Being The Atoner can be a Trauma Conga Line
Is Evil just something you Are or something you Do?Bedlam is an independent comic about a forcibly rehabilitated prolific serial killer named Fillmore Press who decides to use his new lease on life and knowledge of macabre crimes to assist the local police force in catching monsters and madmen. Throughout the story, Fillmore struggles on his new chosen path and the fear of relapsing into his old self as he combats new criminals.
This comic provides examples of:
- Antagonist Title: Averted. Bedlam is the name of the city and the setting. The protagonist is a former antagonist in question and the story displays his desire to make amends for his former criminal life.
- The Atoner: Fillmore is one, remembering his past and trying to atone by doing good and being good in his own odd way. Becomes harder as he comes face to face with madman who want his old self back.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In a sense, Archbishop Warton did what he wanted. He used his brainwashed former students to spread death and destruction so he could be allowed to preach in his prison. After given a chance to give Fillmore a confession, he called his servant Eric to tell him to commit suicide, but admitted he has many more brainwashed killers out there waiting to do his bidding and start where Eric left off.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Enforced by Warton's disciples, who've had their genitals mutilated and covered in bloody stitches with metallic wings sown into their back to simulate being angels.
- Behavioral Conditioning: Madder Red is a lover of extreme acts of violence and is a prolific mass murderer and child killer. He's captured by a deranged Psycho Psychologist working for an unknown group who spends 12 years putting Madder Red through brain surgery, pet affection experiments, and violence tests to mold him into a person who refuses to commit any violence or wrongdoing towards others.
- Big Good: The First. A clear Batman Expy to the Madder Red's Joker expy.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Madder Red played up this trope for all its worth, trying to do as many depraved acts as possible for amusement and to convince society to become just as brutal to stop people like him.
- Humanoid Abomination: Mister Pixel. Implied to be a case of Demonic Possession as the original was just a random guy possessed and directed by another claiming to be the same. Not to mention his ability to conduct mass hypnotism through phone calls and pixelate his fate in real life.
- Momma's Boy: Councilman Matt Severin aka The First is essentially this, being constantly henpecked by his socialite mother to do charitable acts for his campaign while decrying his vigilante activities.He psychologically breaks when Mister Pixel brainwashes him into killing his mother
- Pædo Hunt: Archbishop Warton is imprisoned for this, having been imprisoned for thirty years for lengthy acts of rape and abuse of young boys in the school he worked in.
- Practically Joker: Fillmore's original persona as the violently unstable super-criminal Madder Red, a nihilistic psychopath obsessed with testing the limits of human dignity with wanton acts of mass-murder and chaos (and a helluva lot of crass jokes at his victims' expense). His symbol is a cartoonish red smile, not unlike something the Clown Prince himself would use. The main conflict of the series centers around Fillmore trying to distance himself from the cackling monster he once was.
- Religious Bruiser: Eric and by extension the rest of Warton's Holy Hitman disciples. Eric by himself could assassinate many targets on his own without notice and nearly killed The First.
- Sinister Minister: Archbishop Warton. A depraved old catholic with a penchant for brainwashing, child-diddling, and Fire and Brimstone rhetoric.
- Would Hurt a Child: Madder Red certainly would and by his own admission he certainly hates kids. He starts his story slitting a young girl's throat with a scalpel and then pulling a Sadistic Choice where he would kill many children with implanted bombs unless he was killed within in an hour.
