History JackBauerInterrogationTechnique / ComicBooks

* In ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis'', the revelation that the mysterious killer targeting the loved ones of superheroes knows that Superman is Clark Kent and sent a death threat to Lois makes the superhero community even more desperate. Clark's secret identity is ''really'' secret, so if the killer knows ''that'', then no one is safe. There is one page dedicated to showing various superheroes slamming a battered villain against a wall demanding information. It doesn't work since none of these villains know anything.

* Rorschach from ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' seems to consider this the best way to get information about the criminal world. He does this to completely random people at dinky bars. He doesn't care if the person is actually guilty of anything -- he just expects that when he does it enough times, he'll find someone who is, or is willing to talk about a guilty person to make it stop. In one of his diary entries, he comments how depressing it is when no-one's guilty.
-->''"I've just [[{{Fingore}} broken this gentleman's little finger]]. Who killed Edward Blake?"\\
''[{{Beat}}]''\\
"...and his index finger. Who killed Edward Blake?"''

* ''ComicBook/TexWiller'': Tex's typical modus operandi involves punching the poor sop across the room until he finally tells the truth.
* During the ''ComicBook/{{Daredevil}}'' arc "The Devil, Inside and Out", Daredevil interrogated Hammerhead by hitting some {{Pressure Point}}s that made "his eyes feel like hot coals in his head".

* ''ComicBook/{{Asterix}}'':
** In ''Recap/AsterixAndCleopatra'', when the heroes suspect that the captain of a Nile ferry was lying about there being no more stone left in the quarry, Obelix proceeds to beat him [the captain] in the face repeatedly (apparently toning the force of the blows down enough to not be fatal). The captain confesses how [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Artifis]] had bribed him to toss the stones in the Nile.
** Also occurs in ''Astérix chez les bretons''.
* A staple of ComicBook/{{Diabolik}}: if he can't use TruthSerum for some reason, he'll first aim a knife at your throat, and if you don't talk anyway he starts torturing.
* Amanda Waller does it to a courier working for a terrorist group to find out what he was transporting in ''ComicBook/SuicideSquad'' #0.
* In ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis'', the revelation that the mysterious killer targeting the loved ones of superheroes knows that Superman is Clark Kent and sent a death threat to Lois makes the superhero community even more desperate. Clark's secret identity is ''really'' secret, so if the killer knows ''that'', then no one is safe. There is one page dedicated to showing various superheroes slamming a battered villain against a wall demanding information. It doesn't work since none of these villains know anything.

* ComicBook/{{Huntress}} does this a lot. At one point, she interrupts an interrogation ComicBook/{{Nightwing}} was conducting of the Tattooed Man and just starts beating the information out of him. Nightwing is shocked by how far she's willing to go. Considering [[Franchise/{{Batman}} who trained]] Nightwing, that's saying something.
* ComicBook/UltimateMarvel
** ''ComicBook/UltimateGalactusTrilogy'': Marh-Vell has to suffer one of those after being captured, when Nick Fury refuses to believe him. After all, he's still an alien that infiltrated a high security meeting, so Fury and Danvers are wary on his good intentions at first.
** ''ComicBook/TheUltimates'': Black Widow tried it with a Chitauri, asking how to deactivate the Doomsday Device. But he refused to help at all, so she killed him.
* ''ComicBook/WonderWoman1987'': Ectreba starts torturing the captive A'iir, who is the Emperor's chief advisor, but he gives up no information and Wonder Woman runs in and stops her as soon as she learns what's happening. Wondy gets far more info out of him just sitting and talking with him the next day after she had him sent to medical, even though A'iir is still unquestionably loyal to his Emperor he lets more slip than he realizes.
* ''Comicbook/{{Preacher}}'' features an example that goes beyond a mere beating. A paralyzed soldier who cannot feel anything due to being on anesthetic in a hospital is being asked questions by a Grail official named Eisenstein who wants info on Herr Starr. Before Eisenstein asks him any questions, he relates a story about his bodyguard's days as a Spetsnaz officer, all while telling the soldier to not turn around. The story reveals that the bodyguard and his unit were once snowed in with an elderly couple in their cabin for days, [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty and that their food ran out well before they could leave.]] Then he tells the soldier to turn around. [[spoiler:He sees the bodyguard '''eating his arm'''. The soldier proceeds to tell Eisenstein everything he knows.]]
* ''ComicBook/{{Whisper}}'': In the first issue, [[TheProtagonist Alexis]] poses as a bathing girl of Kimura's and waits 'till they're both in his tub. Once they are, she holds his head underwater a few times to get information about how to stop Hatzumi's attempt on Toreshido's life.
* In ''ComicBook/HolyTerror'', The Fixer gets information out of a terrorist by blinding him and slamming his foot down on his spine to the point that it paralyzes him. When he's satisfied by the terrorist's answer, he executes him.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/batman_fist_660x805.jpg]]

* This is the usual technique of Franchise/{{Batman}} when he's trying to find someone. He beats up a lower mook until he gets the name of someone else above the chain of command. Then he goes after him and repeats the cycle until he finds one he was searching for. The other members of the Batfamily (especially Red Hood and Huntress) do the same.
* Pretty much a staple of Marvel's ''Comicbook/ThePunisher'', with Frank Castle able to come up with some rather [[{{Squick}} impressive]] techniques, to the point where the 2005 ''[[VideoGame/{{The Punisher|THQ}} Punisher]]'' video game consisted of a variety of ways to use the environment to threaten a criminal with horrific bodily injury... and then let him have it anyways once he gives up the needed information. Note that he sometimes merely threatens torture, but the [[Comicbook/ThePunisherMAX MAX version]] is much more overt about him committing it and ''The Punisher: Force of Nature'' one-shot (MAX) had a page with him monologuing about torture as well as the threat: for some the threat is enough, some ''never'' break, and some just pass out. One of the villains even says that he figures that the Punisher would simply "shut down" if he were tortured.
** In the MAX arc "The Slavers", Frank needs to get information from one of the titular Croatians and realizes that, hard as they are, "what I would need to do to such men would be...extreme." So he drugs the guy, cut a hole in his belly, pulls about two feet of his intestines out, and drapes them on a tree branch in front of him. And that's ''where he starts.''
* Rorschach from ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}'' seems to consider this the best way to get information about the criminal world.
-->"I've just [[{{Fingore}} broken]] this gentleman's little finger.. Who killed Edward Blake?"
-->[{{Beat}}.]
-->"...and his index finger. Who killed Edward Blake?"
** And he does this to completely random people at dinky bars. He doesn't care if the person is actually guilty of anything -- he just expects that when he does it enough times, he'll find someone who is, or is willing to talk about a guilty person to make it stop. In one of his diary entries, he comments how depressing it is when no-one's guilty.
* [[ComicBook/{{Transmetropolitan}} Spider Jerusalem]] will get at the truth, no matter who he has to maim to do so.
** Or even just if he doesn't like them, although ''that's'' usually limited to punches, general manhandling, and shots with his bowel disruptor rather than anything terribly permanent.
-->"Do not offend The Chair Leg of Truth. It is both wise and terrible."

* ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} has used a simple method to intimidate or interrogate someone throughout his whole career that rarely fails to work. He subdues the victim in some way (like shoving him against a wall) and then holds the knuckles of one hand against the victim's throat in a position where, if he were to unsheathe his claws, the middle one would impale the victim's throat and kill him. But he only unsheathes ''two'' claws, the left and right one, keeping the middle sheathed. This almost never fails to scare the shit out of the victim (as Wolverine hardly needs to remind him that he ''could'' have unsheathed all three) and usually works.
** For example, in the Graphic Novel ''ComicBook/GodLovesManKills'', after capturing some Mooks, ComicBook/{{Wolverine}} shows his claws on one hand and puts the other under the mook's chin.
-->'''Wolverine:''' See these? Remember what they did to your car?
--->''(Pops claw up on left side of Mook's face)''
-->'''Wolverine:''' That's one.
--->''(Pops claw up on right side of Mook's face)''
-->'''Wolverine:''' That's two. Wanna go for three?
* ComicBook/{{Asterix}}:

* {{Wolverine}} has used a simple method to intimidate or interrogate someone throughout his whole career that rarely fails to work. He subdues the victim in some way (like shoving him against a wall) and then holds the knuckles of one hand against the victim's throat in a position where, if he were to unsheathe his claws, the middle one would impale the victim's throat and kill him. But he only unsheathes ''two'' claws, the left and right one, keeping the middle sheathed. This almost never fails to scare the shit out of the victim (as Wolverine hardly needs to remind him that he ''could'' have unsheathed all three) and usually works.
** For example, in the Graphic Novel ''ComicBook/GodLovesManKills'', after capturing some Mooks, {{Wolverine}} shows his claws on one hand and puts the other under the mook's chin.

* Pretty much a staple of Marvel's ''Comicbook/ThePunisher'', with Frank Castle able to come up with some rather [[{{Squick}} impressive]] techniques, to the point where the 2005 ''[[VideoGame/ThePunisher Punisher]]'' video game consisted of a variety of ways to use the environment to threaten a criminal with horrific bodily injury... and then let him have it anyways once he gives up the needed information. Note that he sometimes merely threatens torture, but the [[Comicbook/ThePunisherMAX MAX version]] is much more overt about him committing it and ''The Punisher: Force of Nature'' one-shot (MAX) had a page with him monologuing about torture as well as the threat: for some the threat is enough, some ''never'' break, and some just pass out. One of the villains even says that he figures that the Punisher would simply "shut down" if he were tortured.

* {{Wolverine}} has used a simple method to intimidate or interrogate someone throughout his whole career that rarely fails to work. He subdues the victim in some way (like shoving him against a wall) and then holds the knuckles of one hand against the victim's throat in a position where, if he were to unsheathe his claws, the middle one would impale the victim's throat and kill him. But he only unsheathes ''two'' claws, the left and right one, keeping the middle unsheathed. This almost never fails to scare the shit out of the victim (as Wolverine hardly needs to remind him that he ''could'' have unsheathed all three) and usually works.

* ''Comicbook/{{Preacher}}'' features an example that goes beyond a mere beating. A paralyzed soldier in a hospital is being asked questions by a Grail official named Eisenstein who wants info on Herr Starr. Before Eisenstein asks him any questions, he relates a story about his bodyguard's days as a Spetsnaz officer, all while telling the soldier to not turn around. The story reveals that the bodyguard and his unit were once snowed in with an elderly couple in their cabin for days, [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty and that their food ran out well before they could leave.]] Then he tells the soldier to turn around. [[spoiler:He sees the bodyguard '''eating his arm'''. The soldier proceeds to tell Eisenstein everything he knows.]]

* ''ComicBook/UltimateGalactusTrilogy'': Marh-Vell has to suffer one of those after being captured, when Nick Fury refuses to believe him. After all, he's still an alien that infiltrated a high security meeting, so Fury and Danvers are wary on his good intentions at first.

* ComicBook/{{Asterix}} suspected that the captain of a Nile ferry was lying about there being no more stone left in the quarry, so Obelix struck him [the captain] in the face repeatedly (apparently toning the force of the blows down enough to not be fatal). The captain confessed how [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Artifis]] had bribed him.

[[caption-width-right:350:"Will you tell me what I need to know? Or will you TalkToFist?"]]

* ComicBook/{{X 23}}'s methods don't exclude torture as a means of obtaining information. Wolverine (himself perfectly willing to use it) accepts it, but many of Laura's other teammates get ''quite'' disturbed by it, particularly when she summarily executes the subjects once they have no more information left to give. In fact, on her first day in school, when the French teacher asks if she speaks the language, Laura stands up and recites ([[CrowningMomentOfFunny in perfect French]]) ''her entire interrogation protocol'', which outright states high-ranking officials should be tortured because bribes would be too expensive.

* This is the usual system of Franchise/{{Batman}} to find someone. He gives a beating to a lower mook, until he gets a name of someone else above the chain of command. Then he goes after him and repeats the cycle, until he gets to the one he was searching for. The other members of the Batfamily (especially Red Hood and Huntress) usually follow this technique as well. And even some of his villains may do it.

* ''ComicBook/TexWiller'': Tex's typical modu operandi involves punching the poor sop across the room until he finally tells the truth.

* Amanada Waller does it to a courier working for a terrorist group to find out what he was transporting in ''ComicBook/SuicideSquad'' #0.