Cain And Abel / Comic Books

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• Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld: One of the comic series has Lady Mordiel, who is Graciel's sister and Amethyst's aunt. She wants to kill her sister and adopt her niece as an heir so she can have all the magic power of House Amethyst for herself.
• Aquaman: Aquaman frequently faces off against his evil brother Orm, the Ocean Master.
  • In Aquaman (New 52), it's only somewhat of an example. Orm isn't portrayed as outright evil, and the two actually get along pretty well, but once Orm decided to attack the surface, it became this. The reboot also made it a case of We Used to Be Friends, where the two are portrayed as having been very close as teenagers.
  • Aquaman's wife Mera also has an enimity with her sister Hila.
  • This is apparently a recurrence throughout Atlantean history. Thar and Zath, the father and uncle respectively of the original Aqualad, Garth, also had this relationship. Thar was the king of the Atlantean colony known as Shayeris, where people were builders, pacifists, and sorcerers. Zath was envious of his brother and felt the throne of Shayeris was rightfully his. His practice of the dark arts transformed him into the monster Slizzath and he became an enemy to Shayeris and ultimately his nephew Garth.
• Arawn: The titular character and his brothers have an extremely murderous rivalry caused primarily by the machinations of the Cauldron of Blood, promising ultimate power to all of them simultaneously if they backstab each other. It's so intense that it's hard to figure out which of the brothers were the good and evil ones. The biggest one driving the series is between Arawn and his eldest brother Math, who becomes so insanely jealous of his possession of the Cauldron that he kidnaps Arawn's wife, forces her to marry him and carry his child, while he kills Arawn's own son. At the end, their beef is cut short when Math is killed by someone else, but after Arawn becomes a God of the Underworld, he makes sure that his brother is eternally tortured for his terrible crimes.
• Atari Force: Pakrat the thief and his brother Rident Oly the intergalactic police officer.
• Batgirl: Barbara Gordon and her brother James Gordon Jr. have this dynamic, as Barbara is the plucky superheroine Batgirl who also acts as Mission Control for the entire superhero community under Oracle, while James is a murderous psychopath with sociopathic tendencies who actively enjoys torturing others: Case in point, in Batman: The Black Mirror, James attempted to murder Barbara by driving knives into the arteries in her legs and then pulling one out himself. He also set his sister up and gave her away to The Joker in Death of the Family.
• Batman:
  • Since his resurrection, Jason Todd has repeatedly attacked his adoptive brothers Dick Grayson and Tim Drake. It came to the point that in Battle For The Cowl he actually tried to kill them.
  • Damian also has this toward Tim, reasoning that he would have to kill the then-current Robin to get Batman's respect. He's undergone some Character Development since then, but there still isn't much brotherly love between him and Tim, and for some time he regularly sabotaged Tim's equipment in ways that would probably kill those without the type of training Tim has.
  • In Batman (2011), Owlman is (supposedly) Thomas Wayne Jr., Bruce's brother.
  • In one story in the Batman: Black and White motion comics, one of Harvey Dent's many, many attempts to become sane again is ruined because his plastic surgeon fiance had a psychotic twin sister who was even crazier than Two-Face.
• Deadpool: Ellie & Warda. Half-sisters, who duel for the Deadpool name. Warda is the younger sister but is the Cain. She says she hates Wade because of her inheritance and face, having inherited his scars. But later comments hint it was more. At one point, Warda punches Ellie and claims she had everything. She eventually delivers a fatal blow to her, unaware of Ellie's Healing Factor. As Wade grieves, Warda asks would he cry for her if she was killed instead. Ellie heals and returns to the fight — to Warda's anger. Wade breaks them up to reprimand Warda on the unnecessary war and she points at Ellie, telling him to lecture the family he wanted. Wade straightens her out by admitting that he didn't want any of them and that they all just happened.
• The Eternals: Starfox and Thanos the Mad Titan. Their father forced them to agree to meet once every thousand years on peaceful terms in the hopes that they would eventually stop fighting altogether. So far they haven't.
• Fables: Snow White and Rose Red are descended from a line of powerful female magic users. Each generation of the family has been doomed to suffer from this because their power can only be inherited by one person. Many generations have tried to avert the trope by not fighting or not having children. So far, nothing's worked. Their mother tried to avert it in multiple ways and failed each time. First by abstaining from the conflict, which failed when her remaining sister hunted her down anyway and she was forced to kill her in self-defense (though it's also implied she planned this all along). Then she resolved to die without bearing any children by remaining single for life, which failed when she fell in Love at First Sight with a man who wandered onto her home by complete accident (implied to be destiny at work to propagate the curse). Finally, she resolved to only have one child, which failed when she gave birth to twins Snow and Rose. Learning all of this convinces Rose Red that a fight to the death with her sibling is inevitable. Since she's also convinced that she would lose in a fair fight, she also resolves to fight dirty…
• Gotham City Garage: Batman eliminates James Gordon and then attempts to blame his murder on Kara Gordon to get her sister Barbara to hate and hunt Kara down. It almost works until Harley Quinn of all people tells Barbara her little sister is innocent.
• Hawkeye: Hawkeye and his older brother Trickshot. Trickshot even impersonated his brother during his time with the Dark Avengers, just to piss him off.
• The Incredible Hulk: Skaar and Hiro Kala, the twin sons of the Hulk. Hiro-Kala wanted to kill Skaar, and then himself, to finally destroy the Old Power they inherited from their mother, as he believed it would eventually destroy the universe. Main problem was that he was going to do this by crashing a Mars-size planet into Earth to destroy both worlds, in his words "sacrificing billions to save trillions."
• The Incredible Hercules: The Marvel versions of Hercules and Ares are bitter rivals throughout their comics histories. Ares' primary reason for despising Hercules is said to be his anger that mortals favoured Hercules over him, despite all the benefits (fame, power, empire) that war brings. But he overlooks the bad things of war (death, destruction, fear and often a heavy poverty)
• The Inhumans: Black Bolt, leader of the Inhumans, and his brother Maximus "the Mad". Maximus blames big bro Blackagar for causing his insanity and killing their parents (which, in fairness, was an accident that happened when Black Bolt found out Maximus was covertly working with the Kree), and dedicated himself to killing and / or overthrowing him. On occasion, however, Maximus has taken time off, but he often ends up reverting to type. He is mad, after all.
• Judge Dredd: Dredd and his brother, Rico. Dredd arrests Rico after he goes rogue. Twenty years later, Rico comes back for revenge and Dredd is forced to kill him.
• Martian Manhunter: J'onn J'onnz has had his share of troubles with his evil sibling Malefic, who was responsible for wiping out the entirety of their species, before J'onn tossed him into the sun.
• Ka-Zar: Kevin Plunder, the second Ka-Zar, has a supervillain brother, the Plunderer a.k.a. Lord Panival Plunder. Hey, with a name like that, you'd go supervillain too.
• The Mighty Thor: Thor's archenemy is his adopted brother, Loki.
• Karma and her twin brother Tran from the New Mutants. The two had the same possession abilities, but in sharp contrast to Karma, Tran was a very cruel, vicious young man (and implied sociopath) who delighted in using his powers to cause harm.
• New Gods: Kalibak, son of Darkseid, is the adopted brother of Mister Miracle, the biological brother of Orion, and an enemy to them both. And in the same vein, Darkseid murdered his own brother, Drax, to get the Omega Effect and take over Apokolips.
• Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja : Though it's never established if they're blood siblings or not, John Doe and Alfie O'Meagan are same-age infants who were found and raised in the same orphanage. The series centers around John's efforts to stop Alfie from destroying the world.
• Rat Queens: A one-shot features siblings Broog and Voon. As the older Broog is required to inherit leadership of the tribe, but doesn't want it. Voon is jealous of the opportunity and mounts an attack to both eliminate the competition and demonstrate his ability.
• The Sandman (1989):
  • The Dreaming versions of the original Cain and Abel. Abel is harmless, but Cain feels driven to repeatedly murder him. Furthermore, Cain won't stand for anyone else harming Abel. These versions of the characters are originally from DC's '70s horror titles. In said '70s titles, this is averted: they're a pair of Horror Hosts and quite chummy.
  • In a less literal example, Desire has sworn to set the Kindly Ones on his/her brother Dream. In this case, Desire is the younger sibling.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • Lien-Da and her brother Kragok hated their half-sister Julie-Su due to their belief that their father liked her better. Kragok's dead these days, but the rivalry between Lien-Da and Julie-Su is still going strong — and it's not helped any by Lien-Da working for Eggman and Julie-Su being Knuckles' girlfriend.
  • Lien-Da's actually been on both sides of this — she and Kragok were supposed to take over the Dark Legion together after killing their father, but Kragok set things up so that Lien-Da would be badly injured in the process, so he could cheat her out of the position.
  • Going further back in Echidna history we have the twin brothers Dimitri and Edmund. Dimitri became infused with the power of eleven chaos emeralds following a Freak Lab Accident and tried to conquer the world. Edmund became the first Guardian and helped stop his brother's mad plans. That's just the beginning though as Edmund's descendants continued to pass on the mantle Guardians of Angel Island from parent to child, while Dimitri's descendants became the grandmasters of the Dark Legion. The two groups continue to battle each other to this very day turning a Cain and Abel scenario into a generations-long blood feud.
  • In a more metaphorical sense, there's Shard (the original and reformed Mecha Sonic rebuilt by the Secret Freedom Fighters) and the current Metal Sonic (still loyal to Eggman), who view each other as brothers, with Metal dedicated to destroying Shard.
• Spider-Man:
  • Spider-Man with his clones Ben Reilly and Kaine, who were sort of brothers. Ben and Peter managed to work it out just in time for Ben to die. Kaine however was unfriendly and confrontational for a very long time.
  • In The Spectacular Spider-Man, the Sins Remembered arc ends with Sarah Stacy pulling a Heel–Face Turn and joining Interpol to hunt down her brother Gabriel, who embraced the identity of the Grey Goblin and doubled down on the belief that Peter murdered their mother.
• Starman: The Silver Age version. On the planet Kranaltine, if there are two siblings alive when the current emperor dies, then to head off any case of siblings arguing over who gets the crown, the older one naturally gets it... and the younger is summarily thrown out into space. Problem solved! Or maybe not in Prince Gavyn's case, since he wasn't planning on killing his big sis in the first place, and was kind of miffed.
• Supergirl:
  • Supergirl (2005): In Joe Kelly's run, Supergirl's father Zor-El hated his brother Jor, and sent Kara to Earth to kill Jor-El's infant son. Or he just didn't get on with his brother, and knew that Kal-El would "infect" Earth with evil spirits from the Phantom Zone. Or something. It does not matter anyway because it was retconned out.
  • In the Crucible storyline, Roho plunged their planet into a civil war and attempted to murder his parents and brother Tsavo only because he was disowned.
    Tsavo: You attacked our parents, Roho! I'll have your hide for that!
  • Subverted in Strangers at the Heart's Core. Lesla-Lar has deluded herself into believing that her hated foe Supergirl is her twin sister whom she wants to see destroyed for being "their parents'" favorite daughter; but as Kara puts it, it is all in her head since they cannot possibly be sisters.
  • Supergirl's Big Brother: Subverted. Supergirl is introduced to her adoptive brother Jan Danvers, who lets drop that he would love having powers like her. In spite of her misgivings, Kara comes to believe she can trust him to use super-powers responsibly, so she gives him a power-granting pill...and Jan commits theft within one hour. Supergirl cannot believe her own brother would commit crimes, but she then decides to run a background check, discovering that the real Jan Danvers is dead. She is dealing with a fraud who is not her brother, adoptive or otherwise.
• Superman:
  • The Krypton Chronicles miniseries, which delves into the history of Krypton and the lineage of Superman, offers a couple of examples:
    • One of the ancient ancestors of Kal and Kara was Hyr-El, who was chased out of the city of Erkol by his own brother, the tyrant Vad-El who Hyr quarreled with.
    • Val-El and his brother Tro-El didn't get along. Tro persuaded Val into joining the latter's sailing expedition to discover new lands, claiming he was a better person now, but later he raised a mutiny with the purpose of taking over the ships and turning pirate, a plan which included marooning his own brother.
  • Superman's Pal: Jimmy Olsen (2019) adds Julian Olsen, Jimmy's more serious older brother, who's never gotten along with his chaotic younger sibling. The attempt on Jimmy's life turns out to be Julian's idea, because he's run out of money thanks to his entrepreneurial endeavors and Jimmy still has money that will revert to the family if he dies. Even when Jimmy confronts him with it, Julian's only regret is that he chose someone incapable of doing the job rather than killing his younger brother himself.
• Superman & Batman: Generations: Joel Kent, who was prenatally stripped of his Kryptonian superpowers by Gold Kryptonite exposure, was the Cain to his sister Kara's Abel, and in the same Biblical fashion ended up killing her when he got superpowers.
• Star Wars: Darth Vader: This happens with Morit betraying and pushing his sister Aiolin into a lava pit after she just saved his life, leaving it down to Vader himself of all people, who can very much relate, to pull her out and deliver a Mercy Kill.
• Tales of the Jedi: Ulic and Cay Qel-Droma. There isn't any Sibling Rivalry until their master is killed and Ulic's attempt to become a Fake Defector results in him actually falling to the dark side and becoming the Sith Lord Exar Kun's Number Two. Nevertheless, Cay stubbornly believes that there's still good in his brother and tries to talk him back even after Ulic shoots his starfighter down. He's...sort of right — Ulic kills him in a lightsaber duel, and promptly turns back out of remorse.
• Teen Titans: Anyone who's a fan of the Teen Titans (2003) cartoon knows that Starfire and her sister Blackfire are enemies… Their hatred for each other is a lot worse in the comics—and much more tragic, as it basically boils down to Blackfire being treated like a monster for something that happened on the day she was born and ultimately snapping and lashing out at her sister, one of the few who loved her but was given her birthright, until she started hating her back.
• The Ultimates: Tony Stark has an older brother, Gregory Stark. Initially, it was a Sibling Rivalry that proved to Stark that there's Always Someone Better. All their life, whatever Tony did, Gregory did it as well, and better and bigger. Including wealth and inventions. But then he took one more level: he wants to replace Stark (and, by extension, the Ultimates and S.H.I.E.L.D.) as the ultimate line of defense of humanity, which means taking them all down. Meaning, go into full supervillain mode.
• Usagi Yojimbo: Tomoe and her Evil Counterpart Noriko.
• US 1: Heroic trucker Ulysses Solomon Archer and his villainous brother the Highwayman from Marvel's short-lived toy tie-in comic.
• Wonder Woman:
  • The petty, and occasionally homicidal infighting of the Olympians is maintained, with siblings Ares and Athena often fighting each other. In the Golden Age the only Olympians that mattered were Mars and Aphrodite who were at constant odds with each other and, though they were not related at the time, Wonder Woman (Rebirth) has used the less popular origin for Aphrodite as one of Zeus' daughters (which doesn't fit very well in the timeline since she's at least a generation older than Zeus) making her and Ares sister and brother.
  • Wonder Girl Cassie Sandsmark rightfully doesn't trust a word her half-brother Hercules says and when he tries to force her to face her "destiny" as chosen for her by their father Zeus and make her ally with him and the Female Furies she very nearly kills him fighting to get him to leave her and her loved ones alone. She also fights her other half-brother Ares frequently, but their relationship is slightly better since Ares has put in some effort to be a decent brother to her, in his own way.
  • Countdown to Final Crisis sees Belthera recruit an alternate universe Donna Troy, who went mad and strangled the Wonder Woman who adopted her as a sister to death with her own lasso, in a fit of envious rage. The Donna Troy we follow also envies her Wonder Woman but still loves her adoptive sister and is not amused when her counterpart insists that murdering her Diana will make Donna's life better.
  • In The Legend of Wonder Woman more of Hippolyta's sisters have survived until modern times and she and her sister Antiope end up on opposing sides in a war between the gods that destroys the Amazons and leaves a heartbroken Hippolyta as the only (conscious) survivor of the Amazons left on the island.
• X-Men.
  • Although they're both heroes, Cyclops and Havok frequently find themselves fighting against each other. Played straight between Cyclops and his other brother Vulcan, and played even more straight between Havok and Vulcan after the latter killed their father.
  • Cable and his brother/clone Stryfe.
  • Juggernaut Cain Marko and step-brother Charles Xavier.
  • And in a metaphorical vein, Charles "Professor X" Xavier and Erik Magnus "Magneto" Lensherr — once the closest of friends, now on opposite sides of an ideological gulf on mutant/human relations.
  • Also Professor X and Cassandra Nova, making him a tripleheader on this one.
  • Banshee's cousin Black Tom is his brother in the Animated Adaptation.
  • Wolverine and Sabretooth aren't brothers per se, but they were both products of the Weapon X project, and at one point it was (wrongly) believed Sabretooth was Wolverine's father. Chris Claremont has suggested that Sabertooth being Wolverine's father was the original plan.
  • Wolverine also has this with his actual half-brother Dog. Ironically, in Origin, Dog was strongly implied to be a young Sabretooth, but they are later shown to not be the same person. Dog is still alive and well after almost 133 years and really knows how to hold a grudge. Another version is this with his other half-brother John Howlett III.
  • Emma Frost and her sisters, especially Adrienne whom she shot to death after Adrienne's actions led to Synch's death.
  • There's also the human Graydon Creed and his mutant half-brother Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler.
  • Daken and X-23 can be added to the list, being the son and daughter of Wolverine. Daken is what Wolverine is trying to make sure X-23 does NOT end up like him.
  • Colossus and his (usually deceased) brother Mikhael Rasputin. His relationship with his little sister Illyana is only slightly better: Colossus is fiercely protective of her to the near detriment of every other aspect of his life, but she's a soulless demonic being (who nonetheless still loves Colossus as much as a soulless demonic being is capable of love). Eventually, Ilyana forced Colossus to understand that she isn't the same innocent little sister he loved by manipulating him into suffering demonic possession as the new Juggernaut. When Colossus learned the truth, as well as the fact that Ilyana could have freed him at any time, he vows to kill her if they ever meet again. Ilyana is disturbingly pleased by this.
  • In Avengers vs. X-Men, a badly injured Spider-Man manages to take down Piotr and Ilyana (both of whom have received insane power upgrades courtesy of the Phoenix Force) by tricking them into fighting one another.
  • Psylocke and Captain Britain are twin superheroes, and their older brother Jamie Braddock is an insane reality-warper who flip-flops between loving sibling and insane supervillain. Eventually, Psylocke mind-controls Captain Britain into killing Jamie, in order to prevent his future self from destroying the multiverse. This rather sours their family relationship. In a less clear-cut example, at one point Psylocke killed Captain Britain's evil double from an alternate dimension after he tried to rape her.
  • The Shi'ar royal family have this in spades. The oldest sibling Cal'syee (also known as "Deathbird") was born as a genetic throwback, and with the unfortunate tendency to enter berserk rages and kill anyone in arms' length (not that she's Ms. Warm and Cuddly when she's not blood-raging). One of these blood rages killed her little sister, one of the several reasons she got exiled. Cal actually feels bad about that one. Less so her many, many attempts to kill her other sister, Lilandra. And then there's Lil and Cal's brother D'Ken, the one who ended up getting the crown first... despite being a psychotic nutjob who had no problem trying to have Lilandra killed himself when she objected to a plan of his nearly endangering all reality. Lilandra is less willing to kill her siblings, but she did once skewer Deathbird with a spear, putting her out of action for several years.

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