Overshadowed By Awesome / Comic Books

• Alias: Jessica Jones is a private investigator who has super strength, super durability and can fly. So why doesn't she become a superhero? Well actually she retired from being a superhero: you see, she lives in the Marvel Universe...yeah... Case in point: she quit being a superhero after enduring eight months of horrifying Mind Rape at the hands of the Purple Man and being beaten into a coma by The Avengers (who would have likely killed her if Ms. Marvel hadn't recognized her) after she attacked them under the Mind Control of the former...only to find at the end of the ordeal that during all this time no one noticed she was missing.
• The Avengers:
  • Dane Whitman, the heroic Black Knight, ultimately fell victim to this. Despite a truly concerted push during the 90's to make Dane The Protagonist of the team, at the end of the day he's just a guy with a cursed sword. Being a Jack of All Trades didn't help him either — even as Badass Normals go, anything Dane can do, some other Avenger can do better. Not helping is that Dane's whole deal and characterization tends to shift from writer to writer.
  • Hank Pym, at least after the early days of the team. Despite having incredible size-changing powers, hanging around with a Physical God, a Juggernaut, and a Gadgeteer Genius in Powered Armor made him kind of redundant. This has turned out not to be a good thing with a bi-polar disorder, with much of Hank's charactization post-70s being him having to deal with a crushing feeling of inadequacy compared to everyone else on the team.
  • Blade, the Badass Longcoat Dhampir Vampire Hunter of Marvel. Extremely cool in his own comics and crossovers, in Avengers books however, he’s generally not that impressive compared to the likes of Iron Man, Carol Danvers or Thor. Highlighted in the Immortal Hulk where Blade rather overestimates himself and attacks Hulk with his Cool Sword and gets Team Rocketed into the sky for his effort.
  • Hawkeye gets this a lot, despite being able to give the Bat-Family a run for their money in the Charles Atlas Super Power department (including famously lifting a car off himself one handed), he’s even more overshadowed than the previous examples, having no super powers whatsoever and is usually on a team with members who could reduce him to a fine smear. Subverted at other times where he proves to be an effective leader, a good (if extremely irritating) read of people, and capable of taking on just about anything with his arrows. Unfortunately, later writers would emphasize this trope as a Running Gag for Clint, with telling his sidekick Kate the best strategy when you lack claws and webs is to "run like a bitch".
• The Guardians of the Galaxy, throughout the Abnett/Lanning run, were treated as being major underdogs who were completely and laughably outclassed by most of the threats they faced, and their name apparently commanded so little respect on Earth that Reed Richards didn't even know who they were. However, the Guardians roster included the extremely powerful magician Adam Warlock, universal defender Quasar, three powerful telepaths, and two super-strong assassins, and their leader was a former Four-Star Badass. By Earthly standards, they'd be one of the strongest teams out there - one of the team's weakest and most badly decimated incarnations was able to crush an alternate version of the Defenders in seconds (Cosmo took down the Hulk in one shot).The fact that they get no respect is really more a side effect of having to take on universe-threatening opponents every week instead of four to six supervillains.
• Loki and Ares from The Mighty Thor and The Incredible Hercules respectively. The former is one of the most powerful sorcerers and one of the most powerful gods in the nine realms and a brilliant schemer but lives in a society of warriors that value brawn and brash heroics more than cleverly-laid schemes which they view as cowardice. The latter is a revamped anti-hero who personifies war that can "turn nations into empires, peasants into heroes, men into gods!" Both are overshadowed by their brothers whom they ridicule. Loki ridicules Thor for being a brainless oaf. Ares ridicules Hercules for being a drunken, destructive, buffoon and is himself looked down upon for his violent nature. Hercules himself is sometimes this for Thor. Despite being one of the greatest heroes who ever lived and the strongest god on Olympus many, including Zeus, still view him as a second-string Thor and a walking joke.
• New Mutants: Doug Ramsey, aka Cypher, had the mutant ability to decipher languages. In fact, he started out as a friend of the characters and Prof. X had no intention of telling him he was a mutant. Too bad none of the writers had figured out how potentially powerful his ability could be if used in a less conventional manner. To wit: his powers were instant total comprehension of any communication. This included the labels on buttons and controls of eons-dead aliens. Ramsey was later brought back to life, becoming a master computer programmer and hacker, as well as having the ability to read body language. Furthermore, he can now "read" the architectural structure of a building and determine its weakest point. In X-Men (2019), he is the only able to communicate with Genius Loci Krakoa who's providing a home for every single mutant in existence and gateways across dimensions. This in essence makes Doug one of the most important mutants ever, second only to freaking Professor X himself.
• Rick Jones, the perennial sidekick, was pointlessly outleagued by everyone he sidekicked for. Though he was touched with awesome a few brief moments, most of his days in the limelight simply let him show himself to be slightly more badass than normal.
• Batman
  • Stephanie 'Spoiler' Brown is an impressive fighter, athlete, and investigator considering she is a largely self-trained Ordinary High-School Student (not to mention having guts enough for three). She lives in Gotham. Her boyfriend is Tim Drake, and her closest female friend is Cassandra Cain, whose martial art skills are vastly superior. Suffice it to say that Batman's efforts at getting her to ditch the costume are not entirely due to being a control freak. Once she becomes Batgirl, though, things are a little different.
  • Dick Grayson was this to Batman when he was the first Robin, and in his late teens decided to strike out on his own as Nightwing. Now, he's one of the leading heroes of the DCU. He even became Batman after Bruce's kind of death.
  • Jason Todd constantly felt like he was living in Dick's shadow as well as Batman. It led to him being impulsive and angry.
  • Tim Drake wasn't the "first", and wasn't the tearaway Bruce couldn't save. He was just kind of...there. More competent than Jason and even improving on Bruce's techniques. Bruce knows all of this and admits that Tim'll eventually be a better detective than him.
  • Damian Wayne was never quite accepted by Bruce. Dick was much more of a mentor to him, and a lot of characters and fans plain didn't like him. He was also less competent than previous Robins, because he was only 10 years old and had to adapt his techniques from lethality to Bruce's no-kill approach, often mid-battle.
  • Batman himself when it comes to Justice League of America comics is a mixed example, as its either him the Non-Powered Costumed Hero getting overshadowed by teammates who can move planets and travel faster than light or it's him overshadowing his superpowered teammates by being a Crazy-Prepared Gadgeteer Genius to Power Creep, Power Seep Gary Stu-levels. Justice League (2018) features a refreshing subversion with Batman fighting his fellow league members in the Final Batsuit, only to be overshadowed by Superman flying through multiple suns to give the World Forger a Megaton Punch.
• Steve Trevor is a Badass Normal Ace Pilot and military intelligence officer/spy with excellent hand-to-hand combat skills who could easily have been the lead of his own story, but given he exists as the boyfriend to the most prominent and powerful Action Girlfriend in the DCU he's mostly remembered as and often written as a Distressed Dude Useless Boyfriend who is constantly rescued by Wonder Woman.
• The Invisible Girl in the first few years of Fantastic Four was mostly just standing around watching the men fight, or being captured, getting to use her powers for the odd stealth scene once every five issues or so. She was eventually given force field powers to make her somewhat more useful. That may have been a more dramatic change than intended, as she is now broadly accepted as the most powerful member of the Fantastic Four, with her powers becoming effectively an invisible Green Lantern Ring.
• The Ultimates: Hawkeye's sight has been enhanced, which gives him Improbable Aiming Skills with just about anything he can lay his hands on. Still, he's in a team with a Super-Soldier, a man in Powered Armor, and a freakin' Physical God.
• Anyone in Watchmen who is not Dr. Manhattan. And yet Rorschach still manages to come off pretty much universally as the most serious badass in the cast. Lampshaded/Emphasized during (the first) Night Owl's retirement banquet, when Dr. Manhattan and Night Owl are discussing his reasons for retiring — mainly that "You (Dr. Manhattan) can do anything and all I've (Night Owl) got is a good left hook." When asked what he was going to do now, the Night Owl said that he planned to work as a mechanic like his father — to which Dr. Manhattan replied that he plans to synthesize enough lithium to make electric cars practical, making his profession obsolete.
• One DC comics story, "Menace of the Mystic Mastermind", teamed up Wildcat and The Spectre. Wildcat, a boxer, was rather overshadowed by the Spectre, who embodies the Wrath of God.
• Cyclops of the X-Men, though not to the same level as some examples. Cyclops has very powerful Eye Beams that could, in the words of Jean Grey, punch a hole through a mountain, he's got martial art skills on par with some of the best fighters in the world, and is a skilled enough tactician and leader that he's earned the respect of Nick Fury, the default Big Good of the Marvel Universe. However, Cyclops is often on a team that includes Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Gambit and Phoenix. While In-Universe, Cyclops is shown as being just as badass and as competent a leader as series mainstays Wolverine and Storm and is often just as powerful as Rogue and Gambit (especially the latter) the fanbase, and many writers, seem to prefer the other four, leaving him in the dust. Phoenix, meanwhile, is an inverted example; she's so awesome, they had to kill her off because she overshadowed the rest of the team, and the plan to depower her backfired and made Jim Shooter demand she be killed instead. When she came back, her power was far more fluctuating. It doesn't help that both of them have a very vocal Hate Dom.
• In his early appearances, Toad was depicted as the weak link of the Brotherhood and Magneto's snivelling lackey. His powers: minor Super-Strength and agility which he generally used to jump good were pretty pathetic compared to the Reality Warper, the speedster, the massive super strong bulletproof guy and the man who controlled one of the fundamental forces of reality. Later writers realised that someone with Toad's abilities would be one of the most athletic people in the world and have the potential to be one of the most skilled martial artists alive. Drawing off his Adaptational Badass depiction in the movie, he has generally been depicted as an acrobatic asskicker who can pose a legit threat to Badass Normals and low-level supers, even if he's still seen as a bit of a joke in-universe.

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