Cursed With Awesome / Comic Books

• Astro City: In the story "Lucky Girl," Hummingbird II discovers that her gods-granted powers are tainted with a curse that will eventually turn her into a real bird. She rejects an offer to be cured by having her powers removed, choosing instead to deal with her fate with the help of her Honorary Aunts.
• The Books of Magic: Molly grows a garden (a "real garden", as in, "tomato orchard", not "pleasure garden") while in Faerie, and Titania gets miffed about this for no good reason, so she puts an enchantment on the garden. When Molly eats one of the fruits, she gets cursed and is constantly on fire without burning. Molly is pissed, of course, but she puts the curse to good use by burning everything that stands in her way on her march to the Titania's palace.
• Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew!: As an Expy of Ben Grimm, Pig-Iron was transformed into a hulking steel monster. While he gained Nigh-Invulnerability and Super-Strength, it also makes it utterly impossible for him to have a Secret Identity or live any kind of normal, non-superheroic life. It also resulted in his death from drowning, as unlike the other heroes he couldn't possibly swim. He would be resurrected by Grant Morrison to be a background character in Final Crisis.
• Deadpool:
  • Deadpool was cursed by Loki to have Tom Cruise's face until his father forgave him. Deadpool was not happy at all. Remember Deadpool is ugly!^*For the curious, Deadpool was happy to have an attractive face for about an hour, but eventually he became melancholic because while he had a face that people wouldn't run screaming from, it wasn't his face. He eventually came to view it as just another form of ugliness.
  • Deadpool gets this again, in a sort of subversion. In Deadpool #64, Thanos curses him with immortality. Where's the curse in that? Well, they both love Death, so Deadpool would actually be pretty happy being killable. Torn between Cursed With Awesome and Blessed with Suck — the curse only won out because that was Thanos's original intention.
• Empowered: The titular characters's suit usually is more Blessed with Suck, but the fact it supercharges her orgasms? Gee, what a burden.
• Fables: Thunderfoot, a homage to the character of Watership Down, is cursed by a dark magician hare to change into a horrendous, disgusting form — that of a human — until he gets the love of a pretty doe (female hare). Actually, Thunderfoot is the most awesome lad the readers may have seen. Ever. But his attempts to woo lady hares are constantly thwarted by their fearful cries of "MONSTER! Monster!"
• Fantastic Four: The Thing. Super-strong & nigh invulnerable. Sure he's not the best looking guy around, but despite this he's had several women attracted to him, Alicia Masters, Thundra, the second Miss Marvel, heck even Tigra seemed interested in him. Boo-hoo, poor Ben.
  • Although, this is pretty heavily subverted now. Ben doesn't hate his looks and is actually quite happy to be the "Ever-lovin' Blue-Eyed Thing", as it's brought him great success and many new friends.
  • The most irrational thing he complained about was how he thought the first of these women would flee him if she were not blind. Dude, she has a pretty good idea that you are not normal-looking because your skin feels more like an animate pile of rocks than anything outwardly human.
  • In fact, Alicia played a very big factor in him as a character early on. He doubted that she would fall for "plain old Ben" because she hadn't met him before he became the Thing, and tried very hard to resist his desire to become human again.
    • The Thing goes back and forth on the issue usually presenting himself as someone who has adjusted to the condition and enjoys the benefits, but sometimes something happens to remind him that not everybody accepts him.
  • The big issue comes from the fact that he inadvertently causes damage to structures around him. Buildings would have to be well-reinforced to support him and he probably wouldn't be able to take stairs or elevators. His fingers are too big and powerful to use normal, everyday things like telephones or cups, and everything in the Baxter Building had to be Thing-proofed just so he'd be able to live there. In terms of living his day-to-day life he's essentially handicapped.
  • The Ultimate Universe version of the Thing has his condition played for full angst value but this is a younger version of the character. Aside from looking like a monster, he laments that he can't even figure out how to kill himself because he's too tough.
• Green Lantern: Locksley Smith, introduced in Comic Cavalcade, can open any lock, and has used it to save children trapped in safes. The fact that he cannot help but open any lock he's within a foot of no matter how foolhardy it is and how much he doesn't want to is a pretty big downside, but while it has mostly ruined his ability to hold a job it's also saved his life and others.
• Halloween Man: The eponymous hero of Drew Edwards' indie comic is a pretty good example; though Solomon Hitch's "origin story" disfigured half his face and left him with a skeletal hand, he gains superhuman strength and agility, virtual immortality, and even vague psychic powers. In addition, his wealthy, attractive, and brilliant girlfriend Lucy and demigod best friend Ron (son of Dionysus) accept him without hesitation, even if many of the other, more "mainstream" heroes of Solar City do not. Subverted to an extent, as Halloween Man is still one of the undead and needs to gruesomely consume fresh organs from other monsters to maintain himself (rather than reverting to eating humans). It is also hinted that in at least some future time lines he flips to the dark side anyway, becoming a Jason Voorhees type slasher.
• Hellboy:
  • Johann Krauss and his wife died during the Chengdou disaster; fortunately he was in the "Astral Plane" at the time. Now he's an effectively immortal cloud of mist, as long as he can find an empty "body" to inhabit. The 2004 movie shows him pondering the difference between him and clockwork Implacable Man Kroenen.
  • Abe Sapien was a human scientist who, while exploring an undersea ruin in the 1800s, became touched by an Eldritch Abomination after finding a mysterious "egg" that turned him into a fishman. Subverted in that he doesn't feel cursed. Usually.
• The Incredible Hulk:
  • For most folks who gain powers via Gamma radiation like the Hulk, the Abomination, and General Ross, it's the opposite Trope, but there are exceptions:
  • She-Hulk started out as Bruce Banner's mousy cousin Jennifer Walters who transformed after being given a blood transfusion from Dr. Banner. She went from a shy, rather nebbish girl into... well, She-Hulk. Eventually, writers realized there weren't any real downsides to it, and she hasn't complained about the situation in years. (The trick is that, as the name implies, they were trying to make a Distaff Counterpart to the Hulk — but while Bruce Banner turns into a horrific, mindless force of destruction most of the time, Jennifer turns into a friendly, vivacious Amazon who is still mentally herself, just tall, busty, and jacked. Hard to see any downsides in that, especially since she didn't like who she used to be all that much to begin with.)
  • Lampshaded as early as the late-80s, when at the end of an issue, Mister Fantastic sadly informs Jennifer that due to a burst of radiation she absorbed, she is now permanently stuck in her She-Hulk form. A couple of beat panels later she replies, "So, what's the bad news?"
  • Jen isn't the only one to benefit from gamma radiation. The Hulk's enemy the Leader was once nothing more than a janitor until an accident involving gamma radiation turned him into a super-genius with Psychic Powers. (He considered the green skin and enlarged, mutated cranium a very small price to pay.)
  • Doc Samson transformed himself using stored energy siphoned from the Hulk in an attempt to turn the Hulk back into Bruce Banner permanently. Considering that it changed him from a somewhat nebbishy scientist into someone with the physique of a Greek god, the fact that it also made his hair longer and green was unplanned, but overall he admits it's still a good deal for him.
  • Indeed, one theory about gamma radiation is that it transforms the victim into a physical embodiment of deeply repressed emotions. While the Hulk embodies the hidden rage that Bruce felt towards his abusive father, She-Hulk is a liberated, daring side of Jennifer that she had never been able to show before. Abomination is an unlovable bastard because Emil Blonsky is an unlovable bastard (or believes he is). Doc Sampson always wanted to be a paragon-style superhero, so that's what he turned into.
  • The She-Hulk question is interestingly played with in The Avengers (Jason Aaron), when Jen's Hulk form becomes more like Bruce's. That's worse, right? Well, it turns out she prefers not having to fight in a highly sexualised form that means she has to make the jokes before the bad guys do, and it's a relief to drop being the funny, upbeat one and just get mad and smash things.
• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992): Those trapped in the Dark World are cursed to become beasts without artifacts or heroic willpower. Roam, however, takes advantage of being able to become an eagle.
• The Legend of the Chaos God: Solego, though trapped within a crystal, has the power to possess any living or mechanical thing that comes in direct contact with the crystal.
• The Mighty Thor: Thor's foe the Flame believes he is horrendously ugly in addition to having superstrength, fire control abilities, indestructible armour and a BFS. Of course, he is horrendously ugly by fire demon standards which makes him extremely handsome by human (or Asgardian) standards, but the Flame refuses to believe this.
• ROM Spaceknight: ROM and the other Spaceknights constantly bewail the loss of their humanity, even though they can still think, talk, feel, and do pretty well everything else humans can, while also having supercool cyborg armor, the ability to fly, virtual immortality, and, of course, survive attack by the Dire Wraiths.
  • Not being able to get out of their armor probably sucks pretty hard. For one thing, you couldn't have sex. Actually, do there really have to be any other reasons?
  • They also turned out to be right to bemoan their loss of humanity. A second generation of Space Knights was created which were more extremely transformed (and more powerful), and they all went Ax-Crazy and destroyed the rest of their race and the parts removed from all the Space Knights, preventing anyone from ever transforming them back.
• Played with in Sillage. You would think that in a setting where everyone but the protagonist has psychic powers, to the point that she was not recognized as a person at first, might be a bad thing. Turns out it means she's an excellent spy/special agent, because she cannot be psychically detected like everyone else.
• Spider-Man:
  • Peter Parker is a genius, incredibly powerful (at least compared to us muggles), a successful photographer — who even published a book of Spider-Man photos — and a college student. Despite his poverty, he is able to provide for himself — including crime-fighting gadgets like web-shooters, webbing and costumes — his aged aunt May and his supermodel wife Mary Jane Watson. Remember? He bagged a chick so hot she should be using dorks like him as a paperweight. Not to mention Gwen Stacy, Betty Brant, Liz Allen, the Black Cat, Deb Whitman...
  • This is ultimately deconstructed during the Superior Spider-Man (2013) saga. Doctor Octopus, having hijacked'd Peter's body, uses it to be a superior Spidey. However, when the Green Goblin opts to bring everything down around his ears, he comes to realize that Peter purposely stops himself from using his Awesome because of things like this.
  • Spider-Man Noir: When Peter got bitten by the mystic spiders, he hallucinated that a spider god would give him "The Curse Of Power". Considering how the Spider-Man powers have affected other Spider-Man, this isn't actually that far off.
  • Spider-Boy: Bailey was mutated by Madame Monstrosity into being a spider-human hybrid for the sake of being a living weapon for her. While this left him looking inhuman at first, Bailey got away with a suite of useful spider-powers and no permanently deforming side effects. This is in stark contrast to his friend Eli, who was converted into Hellifino, a four-eyed elephant-rhino hybrid with no signs of being able to turn back into a normal kid.
• Superman:
  • In All-Star Superman, Lex Luthor endangers a space flight, forcing Superman to fly too close to the sun in the process of rescuing them. The damage to his body leaves him with one year to live. On the upside, it boosts his powers and intelligence, and renders him immune to kryptonite, which helps him deal with all his final year's problems.
  • In A Mind-Switch in Time, Superboy is not happy to learn his future self will be a famed newscaster since Pa and Ma always said he should keep himself out of the public eye. Still, going to greater lengths to protect your secret identity seems a small price to pay for becoming a renowned journalist.
  • In Red Daughter of Krypton, Supergirl complains that her incredible powers have been an endless source of problems for her since she crash-landed on Earth. Yes, she has soared through the galaxy and tanked energy blasts. She has also been forced into battle after battle, manipulated, used, abused and treated as a tool or a ticking bomb by pretty much everyone.
    Supergirl: This strength, this power— It's been like a curse.
  • Legends of the Dead Earth: In Superman Annual #8, the League of Supermen is made up of men and women who are empowered with just one of Superman's many Kryptonian abilities. Unfortunately, they can't shut them off. Shield is completely numb, See-Through has to wear lead shades to block his x-ray vision, Flyboy needs to be tethered when not consciously moving towards something, Pounder has to be fed like a baby, and Heat needs to let off excess heat energy every fifteen minutes or his insides burn up.
• Thanos: Ironically enough, the literally Death-loving Thanos receives the immortality curse in The Thanos Imperative, and he goes completely omnicidally insane as a result.
• Timespirits: The Heroes encounter a dinosaur-descended space pirate who has supernatural luck. She can never fail to do anything she tries. And when Our Heroes offer to remove the "Curse of Success" she jumps at the chance. Because, as she puts it, "I am so incredibly bored!". So she gets her luck extracted and has the ordinary chance of success and failure of anyone else — which she considers a blessing.
• Watchmen: This certainly happens to Dr. Manhattan. Being the only person with god-like powers in the entire known universe is a plus. But he lost his humanity, not really caring about anything but science. On the other hand, he doesn't care.
• Werewolf by Night: Zig Zagged with werewolves. At their creation, werewolves weren't "cursed" but merely given a useful ability; it later became a curse when the way to control those abilities got lost over time. So when Jack becomes a werewolf on his eighteenth birthday, it really is a curse: forced to painfully transform three times a month with no control. But when he finally does learn how to control it, he starts to enjoy the abilities it gives him, being able to use his werewolf form to do good. Unfortunately, the curse seems to have a way of striking back. You can transform any time you want? Your uncontrolled werewolf form during the full moons will become stronger and more violent. You're happy you won't have to change at all anymore, not even during the full moon? You'll lose the ability, and from now on you'll be forced to have visions of hell when you transform.
• Wonder Woman:
  • While not common the occasional Amazon takes issue with the fact that due to being superpowered and immortal and living on an island with no men/where men don't receive the same, they cannot have children and if straight cannot find a lover of their choice who isn't going to just die on them of old age. The most notable is Persephone from Wonder Woman (2009), who ended up betraying the Amazons and turning evil in order to be with Ares.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Due to the oaths the Amazons have taken in the Golden Age none but their champion can have a life outside Paradise Island, and even leaving for brief periods is questionable. This trade-off for immortality and super-strength does not bother most of them but seeing Diana's life drives Dalma to remove her bracelets (unleashing her full Amazonian strength) and flee to America to become a boxer. Aphrodite orders Dalma dragged to Reformation Island and locked in an Aphrodite Girdle.
• X-Men:
  • Subverted with the Juggernaut. Those who are bestowed with the power of Cyttorak through his crimson gem are also compelled to do evil, regardless of their previous nature. However, Cain Marko is a natural sociopath, and doesn't need much prodding. When Cain tried to turn over a new leaf and joined the X-Men, Cyttorak was very unhappy with this development. Thus, Cain's power was greatly reduced and he was pushed into returning to a life of evil to regain the lost power.
  • In its early history, the X-Men themselves tended to have attractive heroes who felt awkward about their powers, while villains who reveled in their powers were ugly. This trend was reduced with the introduction of the Morlocks, who were bizarre but kind, plus the general escalating public fear of mutants because they could look just like anyone else.
  • X-Men in many ways reflected this; the heroes were all extremely gorgeous people with cool powers played by people like Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry and James Marsden, whilst the bad guys — with the notable exception of Ian McKellen — were all freaks. The later movies began to balance this out a bit more with the inclusion of characters such as Nightcrawler. Other X-Men films, such as First Class imply a number of evil mutants become evil because they're ugly; visible mutations make them bigger targets for prejudice, which in turn makes them more cynical and bitter toward humans.
  • Also, some of the mutants who've wished to be cured over the years (and over the adaptations) have been mutants who looked human and didn't suffer from any lack of control.
  • The X-man Beak became an interesting, fairly literal example. At first, he was simply Blessed with Suck since his only mutant power was looking like a giant plucked chicken. Then the Exiles' boss The Timebroker decides to draft Beak onto the team, and forcibly yank him away from his home reality. Why? Because Beak will supposedly save The Multiverse some day. Essentially, the Timebroker just decided to hand Beak a great responsibility while Beak just wanted his life back, literally cursing him with awesomeness. Of course, the Timebroker turned out to be right when Beak found a way to defeat Hyperion.
  • This point's been lampooned in Toyfare's Twisted Toyfare Theatre, with a villain exclaiming "rich teenagers with superpowers? Yeah, I WISH I had your problems!"
  • Inverted after M-Day which de-powered almost all the mutants. There is, for example, a home dedicated to helping mutants adjust to life without powers. One resident is a former telekinetic who used to use his powers for construction work.
  • During the CinemaSins video of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Jeremy finally has had enough of Mystique claiming humans wouldn't find her attractive in her normal form: a nude, busty blue Action Girl. He retorts it would be almost impossible for a straight man not to be turned on by her.