He kills this baby, too!
- Aquaman: Black Manta won notoriety by killing Aquaman's infant son in Death of a Prince.
- Asterix: Marcus Brutus in Asterix and Son fits this trope. He burned down Asterix's village, and nearly kills the baby boy Asterix is trying to protect because the boy is really Ptolemy XV Caesarion, the son of Julius Caesar and Cleopatra, and that killing would solidify Brutus' power in Rome. A rare departure from the comedy of the usual comics.
- Back to Brooklyn:
- Paul rapes and kills kids and has it videotaped.
- Churchill is the one who made a deal with Russian mobsters to always provide Paul with immigrant boys.
- Penny was the one who taped Paul's crimes and was willing to let him have his way on her own son.
- Batman:
- Depending on the Writer, the Dark Knight himself has been known to strike teenagers (as seen in Batman Incorporated when he clocks a schoolgirl in the face), and he has slapped or punched both Dick and Tim. While the former is justifiable self-defense, since said schoolgirl is attacking him and Batgirl, the latter is plain Manipulative Bastard jerkassery/Early Instalment Weirdness.
- The Joker has a track record of this. Just ask Jason Todd...
- On one occasion, he and Catwoman take a whole rich family hostage, including a Delicate and Sickly girl who is in a coma. Joker is completely ready to kill the little girl in front of her father and older brother, but a very pissed-off Catwoman stops him and screams that they didn't come for that.
- Perhaps Joker's most notorious moment of this came during Batman: No Man's Land, in which he plots to kill all the newborns in Gotham City on New Year's Day, just so that he can destroy the already fragile spirit of Gotham's citizens. Interestingly, his dialogue to the babies indicates that he thinks he's doing them a favor, sparing them from life's cruelties... and he does promise that it won't hurt. After killing Sarah Essen-Gordon, who tries to save the babies from him, he leaves the newborns unharmed despite still having plenty of time to kill them before Batman arrives. Notably, it's one of the few times when the Joker has stopped smiling.
- There's also what he does in The Nail: torturing and killing Dick and Barbara on live television. No wonder that this is one of the few counted times when Batman breaks his not-killing vow, albeit while in a grief-induced traumatic rage.
- Joker certainly has no problem fighting Damian, the 10-year-old kid who beat him up with a crowbar, in Death of the Family.
- So has Two-Face. Ask all the Robins.
- The Crazy Quilt has a particular vendetta against Robin (Dick Grayson) for blinding him, and when he mistakes Jason Todd for Dick, shows he has no qualms severely hurting a young boy out of Misplaced Retribution. For that matter, he also has no qualms with hypnotizing said young boy so that he lets himself be beaten up by his gang.
- The original Clayface, Basil Karlo, is just as awful as the Joker in this department. During Batman: No Man's Land he enslaves and abuses the children under Poison Ivy's care to force them to make produce he can sell. A later story has him forming a cult out of mentally unstable teenage fans of his movies who offer themselves to be devoured by him. All in all, he's definitely the most unambiguously vile to take the Clayface name and is not the reluctant monster from the animated series (or at least, he wasn't until DC Rebirth, which reinvented him as The Atoner).
- Early in the Dark Knight's career (as depicted in Batman Legends Of The Dark Knight), Doctor Randolph Porter sacrificed his own daughter to be kidnapped and drowned, just to manipulate Batman into becoming an unwitting test subject for the drug that would come to be known as Venom (the girl's death prompted Batman to seek out a means of enhancing himself physically, which led to him becoming briefly addicted to Porter's drugs).
- David Cain is one of the worst of the lot. He already had a reputation for being willing to kill children in his career as an assassin, but almost no one knew just how far he'd gone, having kidnapped dozens of infants to force them through Training from Hell in order to create the perfect assassin, and eventually doing the same to his own daughter. Only two of the children survived to age ten and one of them went completely insane in the process. His daughter Cassandra reveals that part of the training involved shooting her with low-caliber ammunition and continuing to do so until she stopped flinching from the pain.
- Bigfoot Bill:
- One example is Played for Laughs. When Bigfoot Bill sees a kid nearby, the Kraken attached to him says, "Can I eat it?"
- The next example is played more seriously. Mothman scours the city looking to absorb fear from one person, and he swoops in and kidnaps Georgia Lee, that same aforementioned kid that Bigfoot Bill befriended not too long ago.
- Cable & Deadpool: Deadpool states that he would kill a child — wouldn't like it, but would do so, as he's a mercenary and this is his job. He later attempts to kill a child version of Cable, although he's been brainwashed and has just rescued Little Nate.
- Cerebus the Aardvark: This starts showing up once the Cerebus Syndrome kicks in, with the most notorious example being Pope Cerebus blessing an infant after his mother begs Cerebus to do so and then hurling it away to illustrate the point that "you can get what you want and still not be very happy".
- In Convergence: Titans, Dreamslayer is more than happy to resurrect and use Lian Harper to force her father into fighting his friends. He keeps his hands on her throat and caresses her cheek to demonstrate he's in control, so he quite literally has her life in his hands.
- Crossed:
- Those infected with the Crossed virus are willing to rape and gorily murder children and babies.
- Even non-infected people are willing to rape and murder children.
- Dark Reign: Norman Osborn visits Baxter Building to speak with Reed in Dark Reign: Fantastic Four, Vol. 1 #4. Unfortunately, the Fantastic Four are away at the time, and the only people left in the building are Richards' children, Franklin and Valeria. The visit is tense but more or less civilized until Franklin shows up with Spider-Man's mask. It does not take long for Norman, a known psychopath with a burning hatred for Spider-Man, to start shooting at the kids.
- Day of the Dollmaker: Unlike his father, Toyman's son Anton "Dollmaker" Schott has no issue with taking children away from his parents and hurting them by turning them into his brainwashed doll soldiers.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: The Uncle Scrooge story, "McDuck of Arabia" has Scrooge and his nephews dealing with Hassan Den Jaild. He's a loathsome Smug Snake of an Arabian villain who is outright eager to threaten a child, Hewey, whom he's kidnapped, to force Sheik Arrabi to lead him to a treasure trove. Furthermore, when the villain finds the mine, his first thought is to force his hostages to dig for the gold and then kill them, including Hewey. Fortunately, Hewey's family, the local Junior Woodchuck and an isolated desert settlement are able to thwart him.
- In A Distant Soil, there is actually a holiday for this on the planet Ovanan. In order to weed out children whose psychic potential is too great ("variants"), all children are ceremonially tested by the Avatar, who kills any with potential that could allow them to threaten the ruling Hierarchy. The kids have to stand in line and literally wait for their turn to find out whether they will live or die!
- Winnowill in ElfQuest imprisons, humiliates and tortures the Wolfriders, but it's only when she threatens Cutter and Leetah's children that she really crosses the line. Then there's her 'relationship' with her son Two-Edge.
- Fables has two Rare Female Examples. Frau Totenkinder kills her own son and countless other infants for power; even in the mundy world, she funds abortion clinics. Baba Yaga is stated to have the same habits as she does in the folk tales, including eating babies.
- Fantastic Four:
- Doctor Doom shows no hesitation in trying to murder the Hulk's young son, Skaar, and at the end of Avengers: The Children's Crusade, he kills the young Cassie Lang. On the other hand, God help anyone who tries to hurt one of Latveria's children when he's around (or the Richards kids. Especially Valeria).
- The Wizard had absolutely no qualms about performing an experiment on Franklin Richards that had a high probability of causing Franklin's death. Fortunately for Franklin, the Wizard's current partner the Mad Thinker would not hear of it, dissolved their partnership and contacted the Thing, who helped him defeat the Wizard.
- Flashpoint (DC Comics):
- In this timeline, Joe Chill shoots Bruce Wayne in place of his parents, which leads to Thomas Wayne becoming Batman to avenge his son, and Martha Wayne being driven mad by her grief and becoming the Joker.
- In the Final Battle, Wonder Woman (or, more accurately, the evil Bad Future version) attacks Billy Batson a.k.a. Captain Marvel from behind with her sword, running him through and killing him (in the animated adaptation, she slits his throat). Barry, who witnesses this, is absolutely horrified, as the Diana he knows would never lay a finger on an innocent child.
- Harley Quinn: Harley herself is not immune to this. In the New 52, she massacres hundreds of children by using bombs disguised as handheld gaming consoles.
- Hide is set in a world where, after the day of the Birthday Beginning, all the adults in the world over the age of 18 go from loving their kids unconditionally to killing them on sight.
- Hitman (1993): Skull slaughters a baby in front of the child's mother in the "Tommy's Heroes" arc.
- The Milestone Returns series Icon and Rocket has a villain named Benedict Lord who has been on Earth for as long as Icon has and goes about murdering aliens who came to Earth. One of his victims wasn't just this continuity's Superman, but was murdered when he was an infant.
- Plutonian, the villain of Irredeemable, is introduced murdering the family of a former superhero colleague, refusing to accept his plea to spare his child. When he first snaps, the rest of his superhero team turn up to find he's welded shut the doors of a school so he can kill everyone inside, which he then does despite their efforts, claiming the children were no different from the ones who bullied him relentlessly as a child.
- Played with in Jew Gangster. After Monk kills a baker in front of his young son, he lets the boy leave, but warns that he will return for the rest of the family if the son tells anyone about the shooting.
- Judge Dredd: All of the Dark Judges are willing to murder children, given their whole "life is a crime" philosophy. Notably, Judge Fire burning down a primary school with everyone inside (earning him the nickname) when he was still human, Judge Mortis pursuing a group of juvie Judges like some undead Implacable Man during Necropolis, Judge Fear forcing a child on board the Mayflower to gaze into his face, and Judge Death going on a killing spree in an orphan shelter to draw out Judge Anderson.
- In Legends (DC Comics), Glorious Godfrey goes as far as slapping a child when she tries to speak reason to a crowd of adults that were surrounding the superheroes at the climax of the story, ready to let them have it — unfortunately for Godfrey, this is what frees the mob from his power.
- Dodge from Locke & Key has no problem pushing a child under a school bus because he's figured out too much.
- In Ms. Marvel (2014), the Inventor is not above using children in his schemes from employing them as Mooks to making them the power source of his inventions.
- In Mega Robo Bros, Alex and Freddy are two robot brothers who are children, which means that no villain will go after them right? WRONG. Them being superpowered robots who shoot laser beams out of their hands and having great amounts of strength which includes being immune to large amounts of damage inflicted onto their robot bodies means that there are a greater chance of villains such as Robo 23 in book 1, Team Robotix in book 2, and Wolfram in book 2 and book 3 will threaten them with severe attacks that will guarantee a severe amount of physical harm to a human being.
- MonsterVerse:
- In the graphic novel Skull Island: The Birth of Kong, Riccio (after his Sanity Slippage has hit its zenith) Bitch Slaps Ato to shut him up when the latter protests to his Evil Plan. Never mind how Riccio at this point intends to blast open the walls which protect the Iwi village from suffering horrible deaths by Skull Island's predators regardless of there being children in there.
- Upon accidentally coming across a pair of Spineprowler cubs while he was hunting their mother, Raymond Martin immediately tries to kill them. Worse yet, after he finds and defeats their protective mother, he goes out of his way to chase the fleeing cubs down and try to kill them anyway.
- In The Multiversity Guidebook #1, the alternate Sivanas have no problem luring a chibi Sivana into their number so that one of them can eat him. Given everyone else on his world was a robot, that Sivana was found unpalatable.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): Queen Chrysalis has made it quite clear that she doesn't intend on letting the Cutie Mark Crusaders leave. Not to mention a luvcat kitten was seen before Chrysalis and her soldiers took over the village.
- Granny Goodness from New Gods is one of the most prolific examples of this in all of The DCU. Her "orphanages" on Apokalips are wholly dedicated to torturing and conditioning children to worship Darkseid — and that's just for the orphans she doesn't train personally. Thanks to Status Quo Is God, she never receives any permanent comeuppance for this.
- Apocalypse attempts to kill Franklin Richards during Onslaught, both to rid himself of a rival and because he was horrified by what Onslaught was doing and knew that Franklin was a key part of his plans.
- Oxymoron: Oxymoron mails a bomb to a classroom full of children, and later murders Mary's son in front of her.
- Red Hood and the Outlaws: Suzie Su at one point tries to get Jason Todd to come to her by holding a children's hospital hostage, fully intending to kill both the staff and the patients if Jason doesn't come to her in time.
- Robin (1993): Scarab is hired to kill Robin and sets out dispassionately killing a bunch of teenagers and their families who fit the profile to possibly be him before Batman realizes what was going on. She only stops because Stephanie's appearance as Robin convinces her that one of her previous victims is her target. Tim manages to build an entire Rogues Gallery of individuals willing and eager to try and kill him, only one of whom (the General) is a fellow kid.
- In Robyn Hood, Cal King, a.k.a. the Sheriff of Nottingham, murders the child son of Prince John to take power for himself.
- Runaways: The Runaways frequently manage to run into villains who are willing to hurt kids. This often leads to humiliating defeats at the hands of Molly and Klara.
- Sin City: The plot of That Yellow Bastard revolves around a Cowboy Cop going after a villain who preys on children.
- Billy Kincaid, an early Spawn villain, is a Serial Killer who targesd children through his Bad Humor Truck.
- Spider-Man:
- Carnage has no qualms about who he kills, children included. During his rampages, child corpses are often among the dead, and in his youth, he torched an orphanage.
- Norman Osborn/the Green Goblin kills Peter and Mary Jane's newborn daughter May to force Peter out of retirement before she's Ret-Gone entirely in One More Day.
- In one issue of The Spirit, two bank robbers plan to kill all witnesses to their crime — including a little girl just coming around the corner. With tommy guns.note
- Stabbity Bunny: Larry is an Evil Redhead Fat Bastard who, in Issue #1, kidnapped Stabbity's owner, a girl named Grace. After getting the ransom money, he decides to kill her to erase the evidence of his crime. Luckily he doesn't manage to lay a finger on her, thanks to Stabbity.
- In Superman volume 2, issue #84, Catherine Grant's son Adam Morgan is first kidnapped by Toyman (alongside other children), then is stabbed to death when he attempts to escape from him. Subverted years later in Action Comics #865 when Toyman reveals that it was a defective robot-double who killed Adam, and that he would never hurt little children.
- In Superman (Rebirth), Eradicator repeatedly attempts to murder Superman and Lois's young son Jonathan, as him being a Half-Human Hybrid makes him an "impure Kryptonian" in Eradicator's eyes.
- In Superman: Speeding Bullets, which has the premise of Kal-El being adopted by the Waynes rather than the Kents and becoming a Batman with Kryptonian superpowers, Joe Chill attempts to shoot Bruce after killing his parents. Due to Bruce's Kryptonian physiology, this backfires badly when Bruce discovers that he's immune to bullets and accidentally kills Joe Chill with his Eye Beams.
- In Ultimate Doomsday, among the first people who the Maker/Reed Richards kills when he turns evil is his own little sister.
- The Ultimates:
- The Red Skull holds a gun to a baby's head. Horrifically, he kills the baby anyway, even after his demands are met!
- Black Widow kills all of Hawkeye's family, including his children.
- Captain America uses an entire kindergarten class as a human shield against War Machine. He knows that black ops would hurt children, but not in broad daylight, when it can become a huge PR problem.
- In Violine, the doctor, Muller, and Van Beursen all threaten Violine's life at one point or another, either by poison or with guns.
- The Walking Dead:
- Thomas Richards decapitates Hershel's youngest twin daughters, Rachel and Susie.
- The Governor leads his own men towards an assault on the prison while knowing full-well that there were children still living there, and it results in the death of Lori Grimes' infant daughter Judith.
- The Hunters killed and ate their own children when they ran out of food.
- The child abductor in Watchmen.
- In West Coast Avengers, the Scarlet Witch stands in horror as Master Pandemonium deformed and grafted her children on his own arms.
- Wolverine: Logan, much like Batman, has been written as capable of this, contrary to other comics in which he's a Papa Wolf who hates children getting endangered. The most notable example is Avengers: The Children's Crusade, in which he beats up the teenage Wiccan to the extent that Magneto of all people has to go Grandpa Wolf to stop Logan from killing his grandson.
- Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1942): Paula von Gunther seems to be made furious just by seeing children playing, and at one point turns her car towards a child and runs over his sled. The fact that she didn't actually run him over, just brushed him, clues Diana into there being something more behind this and her subsequent questioning of the villain with her lasso reveals that Paula's own daughter is held captive by the Nazis. She hates seeing happy kids because it reminds her of what her love for her own has twisted her into and that she has given up hope of seeing her again.
- In The Legend of Wonder Woman, the amoral Mad Scientist Queen Atomia is fine with kidnapping children, including young Suzy.
- Wonder Woman (2006): Alkyone tried to kill Diana when she was a defenseless baby, out of jealously and a misplaced twisted sense of duty.
- Wonder Woman (1987): Medusa specifically targets the young Garibaldi brothers during her attack on the embassy, though she'd prefer to kill everyone there. She actually succeeds in murdering Martin Garibaldi despite Wonder Woman's attempts to stop her, all it takes is the tiniest lull in their fight while Diana was getting back to her feet.
- X-23:
- A very rare heroic example: X-23 confirmed to Valeria Richards that she killed children during her time as a Tyke-Bomb assassin-for-hire. This changed, however, after her escape from the Facility. She did later kill symbiote-infused clones of herself in Blackheart's service, who could technically be considered children.
- The Facility members who tortured her in the first place certainly qualify, as shown in X-23: Innocence Lost. Zander Rice and Kimura both subjected Laura to horrific physical abuse from the time she was seven years old. Rice also sent her to kill his illegitimate toddler son Henry (she ultimately refused to carry it out), while Kimura tried to kill Laura's cousin, Megan, by slowly pushing her finger through her heart just to punish Laura over her escape.
- X-Men:
- Part of what makes the Marvel Universe such a Crapsack World, at least if you're part of the extended X-family stories, is that this is a world where Fantastic Racism is so strong that this trope is in place. Yes, there are humans in this world willing to physically abuse, torture, and even kill kids, just for being born mutants. God Loves, Man Kills actually opens with two grade school kids being hunted through the streets at night and then lynched in a playground by anti-mutant religious bigots. Meanwhile, the fortunately minor villain organization the U-men specializes in hunting down young mutants and vivisecting them for the raw materials for super-power-granting organ transplants. There's a reason why readers often complain that Magneto's Kill All Humans stance isn't unjustified.
- Magneto is more complicated case. He is capable of this, as he almost kills the 13-year-old Kitty Pryde in the Chris Claremont issue Uncanny X-Men #150 (for tragic irony bonus points, she's Jewish like him). However, this action immediately triggers a rare My God, What Have I Done? response in him, and he surrenders immediately after. He has no qualms hurting Kitty in later comics, such as X-Men Vol. 2 #87, but granted, she was older at that point, and you can argue that it was technically self-defense — even if it still makes Erik look like a massive Hypocrite on a moral level.
- Sabretooth is known to attack, murder, and sometimes even eat children. In one issue, Deadpool is in a cabin with him and he opens a closet to find a little girl tied up. When he asks about this, Sabretooth replies that he's saving her for later.
- Mystique, a Rare Female Example, is just as vile as Sabretooth when it comes to this trope, as she has no issue killing little children and babies whenever she sees fit, she infamously tossed her own infant son Nightcrawler off a cliff. In New X-Men #46, she uses the infant Hope Summers on Rogue (who has Touch of Death powers) to bring the latter out of a coma. Hope is unharmed, but Rogue flips her shit when she learns what her adoptive mother did. If that wasn't bad enough, in X-Men: Worst X-Man Ever, Mystique sexually molests the protagonist Bailey, who's a minor.
- X-Statix: The titular team overthrows their former coach in part because he plans to hand over a little boy with Healing Hands to pharmaceutical companies to be dissected.
