Adaptational Sympathy in Comic Books.
- Darth Vader was made this, at least in contrast to the Legends version of the character, in the Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith series in Disney's new continuity. Legends Vader's villainy, Depending on the Writer, depicts him as a ruthless killing machine who will tear down anyone who '''gets in his way, be they friend or foe, and really reveling in being evil. Canon Vader, though still a cold and merciless killing machine, is shown to have become evil because he feels like he has no other choice, using the guilt of having betrayed the Jedi Order and playing a role in his wife's death as the means to punish himself for his sins.
- G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel): Cobra Commander, one of the most ruthless terrorists in fiction, is depicted with much more sympathy here than he is in the cartoon that ran around the same time. The cartoon Commander was an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who audiences felt bad for due to him constantly losing thanks to his ridiculously short-sighted minions and his own personal faults, the comics Commander was a villain who became the way he did because the death of his brother (caused in part due to the trauma he suffered in Vietnam) drove him over the edge to seek revenge, drive his family away in the process, and subsequently blame his misfortunes on the country.
- The IDW comics for My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic gives King Sombra a backstory that involves being born a shadow creature, and left outside the Crystal Empire in the form of a foal as part of his mother, Queen Rabia's, plan to free their kind from their prison beneath the Empire. The young Sombra grows up an outcast among the Crystal Ponies, with only one friend, a filly named Radiant Hope. After finding out the truth about his origins, Sombra loses his mind, becoming the villain he was in the show due to thinking it is his only reason for being. Funny enough, when IDW did a crossover with The Transformers, this added backstory wasn't mentioned.
- Transformers
- In IDW Publishing's first series of comics, Megatron is given more of a reasonable desire for power than the original cartoon ever did. The original Megatron is a conqueror above all else, determined to see the universe in his grip. This Megatron is forcibly assigned as a miner and gladiator under a corrupt government that would happily stomp out anyone daring to challenge the status quo. Since this oppressive state was taking a toll on him and his fellow miners, he tries to peacefully protest this corrupt regime, only to have the crap beaten out of him, which leads him to try and forcibly overthrow the government so they can see exactly how things are from his perspective. Tellingly, all major Transformers stories pattern their Megatrons after this one.
- Likewise, Thundercracker's original toy bio indicated he wasn't fully convinced of the Decepticon cause, but kept his head down so he wouldn't get in trouble. While all iterations of the character have been generic thugs for the Decepticons, the first IDW series explicitly adopted this old bio, showing him as having enough doubts during the events of All Hail Megatron that he finally ups and quits, getting shot by Skywarp in the process. The rest of the series would follow him recovering under the care of Marissa Fairborn and his dog Buster, developing a fascination with Earth and becoming a screenwriter, as well as a hero in his own right.
- Starscream, as with the Armada example above, is still the same treacherous backstabber as ever, but this takes hold much later in the series run when he successfully begins to rule over Cybertron as their appointed leader. At first, he engages in his usual scheming, but along the way, he starts to develop a conscious and wants to be a genuinely good leader for his people. It's what convinces him to eventually step down after he confesses to his crimes, and gives his life to stop Unicron.
- Shockwave, a Straw Vulcan driven by cold logic in most iterations, used to be a well-meaning Senator trying to push for a better Cybertron. Much like Megatron, the corrupt Senate resisted, only they went so far as to forcibly strip him of his emotions and remove his face and hands as punishment, turning him into the calculating monster he's known for. Everything that happens from there occurs all thanks to his manipulations—literally, as he goes back in time at one point to make the entire mythos of the Transformers universe happen under his influence.
- Really, the entire Decepticon faction gets this treatment to an extent. Aside from being forced under Autobot oppression for a long time, many a story set after the war ends shows that they aren't at all as bad as previous media made them out to be; the Scavengers, for example, are just a bunch of guys trying to make ends meet instead of being ruthless killers and sadistic thugs, Tankor (or Fat Tankor, just not to his face) actually left Cybertron for a time because he and several others wanted out of the war, and even Swindle, a slimy arms dealer, gets turned into a vegetable by Starscream just for knowing too much, forcing his teammates to care for him in this state.
- Megatron's descendant, the famous silver-tongued iteration of the Beast Wars cartoon, followed suit in 2021 with the Transformers: Beast Wars (2021) comic, showing that, unlike the power-hungry megalomaniac from the original series that would go on to develop a god complex and nearly commit multiple instances of genocide several times (being a Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist everyone mistook as a common thief), this Megatron (formerly Galavar) is implied to have taken up this grandiose scheme so history won't forget him, as it did his predecessor.
- The same series did this with Dinobot to a small extent. The original was a warrior with a Code of Honor—an ex Predacon who joined the Maximals when he tried and failed to stage a coup against Megatron, becoming the Token Evil Teammate amongst the heroes that frequently butted heads with Rattrap. This series shows he still has his honor, but his defection came from the Predacons being violent savages that tortured the Maximal Nyx for no good reason other than their own fun, and not only saved her life, but defected because he felt the only way he could continue to be an honorable warrior was to fight alongside those who shared his moral compass.
- As revealed by Skold and Dinobot, the entire Predacon faction counts to an extent. As the descendants of the Decepticons, the original series depicted all Predacons as naturally evil, sneaky, and deceptive—even Dinobot's Heel–Face Turn did nothing to convince the Maximals he was completely on their side (Rattrap especially) until his Heroic Sacrifice. It's through Dinobot's own revelation that Predacons aren't evil; they're naturally built to face conflict head-on, and do so in a wide variety of ways (including law and sciences, if not warriors and politicians), to the point that the Maximals mistreat them as second-class citizens for going against the status quo; Skold's Freudian Excuse for joining the Predacons is that the Maximals mocked her for wanting to be an artist instead of a warrior like it was commonly expected.
- In IDW Publishing's first series of comics, Megatron is given more of a reasonable desire for power than the original cartoon ever did. The original Megatron is a conqueror above all else, determined to see the universe in his grip. This Megatron is forcibly assigned as a miner and gladiator under a corrupt government that would happily stomp out anyone daring to challenge the status quo. Since this oppressive state was taking a toll on him and his fellow miners, he tries to peacefully protest this corrupt regime, only to have the crap beaten out of him, which leads him to try and forcibly overthrow the government so they can see exactly how things are from his perspective. Tellingly, all major Transformers stories pattern their Megatrons after this one.
