Superman seldom gets a chance to, but he's allowed himself to unleash his full fury on opponents like Darkseid, Mongul, Cyborg Superman, Lobo, The Incredible Hulk, and The Mighty Thor.
JLA/Avengers: Thor gives as good as he gets when it comes to Superman, and both beat the stuffing out of each other once, implying that they are about even. Shortly after Superman gave one to Thor in the Avengers/JLA miniseries, the rest of the Avengers flip the heck out, and Superman is pounded into the ground by the Vision, Iron Man, She-Hulk, Wonder Man, and Hercules. Who then all get launched into the air by Aquaman on a freaking Sea Serpent.
In The Supergirl from Krypton (2004), Superman beats the crap out of Darkseid when the Lord of Apokolips attempts to murder his cousin. Earlier Darkseid gives Batman a beatdown when Bruce reveals that he has rigged Darkseid’s bombs to blow Apokolips up.
Supergirl is a mostly nice, good-natured girl... but she's also a temperamental Kryptonian teenager, and sometimes she's flipped out and trampled villains which tried her patience until she ran out of it:
Most famously, she trashed the Anti-Monitor in Crisis on Infinite Earths even though he was killing her.
In Red Daughter of Krypton she pummelled Lobo until he stopped moving and talking. Not an easy feat.
In H'el on Earth, Superboy is pounded into the ground by Supergirl for trying to stop them from resurrecting Krypton. Having been severely weakened, he doesn't even bother fighting back and instead tries to reason with them.
In Who is Superwoman?, Supergirl delivers a brutal beating to the titular super-villain.
In Reign of Doomsday, Supergirl comes face to face with Doomsday. And she is actually glad because she wanted a chance to take him -the monster that killed her cousin- on one-on-one. And then she does◊ and she cuts loose◊.
Death & the Family: Enraged by Insect Queen's manipulations, Supergirl smashes the villain through several walls, rips her wings off, pummels her into the ground until her face is bleeding, and then drains her out of Lana's body.
The Phantom Zone: Superman is absolutely furious when he finally faces Zod, what with having gone through several nightmarish parallel dimensions, having lost a friend, and seeing the Zoners trying to send Earth into the Twilight Dimension. Zod being smug about it is the last straw, and Superman delivers a real battering.
Superman:"He's dead, Zod. You're going to have to pay for that." Zod:"Forgive my not trembling, Kal-El... But what am I to fear, in light of your moronic code against killing?" Superman:"You're right, Zod! I can't take your life— much as I'm tempted! But my code does not say a damn thing— about not battering you to within an inch of it!! Murderer!!" (thinking) And there are moments... When I think I should chuck that code altogether...!
Infinite Crisis: Pretty much every fight involving Superboy-Prime is this, though his first fight with Conner Kent (then regular Superboy) stands out in that he not only beats Conner to within an inch of his life, but he kicks Krypto halfway across Smallville. The JSA, Teen Titans, and the Doom Patrol arrive shortly after that. Does this change anything? Nope. Prime wipes the floor with them; he kills Pantha, Baby Wildebeest, and Bushido, and rips Risk's arm off. He was in the process of beating the snot out of Beast Boy when a bunch of Flashes arrived and managed to seal him in the Speed Force for a good deal of time. The other one that stands out is the one against the Superman of Earth-Two. Prime beats him to death with his bare hands even though both are depowered.
In A Death in the Family, this happens to Jason Todd's Robin at the hands of the Joker in the third chapter, as Jason is beaten within an inch of his life with a crowbar. Batman later pays him in full in the Knightfall saga, roaring Jason's name the whole time.
The Knightfall saga could be considered one big version of this for Bats. Because of the mass breakout, Batman is constantly in action and starts to exhaust himself, and as he wears out the beatdowns become more severe and more often until we get to Bane, who delivers the coup de grace Beatdown by beating an already-wrecked Batman to a pulp and then breaking his back. Bane later gets the crap beaten out of him by Azrael.
Batman delivers a truly terrifying beatdown to the Joker in chapter 7 of Batman: Hush. Harley Quinn and Catwoman both try to stop him, but fail utterly. It's accompanied by an Internal Monologue listing some of Joker's more heinous crimes, so it's hard to feel sorry for him, but the same Internal Monologue makes it clear that Batman has every intention of killing Joker, and nobody is capable of stopping him. At least, until Gordon talks him out of it. It's probably the closest he's ever come to finishing The Joker off once and for all.
In Joker's Last Laugh Nightwing beats the shit out of the Joker, both for Jason and under the mistaken belief that Tim is dead too. He actually beats the Joker to death. Though, he gets better.
In Robin (1993), Tim Drake sort of loses it when he reaches a hostage situation only to find the hostage takers have already murdered a father in front of his little daughter because "he wouldn't shut up". He beats the small group of criminals in a near daze and is still pounding the unconscious leader in the face when the police finally enter the building, only stopping in shock at what he's done when one of the officers grabs his shoulder and tells him it's over.
The final issue of the New 52 Nightwing series involves Batman giving one of these to Dick Grayson until he agrees to go undercover at Spyral. It's a pretty tough read. Dick's emotionally broken from losing the circus, Damian's death, and the fact that Lex Luthor literally just killed him and brought him back to life in order to save the world. And the worst part? Dick isn't even arguing against going undercover. He just wants Alfred, Barbara, Jason, and Tim to be told that he's alive. Bruce keeps hitting him until he hits back and gives in to his demands.
In Batgirl (2011), Batgirl takes out a bunch of rage and frustration at Knightfall on Huntress, who surprised her by suddenly appearing from the shadows.
Secret Six: Deadshot delivers multiple beatdowns of this sort to a gang of white supremacist thugs. The first one results in one of the thugs getting his eye put out, while subsequent beatdowns occur over one night when the thugs decide to go after him for revenge. The beatdowns just keep getting more and more humiliating until Deadshot's date finally offs them.
The Comedian receiving one that ends with him being flung out of the window to his death. Then, near the end of the comic, Ozymandias beats down on Rorschach and Nite Owl as he explains his motives.
Hollis Mason, a former vigilante pushing 70 years old, is killed this way by a group of thugs. The movie manages to make this scene even harder to watch by letting him get a few punches in.
The White Magician beat Artemis to death when she finally confronted him after realizing how she'd been played while acting as Wonder Woman. He had at the time become warped into a giant muscle bound monster by his abuse of magic.
Wonder Woman: The Hiketeia: Batman is on the losing end of two of these courtesy of Wonder Woman when he comes after a young woman under Diana's protection and ignores her warnings to not push his luck. The second one ends with Batman's head under Wonder Woman's boot ordering him to not get up. He listens.
Wonder Woman delivered a notable one to Medusa after she petrified a child under Diana's protection. Medusa had to invoke Ares' protection to stop Wonder Woman from beating her to death there and then.
Wonder Woman (2006): Diana is on the receiving end of a one sided beatdown the first time she comes across Genocide, the only reason she survived was that Genocide decided to make her suffer, so left her broken, bleeding and pinned while she went and kidnapped Etta Candy to torture.
In the first run on Infinity, Inc., Marcie Cooper, the third Harlequin, tricked Solomon Grundy into killing Sylvester Pemberton (Star-Spangled Kid I/Skyman) by using her illusion-casting goggles to appear as Jade, whom Grundy had become attached to. When Grundy realized he'd been tricked he mercilessly beat Marcie to within an inch of her life. In fact, the readers weren't sure if Grundy had killed her or not until Word of God clarified that Marcie wasn't dead since she hasn't appeared since.
In Year One #36 of Injustice: Gods Among Us, Batman fights Superman (who in this world is an Evil Overlord) to distract him long enough to scan a pill that grants normal humans super-strength and invulnerability. Superman beats the ever-living crap out of him, finishing the beatdown by breaking the Bat over his knee.
Immediately following this, the scan of the pill finishes. Alfred Pennyworth then takes the pill and, taking Superman completely by surprise, delivers the mother of all beatdowns on the Man of Steel. All the while he is yelling, “You don’t get to hurt my family anymore!” Needless to say, it's badass. Sadly he ends up receiving a fatal one of his own from Zasz, in Year Five.
In Year Three, after Wonder Woman snaps Huntress's neck during a battle, she gets the piss beat out of her by an enraged Batwoman.
Huntress beats up an assassin who threatened to murder her students.
Deadpool has been getting these from the women in his life as of late. When he discovers Shiklah's infidelity, he shoots one of her lovers. She then beats his ass from her underground Monster Metropolis, to the subway, and all the way up to the streets of New York. His clothes being slightly tattered afterwards. He receives a very bad one from a mind-controlled Rogue in Uncanny Avengers. The damage being so great, he had to go to the hospital and walk with a cane for a bit afterwards. In most recent chapters, Preston delivers another bad one to him. Lesser than Rogue's beatdown, but makes Shiklah look sweet. She strangles him, knocks out multiple teeth, fractures his ribs & sternum -with bone possibly piercing his lungs, as he gasps for breath. She then grabs him by the neck, continues to punch him into a tree. As he falls to the ground, she kicks him into the tree so hard, his spine almost wraps around it. Deadpool eventually had to use a grenade and blow them both up to stop her assault.
Hulk himself has been handing these out like candy for years, giving these to anyone foolish enough to fight him. Especially during World War Hulk.
He still receives them here and there, namely from Zeus in The Incredible Hulks #622, who left him crippled for days. The beatdown was bad enough that only Hulk's Healing Factor keeps him alive long enough to be rescued.
In their first meeting, Kingpin beats Daredevil and then slams a vault door on his head after Daredevil experiences a moment of Punch! Punch! Punch! Uh Oh......
In the Born Again story arc, a corrupt cop about to confess to framing Matt Murdock/Daredevil is subjected to a beatdown by one of the Kingpin's minions.
Every now and then a new villain shows up or an old one with a vendetta and Spidey gets the crap beaten out of him. A lot of the time his My Name Is Inigo Montoya moment is very far away. If not for outside interference, he would've bitten the dust against Morlun, for instance.
In The Other, Morlun dishes one out to Spider-Man, first by tearing one of his eyes out and eating it, and then literally beating him to a bloody pulp. By the time he's done and is chased off by the police, Peter's face is so bloody and swollen that not even Mary Jane, his own wife, can recognize him.
In Back in Black, Spidey gave one of these to the Kingpin after he caused Aunt May's almost-fatal gunshot wound... then made the mistake of gloating about it. Spidey then brutally demonstrates how much he usually holds back by beating the Kingpin to within an inch of his life without the Kingpin laying a finger on him. Then, he holds up the Kingpin and coldly, calmly, explains that he's not going to kill him - he's already dead. Because if May dies, then so does the Kingpin, in approximately three seconds, when Spidey fills his throat and lungs with webbing and lets him choke on it. Then, he leaves him broken and bleeding in front of the prison guards. Usually, he's sorry after, but after that one, he just kinda smiled.
In The Night Gwen Stacy Died, after the Green Goblin kills Gwen Stacy, Spidey hunts him down and beats him within an inch of his life. Hell, if Spidey hadn't decided against it, Norman Osborn would've died that day. As it was, Norman's glider did the job for him.
Spider-Man Noir: Spider-Man is beaten half to death by the Sandman the first (and only) time they meet face-to-face. After Spidey's punches fail to get a reaction from him, Sandman knocks Spidey down and pounds his face into paste. He doesn't even stop right away when police hit the scene. When all's said and done, the Sandman is dead from a hail of police gunfire and Spider-Man's mask is in tatters and he's delirious from blood loss.
During Spider-Man 2099's storyline in Spider-Verse, the Inheritor Daemos escapes a trap by Miguel and Lady Spider by killing himself. He hops into a new body and heads back to 2099 to find them again, and ends up encountering The Punisher 2099 with his trademark weapon, a bat. Daemos taunts him by telling him that a simple bat wouldn't hurt him at all... until the Punisher smashes his head in with the bat, set permanently on "titanium". For all the curbstomping the Inheritors gave the Spiders, having a non-Spider smash his head was a breath of fresh air.
Dark Reign: After a long globetrotting journey to burn out his own mind, Tony Stark finally faces off against Norman Osborn. The "battle" is completely one-sided in Osborn's favor since Tony is all but brain dead and in an outdated suit at that point. The beating is savage enough to render Tony comatose, which of course was All According to Plan. The beatdown was also broadcast on live television, winning Stark public sympathy and casting Osborn in a very negative light.
In an issue of The Avengers dealing with the Skrull-Kree war, The Vision displays a Not So Stoic reaction against an opponent after the Scarlet Witch is injured. An ally warns the Vision that he doesn't know what he's doing, and might beat the opponent to death. The Vision replies that he has a computer mind and knows precisely what's he's doing. "I am beating him to death."
"Under Siege" sees Hercules on the recieving end of a brutal beatdown from Goliath, Mr. Hyde, the Wrecking Crew and Tiger Shark. Later, Mr. Hyde would also deliver one solo to Jarvis while a captive Captain America is Forced to Watch.
In one of the later Ultimate Spider-Man story arcs, Norman Osborn fights off SHIELD agents while trying again to coerce Peter into helping him. When the conflict reaches its climax, a fight breaks out between Osborn in mutated form, a ship full of SHIELD agents, Spider-Man, and Harry Osborn in mutated form. When Harry tries to beat his father into submission, Norman goes insane with rage and smashes him to the floor, striking him in the face until he accidentally kills him. This shocks everyone into halting the fight, and a moment later Osborn shifts back into human form and requests that someone kill him.
In The Punisher MAX storyline Streets of Laredo, this happens when a thug insults his boss' son. Rachel, the leader of a gunrunning outfit, has an openly gay son whom she adores. When one of her men calls him a "stinking queer" and proceeds to tell her that someone ought to put him down like an animal, she challenges the man, who is easily twice her size, to a fight. He has a Bowie knife and she has brass knuckles. He doesn't even scratch her and she completely wrecks him before delivering the final blow.
In The Punisher MAX storyline "Mother Russia", Nick Fury takes off his belt and whips the general who came up with the whole "Fake terrorists crashing a passenger jet full of innocent people as a distraction" plan. Over and over and over again. The guy is a bloody whimpering mess after Fury's through with him.
In Nextwave #6, Aaron gets one of these from Monica Rambeau, Elsa Bloodstone, and Tabitha for wearing a woman's bra and refusing to take it off. Played for Laughs.
Finally, in Nextwave #8, The Captain delivers one (offscreen) to Dread Rorkannu, which included doing something unpleasant to him with a toilet brush. We never get to know what (thankfully). Unsurprisingly, this too is Played for Laughs.
In The Dark Phoenix Saga, the X-Men's beatdown at the hands of the Imperial Guard. In fairness, the X-Men were badly outnumbered, but watching Colossus go down hard in a one-on-one fight with Gladiator is when it becomes clear they have no hope of victory.
X-23 delivers a brutal one to Zander Rice at the end of X-23: Innocence Lost. She could have easily killed him instantly with her claws, but after disabling his gun she put them away to beat the ever-loving shit out of him bare-handed in return for everything he'd done to her (short list: forcibly activating her Healing Factorat age seven with lethal doses of radiation, removing her claws at the same age one at a time to be coated in adamantium without anasthesia as part of his sick Revenge by Proxy against Wolverine, leaving her behind to be killed on a mission for no good reason, and thirteen years of general abuse and cruelty intended to strip her of her humanity). Her mother just gave her a mission to kill him. Laura pummeling him for about nine minutesnote Based on Laura's mission timer. Her fight with Rice begins at about 11:00 on the clock, and ends at about 01:00 straight? Payback.
"Give your orders and ultimatums to those who choose to obey, or too cowardly to fight, NOT to me. Or learn again the difference between a God of Thunder and a mortal man in a metal suit."
In Drax #9, a fight between bounty hunter Killer Thrill and Drax's crewmate Ora turns into this when Killer Thrill gets the upper hand and starts beating Ora to a pulp. Thrill even uses her telekinetic powers to stand Ora up when she's semi-conscious and continues using her face as a punching bag.
After Black Cat finds out that Silk has been working for SHIELD behind her back, she teleports both of them to an abandoned factory and beats up Silk in front of her other goons.
Other Comics
Bone has a male and female example when Thorn and Fone Bone get the tar beaten out of them before they're thrown into jail. Really hard to witness, especially when she discovers her bruises, black eyes, and a missing tooth. Then Fone smiles apologetically to reveal his missing tooth. Both are drawn like that for the rest of that day.
And each is missing a tooth from that point til after the big climactic battle.
This is approximately one-half (or slightly more) of the standard MO of The Boys. The first half is usually some combination of surveillance, investigations, a little blackmail, messing with government agencies, etcetera, but sooner or later someone, somewhere, will be handed the kind of beating that, no matter how much the target might deserve it, is still likely to leave the reader feeling slightly queasy.
The Crow: Aside from flashbacks, the original (1989) comic book was one long impressionistic beatdown and slaughter of the gang responsible for Eric and Shelly's death.
The Dark Crystal: Creation Myths: Before the advent of a Skeksis emperor, skekShod questions the need for a ruler and openly mocks skekSo as the potential candidate. This enrages skekSo, who beats him to a pulp with the scepter then asks if anyone else wants to question his rule. Nobody does, unsurprisingly.
The Doctor Who Magazine comic doesn't have that much graphic non-fantasy violence, but the No Holds Barred Beatdown Jodafra gives to his own niece Destrii in "Bad Blood" (after she stopped him from sacrificing a bunch of abducted children to an extradimensional monster in exchange for powers) is quite horrific. And pivotal in starting her Heel–Face Turn and making his irredeemability clear after he'd been introduced as a Lovable Rogue.
Mark (the titular Invincible) does this to supervillain Angstrom Levy and overestimates his durability, accidentally beating him to death.
Nolan almost killed him when the latter wouldn't go along with his world domination plans.
Sadly, the one implied by the cover of issue 50, Mark beating Cecil to death, doesn't happen.
Oliver, however, does just fine at beating the Mauler Twins to death.
Taken up to eleven in the Conquest "arc," which is actually four full issues of almost nothing besides Conquest smashing Mark into more and more bloody pulp. It ends with a Moment of Awesome in which Mark, having lost the function of his arms and legs from the savage battle, manages to headbutt Conquest, caving his opponent's skull in.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: After Griffin beats Mina, Hyde reveals he could always see him, then proceeds to beat and rape Griffin before leaving him to bleed to death.
Anathos does this to the Legendaries right after reincarnating in Danael: as soon as he appears, he impales Jadina on his sword, slashes Gryf everywhere on his body, burns Shimy's eyes, and cut Razzia's arm off. All of this in two pages. While the comic had got quite dark at this point, this was so far the most violent scene in the whole series.
In The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, it happens to the last Beagle Boy after he pisses off Scrooge in the Klondike dream. Cue him crying afterwards about how he can't pick on someone TOUGHER than him, and that it's unfair to bullies.
Parodied a couple times in Rat-Man. A Kenshiroexpy punched Rat-Man so hard and for so long that the fight's audience went from cheering to perplexed to worried, and one man had to go down and tell "Ken" to stop. Another time a Son Goku expy hit Rat-Man with a stone for so long that... the stone begged for mercy! There was also that parody of Space: 1999 where Rat-Man was hit with a truncheon until it was destroyed, just because he irritated one of the characters with the wrong question...
The Clown/Violator from Spawn dishes these out on Spawn whenever he thinks the Hellspawn is getting out of line, or whenever he feels like it. He's forbidden by Malebolgia from actually killing Hellspawn — fortunately for Violator, Spawn can take a lot of punishment. There's not much Al can do about it early in the series, since a fledgling Hellspawn is no match for a demon like the Violator. When Violator gets his claws on victims who aren't as durable as a Hellspawn, things get ugly.
In the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic series (Leonardo #1), the Foot manages one on Leonardo while he's out training solo. After a lengthy chase, he's cornered and numbers overwhelm him, though most of the actual beatdown takes place out of frame. By the time he's thrown through April's apartment window, Leo is only able to choke out that the Shredder has returned. For the next full issue (#10) he's unable to participate in the ensuing Foot vs. Turtles battle, and the next (#11) is dedicated solely to our heroes' recovery from the incident.
The IDW comics has the Shredder ordering Bebop and Rocksteady to kill Donatello. The beatdown is so brutal that they crack open his shell with a hammer and the end of the issue suggests that he is, in fact, dead.
A strange one happens off-screen in Issue 46 of W.I.T.C.H.. To convince Will to give up the Heart of Kandrakar, Phobos in Endarno's body mind-raped her. Will looked like she would give up... And whatever she did him, it reversed the body swap and left Phobos unable to walk and utterly terrified of Will. It's probable she would have tortured him to death if it wasn't for the need to send Phobos back in his body and recall Endarno into his own, and when the following issue gives her the chance the first thing she does is calling dibs on the killing shot ( Phobos was lucky: due the situation, Will opted to make it quick and disintegrated him).
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