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The Berserker / Comic Books

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There is an extremely good reason he's named after such an aggressive animal

  • B.P.R.D.: Agent Howards collapses in a coma after touching an ancient Hyperborean sword. When he eventually awakes, he has the memories and personality of the proto-human warrior who originally wielded the sword, and from then on forgoes body armor or firearms, using nothing but the sword to devastating effect. The other BPRD agents are more than a little creeped out by him.
  • Cossacks: During the battle between the Sipahi and the Polish Hussars, Hussar commander Sigismond (and the first album's villain) fights with the rage of a relentless demon who's Not Afraid to Die. It's treated like Villainous Valour since it allows to save some of his men from the carnage (himself doesn't survive and gets beheaded).
  • Doom: The Doomguy is under the effects of a Berserk Pack at the beginning of the comic, and is every bit as batshit insane as this implies. He becomes slightly more coherent when it wears off.
  • Glory: Glory, at least in her incarnation by Joe Keatinge and Sophie Campbell (then using the name Ross Campbell), likes to hulk out harder than the Hulk himself, exploding out of her magical armor, turning into a cyclopean, fast flying, world destroying mass of crystalline muscles able to tear not just any old gods to pieces, but the Thulian gods of conquest. It is not without reason that most of the people in the comic treat Glory as the greatest threat against all existence that ever existed.
  • Green Lantern: Every single Red Lantern, bar maybe Atrocitus, who actually has a brain. One panel actually shows one shoving his head inside a Sinestro Corpsman made of acid.
    • This is by design: Atrocitus wanted an army of Ax-Crazy monsters to use as weapons against the Green Lantern Corps, not people capable of rational thought, so he built the rings to induce this state. With the Red Lantern Corps's shift to Villain Protagonist, Atrocitus has been giving more and more of his Corps free will via Applied Phlebotinum. They'll still all gut you at the drop of a hat, but at least now they might tell you why...
  • The Incredible Hulk: The Hulk is the personification of this trope because he is Bruce Banner's latent rage taken a physical form. He's Marvel's best example of a berserker. Except in those stories and periods where more of Banner’s intelligence in control.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Edward Hyde is a Berserker. Initially he is just so powerful that he doesn't need to worry about taking risks in battle, but this shifts in the second volume when he takes perverse pleasure in sacrificing himself for the sake of killing some H.G. Wells Martians.
  • Lucifer: Mazikeen gains this as a nickname. She's not averse to it. It’s noted that she has no identifiable fighting style; she just fights. And having been around for a very long time and fighting for a lot of it, she’s very good at it.
  • The Mighty Thor: Thor can be a berserker at times, notably when he suffers from warrior's madness. It took Thanos bringing Thor before Odin to cure Thor. Everyone else was on the receiving end of a Curbstomp Battle.
  • Northlanders: The Vertigo comic, which is all about Vikings, has a few mentions of the original Berserkers. The attitude towards them is distilled by one comic, which more or less says "Singers loved berserkers for their deeds, lords loved them because they didn't have to buy them armor or decent weapons, (and didn't have to pay them after they inevitably died) and no one else remembered them, because they seldom lasted longer than a raiding season or two."
  • Paperinik New Adventures: Xadhoom is this regarding Evronians. Justified, as they are responsible for the genocide of her race.
  • Sin City: Marv, who fights in a very berserk manner, throwing himself head first into the fight with no regard for his own safety. In fact, in his initial story arc, he expects to die anyway, and does.
  • Sláine: The main character of the British comic of the same name, is in part based on Cuchulainn. An almost ridiculously powerful Celtic warrior, even by the standards of Heavy Metal-style comic magazines (imagine Conan the Barbarian on steroids), Slaine's favored weapon is a huge battle axe named "Brainbiter" with which he inflicts much carnage, and he embodies the power of the ri­astrad, or "Warp Spasm," which is capable of transforming him into a huge, monstrous mass of muscle and sinew which is incapable of distinguishing friend from foe, but is quite efficient when it comes to dispatching either. He is also, arguably, The Hero and The Big Guy of the series.
  • Sonic the Comic: Even before his Unwilling Roboticisation at Dr. Robotnik's hands, Shortfuse the Cybernik was a bad-tempered squirrel, quick to get into trouble. It was partly due to his own stubbornness that he was able to retain his free will, and, after breaking loose, he dedicated himself to taking revenge on Robotnik. Although his goals in this respect did align with Sonic and the other Freedom Fighters, he often proved himself a poor team-player in the times when they actually joined forces; blindly charging into the fray against all advice and prioritizing the defeat of their enemies over the protection of their teammates.
  • Strikeforce: Morituri: Marathon grows into this after the death of Vyking. He gradually becomes obsessed with killing the Horde, turning Darker and Edgier and giving himself a facial brand to strike fear into his enemies.
  • Supergirl: During her Red Lantern tenure in Red Daughter of Krypton, Supergirl genuinely enjoyed finding evil jerkasses and pummeling them.
    Kara: The Red Ring on my fist chose me. It made me part of a team. We seek out injustice and we punch it in the teeth. And it feels good.
  • Superman: Good luck if you manage to piss off Superman. It doesn't happen often but when it does... well, there's a reason he's the Trope Namer for Beware the Superman.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Mirage): Both Raphael and Casey Jones begin like this until they meet each other, which allows them both to gain some perspective; although they eventually cool down considerably, they are both keenly aware of their tendency to fly off the handle when provoked and try to avoid it.
  • Tomahawk: Wildcat was one of Tomahawk's rangers. Although originally a member of a pacifist sect, he became a wild man in combat and was the most enthusiastic member when it came to charging into battle.
  • Transformers: In many continuities, all or most of the Dinobots have this, particularly Grimlock.
    • In the IDW comics, Cyclonus is this, while trying to be The Stoic. He flies into a rage in his Spotlight, angry at how his home was destroyed, among other things, and charges through gunfire, in his rage, he laments about how he strives to seek order, but ironically he's the very chaotic element he despises. Eventually he grows out of this, becoming the stoic full time, though a conversation during a fight implies he can fly back into this.
  • Vampirella: Since the 90s, Vampirella has some times been depicted as struggling with or even succumbing to the rage and Bloodlust that comes with being a vampire transforming her into the type of feral beast she protects humanity from.
  • Watchmen: Hooded Justice, the first ever superhero in the Watchmen universe, was one of these. In his first ever case as a vigilante, HJ beat up a street thug so bad he lost the use of his legs for the rest of his life.
  • X-Men:
    • Wolverine. Though with his increasingly effective Healing Factor, he's really got nothing to worry about. This leads to unfortunate consequences.
    • His son Daken often takes advantage of his father's reputation and acts out in a similar way he would in battle.
    • His Opposite-Sex Clone X-23 is this to a lesser extent. Ordinarily she's a very calculating and tactical fighter (when the writers actually remember it), to the point she forms a plan of attack to kill everyone in a room the moment she enters it. Even those times where she legitimately loses her cool, her response is generally a cold fury rather than uncontrolled rage. That doesn't apply when she's under the effects of the Trigger Scent, in which case she's a whirling ball of adamantium-bladed death that will tear through anyone marked by it, and will shrug off the most horrific of injuries to turn her target into bloody confetti.
    • The Juggernaut is tough to stop normally. Try stopping him when he's not happy.

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