Sandbox / Monster: Top Cow Productions

"Sometimes true evil does take flesh and walk the Earth."

Ian O'Conner: The Dolmen Emerald. The Source of "Tir Na Nog." The Realm of Eternal Youth. As long as I possess the talisman, I shall never die.
Lara Croft: A shame those poor souls you tortured to death must pay the prize for your immortality. The talisman curses them, doesn't it? Makes them eternal prisoners of this castle?
Ian: The talisman draws power from torment and death. The greater the agony of the death, the more power the talisman absorbs...As long as I live, I don't believe I'll ever grow tired of this.

—Tomb Raider: The Series, issue #44—"Tower of Souls, Part 2"

Even in a bleak world full of murderers and rapists, a select few individuals in this Shared Universe manage to stand out.

• Other Top Cow comics, i.e. those which don't use Shared Universe characters, can be found here.
• The Witchblade anime can be found here.
• Examples from the Witchblade tv series can be found here.
• Examples from The Darkness video game duology can be found here.

All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

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Pre-Rebirth

Witchblade

Examples

• Vol. 1:
  • Issues #40-41 & #48-49: "The Pyromancer" or "the Firestarter" is a fire-obsessed demon who possessed the innocent math teacher Ray Perkins. Using his body to set buildings on fire, the demons decided to find a large truck full of explosive material and drive it to the center of a populated city, where he would blow it up, destroying a large part of the city and killing two thousand people. Deciding to present the biggest sacrifice to his masters, the Undying Ones, in exchange for power, the demon invaded the nuclear plant and planned to cause it to explode and destroy the city, killing millions of people. Returning after being defeated by Sara, the demon continues to kill people by burning them and tries to corrupt Sara Pezzini, the current wielder of Witchblade, so that he could use her as a weapon.
  • Issue #67: Mother Mary is the cannibalistic head of a large meat production factory called "Mother's Meat", who ate her parents when she was young. Using her factory as a secret base, Mother Mary created a cult of cannibals and kidnapped dozens of people so they could carve them apart and eat them, with some of the victims being eaten alive. Transferring to Manhattan after she finds out that Witchblade is there, Mother Mary has her "sons" kill people and eat them, while she planned to devour Sara Pezzini to "get her power".
  • Issues #99-100—"In the Darkness...Something Stirs" & "Gods and Monsters": The nameless dark entity is an extremely powerful being who was able to escape from his dimension and possess Jake McCarthy, Sara's former partner. Getting used to his body, the entity tricked Sara into giving him a view of his "future kingdom" before he attacked her. Revealing his intention on turning the Earth into a hellish nightmare, where people would burn alive for eternity, before he consumes the whole population of the planet, the entity taunts Sara with the fact that he will force Jake to watch as he will kill her and enact his plans.
  • Issues #106-107—"Raising the Dead" two-parter: Madeline Desormeaux has a sick fascination for torturing and dismembering her slaves, then putting them back together in grotesque ways where they suffered until death. After the escape of a little boy whose eyes and mouth she had stitched shut, Madeline ultimately died. However, even this would not keep her evil from infecting the land, cursing all of her former victims to wander in agony until the day her wicked soul is destroyed for good. When Danielle Baptiste shows up to put the slaves' souls to rest, Madeline gleefully attempts to torture her due to her fraternization with the "filth" of her former slaves.
• Medieval Spawn/Witchblade, written by Garth Ennis: Lord Cardinale is a medieval wielder of "The Darkness", and definitely the vilest. Using his power to take over a large chunk of territory, Cardinale rules like an Evil Overlord. After Matthew Royale told him about the power of Elven artifacts, Cardinale eagerly invaded the Elven homeland of Faerie, massacring thousands of Elves and destroying their homes. When the current wielder of Witchblade and Spawn were close to defeating him, he decided to power himself up by absorbing all Darkness essence from—in effect killing—all his servants, including his lover.
• Blood Oath, written by R.J.M. Lofficier: Queen Mauve is a high-ranking demon who desired to conquer the Outer Circles of Hell. After being summoned by Gilles de Rais, the lover of Joan of Arc, Mauve made a pact with him, saving Joan from being burned alive in exchange for Gilles becoming the host for her servant demons. Later on, Mauve has Gilles sacrifice hundreds of infants to her by torturing, killing, and eating them at her altar. When Gilles was hanged for these crimes, Mauve kept him alive and has him commit various atrocities across history. When Sara Pezzini, the wielder of Witchblade in modern times, offered her services to her, Mauve threw Gilles aside and was ready to fully manifest on Earth and vaporize three quarters of the Earth's atmosphere.

Others

Examples

• Ascension: Voivodul is an ancient, extremely powerful Dayak and the one behind the never-ending war between Dayaks and Mineans. Born among Dayaks, Voivodul was naturally ahead of everyone else in terms of power. Experimenting on thousands of people not important enough to get noticed missing, and creating various monsters, Voivodul was able to take over Dayaks and started a long bloody war with Mineans. After being imprisoned by both Dayaks and Mineans, Voivodul swore to get revenge by killing all of them. Manipulating Dayaks into starting another war, Voivodul managed to free himself and was able to kill hundreds of Dayaks and Mineans before he was defeated. Managing to survive, Voivodul manifest himself later by using his undead army to kill nearly all Mineans.
• Cyberforce:
  • Kimata Saburo, a former high-ranking member of the Cyberdata corporation, helped with experimenting on and brainwashing mutants into being loyal soldiers of the corporation. Departing from Cyberdata, Kimata created his own organization, which performed even more vile experiments. Seeking a new head of security, Kimata contacted numerous mercenaries around the world, ordering the death of those who refused and secretly poisoning with radiation those who accepted the offer, intending to cure only the one who succeeds in getting the position. As a test, Kimata tells these mercenaries to bring him Ripclaw, with the resulting chase claiming the lives of many innocents in the crossfire. Later on, creating a new muscle drug that increased the user's strength, but results in death after a few months, he decided to use it on some of his troops. Desiring to become a god, Kimata created the machine, with which he would be able to brainwash people into being his obedient servants, and plans to use it on every person on Earth.
  • Codename: Strykeforce: Felix Abbott, aka Death's Angel, the first enemy Strykeforce encountered as a team, is a former computer nerd who, after being humiliated in public, used stolen technology and data from Cyberdata to transform himself into a superpowered being. Managing to get a powerful submarine and his own private army, Death's Angel kidnapped various politicians from a big international meeting, in the process killing dozens of civilians and security guards, as well as Strykeforce member Icarus. When Strykeforce started tracking him down, he captured them and decided to force them to watch as he sent his missiles towards New York, intending to kill millions people there just to showcase the power of his submarine. A pathetic wannabe with a massive inferiority complex, Death's Angel nevertheless managed to prove himself as the worst enemy Strykeforce has ever encountered.
• The Darkness:
  • Vol. 2 issues #1-6—"Resurrection" arc: Paulie Franchetti is the cousin of Frankie Franchetti, and desired to take over the latter's organization after his death. Arriving in town, Paulie has an innocent man drowned in cement, before he decided to try to force Jackie Estacado to become his personal hitman. When Jackie refused, Paulie, out of spite, blew up the orphanage where Jackie grew up, killing at least two dozen children and the staff working there. Blackmailing Jackie into accepting his offer, Paulie has him kill people for the slightest insults, and threatens to kill the husband and the infant child of Jackie's deceased childhood friend Jenny's sister, should he try to defy him.
  • Vol. 3 issue #89—"High Noon" & Witchblade: Day of the Outlaw, written by Joshua Hale Fialkov: Ramon Estacado is an especially vile ancestor of Jackie Estacado from The Wild West. Using his newfound powers and gang to Rape, Pillage, and Burn entire towns, Ramon at one point has his former henchmen transformed into demons and left to die. Robbing a train full of gold and slaughtering all its guards, Ramon eventually managed to take back control of his gang by killing two of its members, and decided to continue the pillaging of the town they were in. Later arriving at another town, Ramon immediately has his men wreak havoc on the streets and drag women out to be raped.
• Devil's Reign: Mephisto is as vile as ever. Discovering the existence of another universe, where he would have less opposition, he decided to come there and devour the souls of every living being to make himself more powerful than ever. Arriving there, by tricking Silver Surfer into opening a portal, Mephisto begins corrupting this world with various sins, killing and devouring the souls of thousands. Using natural disasters and cataclysms, Mephisto attempted to trick millions of people in to giving him their souls, pretending to be their savior. When his true form was revealed to the people, he simply ordered his army of demons to massacre everyone in sight.
• Tomb Raider: The Series:
  • Issues #21-23 & #29-30: Lord Vymes is a being of antimatter who is rumored to be an Asura, an evil lower god. Starting of as a stream of raw shapeless hunger, Vymes clawed his way to Earth and took the form of a human that he first devoured. Rising to nobility in human society, Vymes devoured and murdered countless people in the past and decorated his castle with their bones. After Lara Croft refused to have any deals with him, Vymes tried to kill her and captured her lover Tsang. Buying her Croft Manor, Vymes tried to trick her into finding him the Waters of Death and Life, threatening to eat Tsang, whom he imprisoned in his own flesh, while fully intending on killing and devouring them both anyway as soon as Lara gave him what he wanted.
  • Issues #43-44—"Tower of Souls" arc: Ian O'Conner is a vile member of the O'Conner family. After his father died, he begins fighting for control of their castle, eventually killing his priest brother on a holy altar. Discovering the existence of the Dolmen Emerald, the ancient artifact which gives the owner immortality in exchange for torture and pain, Ian starts torturing countless men, women and children to death. In the present, he uses his henchman to lure people into his castle as fuel for the Dolmen Emerald, and attempts to torture Lara Croft to death after capturing her.
• Tom Judge: The Rapture, written by Paul Jenkins: Mr. Black, debuting in Inferno: Hellbound, is a former government agent, who after discovering that all people go to Hell after death, decided to try and avoid that fate. Manipulating many demons into deals, Black tries to get his hands on the ancient artifact the Rapture, which supposedly gives its owner nearly-infinite power over Hell. Eventually backstabbing everyone, Black decided to start the End of Days by releasing a toxin in the city, killing hundreds of people, at which point Black would collect their souls, so that he would become "rich" in Hell.

Post-Rebirth

Examples

• Cyberforce Vol. 4, Aphrodite IX, & IXth Generation: The Chairwoman, real name Francesca Taylor, managed to dispose of her husband, head of the Cyber Data Corporation, by stringing along her daughter, Carin "Velocity" Taylor, into finding her true father, Stryker, so that he may attack and kill him. Taking control of her husband's company after his assassination, Francesca manipulates Stryker and his team into uploading nuclear launch codes in a Russian military base, resulting in the destruction of China and Russia and causing billions of deaths, allowing her to Take Over the World. With the Aphrodite program, Francesca has dozens of women kidnapped and forcibly impregnated to birth androids, after which they are disposed of. Using Aphrodite IX as her personal soldier and assassin, Francesca later has Velocity help her "cleanse" the Earth by killing all surviving humans of a planetary catastrophe. In the far future, Francesca instigates a war between cyborgs and animal-human hybrids to devastate both species, solely to weed out those who would challenge her rule. Tricking Velocity into manipulating the IX androids into going to war with each other, Francesca takes the opportunity to trick the wielders of the Witchblade, the Darkness, and Angelus to come to her, using their powers to resurrect herself before personally killing Velocity, after the deaths of nearly all of her IX androids, intending to rule over the remnants of the world as a sole "God", while openly planning to possess Aphrodite's body.
• Artifacts issue #33—"The Teacher and the Preacher": Matthew Strow is a sadistic Serial Killer who practiced dark arts. Posing as a piano teacher, Matthew kidnapped 51 children and killed them, trapping their souls in his piano, where he would put them through constant agony by forcing his next victim to play it. Enjoying the sounds of their screams, Matthew planned to kill his latest victim after she would create a "perfect music" from the screams of his captured souls.

Non-Canon (includes Crossovers)

Witchblade, by release date

Examples

• Destiny's Child, written by Christina Z.: In this Alternate Continuity, Kenneth Irons is an immortal businessman who is obsessed with the Witchblade. Hiring Ian Nottingham as his personal bodyguard after beating him in a fight, Irons tortured him to make him learn his place, then he has him kill people for defying him or to get the magic items that he needed. At some point, finding out the identity of the future wielder of Witchblade, Sara Pezzini, who was a child at the time, Irons has her kidnapped, tortured, set her on a path to meet him years later and stalked her through the years. Then, setting up his underground laboratory, Irons experiments on several innocent people, with one of his victims being a child. Capturing Sara, Irons desires to transform her into his puppet goddess, who will destroy and create at his command, and use her to Take Over the World.
• Lady Death/Medieval Witchblade, written by Brian Augustyn & Brian Pulido: Queen Morrigan is a powerful dark sorceress who took over the lands in the past. Turning her newfound kingdom into the dead wasteland, Queen terrorizes the population, and when she hears of the prophecy that the "Son of Light", the one who could end her reign, was about to be born, she rounded up hundreds of pregnant women and women with infants and tried to have them thrown into a fiery pit. After Lady Death stopped that, Morrigan orders her knights to kill her, while she finds out the town where the supposed "Child of Light" would be born and burns it to the ground, along with all men, women and children inside. When she finds out that the true "Child of Light" is her stepdaughter, she immediately tries to kill her, while attempting to spread her darkness across the world.
• Vampirella/Witchblade: The Feast, written by Justin Gray: Rod Sterling is the unofficial head of the J. Holmes Modeling Agency, who discovered a Magical Camera which allowed him to steal the souls of innocent women to keep himself immortal and young. Having J. Holmes himself find and prepare the women for him by promising them a model career, Rod hires some people to track down the vampire for him and cut them apart, so he could make the "Eternal Slender" product from their meat and feed it to unsuspecting women, before he steals their souls and turn them into his undead slaves. Making a deal with other vampires, Rod feeds them his zombified models, so he could have them hunt down and harvested as well.
• Witchblade/Red Sonja, written by Doug Wagner: Ragniel is one of the Fallen Angels who were cast down from Heavens after the rebellion against God. Being freed by a mad wizard, Ragniel immediately killed him and then, when Red Sonja refused to be his concubine, he forced her to fight against her deceased father, whom he had resurrected. After being defeated and sealed away by Red Sonja, Ragniel eventually frees himself, forms a cult and has them commit ritualistic murders by skinning people alive. Tracking down the current wielder of the Witchblade, Ragniel zombified some of her fellow police officers and tries to force her to give up Witchblade, before he spitefully has her husband mortally wounded and declares his intention on kidnapping her infant daughter and having her breed the new race, with which he intends to take over Heaven and Earth. When Sara Pezzini picked on his trail, Ragniel painfully transformed all his followers into the mindless monsters and sends them to kill Sara.
• Medieval Spawn and Witchblade, written by Brian Haberlin & Brian Holguin: The Trinity is a being from another dimension who managed to find his way to Earth. Splitting itself into three forms of the Mother, the Daughter, and the Unholy Spirit, The Trinity used its "Daughter" form to seduce both King Valon and his friend Leith and then convinced Leith to kill Valon. Revealing its true form to Leith, leading to him committing suicide and becoming Hellspawn, the Trinity began corrupting the lands, spreading the Blight and sending its monsters to attack and kill innocent people. Using its "Mother" form to kidnap the women of the tribe, which rebelled against her with newly arrived Spawn, it painfully killed them and tried to kill a little girl, who was the current wielder of Witchblade. Later trying to corrupt the wielder of Witchblade to its side, the Trinity attempted to consume the Earth by merging it with the Nightmare Realm.

Others

Examples

• The Magdalena/Daredevil: The Devil in Longhand, written by Phil Hester: The unnamed demon is an ancient being who, after being captured and tortured by a group of monks, decided to make himself more powerful. Setting up a scheme to steal the innocence of children, he kidnapped a dozen of young descendants of the men who tortured him. Turning the children into statues, he made an armor for himself out of their souls and desired to bind them to himself for eternity. When The Magdalena and Daredevil tracked him down he used children's souls as a Human Shield and orders his enslaved children to kill them.
• Monster War:
  • Edward Hyde, upon being separated from Jekyll, becomes his own being. Falling in to worship the Old Ones, Hyde helps to feed Magdalena and others to Dracula, experimenting on others to craft new monstrosities from them. Letting his vampires prey on other victims, Hyde intends on twisting humanity into monstrous shells while unleashing the Old Ones to consume the world in a symphony of bloodshed and madness.
  • Dracula is an equally willing partner in Edward Hyde's plot to make all of humanity consume itself. Dracula spreads his vampiric curse to others in the hopes of furthering Hyde's plagues, trying to excruciatingly enslave Magdalena to his curse. At one point, Dracula slaughters over two dozen people in a brothel, all for thrills.
• Painkiller Jane vs. The Darkness: Stripper, written by Garth Ennis: "The Stripper" is a sadistic Serial Killer who loves to kill her victims by removing their skin while they are still alive. Having already managed to kill this way around a dozen of people, including her parents, the Stripper finds herself a new victim in lowly conman Terrence J. Flannery. Initially saving him from a mob of angry ninjas, she drives him to her house. As Jackie Estacado and Jane managed to track down Terrence in her house, they find him alive with most of his skin removed. The Stripper attacks them, intending to skin them alive as well.

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