Sam and Max are ostensibly peacekeepers, but in practice they're peacekeepers who are only happy if there's no peace to keep, and the latter of the duo is a sociopathic maniac who's more of a mobile and highly unstable weapon than a detective. In Max's words, they save the world. Sometimes on purpose!
One of Steve Purcell's rules for writers in other Sam and Max media is that while Sam and Max are sociopaths, they're still HEROIC Sociopaths. Heroic sociopaths with a wing in Hell dedicated to them. That are allowed into Heaven. Make of that what you will.
Nemesis the Warlock is supposed to be seen as a hero of the alien resistance, but is really a manipulative, murderous jerk and nobody would root for him, was he fighting somebody less evil than Torquemada. Later the series decides to turn him into one in-universe, revealing some unpleasant things about him: most notably, that his motivation is simple boredom and he could have solved the conflict long time ago, but is holding back, therefore prolonging a monstrous war, that took a great toll on both sides and caused the genocide of countless alien species for thrills. That however makes him lose the status of a hero among both his allies and the readers.
Gladstone Gander in Don Rosa's The Sign of the Triple Distelfink. Considering the immense lucky streaks he gets every other day of the year and his unrelenting smugness about that fact, it's hard to feel sorry for him if his Born Lucky status is inverted on a single one. And he accomplishes his goal of getting rid of even that blot on his entitlement to fortune, while beating Donald out of attaining any luck for himself, who is usually portrayed as barely being able to get by or financially support his nephews (take for example the ending to Super Snooper Strikes Again).
In Gold Key Comics Star Trek story The Planet of No Return, aka K-G, Planet of Death, Kirk and co. discover a planet with a plant civilization, in an otherwise uninhabited galaxy. Unsurprisingly, the plants view the landing party as prey. To prevent this civilization, which was just sitting there minding its own business, spreading to neighboring uninhabited planets, Spock performs an act of planet-wide genocide. We even get to see the Enterprise phasering sentient trees who burn as they run for their lives across a devastated landscape.
The Fixer from Holy Terror (who, interestingly enough, was written by Frank Miller and was a Captain Ersatz of Batman). Natalie Stack is at least a criminal already, but The Fixer is meant to be the hero of Empire City. Said hero yells at his allies and belittles them, uses guns on the terrorists, cripples one and threatens to gouge his eyes and blows them up despite saying he despises their lack of respect for life, makes constant racists remarks about them and doesn't suggest any other method of stopping someone save for killing, including a corrupt police commissioner. And before the comic ends, he reveals he only fights crime to stay in shape and practice on criminals to get ready in case of a terrorist invasion, meaning his only interest has been to kill Muslim terrorists.
King Aspen and his deer (except Bramble) from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW), despite being presented as victims losing their home to an evil construction company, came off as much more heartless and villainous than Well-To-Do. While Well-To-Do unrepentantly destroyed a chunk of the forest, King Aspen caused much more damage by sending vines and animals from the forest to invade pretty much all of Equestria and endangered countless innocents who had absolutely nothing to do with it out of mere petty vengeance. Not only did these actions actually prolong the problem (Celestia and Luna would have happily helped if they weren't busy defending Canterlot from the vines), but the deer are completely unapologetic about it and not even so much as told off for it (Can't Argue With Deer, after all) . The comic even ends with Princess Celestia apologizing to them for some reason. To say this all hit a sore spotwith the fanbase is one heck of an understatement; the fanbase's description of the deer tends to fall somewhere between sociopathic smug elves and eco-terrorists.
Due to extreme Values Dissonance, basically every "good" character in Chick Tracts up to and including God. The measure of what constitutes morality in the Chick Tracts universe is based solely on devotion to Chick's own brand of extreme cultish fundamentalist evangelism, which the vast majority of Christians, let alone people in general, simply do not share. Characters can be the most selfish, cruel and just plain awful human beings to ever exist, but a deathbed conversion or lip service to the author's professed religious beliefs will have them ascend to heaven, while people who spent their entire life trying to stop misery around the world will go to hell for the crime of not bothering to convert anyone.
God himself comes across as a cruel, petty and nasty egomaniac who doesn't care about mankind and hungers only for adoration.
The titular heroine of The Pro, who was a surly prostitute given superpowers and was apathetic at best toward using her powers for the greater good. She's very abusive towards her infant son, she's quicker to resort to brutal methods when fighting criminals, she gets even with one of her short-changing clients by having a line of prostitutes shove extremely painful objects up his ass and later rips off his jaw for attempting to shoot her son, and she shows zero respect for the League of Honor's standards for decency. The League of Honor, in contrast, are meant to be seen as inferior to the protagonist for holding back when lives could be at stake and chewing her out whenever she goes too far in her treatment of the villains. All this and the comic's writer Garth Ennis, notorious for his bias against superheroes, apparently thinks the Pro is still better than conventional superheroes.
Katie from Seconds is this in spades, as she cheats on Max with Andrew repeatedly, and yet she still ends up with Max at the end. And she even ends up with him after he catches her smooching on Andrew.
Johnny Turbo: The titular hero regularly assaults and shoots the FEKA goons for simply selling their products.
The title character of Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist occasionally edges into this trope, most notably in an early story where she decides to take action against women getting raped and men trying to rationalize that women like it by shoving a telephone pole up a random man's ass. The problem with the story is that there is absolutely no indication that the man Hothead attacked was a rapist or a rape apologist, so, aside from the fact that it is never okay to rape someone, Hothead's actions can easily give the impression that she just sexually assaulted an innocent person unprovoked.
The Boys: Most of the titular Boys. Sure, when you compare them to their enemies, they more or less look like saints by comparison, but they aren't much better. They’ve got a lot of blood on their hands and during the series, a lot of what they do can be considered morally dubious at best, and downright horrifying at worst. It doesn’t help that their motivations for opposing and hunting down the supers aren’t quite altruistic... and their methods for dealing with their enemies are... ”creative”. This is not to mention the fact that despite their (particularly Butcher and Hughie's) ideological opposition to superhumanity as a whole, they themselves are superhumans. You could easily argue that their stated purpose would be just as well fulfilled purely through their surveillance operations: gathering sordid information on their activities for use as blackmail does a far better job of 'keeping the supes in line' than going around maiming them, but the latter seems to be most of what The Boys get up to: using their superpowers to throw their weight around, just like the supes they are supposedly there to keep in line.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW): Karai is a criminal and a murderer who has hurt and killed many people, both innocent and evil. However, the comic initially presented her as the "reasonable" member of the Foot Clan and she is rarely ever called out for her actions. This appears to have been rectified in issue 92, when discussing the fate of the orphans currently in the foot clan's care she wants to conscript them into warriors or kill them for seeing the inner workings and she is shown to be a violent zealot for it.
Crécy: The narrator insists that he and his countrymen are plucky and heroic underdogs—despite the fact that they deliberately pillage and burn several French villages from Caen to Crécy in an attempt to persuade the French people that their own warrior class won't protect them but the English will.note How any English commander thought these chevauchée tactics would endear them to their French victims is anyone's guess.
In the beginning, the Authority were hardline with their ideals and used violence reasonably. With Jack Hawksmoor as leader receiving the position after Jenny Sparks's death, the Authority became increasingly predisposed toward unyielding moral positions and merciless brutality as time went on, but the entry of another character, Jenny Quantum/Quarx, as a member of the team softened them somewhat. Now, their level of violence is about par for Wildstorm's post-apocalyptic world, so they're no better or worse than any other group.
Right from the start, this was the case. Ellis has said on more than one occasion that he wrote the Authority as villains, just ones who happened to fight even bigger villains. The first story arc does end with Midnighter plowing a giant swathe through a populated city just to reach one person, after all. If that's not enough for you, one arc later the Authority stops an invasion from a parallel Earth by totally and indiscriminately destroying a whole country to eliminate the enemy's infrastructure, even though by that point it is clear that the invaders are completely outmatched by them anyway. Starting from Millar's run, however, the comic increasingly turned into a vehicle for political Author Tracts, where the Authority were indeed designated to be heroes, although, obviously not all readers were convinced.
In the "Utopian" arc, their actions kill off an entire alternate earth.
Monica's Gang: Marina made drawings of Smudge bathing and freely handed out copies of them to everyone in the block without his permission. Smudge got understandably offended by it, but Marina countered with "It's just a drawing" and brought up her right to freedom of expression. He then steals her art tools as revenge, but she proceeds to fill the walls of the streets with the very same drawing as payback. So Marina gets away with not only violating Smudge's privacy, but also with vandalizing public property, yet the reader is supposed to side with her.
Amulet: Some feel Emily and Navin are these, with some:
For one, Emily rarely does anything heroic and the reasoning behind her actions sounds less because she wants to do good but more like she simply has no other choice. It also doesn't help that she's rarely nice and warm to other, especially ruthless towards her enemies and is not above using force and violence against her allies, proven they stand in her way. She also doesn't exhibit any sort of leadership qualities, and can be quite arrogant, and although she does care for other people and believes in the value of teamwork, she still steadfastedly works alone.
Ever since the Resistance claim that Navin is a commander and a leader, he doesn't possess leadership qualities himself, and always defer to someone else when there's leading needed to be done. He also has little development at all because the lack of a concrete personal goal or character flaws.
Amazing Cow Heroes: The cow heroes often snatch burgers people are about to eat or make without any warning or persuading them not to beforehand, which doesn't exactly make them look all that good.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: In "The Tempest", we're clearly meant to support Emma in her plan to get revenge on "Jimmy" by murdering him. However, she doesn't even try to get her own hands dirty, and instead emotionally blackmails Jason King into being her assassin while she safely watches from a distance. Then when the apocalypse happens, all the story's "good guys" don't even make the slightest effort to save humanity, choosing instead to abandon Earth.
, aka K-G, Planet of Death, Kirk and co. discover a planet with a plant civilization, in an otherwise uninhabited galaxy. Unsurprisingly, the plants view the landing party as prey. To prevent this civilization, which was just sitting there minding its own business, spreading to neighboring uninhabited planets, Spock performs an act of planet-wide genocide. We even get to see the Enterprise phasering sentient trees who burn as they run for their lives across a devastated landscape.