Deadly Game / Comic Books

Deadly Games in Comic Books.

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• The televised battles of downtown Chicago's "poli-clubs" serve as this in American Flagg!.
• The entire premiss of Avengers Arena has teen heroes off Marvel being forced into one of these at the machinations of the villain Arcade. The first few covers contain homages to several other series using this trope.
• Deadpool: Games of Death sends the merc with a mouth on a retrieval mission on an underground game show where contestants fight for their survival against the daily challenges, as well as the deadly traps contained within.
• Futurama: An early issue has Who's Dying To Be A Millionaire, where after getting into the high-numbers, a very large death ray is used on contestants who get answers wrong, starting with a hippie, much to Bender's joy. Unsurprisingly, Morbo is the host, and Mom is behind it. Fry enters, and is saved from certain death only because of Scruffy's "reading material".
• In Joker's Asylum, the Joker takes over an ordinary game show, with the intention of making it one of these, by killing anyone who gets the questions wrong. It turns out the Joker, for once, had no intention of killing anyone. He just likes terrifying the contestants, who believe he is going to kill them, and is actually recording the producer, who is ordering his people to keep the police out in the hopes the Joker will kill someone, as it will boost their ratings. The point was to show how messed up the producer and the people at home watching the show are for going along with him.
• Judge Dredd:
  • This showed up on at least three separate occasions; one early story featured an underground game show entitled 'You Bet Your Life' where stupid, greedy saps wagered the lives of their closest loved ones (and their own) on trivia questions. A later story had a failed game show host put his old rivals through a crazy contest with endless fatal results "Congratulations! You win a golden bullet!" BAM! A third story saw a quiz show where a contestant's correct answers would let him to pick a number between 1 and 10 which would spring a booby trap in his rival contestant's own city block, one of the numbers triggering a flesh disintegrator planted beneath their own seat; the show's host didn't particularly care if correct answers were actually given though and would let contestants pick a number, anyway.
  • Actual wars between cities in Dredd are sometimes conducted as a Deadly Game between small teams of Judges representing each city, as a less-destructive alternative to nuking still more of the planet. Such wars are always televised, complete with running sportscaster-style commentary.
• The Lobo story "Unamerican Gladiators" features a deadly game show taking part on a planet that was a gigantic violence-themed theme park. The contestants had to complete a number of tasks, trying to kill each other while avoiding deadly traps... as well as answer some quiz questions to win valuable prizes.
• In Red Robin Tim ends up stuck between two assassin groups, the Council of Spiders and the League of Assassins, after the Spiders decide it would be a fun game to try and murder a bunch of League ninjas and kill Ra's al Ghul.
• The Simpsons:
  • Homer has landed in at least one of these, "Burnsimoto's Castle". Three guesses who produced it.
    "This game show, banned in every state except our state and, of course, Utah, will soon send three convicts, two mental patients, a homeless guy, a circus freak and one lazy couch potato to unspeakable and untimely deaths. In this reporter's opinion, just the touch of Darwinism our society needs."
  • Another comic has Mr. Burns take part in a version of America's Got Talent where he gets to release the hounds on contestants whose performances he disapproves of.
• In Ultimate Marvel, Krakoa is an island where mutant criminals are hunted down as a televised (and/or online) series. The X-Men end up there twice, and one time Spider-Man gets pulled along with them.
• ...and, of course, Mojo's Mojoworld, where the X-Men ended up anytime somebody wanted to make fun of television. Arcade's Murderworld also fits the bill, usually involving some kind of giant pinball machine. For the record? Mojo is a morbidly obese blob with mechanical spider legs and Arcade wears a leisure suit and wide polka-dot bowtie. You decide which is more repulsive.
• Sort of mentioned in a story arc of Wolverine by Frank Tieri. It featured a version of Survivor set in Alaska. When an ancient Francophile vampire wizard showed up and started killing the contestants, the network boss thought it made a great show that could boost the slipping sales. If only the vampire could contain himself and would only eat the people voted off...

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