Deconstruction / Comic Books

Deconstruction in Comic Books.

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The following have their own pages:

• The DCU
• Marvel Universe
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
• Rick and Morty

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A-D

• Afterlife with Archie:
  • So, you've got unfaithfulness played for laughs in the Archieverse? Here Betty and Veronica hate each other because of it.
  • Everyone (except for Reggie) easily accepting Kevin's sexuality. Nancy is convinced she and Ginger wouldn't be as accepted as a well-off white boy.
  • Sabrina ignoring her aunts' warnings and using her magic however she pleases. Normally there's no lasting consequences and she simply gets a minor punishment if any at all. Here it causes a Zombie Apocalypse and her Aunts respond by turning into horrific monsters and banish her to purgatory while taking her mouth away so she couldn't plead with them. Moreover, it's revealed that her reckless use of magic summons Cthulhu.
  • Jughead's hatred of Veronica is normally a simple case of Snark-to-Snark Combat between the two. Here, Zombie!Jughead nearly murders her due to his lingering feelings of hatred towards her.
• Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise: The series ended on a note of hope for the future, with the new Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko as the vanguard of peace among the four nations. However, the idea of leaving a group of idealistic teenagers in charge of a world that's been festering in complicated political problems for more than a hundred years is quickly shown to be an unrealistic solution. Their initial solution—simply deport all Fire Nationals in the colonies back to the Fire Nation—is quickly shown to be extremely naive and causes problems due to people having already-established lives in the colonies and interracial marriages.
• Birthright:
  • For the Trapped in Another World kind of story where a young kid gets taken from Earth to a fantasy realm where he is The Chosen One destined to take down the Big Bad. In this kind of story, the horrors of war turn the Kid Hero into a Shell-Shocked Veteran and his resentment over being separated from his family and forced to fight in a war he never asked for ended up driving him to side with the Big Bad.
  • Its also one for Invincible Villain. When confronted with an big bad dark lord who has seemingly endless armies at his disposal and black magic, the natural reaction of most people would be to give up fighting against him altogether, or give up on conventional means and turn to questionable tactics.
• Black Gas: In most zombie stories, at least one of the main characters usually has some degree of combat training for one reason or another. One of Ellis's stated plot points in Black Gas is that neither Tyler nor Soo have any idea how to handle themselves in a fight, and it shows.
• Black Hammer: Of superheroes in general. Each issue of the opening arc tackles the psychological and emotional effects of being a superhero.
• Blackbird (2018): Of secret magical societies and the Masquerade in particular. The driving theme of Blackbird is that a society which maintains itself apart from the larger world around it and enforces that separation irrespective of the wishes of its individual members, by its very nature rests on a foundation of exploitation and cruelty. No matter how wondrous the abilities of the paragons, they do not use them for the benefit of others, only themselves, and are actively forbidden from doing otherwise. As a consequence, most paragons are contemptuous of "civilians" or "normies", and are habitually cold and distant at best, ruthless or even psychopathic at worst. On the other hand, If you are, say, a genuinely warm and caring paragon mother and you wish to maintain a relationship with your little non-paragon daughters... you will be forced to fake your own death and never be allowed to see them again.
• The Boys: All over the place, as the series is very much a Deconstruction of the idea of silver-age superheroes in the modern world.
  • Of the underlying corporate nature of superheroes and the comic book industry. The superheroes in the world of The Boys were raised from birth with everything handed to them on a silver platter from Vought-American. Because of how Merchandise-Driven superheroes by nature are, spoiling them with all the wealth in the world is pretty much all Vought can do to make sure they don't one day go off the deep end. That being said, the superheroes, as a result of all the power they've been given right from the moment they were born, end up sociopathic, immature, spoiled, and utterly hedonistic—fixated only on their own individual satisfactions without much regard for the innocents whose lives are in their hands. What's even worse is that since superheroes are such a massive investment and turn in extremely huge profits, Vought's management is very much willing to do whatever they deem necessary to ensure their business remains afloat.
  • Surprisingly, Butcher is this to the protagonists Ennis usually wrote. Turns out, an Implacable Man who is driven solely by one goal is absolutely not right in the head. In fact, he's a total psychopath. And as soon as that goal is achieved, that man's next goal is more monstrous than the last to the point that he can't be considered anything remotely close to a hero anymore.
  • Uncle Dreams might be intended to be a destruction of one of older superheroes such as members of the Justice Society of America who stay fit despite having been around for decades. Unlike those guys, Uncle Dreams has not aged well (and neither has his political views), walks around with an oxygen tank, and can't even keep his bladder in check.
  • The events of September the 11th, 2001 show exactly what would happen if a Justice League-esque super team tried to stop a mid-air plane hijacking (see Didn't Think This Through above.)
  • In Issue 65 swarms of powerful but inexperienced superheroes are gunned down en masse by the US military, who were warned of their coup in advance and are outfitted with depleted uranium ammunition. Considering that a 30mm DU round is capable of penetrating a good three inches or 76mm of RHA steel (for reference, 30mm RHA or above all-around is enough to render an armored vehicle more or less Immune to Bullets [at least small arms], which only a minority of supers are to begin with), that every A-10 and M2 Bradley puts out dozens of these rounds per second, and that the military also had anti-tank guided missiles capable of piercing several feet worth of RHA, this is completely unsurprising. Particularly notable is that most of the heroes are killed by airstrikes or artillery that they never had any chance to retaliate against due to them either having just their fists or a short-ranged attack (e.g. Eye Beams, Hand Blast, Playing with Fire, An Ice Person), with a She-Hulk expy even despairing that the Air Force wouldn't "come down and face us, cowards!". Again, not surprising in an era where unmanned drones regularly target individual insurgents with missiles from miles away.
  • The superhero business in general. Why go out and fight crime for real when you can sit back and collect residuals on all of the comic books, TV shows, and merchandise with your face on it?
  • Played for laughs with Vas' Gag Penis. As stated above, when he gets aroused, he is incapacitated due to the amount of blood being sent.
• Brat Pack is a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to the very concept of the Kid Sidekick.
  "Buying into the idea of a superhero is one thing, but the idea of a teenager operating in that world becomes especially absurd if you apply some logic to the situation. They would have to grow up and lose their innocence if they had to fight crime everyday. Their minds would be shattered." — ComicTropes
• Cerebus the Aardvark: The later books do this to the earlier books. In the earlier books, any violent or morally questionable action Cerebus takes is treated as being all in good fun. Once Cerebus Syndrome set in, the consequences of Cerebus' actions are thoroughly explored and often very unpleasant.
• Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things: At first, The Power of Love is pretty strongly deconstructed, showing idealism alone accomplishes nothing, and even fighting for what you love may often fail. Then the color series happened and every single decision Courtney and Aloysius made in the entire series, and magic culture in general is deconstructed to devastating effect.
  • Reconstruction again when Courtney connects with the few friends she's made to help her through the climax, relying on Calpurnia's insistence that friends are important — and when The Power of Friendship unlocks her Secret Art, and makes her more powerful than ever.
• Crossed: The series re-thinks the Zombie Apocalypse story right back to square one: as culture has grown numb to the idea of "unstoppable plague of mindless cannibals," Ennis ups the ante to "unstoppable plague of grinning sadists" to rub in how awful surviving this sort of apocalypse would really be.
  • In the final arc of Badlands, Cody makes a major point regarding armchair survivalists' bugout plans: having an apocalypse survival bunker is only going to do you any good if you have the chance to get to it when the apocalypse hits. He notes the vast majority of his wealthy clients who paid for the luxury bunkers he sold pre-outbreak were in Austin or Houston doing the things that earned them the money they spent on their bunkers when the Crossed outbreak began and thus had little chance of actually getting to safety.
• Crossover (2020)
  • The whole "comic book writer murders" subplot is one of fiction writing in general, basically asking the question of "what would fictional characters who have suffered badly in their stories have to say to the people who wrote them"? As it turns out, quite a few harsh words, and from the look of it, one is downright vengeful.
  • The trip to Denver deconstructs the big comic book Crisis Crossover. Sure, stories like that are fun and epic when you're following the main characters and know what's going on, but when you're just a bystander passing through with no idea of the circumstances, it just feels like a lot of chaos with familiar faces flying by.
• Demo: This series deconstruction people having superpowers in a more realistic setting. A protagonist discovers powers/abilities or deals with ones they already had and finds that their lives become worse mainly because they don,t know how to control their powers and because there is no one to train them. Because of that, their abilities often cause harm to other people, the characters ' loved ones, and eventually themselves. Even characters who master their powers and incorporate them into their day-to-day lives still have problems. Just because they have an ability or skill that makes doing a job easier does not mean they want that particular skill or job. And often, the people in those protagonists' lives will pressure them to continue the job they hate because they are good at it with their powers. And sometimes, the protagonist's loved ones would only see them for their powers and what their powers can do for them, instead of valuing the character for themselves. It shows that powers will not automatically make a person's life easier even if you master them, the powers come with their own set of problems for a person.
• Doméstico: Of the Super Hero genre. While it has everything that a super hero needs to be called one, the whole thing is extremely realistic.
  • Arch-Nemesis: Is the guy who is with the only girl he loves.
  • Super Powers: Has none, besides being incredibly stubborn.
  • Sidekicks: For different reasons, two or three guys help him during his quest. Most of them are only former friends, and hate helping him in this.
  • Damsel in Distress: The woman he loves. She is not in danger, and she doesn't want to see him.
  • Extravagant Tools: He only has a scooter he buys from a eBay-like webpage.
• Before there was deconstruction, there was EC Comics and especially Harvey Kurtzman's MAD whose famous parodies of movies often made fun of the obvious conventions and cliched stories. Specific examples include:
  • A movie cowboy (Lance Sterling) and his adventures with a real cowboy (John Smurd). Whereas the handsome Lance defeats the villain after a shootout and fist fight, getting a girl and a hero's celebration, the plain-looking John gets knocked out and beaten up, then kills the villain by taking him by surprise, only to be greeted with a fairly homely woman and lynched for murder.
  • Superduperman, a classic story and influence on Watchmen and Miracleman, is a brutal send-up of several classic Superman tropes - the Two-Person Love Triangle, Loves My Alter Ego and the Let's You and Him Fight of Superduperman and Captain Marbles which causes considerable property damage and ends only because the hero fights dirty.
  • Their parodies of Popeye, Archie and Mickey Mouse were similarly brutal and funny, exposing the nasty subject of Betty and Veronica as a classic adolescent male fantasy.

F-M

• Finder: Jaeger is one of the Lovable Rogue and Walking the Earth tropes. On the surface he may seem like a traditional action-adventure hero, except that his medical conditions force him to live that lifestyle. The only therapy for his unknown disease is for his body to endure a physical shock, meaning that he has to keep moving and getting hurt just to stay healthy.
• From Hell: From Hell deconstructs perceptions of the Victorian era, especially the late Victorian period, showing where many of our 20th Century obsessions (detective fiction, sensationalist tabloid journalism, serial killers) originated.
• The Great Power of Chninkel deconstructs the hero myth, in particular the Messianic Archetype, and the Unlikely Hero tropes.
• Hack/Slash: Arguably one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Both start with the premise "Final Girl of a horror film goes hunting the villains from other horror films," but unlike Buffy, who balances this with a normal life, Cassie is shown to be a deeply scarred person.
• Hero Squared: Of Valor's Black-and-White Morality and the concept of The Cape; Valor means well, but his actions outside of a comic book are in many ways just as destructive and irresponsible as the super-villains he battles. Furthermore, for all his fine talk and self-righteousness, he proves to have feet of clay and similar issues to Milo — which is not entirely unexpected, seeing as they are essentially the same man.
• Invincible: Of The Needs of the Many; whilst a fine and altruistic ideal, the vast majority of people just can't operate that way, because people have a natural hierarchy of caring based on personal connections. Mark is literally given the chance to undo the millions of deaths caused by the series up until that point by going back in time, but he rejects it because it will mean erasing his daughter Terra from existence (and probably also his half-brother Oliver, but he never thinks of that). The time-manipulating aliens who gave him this chance in an effort to try and restore the cosmic balance give him a short "The Reason You Suck" Speech calling him out on how unheroic this is, and promptly return him to a point five years in the future to where he started from as payback for screwing this up.
• Irredeemable: Your standard deconstruction of Superman through the Expy Plutonian, challenging the idea that someone given superpowers would automatically do the right thing without being emotionally prepared to handle the job and the concept of happily being a Slave to PR without actual regard for what people think. The finale puts a meta twist on this: when Qubit scatters Tony's essence throughout the multiverse in an attempt to give him his second chance, part of it helps inspire a pair of artists to create the first Superman comics. Thus, Superman is the reconstruction of the Plutonian.
  • Irredeemable #25 also deconstructs the idea that powers like Superman's or Plutonian's could ever be physically possible without absolutely shattering the laws of physics, much less accomplished by a being with the mass of an ordinary human. Reconstructed — albeit horrifyingly, given the implications for what this means Tony could do if he realized it — by the revelation that he's actually altering reality itself, allowing him to sidestep physics altogether and do whatever he thinks he can.
  • Issue #18 also serves as a deconstruction of the Badass Normal through the Hornet's flashbacks. He really did consider the Plutonian to be his best friend on the team, but he was all too aware of his lack of powers compared to his other superpowered teammates, giving him more reason to be on guard at times. It just took one simple question to make him realize Tony would snap eventually, and he makes a deal with the Vespa alien empire as a contingency plan in case his worst fears did indeed come true. The Hornet hated that he had to make such a deal, but he was ultimately proven right, plus it did save humanity from being exterminated/enslaved by the Vespa aliens.
• Kaijumax: As a child, Nobuko Matsumoto and her friends stood up for the turtle kaiju Zugaigo and defended him as the Protector of All Asia... only to have Zugaigo blaze a path of destruction through un-evacuated buildings and eat hundreds of innocent people. As a result, she killed him, and grew up into a hardass who believed that the only good monster is a dead one.
• Kick-Ass shows us what it would be like if a teenager without super powers ever became a superhero (like Spider-Man). The main character gets beaten within an inch of his life in every encounter, and things get even worse after he dons the mask; his only super power is that he has a metal plate in his head.
• Marshal Law: More like outright demolition.
  • Golden/Silver Age heroes: Homophobic, sexist, glory-seeking assholes, who don't deserve any of the fame they get, and their example only leads those who look up to them to ruin their lives. However, they're also tortured over the fact that they must always be perfect, an image which is impossible to keep up for any human.
  • One entire issue, set in a museum celebrating the "deeds" of the superheroes of the Golden Age, note that they almost always attacked safe targets, were killed off rather easily when attempting to actually fight in the war (causing the war to run longer by an estimated six months), and aren't a tenth as heroic as cops or soldiers who risked their far more vulnerable bodies to serve something bigger than themselves.
  • The Kingdom of the Blind likewise attacks the Batman mythos, mocking the billionaire's angst when Deceased Parents Are the Best, exposing his questionable sexual identity and tendency to violence, and stressing the class-war elements of a multi-millionaire going out at night to beat up poor people.
  • Dark age heroes: Violent, brutal, and psychotic murderers who aren't that different from the villains they fight. Also, their violent ways even serve to inspire more villains. However, they're acknowledged as psychologically scarred humans who can even portray themselves, and their victims, as sympathetic. It's even pointed out that Marshal Law's barbed wire can be seen as a symbol of penance for his actions.
  • Teenage groups like the Legion of Super-Heroes and X-Men are basically an elite club of cool kids who lord over and shame insecure kids into becoming sidekicks and lackeys who fall into peer pressure over body image and looks. These kids in turn spend all their time thinking about acceptance and expect the hot girl leader's attentions as a reward. Marshall Law's friendship and kindess with Growing Boy ends when the latter finally "gets accepted" from the group, and refuses to see it for the sham it is.
    • On another level, Secret Tribunal (the comic with the aforementioned expies) mocks the Fantastic Racism seen in X-Men in two ways. First, by calling out the absurdity of using what's more or less a power-fantasy to tell a story of being "outcasts feared by the world" (perhaps best shown when the Jean Grey analogue talks about how no man would choose a mutant like her for a partner despite being an obviously attractive girl with no visible deformities wearing an outfit showing her goods off, which comes off as a jab at Stripperiffic/Ms. Fanservice lady X-Men characters like Storm or Psylocke or Emma Frost). Secondly, by taking a hacksaw to the notion that mutants are "the next stage of evolution" or Homo Superior by Marshal pointing out that the mutants, from all their talk on how they are destined to replace humanity and are their betters are nothing more than glorified Nazis (backed by one mutant speaking of purging the "inferior").
• The Maxx: The comics and the animated series often deconstruct many superhero related tropes, such as The Cowl and Working-Class Hero (The Maxx is even referred as such by one kid in the sixth episode of the series): Not only does The Maxx constantly fails to save people from Mr. Gone, his vigilante actions only cause him to end in jail, forcing Julie to bail him out. Ultimately, most of the actions done by the main character as a superhero fail to have the same effect they would have in a more conventional comic book.
• Mega Man (Archie Comics): This adaptation takes a more realistic approach to the Classic series' events and shows its consequences.
  • In the first game adaptation and his first combat situation, Mega Man grows proud, power-hungry, and insists that That Man Is Dead when asked to show leniency.
  • Dr. Lalinde removing Tempo's emotions after feeling empathy for her shows how someone might think seeing robots as children is terrifying.
  • The second arc follows up what would happen in the aftermath of a robot rampage, with a Federal agency investigating Dr. Light.
  • In the arc covering the events of Mega Man 3, the point-of-view of the Robot Masters is covered in a more cynical light by Needle Man, who laments that they are nothing more than soldiers being marched to their deaths by a Bad Boss, and can do nothing about it.
• Miracleman:
  • Moore developed a lot of the themes of Watchmen first in his run of Miracleman and indeed the former was described by him as the last word in his interest in superhero deconstructions, which properly began with this series. In Miracleman he tackles the conflict between boring civilian identity and the superhero identity, the wider social effect superheroes can have on the world and the Ascended Fridge Horror of a superhero-supervillain dust-up, likewise the Blue-and-Orange Morality that develops from the mere fact of having superpowers.
  • The final issue of course is a parody of Crystal Spires and Togas utopia portraying that such a world can amount to mere Ethical Hedonism and a false paradise without any real authenticity and feeling. It's also much harder to resist than any dystopian reality since opponents would come across as either Luddites or regressive and reactionary people.
  • Young Miracleman/Dicky Dauntless also explores the Captain America caught in time warp arc. He's still mentally a teenager of the Fifties and the newly changed world of the Miracles is deeply strange and upsetting, and he's not able to adjust the shock, and Miracleman and Miraclewoman are not willing to help him adjust.

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• Nemesis (Mark Millar): The series is this to comic book series focusing on the escapist exploits of supervillains, by stripping out everything that creators typically use to make us root for characters like that. Nemesis isn't fighting people who are as bad or worse than him, he has no tragic backstory or loved ones to make the audience sympathise with him, he's not a Noble Demon like Doctor Doom or Black Adam; in fact he's Jerkass with no Affably Evil or Faux Affably Evil traits, and his evil isn't cartoonish and over-the-top enough to make him fun like the Joker or Deadpool.
• Planetary: In some cases just outright demolition. Even Deconstructions are deconstructed; the widescale Darker and Edgier trend in superhero comics in the 1980s and 1990s is deconstructed with the appearance of a former Cape who, having apparently suffered one of these during that period and angrily blaming the John Constantine Expy for it, angrily rants that he didn't want or need such a deconstruction just for the hell of it and liked his former, more innocent life perfectly fine, thank you very much.^note The John Constantine expy is used as as a stand-in for Constantine's creator Alan Moore and the other "British invasion" writers, who played a major role in the deconstruction of American supehero comics in the '80s and '90s.
• Princess Ugg: Several themes, to which one or several whole issues are devoted. There's usually an appropriate line to sum each one up.
  • The (slightly Übermensch-flavoured) Proud Warrior Race Guy archetype: The frost giants and Ulga's people have been fighting each other for centuries, not even remembering (or caring about) what caused the feud in the first place. They are all very good at war, which makes up most of their culture, but it's slowly driving both to extinction, and neither know how to stop since they don't understand the concept of diplomacy.
  • The Ubermensch archetype in general, with the bandit chief who sees himself as superior, as he follows his will and desires alone and bosses his men around, arguing that their are just "slaves" who need to be commanded. When he proposes Ulga to join him because he sees her as his like, she briefly hesitates, before declining: this was her way of living for a long time, and she's starting to see the fault in it, even pointing out every flaw in the bandit's worldview.
    Bandit chief: I fear nothing in this world.
    Ulga: You're afraid of civilization, where strength alone ain't enough. Where ya gotta trust others, no matter how fickle they are. Things ya can't do. Without civilization, all men are enemies. And only a fool would sleep beside an enemy.
  • Additionaly, a point is made about the relationship between the Bandit Chief and his mooks. He doesn't doubt their loyalty because he views them as slaves, mindless minions who just wish for a master's guidance. At first, it seems he's right, as they keep attacking Ulga even when she slaughters them by the dozen, and tolerate her presence on the ship (although, with her hands bound) afterwards, simply because he orders it. They later betray him at the moment he loses his position of strength, and don't turn back even once no matter how loud he shouts at them. Ulga sums it up:
    Ulga: You won't find no loyalty 'mong slaves, man. They got nothing to get out of it.
  • The classic fairy tale weddings and usual Princess and Prince archetypes. It's shown early how a Princess' grace, knowledge, poise, and talents all serve the same goal: securing a good wedding, which itself is usually little more than a political and economical arrangement.
    Mal: Open up your eyes, Julifer. You're not a princess and I'm not a knight in shining armor. This isn't a fairy tale, it's politics.
• Providence: Part of Alan Moore's intent is to ground Lovecraft's stories in the context of the political and social tensions of the period in which it was written:
  • The racist subtext of Lovecraft's original stories is directly brought to the surface and re-examined with a modern lens. The residents of the Innsmouth-expy resent others for racially discriminating against them. The Red Hook is shown as a positive example of New York's melting pot rather than the hysterical racist atmosphere in Lovecraft's story set there.
  • Likewise, where Lovecraft described the occult in generally sinister terms, and seemed to feel that cosmic forces can make one Go Mad from the Revelation, Moore, being an occultist himself, is more neutral towards these aspects. As such many of the evil and creepy wizards and sorcerors from Lovecraft's stories are shown to be Affably Evil or given Pet the Dog moments.
  • Occult societies are also shown to contain the same class biases and prejudices then the supposedly conventional society they are criticizing. Garland Wheatley and Tobit Boggs are both disappointed that they are looked down as low-down hicks by the current Order of the Stella Sapiente, which is led by the more urbane and academically minded occult groups:
    Robert Black: I mean, I don't know much about the occult, but I'd have thought that serious philosophers should be above all that.
    Garland Wheatley: Course they should! They talk about distant stars an' eternity's depths an' how man ain't nothin', though respectable society is, seems like.
  • Henry Anneseley for his part refutes these charges, and states that the Liber Stella Sapiente have modernized and become more accessible, less ritualistic and more scientific in their approach and researches and for them the Redeemer Prophecy is only one of many parts of the Order and not the sole one.
• Rat Queens: Of fantasy role-playing and High Fantasy comics. Or at least of worlds in which adventurers are commonplace, as Palisade is getting tired of their brawling and rowdiness spilling over into the streets and causing all sorts of property damage. To the point where one of the townspeople hires an assassin to kill them all.
• Sonic the Comic: Everything you know about the franchise is turned on its head here. Sonic's flaws are played up a lot more and they end up biting him in the ass as he becomes a social pariah because of them. Robotnik is legitimately insane as his normal quirks are not played for laughs. Its one of the bleakest settings for the franchise to date.
  • Super Sonic is rewritten from a standard Super Mode to a Superpowered Evil Side who exists purely for chaos.
• The Strange Talent of Luther Strode:
  • The series primarely picks apart Charles Atlas Superpower, Fantastic Fighting Style, and the way society tends to glorify or idealize badass heroes that can beat the hell out of anybody. Hell, the basic message at the end of the series is that you should use your gifts to be a better person because anyone can go push people around but that doesn't help anything and your not really making things better.
  • Fantastic Fighting Style is deconstructed with the effects the Method has on the students. Sure, it can make you a badass capable of killing mooks en mass like you're John Wick but the enhanced awareness granted by the Method that allows you to dodge bullets and predict you opponent's every move also constantly makes you aware of how fragile and easy to break normal people are. The constant input makes you see people as bags of meet and bone that you know how to kill 50 times over. Combine that with the rush of having a superhuman body and being able to do what you want without anyone stopping you make you lose more and more empathy with others until the people around you start to look like nothing more than targets and weaklings to be slaughtered.
• The Ten-Seconders: Of super-heroes, and people's belief in them.
• Word of God said that the Series Finale for the Tintin comics was the album Tintin in Tibet. The next three albums (The Castafiore Emerald, Flight 714, and Tintin and the Picaros) are deconstructions of the Tintin series in general.
  • The Castafiore Emerald has Hergé trying to keep a plot where not much happens still suspenseful.
  • Flight 714 ridiculizes Tintin's Arch-Enemy, Rastapopoulos,
  • Tintin and the Picaros has Tintin pulling an initial Refusal of the Call because he smells something fishy about the whole affair (he's right, but ends up coming along out of loyalty for his friends anyway), Haddock suddenly unable to enjoy alcohol and Calculus showing some hidden Magnificent Bastard tendencies. At the end of the story, it is made crystal clear that the heroes only helped San Theodoros experience yet another Full-Circle Revolution. Oh, and Tintin wears jeans, instead of his iconic plus-fours.
• The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers: Of pretty much the entire of Transformers franchise. In particular the comic completely tears apart the War Is Glorious, Black-and-White Morality, Anti-Hero, Never Say "Die", and Ascended Fanboy tropes. The comic also takes special time to display in graphic detail just how utterly horrific actual warfare between Transformers would be in real life.
• The Transformers Megaseries: Of Combining Mecha. Putting six minds together in one body is not cool, and drives the resulting creation utterly mad, with the added side effect of creating a gargantuan robot monster lashing out at everything it sees.
• Wanted:
  • Not just of comic books and super-villains (see below), but to a larger extent, society's glorification of violence. It's a widely established fact that becoming an action hero and "manning up" is a power fantasy frequently entertained by adolescents (mainly males). Here, Mark Millar suggests that such dreams are not only unrealistic, but just downright dysfunctional and reprehensible. For example, Wesley mentions several times about how his transition to cold-blooded killer changed his life for the better, but isn't portrayed sympathetically at all. In fact, at this point readers are most likely disgusted by his actions, with his callous murder of innocents, like the moment where, on a whim, he decides to walk into a police station and kill every male officer and nearly rape the sole female survivor, all because he was bored. In fact, towards the end of the comic, as he enacts his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against Mr. Rictus, he confidently states "I am John Wayne, Bruce Lee, Clint Eastwood", among other action heroes. At this point, would you really cheer for him, even if he plays on your power fantasies like a video game?
  • Wanted explores the entire The Hero's Journey archetype of storytelling by stuffing it in a blender with Protagonist Journey to Villain and hitting frappe. Wesley starts out as an average loser before having the Call to Adventure forced on him; before the second issue is over, he's a horrible, horrible person, and every person he comes across seems tailor-made to cheer him on in his horribleness and mould him into a more competent horrible person, offering moral support and justifying his actions for him, so that even when he has moments of introspection, the answer is always "you're right, and you deserve all the power". Compare the journey of Wesley Gibson with the journey of a character like Harry Potter: lots of conveniently inherited guardians, assistants, resources, and lucky powers that save the day with bizarre ease. When changed to this context, the insidiousness of the archetype kind of comes to the fore.
• We Stand on Guard: In the first issue, Booth is given lip about his Superman tattoo and he defends it by saying that Superman has a message of immigrants that become powerful (especially Canadian ones). In the last issue, Amber is about to detonate a bomb vest that will kill her, the Administrator and will poison Canada's water (which will make the Americans leave, but will cause an immense amount of ecological damage). Amber's last words before detonating it?
  "There's no Superman out there. 'Cause you know what really happens when you blow up a kid's parents? You don't get some noble defender of justice. You get me."
• Welcome to Tranquility: Of The Golden Age of Comic Books; the people who fought the Nazis are horribly scarred because of what they experienced, supervillains who fought with the Nazis have been shunned and hassled all their lives since then, and most characters are struggling to deal with growing old in a world where younger heroes have taken their places.

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