One Man Army / Comic Books

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• Most characters possessing Super-Speed. The only exception would be those who lack Required Secondary Powers.
• In 52 we have (DCU's second) World War III event, a one week war with Black Adam as one side. Not fighting for one side, or Leading One Side: it was literally Black Adam going on a rampage verus the rest of the world trying to stop him.
• Asterix: Obelix is a prime example of this, on more than one occasion taking on entire Roman armies single-handed, for fun. Any of the Gauls are capable of this when tanked up on magic potion, though — Obelix is just more noteworthy because he's always tanked up on the magic potion.
• Atomic Robo: Jenkins. Robo can take on a lot of soldiers by himself, mostly because it takes heavy weapons to seriously threaten him and normal bullets just irritate him, and Jenkins is the guy Robo thinks is hardcore. During Majestic 12's attack on Tesladyne, when the shady government conspiracy showed up with all its favourite toys, they figured out where Jenkins was based on suddenly losing contact with an entire squad - so they air-dropped three heavy suits of Powered Armour directly on top of him, and didn't expect to get all of them back.
• Batman:
  • Whether it's dozens of Faceless Goons or merely half the Legion of Doom, you can bet that Batman will get through them (without killing them, of course; this is Batman). This can often be drawn up to him being Crazy-Prepared (you can totally see Bruce just sitting around going like "Okay, if a President Evil took over and I was surrounded by the Green Berets, how'd I get through them all?"), but he can do it on the fly, too.
  • He's outdone by Cassandra Cain, who can level a room full of Mooks so fast that the government was convinced she had Super-Speed. Whether she actually does is up in the air (genetic tests show no metagene, but mystical abilities haven't been ruled out), but she is considered to be the best hand-to-hand fighter on the planet, and once defeated the Brotherhood of Evil singlehandedly.
• Captain America: No other hero has been the subject of more angry commanders shouting "Kill him, you fools! He's only one man!" Although he wasn't MEANT to be a One-Man Army, just the first of many. Then stuff happened and the secret of the process was lost, leading to any number of character origins that relate to attempts to replicate it.
• Code Name: Gravedigger: The Pentagon is so impressed by Hazard's combat prowess that they send him on one-man commando raids behind enemy lines.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe:
  • In stories set in the Middle Ages, Donald Duck fought off entire armies with his superior ability with a sword backed by enormous strength.
  • Stories set in the present usually tone it down, but make clear that a pissed Donald can fight off multiple opponents with ease. Then came "Donald Duck and Reginella's Wedding", where he faced an entire army equipped with middle-ages weapon and not only routed it with only a double-barreled shotgun, plenty of rock salt rounds and a boombox playing a horrible song, but then forced them to melt their weapons and turn them into agricoltural tools or else he'd "ruin everything healthy you still have".
  • Paperinik New Adventures sees him regularly facing dozens of Evronians and come out on top. Bear in mind, Evronians have been seen to fight the US Army outnumbered and win.
  • Scrooge McDuck can act as one, especially when he's written by Don Rosa and in stories set in the past: In the eight chapter of his Scrooge-biography The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck he faces a whole gang of bad guys alone and wins, in the tenth chapter he dares to take on the U.S. army by himself. Other stories set in the present day see him also face dozens of Beagle Boys, but it's not as impressive as the other two examples.
• Green Lantern: Green Lantern and anyone with a similarly versatile weapon.
  • Larfleeze of the Orange Lantern Corps takes this to its logical conclusion. He's the single member of his entire corps (any others are just constructs under his control) because the Orange Light embodies greed; he literally will not share its power with anyone else. Having all of it at his disposal makes him incredibly powerful, but he's thankfully too focused on guarding his piles of treasure to do much else.
• Groo the Wanderer: Groo would be one of these, if it weren't for his stupidity. He has an unfortunate tendency to forget which side he's on (If he was on a given side in the first place — there have been occasions where he's charged into battles he had nothing to do with and killed anyone who crossed his path simply because it was a fray and he felt like joining in) in the middle of a battle — to the point where he has found himself the only living person left on the field, having single-handedly killed most of both armies involved.
• Hawkeye: As much as Clint Barton suffers from Overshadowed by Awesome and Memetic Loser status, he is repeatedly shown to be one of the most capable among Earth's Mightiest Heroes despite often being dismissed as its weakest member (hey, the weakest of Earth's Mightiest is still one of Earth's Mightiest). Though he's often dismissed as just being a guy with a bow and arrow, most overlook that he's literally the best marksman in the world, and that he ultimately only uses the bow due to it being his weapon; he's also an excellent swordsman (with both a Katana and a broadsword, among other sword-styles), staff-fighter, and many other melee and bladed weapons, an expert with throwing weapons, and can turn anything into an Improvised Weapon, including turning a room into a Rube Goldberg Device to take someone out without actually touching them. This is all on-top of being Captain America's sparring partner, which requires he match him in acrobatics and speed, and unarmed combat, as well as being one of the few people who can use Steve's shield as well as he can. There's a reason that, in many instances where the team is cleared, Clint is one of the last to be taken down, despite his goofy appearance and mundane power set.
  • This was actually deconstructed in Matt Fraction's critically acclaimed Hawkeye run; Clint is shown to be an impressive combatant who, alongside his protege, can take on multiple gangs of mooks at the same time. However, he's capable of being overwhelmed by Zerg Rush tactics and can be knocked out as easily as any other non-powered person, he's still a bruised mess even after a successful mission, and his goofy exterior (which is shown to be something of a Stepford Smiler act to cover his depression) sometimes means he distracts himself and can be caught off guard easily. His protege Kate Bishop is shown to be much the same, where when prepared and armed she's able to fight groups of men much larger than herself, but she's still short for her age and not particularly muscular, so if she's caught by surprise or just overwhelmed she's able to be knocked out or over-powered.
• The Hulk and the Thing obviously fare well against hordes of mooks, or even Elite Mooks, due to Nigh-Invulnerability and Super-Strength. The Hulk has spent large part of his publication history annihilating literal armies and goes up against several beings considered Physical Gods, and on more than one occasion beats the stuffing out of them. The Thing is normally outclassed by such opponents but hangs on with his tenacity.
• Invincible: Conquest. He claims he has conquered entire worlds with his bare hands. In fact, this is the standard Viltrumite strategy. They send a single person to each world targeted by their empire. Very rarely is this insufficient to take over the world in question. The former Regent Thragg makes Conquest look like a pushover, having been trained from birth to be the strongest Viltrumite alive.
• Iron Man: Iron Man, who has been described as wearing a fighter jet, although that's an understatement. Even better when he uses his Extremis to control multiple suits simultaneously.
• Judge Dredd: Judge Dredd has been known to be this. A classic example occurs just after the fall of Cal. Newly installed Chief Judge Griffin wants to send in a fifty man squad to clear out a sector that has been taken over by a gang known as the Cosmic Punks. Dredd notes that this is giving them too much credit and elects to go in alone with nothing more than his Lawgiver and a garbage truck. Anyone who survives the encounter ends up in the back of the truck and exiled into the Cursed Earth for ten years.
• Last Man Standing: The character bios uses these exact words to describe Gabriel.
• The Mighty Thor and The Incredible Hercules from Marvel. Both can handle hordes of regular humans fine, but when serious can fight large groups of super-villains and powerful mystical creatures. Thor fought off nearly every super-villain in Secret Wars (1984) and has fought through the armies of Asgard, the underworld, and Hell several times. Hercules has fought off all of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Attuma's armies.
• John Doe, of Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja , who is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• O.M.A.C.: The original O.M.A.C. from The DCU, whose name is an acronym for "One Man Army Corps"; also a Shout-Out to a WWII medal of Honor winner who got the nickname "One Man Army Klein". Note that this is out of necessity; in a future where every country is nuclear and international tensions constantly threaten to boil over, where the risk of war is both ever-present and too great to comprehend, one man must stop conflict before it grows. Troops take too long to assemble and deploy, and a large scale conflict is not an option in the world that's coming.
  • In O.M.A.C.'s first appearance, practically his first line is "Evacuate this section [of the building]! I'm going to destroy it!"
  • The O.M.A.C. Project is an aversion of this, as the word O.M.A.C. was originally thought to be an acronym for One Man Army Corps, but it turned out the creators took Fun with Acronyms up to eleven by naming the individual O.M.A.C. units (who were an Internal Homage to the original O.M.A.C. character) "Observational Metahuman Activity Constructs", and the satellite system that controlled it all was named the "Omni Mind And Community".
• Preacher: The Saint of Killers. He is Heaven's army. Heaven's entire army. At the end of the series, anyway. ("You killed the heavenly armies!" "They were in the way.")
• The Punisher: Most Marvel characters already consider the Punisher not right in the head. Just look at the arc in the grittier MAX series where he responded to his family's grave being defiled by killing 68 organized crime members in one night. Also, he is shown to end up in pretty bad shape after many of his self-assigned missions. It's implied he has to recover for several weeks after the ones in which he's most injured. In the MAX series, one police officer mentions that Castle's body count exceeds 2000 confirmed kills.
• Raptors: The Molina twins are a pair of vampire twins that show formidable how creatures like them would be in combat. Drago is capable of slaughtering an angry mob in India unarmed and towards the climax, the council sends attack helicopters and fully armed SWAT teams to dispose of him. Later, when Vicky's nature awakens, she is also capable of fighting off a number of her family's bodyguards at once.
• Rogue Trooper: Both Rogue and Friday. To make it more impressive, each comes from an army of similarly enhanced soldiers.
• Sin City: Wallace and Marv took on several armed Mooks on more than one occasion. In fact, Wallace was flat-out called a one man army by the Big Bad.
• Spider-Man: Peter Parker's Super-Strength, Super-Reflexes, Danger Sense, jumping and web-shooters synergize well. He can drop gangs of mooks without being touched.
• Star Wars: The comic books often remind the reader just how dangerous Vader is when he cuts loose:
  • The solicitation for the first issue of Star Wars: Vader Down is "Vader vs. All the Rebels... it’s not a fair fight!". Indeed, when Darth Vader comes out of hyperspace in his fighter and is surprised by squadrons of X-Wings he shoots down three squadrons worth before Luke rams his fighter and forces both to crash land, and on the ground the Rebels send thousands of troops with mechanized and air support... And he mows them down.
  Rebel Soldier: Lay down your weapons! You are surrounded!
  Vader: All I am surrounded by is fear. And dead men.
  • In Age of Rebellion - Darth Vader, Vader has to obey Imperial governor Ahr, who, holding a grudge against him, sends him to take on the rogue droids that have overran the planet Ahn Krantarium single-handedly, and later has him take on the insurgents on the planet Phelzepham alone. Vader comes back successful from both assignments.
• Superman:
  • Superman's powerset lets him take on large numbers of enemies, whether they are the mooks of a mob boss or alien armies.
  • In Krypton No More, Superman, Supergirl and their dog defeat a whole alien army.
  • In War World Superman and Supergirl manage to destroy a Kill Sat bigger than a star.
  • In The Supergirl from Krypton (2004) arc, an army of Darkseid's kamikaze parademons attempts to kill Superman. An angry, almost berserk Superman who intends to rescue his cousin. Superman ignores them and strides onward as they blow up around him.
  • Many Superman's Rogues fit the description. In The Third Kryptonian, Amalak proves he's powerful enough to fight back four mad Kryptonians. Granted, they were injured and exhausted, but still...
  • Supergirl is a nigh-invulnerable Flying Brick who has been known to wipe whole armies. This is especially true of her pre-Crisis version, who was virtually a Physical God. She broke down Warworld — a planet-sized machine war — by ramming through it. In Red Daughter of Krypton she nearly single-handedly defeats a whole alien genocidal army.
  • The Krypton Chronicles has Erok, the founder of the House of El, who after drinking a strength-enhancing potion became powerful enough to terrifying one entire army into fleeing.
• The Transformers (IDW):
  • Sixshot in the earlier comics for the Decepticons. Sixshot is such a One Bot Army, his specialty is wiping out ENTIRE PLANETS.
  • Other notable examples from the IDW G1 continuity are Overlord (from The Transformers: Last Stand of the Wreckers), who takes on the Wreckers and came so very close to beating them, and Thunderwing, who became so powerful thanks to Pretender technology it took the combined efforts of BOTH the Autobots and Decepticons to bring him down and he didn't even stay dead.. And, of course, Megatron, who is not only able to fist-fight against some of his own upgraded Phase-Sixers, but has a tendency to collect superweapons and hatch contingency plans just in case they're needed. After his defection, he's facing down Deathsaurus's few hundred remaining men and the DJD, which includes a Phase Sixer and some of the scariest killing machines in The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye, and apart from having his fusion cannon shot off, the fight is only even close when Megatron wants it to be.
  • Then there's Galvatron, main antagonist of the Marvel UK storyline and Megatron from another time, who regularly takes on entire squadrons of Decepticons and Autobots, and usually emerges unscathed (his foes less so). He has singlehandedly torn apart elite squads like the Wreckers and the Dinobots, and in his last battle, the combined forces of Autobots and Decepticons from the past and future are unable to truly stop him, and only a rift in space and time ends him.
  • On the Autobots' side, there is Optimus Prime, obviously. Omega Supreme, Fortress Maximus and Ultra Magnus also follow this trope.
  • Nearly every 'leader' Transformer fits this trope to varying degrees.
  • Grimlock and the Dinobots are basically this turned into a Badass Crew. When Grimlock stays behind on Scorponok's ship to face down a small army, he doesn't even seem concerned.
  • Each of the Phase-Sixers (Sixshot, Overlord, Black Shadow and Tarn of the Decepticon Justice Division) was upgraded by Megatron to be even stronger than him. Phase Sixer refers to "Phase Six" of Megatron's plans: namely, wiping out the populations of entire worlds. Something each of the Phase-Sixers is able to do single-handedly.
  • The Decepticon Justice Division, which includes a character mentioned above, is basically five of these teamed up. The five of them, plus their mode-locked, near-mindless Pet, are able to slaughter the entire 200-strong crew of an alternate Lost Light, including Ultra Magnus and Cyclonus. Doesn't do them much good against Megatron, though — at the climax of "Dying of the Light", he pulls out all his stockpiled contingencies and rips the four remaining members apart.
  • During his miniseries, Ironhide replied to Alpha Trion's attempt to intimidate him by pointing out that he had a bodyguard the size of an army (Metroplex). Ironhide's reply was that he'd just destroyed an army of Ax-Crazy Insecticons.
  • When Tailgate undergoes an empowering event, he gains super-strength. At one point, Cyclonus shows him part of the battlefield on Necroworld and points out that everyone else was on the other side of the fortress; the piles of dead Decepticons in the area were Tailgate's work alone. Unfortunately, it's also bad for his health, and the only reason he survives his attempt to escape it from being sabotaged is because other parties wanted to use him as a pawn.
• Any Flying Brick. Wonder Woman, Power Girl, Supergirl, Superboy, Captain Marvel (both Billy Batson of DC and Carol Danvers of Marvel)...
• X-Men:
  • Professor X can shut down hundreds of minds with a thought, and that's not counting Cerebro. He can also turn your army against you.
  • Wolverine has literally fought hundreds of mooks at once. A comprehensive documentation of his combat history would include the phrase "piles of ninjas" more than once. Per page.
  • His daughter/Opposite-Sex Clone X-23 is no slouch either. She single-handedly destroyed the entire Facility installation where she was bred (OK, her mother Sarah may have capped a couple mooks during her own escape), and has been seen carving up security personnel and soldiers by the dozens. And oh yeah, add extensive assassination, espionage, and spec ops training to her qualifications.
  • Nate Grey a.k.a. X-Man is the overdesigned Living Weapon version of this, as he was meant to take down Apocalypse - a Physical God who often quite literally functioned as this. As the Marauders, both versions of the Gauntlet, the Shi'ar Empire, Queen Jean and more or less her entire empire, and Apocalypse (two different versions, in fact), the X-Men, Legion, and the Brotherhood (the last few simultaneously) have all found out, he is very, very good at it.

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