Super Narcissist, Super...hero?
I don't care about right or wrong. I don't care about ideology - your cause. That place you were going to blow up is very dear to me.
— Satan's Soldier
An aggressively strange graphic novel by Tom Scioli featuring Satan's Soldier, a vain, capricious Superman Substitute and the intergalactic conspiracy to murder him after his erratic and destructive misadventures go too far.
It can be read for free in its entirety here
on Scioli's official website.
Tropes:
- Aborted Arc: The "Cape Killer" is easily killed by Justice Truth's new Powered Armor with nothing explained as to why he was murdering superheroes outside of it allowing the book to briefly reference Watchmen.
- Amazon Brigade: d'Ark has been assembling one of these by recovering, patching up, and heavily arming Soldier's various one-night stands.
- Atrocious Alias: The Human Target. To make it even more unfortunate, he's only half-human.
- Attempted Rape: Soldier attempts to do this with Heroine, who Judo Chops his penis off in response. While it causes him immense pain, he laughs this off, and later offers her a cherry blossom tree in an ambiguously peaceful gesture.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: When properly motivated, it's revealed that Satan's Soldier could create a Panacea that could cure all the world's medical problems in the span of a few days.
- Captain Patriotic: Union Jack...the Ripper.
- Decon-Recon Switch: Of the Beware the Superman archetype.
- Enfant Terrible: After he fails to kill any of them, Soldier's superpowered progeny become a collective interstellar scourge that randomly attacks space travelers and various planets.
- Evil Counterpart: Satan's Soldier is not only a Corrupted Character Copy of Superman, but a singular wicked menace to his much more benevolent selves in other parts of the multiverse. On Earth, he was a rival to the more straightforwardly heroic Justice Truth before he crippled him.
- Evil Hero: Satan's Soldier. Though he's more "Hero" than "Evil" as he exists in a very violent universe and lives on an Earth that needs his protection from it.
- Godzilla Threshold: The titular character is feared so much that Cosmoses and Black Sabbyth join forces to try and banish him through a literal Wormhole.
- Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Soldier, who loves the Earth enough to save it from nuclear armageddon and alien invaders, but will, out of boredom, use Eye Beams to commit destructive acts of violence from orbit.
- It Amused Me: How Soldier lives his life. Those strong enough to survive his mood swings may find themselves his enemies one day and his allies the next.
- Mystical Pregnancy: Soldier's bastard offspring gestate fast before bursting out of the wombs of their mothers to wreck havoc.
- Not Worth Killing: Jaguar Offspring and his sidekicks are such minor inconveniences that Solider doesn't bother to kill him after their failed assassination attempt.
- Really Gets Around: Soldier through either impressing women with his power or using that power to take them by force.
- Übermensch: Soldier does what he wants, unburdened by the rules and standards of others. Even after his Heel–Face Turn, he refuses to allow himself to be killed or incarcerated for his past actions because that would prevent him from doing as much good as possible to atone for his crimes.
- Warrior Monk: In the end, Soldier tonsures himself and dresses in the manner of a friar as the Penitent Man.
