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And he's still not as Bad Ass as DC's Santa... 1993 was the year Superman died and Venom got his own series. Just keep that in mind.
—Marvel Year In Review, 1993
The Nineties Anti Hero is a specific version of the Anti Hero. Not all such characters were created during the 1990s, but that was the time when they were most common and most popular.
The Nineties Anti Hero is the polar opposite of your typical Silver Age superhero. Not only are they flawed, they may lack any heroic attributes. However, they're rarely ineffectual or pathetic (in the eyes of the writer, anyway), generally instead being totally committed to whatever they're doing at the moment. They have no compunction about killing villains, and indeed, this may extend to anyone who gets in their way; facing The Cape or any hero who does mind, they sneer at them as outdated. Their super-powers tend towards the lethal as well; growing spikes out of one's body, being able to telepathically boil blood, or turning any item into a gun, and are usually either demonic, or technological in orgin..
Male Nineties Anti Heroes are ridiculously muscled, and often wear lots of pouches or bandoliers. There's a good chance he's either young and "hip" or middle aged, with lots of long, grey hair, beard stubble, and scars. He also probably has at least one eye that looks fake, injured, or diseased and he carries a ludicrously oversized gun or sword that no human being could possible carry. Female Nineties Anti Heroes have large breasts and small waists ( like most female characters), albeit often taken to disfiguring extremes courtesy of the ineptitude of the trope's pioneering artists. Neither one tends to wear very much clothing (or if they do, it'll be typical superheroic barely-there 'spandex' which showcases their exaggerated/inaccurate anatomy). Usually they'll have one word, gritty names that used to be reserved for villains, often creatively misspelt ('Shade' becomes 'Shayde', etc) to appear more dramatic or, because poor literacy is kewl, make the character look radical.
In Terms of characterization, they have three modes, Brooding, Sarcastic, and psychotic Bad Ass. How much of anyone side they show over the others is the main thing that sets them apart from each other
Artist/writer Rob Liefeld is most prominently associated with Nineties Anti Heroes (and pouches). Todd McFarlane and Jim Lee are also prominent artists from the period.
The origins of this trope extend at least to the mid-'80s; two critically praised comics, Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns were both published in 1986. Both comics were influential in that they " deconstructed" traditional superheroic tropes, employing them for more sophisticated ends; Watchmen is considered by some to be the greatest comic of all time (if the success of The Dark Knight Saga (though not so much Watchmen) is any sign, it's gonna start all over again.) The Nineties Anti Hero was born when less... developed writers connected the success of these series with their dark mood and overt violence, mixed their limited understanding of these works with tropes from the action movies of the time, and went from "heroes with flaws" to "characters constructed entirely of flaws". An argument can be made that the Nineties Anti Hero came about more from the influence of the Action Hero archetype that was popular at around the same time than anything seen in Watchmen, indeed many Nineties Anti Heroes would spout One Liners that would not at all be out of place in an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Steven Seagal Movie.
If one is replacing an older more optimistic hero, you have an example of an Anti Hero Substitute.
See also: Designated Hero
Examples:
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Comic Books
- Rorschach from Watchmen is the Trope Codifier. Strange, since he's almost a deconstruction of the concept...
- Also ironic considering Rorschach is a Kantian moral absolutist, wheras most Nineties Anti Hero characters are utterly amoral.
- Same deal with the Comedian, sociopathic personality, heavy reliance on guns, does secret work for the government, etc.
- Doctor Manhattan, detached from the rest of the world, the power to explode a human head with a single thought, etc.
- Batman's evolution; the character of Azrael was created and donned the mantle of Batman in Issue #500, supposedly to show fans exactly what the "anti-heroic" version of the character they clamored for would be like: namely like The Punisher, except more of a jerk. Of course, had it sold well enough, the change was intended to be permanent.
- This ran hand-in-hand with Superman's death and temporary replacement by edgier counterparts.
- Despite Frank Miller having clearly understood what he was doing the first time he tried this, his All-Star Batman And Robin features, of course, the Goddamn Batman, having him kill people when his whole life and career has been opposed to that, and so on.
- Cable
 ◊, of the New Mutants, X-Force, and the X-Men, may have been the original, if not he was certainly a major Trope Codifier, Tragic and mysterious past? Check. BFGs coming out the ass? Check. A "Bad Ass" look that used to be reserved for villains? Check. His first apearence was even in 1990, Over time, though, he's been developed into a more complex character, somewhere between Messianic Archetype and A God Am I.
- Deadpool (created by none other than Liefield himself) started out as a villain, then moved into Anti Hero territory, and when a non-Liefield writer got ahold of him became more of an Affectionate Parody
- Image Comics specialized in these for as long as the fad lasted:
- Spawn, quite possibly the most popular Nineties Anti Hero. Edgy one-word name, grim-n-gritty backstory (an assassinated mercenary damned to Hell and sent back as a soldier of Satan), killing bad guys who were slightly worse than him, and written and drawn by Todd McFarlane.
- The Darkness and Witchblade both exemplified this trope. The former is a former mafia hitman who becomes a living vessel of the world's dark energies, complete with an army of flippant, happy-go-lucky demons who delight in every opportunity to torture someone; the second is a pornolicious detective with powers both psychotically lethal and which rip her clothes off whenever she uses them.
- The Darkness, at least, grew the beard after a while if the game is any indication; Jackie still shows all the Nineties Anti Hero traits, but he gets plenty of potential Pet The Dog moments, and he treats his power as the utter epitome of Blessed With Suck that it is by the end of the story.
- It's just that kind of Pragmatic Adaptation that convinces me that the Creative staff of the game are Jackie's Real Daddies.
- As did Witchblade, when Ron Marz took over and turned the book into more of Law & Order: SVU with occasional superhero elements mixed in. Of course, the book's usual audience got scared off and left, but never bet against Marz' ability to tweak a bad concept to make it entertaining.
- Youngblood, Rob Liefeld's Magnum Opus. What this implies about Liefeld's abilities is for the reader to decide.
- Supreme, who eventually moved from a Nineties Anti Hero ripoff of Superman into an affectionate homage to the Silver Age Superman (largely because Alan Moore took control of the character).
- During the early '90s, Bloodlines, possibly the most loathed Crisis Crossover to hit The DCU, produced a glut of Nineties Anti Heroes, few of whom lasted more than a couple years, including Gunfire, Mongrel, Razorsharp, etc., etc. Probably the only one to be remembered fondly is Hitman, a, well, super-powered hitman, who alternated between being a paragon of the trope and a clever send-up.
- Lobo, also of The DCU, is a humorously over-the-top parody of the Nineties Anti Hero; under weaker writers, he turned into a perfect example of one.
- Around 1994, Guy Gardner, a roughnecked, "macho" member of the Green Lantern Corps, was reinvented as "Warrior," with ridiculously huge muscles, tattoos all over his body, and the ability to form his arms into any kind of weapon he could think of, mainly gargantuan guns. Rumor has it that the reinvention was the result of writer Beau Smith writing the pitch as a joke and accidentally having it approved. He eventually reverted to his old (but still roughnecked) Green Lantern persona after the fad played itself out.
- Kingdom Come, by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, was in part a savage denouncement of Nineties Anti Heroes, and was one of the things that caused the changeover from the Dark Age to the Modern Age. One of the themes of the comic was the classic generation of superheroes fighting the violent "modern" heroes. Of course, the "classic" heroes shared some of the blame as well; many became just-as-violent Knight Templars attempting to deal with it. The "face" of the anti-heroes, Magog, is practically every Dark Age stereotype rolled into one cybernetic, sacreligious package (though Waid and Ross admitted a certain fondness for him due to how over-the-top he was). In a brilliant twist of idealism, Magog realizes how screwed up he is, turns himself in, renounces violence, and is one of the people left alive at the end; in the prose novelization of the story, he becomes the Dean of Students at Paradise Island!
- Magog himself was able to pull a Canon Immigrant, and was introduced in the Main DCU in a JSA storyline. He recently (November 2009) got his own solo series, which is something of an Affectionate Parody of the old school Nineties Anti Hero. To date his Rouge Gallery includes an insane homeless man with mind control powers, and a silver haired woman who talks like a 1980s valley girl.
- Marshal Law is an Anti Hero who specialises in hunting heroes, though as he always says, "I haven't found any yet."
- In the Marvel Universe, the Punisher practically wrote the book on this archetype, and while he predates the nineties by a significant degree, his stock certainly rose during the period. The character was carried over into movies (1989, 2004, and 2008) and numerous computer and video games during the 1990s and recently in 2000 and 2005. He eventually had his fair share of bad storylines, and suffered some changes that nobody liked. Thankfully, Garth Ennis came along and save Frank Castle, casting aside the ill-received Punisher: Purgatory with his story Welcome back, Frank. Ennis continued to work on the Punisher, and his work is considered by many to be the definitive take on the character.
- Likewise, in The DCU, Jason Todd (Batman's second Robin) has been a Nineties Anti Hero type ever since he came Back From The Dead.
- The Authority represent an entire Justice League of Nineties Anti-Heroes. They are, however, unusually idealistic for their kind, as part of their remit is to "make the world a better place". Their methods, however, seem to involve copious amounts of ultra-graphic violence (no Thou Shalt Not Kill for them), ruthless cynicism towards their enemies, and disdain for opposing points of view — they once overthrew the government of the United States. Their idealism, in many cases, only makes them worse than the standard cynical nineties anti-hero. This editor was once amused, however, to see them described as 'hippies'.
- It should be noted that most of the above characteristics are often attributable to the post-Jenny Sparks era, as under her leadership the team tried as much as possible to exercise some discretion when it came to collateral damage (even helping in the clean-up, afterwards). They were still all for balls-out killing of hostiles, though.
- Cyclops, of the X-Men, had his personality largely unchanged, but despite having been nicknamed "Slim" his whole life suddenly developed a chest that pro wrestlers would find intimidating.
- The second-tier Marvel superheroes Darkhawk and Sleepwalker, both of whom had their heyday in the early 1990s, are arguably subversions of this trope. While they have strange and bizarre appearances, neither one was especially dark in their tone, at least compared to titles like Spawn, or the other characters that exemplify the Nineties Anti Hero. Darkhawk was about a kid who followed in his policeman father's footsteps by fighting crime with the mysterious alien armor he had obtained, while simultaneously keeping his Nuclear Family from falling apart. Sleepwalker was about an alien from another dimension that became trapped in a human's mind and manifested to fight crime while he was asleep, carrying on the similar role he had carried in his home world. There were, both in the letter columns of the old Sleepwalker comics and more recent web postings, positive responses from fans who liked the fact that Sleepwalker wasn't a violent antihero.
- Penance in the Marvel Universe, originally the happy-go-lucky character Speedball, is a strange version of this. After believing himself responsible for the death of 612 people in Civil War, he designs a costume in dark colors designed to give himself constant pain with 612 spikes. This was intended seriously, but having happened long after the 1990s, is treated like a parody in most of his appearances outside Thunderbolts.
- The late eighties and early nineties had the Teen Titans sister team, the "Team Titans," who were this to the point that one of them took to calling himself Deathwing.
- Wolverine went from being a complicated, interesting character in the 80's to "stabby stabby stabby!" in the 90's. It took the recent "Enemy of the State" and "Wolverine: Origin" stories to restore his former glory.
- Valiant Comics had a number of Nineties Anti Heroes.
- Bloodshot: Mobster Angelo Mortalli was framed by the Carboni crime family, forcing him to become a witness for the state. While under Federal protection, Mortalli was betrayed by his protectors and sold to Hideyoshi Iwatsu to become a test subject for Project Rising Spirit.
- H.A.R.D. Corps: A group of Vietnam veterans who where revived from comas by a corporation who fits them with brain implants that give them psionic powers, and explodes if they're killed, or caught. One of them dies in every other issue, so they're always being replaced.
- The recent (and ongoing) "Winter Soldier" mega-arc by Ed Brubaker in Captain America subverts a lot of these tropes. When Cap's sidekick Bucky turned out to be Not Quite Dead after all, he was revived as a brainwashed assassin with a cyborg arm; it could have been really stupid, but it wasn't. Then, when Bucky took over as Captain America, he seemed poised to be a Grim And Gritty alternative to the more traditional model, with much made of him carrying a gun — however, Bucky almost never uses the gun, and in fact tries overcome his past and be a more traditional superhero.
- Spider-Girl has April Parker, that is simply a jerk version of main protagonist with powers of Venom. She fits this trope perfectly, right to the point that woman she once saved from bandits run away, because she was more violent that they. Oh, and she killed Tombstone too.
- "The Boys" treats almost all the superheroes featured as heartless, violent, and depraved sociopaths who ignore society's rules just because they can.
- Venom. First there was the "black suit" Spiderman, basically a Nineties Anti Hero before his time, caused by an alien symbiot bonding to him. He later removes the symboit, and it bonds to another man, becoming Venom, basically an Evil Spiderman. That would have all been well and good, except Venom proved to be something of an Ensemble Darkhorse, and entered his peak of popularity during the peak of the Nineties Anti Hero's popularity, and thus Venom was given his own Comic and re-worked into one. Then they have Venom's Symbiot give birth to a second one, which bonded with a Serial Killer to become Carnage, an evil(er) Venom. This opened the floodgates. Venom's symbiot gave birth to 4 more Symbiots, but these fused into a single one which bonded with a police officer to become another Nineties Anti Hero Hybrid, meanwhile Carnage's Symbiote gives birth to yet another symbiot which bonded with another police officer to become yet another Nineties Anti Hero called Toxin.
- There's nothing really "anti" about Toxin though. The symbiote is pretty childish, but he and his host are pretty decent guys. Venom aka Spiderman of the Dark Avengers is more of a Complete Monster now.
- That's partially because the Dark Avengers Venom is Mac Gargan, aka the Scorpion.
- Shadowhawk was a Image Comics title about a succesful, scrupulously honest African-american attorny who refused to fix a case for an organized crime outfit and, in revenge, was kidnapped by them and dumped after being given an injection of the AIDS virus... which prompted him, in a fit of rage and desire to try and make some sense out of the world, to don exoskeletal armor and start brutalizing thugs as a vaguely Batmanish vigilante. The suits got more and more elaborate as the disease took its toll, to help compensate for his weakness, but he ended up dying of the disease anyway.
- Mr. Furious in the movie Mystery Men is a parody and subversion of these kinds of characters; he would very much like to be one, and tries his hardest to come up with a back story fitting this mould (with most of his proposed names being some combination of 'Phoenix', 'Dark', 'Dirk' and 'Steel'), but is in fact ultimately a rather shy, gentle and meek man called Roy. In fact, the realization that he's not one of these types is enough to prompt a moment of Heroic BSOD for him.
Live Action TV
Professional Wrestling
- Late 90s WWF saw most of the babyfaces in this era act as such, with the charge being led by acts such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock, and D-Generation X.
Video Games
- Tombstone from Freedom Force Vs The Third Reich, a series that is a Homage to the high Silver Age of comic books, is a Nineties Anti Hero. And he still fits into the game, because his overblown "dark and tormented" act makes him just as laughable as the rest of the cast.
Alchemiss: [sarcastically] So how did you spend your sabbatical, Tombstone? Performing in musical theater? Raising puppies?
Tombstone: Animals wither in my presence.
- On the other hand, Shadow the Hedgehog seems to be a painfully played straight born-too-late Nineties Anti Hero, especially when he got his own, inferior spinoff where he used guns and rode motorcycles. The Archie comics at least have the decency to have Sonic mock him for his Wangst at every opportunity.
- City Of Heroes lets you make these with all the Spikes Of Villainy costume pieces that are equally available to heroes. Though there's no real representative of them in-game (it has more of a Silver Age flavour), the closest could be Hardcase, an Anti Villain Sue and one of the most loathed contacts in the game.
- Square played this trope pretty straight in The Nineties with heroes Cloud Strife, Squall Lionheart and Amarant. Arguably, however, Kain, Shadow, and Magus are all milder versions of NinetiesAntiHeroes.]]
- Two words, Duke Nukem. A sex obsesed, miror shade wearing Action Hero wanna be who hangs out in sleazy biker bars and strip clubs, with a Lantern Jaw Of Justice and blonde flatop haircut. He comes armed to the teeth with BFGs (Being as it a FPS and all), adicted to Steroids (or whatever those pills are) and loves to spew lame One Liners like "I've Got Balls of Steel", "Some mutated son of a bitch is gonna pay!" and of course the immortal "It's time to kick ass and chew bubble gum. And I'm all out of gum." And his games were big in the early 90s. I guess that was a little more than two words.
Western Animation
- Spoofed in an episode of The Fairly OddParents, where Timmy called upon the help of several different versions of the Crimson Chin to defeat an escaped supervillain, including a bandolier-wearing, gun-toting "edgy" version of the Chin from the eighties. He was apparently the only version that ever got away with profanity, but was cancelled because of it anyway.
- Spoofed in The Tick with Big Shot, a Punisheresque character who shoots up inanimate objects while tears run down his face. After running out of bullets, he says "Why didn't you love me, Mom?" and collapses, sobbing, on Arthur.
- He's someone so obviously messed-up that the Tick tells him to 'seek professional help'—-the Tick, who both sees super-heroes and -villains as normal, and is in any event usually not aware enough of non-plot necessities to care.
- He actually does seek professional help between episodes. When next seen in "The Tick vs. The Tick," he's relatively well-adjusted and tries to convince the Tick and Barry to discuss their problems rationally.
- With emphasis on 'relatively' well adjusted. He starts foaming around the mouth when he mentions how he used to solve all his problems with... Violence, and gives a rather, um, passionate outcry for Barry to "put in in the happy box!".
- When the Powerpuff Girls briefly decide to split up as separate superheroines, with Blossom taking on a Wonder Woman'ish persona and Bubbles dressing up as a cute bunny girl, the sullen and quick-tempered Buttercup reinvents herself as "Mange", a brooding, shadowy character with glowing green eyes who only emerges at night. Unfortunately for Townsville, this means she has to wait until nightfall to stop a noon robbery: she spends the hours beforehand just brooding awkwardly in the living room.
- The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee also spoofed it with Boomfist, who battles an idiot Mad Scientist in a futuristic Crapsack World and delivers Family Unfriendly Aesops. Although he does respect Juniper's abilities and makes a Heroic Sacrifice.
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