Token Good Teammates in Comic Books.
- Jim Gordon in most Batman comics and shows has that effect. He seems to purify the air around him. Look at Harvey Bullock, a Corrupt Cop that becomes Gordon's Lancer.
- During the opening of Reginald Hudlin's run on Black Panther (the arc that was later animated), Ulysses Klaw puts together a team of supervillains to attack Wakanda. Black Knight (a deluded fanatic who believes in White Man's Burden), Cannibal (a creepy body-surfer), Rhino / Juggernaut (Dumb Muscle who kills an endangered rhino for kicks) Radioactive Man (glowing green sadist) and Batroc the Leaper ("I'm a professional, not a zealot").
- In Dark Avengers, Noh-Varr and Victoria Hand are the only people on the team who aren't homicidal maniacs. So much that when Victoria Hand is appointed as Captain America's New Avengers liaison, and Noh-Varr actually becomes a member of the Avengers. Ares isn't exactly good, but he's generally not as villainous as the rest of the team. The Sentry himself isn't so much a villain as much as a schizophrenic and later brainwashed into giving control over to his darker side. Ares and The Sentry were the only field agents on the team who were actually Avengers, and were the only ones that didn't have to change their identities.
- Fantastic Four: Jerome Hamilton is the nice one of the Enclave, a group of mad scientists who naturally want to Take Over the World. However, this is only by comparison. He'd been a willing member of the team up until their attempt to create Adam Warlock goes sideways, and his solution is try to kill Adam.
- For a given value of "good" and "team", the Juggernaut was this to the Exemplars, eight humans chosen by the magical beings known as the Octessence to serve as their avatars and compete in a contest. Unlike with the other seven Exemplars, the process that empowered Cain was interrupted, with the result that Cain Marko was still basically himself apart from possessing his powers, where the other seven were fully committed to the planned contest between them as their personalities had been altered by the same process.
- Jem and the Holograms (IDW):
- As in the cartoon, Stormer is the token "nice guy" of The Misfits in the Jem comics. She has more bite than in the source but is still the more soft spoken, gentle member of a band full of easily angered, morally dubious women. The Misfiits then get another member, Blaze, who falls into this trope as well.
- Raya has been given Adaptational Villainy as she is now a part of The Stingers. However, she doesn't act like a villain and is the only one in her band not to be a self-centered jerk. She later joins Jem's band.
- Played for Laughs in TheMultiversity: Thunderworld, where Sivanas from numerous alternate universes team up to take down the Marvel Family. One of them is a Nobel Prize winner
who didn't seem to realize what he was signing up for. - Piffany in Nodwick. While Nodwick is also good-aligned, he is too subservient to have much effect on the group's actions. Piffany is oblivious to Yeagar and Artax's more questionable actions, or sometimes willing to rationalize. Ironically, she's also Yeagar and Arthax's Morality Pet, and the two would probably be even more reprehensible if she wasn't a party member, however ineffectual she is at stopping what they do try with her around. One plotline concerns a Bad Future without Piffany, where Yeagar and Arthax become The Dragon and The Evil Genius under an evil god without her around. One thing: the easiest way to make Yeagar and Artax fly into a rage is to hurt Piffany.
- At the end of the Ravencroft miniseries, director Norman Osborn turned out to be working for an organization called J.A.N.U.S. From out of the shadows, it's revealed that the heads of J.A.N.U.S are Monicca Rappaccini from A.I.M, Madame Viper of HYDRA, Countess Valentina Allegra de Fontaine - S.H.I.E.L.D traitor, Malcolm Colcord from the Weapon X project and G.W Bridge of the mercenary Six Pack. The final head and only truly good member is James Hudson from Canadian hero team Alpha Flight.
- The main protagonist in Requiem Vampire Knight. In the world of Résurrection, where people reincarnate as different kinds of monsters, the most loathsome of all become vampires - the ruling elite of this setting which includes all kinds of sociopaths and psychopaths. Requiem himself used to be a Nazi who committed many despicable acts, but he differs from other vampires because he is the only one who expresses regret and shame for them. Though he is unable to fully atone for them since he is already in Hell and he is unwilling to betray his kind, he does his best to protect his Jewish girlfriend Rebecca, who also became trapped in this world after getting killed by another vampire in life.
- Rogue Sun: Juliette is the only member of the Bell family who isn't an entitled, bratty, manipulative Jerkass. Other than her, we have the late Marcus, an absentee father and abrasive Jerkass (on his best days); Aurie, a girl who starts off nice but who quickly shows how far she's willing to go in her father's memory; and Brock, who is bratty and openly insults people and feels entitled to the Rogue Sun mantle. In fact, in the comic's opening murder mystery arc, Juliette is the only member of the entire main cast who isn't at any point one of those things, and isn't ever even slightly hinted to be Marcus' murderer. Protagonist Dylan Siegel is a complete prick to everyone, while his mother Gwen lets her mixed feelings on her late ex-husband lead to her mistreating Dylan. Juliette is the opposite of all of them, being very welcoming to the Siegels, patient to everyone grieving, and eventually becomes Dylan's best parental figure, to the point that even he appreciates her. As some readers have noted: many expected her to be a Rich Bitch Wicked Stepmother, not a Spoiled Sweet Good Stepmother.
- Lucas Lee of the Evil Exes in Scott Pilgrim is not a Jerkass like much of the other Exes. He turns out to actually be a decent guy who is genuinely friendly to Scott. However, Scott still has to defeat him to free Ramona from the Evil Exes' control.
- He was more of an antagonistic Jerkass in the film adaptation, however.
- Sandman of The Sinister Six.
- Superman The Phantom Zone is filled with dozens of mass murderers, Mad Scientists, and surly career criminals, but there are some decent inmates, although they rarely show up at the same time.
- Quex-Ul is an innocent man who got sent to the Phantom Zone due to a miscarriage of justice. Even when an amnesiac Quex-Ul has a short-lived Then Let Me Be Evil moment and tries to de-power Superman, he still forms a brief truce with Superman to save an innocent bystander.
- Thul-Kar and Mon-El are complete innocents who enter the Phantom Zone voluntarily (to escape the destruction of Krypton and to be healed of lethal lead poisoning) rather than being sentenced there for a crime. Mon-El is a recurring ally and Thul-kar is very helpful to Superman when they meet in The Phantom Zone miniseries.
- Ak-Var gets sentenced to the Phantom Zone for 30 cycles for stealing a sacred jewel, but he claims it was just a prank and becomes a superhero inside Kandor and friend of Superman after his sentence is up.
- Tra-Gob is a former professional criminal but feels obligated to Jor-El for saving his life and saves Superman from a monster during their one encounter.
- Vorb-Un experimented on forbidden technology but never hurt anyone with it, promises to never do it again during his parole hearing (his only scene), and never gives Superman any trouble after being paroled.
- Orn-Zu was sent to the Phantom Zone for attempting to kidnap children, but he was only trying to kidnap them to save them from the destruction of Krypton and he gets a Heroic Sacrifice after being released during his sole appearance.
- Thunderbolts:
- Jolt for the original incarnation of the team. She was an actual hero (technically a hero wannabe) among the villains pretending to be heroes Thunderbolts. Her presence helped foster the already-forming Heel Face Turns of Songbird, Atlas, and Mach-1.
- In a later incarnation of the team composed mainly of unrepentant criminals, the good teammate was Songbird. In the version of the group after that, Norman Osborn's private black ops task force, the good teammate was Paladin, though he wasn't so much "good" as "not bad." Eventually the Headsman, Ant-Man, and the Ghost joined him — though it was Ghost who made it all possible.
- A later version of the team (overseen by Luke Cage, US Agent, Mach V, and Songbird), had Ghost and Man-Thing, who are more neutral than anything else, and later had Troll (Gunna) join the team.
- The Thunderbolts (2012) incarnation of the team, formed by General Thaddeus Ross (the Red Hulk), had Flash Thompson, aka Agent Venom. He's the most heroic of the group - he's a Spidey fanboy so go figure - which says a lot considering he's bonded to a carnivorous parasite with a taste for human flesh, and is the one who resents violence the most and tries to avoid it whenever possible. However, eventually he realises that as the Token Good Teammate, he can't stand what the team does, and quits. He is later replaced by Ghost Rider, who is as amoral as everyone else on the team.
- Played for Laughs in Uncanny X-Men Vol. 2, when Scott creates what he calls "Extinction Team" — a group of the most powerful and dangerous members of X-Men to perform large-scale heroic acts, as a warning to everybody willing to attack X-Men by showing what can they do. He even directly calls them weapons of mass destruction. The team is made of himself, Storm,
Hope, Emma Frost, Colossus (who had recently became The Juggernaut), Magik (frequent Token Evil Teammate of New Mutants), Sub-Mariner and Magneto. Storm points out that in entire team only her, Hope and Scott haven't been, at least once in their life, supervillains and considering he just compared X-Men to North Korea, he doesn't count. - The Ultimates
- Nerd Hulk is the Hulk with Banner's morality and moral compass, making him much more moral than the rest of the Ultimate Avengers, but also a major Butt-Monkey for the team.
- The Colonel is the only one of the Liberators that is even remotely close to sympathetic, as he is simply with the Liberators for the goal of protecting his homeland. He even insists the American people don't suffer for the sins of its government. It gets to the point that Cap and even Fury feel sympathy for him. This doesn't stop the Colonel from calling in help when he realizes Cap is beating him.
- Watchmen:
- Of the costumed vigilantes, Nite Owl II is the only (extant) one who resembles the traditional idea of a superhero. Silk Spectre II also seems to be a generally decent person, especially in comparison to Rorschach, Ozymandias, Doctor Manhattan, and The Comedian.
- The original Nite Owl was, similarly, the most likeable member of the Minutemen (well, Silhouette and Dollar Bill may have been, but they aren't fleshed out enough to make any real judgments on). Hooded Justice was a Combat Sadomasochist and a Nazi sympathizer, Silk Spectre was only a crimefighter to bolster her modeling career, Captain Metropolis was a bigoted old dinosaur, Mothman was an unstable drunk, and the Comedian was kicked out for trying to rape a teammate. Meanwhile, Hollis Mason was an affable and genial man with no outstanding psychological issues beyond a somewhat childish personality and worldview.
- Wolverines has two: X-23 and Endo. Despite X having done a lot of unambiguously terrible things in her past, all of this was under duress, and though more ruthless than many of her teammates has nonetheless shaped herself around trying to do right as best she can, making Laura the most unambiguously heroic character in the series. Endo, however, is very much The Heart of the cast and the most innocent of all of them. She was the only member of the Paradise crew who was just living a normal life and had never done anything wrong before before they took her,note to say nothing of comparing her to the Wolverines.
