Characters insisting you take their word for it in Comic Books.
- Baron von Helsingrad of Atomic Robo has committed a number of atrocities, most of which are left to speculation.Robo: By the authority of the League of Nations, Baron Heidrich von Helsingrad is hereby placed under arrest as an enemy of all mankind for the crimes of kidnapping, human experimentation on unwilling subjects, and... Wow. Jeez, that's a lot of atrocities. Where the hell did Helsingrad find the time to sleep? I don't even know what this one means.
- Jack Hawksmoor of The Authority possesses genitals surgically enhanced by time aliens from the far future, weird enough to make a seasoned Secret Service agent vomit uncontrollably at the sight of them. This apparently didn't stop the Engineer from having sex multiple times with him.
- The DCU:
- Batman: Black and White:
- In "The Riddle", the MacGuffin is a document reputed to contain Lewis Carroll's one true punchline to the Orphaned Setup Raven Riddle from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. When the villain gets his hands on the document, he reads it, laughs, and says, "Brilliant! No wonder he never published this!" The punchline itself is not revealed to the audience.
- The backstory of "The Black and White Bandit" revolves around a painting that's hailed as a masterpiece with sublime use of colors. It would be impossible to show the painting in its full glory in a Deliberately Monochrome story with art that leans toward the cartoony end of the realism scale, and no attempt is made to do so. Mostly we see reaction shots of people looking at it, and in one panel it's visible in the background and only rendered as an undetailed rectangle.
- In a 1970s issue of Green Lantern, GL and Green Arrow meet "The Most Beautiful Woman in The Universe". However, we never get to see her face. The artist probably assumed drawing someone that beautiful was beyond his skills. Green Arrow refused to look at her face, claiming it might ruin every other woman for him, and make him give up give up his preferred lifestyle. GL didn't have that problem, though. This is essentially a distaff version of Downwind Johnson, pal of the title character in the Smilin' Jack comic strip.
- Identity Crisis (2004) features a whole page of captions describing how awesomely beautiful and moving Wonder Woman's speech at Sue's funeral is.
- Batman: Black and White:
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: In the Scrooge McDuck story The Treasury of Croesus by Don Rosa, the first page shows the end of "Magica de Spell's most complex and bizarre scheme yet". The only things shown include magical explosions and foam coming out the windows of the money bin, a pig in a Groucho Marx disguise, a lizard with its tail tied to the tail of a vulture with a party hat... and Magica, wearing a Viking helmet, an apron, a thick glove on one hand, carrying a thin wooden mallet in the other, an ice skate on one foot and a roller skate on the other, shouting "Curses! Foiled Again!"
- The stink of Tona, the dog of Dori Seda. Of course, smells are especially difficult.
- In the story "A Strange Undertaking" from the EC comic The Haunt of Fear, which involved vengeful corpses, it isn't mentioned what said corpses actually do. In the final panel, the narrator instructs the reader to imagine the worst thing they can think of, and that would be what happened.
- One story of Iznogoud has him meeting a woman who is reportedly so ugly that anyone who sees her face freezes into a block of ice. Luckily, she wears a veil. She's never shown from the front while the veil is off, only the terrified expression of people when they freeze. Iznogoud tries to make her show her face to the Caliph, but (as always) he ends up frozen himself. The story ends with the woman starting to remove her veil toward the "camera", to satisfy the reader's curiosity, but instead of the next panel we see a note by the editor that when they visited the comic's artist to get the pages they received "a very cold welcome".
- Marvel Universe:
- We almost never see Doctor Doom's face. Any time anyone else sees it, he's facing away from the reader. The person seeing him isn't, and always reacts with horror. By now, it's clear they can never show us Doom's face: nothing could do all those years of horrified reactions justice. Later writers upped the mystique (and the irony) by saying the original scar was nothing much, but he was so desperate to hide it, he put on his mask while it was still red hot, and that's what created the visage that horrifies everyone. Jack Kirby intended Doom to look like this
◊, his normal, unscarred face and a burned mass of scar tissue is seen in the Secret Wars (1984) miniseries, and there's an alternate-continuity Doom in Marvel 1602: Fantastick Four who takes off his mask exactly once. - It has been frequently stated in Marvel Comics that both Thor and Hercules are complete "equals" in both strength and ability. While they are certainly equals in physical might, the rest is kind of head-tilting. Hercules's other abilities come from mastery of various martial arts, numerous weapons, and cheating when he needs to. Thor has the mastery of other forms of combat alongside Flying Brick powers and a massive case of the Superpower Lottery thanks to his hammer, which at its best is a borderline Reality Warper. How exactly Hercules is supposed to "equal" that when both are going all out is debatable, but they're frequently billed as equals.
- An early issue of The Amazing Spider-Man (Lee & Ditko) has Liz Allen and Betty Brant, competing over Peter's affections, visiting his house. He isn't home (being busy with superheroics), but Mary Jane Watson, who Aunt May is trying to set Peter up with, is waiting for him there. Her face is obscured by a plant, but both Betty and Liz are shocked by how attractive she is and storm off, figuring that if Peter is friends with her, they have no chance with him. Notably, this was Mary Jane's first appearance ever before she fully made her debut in issue #43 and her face was finally shown.
- Deadpool was once hired to assassinate someone who spread a rumor about a classmate in high school years ago, a rumor so vicious and appalling that it destroyed her life forever. This was so vile that even Bullseye was disgusted by it. An unfortunate bystander is shocked that a man should die for this, but once Deadpool whispers the rumor to him changes his mind and even agrees to give the merc a head start before calling the cops on him.
- In Excalibur (Marvel Comics), Rachel Summers (Phoenix) gets out from a party, with a gentleman, Nigel, asking what he said to piss her off. She transforms his clothing into tar and feathers. When Captain Britain reprimands her, she telepathically shows what the "gentleman" thought. The next second, all the group is needed to hold the Captain so that he doesn't beat the shit out of Nigel.
- The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl has defeated some of the most powerful villains in the Marvel Universe, including Thanos, Galactus, Fin-Fang-Foom, Deadpool (twice), and Terrax; however, this trope applies to most of them, because all except her battle with Doctor Doom have occurred off-panel.
- We almost never see Doctor Doom's face. Any time anyone else sees it, he's facing away from the reader. The person seeing him isn't, and always reacts with horror. By now, it's clear they can never show us Doom's face: nothing could do all those years of horrified reactions justice. Later writers upped the mystique (and the irony) by saying the original scar was nothing much, but he was so desperate to hide it, he put on his mask while it was still red hot, and that's what created the visage that horrifies everyone. Jack Kirby intended Doom to look like this
- Done in the more-than-a-little-terrible Marvel Versus DC issue in which Wolverine and Lobo allegedly have a fight. Ultimately, the fight is decided behind the counter, since no professional artist could possibly have rendered a realistic picture of Wolverine (without his adamantium at the time) dealing damage to someone who is nearly as strong and fast as Superman and armed with an afterlife contract that makes him immortal. Lampshaded in a later issue, in which it is revealed that Professor X had actually paid Lobo to lose the fight, which, frankly, makes sense for the character.
- Preacher, despite all its goriness, does a perfectly standard Reaction Shot when showing (the back of) a photo of someone who attempted suicide with a shotgun and lived... and then, being Preacher, you turn the page and there is "Arseface".
- The Sandman (1989): When Death holds a speech at Morpheus's funeral, the only thing we're told is that "Her words make sense of everything. She gives you peace. She gives you meaning."
- Issue #70 of The Simpsons comics features a variety of characters from Aesop's fables. Towards the end of the story, Homer (as Homer) hijacks the story and has the fable characters fight an army of horror movie villains and a fleet of alien spaceships. All the reader gets to see is the faces of the onlookers gaping in awe and explaining that it would be ridiculous to ask any artist to try drawing such a surreal scene.
