Emergency Transformation / Comic Books

• In Blackbird (2018), the members of the secret society of magical cabals known as paragons start off as ordinary humans who undergo a magical ritual that requires them to first die and then be resurrected as idealized versions of themselves in order to acquire their magical powers. When Nina Rodriguez, the story's heroine, gets killed in an earthquake at the tender age of 13, her paragon mother uses a partial version of the ritual as a handy means of resurrecting her without actually completing the full paragon transformation. This leads to a lot of complications later on...
• This is how Patriot from Young Avengers said he got his powers, via blood transfusion from his super-grandpa. He was lying. Later, it happens for real.
• Jennifer Walters, attorney at law, also got a blood transfusion — from her cousin Dr. Bruce Banner. Unusually for this trope, Jen usually likes being She-Hulk or even prefers it to her human form. The later Retcon that the Hulk's personalities are a result of multiple personality disorder and were not caused by his powers happens to explain away why she doesn't have the same problems the Hulk has. Of course, she did have some issues at first (but more roid rage-ish than "HULK SMASH"). As she became more used to the transformation, her lack of inhibitions shifted themselves from wanting to break stuff to just having fun.
• Teen Titans:
  • Cyborg was given his cybernetic parts by his father after an attack by an other-dimensional creature nearly killed him, ate his mother and fatally contaminated his father with radiation poisoning (which neither knew about at the time). It took the traumatised Cyborg quite the time to come to terms with the whole deal, understandably.
  • Gar "Beast Boy" Logan gained his powers when his parents injected him with an experimental serum to save him from a rare, incurable disease.
• Doom Patrol (Gar's former team), could be poster children for this, especially Robotman and the original Negative Man. Niles "The Chief" Caulder arguably counts (defusing a bomb implanted in his chest put him in a wheelchair), but with current continuity turning him into a monster that arranged the horrific accidents that changed some members of Doom Patrol into "heroic freaks."
• Henry Heywood was severely injured by saboteurs. A scientist gave him steel replacement parts, saving his life and turning him into a super-strong and durable "indestructible man", Commander Steel from All-Star Squadron. In the New 52 "Rotworld" stories, Henry Heywood uploaded himself into a robot body when the Rot was taking over the bodies of the living.
• The Invaders (Marvel Comics): A blood transfusion from the original (highly humanlike android) Human Torch gave Spitfire her super-speed powers. Yes, a blood transfusion from a flaming robot gave her super-speed powers. A second transfusion forty years later not only reactivated her then-faded powers, but de-aged her back to the age when she first became Spitfire.
• In the Forgotten Realms comics, the character Minder was originally a dwarven adventurer who was fatally injured in battle; in desperation, the wizard of the group transferred her spirit into a magically animated golem.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Star Wars: Legacy: Cade refuses to let his childhood love Azlyn die, even though she asks him to, accepting her fate and the will of the Force. When all other options fail, he gets her to people who put her in a Vader-esque life support armor. After waking up, she was really pissed at him. Fortunately for her, she managed to avoid slipping to the Dark Side and managed to get the scary black suit replaced with something much more elegant.
  • The Biggs Darklighter comics have Hobbie Klivian repeatedly lose limbs and need prosthetics to keep being a pilot. One of Biggs' lines◊, while commenting on the strength of a prosthetic hand, is "Not like it makes up for losing your..." ...which is generally taken to mean that Hobbie lost his penis.
• Bunnie Rabbot in the Sonic the Hedgehog comics had already been changed into a cyborg against her free will; however, being only half-roboticized, the effects eventually catch up with her and start screwing up her body, putting her in the hospital. She's given the option of removing her original robotic limbs (transformed from her real ones) and replacing them with new ones (which would ruin her chances of deroboticization and having her original flesh-and-blood body back, a longtime goal/dream), or trying to treat her condition to slow oncoming death. She goes for the upgrade, deciding to finally fully accept herself as a cyborg. There was another option that they could have tried, but knew it was way too risky - attempting to deroboticize her. The problem was that they didn't exactly have the original roboticizer - they had it, but Sonic damaged it when they rescued her way back when and they ended up rebuilding it to use later on. As it wasn't the original one, using it to revert her to normal would be life threatening.
• When Techno of the Thunderbolts got his neck snapped, he transferred his consciousness into his pack o' gear, forming a robotic body out of it. He liked it much better than his human body.
• In 30 Days of Night Eben Oleman injects himself with vampire blood in order to save the remaining survivors of Barrow.
• Inverted in an early Spider-Man comic: When Peter Parker had to make a blood transfusion to save Aunt May, he was almost completely depowered for about a week while the villains-of-the-issue ran amok. Aunt May didn't get any of his powers, either — in fact, the radioactivity in his blood later caused her further health problems during the Master Planner storyline.
• Captain America:
  • The Machinesmith, as recounted at the top of the main page. A little later in the issue, while he is attacking with a crowd of duplicates, Captain America reasons that only one of them must hold the original's mind and the others must be directed by a computer bank that they are defending. He damages it, and all the robots fall. The sparking computer tells him that yes, his robots did program-record his mind, but into this computer; to get mobility he "microbeamed" into the bodies and he's never quite all there, so no matter how human-looking the bodies he built were, he was living a lie. And he couldn't self-terminate, so he thanks Cap for falling for his plan and helping him commit suicide. Though given some of the events before this, it's entirely possible that he was lying; his "death" here was the kind that is conveniently easy to undo in case the writers wanted him back. And in fact he was, as an Energy Being able to transfer into any electrical device.
  • Also happened to the Red Skull, who transferred his consciousness into the body of one of Arnim Zola's robots.
• After going a few rounds with Daken in Dark Reign, The Punisher was dead, until Morbius the Living Vampire glued him back as a Frankenstein's Monster like being (Franken-Castle).
• In the Alternate Universe series Mutant X, Gambit was turned by a Storm that didn't "get over" Dracula's bite back when. It almost costs both their unlives.
• In Superman, Hank Henshaw's physical body expired due to radiation exposure, but is able to transfer his consciousness into a robot body. His wife killed herself after seeing his new body, and the Cyborg-Superman later became a Death Seeker.
• Planetary #0's story of a Wildstorm analogue to The Incredible Hulk incorporates this. Here, rather than a gamma bomb, ersatz-Banner was caught in the blast of a Reality Warping supercomputer, which he had set to erase from the universe all matter within a small area of desert. A witness to his transformation into a Nigh-Invulnearable monster hypothesizes that in order to turn himself into something that would survive the blast, ersatz-Banner ran through his head an equation based on the theoretical physics behind the computer's Reality Warping.
• In Xombi, inventor David Kim was revived from a critical wound when his lab assistant injected him with a beneficial nanotechnological virus. In order to rebuild David, his nanites used the closest matter available, which included the lab assistant herself.
• The short-lived Archie Comics title ManTech (based on a line of toys) was about a trio of dying astronauts who are found by an alien. The alien saves their lives by turning them into super-powered cyborgs. Lasertech loves the change, Solartech accepts it as necessary, and Aquatech hates it.
• In Hack/Slash: Slice Hard, Emily Cristy's cosmetics company researched "slashers" in hopes of reversing the aging process; when the slashers escape, "slasher serum", which induces the transformation into a slasher upon death, is the only thing to come of this research. Cristy used a vial on herself after being mortally wounded by an escaped slasher. This had the side-effect of making her go absolutely crazy — they don't call them "slashers" for nothing.
• This is the origin of the Human/Atomic Sub in Big Bang Comics. The aged Dr. Noah Talbot designed a sophisticated robot body as a prosthesis for injured soldiers, but when Nazis came to steal his research he suffered a heart attack and was forced to transfer his own mind into his creation before he died. It wasn't a decision he would regret, even though an oversight in developing the body's artificial "blood" meant it had to be submerged in water once every hour or so.
• In Superman & Batman: Generations, Superman destroys the Ultra-Humanite's escape rocket, which critically injures Ultra's body and damages his minion "Ell"'s brain. Ultra's robot minions put his brain in Ell's body, and he spends the next fifty years posing as Lex Luthor in his quest to get revenge on the Man of Steel^note This may be author John Byrne lampshading the similarities between the two characters during The Golden Age of Comic Books. In the meantime, the robots attempt to heal Luthor's damaged brain and rehabilitate his evil personality, which results in his becoming the story's version of Metallo.
• In Death Vigil:
  • Clara was the target of Human Sacrifice for her Necromancer boyfriend's Ritual Magic. To seal away the monsters summoned and prevent her from dying, Bernie offers to make Clara into one of the Vigil's members. Clara accepts under the pretense of "not dying".
  • Allistor cures Mia's Soap Opera Disease by sacrificing and binding her to a True Primordial, which makes her immortal at the cost of developing a Horror Hunger and loss of humanity (at least, until she meets James).
• In one alternate reality where the Runaways were recruited to form the Young Avengers, Chase became the new Iron Lad after getting stabbed in the chest. The Iron Lad chestplate happened to be nearby, and it was capable of dispensing nanites to heal wounds, so he grabbed it and stuck it on. His teammates all suggested that he'd probably never be able to remove the chestplate without dying.
• In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (IDW), Bebop and Rocksteady break Donatello's shell while the rest of the team is away. To save his life, the Fugitoid puts Donny's body in a freezer to slow down his metabolic functions, then transfers his consciousness into the turtle robot Metalhead. He stays this way for several issues while he and the Fugitoid work on repairing his damaged body with mutagen and an artificial shell made of titanium.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1987): The scientist who becomes Giganta only developed her method of overwriting minds (essentially killing the original owner) with her own in order to save herself from a painful fatal and untreatable illness. She and her assistant grabbed Wondy when Wondy was claimed to be brain dead in order to transfer her there, but when they were interrupted her assistant had to transfer her into a gorilla instead lest she die.
  • Donna Troy's most well known (and coherent) backstory has her rescued from an apartment fire by Diana and brought to Themyscira where the Amazons' use of their healing purple ray on her gave her the same powers as them. Depending on which source is used for the tale it can read as if she was healed and given powers to save her life or just to help her fit in among her new people.
• The 35th issue of Rom: Spaceknight had Namor save the life of Sybil by converting her into an Atlantean so the girl could survive underwater.
• Morbius reluctantly transforms a girl dying of a drug overdose into a living vampire like him to save her life. It works, but since she was already too far gone there's nothing left of her but a braindead shell now filled with hunger. Morbius kills her by breaking her neck when she attacks her friends.