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Spiritual Antithesis / Comic Books

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Spiritual Antithesis in Comic Books.

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  • Animal Man has Deadpool. Both were obscure characters that got daddies that retooled them to very powerful street heroes trying to be recognized by bigger teams and Breaking the Fourth Wall, but other than that they take completely different directions. Animal Man is a Nice Guy family man and animal rights activist with very few close friends in the superhero community, while Deadpool is a lonely Jerk with a Heart of Gold mercenary with many Vitriolic Best Buds in the superhero community. Animal Man is a vegetarian, while Deadpool is practically a carnivore. Animal Man barely uses his very minimal Healing Factor, while Deadpool gets by with his extremely rapid healing factor. Animal Man is a product of The Silver Age of Comic Books whose most famous run went on to harshly criticize The Dark Age of Comic Books, while Deadpool is a product of The Dark Age that went on to lightly criticize the worst aspects of The Modern Age of Comic Books. Animal Man played breaking the fourth wall very seriously and would always forget when he did because he can't truly see it, while Deadpool plays breaking the fourth wall for comedy and always has that ability. After Grant Morrison's run, Animal Man went on to more horror, sci-fi and mysticism based stories, while Deadpool still stayed in comedy-based mercenary stories. Animal Man isn't in many big stories while Deadpool has Wolverine Publicity.
  • Not uncommon for Batman:
  • Deliberately done with the two bearers of the Captain Britain title, who made completely different choices when given the choice between the Amulet of Right and the Sword of Might. Brian Braddock is a man who chose the amulet as he felt he was a scholar not a warrior, while Kelsey Leigh is a woman who chose the sword because she believed that she needed to be a warrior to defend her friends and family.
  • Infinite Crisis villain Superboy Prime has one in the titular protagonist of The Unbelievable Gwenpool. Both share origin stories of being teenage fans of superhero comics from our world who enters their favorite Universe and gets superpowers, only to be disappointed that things do not work out as they imagined. The difference lies on how they react and what kinds of fans they represent. Prime represents lifelong fans who become bitter with how much The DCU has changed. He wants to brutally force it back to the way it once was and as he goes along, he stops caring how many he kills since he doesn't consider them real anyway. On the other hand, Gwen represents news fans who are aware of the Marvel Universe's many problems and love the franchise despite them. While she starts thinking she can do whatever she wants since none of it is real, she is quickly humbled and comes to care for others like real people. Prime embraces villainy as a alternative of being forgotten, while a Face–Heel Turn is the only things that terrifies Gwen more than Comic-Book Limbo. Finally, Prime was a huge fan of Superman before coming to hate him, while Gwen named herself after Deadpool only for the pun and doesn't even read his comics.
  • While they share the same modus operandi of supergenius using Powered Armor, Ironheart is this to Iron Man. Tony was raised in privilege as a son of a billionaire, but stranded relationship with his father lead him to become a cold businessman and a playboy, wasting his genius until events that lead to him becoming Iron Man opened his eyes on the harm he has caused and turned him into The Atoner. Since then he's been laser-focused on his goal of making Earth a better place but is also dealing with the guilt that makes it that, while he makes friends easily, he rarely lets anyone really close and tend to push those who did away. Riri tends to be better with technology than people so she is hard to approach initially, but fiercely loyal to people who manage to do so anyway. Her isolation makes her blame herself for not developing better relationships with people she already lost, especially her caring stepfather, motivating her to become a hero and make a world a better place - an act that opens her so many opportunities she gets overwhelmed as any teenager would and often finds herself unable to commit to just one goal.
  • Superman, of course, had his share of these over the years in various shapes and forms, some more obvious than the others.
    • One of the oldest is probably Sub-Mariner — their respective first appearances mark the beginning of what would become DC Comics and Marvel Comics and they both were a clear metaphor for young immigrants unhappy with the current state of things. But when Superman was a tale of a hero fighting for the little man but embracing and loving America, Namor was a destructive rebel crushing anyone or anything standing in his path, shunning the idea of assimilation with the surface world.
      • Aquaman in turn is this to Namor - he takes the basic idea and cuts out lingering similarities to Superman like flying, but portrays the main character as purely heroic. In fact, when Namor was known for his Heel–Face Revolving Door attitude even back then, as often fighting the Axis forces as the Allies, the first thing we see Aquaman do is to attack a Nazi ship to leave no doubt whose side he is on.
    • Another Golden Age antithesis to Superman is Captain America. Both are red and blue-wearing superheroes with idealistic attitudes of America who grew up in poverty and grew up to serve as the traditional Big Goods of their respective universes. In addition, both heroes' ArchEnemies are bald villains who seek to Take Over the World (Lex Luthor for Supes, Red Skull for Cap). However, one interesting contrast is how they embody opposite sides of the Nature Versus Nurture debate: whereas Superman is an extraterrestrial whose abilities were innate and manifested themselves when he arrived on Earth (i.e., Nature), Captain America was born an ordinary human who, as an adult, was given a Super Serum by the U.S. military that enhanced his peak abilities (i.e., Nurture). In addition, Superman has traditionally no need for physical weapons, instead using his aforementioned Kryptonian powers, while Captain America's weapon is his trademark shield. While Superman is an alien who often feels alone on Earth as the Last of His Kind, Captain America sometimes feels out of his time, being a World War II veteran in modern society. Superman's Archenemy Lex Luthor is often portrayed as an American capitalist who uses his wealth and influence, while Captain America's Archenemy the Red Skull is a literal Nazi reviled by all but like-minded individuals.
    • Superman and the Fantastic Four are polar opposites in almost every way. Superman is traditionally portrayed as a borderline-demigod with a vast array of powerful abilities, but he has to cope with the inherent heartbreak of being the last member of a dying alien race; as such, he typically fights alone when he's not with the Justice League, and he lost most of his family when he was too young to remember them. He's also famous for keeping his secret identity so well-hidden that not even his love interest and his nemesis know who he really is. In contrast, the Fantastic Four have worked as a group since the beginning, they each have one specific superpower, they're a lovably dysfunctional family in addition to a superhero team, and they don't have secret identities at all; in fact, they're all world-renowned celebrities. Interestingly, their origin stories are also mirror images of one another: Superman's story begins with him crashing to Earth in a rocket ship and getting superpowers from Earth's sun, while the Four's story begins with them flying into space in a rocket ship and getting superpowers from cosmic radiation.
    • The X-Men can also serve as an antithesis to Superman. To wit, both properties are about specimens of superpowered races whose abilities manifested themselves during puberty and how the use of their powers affect their relationships with ordinary humans. However, the executions of this core premise heavily diverge from there. Superman is traditionally depicted as being well-respected by humanity (with some notable exceptions), while the X-Men are hated and feared by humanity because of their abilities. Superman is often depicted as the Last of His Kind of an alien species on Earth, while the X-Men are Mutants, an Earth-born species who protect their kind from extinction.
    • Superman and Spider-Man are both iconic urban superheroes known for their distinctive red and blue costumes, and for wearing glasses and working at newspapers in their civilian identities; both of them also have evil corporate CEOs as their archenemies. Both of them are also raised by elderly guardians (Pa and Ma Kent & Uncle Ben and Aunt May) due to their biological parents being deceased. Both have their father figure often die to teach them a lesson about their powers, for Superman Pa's death teaches that even he can't save everyone, and for Spider-Man, Uncle Ben teaches that with great power Comes Great Responsibility. In their early days, they even had essentially the same justification for their powers (Superman's writers used the great proportionate strength of insects to suggest that such feats could be within a "sufficiently evolved" being's capabilities). But Superman is known for his raw strength and his brawny physique, and he's often thematically associated with the heavens due to his flight powers and alien heritage. Spider-Man, on the other hand, is known for his agility and his wiry physique, and most depictions emphasize his closeness to the Earth due to his humble background and insect motif. The Daily Planet is also traditionally portrayed sympathetically, with its reporters being crusading idealists driven to protect the truth, while the Daily Bugle is cast in a more morally ambiguous light, with J. Jonah Jameson's editorials ruining Spidey's reputation. Finally, both often play the role of The Heart of their respective universes, but Superman usually benefits from being seen as the Big Good who's Loved by All of the general public while Spider-Man typically is the Hero with Bad Publicity.
  • Wonder Woman and The Mighty Thor are both heroes who derive their origins from mythology and emphasize magical weapons, and have served as part of the Power Trio of their respective SuperTeams (Justice League for Wonder Woman, The Avengers for Thor). Also, they both hail from societies drawing on those old myths that have been secluded from the world. However, Wonder Woman is a feminist hero who draws inspiration from Greek myths, whereas Thor is a classically masculine hero who draws his own inspiration from Norse myths. Whereas Paradise Island is at roughly the same technological level as the ancient Greeks, Asgard is a Science Fantasy.

    Works 
  • Alan Moore has done this to himself.
    • Someone described the Alan Moore version of Miracleman as "Superman told as a horror story". Or, perhaps more accurately, the original Marvelman done as a horror story. Moore himself said that all he did in Miracleman and the thematically similar (albeit more realistic) Watchmen was do a serious version of Harvey Kurtzman's famous satire Superduperman for MAD. Where Kurtzman parodied the superhero tropes for laughs, Moore played it for dramatic value.
    • His run on Supreme is the opposite to his Marvelman — in both cases, Moore takes the character of a Flying Brick based on Superman, who was also the epitome of the age during which he was created, with all its flaws, and molds him into the complete opposite, while making him more complex and interesting than he was before. The difference lies in tone - while Moore turns Marvelman towards Darker and Edgier waters, while breaking apart many traditional tropes of the Silver Age, Supreme under his guidance took the path towards Lighter and Softer territory and paid tribute to the same tropes Marvelman tore apart.
    • His Lovecraft Trilogy, The Courtyard, Neonomicon and Providence, is a homage but also an antithesis to Lovecraft. Moore generally brings the sexual subtext of Lovecraft's original stories out into the open, places more emphasis on the dubious racism of the original stories and largely shows a more sympathetic portrayal of the occult than Lovecraft allowed.
    • League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Tom Strong are both Genre Throwbacks to old Pulp Magazine stories, but League is a Deconstruction Crossover that makes heavy use of Public Domain Characters and features lots of sex and violence while Strong is more of a loving Homage and Reconstruction that mainly stars original characters and is on the whole much more Lighter and Softer than the former.
    • After some Creator Backlash following Watchmen, Moore wrote 1963 as a Reconstruction of the superhero archetypes from Watchmen, especially contrasting them with the Tomorrow Syndicate: Rorschach is a paranoid, rude nutjob, while the N-Man is, if still thick-skinned and conservative, friendly enough to work on a team. The Hypernaut is, much like Ozymandias, an erudite transhumanist with a genetically modified pet (he even uses the same array of screens to maximize content absorbion as Ozzy), but lacks Adrian Veidt's Anti-Villain tendencies. Infra-Man and his wife Infra-Girl mirror Night Owl and Silk Specter, a geeky scientist and a flirty, beautiful woman, who are, unlike their Watchmen counterparts, completely satisfied with their lives. Horus is a Doctor Manhattan analog: Immensely powerful and focused on inevitable death...except he's willing to avoid destruction at all costs. And the USA is, even in appearance, similar to the Comedian: An aging patriotic secret agent and war veteran who works closely with the president. But USA isn't an Anti-Hero at all - as you can tell from how the JFK assassination plays out in both books - The Comedian is implied to have pulled the trigger, while the USA saves JFK by using his bulletproof body as a decoy.
  • All-New Wolverine is this to previous X-23 and Wolverine stories with Laura doing everything she can to both overcome her own past and issues stemming from it and avoid pitfalls Logan often stumbles on, like his tendency to be a deadbeat parent. Enemy of the State II and Old Woman Laura in particular are the exact opposite of Mark Millar stories Enemy of the State and Old Man Logan.
    • In turn, the book has an antithesis in a series that was running at the same time, Totally Awesome Hulk, which is about another character from the Turn of the Millennium becoming Affirmative-Action Legacy to a classic Marvel Anti-Hero, determined to not repeat his predecessor's mistakes. Except here Amadeus insistence to be better Hulk than Bruce Banner is portrayed as naivety and hubris and, especially as book changes titles to back to The Incredible Hulk he fails, spectacularly.
  • The creators of Cerebus the Aardvark and Bone got into an infamous feud during the books' runs. It makes sense, then, that their books can be considered antithesis to each other - both are black and white fantasy stories, incredibly long-running, and feature a title character that'd belong in a much more lighthearted book. However, Bone is a wholesome comic, with the hero being a goofy, kind-hearted guy and his world a classic High Fantasy culture, while Cerebus features a Sociopathic Hero in a violent dystopia full of corruption, and is known for its descent into seriousness. In addition Bone is unapologetically a Feminist Fantasy, and Cerebus...isn't.
  • The Champions (2016) storyline "Beat the Devil" is this to One More Day. Both stories share a basic premise that could be awful if done poorly (Spider-Man making a Deal with the Devil) but while One More Day did everything possible to make Peter's actions completely unjustifiable (due to a Writer Revolt), and ended with a Bittersweet Ending where everyone involved got Mind Wiped, Beat the Devil frames Miles' actions in the most sympathetic possible light: Miles made his decision under duress, unlike Peter who had a whole day, didn't know he was making a mistake, unlike Peter who was definitively told so by everyone including the very person he was trying to save, and while Peter forgot he made his deal, Miles got to see the consequences of his hasty decision and has to live with the guilt. In One More Day, Mephisto is completely above-board the whole time and doesn't screw over Peter, but in Beat the Devil does screw over Miles by neglecting to mention how the deal will ensure a girl he had saved will be dead in the new timeline. Mephisto got off easy for One More Day, but by the end of Champions Vol 3, it's clear his actions in Beat the Devil have only made the team's resolve that much stronger and they collectively tell him to buzz off. And as if to underscore the similarity, the words that seal the deal are the same in both books: "Do it".
  • Contest of Champions (2015) is this to Avengers Arena. They are both based on the "Battle Royale with superheroes" premise, Anyone Can Die rule, and both cash on what is popular at the time (Arena on the popularity of Hunger Games movies and Contest on the success of the video game of the same name). However, when Arena was Darker and Edgier, treated its characters as C-List Fodder (the writer was outright surprised anyone cared about them at all when he received complaints about this) and gleefully kills fan-favorites for shock value and to push one of his Original Generation characters, largely seen as a bunch of Creator's Pets, Contest is pure awesome with only one new character, bringing up obscure characters to cherish them, had actually resurrected several dead ones, and most of those killed were Expendable Alternate Universe versions of popular characters. Both series set up as the Big Bad a quirky classic villain who manages to pull it off with the help of new dragons. Only in Arena that's Arcade, who openly abandons his quirky shticks to go on trying too hard to prove he is a real threat and his dragon is a new character, who provides him with powerful tech and disappears from the story, while in Contest it's Collector and Grandmaster, who are so powerful their quirks are the only advantage against them and need to prove nothing and their respective dragons are established characters (Maestro and Punisher 2099), whom they use to rein kidnapped heroes in and who form an alliance to turn against them. Arena follows the Battle Royale formula to the letter, whenever it makes sense or not and openly ignores continuity, past characterization and any questions why nobody is looking for kidnapped heroes (in fact they had to bring a different writer to answer that one), while Contest comes in with a strong explanation of how the whole thing can be set up without anyone finding out ( which actually fails as people do find out, something that never happened in Arena) and never goes further than basic premise in similarities with Battle Royale, instead establishing its own rules and ditching the premise entirely after the first 6 issues.
  • The DC Rebirth Deathstroke series is this to Christopher Priest's earlier work on Black Panther. They both focus on a Magnificent Bastard type of character. Except when Panther was more about the "Magnificent" part, Deathstroke is more about the "Bastard". T'Challa is always the smartest person in the room and also the noblest. Slade is always the smartest person in the room...and also the vilest.
  • DCeased is this to both Marvel Zombies and to Injustice: Gods Among Us
    • Just as Marvel Zombies it is an Expendable Alternate Universe story of superheroes dealing with a Zombie Apocalypse. But instead of being a Black Comedy where zombifications make people amoral cannibals but let them retain their intelligence like Marvel Zombies, it plays off more like a traditional zombie story, with mindless hordes of undead and things being played for drama, not laughs.
    • When compared to Injustice it has a tendency to give heroic roles to characters who are evil or dead in that story, like Superman or Damian Wayne, while quickly killing of those who were crucial for Injustice storyline including Joker, Catwoman and even Batman himself.
  • The Deadpool issue "The Never-Ending Struggle" (vol. 6, issue #20) was lightly described by writer Gerry Duggan as an antithesis to All-Star Superman, specifically the famous story beat where Superman talks down a suicidal girl — the scenario described by Duggan being: "There are all-star heroes that can save a life with a single word balloon. And then there's Deadpool." Deadpool also stops a young woman from jumping with words, but rather than Superman's gentle, hopeful reassurance that she is loved and valued, Deadpool jokingly offers to take her to a better building to jump off of, before inviting her to an exciting night on the town, including Hamilton and beating up crooks and geriatrics. Also, while Superman's encounter is optimistic and hopeful, Deadpool's story ends on a more bittersweet note as it highlights the reality that his actions won't singlehandedly fix all the woman's problems, the story ending with him guiding her to the folks in the ER who are better-equipped to get her the long-term help she needs to heal.
  • Garth Ennis wrote Preacher as an episodic story with a theme that despite all the ridiculousness and horribleness the book showcases America and its people have good in them and villains who in the end all bring their own downfall by either incompetence or by creating monsters they cannot truly control. The Boys on the other hand has a larger ongoing intrigue and shows America as deeply rotten, with very few actually good people in it on top of all the ridiculousness and horribleness, while the villains are still incompetent and creating monsters they cannot truly control, but are also too big to fall. To put it simply, Preacher is written by Ennis who, for all his trademark cynicism, still believes in American Dream, while The Boys is written by Ennis who no longer does.
  • For Geoff Johns Doomsday Clock is this for his earlier work, Infinite Crisis. Crisis was a huge, action-packed Crisis Crossover where DC heroes must fight an immensely powerful character formerly Exiled from Continuity, who is mad how Darker and Edgier The DCU has become and wants to force it back to how it once was. Once it ended it forced all books to do a one-year Time Skip. Clock is a self-contained, focusing more on mystery than action miniseries about the threat of an immensely powerful Canon Immigrant who tries to force the DC Universe to become Darker and Edgier and something new. It's set a year ahead of the rest of DC books, meaning once it ends other books will catch up to it without interrupting any storylines.
  • One story in Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Real Sidekicks of New Gotham Special is this to The New Batman Adventures' eighth episode, Growing Pains. Both stories involve Clayface, both involve him creating a "daughter" named Annie, but in the latter, Annie is an innocent little girl who he shows no sympathy for and only thinks of as a part of himself that's gone rogue and needs to be reassimilated. In the former, Annie is a jaded teenager who Clayface simply forgot about and while he initially does think of her as only a cast-off part of himself, quickly changes his tune once she asserts her independence from him, instead trying to make amends by adopting her as his daughter for real. The tone of the stories is also different, with one being Played for Drama and the other being Played for Laughs (for the most part).
  • Kieron Gillen seems to be driven to do this:
    • Three was consciously tailor-made to be this for Frank Miller's 300. 300 has heroic Spartans fighting for freedom against the irredeemable, evil Persian Empire and played with the actual history. Three has less clear conflict with Spartans as the slave-hunting antagonists from which the titular three slaves are running away, and Gillen recruited an academic Classical history consultant to keep the setting and story accurate. Of note is that Gillen initially intended to make just as much an over the top, black and white take as Miller with the Spartans as the bad guys, but then found the real facts far more interesting to portray than either.
    • Another ongoing title by him is Über, which is a very grim and violent deconstruction of comics which use the idea of World War II being fought with superheroes and mad science as an excuse for lighthearted Rule of Cool high-jinks. What happens when you give superpowers to a gang of genocidal imperialists? Bloodshed and destruction escalating to almost pantomine levels is what. It also throws the idea of something like Heroic Spirit being a real match against Power Levels out the window. It doesn't matter how brave you are, if you can't throw around tanks like your opponent, you will be splattered over a mile-wide area.
    • He also intends The Wicked + The Divine, to be this for his own series, Phonogram. As he explains, Phonogram is about how the art inspires, changes and destroys the consumers, while The Wicked And The Divine is about what choices creators of the art make and how it changes and destroys them.
    • And of course there is his run on Journey into Mystery (Gillen) which is a whimsical, light-hearted series about Loki, god of mischief, imagination and stories, who refuses to accept that Status Quo Is God and desperately tries to change only to ultimately fail and kill the only chance to truly change he ever had. Contrast with Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, which is a moody, semi-gothic series about Morpheus, god of dreams, imagination and stories, who refuses to accept that everything changes and desperately tries to stay the same only to ultimately fail and undergo change by being reborn in a new body.
  • Rob Liefeld's Heroes Reborn: The Avengers was a Darker and Edgier revamp of the Avengers that epitomized the Dark Age of Comics. It was immediately followed by The Avengers (Kurt Busiek), which was a Lighter and Softer reconstruction of superheroes that helped bring an end to the Dark Age.
  • Robert Kirkman's two most well-known and acclaimed creator-owned works are Invincible and The Walking Dead, both stand in stark contrast to each other outside the use of Gorn. Invincible is a colorful, Lighter and Softer story about larger-than-life superheroes, and served to be a Reconstruction of the superhero genre for Image Comics (in the past known for Dark Age excess). The Walking Dead is a grim, Darker and Edgier tale set After the End, and tells its story of a Zombie Apocalypse with unnerving realism, which served to break Image away from being exclusively about superheroes. Notably, this contrast is highlighted by color scheme. While the former is very bright and vibrant, as befitting of American superheroes, the latter is entirely in black and white, reflecting the nature of the story.
  • The entire body of work of Jack Kirby could be seen as one to works of H. P. Lovecraft. As Ben Rowe put it, they both tackled the concept of humanity being small in a vast Universe beyond our ability to understand it. The difference is that when for Lovecraft it was a Nightmare Fuel, Kirby saw it a delight.
  • Marvel Noir and Marvel 1602 can be considered this to Marvel 2099, Marvel 1602 especially. Marvel 2099 thrust the heroes of the Marvel Universe into the far future, treated the present-day stories as canonical and important to the overarching metanarrative, and had a Cyberpunk motif and themes. The Noir and 1602 Verses are both set in a distant past (around Prohibition era and the Age of Exploration, respectively). They have more of a Steampunk (or perhaps noir) feel to them, and don't treat the current-day stories as canon (except in the case of 1602... it's complicated.) Marvel Noir shares 2099's pessimistic atmosphere, but unlike it, doesn't have the heroes sharing a single, cohesive world, whereas Marvel 1602 is set in a single 'verse and is much more optimistic, so they can also be this to each other.
  • Grant Morrison's The Multiversity and The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman). Both involve heroes from numerous alternate realities facing a major threat to all of their worlds. The latter is a Darker and Edgier deconstruction that sees the heroes of the various worlds coming into conflict over who will live and making morally dodgy choices for the greater good. The former is a Lighter and Softer reconstruction in which the heroes unite together to battle the threat and do so without sacrificing the values, morals, and hope that superheroes represent.
    • Mark Waid's All-New, All-Different Avengers in turn is this for The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman) and New Avengers — the latter two featured an epic, dark plot of the bigger, more powerful than ever team of Avengers and recreated Illuminati trying to stop the destruction fo The Multiverse, making hard, morally ambiguous choices along the way and finally fighting over their decisions. Waid follows that with a much Lighter and Softer series where the Avengers are broke, forced to go back to basics, taking a young generation of heroes as their students and going back to simply punching villains in the face.
    • Similarly Al Ewing's New Avengers series is this to Hickman's. Hickman had the cast of Marvel's iconic characters tangled in a dark storyline which was downplaying the fantastic aspects of the events and trying to ground them more into hard science-fiction narrative. Ewing has a cast of C-Listers in straight-up heroic adventures and his book is not afraid of embracing how silly superhero stories can be.
  • Grant Morrison's New X-Men is a deconstruction of the X-Men franchise that deliberately moved it into general sci-fi, involving the X-Men dealing with small-scale, mutant based crimes and conflicts. Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men, which came shortly after Morrison's, is a reconstruction that returns the characters to their superhero roots, involving the X-Men battling supervillains and working to prevent a cosmic threat from devastating Earth.
  • The Order (2007) was a Lighter and Softer Spiritual Antithesis to two earlier works at once. Like X-Statix, it featured superheroes who were also C-list celebrities, but unlike X-Statix the characters were genuinely altruistic and idealistic instead of being self-serving and cynical. Also, it followed Strikeforce: Morituri in featuring "normals" who were given artificial superpowers on a strictly time-limited basis, but unlike Strikeforce: Morituri the results weren't lethal when the time ran out.
  • Brian K. Vaughan's Runaways has Allan Heinberg's Young Avengers. In the '00s (2003 and 2005 respectively) the two of them were introduced as Marvel's primary teenage super teams, in an effort to appeal to young adult readers and capture the market DC had with the Teen Titans. They were highly successful on that front, being acclaimed and award-winning comics with large followings to this day. While both teams consist of young heroes that combines Fantasy Kitchen Sink origins in one setting, they also greatly diverge in terms of execution. The Runaways are from Los Angeles, away from much of the superhero action, and are not a traditional superhero team, as they don't have costumes or codenames, and they openly mock superhero tropes commonly associated with the genre, nor do they think of themselves as superheroes. They also always have more female members than male, another inversion of the norm. In contrast, the Young Avengers are from New York City, the core of the superhero culture, and are very much a traditional superhero team that are more in line with the Teen Titans, complete with costumes, codenames, and they embrace superhero traditions up to the point of considering themselves as superheroes. Fittingly, they always have more male members than female, adhering to Two Girls to a Team. Going further, the Runaways each have evil parents that led to them becoming heroes by force, while the Young Avengers all take on heroic legacies. Lastly, the Runaways (being the non-traditional team) aren't really active as part of the superhero community outside of company-wide crossovers that happen to get to them, and the Young Avengers (being the traditional one) are much more involved in the universe as a whole. Ironically, the two titles are known for their Friendly Fandoms.
  • Saladin Ahmed admitted that his runs on Miles Morales: Spider-Man and The Magnificent Ms. Marvel are this both to his predecessors' runs on the characters and each other. Miles under Brian Bendis constantly had to deal with high stakes but at the consequence of his supporting cast and corner of the world remaining underdeveloped. Under G. Willow Wilson Kamala was allowed room for character development of her and her supporting cast as well as a lot of worldbuilding but stakes most of the time were pretty low. So with Miles Ahmed wants to focus on the supporting cast and worldbuilding while for Kamala he is raising the stakes.
  • Gene Luen Yang's The Shadow Hero is a Spiritual Antithesis to his previous work, Boxers & Saints. The Shadow Hero is about a young man who gets possessed by an ancient Chinese national spirit and becomes a superhero, whereas Boxers was about a young man who gets possessed by an ancient Chinese national spirit and ends up getting utterly morally corrupted and becoming a mass murdering terrorist.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) started as this to Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM), featuring characters and designs from the show, but being considerably Lighter and Softer and more episodic. Meanwhile Fleetway Comicss Sonic the Comic featured designs from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog but was considerably Darker and Edgier. The two comics would establish their own continuities and lore, each becoming its own different thing, with Archie Sonic lasting longer and adapting plot of more games, while STC doing a lot of things its own way, often diverging from other versions.
  • Space Job is a miniseries set very much in the vein of Star Trek, but with the caveat that society is just as materialistic, prejudiced, incompetent and petty as is ever was instead of a optimistically progressive utopia. The series opens with a Red Shirt new officer dying to the captain's faulty command chair. The next issue follows the lack of concern or dignity afforded to his remains by the rest of the crew, with the captain in particular too self-possessed to care besides getting a new desk. Their whole organization is basically security for humanity expanding across the universe to exploit resources for money.
  • Star Wars Legacy is this to Knights of the Old Republic II. Whereas KOTRII is an unrelenting and ruthless deconstruction that simply tears apart and criticizes the Star Wars universe, Legacy deconstructs the setting only to then examine the positive aspects of it (as opposed to bringing a strong focus on the negative) and puts it back together.
  • DC's Suicide Squad has Marvel's Thunderbolts. The former is about incarcerated criminals being forced into black ops missions for reduced sentences, the latter is about ex-supervillains willingly trying to go legit and do good as a means to redeem themselves as heroes. Both take darker views, a given when the stories star villains, but the former is decidedly more jaded than the latter.
  • Superman Reborn to One More Day. Both mark the end of an era for their upstanding hero, but in vastly different ways. One More Day is a story about losing a marriage and a child, and is relatively simple in its execution of dealing with a supernatural being to accomplish this. Superman Reborn is about keeping a marriage and a child, and is pretty convoluted in its explanations with still a few questions left over after defeating a supernatural being to accomplish this.
  • The Unbelievable Gwenpool is a very direct antithesis to The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Both are comedic Marvel titles about a young female superhero, with a writer who rose to success with humorous webcomics and "cartoony" artwork. However, Gwenpool is a very dark comedy with an (initially) incompetent, overconfident, and self-serving protagonist who kills people at the drop of the hat, while Squirrel Girl is an optimistic neo-Silver Age work with a totally moral protagonist who always wins and never kills her enemies. They're even physical opposites, with Doreen being a chubby and proudly curvy girl whose costumes cover her from head to foot, while Gwen is (usually) drawn as a skinny, undeveloped teen who wears a costume that, with a different art style, could be very revealing and sexual.
  • The Man of Steel is this to Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?. Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow was the last Superman story before Crisis on Infinite Earths and was intended to be a definitive end to the fantastical adventures of the near-infallible pre-Crisis Superman. It's a pretty brutal Deconstruction of the Silver Age, by showing what happens when the goofy villains and Mad Scientists get serious, and how absolutely terrifying an omnipotent being who operates on Blue-and-Orange Morality like Mr. Mxyzptlk would really be. Meanwhile, The Man of Steel was the first post-Crisis Superman book and a solid Reconstruction, showing a more human Superman in a more complicated world and dealing with more realistic forms of evil; but still as an undeniable force for good.
  • Warren Ellis in the afterword of Black Summer contrasted it with Civil War (2006), saying that Mark Millar's event shows watered down version of superheroes coming in conflict with the government, while he wanted to show in Black Summer what he thinks would really happen.
    • Ellis must love this trope — when Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross created Marvels, a deconstructing but still idealistic portrayal of the Marvel Universe, Ellis wrote Ruins — a depressing Alternate Universe where everything that could go wrong did, worse than you can imagine — that is generally seen as Marvels' Evil Twin. When Busiek made a sequel to Marvels, Ellis responded with Ghost Boxes — a compilation of alternate Universes where the X-Men failed to stop the threat from his Astonishing X-Men series, each more depressing than the previous one.
    • He once pulled it on himself as well. His original proposal for Planetary contrasts it with his run on Stormwatch — the latter was a depressing story of a secret super-team doing what they can to stop superpowered threats and the former, while still having its grim moments, is about a secret super-team discovering unknown wonders of the world. It's saying something the same proposal said the big theme in Planetary is Elijah Snow, his Author Avatar, rediscovering the beauty of the world.
      • Nextwave in turns is this to both Stormwatch and Planetary. It's a comedy where a secret super-team of losers with few screws loose finds out the secret organization they work for is run by people even crazier and dumber and also corrupt and needs to stop their ridiculous creations from making the world even dumber than it already is. If Stormwatch said the world is cruel and Planetary that it's beautiful, Nextwave said the world is insane.
    • Ellis may have planned to turn it around, since the series was Left Hanging, but Doktor Sleepless took a central character who was a hybrid of Elijah Snow and Spider Jerusalem and revealed him as a Villain Protagonist who was an Omnicidal Maniac.
    • Switchblade Honey is this to Star Trek — it shows a future where the exploration of space is handled by a bunch of insane egomaniacs, which leads to a war with a much more powerful enemy, which humanity is losing. Heroic idealists, who would become great heroes of Starfleet in Star Trek, here end up in prison for opposing the corrupted system.
  • All-Star Superman is one to All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder in a sense. One is hopeful and idealistic, the other is dark and cynical. One has a hero who treats everyone with respect or, at worst, disappointment; the other's treats everyone as inferior and always tries to intimidate. One regrets treating his sidekick cruelly (while he was being affected by something inverting his personality), the other has no qualms about abusing a child (while he's completely himself). One sticks to a character's singular mythos; the other brings in the rest of the DC Universe. One is at the end of the character's life; the other is shortly after the start of its protagonist's career. Both also act as prequels to their respective writers' self-created continuities. And on a meta level: One series is iconic and beloved; the other is iconic for all the wrong reasons. It becomes blatantly obvious in each series's Signature Scenes; the latter's is the "hero" verbally abusing a child, while the former's is the hero saving a suicidal teenager.
  • Mark Millar wrote Huck after watching Man of Steel and being utterly horrified by its violent depiction of Superman as somebody who kills his enemies. Deciding that his own career played no small part in the rise of Darker and Edgier superheroes, he decided to create something considerably more lighthearted and idealistic.
  • Having created The Eltingville Club as a Take That! to obsessive and antisocial fanboys emblematic of tropes like Fan Dumb, Serious Business and Comedic Sociopathy, Evan Dorkin created an one-issue "mirror image" with The Northwest Comix Collective, making fun of the type of people who would hate the Eltingville nerds - pretentious hacks and wannabe Alternative Comics creators who justify their sloth and heavy drug intake by claiming their work is true art, and are not above commiting fraud and plagiarism to get their comics off the ground. Each character of the Northwest Comix Collective is analogous to an Eltingville character, and it's emphasized how they're similar - they're all unable to get girls to hang out with them, and, despite their talk, the Northwest gang is just as obsessed with superheroes, except they can't stop talking about how much they hate them.
  • The DCU is similar to the Marvel Universe, due to both being long-running comic book continuities, but the way they do things is a lot different: DC reboots their main universe every few years to streamline continuity while Marvel keeps the same one with constant updates; DC heroes tend to be more clean-cut and heroic while the Marvel heroes tend to act within morally grey areas; DC places a larger emphasis on legacy and passings-of-the-torch while Marvel has more independent superheroes who grow up to stand alongside the last generation. While this might make it sound like Marvel is the Darker and Edgier to DC's Lighter and Softer, in reality, they both have moments of lighter and darker content. The main difference is that while Marvel works to make its world and characters feel realistic, DC emphasizes the relationship and history between heroes to drive its arcs.
    • Marvel and DC are the two longest comic book universes, but the way they do things are different, such as the DC heroes try their best not to commit morally questionable acts most of the time, unless they have to. While the Marvel heroes do decide to commit morally questionable acts, they do it to save the ones they care about or the world. Most of the Marvel villains usually stay as straight-up bad guys, while the villains in the DC universe try to change their ways and even become anti-heroes at times.
  • The controversial Superman: Truth received one in the form of a story with the same name in Superman (Brian Michael Bendis). Both featured Superman's identity being outed — but in the latter, Clark himself was the one who went public, he wasn't depowered, the world accepted the truth a lot better than it did in the original, and his friends didn't turn their backs on himnote . In the former, Lois outed Clark, Clark was blackmailed, he lost most of his powers, and he became a Hero with Bad Publicity who was hated by almost everyone.
  • What's So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way? and Superman and the Authority are both stories that involve Superman interacting with a modern team of anti-heroes based on The Authority and featuring Manchester Black (who debuted in the former). However, the former casts Superman and the anti-heroes as diametrically opposed, with Superman as an uncompromising Ideal Hero who is far more powerful than them, and whose strident morality will always allow him to save the day without needing to give up on his ideals, versus the Elite being a gang of psychotic Nominal Hero upstarts whose goals are little more than wanton murder with incidental villainous casualties. Meanwhile, the latter has Superman found the team, has him admit that his actions caused him to ignore important problems and fail to keep the world safe, and depicts him as significantly weakened by age and needing to pass on his ideals to the next generation, while the new Authority is shown as Unscrupulous Heroes at worst who want to save the world as much as anyone else, are necessary to do so, and are victims of a status quo genuinely starting to run sour. Both stories focus on the idea that Superman can't do what the Authority does, but one proclaims "and that's a good thing, because the Authority are terrible", while the other says "and that's why Superman is with them, because they might be able to succeed where he failed."
  • Ultimate Marvel and Marvel Adventures are both Turn of the Millennium Younger and Hipper Ultimate Universe takes on the Marvel Universe. However, the former is Darker and Edgier, features a Myth Arc and is aimed at a teen/young adult audience, while the latter is Lighter and Softer, mostly features standalone stories (though setups for larger arcs sometimes occur) and is aimed at younger kids (although it has a sizeable Periphery Demographic).
  • In the early sixties, DC put out a number of out-of-continuity "imaginary stories", mostly involving Superman, and two of which ended up being rather enduring, to the point of receiving pseudo-remakes in the 1990s: The Death of Superman (1961), and The Amazing Story of Superman Red and Superman Blue. Both stories are, largely, about a possible endpoint for Superman's character, but go about them in completely opposite directions. The Death of Superman is about the most tragic possible ending Superman could have, where he is horribly murdered by a faux-repentant Luthor, being done in by his own altruism and desire to help humanity. Meanwhile, Superman-Red and Superman-Blue is about the most idyllic possible ending Superman could have, where, after being split into a pair of superintelligent twins, he creates world peace, restores Krypton, hypnotizes all his villains into being good, and marries both Lois and Lana.
  • Power Rangers: Soul of the Dragon was pitched as "Power Rangers meets Old Man Logan" but is actually this trope to both OML and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. Each one deals with iconic hero - Tommy Oliver, Logan and Bruce Wayne - retiring and growing Older and Wiser, before being called back to action. However, Old Man Logan is a post-apocalyptic story in a world where evil won, heroes are dead and Logan himself is broken and apathetic, learning over the course of the journey that he still has work to do. Dark Knight Returns is an early cyberpunk-esque dystopia, with Bruce Wayne taking the cowl again to reestablish order in Gotham, but after years having become cynical and jaded, more prone to needless brutality, even showing some clearly fascist tendencies. By contrast to both, Soul of the Dragon is officially set in main Power Rangers timeline, and while Tommy is jaded, it's because of his disappointment with how Status Quo Is God and things got neither better nor worse since he became a Ranger. The story ends with him accepting his is no longer needed and can move on and live a happy life he deserves, Passing the Torch to next generation.

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