Cycles of Revenge in Comic Books.
- 2000 AD:
- Nikolai Dante has to periodically deal with the Arbatov clan, who are constantly seeking vengeance for the deflowering, maiming, death, castration, and humiliation of their relatives who had previously tried to avenge their family's honour, all the way back to the first issue, which has Dante discovered in the bed of Captain Arbatov's mistress. Unfortunately for Arbatov, he was courting the Emperor's daughter at the time, and was flayed alive when he brought a complaint against Dante.
- Judge Dredd: The conflict between Mega City One and their 'Sov Block' counterpart East Meg One resulted in a continuous cycle of revenge. The United States and the Soviet Union were old enemies until the dissolution of the countries into their respective Mega-Cities after the Atomic War of 2070. East Meg One then attempted an invasion of Mega City One during the Apocalyse War of 2104 after nuking half of their enemy's city. Judge Dredd retaliated by leading a strike team to turn the tide by nuking all of East Meg One. The remnants of their military swore revenge, the Fourth Faction of which engineered a synthetic plague to release inside Mega City One in the Day of Chaos 30 years later. The Judges eventually eliminated every key member of the Fourth Faction but were unable to stop the disease's spread, ending in 350 million deaths and the city reduced to a shadow of its former self.
- Age of Reptiles: The feud between the group of Raptors and Tyrannosaurids in Tribal Warfare starts with a Kill Steal by a Tyrannosaurus, then the Raptors steal their eggs in revenge, then the Tyrannosauruses kill a bunch of raptors in revenge, rinse and repeat. It ends with all but one Tyrannosaurus dying, who is then confronted by a Chekhov's Gunman.
- Aquaman: New 52/Rebirth added this dynamic to Aquaman and his Arch-Enemy Black Manta. Where as Pre-Flashpoint Manta had no reason to hate Aquaman other than just because, this Manta hates Aquaman for killing his father. Aquaman himself was aiming to kill Manta at the time to avenge his father, and accidentally killed Manta's instead. Ever since then, the two having been stuck in a perpetual cycle of hate, seeing the deaths of several of Aquaman's loved ones and repeated hits to his dreams of peace with the surface world, while Manta is constantly imprisoned because actually killing him will compromise Aquaman's morality. While initially a willing participant, Aquaman eventually came to tire of it due to having a life outside of their vicious enmity. Manta, meanwhile, has devoted so much of his life to ruining Aquaman's that without Aquaman he virtually has no purpose, and had a crisis of identity when he realized it.
- In the The Authority: Kev miniseries, it's a Running Gag that Kev Hawkins keeps having to kill hit squads from either the Provisional Irish Republican Army or the Ulster Volunteer Force, who come after him because he killed a bunch of their mates in a previous miniseries... and of course, those guys were avenging another squad he killed in a previous miniseries... In the third miniseries, it's revealed that this all stems from a mission during his SAS days where he ended up killing folks from both sides of the conflict in Northern Ireland.
- This was Bruce Wayne's reasoning as to why he forbade Dick Grayson to take up the Mantle of the Bat and chose Jean-Paul Valley instead in Knightfall. However, this turned out to be an even worse decision thanks to Scarecrow's infamous fear gas triggering Jean-Paul's brainwashing by the Order of St. Dumas, causing an ever-increasing level of brutality that ultimately forces Bruce to take back the Mantle of the Bat.
- Blue Monday: Never, EVER tape a girl bathing and show people. You'll lose your Porn Stash in a ball of fire. Of course, if you made copies, don't let the girl know or she and her friends will beat the shit out of you in front of the whole school during a rigged soccer match. Of course, by that point, you're justified in sending a copy to air on local cable access. And this isn't even taking into account the mass TP-ing of a house or the pube-burgers!
- This was the case with Namor and Black Panther (T'Challa) for a long while. It started in Avengers vs. X-Men, when Namor, under the influence of the Phoenix Force, flooded the country T'Challa rules, Wakanda, in retaliation for something the Avengers did. When the story concludes, Atlantis, which Namor rules, and Wakanda are at war. In The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman), the two are forced to work together in the Illuminati to combat a multiverse-shattering crisis, but T'Challa makes it clear that when the crisis is over, he will kill Namor. Eventually, some of T'Challa's soldiers are wounded when one of his advisers intentionally gives bad intel on Atlantis. Namor tries to talk to T'Challa about a treaty, and T'Challa says he'll talk to his sister (Shuri, the actual ruler of Wakanda) about it if Namor makes an official request. Namor does so and Shuri officially claims to be considering it, but in actuality launches an attack that kills many Atlantean warriors and civilians. Thus, when Thanos' army invades Earth, Atlantis is unable to repel it while Wakanda can. Namor bows to Thanos, who is looking for an Infinity Gem, and tells him it's in Wakanda, which he knows it's not. Wakanda is nearly destroyed when Thanos focuses almost all of his resources on it. Afterwards, Namor claims responsibility for the attack, and tells Panther his only regret is that so many Wakandans lived. The two get into a brawl, and Namor is expelled from the Illuminati. Namor starts his own secret organisation, the Cabal, to combat the multiverse crisis, and they are given Wakanda as their home base by the world's various governments. The Cabal kill Shuri. Eventually, Namor admits that his Cabal is out of control, and T'Challa and Black Bolt (another Illuminati member and monarch) say they'll help Namor defeat them. Instead, Panther and Black Bolt attempt to murder Namor. Namor survives (unbeknownst to them), and ends up back with the Cabal. He and T'Challa eventually work together in Secret Wars (2015) to thwart Doctor Doom, and finally reconcile.
- My Little Pony Generations reveals that the conflict between the Generation 1 ponies and the witches to be this: after trying to use the Smooze to destroy the land and being imprisoned in the volcano, the witches have had daughters of their own and trained them to resent the ponies and, eventually, extract their revenge. A mishap causes the young witches, Grackle and Dyre, to instead extract revenge on the Generation 4 ponies. Visiting the G4 world and realizing firsthand the damage their actions are doing, and not wanting to follow in their mothers' abusive footsteps, is what causes them to break the cycle, destroy the Smooze for good and befriend the ponies.
- Northlanders:
- Issue #17 "The Viking Art of Single Combat" revolves around two minor lords whose families have been feuding for 6 generations, with each one inevitably starting some new fight or committing some fresh atrocity that makes the other side have to strike back, thus keeping the feud going. In the issue they're having a Combat by Champion after the latest incident, because both sides have seen their numbers worn down so much that they only have a handful of fighters remaining.Narrator: But these two lords, after six generations of small scale warfare, punch ups turned ugly, and nighttime assassinations, their ability to field anything more than a small gang of fighters was next to nil.
- "The Icelandic Trilogy" shows this happening between two clans in Iceland, as the rivals battle and vie with each other over the course of centuries.
- Issue #17 "The Viking Art of Single Combat" revolves around two minor lords whose families have been feuding for 6 generations, with each one inevitably starting some new fight or committing some fresh atrocity that makes the other side have to strike back, thus keeping the feud going. In the issue they're having a Combat by Champion after the latest incident, because both sides have seen their numbers worn down so much that they only have a handful of fighters remaining.
- Scion was built on this trope. The Heron and Raven kingdoms fought each other for centuries without even remembering why before settling their differences by Combat by Champion. Ethan accidentally cutting Bron's face in a combat tournament leads to Bron taking Ethan under custody, which leads to Ethan escaping, which leads to the Ravens declaring war on the Herons, which leads to Bron murdering Ethan's brother Artor in battle, which leads to Ethan going after Bron, and so on and so on until the Ravens and Herons unite against the invading Tigris kingdom.
- In a sort of one-sided variation, old DC Comics villain/antihero The Shade keeps being pursued by the descendants of the Ludlows a family of murderers who attempted to rob and kill him in the Victorian era. Unfortunately for the family, Shade had just experienced the event that would grant him his unexplained powers, and slayed the entire family with his shadow demons... except for the pair of twins living upstairs.
- This is the concept of Jango Fett's backstory comic series. It progresses thusly: Vizsla murders 10-year-old Jango's family. Jango helps the Mandalorians kill all of Vizsla's men and horribly scars his face. Vizsla leads the Mandalorians into a death trap and personally kills Fett's Mandalorian mentor. Vizsla frames the Mandalorians for mass murder and the Jedi kill all of them. Fett destroys Vizsla's ship, killing most of his men and savagely beats him down (though he gets a nasty beating in return). The cycle is ended when Fett slashes open Vizsla's belly, causing him to be set upon by a pack of predatory cats while Fett plays dead.
- In the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic books, the turtles kill Oroku Saki/The Shredder on Splinter's behalf, as revenge for the death of Splinter's former owner, Hamato Yoshi, who had died at Saki's hand. Yoshi, for his part, had been killed (along with his lover Tang Shen because Saki was a dick) as revenge for slaying Oroku Nagi, Saki's older brother. Why was Nagi killed? Because when Tang Shen, the object of both Yoshi and Nagi's affections, chose Yoshi over Nagi, Nagi flew into a rage and savagely beat her; one berserker rage later, Yoshi had killed Nagi. Saki's death wasn't the end of things, however; after he was slain, the Foot Clan that he led became honor-bound to kill the turtles in order to avenge him, and the cycle continues until Karai, who had been sent from Japan in order to unify the then-warring Foot Clan, offers to end the vendetta if the turtles help her eliminate one of the rogue factions, a deal which they take.
