Times where characters are left questioning Dude, Where's My Respect? in Comic Books.
- Astro City:
- Used as character development in "Confession". The Confessor's Kid Sidekick Altar Boy holds his father in contempt because he worked as a doctor despite being stiffed by his patients and died with no respect, and wants to be a superhero because they are respected. After watching Confessor protect the city through a period where superheroes were not getting any respect at all, he abandons his warped priorities.
- The heroic El Hombre got hit with this in both his civilian and hero identities. As community organizer Esteban Hidalgo, he never felt accepted by the Latino community no matter how much money and time he spent improving the neighborhood. As El Hombre, he was disappointed to learn that he was the least popular member of Honor Guard — and disgusted with himself to realize that he actually cared about that.
- The Junkman is a villainous example; he pulls off a bank heist so perfect that no one has any idea who did it, then retires securely in the knowledge that he outsmarted everyone. His joy is short-lived when everyone assumes that the robber must have been caught anyway, simply because the heroes always win. This makes him realize that his victory isn't worth anything if no one knows he outsmarted the heroes.
- The DCU reboot of Aquaman turns him into this. Every person he meets has apparently watched the Superfriends and taken it for a documentary, and his abilities are constantly and openly doubted and he's asked insulting questions about mockable aspects of the character that, in the comics universe, have now never been the case.
- The title character from Captain Electron is for the most part admired and beloved by the general public. However, the police officers we see are oddly short-tempered and dismissive towards him, to the point of openly refusing to believe he's anything other than a guy in a silly costume despite him single-handedly setting down a damaged passenger plane in Central Park.
- One of the (many) complaints against the Marvel Civil War series: superheroes had been saving the world for over a decade. Then when ONE questionable incident happens, the public turns against ALL of them and the government is happy to hunt them down.
- Ginko from Diabolik gets this from time to time, as his many failures against the titular Villain Protagonist sometime make people forget he's the only one who can reliably give Diabolik a run for his money (and has arrested him multiple times), reflected by him being still an inspector and never being promoted. That said, he has the respect of all the main and important recurring characters (including Diabolik himself, who considers him a Worthy Opponent and gets offended if someone dares to insult Ginko's skills), most of the police force and even the Minister for Justice, resulting in him having far more authority than one would expect from a lowly inspector and reporting directly to the Minister.
- In Disney Ducks Comic Universe, Donald Duck. He often shows remarkable skills, regularly saves the day or is an important part in it... And is often treated as a lazy fool and humiliated and belittled by Scrooge and Gladstone. Revenge for this is what prompted the birth of his Paperinik the Devilish Avenger persona.
- It's made even worse when you take into account the fact that for every adventure that his Uncle Scrooge undertakes Donald is right there with him doing just as much heavylifting, if not more, and furthermore tends to have just as many of his own amazing adventures apart from his uncle. Then also note that for all the times he's called lazy it's noted time and again that Donald has had multiple jobs and is constantly shown to be looking for a new one. Admittedly, it is something of a flaw that he can't hold down a job, but the fact remains that he still always attempts to find another one. Not for himself, but for the three children at home that he's responsible for. This can't be seen as anything less than admirable (something the Raider, a villain, points out in the "Might and Power" of the Paperinik New Adventures relaunch. Then again, he too works to make the money to raise his son as a single parent).
- Amazingly enough, Paperinik himself gets hit with it from time to time. It usually takes the form of a new superhero showing up and the people of Duckburg worshipping him and forgetting Paperinik because the new guy is cooler (never mind that the new hero is invariably revealed as a screw-up or a supervillain trying to make Paperinik retire in disgust at Duckburg's people), but in one rather annoying occasion it was because he had become too good and the people of Duckburg were envious, and in another being mocked by most of the city for a single error. This one resulted in Paperinik actually considering retiring out of spite, and it's shown that in an alternate timeline he did just that when Scrooge, demoralized after Emil Eagle accidentally destroyed the #1 Dime, decided to retire and give him his money and financial empire and wouldn't go back being a superhero, no matter the rising crime, because now he was finally getting respect, with only his nephews getting endangered in such a way he needed Paperinik's gadgets to save them getting him back on the job.
- The title character of Empowered often finds that her moments of saving her Super Homeys' butts are often ignored for their chance of taking yet another potshot at her fragile suit.
- Excalibur: Captain Britain, despite being the UK's most well known superhero, leader of Britain's biggest superhero team, and basically in charge of policing the multiverse, a position of responsibility to make the Green Lantern Corps look like a bunch of mall cops, he's often finding himself a punchline to mean-spirited jokes by some of the more Jerkass Avengers.
- Subverted in Irredeemable—this is supposedly the reason why the protagonist goes Ax-Crazy. However, he had the love and adoration of (bare minimum) 98% of mankind, it's just that the tiny amount of people who criticized and didn't appreciate him over the years slowly drove him nuts out of sheer pettiness.
- In Loki: Agent of Asgard, this is King Loki's reasoning for abandoning their quest for redemption and returning to villainy. By their claim, after they wiped their past crimes from history and redeemed themselves, the other Gods continued to call them the 'God of Lies', and treated them with little trust in the most mundane of matters. Eventually he got so sick of it he decided Then Let Me Be Evil and jumped over the Moral Event Horizon with impunity. In order to escape this, the present day Loki, who was already beginning to feel this way towards them because of how he was being treated, ended up recognising this and, rather than either die free or embrace their destiny, instead chose to evolve into a new incarnation, becoming the God of Stories, who, pointedly, no longer cares what others think of them.
- Despite the fact that for years, they were the only superhero team in Los Angeles, the Runaways were constantly threatened with forced dissolution by Tony Stark and the other Avengers. During the events of Civil War, Maria Hill, presumably acting with Tony Stark's approval, actually authorized plans to use deadly force on Victor Mancha and send the alien members of the group to a brutal prison. This treatment continued until the two-part "Homecoming" arc in Avengers Academy, in which the Runaways won enough sympathy from the Academy students that Hank Pym decided it would be better to make a deal with them instead of trying to force them to dissolve.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- Sonic has occasionally run into this, where despite his numerous acts of heroism, King Max and Geoffrey St. John treat him with no respect and have no interest sending him out on missions, despite that he has list of heroic acts that would take too long to list.
- The younger members of the Freedom Fighters pre- and post-Super Genesis Wave have been hit with this. Tails was the first, where he had a number of major victories or assists against Dr. Robotnik, they kept treating him as a ten-year-old. It wasn't until he defeated Crocbot that they made him a major member. Amy Rose was next — tired of being on the sidelines, Amy aged herself up so that she could join them. It wouldn't be until Amy held off an army of Badniks following Sonic's return from space that Amy was made a member herself. Currently, the role of "No respect" is going towards Cream and Cheese; despite being a member of the Freedom Fighters from the start of the new universe, she was constantly excluded from missions by Sally and given negligible roles, much to her protests. Even after leading the rescue of the entire team from a mission gone wrong, Cream was kept on the sidelines.
- Spider-Man:
- Spider-Man, from the very beginning, was conceived as the first hero with everyday problems. This is so frequent that some (including other superheroes) joke that it's one of his superpowers. Luckily he does have a number of fans (how often they show up depends on the writer however), and most of the other heroes, at least nowadays, do show him considerable respect. Enough respect to make him an honorary member of the Richards family and put him on two teams of The Avengers!
- Exaggerated in Ultimate Spider-Man, where not even his fellow superheroes respect him. The Ultimates dismiss him as an annoying wannabe out of hand, Daredevil beat him up for trying to fight crime, and Carol Danvers resents his very presence in New York, in spite of the fact that he's one of the only superheroes not subject to Adaptational Jerkass and is a genuinely good and decent guy on top of being a superhero. Unlike his main continuity counterpart, however, he eventually winds up getting 100% Heroism Rating and becomes The Paragon for the superhero community as a whole posthumously.
- In Guardian Devil, Mysterio complains that nobody gave him credit for his inventions about special effects and illusions while everyone knows George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, etc., despite their work, are less impressive.
- Defied in The Amazing Mary Jane #2, as the tagline says:
"MJ VERSUS MYSTERIO! Mary Jane has learned MYSTERIO is the auteur behind her big break! (It figures… who else would make a prestige Mysterio biopic?)"
- Thunderbolts: After three decades as an almost-ran as the Beetle, Abner Jenkins was starting to feel this way. The breaking point came when, during one heist his entire crew abandon him and run off with the loot, and when he tracks one of them down the man reveals they all thought he was a pathetic joke. This isn't helped by Daredevil showing up and driving Abe into the Hudson moments later, which gums up his armor. As a result, he accepts Baron Zemo's offer to join the new Masters of Evil. As Mach-1, he finds himself starting to enjoy the adulation that comes from being a hero.
- In Ultimate Fantastic Four, Doom sacrificed himself by going into the zombieverse, to prevent a deadly virus from spreading into the world. He returned in Ultimate FF. He thought that he would be revered as a hero. Instead, he was reviled and forgotten.
