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Don't depend on this guy for shit.
Kick the Dog in Comic Books.


  • In Aliens vs. Predator, the first real attack by the Predators against the colonists is the outlying Sheldon family, whose dog detects the cloaked Predator and goes after it. The dog doesn't fare well.
  • In a story from the 1940s newspaper comic strip of Batman, a giant thug is shown caring for a kitten. After attacking Batman and Robin when they show up (and hence causing his boss undue suspicion) the thug's boss breaks the kitten's neck as punishment. While the crime boss ultimately ends up drowning in a swamp while his thug stands by, the revenge is soured by the crime boss being able to shoot the thug to death before he's pulled under.
  • In an issue of Batman Incorporated, Sam Black Elk literally and repeatedly kicks a dog to provoke Man-of-Bats into fighting him, knowing that a fight between them will draw the attention of the cops who all happen to be under his control.
  • Black Tom Cassidy killing Squidboy. This was later retconned. Turns out his secondary mutation was making Tom lose it, and his long time friend and frequent partner/henchman Juggernaut called him out on it. He appears to show remorse about the whole incident.
  • In B.P.R.D. 1946, cute little girl (and head of the Soviet counterpart to the BPRD) Varvara shows her True Colors when she brutally murders Audo, a disfigured and mentally unwell little boy.
  • Civil War: Dog-kicking is contagious when it comes to Pro-Registration heroes. All right, Carol Danvers, you know that Spider-Woman II/Arachne is a traitor to the Pro-Registration side, you are to bring her down... but seriously, separating her with her dearest treasure (her grade-school daughter Rachel) is just... low.
  • Astrid Mueller of Clean Room and her organization are not good people just because they're fighting demons. This is reiterated when a demon gives lifesaving surgery to one of their leaders, after which they imprison it and spend weeks torturing it with electric shocks.
  • Daredevil: In Guardian Devil, Bullseye murders a church full of nuns and Karen Page just for the sadistic pleasure of it all.
  • The DCU's Maxwell Lord. He shot the second Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, in the head. He made Guy Gardner flip out at his revived girlfriend, fellow superhero Ice, for apparently trying to kill him (it wasn't really her, but Maxwell "pushed" Guy into thinking it was). If that wasn't dickish enough, he mind controls two police officers into shooting each other. Their dialogue makes it clear that they don't know what's going on. What makes it even worse is that he could have just mindwiped the police officers instead of killing them.
  • The first appearance of The DCU villains the Reach (evil super-advanced alien race, enemies of the third Blue Beetle) has the Reach negotiator stress how they're there to 'save the earth' and that the Reach 'come in peace'. The very next page introduces the Reach Negotiator's Adorable Evil Minions... and he crushes one of their heads with his bare hand. Just so the audience wouldn't believe the whole 'we come in peace' thing.
  • Death, Lies, and Treachery:
    • Boba's treatment of innocent magician Wim Magwit is stunningly nasty. He forces Magwit to help him catch Bar-Kooda by exploiting the minor bounty on Magwit for his time as a member of Bar-Kooda's crew, even though he was more of a prisoner than anything else. When Magwit says that he'd rather plead his case before a judge, Boba threatens to kill him and claim he tried to escape. Then, after Magwit does help him, Boba abandons him on Bar-Kooda's ship near an exploding bomb and a crew of angry pirates who want to kill Magwit for helping Fett. When Magwit manages to survive anyway and calls him out for this, Fett unrepentantly says he promised he'd let Magwit go, he just didn't say where. He then adds that Magwit should be grateful that Fett gave him a chance to save himself, no matter how bad the odds were.
    • When the pirate Toxus Li's crew all die defending him from Fett even though the bounty is on Toxus alone, and not them Fett mocks them for it.
    • Fett guns down two of Ry-Kooda's henchmen even after they plead that they never wanted to go after him and only did out of fear of Ry-Kooda. Granted, they're former members of Bar-Kooda's crew, so it might be more of a Kick The Son Of A Bitch moment, but as shown with Magwit, not all of Bar-Kooda's crewmen had a choice in the matter.
  • The villain of the Deathwish miniseries that spun off from Milestone Comics' Hardware (1993), Boots, is shown literally kicking a dog while it was peeing on a fire hydrant in the second issue.
  • In the 2010 relaunch of Doctor Solar, corporate executive/Big Bad Tanek Nuro is introduced receiving bad news from an underling, who, having anticipated his disappointment, has already prepared a couple of "punching bags" for him to vent his frustrations. The next panel reveals that what Nuro uses for "punching bags" are people from third world countries whose families desperately need the financial support he sends them.
  • ElfQuest:
    • The Wolfriders bond with wolves, and the Gliders with giant birds. Just before the two groups meet, Strongbow spots one of the giant birds and shoots it down for a meal. It becomes an inter-tribal incident that sticks half the tribe in slavery and Strongbow in psychic torture for a couple weeks, before the tribes' leaders meet to discuss it. One of the proposed solutions is to kill Strongbow's bond-wolf: "My mount was slain while testing its wings! Why should the killer's mount live?" One of the Wolfriders protests that they cannot order the execution of the wolf — "You might as well command us to kill our own children!" This is a little bit remarkable in that the death was caused by the good guys out of ignorance and not malice.
    • In a much later issue, the animal-tamer elf Teir berated Ember for being willing to kill an animal who trusted her. "Would you kill the wolf who shared your fire if you needed some new furs?"
  • Empowered:
    • In the 4th volume, we see the mastermind who turned the 'Capies' award ceremony into a deathtrap discovered by the titular superheroine. Upon the revelation of his identity, he gives a Motive Rant that seems tailor made to win sympathy from any reader who has bothered following the title (and the No Respect Girl before him). Then he tries to use the lives of Emp's lover and her best friend to extort sexual favors out of her. Empowered is not pleased, and her suit is rather more intact than it appears.
    • The 6th volume presents Deathmonger. Collecting the various SuperDead and taking control of them to use as (un)living weapons is his entire shtick, we get it. However going out of his way to leave them self aware while controlling their every move goes over the line into needless sadism.
  • Final Crisis Aftermath:
    • In Run #1, the Human Flame — the archetypal small time thug who had Martian Manhunter killed — returns to his family's home, embraces his wife, and tells her how much he had missed her and their daughter. This is all a pretext to steal his car, with the daughter's bike still attached, while the wife is tied to a kitchen chair. The Flame had already crossed a Moral Event Horizon by leading a shootout through a Fictional Counterpart of Chuck E. Cheese. But just when it looked like writer Matt Sturges was humanizing him as at least a loving family man, whammo!
    • Earlier, Flame wakes up in a hospital, and his first action is to forcefully punch the young attending nurse, knocking her out. He then knocks a traction patient out of his bed while running away, rationalizing both actions by saying "they probably deserved it."
  • The Flash:
    • Villain Mirror Master (II) disguised himself as Pied Piper (Hartley Rathaway) and murdered Hartley's parents, framing Piper for it in the Crossfire arc. This is a contrast to Animal Man where Mirror Master refused to kill The Hero's innocent family, even after Buddy's wife gave him a Groin Attack.
    • After a reluctant team-up between Flash and Reverse-Flash, Godspeed asks Reverse-Flash if he knows who killed his brother. Thawne declares he did, as he breaks Godspeed's neck for no other reason than to remind people that Reverse-Flash is still an asshole (and for added measure, tells Godspeed no-one will remember or care about him). He then taunts Barry about this as he escapes.
    • Green Arrow spends much of the first issue of The Flash (Infinite Frontier) being an absolute ass to Wally West because of the events of Heroes in Crisis, even going as far as telling Wally "You Should Have Died Instead of Roy." First off, there's the fact that the whole massacre as the whole thing was supposedly an accident. Secondly, Ollie was being a complete hypocrite about it given the intentional killings he's done and the fact that Roy was in Sanctuary due to Ollie's infamously shitty parenting. Lastly, at the end of the arc, it was revealed that Wally was innocent and the whole thing was Savitar's fault, so not only was Ollie being an ass to a remorseful man in light of his own sins, it ultimately turned out Wally was innocent.
  • G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel):
    • Cobra Commander did it in a panel. The shot was so popular it was eventually redone as a pin-up some years later.
    • During the Joes' invasion of Springfield, Cobra evacuated the town, and one Cobra agent was shown about to shoot his family's dog because they couldn't take him with them.
  • God Loves, Man Kills: Just so you know Rev. Stryker is evil before you even meet him, his legions kill two unarmed 6-year-olds and leave their corpses in a playground for other small impressionable children to see. Then once we do meet him, turns out he murdered his wife and child, his most loyal henchperson, and tried to kill Shadowcat, who at the time was a cute teenage girl. While everything else he does is justified or serves some useful purpose, at least from his own point of view, the initial act of villainy is a quite glaring instance of pointless Stupid Evil.
  • Green Lantern:
    • Dex-Starr's origin story is a conga-line of kitten-kicking.
    • Even when he claims to be doing things for the greater good, Sinestro always takes the time to kick a puppy or two along the way. One example that is close to a Moral Event Horizon would be killing Kyle Rayner's mother via the living virus Despotellis and calling her a cow to Kyle's face — all to turn him into Parallax's next host.
  • Injustice: Gods Among Us is built on this. The comic is made up of the world kicking as many dogs as possible to drive Superman insane, while the second half seems to building up to Superman kicking as many puppies to make Batman try to stop him more.
  • Iznogoud: "The Doggy Flute" features a literal example; when Iznogoud tries the flute he has just purchased on the Chinese wizard who sold it to him, transforming him into a dog, he proceeds to kick him down the road rather than restoring him to human form, as he believes the magician is no longer useful to him. This comes back to bite him (in several senses) when he cannot remember the correct melody once he is in front of the Caliph; he eventually finds the transformed magician and plays the melody that reverses the spell, whereupon the magician grabs the flute and turns Iznogoud into a dog.
  • In Kick-Ass Volume 2, Issue 5 — Red Mist has Dave's father, who handed himself over to the police as Kick-Ass in Dave's place, killed in prison just so that they'll be able to kidnap Dave at the funeral.
  • Various villains Kick the Dog throughout Kingdom Come, but Vandal Savage snapping the neck of a secretary for putting the wrong amount of sugar in his coffee kinda takes the cake.
  • The Joker has a good number of them under his belt but several stand out:
    • In Death of the Family, The Joker infects Harley's hyenas with rabies solely to hurt her. She does not take it well.
    • In The Killing Joke, the Joker shot Barbara in the spine in front of her father as part of his plan to drive Commissioner Gordon insane. OK, bad, but it hits home when Joker then tortures Gordon physically and emotionally, this is Joker crossing the Moral Event Horizon. Then he shows Gordon pictures of his defenseless daughter after she was shot, having been stripped naked in order to make Gordon think that he might have done more to her. Word of God says he didn't actually do anything besides shooting her, but Joker thought it would be funny to make Gordon think he did.
    • The act that kicks off the Injustice: Gods Among Us saga proper in the Injustice universe is Joker kidnapping Lois Lane and then dosing Superman with a special version of Scarecrow's fear toxin laced with Kryptonite that made him hallucinate that Lois was Doomsday, resulting in him taking her up into deep space where she suffocated to death along with their unborn child. And to make things worse, Joker also implanted a Dead Man Switch in her that triggered a nuke that leveled Metropolis. And the reason this asshole clown did all of this? Because he was tired of always losing to Batman and figured that he'd play on "easy mode" for once. No pity was had for Joker when he was killed by Superman, but this act proved to be the beginning of this version of Superman's Start of Darkness.
  • The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: In King of Klondike, Soapy Slick kidnaps Scrooge, steals his plot of land and reads his mail. When a letter from home reveals that Scrooge's mother had died, the villain mocks the young duck for it and tells his cronies to kill him. No wonder Scrooge went berserk and trashed the entire steamboat they were on.
  • A satirical MAD feature from 1956 proposed "Dog Kicking" as a manly sport analogous to bullfighting. The preferred dogs are Cocker Spaniels "because they yelp louder and longer and are harmless." As for the men who Kick the Dog, "they must possess a rare nobility of soul, unflinching courage and a burning desire, a fever in fact, to Kick Dogs." The Kicking is further divided into three parts, or Tercios: Clobbers, Boots and finally the la Stompa.
  • Miracleman: The newly revived Kid Miracleman initially spares the one person that had offered kindness to his mortal alter-ego Johnny Bates, only to return moments later to viciously take the woman's head apart with a single blow, claiming that his earlier act of mercy would've been seen as a sign that the villain had "gotten soft".
  • In Volume 3 of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW), after Queen Chrysalis reveals her evil plan to the CMC, that involves killing Twilight in front of her friends and using them as a source of food later, she proceeds to brutally slaughter an innocent kitty in front of the fillies to watch.
  • In the short story in My Little Pony Micro Series Issue #3, Spike does this to the ugly, yet adorable Hayseed Turnip Truck. After being smitten by Rarity's beauty but making a fool of himself every time he's near her, Hayseed decides to move to Canterlot to seek for a job that could bring him wealth and so, becoming more deserving of Rarity's love. Through months of sheer willpower he becomes a wealthy businessman (he even manages to look considerably better-looking too); but when Hayseed is finally ready to declare his love to Rarity, a jealous Spike shoots him down by claiming that Rarity is already engaged to someone else, ending the story with a heartbroken Hayseed Turnip all alone and miserable.
  • Not that Jody from Preacher needed any further proof of his unredeemable bastardry, but he went beyond kicking Jesse Custer's pet dog Duke when it made the mistake of humping his leg: he nailed it by the head on a fence. Ironically, in their final fight, Jesse would nail Jody in the head with a piece of the fence. In both terms. The fact Jody no-sells it gives one last demonstration of how inhuman he is.
  • In the first The Punisher MAX volume, Frank Castle's old ally Microchip helps a CIA black ops team capture him in an effort to get him working for them. The Punisher gets loose when a mob hit team attacks, but Micro is badly injured. Frank takes him with him to question him and learns that the head of the CIA group gets his funding from heroin deals, thus making Micro an indirect part of the heroin trade. He gives him a chance to leave, but Micro knows that Frank will need his help dealing with what's coming and stays to cover him. After the battle is over, Frank returns to Micro, who tries to talk him out of what's coming next. Castle cuts his pleas off, then blows his head apart with a shotgun.
  • The Art of Blood and Fire arc of Red Sonja introduces Kalayah the Beastmaster running Beastly Bloodsports. After capturing Sonja, he hamstrings her horses and gives them to his dogs in the arena.
  • In the Death World of Ruins, Nick Fury's reduced to an insane survivalist with a Lack of Empathy. After going on a tirade about how things were supposed to be different, he guns down a prostitute (The universe's version of Jean Grey) and blows up a passing car before blowing his brains out. Plus he had killed a dog immediately before this, but that was in self-defense.
  • The Sandman (1989):
    • In the issue about the serial killers' convention, one of the attendees tells another that he got his start by cutting the heads off of kittens. Notably, the guy was the most sympathetic person in the convention. He clearly understood that he was sick, but lacked courage to turn himself in. It's implied that he was looking for peer support for just that.
    • Desire does a unique kick the dog moment that doubles as a demonstration of what a Magnificent Bastard he/she is: he/she casually tells a random party-goer how she can win and cruelly break another woman's heart. Apparently, he/she can determine such things just by looking at people.note 
  • Scott Pilgrim: In the third book, Todd Ingram is seen kicking a dog in a flashback.
  • Junior from Secret Six: "Kill him. Leave body for his family to find. Also believe he had a dog. Kill dog."
  • Sin City villains are usually vile enough that they are introduced mid-kick or at least post-kick.
    • Kevin went around eating women and forced Lucille to watch as he ate her hand.
    • Roark Junior, the Yellow Bastard, was a child murderer and rapist.
    • Both Cardinal and Senator Roark allowed the former killers to run free and were more than willing to frame innocent people for the crimes.
    • Liebowitcz was a cop that sided with the Roarks in one incident and sided with the leader of a guild of assassins the next.
    • Ava Lord from A Dame to Kill For tricked a former lover into killing her husband so she could inherit his wealth, and according to Manute, he's not the first she's lured to his doom.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics): Fiona Fox does this quite frequently, but the most notable example is when she defects to Scourge the Hedgehog in issue 172. When Tails, who has a crush on her, is pleading for her not to leave, Fiona calmly tells him he can't trust or count on anybody before giving him a brutal slap that knocks him off his feet, smirking gleefully all the while.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Zeena does this to Cream, of all characters, in issues 26 and 27. Seeing the rabbit fly towards her and demanding to surrendering the Chaos Emerald, Zeena instead take control of Cream's robot friend Gemerl with her powers. After he breaks free, she uses the power of the Emerald to control him externally. She later literally kicks Cream then torments her for being the "nice girl", all before attempting to throw her into a Zombot horde. Gemerl saves Cream just in time and after defeating Zeena, the robot punishes the Zeti for the mistake she made of hurting the girl, by throwing her into the horde.
  • Spider-Man: Norman Osborn is master of this. The list of his dog kicking moments he's done to Spider-Man alone is very long, and contains thing like having sex with Peter's girlfriend Gwen Stacy, making her pregnant and killing her after she gave birth to his children; making those children believe that Peter's their father who abandoned them; killing Peter's unborn child and stealing its body; kidnapping Peter's aunt May and replacing her with an actress, and revealing it after that actress died. All this so Peter could suffer. Oh, and he started the infamous Clone Saga too! In Dark Reign he adds some new ones like: shooting two kids because one of them's wearing a Spider-Man mask, impregnating his son's ex-girlfriend (he must really enjoy stealing younger guys' girls) and making his son believe it's his baby, so Norman could manipulate him and kill him in the near future for the biggest benefits (HIS OWN SON!) There's also the possibility that the guy he's using as a guinea pig in his laboratory is his other son, Gabriel Stacy.
  • When The Mist shoots his daughter in Starman.
  • Star Wars Legends:
    • Count Dooku has a long list of Kick the Dog moments. He's a Sith Lord, after all. But one in particular really takes the cake. Before hiring Jango Fett to clone an army in Jango Fett: Open Seasons, he does an extensive background check on the man, including kidnapping one of his last living comrades and torturing him endlessly. The poor man finally cracks and tells Dooku about his memories of Fett. When he's finished, Dooku orders the interrogation droids to stop his heart. As tears stream down his face, the man begs Dooku not to tell Jango that he betrayed him, and you know what that bastard says? "I can't make any promises. Goodbye."
    • In Star Wars: Empire, Darth Vader learns that an Imperial Star Destroyer gunner went rogue after they destroyed his homeworld of Alderaan and has been sabotaging his attempts to track down the Rebels. Instead of killing him, Vader tricks him into destroying a colony of Alderaanian survivors that were offworld at the time before sending him to a labor camp.
  • The Superior Foes of Spider-Man: Speed Demon takes a girl's dog while robbing a pet store just because the girl called him stupid. He at least seems to take care of the dog (which he renamed Inspector).
  • Superman:
  • Tintin:
    • Colonel Boris/Jorgen is generally considered Tintin's most unpopular villain. Why? He kicks Snowy down the rocket chute in Explorers on the Moon, breaking the poor thing's leg. To quote the Captain: "Monster! Vivisectionist!"
    • One of the villains in Flight 714 orders his men to open fire on Snowy (who escapes).
  • Transformers:
  • Transformers: More than Meets the Eye: Overlord has his mind probed by Chromedome and discovers that Megatron is still alive. Overlord frees himself and walks off to the rest of the ship, informing Chromedome that he will kill everyone on it. Onboard, Pipes accidentally bumps into him and apologizes, Overlord stomps on him until he's dead and heads off to the med-bay to go kill some patients.
  • Ultimate Marvel:
    • Ultimate X-Men (2001):
      • Wraith and the Weapon X guys enjoyed shooting Wolverine in his cell, because with his Healing Factor he always gets better. They once doused him with gasoline and set him on fire, and he was still combat ready for an operation two days later.
      • Magneto wants Cyclops to call him "father" when they are near Quicksilver. He also insults him in every fashion imaginable at every opportunity, including calling his power "effeminate".
    • Ultimate Wolverine: Zoe, that friend of Quicksilver that sells frozen yogurt. She had the Mothervine and he told her the trigger phrase, which gives her an uncontrollable and lethal mutation, just to show off the way Mothervine works.
    • Ultimate Spider-Man: The first thing that Norman Osbourne does with his powers is to kill his wife, try to kill his son Harry, and as he escapes he tries to destroy the whole high school he was in to finish the job. He had very limited Hulk Speak at the time, so no reasons were ever explained.
  • In the world of V for Vendetta, certain offences against the dystopian fascist government that rules Britain (like prostitution) are designated a "class-H offence", which means that their punishment is entirely at the discretion of the arresting officer. In plain speech, the arresting officer can do whatever the hell he wants with you without you being able to do a thing about it, which is music to the ears of the sadists and bullies that many of the cops in this government are. This is showcased in the scene where Evey runs foul of the government's Fingermen after her first time as a prostitute, and they decide the best way to punish her is to rape and then kill her. V shows up to take them down before they can do anything to her, but it's still a pretty solid statement on how evil the government and the Fingermen are.
  • In Wolverine #18 (2011), the villain Jade Claw is introduced being served by beefcake men, using a servant as table and with the following food: "Dinner is served, Madame. Cantonese noodles with seared hummingbird hearts and caramelized butterfly brains. Grilled bull elephant tongue with shitake mushrooms and bald eagle hollandaise. Curried Tyrannosaurus Pate, imported fresh from the Savage Land. Baby Seal SoufflĂ© a la mode. And Bacon wrapped tiger eyes sautĂ©ed, as always, in the tears of your enemies." The "dinner" starts out ridiculous, goes on to involves mostly very endangered species and serves the plot not for a single inch. Jade Claw later goes on about how doves are plucked for her pillows and her feet are washed in the blood "of women who dared presume themselves more beautiful than I." This is so over the top, it isn't kicking a puppy — it's kicking a whole litter of them!
  • Wonder Woman:
    • Wonder Woman (1942):
      • Cheetah (Pris Rich) kidnaps and mentally tortures a pair of women she'd already blackmailed into working for her, supposedly to make them too terrified to betray her. This ends up having the opposite effect; the missing women alert Wonder Woman to something going on and both of them turn on Pris at the first opportunity due to her brutality.
      • In Judgment In Infinity, the Horseman of War wills a tank to trample over a little girl who was just passing by.
    • Wonder Woman (1987): While the Sangtee Empire is violently misogynistic they have a strange sense of morality about children that means female children are not aborted nor enslaved, and are instead raised as boys and allowed to enter society as adults so long as they present and identity as male. The Sangtee politician Bruct disagrees and thinks girls should be killed when their gender becomes apparent as embryos and tries to kill his Emperor (who is physically female) as soon as they're alone together. This acts as the catalyst for changing the Empire's laws.
  • X-23:
    • In X-23: Innocence Lost, X-23 is the dog. Any sympathy the reader might have for the sweet and innocent toddler Zander Rice after Wolverine kills his father is pretty effectively squashed twenty or so years later the moment he shoves the seven-year-old Laura into a radiation chamber to forcibly activate her Healing Factor, then straps her down and tears out her claws one by one without anesthesia to bond them with adamantium.
    • Then there's Kimura, who is introduced to her five days after the hellish surgery and proceeds to Curb Stomp her just to show Laura how helpless she is. Remember, Laura is seven at this point.
  • Zipi y Zape: Peloto does this a lot. Literally.


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