Examples of Improvised Weapon in Comic Books.
DC Universe
- Arak: Son of Thunder: Arak killed the sea serpent that attacked his Viking longship by throwing a huge golden cross at it: piercing the roof its mouth and penetrating the brain.
- Batman:
- The "The Hungry Grass!" story involves a bellhop killing a hotel guest with an ashtray.
- Batgirl: Year One: As attempting to stop a shop robbery, Batgirl bludgeons one thief with a shopping bag filled with food cans.
- Harley Quinn Vol 2: In issue 3, to stop the love-crazy convicts that are after her, Harley breaks into a tool store to gear up. Her arsenal includes a weed whacker, an axe, a nail gun, and a propane tank.
- Batwoman (Rebirth): Kate rips a chandelier from the ceiling of the Desert Rose and uses it as a flail while fighting Knife, and in a later issue breaks a stalagmite from the ground to use as a club. At a different point she also tosses a cup of coffee at Knife as a distraction.
- The Golden Age Black Canary displays uncanny accuracy with improvised thrown weapons, no matter how improbable or unbalanced — including footwear
◊, vases◊, bulky cameras◊, random cutlery, and pies◊. Curiously, while she demonstrates her amazing throwing skills often, neither she nor any other characters ever make particular note of it. - Green Arrow: Roy Harper is an expert at Moo Gi Gong, a Korean martial art based on improvisation and turning anything available to you into a weapon.
- The Flash will sometimes throw as many rocks, bricks, dishes, shoes, whatever on hand in rapid succession. And failing at that he might just whip up a dirt storm.
- The Question. Potted Plant. Computer Monitor. Car.
- Superman:
- The Man of Steel once used the Empire State Building as a weapon against Doomsday. (It was evacuated beforehand)
- Supergirl used an aircraft carrier during Red Daughter of Krypton to settle a dispute with another hero.
- In The Strange Revenge of Lena Luthor, a mook bludgeons a weakened Supergirl with a clothes rack.
- The Plague of the Antibiotic Man, Superman uses a ski-lift's chair to bludgeon Jevik.
- Superboy (1994): Superboy is constantly using his surroundings for weapons in a highly destructive manner, though he does at least try not to wreck everything.
- Wonder Woman
- Wonder Woman (1942):
- Once Di grabbed the novelty giant umbrella sign for an umbrella store on her way out a window to use as a weapon in a fight with some gun-toting gangsters.
- In the Impossible Tales Wonder Girl story in #107 Diana uses a piece of long coral to fight off a swordfish and then wack the giant clam clamped around her ankle to force it to let her go.
- Artemis once made a weapon similar to a meteor hammer out of her hair and one of the skulls on her outfit. Since the skull was made of silver, she was able to use it to injure the demon lord Neron.
- Wonder Woman (1942):
- Watchmen:
- Rorschach. Hairspray. Cooking fat. Grappling gun. Toilet (twice). Numerous others. Hurm. Deconstruction. Lethal and gruesome results.
- Ozymandias. Ashtray. Fork. Bowl Cover. Place Mat. Less Than Lethal Results. Most of which probably wouldn't work in real life. But then again, it is Ozymandias.
- Ant-Man once uses Pym Particles to enlarge coins and use them as throwing weapons. He specifically says that he's "throwing big money at the problem".
- In an issue of The Avengers, the team encounters a future version of Franklin Richards. He proves that he's who he says he is by relating a childhood anecdote when Black Widow showed him how to make poison by mixing his crayons with bathroom soap, and then explained how to strangle someone by using his jump rope.
- In Issue #2 of the Kelly Thompson series, the Black Widow uses her necklace as a weapon when fighting off some alley thugs.
- Blade once stuck a vampire to the ceiling with an electric screw driver. Points for ramming it through him without turning it on.
- Daredevil: Bullseye can use anything as a weapon, usually by throwing it. One example where he is in prison, with his hands restrained. He is using a straw to drink his fresh-squeezed orange juice. Occasionally, he sucks out a pit, and fires it through the straw. To kill flies. But when the ninja show up to kill him, he is all out of pits.
- During another prison stint, he was not restrained, but he was denied access to any hard object. So he created his own ammo: he bashed his face into the concrete floor and spat one of his broken teeth in a guard's eye.
- At another point when he was beaten to paralysis (it happens to him a lot), he had to be kept on liquid food so that he couldn't throw his stool as a deadly weapon... which Bullseye admits would probably work, and he likely would do so if he could.
- To take on Venom in Sinister Spider-Man, he lobbed a yap dog, which ended up clamping onto Venom's eye for the entire fight! Even more amazingly, the dog lived through the ordeal.
- On an odd occasion, Daredevil rushed at Bullseye in the corner of a room far away from anything he could actually use as a weapon, figuring he'd be an easy target. Bullseye actually wound up winning and nearly killing Daredevil by beating him against the walls and floor.
- Death's Head is willing to improvise weapons from whatever is at hand, including furniture, barbecue skewers, and doors. If the room isn't empty, he's armed.
- Gambit (Marvel Comics): Gambit's power is custom made for this trope. Aside from his standard playing cards, he's charged a wad of gum, his credit cards, an anchor, poker chips, a bowling ball (stolen from a pair of guys who look suspiciously like Walter and Donnie), and in one particularly memorable scene, a boysenberry pie. However, he sort of cheats since he gets to charge them with explosive psychic destruction before throwing them.
- Hawkeye has been known to effectively use everything from pocket change to playing cards when he doesn't have a bow, and has stated that he looks for potential throwing weapons whenever he enters a room.
- Marvel Two-in-One: When stuck in the Bad Future of the 31st century, the Thing, Captain America and Sharon Carter are running from Badoon troops. Ben sees a car and heads towards it. Cap asks how he expects to drive a futuristic car, but Ben reveals he had no intention of driving it. He instead throws it at the Badoon troops.
- The Punisher
- In their first encounter, The Punisher managed to defeat the Russian (an ungodly powerhouse who shrugged off a knife to the gut like it was nothing and casually tore apart a pistol with his bare hands) using only a hot pizza and an extremely fat man.
- Garth Ennis's The Punisher: Welcome Back, Frank storyline is full of instances of the Punisher using improvised weapons with lethal results. The best example is when Frank gets trapped by mobsters in the Bronx Zoo without ammo and uses the animals to kill them off. He throws one guy at a snake, dunks another one head first in a piranha tank and leads the rest into a polar bear pit. Unfortunately, the bears are more docile and curious than Frank expects, so he punches a polar bear in the face◊ to get it angry.
- During Mike Baron's run, the Punisher was undercover at a South American resort. He spots a hood at the next table who might blow his cover. So the Punisher orders lunch; a club sandwich, a mai-tai, and a side of their hottest salsa. The sandwich came with toothpicks with tufts, and the drink came with a large straw. He dips the toothpick in the hot salsa, and loads it into the straw, making a improvised blow gun. On his way out, he blows the toothpick/dart into the hood's ear canal. The hood goes into fits, with hot-sauce leaking out his wounded eardrum. Frank just goes on his way, like a boss.
- In "War Season, Part 1" by Eric Trautman, Red Sonja pretends to be distracted while bathing as a man she is hunting tries to steal her weapons and horses. The man tries to fight off Sonja using her own sword, but she disarms him using her loin cloth and subdues him.note
- Spider-Man:
- Spider-Man has been known to use his webbing for offensive situations, such as forming a bat like object out of it, or more famously, Ben Reilly's "impact webbing".
- Spider-Man's used quick drying cement to defeat Hydroman;
- Fire hose on Electro;
- An industrial-size vacuum cleaner to vacuum up the Sandman;
- Cathedral bell on Venom;
- Whipped up acid to melt Rhino's suit and Doc Ock's arms;
- Threw a Doombot at Dr. Doom;
- And used a semi truck on the Juggernaut (didn't work).
- Absorbing Man once got Spider-Man to back off with the threat of tossing a commercial airliner.
- Rhino once bashed the Silver Surfer over the head with a gumball machine.
- In The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko), the Living Brain tries to swat Spider-Man with an unhinged door.
- Boomerang, being a former baseball pitcher, can do the same thing as Bullseye (he's just not nearly as good as it) and he displayed this ability during the limited series The Superior Foes of Spider-Man. However, true to his name, he prefers to use boomerangs.
- Spider-Man has been known to use his webbing for offensive situations, such as forming a bat like object out of it, or more famously, Ben Reilly's "impact webbing".
- Ultimate Marvel:
- In Ultimate Origins, when Captain America first gets his powers, Abraham Erskine is shot by an infiltrated Nazi. Cap throws the first object he finds: a round piece of metal. Yes, just like his iconic shield.
- Hawkeye from The Ultimates throws his fingernails through the skulls of several guards in an act of desperation. He's later seen firing pieces of rebar out of his bow.
- World War Hulk has a flashback of the Hulk swinging an adamantium statue of himself at Thor.
- World War Hulk: X-Men had Hulk using the wreckage of the jet that the X-Men just crashed on top of him as a weapon against them.
Other Publishers
- Mega Man (Archie Comics): Dr. Light designed his robots for peaceful industrial purposes, such as working as lab assistants or managing power plants. However, they were designed so well that when Dr. Wily reprogrammed them to cause mayhem, their industrial tools made them each a One-Man Army. This spurred Rock to take up arms himself as Mega Man, converting his ability to utilize any hand tool he touches into his trademark ability to copy the special weapons of other robots.
- In the first volume of Resident Alien, Carter Blaine was murdered with a knitting needle.
- Marv from Sin City has made great use of his surroundings in order to bash enemies' brains in.
- The Tick in one of his early stories as related by the Ninja/victims: "And then he threw a chimney at us!"
- Tintin frequently makes use of this trope to get out of the unusual situations he's thrown into; for example, he knocks a butler out using a phone in The Secret of the Unicorn.
- In The Transformers (IDW), there's a flashback to pre-War Cybertron. In it, Orion Pax, supercop and future Optimus Prime, is trapped in his office with his shelves and shelves of awards given out for being the biggest badass in Cybertronian history, while several thugs of the corrupt Senate fire their guns into the room. One of them mockingly asks, "All those trophies, all those commendations, all those awards - what use are they to you now?" One panel later, he gets his answer in a way that speaks considerably louder than words: the small Autobot badges are reasonably easy to throw, and their edges are apparently very sharp. The wounds aren't lethal, but they buy Orion time to come up with a new crazy plan.
- WILQ – Superbohater: When Opole is under attack of a monstrous shark, the superhero tries to defeat it by throwing ten cars, a newspaper stand, and even a monument statue at it.
- X-Wing Rogue Squadron: Winter drove off a ronk by splashing it◊ with "oratay", which seems to be a coffee analog. Even though she had her blaster at her side and had proved able to shoot without looking. Then again, later in the issue we find that ronks are extremely allergic to oratay◊, so maybe she just wanted to avoid unnecessary killing.
