Evil Ernie is a comic-book series created by Brian Pulido and Steven Hughes, and originally published by Eternity Comics before moving to Chaos! Comics and later Devil's Due Publishing. The property was then acquired by Dynamite Entertainment and rebooted with a six-issue miniseries by Jesse Blaze Snider in 2012.
Ernest Fairchild was originally a young boy with the power to draw events that would later become reality. Stuck in a family with abusive parents, Ernest had a vision of Lady Death, who promised to love him forever if he wiped out all life on Earth. And thus began the rise of Evil Ernie.
Evil Ernie contains examples of the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Ernest's father was a drunk, and his mother was psychotic as a result of a car accident.
- Ax-Crazy: Ernie is Ax-Crazy, but for good reason. His childhood is horrific and the only people who try to "help" him are Mad Scientists. He eventually gets to pull the Ultimate Ax-Crazy Moment and kill the entire world..
- Disproportionate Retribution: Physically and emotionally abused by his parents, one night Ernie sensed through his telepathic powers that his neighbors knew about his abuse for years, but were afraid to inform the police because his parents happened to own the business that was the number one employer in town. This was enough to turn Ernie into a serial killer who now seeks to bring about the end of all life on Earth.
- Good Thing You Can Heal: Ernie has a healing factor, which comes in very handy considering his violent lifestyle.
- Gorn: The Evil Ernie franchise is saturated in over-the-top gory violence. Impalement, limbs and heads being ripped off, guts and other internals being torn out, and people being messily run over is par for the course.
- "Have a Nice Day" Smile: Ernie's sidekick Smiley The Psychotic Button is a smiley face button that's gained sentience and a Slasher Smile.
- Hulk Speak: Ernie's dialogue in his original story Youth Gone Wild; later stories would show him speaking normally.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Ernie's goal is nothing less than the elimination of all life on Earth.
- Self-Made Orphan: Ernest killed both of his parents.
- Slasher Smile: Ernie tends to have a huge friggin' grin while engaging in murder. This extends to his maybe-sentient friend Smiley The Psychotic Button.
- Tom the Dark Lord: An undead serial killer who plans to wipe out mankind is mostly known by his nickname "Ernie".
- Unholy Matrimony: In the original Chaos! publication, Lady Death and Evil Ernie formed an unholy alliance that plotted to Kill All Humans. She wished to return to Earth, but could only do so after all humans were destroyed, so she corrupted a young man and turned him into The Dragon to fulfill this purpose, promising to love him forever. What Death did not anticipate is that she would genuinely fall in love with him, playing this trope unusually straight for an Omnicidal Maniac pairing.
- Villainous Friendship: Ernie has one with his sidekick, Smiley, a psychotic sentient button that acts as the source of his power. Smiley was originally Ernie's pet rat, and was one of the only things Ernie genuinely cared for. After his death, Smiley became Ernie's new companion in undeath. He acts as Ernie's guide and voice of reason, often letting his friend know his opinions. They get along very well.
- Villain Protagonist: Although he was given a sympathetic backstory, Ernie remained a classic example of this all through the Chaos! days. Most of his mini-series began with him brutally slaughtering the populace of an entire city (one story started off just after he had killed the people of Manhattan single-handedly over the period of several months), and then having to ward off attacks from his Rogues Gallery, people who would be considered the protagonists in your typical Zombie Apocalypse story, or from someone who was the villain by default. One mini-series, War of the Dead, was about his attempts to wipe out humanity by hijacking the United States' nuclear arsenal.
