History BodyHorror / ComicBooks

* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': At one point Diana's body starts reverting to clay, slowly killing her.

* ''Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'' villain Dr. Destiny was affected with this during the late 1980s and early 1990s (mostly notably his appearances in ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' and ''ComicBook/ArkhamAsylumASeriousHouseOnSeriousEarth'') extending the original rational for the SkullForAHead ([[FacialHorror his face shriveling as a result of]] [[CannotDream the League ridding him of his ability to dream]]) to his whole body becoming emaciated. Creator/GrantMorrison, the writer of ''Arkham Asylum'', even stated in his notes he never bought the classic [[Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse Skeletor]]-esque look.

* Oftentimes characters who are effectively immortal or have "healing factors" will venture into this territory. The ''ComicBook/UltimateXMen'' version of Wolverine has been subjected to such horrors as regrowing his entire body after being decapitated and having the flesh stripped entirely off his bones but still being alive. Orson Scott Card's "Ultimate Iron Man" gives Tony Stark similar powers (for some reason) and has many creepy scenes of him regrowing his various severed limbs (which he loses so often, it becomes a running joke). In a particularly strange example, ComicBook/TheSavageDragon had the mood spoiled during sex when he and his girlfriend are horrified by the sight of his severed arm suddenly and unexpectedly regenerating in a gruesome fashion.

* ''Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'' villain Dr. Destiny was affected with this during the late 1980s and early 1990s (mostly notably his appearances in ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' and ''ComicBook/ArkhamAsylumASeriousHouseOnSeriousEarth'') extending the original rational for the SkullForAHead ([[FacialHorror his face shriveling as a result of]] [[CannotDream the League ridding him of his ability to dream]]) to his whole body becoming emaciated. Creator/GrantMorrison, the writer of ''Arkham Asylum'', even stated in his notes he never bought the original [[Franchise/MastersOfTheUniverse Skeletor]]-esque look.

* ''Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica'' villain Dr. Destiny was affected with this during the late 1980s and early 1990s (mostly notably his appearances in ''ComicBook/TheSandman'' and ''ComicBook/ArkhamAsylumASeriousHouseOnSeriousEarth'') extending the original rational for the SkullForAHead ([[FacialHorror his face shriveling as a result of]] [[CannotDream the League ridding him of his ability to dream]]) to his whole body becoming emaciated. Creator/GrantMorrison, the writer of ''Arkham Asylum'', even stated in his notes he never bought the original [[Franchise/MasterOfTheUniverse Skeletor]]-esque look).

* A number of the ''ComicBook/RedRobin'' villains the Council of Spiders cause body horror for their victims. First there's Funnel who has created a poison she describes as horribly painful which somehow causes the victim's skin to start exuding tendril like things which almost look like spider webs, presumably a combination of sweat and minerals from the victim's body. Then there's Sac, a PestController who can make his "spiders" lay eggs in people at which point he's able to listen in on their surroundings, then when he's done using them as a spy he has the eggs hatch and chew and claw their way out of the victim en mass killing them.
* ''ComicBook/RobinSeries'': The {{unwitting test subject}}s of Strader Pharmaceuticals' debilitating PsychoSerum start looking more and more monstrous with each appearance. Eventually their bodies start liquefying around their veins while they're fighting the mercenaries Strader sent to [[DeadlyEuphemism clean up]] their mess.

* ''ComicBook/Superboy1994'': After Agenda's experiments on him cause his body to start breaking down Superboy's skin starts bubbling and sloughing off.
* ''Comicbook/{{Supergirl}}'':
** In [[Comicbook/Supergirl1982 a classic issue]], one of the teachers of the titular heroine undergoes an experiment which turns him into a repulsive mutated creature: his body is huge and hairless, his eyes are two large, red balls without pupils, his limbs are ridiculously long and thin and his feet have only two fingers each.
** ''Comicbook/TheSupergirlFromKrypton'' saw Superman fly to the edge of Creation fighting Darkseid and, lo, they beheld... an infinitely vast wall of living, breathing, '''screaming''' flesh and faces that act as the "wall" between Creation and the nothingness beyond, the Source Wall. Its current form is apparently made of everyone who's ever tried and failed to pass through it and discover the secrets hidden on its other side.
** In ''ComicBook/Supergirl2005'' story arc "Who Is Superwoman?", Superwoman's body becomes deformed and falls apart when her super-suit gets torn.

* ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'': The Post-Crisis story that introduced Hank "Cyborg" Henshaw, which is basically a riff on Marvel's Fantastic Four, is loaded with this. Four NASA shuttle crew members encounter a type of radiation and suffer bodily mutations. One of them, as an example, has his body reformed into a mass of rock (a la the Thing) only with pieces of the shuttle mixed in. The pain drives him to commit suicide by way of an MRI machine, which rips him apart.
* Comicbook/SwampThing:

* In the two-parter ''ComicBook/{{Ruins}}'', Creator/WarrenEllis writes about a Franchise/MarvelUniverse where everything goes wrong. Gamma radiation turns [[Comicbook/IncredibleHulk Bruce Banner]] into a green pile of tumors, [[Comicbook/SpiderMan Peter Parker]] develops a deadly viral rash from his spider bite, ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} is allergic to adamantium, and the Comicbook/FantasticFour end up becoming grotesquely misshapen corpses.

** Warren Ellis seems to love this. Remember ''Extremis''? The cyborg virus that enters the brain? And then causes the immune system to reinterpret the entire body as an open wound? ''And then rebuild it, resulting in a cocoon of scab tissue''?

* ''ComicBook/TheTransformers'': The story "The Price of Life!" (issue #70) has something [[https://tfwiki.net/mediawiki/images2/7/78/MarvelUS-70.jpg ghastly]] happen to Megatron and Ratchet.

* In ''ComicBook/TransformersGeneration2'', the Cybertronian Empire boosts its population via Budding, a long-hidden method of Cybertronian reproduction. We see what the process entails at one point: The surface of the "budder" practically comes alive, and slowly forms into a living mechanical foetus, which tears itself free of the host body. While this is happening, the first mechanoid is writhing in pain and discharging all kinds of energy.

* ''ComicBook/TheTransformers'': The story "The Price of Life!" (issue #70) has something [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Price_of_Life! ghastly]] happen to Megatron and Ratchet.

* Played for laughs in several [[ComicBook/TheSimpsons Simpsons]] ''Treehouse of Horror'' comics. Most notable example is "Sideshow Blob", where criminal Sideshow Bob (who has a bad cold) is injected with the wrong vaccine by Dr Nick Rivera and turns into a rampaging blob monster.

* The revivers of ''ComicBook/{{Revival}}'' have a HealingFactor and reduced emotional connections. This allows several of them to engage in self-mutilation for fun and profit to the horror of their loved ones. Examples range from ripping out one's own teeth to severing an arm and sharpening the exposed bone as an improvised weapon.
* Demons in ''ComicBook/CleanRoom'' can permanently mold the flesh of their host. This is used for visceral effect either on bystanders or the host post-possession. Specific examples include folding a man into a human pretzel (and swapping one of his hands), spinning a man's face upside down, and rebuilding a man's head into a semblance of a horse's.

* Cla$$War: "''Uh ... it appears my left leg has just '''eaten''' your dog''."

** ''ComicBook/{{Bizarrogirl}}'': As dreaming, Kara sees Superwoman's flesh melting off until the villain becomes a flaming living skeleton.

** Masque. A disfigured flesh-warping mutant who got his kicks warping the flesh of anyone who had the misfortune of coming into contact with him? When he took over the Morlocks, following the ''Mutant Massacre'', Masque forced the surviving Morlocks to be his playthings, changing their faces and bodies into such horrific abominations, that the bulk of the community were driven irreversibly insane. Part of this motive was based upon the fact that Masque (originally) was immune to his own powers, which drove him mad because he could alter anyone's face except his own disfigured face. Thought killed off in the early 1990s, Masque returned in ''Xtreme X-Men'' #36-39, where he was given upgraded powers: he could now use his powers on himself, which he used to render himself genderless as far as showing the ability to warp his own flesh to go from male to female. However, he was still insane in the head and then some: he used his powers to turn Callisto (ex-Morlock leader who Masque hated) into a tentacle-limbed freak and (with help from his fellow Morlocks) assaulted a subway train full of innocent people and used his powers to disfigure each and every person on said train as an act of mutant terrorism.
** Chamber is another X-Man with quite a unique form of mutation; he has a psychic furnace where everything between his upper jaw and diaphragm would normally be. That's no lungs, ribcage, digestive system, etc. Granted, eventually he gets better, but when he loses his power to contain the energy, boom- everything south of his jaw is quite graphically vaporised. He still lives!

* In the two-parter ''ComicBook/{{Ruins}}'', Creator/WarrenEllis writes about a Franchise/MarvelUniverse where everything goes wrong. Gamma radiation turns [[Comicbook/IncredibleHulk Bruce Banner]] into a green pile of tumors, [[Comicbook/SpiderMan Peter Parker]] develops a deadly viral rash from his spider bite, {{Wolverine}} is allergic to adamantium, and the Comicbook/FantasticFour end up becoming grotesquely misshapen corpses.

** It is common in Judge Dredd's Mega City-One where people willingly inflict body horrors on themselves such as The League of Fatties, whose sporting events include extreme eating and fat contests (the fattest person wins 50,000 creds and tons of endorsement deals).

* ''Stone Island''. Harry's transformation into one of the creatures, which starts with him puking his guts out and doesn't stop until he's a seven-foot-tall monstrosity with no eyelids, a [[SlasherSmile permanent grin]] in a distorted face, and hideously lengthened skull.

* The Chester Brown underground comic ''Yummy Fur'' has such delights as the author eating his own snot (which he has admitted to doing), a man's hand spontaneously falling off, ComicBook/EdTheHappyClown's [[spoiler:penis growing a miniature talking, thinking Ronald Reagan head at its tip]], a man who shits so much that he suffocates himself and many others, graphic scenes of penis surgery and so much more. Chester Brown himself, by all accounts has a very amiable, mild personality.

** Something like this happened to Johnny Storm while he was held captive by Annihilus. He is repeatedly killed, only to be brought back to life, often times stitched back by worms... it's not very lovely.

* ''ComicBook/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagicIDW'' of all things does this when a trio of unicorns swipe Rainbow Dash's wings as part of a ploy to grow their own. We don't see the act, of course, but there are ''[[https://derpiboo.ru/1079220 stitch marks.]]'' [[WebOriginal/NostalgiaCritic You know, for kids!]]

* In Warren Ellis' writing of ComicBook/{{Stormwatch}}, the Island of Gamora launched a watered-down superhuman mutagen upon an English town. Most victims were rendered as horrifically mutated corpses. The unfortunate surivors were fused into a giant mass of flesh whose hands were fused together in a shape similar to that tubular seaform known as a lamprey.

** Kenji Uedo, full stop. Think of what happened to Tetsuo at the end of ''{{Manga/Akira}}'', now give him '''[[https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/f/fc/Kenji_Uedo_%28Earth-616%29_from_Generation_Hope_Vol_1_1_001.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20170611002437 full control over it]]'''. Yeah. Due to his technopathic abilities, he can also force other machines to shapeshift as well, send one way messages through screens similar to [[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure Hermit Purple]], and let him survive extreme damage due to him lacking organs.

* Comicbook/SwampThing. Though later retconned into "a plant who thought it was Alec Holland" (surprisingly similar to the Nazi Bee Swarm thanks to a certain infamous memory experiment involving flatworms that wasn't debunked till much later) the original story was a man turning into a strange plant monster, incapable of even speech, and having to try and cope with it.
** Later on, around ''ComicBook/BrightestDay'' and the New 52 reboot, Alec was brought back from the dead, and it turned out that the plant that thought it was Alec was an accident - Alec himself was supposed to have become Swamp Thing. And since Alec was back and the plant was out of the picture, Alec found himself targeted for the transformation...

* In a ''Comicbook/{{Supergirl}}'' [[Comicbook/{{Supergirl 1982}} classic issue]], one of the teachers of the titular heroine undergoes an experiment which turns him into a repulsive mutated creature: his body is huge and hairless, his eyes are two large, red balls without pupils, his limbs are ridiculously long and thin and his feet have only two fingers each.
* Franchise/{{Superman}}:
** A ''Comicbook/SupermanBatman'' issue saw Superman fly to the edge of Creation fighting Darkseid and, lo, they beheld... an infinitely vast wall of living, breathing, '''screaming''' flesh and faces that act as the "wall" between Creation and the nothingness beyond, the Source Wall. Its current form is apparently made of everyone who's ever tried and failed to pass through it and discover the secrets hidden on its other side.
** The Post-Crisis Superman story that introduced Hank "Cyborg" Henshaw, which is basically a riff on Marvel's Fantastic Four, is loaded with this. Four NASA shuttle crew members encounter a type of radiation and suffer bodily mutations. One of them, as an example, has his body reformed into a mass of rock (a la the Thing) only with pieces of the shuttle mixed in. The pain drives him to commit suicide by way of an MRI machine, which rips him apart.

* Doppelganger, a villainess introduced in Issue 1 of ''ComicBook/GreenArrow: The Midas Touch'' (Volume 5 of his solo line and the first of the ComicBook/{{New 52}} reboot), is presumably a shapeshifter. Within panels of her first appearance, she [[HulkingOut hulks out]], [[GrowingMusclesSequence bulking up]] and [[ClothingDamage shredding a good portion of her]] [[LittleBlackDress slinky black dress]]. Any {{fanservice}} [[AmazonianBeauty this might have been played for]] [[FanDisservice is immediately thrown out the window]] as she not only grows [[MultiArmedAndDangerous an extra set of arms]], but ''[[MultipleHeadCase a second face]]''--still stuck to the first one as if it were a {{conjoined twin|s}}-- and [[http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/10/107028/1998771-doppelganger.jpg breaks out into warts.]] Appropriately so, Ollie quips that she's making him nauseated and her accomplice Supercharge refers to her as a freak when Dynamix (the third member of their villainous trio) wonders where she's been taken after they've all been incarcerated.
* The ComicBook/{{New 52}} rendition of ComicBook/TheJoker has a fellow villain slice all of the flesh off his face... then the Joker reattaches the skin to his face with straps sewn into the skin.
* In ''ComicBook/TheTrialOfTheFlash'', Big Sir mutilates Flash's face with an energy mace, distorting it beyond recognition. When a couple of kids unmask the Flash, they scream in terror and run away.
* Some of Franchise/{{Batman}}'s Rogues Gallery have this as their schtick, most notably Clayface III, who must stay in a containment suit because his touch disintegrates any living thing he touches, and The Corrosive Man, whose skin releases acid and ''he can feel every bit of it''.
** DependingOnTheArtist, as well as in ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' and the ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamSeries'', Two-Face's scarring isn't just limited to his face, but also involves his left arm. [[spoiler:In ''[[VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight Arkham Knight]]'', a hallucination of the Joker wonders if this included ''everything''.]]
* The original ''ComicBook/OmegaMen'' series had Kalista get mind-raped by an organism which did so by stealing her shape and memories, leaving her an unrecognisable blob. While this is happening, she starts losing her shape, then her features, then her ability to perceive things, then the ability to ''think''. It's horrifying, and it doesn't help that she begs for it to stop the entire time.

* In Warren Ellis' writing of ComicBook/{{Stormwatch}}, the Island of Gamora launched a watered-down superhuman mutagen upon an English town. Most victims were rendered as horiffically mutated corpses. The unfortunate surivors were fused into a giant mass of flesh whose hands were fused together in a shape similar to that tubular seaform known as a lamprey.

** Kenji Uedo, full stop. Think of what happened to Tetsuo at the end of ''{{Manga/Akira}}'', now give him '''[[http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130729040417/marveldatabase/images/f/f3/Kenji_Uedo_(Earth-616).jpg full control over it]]'''. Yeah. Due to his technopathic abilities, he can also force other machines to shapeshift as well, send one way messages through screens similar to [[Manga/JoJosBizarreAdventure Hermit Purple]], and let him survive extreme damage due to him lacking organs.