Deconstructed Character Archetype in Comic Books.
The following have their own pages:
Other Comics
- Animosity deconstructs the Uplifted Animal en masse. The story begins when every animal on the face of the Earth spontaneously develops both human intelligence and speech, and society goes to hell as a result. Animals who were abused by humans set out to make them pay, the notion of eating meat quickly turns into a sensitive topic since the meat has a say in the matter, several creatures demonstrate questionable at best morals, and the question of whether all animals are equal gets tossed around a lot, especially in the arc with the giant beehive.
- Arawn is a deconstruction of the Evil Overlord. Arawn, sitting atop his skull-adorned throne in Scary Impractical Armor, introduces himself as the immortal demon god of death, lives in an Evil Tower of Ominousness in a burning wasteland, and rules over an army of hellspawn monsters and undead soldiers who mindlessly obey his every word. However, he Was Once a Man, and relates his long and sad life story of what it took for him to become such a figure of pure evil. The answer involves irrevocable prophecies, evil artifacts, divine intervention, and decades of warfare between him and his three warrior brothers. Also, despite his immense power, he never got what he really wanted, since even with his mastery over life and death he cannot truly bring back the woman he once loved.
- Birthright deconstructs Invincible Villain with God-King Lore. Lore is an extremely powerful mage, who also commands seemingly endless resources and armies that never seem to run out. Many heroes spent years fighting non-stop against him, but they never seem to make any progress - on the contrary, their fighting led to many innocents getting caught in the crossfire and making things worse. In the end, he is so incredibly powerful that everyone who opposes him has just straight up given up on fighting him and has either fled Terrenos to somewhere safer (like the Five) or has submitted to him (like Mike and Kallista) to stop the carnage. However, being indestructible in combat does not automatically make him a perfect dictator, and as it turns out, being an invincible villain also takes a toll on Lore himself. He has utterly failed to stop the resistance from summoning an endless supply of children from another world to fight him in vain, performing Destructive Saviour terrorism to his infrastructure and enforcers along the way, ultimately preventing him from ending the war that ravages his empire, so he can establish peace in this realm.
- Brat Pack is a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown of the Kid Sidekick. Daily crime-fighting would take serious toll on the physical and mental health of a teenager, turning them into emotional wrecks and/or some type of addict. Furthermore, any superhero who takes an underage child into that life would have to be a complete psychopath who only uses said child to keep a wholesome public image.
- Bone: The Veni-Yan deconstruct The Omniscient Council of Vagueness. At first, they seem like a pretty straight example of the trope, but they're still only human and can't really be expected to know everything. In fact, in some cases they have less idea of what's going on than the protagonists do.
- Crossed
- The Crossed are a deconstruction of the Hate Plague Technically-Living Zombie and the Always Chaotic Evil fantasy race. While the Crossed are indeed a nightmarish threat, many sub-stories show that a population composed entirely of hyper-agressive sociopaths is simply unsustainable. By the time of +100, humanity has heavily outnumbered the infected population, and the only reason they have not been wiped out already is the occasional "fresh" infection and Salt's manipulations.
- Edmund "Yellowbelly" Wickenthorpe is a deconstruction of dirty cowards and cowardly lions. While Edmund's cowardice does result in the deaths of Nicole and Sweeney, he survives the Crossed and he comes across as way more rational and sensible than his peers, who insisted on fighting against hopeless odds.
- First of all, Edmund is only a teenager (16-18) as he had just left high school before C-Day and he has no life experiences that would make him brave in the face of danger. He's old enough to understand what's happening, too young to be independent, and too old to depend on others. He was also the sole survivor of the carnival massacre, he saw his town and family get brutally murdered by the Crossed, and everyone else calls him a coward for being understandably scared in the face of danger.
- Sweeney refused to leave the gun store and tried to make Edmund fight to the last breath, despite the Crossed already winning the battle and running away being more sensible. Shooting Sweeney might have been unncessary but since the building was already swarming with Crossed, Sweeney couldn't be reasoned with and Edmund had to think fast before they were both killed by the crossed.
Sweeney: You're goddamn right. We're all gonna die. Including you, Yellow Belly. Turn your ass around. You're gonna die like a man.- During the battle against the Crossed, Edmund falls the bike and hides in the bushes as the battle continues. The rider, Ringo, was killed in the crash and Edmund was underprepared to fight the Crossed so he made the smart decision of hiding in the bushes so he can survive another day.
- Nicole's death wasn't a result of cowardice, she lunged forward as Edmund was checking if she was ok and he instinctively pulled the trigger in response under the belief she had turned. The only true act of cowardice was when he defiled Nicole's corpse and desecrated it to cover the accidental murder.
- While Edmund did eventually redeem himself by saving Donna, she still kills him by brutally staving his head with a rock as punishment for killing Nicole. Ironically, had Edmund abandoned Donna to save himself then his death could have been avoided.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe deconstructs Born Lucky with Gladstone Gander. He is so incredibly lucky that he's a borderline Invincible Hero and has never been found wanting for anything. The deconstruction lies in the fact that said immense luck has turned him into an incredibly lazy bastard that has absolutely zero skills (which has screwed him over on the few times his luck has run out, not to mention that everybody who has had to talk to him for an extended period of time comes to hate his guts because he's a jackass) and refuses to have any patience or do any effort because of this luck. As a result, many times when he's been put against Donald on some contest, he was so sure that whatever he won that was standing right there was the prize that he walked away without finding out that the actual prize was right there and he'd have found it if he'd looked around for a few seconds, or stops to gather whatever little valuable trinket luck put in his way instead of keeping the race to the finish.
- Empowered: El Soldado Del Amor deconstructs the Love Freak. At first she believed in love and started making people fall in love with her. Unfortunately, all it does is to make them little more than slave robots enthralled only with love. Worst of all, with her powers she can see that all kinds of love naturally withers and putrefies over time even under her powers, And she's immune to her own powers so she can't accept her own lies. Eventually she begin to see love as a huge tumorous growth sprouting on people, devouring their brains.
- Fatale: Of the Femme Fatale character archetype. Josephine is supernaturally cursed to remain young, beautiful, and alluring, and is something of a Living Aphrodisiac. She actually hates the fact that men keep falling hopelessly in love with her to the point of self-destruction, since it means she can never have a fulfilling relationship.
- Grimm Fairy Tales: Sela Mathers is a deconstruction of The Storyteller trying to teach An Aesop to her readers.
- Sela starts the series as a teacher using her magic book to teach lessons to people to make the right choice by reading them dark fairytales showing the gruesome fate that awaits them if they continue down their destructive path. At first, things were good, and the people who read Sela's stories made the right choice and better their lives. But eventually, Sela meets people who ignore her advice; they eventually wreck their lives, showing that despite giving good advice and showing the consequences of continuing their bad behavior, there would be people who would ignore good advice and continue their actions. Some issues show that some things are too complicated for Sela and that reading her stories couldn't help the person she's trying to help.
- In the 'Goldie Locks and the Three Bears' story, the woman that was reading the book was trying to murder an older man that she married for money; when she read the book and tried to stop the murder, it was too late, and she was killed with Sela noteing that it was too late for that woman to make things right for her.
- The 'Bluebeard' story had Sela read a story to a woman who suspected her husband was having an affair; the story made the woman afraid her husband was going to kill her, so she stabbed her husband. However, to the women's horror, he was actually planning a surprise party for her and it's revealed that the woman was supposed to read the last page of the book that would've told her that the danger she thought she was in from her husband was just her paranoid fears.
- The 'Beauty and the Beast' story shows Sela reading her stories to a couple in a toxic and abusive relationship. Sela's story convinces the woman to break up with her boyfriend, but the boyfriend, who was revealed to come from an abusive home, decides to kill himself, with Sela noting that he was supposed to do the right thing and wonders why she should care.
- Eventually, Sela herself snaps because of all the people who destroyed their lives despite the advice she tried to give them and starts using the book to kill people that she believes deserve it. Sela only stopped after the person who gave her the book stepped in, and Sela was reminded of the time she read 'The Juniper Tree' to a woman who did the right thing but still lost her daughter anyway. Sela then accepted that despite how hard she tries, she will still lose people who will not take her advice, and she should focus on the people she can save instead.
- Sela starts the series as a teacher using her magic book to teach lessons to people to make the right choice by reading them dark fairytales showing the gruesome fate that awaits them if they continue down their destructive path. At first, things were good, and the people who read Sela's stories made the right choice and better their lives. But eventually, Sela meets people who ignore her advice; they eventually wreck their lives, showing that despite giving good advice and showing the consequences of continuing their bad behavior, there would be people who would ignore good advice and continue their actions. Some issues show that some things are too complicated for Sela and that reading her stories couldn't help the person she's trying to help.
- Hack/Slash: Cassie Hack deconstructs the Final Girl Hunter of Monsters. Driven by a Guilt Complex and her status as a Shell-Shocked Veteran, Cassie's life is shown to be anything but glamorous or awesome. She is a Homeless Hero in Perpetual Poverty due to her Walking the Earth lifestyle, has difficulty relating to others, and is severely developmentally stunted to the point that one could easily say she never really grew up past seventeen. Due to her lifestyle, the It's Not You, It's My Enemies nature of her work and I Work Alone outlook, she quickly grows into a Sociopathic Hero in the most literal version of the term on top of being a Nominal Hero who is in the fight to hunt monsters, not necessarily to save people.
- Irredeemable
- The Plutonian deconstructs the Superman Substitute. Tony was a straight up expy of Superman, except his Dark and Troubled Past caused by their similar origins and powers resulted in his private motivations as a superhero wildly askew with genuine decency and faith in others and ultimately snaps due to not being psychologically capable of bearing the responsibilities and physical complications that come with it.
- Tony's adoptive family, the Hartigans, deconstruct the Muggle Foster Parents. They were perhaps the only foster parents who genuinely accepted young Daniel's powers and loved him as their own, but Bill Hartigan's draconian attempts to teach the emotionally damaged teenage Tony responsibility and complete selflessness backfired in the worst possible ways for everyone down the road, himself included. Tony ultimately kept quiet about Mrs. Hartigan's lung cancer because the upbringing Bill subjected him to convinced him that saying something would've been self-serving.
- Alana Patel deconstructs the hero's Love Interest. She's got a thing for the Plutonian, but solely for self-interested reasons. She also thinks Dan Hartigan is coworker with a harmless crush on her, and is not delighted to learn that he and the Plutonian are one and the same. The first thing she does at this reveal is betray the Plutonian's confidence, which drives him to intimidate the only other people who know into silence.
- Hornet deconstructs the Badass Normal. His lack of any sort of superpowers ultimately means he's nowhere near the same level as his fellow Paradigm members, and the paranoia from being around someone as powerful as the Plutonian leads to him selling out countless planets to a race of intergalactic conquerors in exchange for their help if the Plutonian ever went rogue.
- The Couriers deconstructs Bodyguard Babes through Johnny Funwrecker's bodyguards. Everybody recognizes that the legion of teen girls he surrounds himself with are purely for fetishistic indulgence, they're absolutely useless in a fight, and the only one who's genuinely competent—Special, one of the two protagonists— ends up successfully plotting his utter destruction because she's fed up with him treating her like a sex object and everyone else assuming that's all she is.
- Xerek from The Incredibles comics is a deconstructed Born Winner. His superpower enabled him to be fortunate all his life, gaining wealth, power, and stature well into his old age, but the non-stop success eventually made him feel unfulfilled and hollow, since he never managed to achieve what he really wants in life and became disenchanted with the world. As such he becomes an Omnicidal Maniac and Death Seeker simply because life has nothing to offer him anymore.
- The Shadow Hero: Hank's father deconstructs the Drunken Master. In his youth, he'd take a swig of wine before every fight and was almost unbeatable as a result. But the alcoholism eventually caught up with him, causing him to black out for days at a time, weakening him severely, and sending his life into a tailspin. It got so bad that he asked the Tortoise to promise he'd have the will to resist alcohol for the rest of his life.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Silver deconstructs Inspector Javert. He wants to Set Right What Once Went Wrong by hunting down and destroying a traitor in the Knothole Freedom Fighters who will bring his world to ruin. Sadly, he keeps jumping to conclusions and going off half-cocked with very little evidence and ends up accusing Sonic, Rotor, Antoine, and Bunnie in that order, even trying to kill the first two outright. He's forced to get help from Harvey Who and the Secret Freedom Fighters to finally pinpoint the actual traitor, but when he tries to explain himself to Sonic and the others, they're in no mood to listen to him, with Sonic telling him point-blank that he's done listening to anything Silver has to say and very bluntly telling him to screw off. It is only through Tails' persuasion, Silver helping capture Mecha Sally (the true traitor), and clear convincing that he has learned from his errors that he is finally forgiven by the heroes.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW):
- Starline deconstructs the Big Bad Wannabe, Loony Fan and Only Sane Man tropes. Starline has admired Eggman for a long time and had long wanted to be Eggman's apprentice. But as the Metal Virus arc progressed, Starline slowly began to realize that Eggman was not the genius he made him out to be. Eventually, Eggman fires him when his misguided attempt to help Eggman results in the Deadly Six controlling the Zombots, but even afterwards, he still attempts to prove himself Eggman's equal by forming his own team comprising of himself, Zavok, Mimic, Rough and Tumble. However, as Zavok later points out, for all his talk of being Eggman's successor, he ended up making the exact same mistakes as Eggman such as not thinking his plans through and callously disregarding his allies. Starline himself concedes that Zavok has a point and by the end of the Bad Guys miniseries, gives up on being Eggman's equal and decides to be Eggman's superior. However, Imposter Syndrome shows that he still hasn't learned his lesson. Seeing his action figure in Eggman's Egg Cave is all it takes for him to want to be Eggman's partner again, showing his obsession with Eggman is still there. Also, his attempts to keep Surge and Kit in line with the Hypno Glove backfire as they end up building a resistance to it, allowing him to eventually turn on him and manipulate him for their own plans. Throughout the series, he sees himself as the smartest man in the room and constantly criticizes Dr Eggman for being short-sighted and impulsive despite possessing many of his flaws and not being as smart and rational as he thinks. For every contigency plan he makes, there are other things he neglects which cause him to lose despite considering himself smarter and saner than everyone else.
- Sonic's Thou Shall Not Kill aspect gets put through the ringer multiple times, with many people accusing him that his inability to just take care of Eggman permanently is what causes the Vicious Cycle he and Eggman are seemingly trapped in, which leads to more and more innocent bystanders getting hurt in the process. Espio personally blames Sonic for the Metal Virus arc even happening in the first place, and Surge blames him as the root cause of her ending up like she has, saying if he had just offed Eggman, Starline would have never done what he did to her.
- Both Surge and Kit are deconstructions of the Evil Counterpart . Surge is not Sonic's first Evil Counterpart, a point he lampshades when they're finally face to face. Surge differentiates herself from the others when its shown that she was forced to be one against her will through brainwashing, leaving her very mentally unstable and holds an Irrational Hatred towards Sonic that she herself does not understand. Sonic's attempts to talk her down fall on deaf ears because Surge was groomed to only want to kill him and she rationalizes she has nothing else to live for besides that. To twist the knife further, despite her best efforts, it's made abundantly clear when she faces Sonic that she stands no chance against him and he's barely taking her seriously. Meanwhile, Kit is a deconstruction of this, as well as the Sidekick . Kit is Surge's sidekick, basically being the answer to Tails. Like Surge, however, this role was forced upon him and while Surge has her hatred of Sonic to motivate her, Kit has nothing driving him besides his desire to help Surge and when she's not around to tell him what to do, he starts falling apart very quickly. Tails is able to subdue him fairly easily since Kit is more concerned about Surge than fighting. Kit shows how devoting your entire life to someone else is detrimental to one's own self-esteem and sense of identity, something Tails grew out of ages ago.
- Tom Strong deconstructs The Baroness through Ingrid Weiss. She's an attractive Nazi with her own legion of female soldiers who struts around in black leather, but she's also utterly obsessed with the Aryan ideal, to the point where she would resort to taking advantage of an unconscious Tom Strong to get at his DNA and then indoctrinating the resultant child into Nazism from birth.
- Transformers/Ghostbusters deconstructs The Starscream with Starscream himself. He may seemingly be in a pretty bad situation, but his reputation is well known enough to the point that absolutely no one trusts him. When he starts snooping around the firehouse, Peter is quick to trap him in a hidden security measure to make sure he doesn't cause anymore trouble until Prime arrives. And unlike Megatron, Kremzeek has absolutely no use for a treacherous underling, especially an incompetent one. Once he figures out Starscream's game, he re-absorbs the Decepticon. Though Starscream does get free when Kremzeek is defeated.
- The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye deconstructs the Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist through Megatron. Before the Great War, Megatron was just a miner speaking out against the corrupt senate, but once the revolution started taking off he swiftly became a sadistic, genocidal authoritarian, slaughtering entire species out of Fantastic Racism and trying to be as deliberately cruel as possible to Optimus. Eventually Megatron reached the point where he can no longer justify it to himself and underwent a Heel–Face Turn to fix things. Much of the series after he joins the Lost Light crew deals with many refusing to accept his desire to set things right after all his evildoing and facing down monsters he himself created.Megatron: I once told Optimus I killed for the sake of killing. I wanted him to hurt me, you see - because when he hurts others, he hurts himself. And the thing is, when those words were in my head, I didn't think I meant them; but when they left my mouth, I realized that I did. If the world thinks you're a monster, what does it matter? The world is wrong. But when you start to think of yourself as a monster...
- Viz
- Jack Black is a parody of the Enid Blyton-esque boy detective. Much like The Comic Strip Presents' "Five Go Mad in Dorset'', the strip highlights his negative traits - he's a xenophobic, classist, elitist, amoral bigot who gets well-meaning people, who have done nothing wrong, arrested (or worse) on a minor technicality or obscure law for his own benefit, often with another awful crime being committed right under his nose which he completely fails to notice.
- Cockney Wanker is a parody of Frank Butcher and Del Boy, albeit with none of the sympathetic traits that made them lovable rogues. An embodiment of everything Northeners hate about Londoners, he's a sexist, racist, nationalist, greedy, wife-beating con man with no regard for others and values money above all else.
