Examples of Moral Event Horizon in Comic Books.
Comics/franchises with their own pages:
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- Crossed
- The DCU
- Jurassic Park
- Marvel Universe
- Power Rangers
- Ratchet & Clank
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Star Wars
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
- Transformers
- Whoniverse
Individual examples:
- 100 Bullets:
- Augustus Medici is a ruthless Mafia boss and Ancient Conspiracy member, but for the majority of the series seemed to have some lines he wouldn't cross. In the last three issues, however, facing a possible out-gambitting by some of the conspiracy's younger blood, he abruptly resigns his seat in favor of his son Benito... then has Benito killed the next day. The resulting power vacuum liquidates every single member of the cast but three, exactly as Augustus intended, but in hindsight he probably shouldn't have bothered: in killing his own son he manages to horrify his pet hitman Phillip Graves, and Graves's sudden attack of standards proves just the Spanner in the Works necessary to shut Augustus down for good.
- Lono's rape of Sophie the waitress. While Sophie and her boyfriend Carlos hitting Lono with their car and stealing his money was definitely wrong, Lono's response is to tie her to a bed and assault her non-stop for hours on end. When Carlos discovers this, he makes Sophie watch as he breaks Carlos's neck.
- Ace Powers: Heat Devron Impersonating an Officer and ordering the police to kill all his henchmen.
- The Eye Sees: Ganza plotting to bomb a United States embassy to get America involved in a civil war.
- Eric in A God Somewhere crosses the Moral Event Horizon for most when he rapes his sister-in-law and cripples his brother. But the narrator, his former best friend Sam, notes that throughout the series of ensuing mass murders, he was still ambivalent about Eric. He finally crosses the Moral Event Horizon in Sam's eyes when the military unit with whom Sam had been embedded as a reporter sneak up on the cave where the two of them are talking, and Eric slaughters them right in front of him.
- Godzilla x Kong: The Hunted: Raymond Martin has a tragic backstory behind his hatred of the Kaiju which drives him to be a Hunter of Monsters wannabe and is still haunted by the deaths of his family, but any and all sympathy it affords him completely dries up over the course of the story . If he isn't over the line when he goes out of his way to attack and murder one of the completely-benign and gentle Sker Buffalo (which is a crime that even his henchmen are appalled by), then he's certainly over the line when he stumbles across a pair of defenceless Spineprowler cubs by accident while he's hunting their mother... and he proceeds to go completely above and beyond in chasing them to try and murder them. When he has his Exit, Pursued by a Bear, there's nothing but catharsis to be had in his presumed Karmic Death.
- Gunsmoke: Carr murders his own father-in-law so a range war he's masterminding gets bloody quicker.
- In Irredeemable the very first thing we see former hero the Plutonian do is incinerate a little girl's mother, baby brother and father in front of her eyes before, it's implied, murdering her off panel. That's not even the first atrocity he's committed; we learn that he's just destroyed a city and murdered a large portion of the population with in it.
- Judge Dredd: Judge Death decides that, as all crime is committed by the living, everyone must be sentenced to death, and uses a mixture of psychic and nuclear weaponry to wipe out all life on his planet.
- Kick-Ass:
- Red Mist and his father manage to cross it at the same time, after setting up Kick-Ass and the others. First, they beat the shit out of them. When Hit Girl tries to fight back, Johnny G orders his men to shoot her in the back, which they gladly do, sending her flying out a window. Red Mist then raves about how awesome that was, demonstrating that he's either a total sociopath or at least isn't very good at separating comic books from reality. In either case, that's the moment when both of them stop being mere villains and cross the line. Interestingly, the film turned this into a humanising Even Evil Has Standards moment for Red Mist by having him instead be suitably horrified.
- Also the revelation that Big Daddy isn't an ex-cop and dragged his daughter into the lifestyle after running away from her and lying to her about the fate of her mother.
- Kismet: Man of Fate: Herr Schering crosses it by having 700 people killed in one day in retaliation for the assassination of one man.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen's Griffen was implausibly popular with fans in the first volume, never mind he was introduced raping teenage girls and shown casually murdering an innocent policeman. To make sure we realise he's a very bad man in Vol 2, he sells Earth to the Martians in Vol 2 — and assaults Mina. It's the latter rather than anything else that results in his Karmic Death — by which point a reader can't feel any sympathy for him at all.
- The Lone Warrior: The Dictator's Shadow causing a fleet of airplanes to crash just to test a super-weapon.
- In Negation, Komptin captures Kaine on Komptin's homeworld. He goes to his mother's place and stashes Kaine there until Komptin's superiors arrive. His brother, however, is secretly part of an anti-Negation resistance force, and he helps free Kaine. When Komptin's superior finds out he demands that Komptin discipline his brother or it's his job. Komptin thinks for a moment, and then viciously murders both his brother and mother. Prior to this point in the story, Komptin, while clearly a bad guy, was portrayed with a small degree of sympathy: a hard-working but misfortunate underdog who wants nothing more than to be a successful leader within the Negation. With this act, that characterization changed, and Komptin was afterwards depicted as colder and crueler, living only for his job - and for revenge on Kaine especially.
- In No Hero, two members of the "superhero" team Front Line bring down a passenger jet full of people to give the newest member of the team Josh a chance to earn some good PR after his horribly mutated face was accidentally revealed to the public. Front Line has apparently been pulling stunts like this for decades in order to maintain their control over the world. No wonder the governments of the world finally got fed up with their bullshit and sent their pet killer Josh to bring them down from the inside.
- Pat Patriot: America's Joan of Arc: Haubner crosses this when he orders a bombing he's plotting to go through despite the unexpected presence of twenty children.
- While the man who would eventually become the Saint of Killers from Preacher had already a staggering kill record to his name (among other heinous actions), he was nonetheless a decent human being (at least compared to most of his murderous peers), and for a time lived a life devoid of killing people. However, he finally crossed over when, in the course of brutally avenging the peaceful life that he lost, he cold-bloodedly killed an innocent for the first time in his life, damning himself to Hell in the process. What came afterwards (including the Ratwater genocide) was merely a formality, as it's arguable that he was too far gone by then. Even this is arguable since the series Big Bad, God, is still considered worse. In fact, the Saint of Killers gets a happy ending by killing God and taking his throne, finally able to rest.
- Also, partially subverted for Cassidy, who slowly approaches the horizon through many of the later books, then seems to cross over forever when he shacks up with a devastated and drugged-out Tulip after Jesse's apparent death scene, lying to her and keeping her stoned to keep her dependent on him. Seemingly subverted when Jesse takes his hand in a redemptive gesture after their big fight scene, the seemingly played straight when Cassidy uses this hand-shake as an opening to sucker-punch Jesse and cripple him, then subverted one more time when we learn that Cassidy made a deal with God to betray Jesse this way, in exchange for a promise that Jesse would make it out alive and ok in the end.
- Jody crosses when he blows Tulip O'Hare's brains out (she gets better) for the "crime" of being a positive influence in Jesse Custer's life, as does Marie L'Angelle, who ordered the deed. A subsequent flashback shows that Marie and her men spent Jesse's childhood merrily murdering their way through anyone and anything that gave Jesse one iota of happiness.
- Rick and Morty (Oni): Summer of Dimension C-132 crossed this by planning on killing a popular version of herself and taking over her life. Upon suspecting that that Summer’s girlfriend had figured it out she immediately started planning on killing her as well. While both Summer C-1239 and her girlfriend Christina manage to live, Summer C-132 gets off as a Karma Houdini.
- SpongeBob SquarePants: The comics give us the Big Bad of the Untidaled arc, an unnamed kraken, who is arguably the darkest villain in the comics. Why? Well, not only is he responsible for the draining of the water that kickstarted the arc in the first place, we later learn HE EATS FISH! That's right, the darkest villain ever in the comic series eats Bikini Bottomites, and he tries to force Mr. Krabs to make him a giant Krabby Patty that will attract MANY unfortunate citizens into his jaws.
- Super-American: Tyrannus ordering a small town flooded to cover up him escaping justice.
- The Governor from The Walking Dead explicitly steps across a new one of these (or is revealed/implied to have done so) in any scene where he appears for more than a page. By the time he is eventually killed by his own people assaulting the prison after making them execute about 90% of the cast including Rick's wife Lori and their infant daughter Judy, his MEH crossings look like the line of doors from the opening sequence of Get Smart.
- Negan crosses his during the first thing he does on screen, which is to murder Glenn in front of the rest of the cast.
- Curious example from Watchmen, in that many readers think Big Bad Ozymandias's crossing of the Horizon and the greatest crime he commits are two distinct things. Sure he depopulated New York, but he had a damn good reason for doing that (preventing the Cold War from going hot and depopulating the entire planet). But when he gives a dozen innocent people cancer to discredit Dr. Manhattan, cold-bloodedly murders his absolutely loyal refugee servants to prevent them being a loose end, and pulls a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on his loving pet Bubastis in an attempt to kill Dr. Manhattan, which turns out not to work, it becomes a whole lot harder to sympathize with him.
- If The Comedian didn't cross when he tried to rape the first Silk Spectre, he definitely did when he murdered his pregnant lover because she gave him a scar. Dr. Manhattan's sheer apathy at witnessing said murder without so much as lifting a finger to try to stop it is arguably a Moral Event Horizon crossing for him, as well; The Comedian himself certainly thinks so.
- The Before Watchmen: Minutemen mini-series adds another potential crossing point for the Comedian - He framed Hooded Justices for the crimes committed by Rolf Muller by kidnapping some poor kid from Nite Owl's neighborhood, which led to Nite Owl accidentally killing Justice. The worst part? It's implied that Hooded Justice was actually one of Muller's victims.
- If The Comedian didn't cross when he tried to rape the first Silk Spectre, he definitely did when he murdered his pregnant lover because she gave him a scar. Dr. Manhattan's sheer apathy at witnessing said murder without so much as lifting a finger to try to stop it is arguably a Moral Event Horizon crossing for him, as well; The Comedian himself certainly thinks so.
- Wonder Man (Fox): General Attila bombing a Red Cross hospital.
- The Wraith: Joe Carrol scaring his own father to death and laughing about it.
