Damsel In Distress / Comic Books

• Comic book heroes seem to spend about half their time rescuing some girl they've been dating on-and-off for about seventy years from something each issue, from Olive Oyl to Lois Lane. (Unsurprisingly, people who Love someone's alter ego often suffer from this trope.) Batman? Well, until a few decades ago, the one he would be constantly saving was his oft-kidnapped sidekick, Robin: The Boy Hostage (aren't we all glad they toughened him up).
  • See the infamous image of the JLA being told that they have doomed their love interests... except that Batman doesn't have a love interest. He has Robin. Ho Yay indeed.
    • At least he was smart enough not to think of Robin's real name.
• Alpha Flight: Heather Hudson attempted to invert this trope, even referencing it. When she finds out her two-hour wait for her husband (Guardian) is a set-up, she tries to storm out: "Other wives and girlfriends may be content to play bait for the good guys, but I'm not going to stand around waiting for you to use me to lure Mac into your lair." But by then, Mac's been captured; they want revenge against Heather, too. (The woman with her throws her across the room.)
• Batgirl: In Batgirl (2009), Stephanie Brown, is growing a relationship with Detective Nicholas Gage. She comes to his rescue relatively often, as befits a superhero, and points out that he is a damsel in distress in their relationship.
• Batman: Batman sometimes has a Distressed Damsel love interest. Julie Madison and Vicki Vale in The Golden Age of Comic Books; Silver St. Cloud in the Seventies, and Jezebel Jet in the modern age. No, wait, scratch that last one...
• Copperhead: A minor character example is when Martineau is kidnapped by Clay to aid his escape from prison.
• The Dead Boy Detectives: In the 2004 miniseries, Marcia comes to the Dead Boy Detectives with a case. Lampshaded repeatedly since Charles develops a crush on her and calls her a 'damsel' they have to save.
• Empowered: The titular character almost always ends up captured by villains, as a parody of Faux Action Girls. Naturally, this leads to her being the laughingstock of the superhero community. Nonetheless, despite all the ridicule she receives and her general lack of success as a superheroine, she proves to be a Determinator who refuses to quit.
• Fables: Snow White, Rose Red, Cinderella, Beauty, Briar Rose (sleeping beauty), and Red (Red Riding Hood) all get their fair share of "damseling" (mostly when they were in in the Homeland fighting the armies of the Adversary) but usually can look after themselves the rest of the time.
  • Briar Rose's curse of falling asleep every time she pricks her finger would seem like a major disadvantage until it's revealed she can make everybody around her sleep as well.
• Hawkeye: In Hawkeye (2012), Cherry is married to a member of the Tracksuit Mafia and rescued by Clint. She proves to be a lot more cunning and more manipulative than this trope usually implies.
• Les Légendaires: Subverted with Jadina; her typical princess attitude and natural clumsiness seem to make her designed for this role, and Danael even mentioned she has been in distress at least once; however, she never falls into that role, and actually is the one saving her friends most of the time, sometimes even doing so when weakened. This reaches its paroxysm in Book 14, where after she got temporary depowered and had her friends saving her, but still saves her friends from the new Big Bad Abyss, who none of her friend could even scratch. And all of this while still depowered. Wow.
• Marvel Mystery Comics, which started in 1939, operates approximately half on this trope. The damsels are more likely women of the week than romantic interests, and sometimes don't even have names.
  • The Angel is a world-wandering costumed vigilante with no specific purpose, so seeing a random woman in danger is always a good way to get him involved in a plot. The woman in the second story was in danger because she had something someone wanted. The one in the third was kidnapped off the street to be a Human Sacrifice.
  • The woman in the third Human Torch story is literally Chained to a Railway.
  • In the second Namor story, it isn't the hero being spurred to action, but the police, as Namor kidnapped and almost killed a woman (because he didn't realize humans couldn't breathe water).
• Silent Hill: In Silent Hill: Sinner's Reward, this is how Jack meets Sara in Silent Hill (she's being tied up before Jack frees her).
• Sin City: Most of the women due to the series' noir roots.
• Spider-Man:
  • In the early days, Betty Brant and Gwen Stacy would serve this role. Then it was notoriously subverted in the 1973 The Amazing Spider-Man (1963) story The Night Gwen Stacy Died, in which archvillain the Green Goblin kidnaps Spidey's girlfriend, Spidey goes to rescue her... and she dies, turning from Gwen Stacy into the Gwen Stacy.
  • Also subverted, in a different way, by Mary Jane Watson after her marriage to Peter. Whenever she's confronted by obsessive stalkers, she (almost) always manages to escape on her own, without any help from her super-powered husband. Even more subverted by the fact that, more often than not, Mary Jane is the one who bails out Spider-Man whenever one of his opponents has the upper hand in a fight. Even before their marriage, when Mary Jane was witness to a Spidey fight going poorly, she'd often brazenly distract or sabotage the bad guy, relying on her charm and wit to save her from the dangerous consequences.
  • Even Aunt flippin' May has taken out bad guys. When (fairly) recently the Chameleon had assembled a group of Spider-Bad guys to go after Peter Parker (this is just before Civil War, natch) the Chameleon himself disguised himself as Peter to go and kidnap Aunt May. Aunt May opens the door, and lets her nephew in, and gives him some tea and biscuits while she has to finish her knitting before revealing that she drugged the fucking tea cause she'd recognize her beloved nephew anywhere and Chameleon obviously was an impostor, holding up "GOTCHA" written across the sweater she just made in a knitted moment of awesome.
• Street Fighter: Ibuki in the comic of her own name. She is temporarily kidnapped by rival ninjas in the Geki clan. She manages to escape after a slight distraction by the evil ninjas from her master.
• Supergirl: It very rarely happens to Kara, though, and when it does, it is because she has been overpowered by someone like Darkseid or she is playing along, and she hardly ever needs to be saved.
• Superman: Lois Lane is probably the most famous damsel in distress, and in almost all versions (comics, cartoons, films) needs to be saved frequently by Superman. Modern versions downplay this; Lois can deal with regular gangsters or terrorists just fine by herself, but having Clark as backup doesn't hurt.
• Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man: Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus kidnap Lois Lane and Mary Jane Watson and admit openly that they are bait to lure the heroes into their trap. Both women are understandably pissed off about it.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: April O'Neil. In almost all of the TMNT continuities, she is a good friend of the Turtles and is a love interest to Donatello in the 2012 cartoon. While it varies by incarnation, as the turtle's most prominent human friend she is often in need of rescue, particularly in the 1987 cartoon.
• Teen Titans: In New Teen Titans, Raven, dear God in Heaven! Her being a pacifist, it kind of makes sense that she'd have trouble fighting with kidnappers.
• Violine: Violine is regularly in need of saving, and occasionally tied up as well.
• Wonder Woman:
  • In her defense, it rarely happens and is usually because of some stronger magic de-powering her or cosmic asshole pulling some tricks. In the early days, Diana is often seen bound and gagged in her comics (thanks to her creator being a bondage fetish) but this is subverted as she's the one who breaks herself free, which was incidentally at the time an allegory for the slavery of Africans.
  • Wonder Woman (1942): Myrna Dearfield gets kidnapped by the Yellow Mask Gang while they're looking to steal her husband's research. She has to be rescued from the gang's queenpin Tirza by Wonder Woman herself after they get the research from her husband's duplicitous assistant, and is saved from death at the amoral gangsters' hands just in the nick of time.
  • One time in Superman: Red Son Russian Batman was able to capture Diana by using her lasso against her but after Russian Superman pleaded with her to save him, Wonder Woman broke her lasso and knocked down Batman easily. But this was a bad thing as breaking her lasso cut her powers in half and permanently damaged her... Whoops.
• Y: The Last Man: In a role reversal, Yorick is the spoilt "damsel" who has to be saved by the tougher and more experienced women around him, Action Girl 355 in particular.
  • However, Yorick sometimes has his moments, even in the beginning when he's useless most of the time. Once, Yorick is the prisoner of an Israeli commander who is about to shoot down a space shuttle with two live men on board. He attacks her from behind and ruins her shot. And then he knocks her out. Despite him being locked in handcuffs which not even an escape artist like himself can get out of.

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