people who get on with their lives despite their troubles.
- Cassandra Cain appears to be a straight example but becomes an aversion. Cass was raised by an assassin and gun for hire who wanted a partner he could mold into the perfect killer, and so raised her in the art of killing from a young age, which she saw as a game (including playing 'two for flinching' but with bullets); but when he took her for her first kill, however, she was traumatized from actually taking a life and became a Death Seeker who wanted to atone for her single murder, and is now unable to live a normal life thanks to being raised in a manner without spoken or written language (instead, she was raised to understand body language to make her a better fighter) and suffering from dyslexia on top of that. Despite all that she fully devotes herself to the cause of heroism under that Bat-symbol
- Jason Todd, the second Robin, is a straighter example. Jason was a street kid abandoned by his parents who was adopted by Bruce after he tried to steal the Batmobile's wheels. After he was murdered by Joker and brought Back from the Dead he became a snarky gun-using Anti-Hero who feels he was underappreciated during his life and has a poor personal view of himself.
- Tim Drake and Barbara Gordon become straight examples as their stories go on. As Batgirl, Barbara is a Plucky Girl with her life ahead of her, until she is crippled and humiliated by Joker to drive her father insane. In order to cope, she works on her computer skills and became Oracle, a cynical, angrier hacking expert who no longer shares the belief that killing is never justified, and while she's recovered from her trauma, she's no longer the person she once was. Tim, meanwhile, is a nerdy Nice Guy who wants to help his hero through his darkest moment, but life as a superhero leads to the loss of his family, his two best friends, and his girlfriend (all of which he blames himself for, even though the latter three come back), and his minor neurotic tendencies become more prominent broodiness until he becomes detached from society completely. He begins getting better before the reboot, though.
- Huntress: Brilliant, capable of pulling off daring and convoluted schemes, but also prone to brutal, unthinking violence; loves opera and fine cuisine, but will torture suspects for information; a devout Catholic and an unrepentant multiple murderess; can kill a teenager and crack jokes about it, but god help you if you threaten a child under her protection; driven to become a vigilante by the murder of her family when she was a small child, but later killed her own father, and wants to do the right thing and keep the streets clean, but gets carried away so often that it is debatable whether the aid that she provides Batman and his allies is enough to make up for the many headaches that she causes.
- Batwoman is sort of a mix between the Nightwing and Huntress examples. She's naturally short-tempered, brutally violent, and has her own share of trauma and flaws, but she's also rather well-adjusted due to personal discipline and isn't typically gloomy and broody, just reserved. At particularly low points, however, she can be irrationally self-critical. She's also highly educated and intelligent, charismatic, and considered extremely attractive by men and women alike.
- Catwoman's public persona is that of a selfish libertine whose occasional heroism is largely self-serving, and she would certainly scoff at anyone whoever attempted to call her a heroine (and she has indeed done plenty of shitty and/or extremely morally questionable things over the years), but when things get dark, she has always done the right thing, has always been an ardent defender of the innocent, and has historically been one of a tiny handful of people who can bring Bruce back whenever he goes off the deep end. While she handles most of her affairs in a cutthroat, ruthlessly pragmatic, "nothing personal" fashion, she is nowhere near as dispassionate about doing good.
- Harley Quinn has gotten in on the action as she transitions from Perky Female Minion to a more complex anti-hero. She has a Dark and Troubled Past as the sidekick/girlfriend of the The Joker, becoming his accomplice in several of his crimes that took many innocent lives, finally ending their relationship when she realized what a monster he truly was (leaving her broken-hearted), and striking out on her own. Finding that she has a lot of learned behavior she has to un-learn but is determined to live out her life on her terms. While she wants to be a hero, she has a violent streak that causes her to dish out some Disproportionate Retribution to whatever unlucky jerk that crosses her path (lacking a no-kill rule to keep her in check), she carries out a torrid love affair with a known eco-terrorist, her grasp on reality is tenuous at best as she's prone to falling into a cartoonish Happy Place to cope with her mountains of trauma (where she becomes a serious danger to herself and those around), and very few established heroes are willing to take her seriously due to all the atrocities she was complicit in. Harley knows she's damaged goods and can never make up for what she's done, but she tries regardless because it's the only way she can live with herself.
- Mr. Freeze, the archetypal Anti-Villain from the DC comics and the 90s cartoon, qualifies due to his desire to get revenge on evil businessmen.
- Cable started out like this, as he was a time traveler from a time in constant strife and harbored a ruthless nature, though he has since gone from this to standard Anti-Hero territory. This tends to be Depending on the Writer. When operating alone Cable has no problem using any means at his disposal to achieve his goals, such as torturing Captain America prior to Avengers vs. X-Men. But he has a habit of teaming up with morality pets to rein himself in, not unlike a certain other time traveler.
- Daredevil: An intelligent, bookish young boy is blinded by a truck carrying illegal chemicals. He becomes a valedictorian at an Ivy League school and eventually a respectable lawyer in his own right. But due to his father's murder after refusing to throw a fight in order to gain his son's respect, he chooses to don the guise of a Devil and offers retribution to those who have wronged others inside and outside the law. Even though it causes him borderline depressive episodes, and the work he does in the dark, brings harm (and in worst cases, death) to his loved ones.
- Hans von Hammer, the Enemy Ace, is a very heroic example, being a charismatic nobleman who hates war, but is very good at it. He feels cut off from the bulk of humanity; his best friend is a wolf that lives in the woods near his base. His ideals are often at odds with those of his country: true when fighting for Imperial Germany in World War I, and more so in War In Heaven, where he's fighting for Nazi Germany. And he's always extremely broody.
- Fantastic Four: Doctor Doom fits the trope to a T — a poor Romani boy, brilliant in magic and science, carrying an unyielding and disproportionate grudge against his old classmate for showing him up as much as for any imagined sabotage, forever hiding his disfigured face. From nothing but a scholarship that ended in expulsion, he was able to conquer his homeland and make it into a technological power, styling himself king rather than merely dictator, and through it all, maintaining a sense of honor that somehow does not get in the way of his Magnificent Bastardry.
- Hunter Rose in Grendel, who becomes an arch-criminal simply because he thinks he deserves to dominate everybody else on the planet because he's so much more intelligent and imaginative than they are, and becoming a gangster is the quickest way. Gradually deconstructed, as Matt Wagner became increasingly moral as he got older and started to gradually write Hunter as more and more of a sadistic thug.
- After The Infinity Gauntlet affair and other bids for absolute power, Thanos of Titan often broods on the circumstances that led him to failure and plans his next attempt to take over the universe, destroy it, and/or woo the Anthropomorphic Personification of Death herself.
- Iron Man: Tony Stark is womanizing, self-destructive, and forever angsting over his past as an arms-dealer.
- Lucifer, as presented in The Sandman (1989) and in his own series. Morpheus may initially give this impression but is revealed to be more of a Tragic Hero as the series goes on, especially considering how he dies/kills himself in the end.
- The Punisher sometimes has moments of this, being an utterly ruthless, brooding and intelligent former Vietnam vet vigilante going on a one-man war against crime.
- Dwight and Wallace embody this trope more than any other Sin City protagonist: charming, handsome, dark, mysterious, and violent.
- Spawn: Al Simmons is a self-absorbed anti-hero who deeply loves his former wife and from time to time makes bad decisions due to thinking with the heart instead of the brain. He is also anti-social and doesn't have a good opinion about himself.
- Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Megatron, of all 'bots. Undeniably a genius, charismatic and a powerful warrior, he's decided that the revolution he espoused has more or less failed and that he's failed, and now has to spend the rest of his life dwelling on where he went wrong on a ship full of people who hate him at best, while feeling the increasing sting of his encroaching age. But he'll still snark at the madness that seems to surround the entire cast.
- X-Men:
- Emma Frost: highly cynical and jaded, Dark and Troubled Past, intense drive and determination to live out her philosophy.
- Scott Summers, a.k.a. Cyclops; always troubled in life thanks to a childhood of trauma, abuse, and pain, when he was pushed into the limelight and got more focus following Decimation, he was forced to lead the X-Men through their darkest hour, and it led to a lot of personal loss as he tried to keep the rest of the mutant population alive.
- Magneto has had a very troubling past (being a victim of Nazi cruelty), sees himself as a freedom fighter, and will often do heinous things in what he believes is for the better good of mutantkind. Authors often even describe portraying him as "Malcolm X to counter Professor X as Martin Luther King."
