Karma Houdini in Comic Books.
The following have their own pages:
Other Comic Books
Considering that
Death Is Cheap and villains easily escape from prison in most comic books, and the fact that comics are generally written as unending serials, this trope is pretty much the rule rather than the exception.
- 2000 AD:
- PJ Maybe in Judge Dredd is a gleeful serial killer and one of the worst criminals the Big Meg has ever seen. How does his story end? He uses his impersonation skills to get himself elected mayor. Interestingly, since then, he's used his position to do quite a lot of genuinely good work, such as increasing employment, supporting mutant rights, and most recently working to eliminate Chief Judge Sinfield. All while keeping up his passion for murder.
- Unfortunately for Maybe, the story returned to him; his murder attempts failed, exposing him and getting him arrested and jailed, and while he returned a time or two more, it ultimately ended permanently for him with Dredd kicking him off a ledge to his demise and shooting the grenade (detonating it, and Maybe with it) the killer had been planning to use to kill both of them to ensure it.
- Nemesis the Warlock: Subverted. Torquemada uses assassination and intimidation tactics during his trial to scare the jury into declaring him "not guilty" on the charges of crimes against existence. The free human government hands him over to his arch-enemy Nemesis instead.
- The Darkstalkers UDON comics have the main character, Morrigan Aensland, to be this. Unlike the games, Morrigan is depicted as a malevolent succubus who cares only about eating human souls and spends most of the story attacking, manipulating, probably raping and killing humans for their souls. Her first scene in the comics is tricking a fisherman called Jack by faking being a homeless widow and then killing him hours later despite him letting her stay at his house and giving her food. Morrigan later on kills a woman brainwashed by her nemesis Demitri Maximoff to disguise as her and lets a group of slaves women captured by Demitri to be sacrificed by the evil vampire. She still not only gets away but gets rid of Demitri once Donovan and Anita kill him. The closest thing Morrigan gets to a punishment is the loss of her father Belial.
- This is followed by the crossover Street Fighter vs. Darkstalkers comic, where Morrigan keeps killing humans and provoking havoc in the human world. Her first action onscreen is to trick a duo of archeologists in Brazil by pretending to be a injured human archeologist woman. She kills one of the men draining hos soul once she got him close, then kills his friend when he attemps to save his partner from the evil succubus. She isn't punished by the end of the comic since she makes an alliance with the other characters to stop the main villain Jedah and everyone else just returns to the human world after that. The last we see of her is when she is crowned queen of the makai world, having achieved her goal of defeating Jedah and reuniting with the missing part of her soul, Lilith. The latter also counts since she helped Jedah on her own will (unlike the games), kills a bunch of people as well and even attemps to kill some of the heroes. Like Morrigan, Lilith gets away with her crimes and achieves her goal of fusing with her sister.
- The Adventures of Mighty Max comic: While Master Brain's automated weapons were destroyed and thus stopping his scheme to Kill All Humans, he gets away with no repercussions.
- Moose Mason from Archie Comics. He beats up any guy who so much as looks at his girlfriend Midge, sometimes even sending guys to the hospital, and never gets any punishment at all for his violence. Worst of all was the time when he went so far as to spend several days hunting down Reggie Mantle, not stopping until he finally got the chance to beat him up. That goes beyond bullying and enters the realm of pure sadism. Of course, Moose is an idiot, possibly even intellectually disabled. So he presumably can't be held responsible for what he does, and the other characters just tend to see it as Exit, Pursued by a Bear. (Or maybe it's just that most other characters think Reggie has it coming; he's rarely an innocent in any such conflict.)
- Averted in, of all things, Predator Versus Archie. Dilton comes to understand the essential nature of the world he lives in. Teenage dating. Then he loses his head five minutes later.
- The Black Knight: Since Le Chevalier Noir can escape from any restraints no prison can hold him, and his true identity as a master thief has never been proven, he escapes any sort of consequences for his actions in both his appearances. However, the bitterness of this is lessened because he's such a good sport about losing.
- Captain Flash: The Mirror Man is never punished for all his murdering of scientists.
- In IDW Publishing's Clue, The Chessmaster Mr. Boddy achieves everything they wanted. His business rival is poisoned, he has successfully recruited Professor Plum to his cause, and everyone else who had knowledge to spoil his plans are killed.
- In Will Eisner's graphic novel, A Contract with God, one of the stories focuses on the super of the tenant where the stories take place/centered around. While the super is a middle-aged, balding man with a somewhat bad attitude and a possibly unfriendly dog, he is played in a horrible con. While in his room (the walls of which are covered with pornographic pinups), the niece of one of his tenants enters his room, and offers to show him her panties for a nickel (the setting is in the 1950's) and asks if she can give the dog a treat. While the super's back is turned, the girl (who is twelve years old!) grabs his cashbox and poisons his dog to death. When the super catches up with the girl, she screams rape and everyone sees and the tenants call the police. When the police come for the super, he kills himself and everyone calls him a creep. The last scene we see is the girl counting the money she just stole, not a look of remorse on her face. It's a great story and everything and was probably written to spite The Comics Code, but still.
- Gunsmoke: Curly Joe vanished without a trace after massacring a rival gang over a silver mine long before a story where a former goon of his is a Villain of the Week.
- While pretty much all her victims were misogynist douchebags, the title character of Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist has not faced any kind of punishment for any of the men she's assaulted, killed or violently removed the genitals of.
- Justified with the title character of Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, who cannot die or get captured because he plays an integral role in the universe.
Johnny: On a crowded street, I could drain a flower vendor of all his blood and not get caught!! People would scream and vomit, and yet, somehow, I would walk away unscathed. I could do that!! Oh. Wait... I DID do that!!
- Kismet: Man of Fate:
- Satan is never even directly confronted in-comic, let alone punished for masterminding World War II.
- Flame and Bruta escape after supplying Hitler with a super weapon that could win him the war.
- As the comic ended in 1943, Adolf Hitler makes a narrow escape from Kismet's wrath. However, if this universe follows history, he will get his comeuppance soon enough.
- El Kuraan: The Pasha gets away scot-free with tricking an American into letting him be the middleman for buying off tribal lands, pocketing the cash and driving the tribe off the lands. All that our hero does is scare him shitless.
- In Star Wars: Legacy, most of the truly heinous villains, namely Darth Krayt, Darth Wyyrlok, Darth Stryfe, Darth Rauder, and genocidal Vul Isen do receive punishment, several secondary antagonists including Darths Nihl, Talon, Havoc, and Maladi, and Sith Apprentice Saarai decide to say Screw This, I'm Outta Here at the deaths of their superiors and return this Sith to their Sidious-era ways of subterfuge rather than the all-out war Krayt espoused. As such, they avoid any comeuppance, and with the 2014 reworking of the franchise's continuity policy, it seems likely to stay that way.
- The My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW) has a few:
- One issue had a Kelpie who intended to destroy a dam which would flood all of Ponyville and drown the entire populace, which she did by brainwashing the populace. However when her plan is beaten and her motive turned out to be wanting to help some Water Sprites get to the ocean. She's instantly forgiven by the ponies who drop everything to help her, ending with the now legendary line of "We've all done something silly for a friend" which led to the creation of the Twilight Justifies Evil Meme
. - In My Little Pony Micro Series Issue #3 Flim and Flam trick the Hippie Ponies into owing them a large sum of money and losing their farm (so they could sell the land to Filthy Rich) unless the ponies could pay the debt. Thanks to Rarity's help, the Hippie Ponies can make enough money to pay their debt and save their farm... which means Flim and Flam still managed to win a large sum of money out of their shady deal and once again nothing bad happened to them.
- Pat Patriot: America's Joan of Arc: The Mallet, commander or a Japanese spy ring in China, escapes while Pat and the Chinese military take out his army. Given that the comic ends with an announcement that he's got a new scheme brewing, it can be presumed that ht would have become Pat's Arch-Enemy if the series didn't end.
- Shock SuspenStories ran a one-off strip in which a Karma Houdini uses his influence as a newspaper reporter to blackmail people all over town. The story hints throughout at Laser-Guided Karma for the protagonist (this being a staple of the comic and similar titles published by EC) and then ends abruptly with him getting away with murder.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Patch, Antoine's Mirror Universe counterpart. He impersonated Antoine for a year, tried to trick Sally into marrying him in order to gain the throne, and poisoned both Antoine's father and King Max, killing the former and rendering the latter crippled and senile. Despite all the damage he ends up causing, Patch is neither arrested by the Zone Cops or imprisoned by the Kingdom of Acorn; the worst punishment he receives is Sonic dumping him back on Moebius after blowing his cover.
- Super-American: Murderous fascist Vultro flees in an airplane while Super-American isn't looking, promising to continue his plans of conquest.
- Tintin:
- Thief Max Bird from The Secret of the Unicorn. He threatened to torture Tintin for information and attempted to murder somebody. However, even though he was arrested, he manages to escape jail and, other than a brief mention, is never heard from again. But even assuming he managed to avoid being arrested again, he will have to avoid the police, maybe even leave the country, and does permanently lose his chateau, Marlinspike Hall, and presumably the larger part of his other assets.
- Corrupt oil executive Trickler and international arms-dealer B. Mazaroff in The Broken Ear. After manipulating two Banana Republics to go to war over oil, working with Mazaroff, who selling weapons to both sides, framing Tintin for treason, and arranging him to be executed without trial, Trickler gets no comeuppance other than the embarrassment that the region he started a war over didn't have any oil at all.
- This trope also applies to the Bordurian government. In King Ottokar's Sceptre Syldavia is saved, but Borduria remains a threat in later adventures (despite World War II), even if the schemes launched by its secret agents continue to be foiled.
- The most notable example however is General Alcazar. Although both The Broken Ear and Tintin and the Picaros show that he is just as bad a dictator as his perennial rival, General Tapioca, but largely because he looks on Tintin as a friend, he does not really get his comeuppance. At the end of Tintin and the Picaros, Tintin and Haddock try to persuade him to become a better ruler, but one has to wonder how long that will last. Especially as his conversation with Tapioca shows that he regards Tintin as a naive idealist.
- The Unfunnies was about a child murderer named Troy Hicks who escapes capital punishment by trading places with Frosty Pete, one of the characters in his comic strip known as The Funnies, and causing all sorts of horrible things to happen while Frosty Pete gets the chair in his place. Any and all efforts the characters make to put a stop to Hicks' ways turn out to be futile, since his being the creator of their world enables him to avoid every attempt they make at capturing or killing him.
- Wonder Man (Fox): General Attila gets off scot-free for killing refugees and starving his people, with his only punishment being a scar on his face from Wonder Man.
