Self Made Orphan / Comic Books

• Subverted in Aquaman: several people assume that Ocean Master killed his parents to become king. Actually, his mother killed his father and then faked her own death.
• In Assassin's Creed: The Chain, Innokenti Orelov ends up having to shoot his own father Nikolai, an Assassin, who is struggling with another Assassin. The bullet passes through Nikolai and the other Assassin, killing both. It's implied Nikolai wanted his son to do this to save himself. Innokenti picks up his father's hidden blade and walks off into the sunset. While his further fate is unknown, it's clear he at least survives to produce a child, as Daniel Cross is his descendant.
• Technically, Samaritan from Astro City qualifies. He was sent from the future to prevent a disaster that would cause the end of the world centuries down the line, but his success meant that his parents never existed.
• In Avatar The Last Airbender The Search, this is the only reason Azula is "helping" Zuko search for their Missing Mom Ursa. After her Villainous Breakdown, she blamed all of her problems on an imaginary conspiracy masterminded by Ursa. As long as Ursa is alive, Azula is too afraid to put her plan to usurp Zuko into motion.
• Batman:
  • Bruce Wayne's childhood friend Thomas Elliot tried to kill his parents at a young age in order to inherit their riches and because his father was an abusive monster and his mother a simpering money-hungry lunatic. He only succeeded in killing his father, and, to avoid suspicion, didn't try again, only truly being orphaned when he smothered his raving senile mother in a fit of anger. This left him with a bitter hatred of Bruce, who tragically lost his parents soon after Tommy tried to kill his. Later on in his life, he joins the Riddler (who discovered that Bruce was Batman on a vendetta against him, feeling that, not only did Bruce get the riches Tommy wanted, but that he was wasting those riches as well. Predictably, his vendetta eventually causes him to lose everything and become the full-time Super Villain Hush.
    • In the New 52 continuity, the exact motivations and sequence of events are a bit different, but the result is the same. As Bruce became more withdrawn following Thomas and Martha's murder, Tommy killed his parents in the hope that having this in common would let them reconnect. He probably hated them as well, but this seems to have been the primary reason.
  • Black Mask killed his parents in a fire to inherit their business and fortune. Unfortunately, he was a lousy businessman and when he tried to burn down the factory to cover his tracks, he wound up with the facial injury that gave him his villain name. He was a lot better at being Ax-Crazy than a businessman anyway.
  • In a look at The Joker's childhood in The Brave and the Bold revival issue #31, as a child the Joker burned down his house with his bickering parents inside. This being the Joker, who knows how accurate the story is.
  • According to The Long Halloween, Jonathan Crane (the future Scarecrow) killed his mom. On Mother's Day.
  • And the Penguin murdered his father (along with his brothers) in the miniseries Penguin: Pain and Prejudice so he could be alone with his mother, the only person who loved him.
  • A one-off character in the debut issue of Gotham Knights is a child that kills his parents.
  • Hilariously used with Batman's opposite clone, Batzarro. As the total reverse of Batman, Batzarro killed his parents and calls himself "the world's worst detective".
  • The Red Robin villain Wanderer killed her single mother as a child. In this case, it seems to be a combination of Came Back Wrong and Gone Horribly Right as she seems to have been a nice enough little girl before falling into the pit of Brazilian Wandering spiders whose deadly venom reacted poorly to her innate healing abilities. It's also not known whether she killed her mother on purpose, though certainly the rest of her numerous murders were intentional.
  • A new villain introduced in Batman (Tom King) is "Master Bruce", aka Matthew Warner, a Lonely Rich Kid with a severe case of I Just Want to Be You towards Bruce Wayne, which he took to the logical conclusion.
• In Billy Majestic's Humpty Dumpty, it is established that the Brakk brothers murdered their own mother.
• Birds of Prey: Misfit is also technically a Self-Made Orphan, though she did it accidentally. When her apartment building caught on fire she tried to "bounce" away with her mother and little brother. That is how she found out that any living thing she bounces with her dies en route. She clings desperately to Barbara Gordon and the Birds of Prey because she needs both a surrogate mother figure and the opportunity to atone for accidentally killing her family.
• Subverted in the Season 9 Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics. Faith is made so angry that she chokes and almost kills her father but is stopped by Angel.
• While he has a Multiple-Choice Past, one detail that Bullseye keeps bringing up consistently is that he murdered his parents, who were abusive (although the circumstances are sketchy). He offed his dad in Dark Reign: Hawkeye, long after he became a supervillain. Not that he didn't try before though.
• Subverted in Cable & Deadpool. The title characters are at a bar discussing their less-than-stellar childhoods over beer (well, only Deadpool's drinking - Cable's temporarily regressed to his teens). Deadpool's brief flashbacks show his mother's death led to his dad becoming strict bordering on abusive, and he may have shot him. At the end of the issue, we get the full story - it was one of the "wrong crowd" Wade had fallen in with, and he was genuinely horrified.
• Evil Ernie's murder spree began with him killing both of his abusive parents.
• The Flash:
  • Evan McCulloch, the second Mirror Master. He was an orphan and end up killing his father by accident in his job as a hit-man. As a result, his mother committed suicide. Another Rogue, Captain Cold, confronted his abusive father but couldn't bring himself to kill the man... so he had Heat Wave do it.
  • Heat Wave himself qualifies, in a sadder way. Murdering them was not the intention, but he set his family home on fire with his parents still inside, his pyromania kicked in completely, and much as he would've wanted to save them he just watched. He couldn't help it.
• Forever Evil (2013), the comic event that introduced the New 52 incarnations of the Crime Syndicate (evil versions of the Justice League from another universe), established that Batman's Crime Syndicate counterpart Owlman arranged for his parents' deaths by conspiring with his world's counterpart to Alfred Pennyworth.
• Hack/Slash: Evil Cripple Courtney in Hatchet/Slash. After ten years of plotting, she murdered her parents so she could inherit their fortune and use it to implement her plan for revenge on the 'friends' who fled and left her in the hands of a slasher.
• Hellboy's Liz Sherman became one accidentally after a Superpower Meltdown of hers created a fire that destroyed a city block (among the fatalities were her parents and brother).
• Huntress does this when she arranges the murder of her biological father at the end of Cry for Blood. In this case, this was more anti-heroic than outright evil, since her father was a vicious gangster who had ordered the murder of the rest of her family and was trying to blackmail her into joining his gang as an assassin.
• The Incredible Hulk:
  • Another rare heroic example: Before Bruce Banner became the Hulk, he semi-accidentally killed his abusive father, Brian. In their final confrontation, his father was trying to kill him and he had killed Banner's mother; Bruce lashed out as Brian got ready to attack him, sending Brian crashing into the gravestone of Bruce's mother and cracking his skull.
  • Narrowly averted with Betty Ross. She almost killed the Red Hulk, only to realize he was her father and stop in time.
• In the Shadow of Dragons: Kiernan is accused of killing his mother. Later he kills his own father, the real culprit.
• In the John Constantine story in Secret Origins v3 #11, one of the constants in John's Multiple-Choice Past is that one of the first things he did with magic was kill his family in a fire, although this may have been a tragic accident, a brutal but justified revenge, or a ruthless act in pursuit of power. (Constantine #14 had already presented it as the first one).
• Judge Dredd: Dredd's arch-enemy Judge Death is revealed in Boyhood of a Superfiend to have murdered his own family back when he was still a human being known as Sidney De'ath. He first made a failed attempt to kill his sister after she told on him for torturing the family dog. He later reported his misanthropic and serial killing father (whom he considered a role model) to the Judges to further his own career and carried out the execution himself. As a registered Judge years later, he hunted down his mother and sister after they had gone into hiding, shooting his crippled sister in the face and throwing his mother off a cliff.
• DC Comics' Lobo is not only a self-made orphan but a self-made Last of His Kind. As he put it in his appearance on Superman: The Animated Series:
  "Hah! That's rich. I'm the last Czarnian. *Aside* I fragged the rest of the planet for my high school science project. Gave myself an A."
• Loki created a Stable Time Loop to ensure his biological parents would die in battle so he would be adopted by the Asgardians.
• The Marshal Law one-shot "Kingdom of the Blind" had a twisted Batman Parody known as Private Eye as the antagonist, with Batman's origin of going down the path of becoming a vigilante after his parents were shot given the twist that Private Eye arranged for his own parents to get killed by conspiring with his butler.
• Nightmares on Elm Street: Devonne killed her parents in a gas explosion.
• The notorious 1954 EC Comics story "The Orphan" (former page image) featured a little girl who kills her abusive father and then frames her neglectful mother and her lover for the murder (resulting in their on-panel execution in the electric chair).
• Rat-Man (1989): In the Origins Exalogy we find the story of Rat-man's childhood and his stepfather Janus Valker's descend into evil. Particularly, we find out that his father Boda, the previous embodiment of the Shadow, was murdered by a hitman sent by Jan's brother Joba.
  Jan This is for Boda. For having my father killed.
  Joba Hey, don't be mad at me! He was my father, too!
• Rom Spaceknight: There was a half-breed offspring of a human and a Dire Wraith, calling itself Hybrid, who was a true monster, murdering both parents by magically 'aging' them and then impaling his father with a pitchfork. It might not be entirely Hybrid's fault - he was raised by the uber-evil Dire Wraiths, the ultimate form of child abuse. Still, he was as close to pure, self-consciously intentional evil as is likely to be possible.
• Runaways: The group were formed when they found out that their parents were a band of supervillains called the Pride, and after initially just trying to avoid their parents, they ended up having to battle them, resulting in the death of all of their parents and the one member of their own who had remained loyal to the Pride. They never actually intended to kill them, but this doesn't stop many people from assuming they did.
• Catman from Secret Six is technically a Self Made Orphan, although he only shot his mother accidentally because his father pointed the shotgun at her while Thomas was attempting to shoot him. He did finish the job with a machete in the dad's stomach, though.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
  • It's heavily implied that Scourge killed his neglectful father Anti-Jules.
  • More clearly, Kragok and Lien-Da of the Dark Legion murdered both their father and their stepmother, the former to become Grandmasters of the Legion.
• Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do: Garrison discovered he had powers when he teleported some mouthwash into his mother's heart, killing her instantly. Unlike most examples of this trope, Garrison's killing of his mother was an accident but given his complete lack of regret or remorse, he might as well have done it on purpose.
• Squadron Supreme: A young Emil Burbank (the Lex Luthor Alternate Company Equivalent), was shown killing his parents for the insurance money (from a policy on which he forged their signatures).
• Superman:
  • In Superman: Secret Origin Lex Luthor got his start by taking out a life insurance policy on his parents and cutting the brake lines to their car while both were taking a trip, leading to their immediate death and Luthor collecting the insurance money for start-up capital to his company.
  • Subverted with Supergirl's enemy Blackstarr, who kidnapped her mother and considered killing her, but was stopped by Supergirl before going ahead with the attempt.
  • In 2010 story arc Day of the Dollmaker, the titular villain attempts to murder his father Toyman.
  • In Crucible, Roho murders his own parents in revenge for being disowned.
• Thanos Rising: Thanos kidnaps and vivisects his mother Sui-San to find out how she could have brought someone as evil as him into the world. However, when he returns years later to wipe out the rest of his people, he leaves his father Mentor alive just so he can be witness to his son's continued atrocities.
• Ultimate Marvel:
  • Ultimate Origins: When Erik's powers came out when he was thirteen, his father tried to kill him with a gun. After realizing what his parents were and had been doing, Erik killed his mother as well.
  • Reed Richards had an abusive father but escaped from him to be part of the Ultimate Fantastic Four. The team broke up after Ultimatum, and Reed had to go back home. He became the villain The Maker, and his first act of villainy was to kill all his family.
  • Ultimate X Men: Juggernaut crushed his father's skull in his hand when his mutant powers first manifested.
• One of Marvel's What If? stories is set 20 Minutes into the Future where an aging Captain America has a final confrontation with a now decrepit and elderly Red Skull, who has kidnapped Cap's wife and children as leverage and trapped them with a bomb connected to a deadmans switch hooked to the Skulls vital signs. He then reveals that during his absence, he has sired and raised a son of his own as the new Red Skull, and when their plan falls apart, the son shoots and kills his father to activate the bomb and distract Cap long enough for him to escape and fight another day. True to form, the Red Skull is proud of his son for being as ruthless and calculating as him.
• Wonder Woman: In Wonder Woman (2011), Cassandra learned of her Compelling Voice when she ordered her single mother to kill herself, and her mother complied.
• X-Men:
  • Rahne Sinclaire, aka Wolfsbane, did this to her father when the brainwashing he had put her under kicked in and caused her to maul him to death before devouring his corpse.
  • Warlock is a member of the Technarchy, a technological race where being a Self Made Orphan is the standard - adulthood was conferred after you killed your "Siredam". Warlock fled because A) his "mutation" was the realization that this was a strange way of doing things and B) the fact that his father, The Magus, can casually tear apart suns.
  • Kevin Ford/Wither, has the bad luck of his power being to dissolve any organic matter that he touches. He naturally began to freak out when his own clothes were dissolving off of his body, his father tried to comfort him and, well...
  • Ultimate X Men had an even worse example with a kid who dissolved anyone within a mile of him. He woke up to find his parents and whole neighborhood empty and wound up destroying his whole town just by wandering around trying to find somebody.
  • On the topic of Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Origins reveals that Ultimate Magneto was responsible for the deaths of his own parents, unlike his mainstream counterpart, who lost them in The Holocaust ^note Though oddly, issue 5 had Magneto claim his family died in one of humanity's periodic genocides, and imagery of the Holocaust was shown, implying this originally was meant to be a part of his backstory.
  • X-Men villain Shinobi Shaw once murdered his supervillain father Sebastian, taking over the Hellfire Club upon doing so. This being a comic book and Sebastian being a long-established villain, he was eventually revealed to be quite alive and not in a good mood with his son. Given Sebastian's powers, the strangest thing is how long it took for him to come back.
  • X-23, after a fashion. She doesn't have parents per se, however she recognizes her creator, Sarah Kinney, as her mother. It's never made completely clear, but some sources and readings suggest that Sarah used her own genetic material to help stabilize the damaged samples (thus why she's the green-eyed The Ugly Guy's Hot Daughter, rather than looking more like Wolverine), and Sarah did serve as a surrogate carrying her to term and giving birth to her, and was also her primary caretaker. Laura killed her against her will when Sarah was contaminated by the trigger scent.
  • X-Factor (2006) reveals that Polaris caused the plane crash that killed her parents due to her mutant powers manifesting and going out of control while they were arguing over her mother's affair with Magneto.
  • Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire: Vulcan does this to his father Corsair when the latter opposes Vulcan's actions as Shi'ar Majestor. Unlike most examples on this list, Corsair came back to life later on.
    • In his second appearance in X-Men: Schism #3, West African Manuel Enduque notes he assumed control of the family's slave-trading business by strangling his sleeping father and shipping his seven older brothers to a planet of carnivorous aliens with a taste for sapient prey.
• In the X-Wing Rogue Squadron arc "The Phantom Affair", Loka Hask, the Ax-Crazy psycho who killed Wedge Antilles' parents, comments that Wedge should thank him for it, then goes on to muse that he wishes he had had someone willing to do that for him when he was a boy, but no, he had to do it himself.
• Zatanna (2010): In the arc where Zatanna deals with Oscar Hampel, a sketchy puppeteer who was transformed into a marionette decades ago by her father Giovanni Zatara, Zatanna uses an enchanted crystal to make Hampel tell her his true backstory, one of the terrible things he admits to doing is murdering his parents by setting fire to their puppet theatre.