The DCU
- Batman:
- In one story, Batman finds and confronts the man who killed his parents, Joe Chill, but can't find any evidence against him. Taking a risk, he confronts Chill and accuses him of murdering the Waynes, and reveals that he, Bruce Wayne, became Batman because of what happened. He then goes on to tell Chill that he will always be watching, waiting to collar Chill for good. Terrified, Chill runs to some fellow crooks and begs for their help, claiming that Batman is after him because he killed his parents. However, the crooks are furious that because of what Chill did, Batman came to be and ruined their schemes time and time again. In hot-blooded rage they gun Chill down, then realize what a bad idea that was, but before they can get him to spill who Batman is, the 'man himself comes in.Batman: Still with us, Chill?
Chill: Not... for long! Funny... because I started you off as Batman, the boys... plugged me! Yeah... I guess you got me... after all! Ahhhh... (Dies) - In Batman #414, Bats is investigating the mysterious "Dumpster Killer", who leaves women's mutilated corpses in dumpsters (and it becomes personal when one of the people killed is a friend of Bruce Wayne). Several issues later, in #421, Batman discovers the killer is a pair of misogynist douchebags, Karl Branneck & Vito Procaccini, and vows to take them down. In the next issue, Branneck kills Vito because he views him as a liability; later, Batman arrests him and he goes to trial, but is set free because a bloody knife Batman found at his house was found illegally. After making sure Batman isn't around, Branneck then sets out to target another woman... who promptly slits his throat with a straight razor (and is revealed to be the sister of his second victim, who has been personally hounding him so he'd choose to kill her). Fittingly, the name of the last issue is "Just Desserts".
- A third example comes from the mini-series The Cult: having been freed from his imprisonment and recovering from his mental and physical trauma, Batman and the Jason Todd Robin storm into Gotham to take back Gotham from Deacon Blackfire, who has taken it over with his army of similarly kidnapped and broken people. Batman finally confronts Blackfire and proceeds to beat him within an inch of his life before stopping; he couldn't arrest him nor, even if he didn't have his code, kill him - they'd just make him a martyr. Instead, he leaves Blackfire, broken and beaten, in front of his followers who literally tear him apart because his broken and pathetic self spat in the face of everything he drilled into their heads.
- In one story, Batman finds and confronts the man who killed his parents, Joe Chill, but can't find any evidence against him. Taking a risk, he confronts Chill and accuses him of murdering the Waynes, and reveals that he, Bruce Wayne, became Batman because of what happened. He then goes on to tell Chill that he will always be watching, waiting to collar Chill for good. Terrified, Chill runs to some fellow crooks and begs for their help, claiming that Batman is after him because he killed his parents. However, the crooks are furious that because of what Chill did, Batman came to be and ruined their schemes time and time again. In hot-blooded rage they gun Chill down, then realize what a bad idea that was, but before they can get him to spill who Batman is, the 'man himself comes in.
- This is The Spectre's typical modus operandi.
- In the DC Comics miniseries "Final Crisis: Revelations", after Libra kills the Martian Manhunter by means of lighting him on fire to show the assorted villains in his Secret Society that he could make their wishes come true, The Spectre goes after the people who wished it to happen. He turns Dr. Light into a human candle (that is he turns his body into wax and sets his head on fire) and turns Effigy into a melted puddle of a man by boiling him alive. Sadly, it doesn't work for Libra, but The Spectre does kill all the other villains in the room who tried to stop him instead.
- Said villains, the Hangmen, are also an example. Spectre hanged them.
- Legion of Super-Heroes: In the mini-series Legion of 3 Worlds a couple discover Superboy-Prime after he arrives in the future and he vaporizes them in passing. What makes this a Karmic Death? In earlier storyline Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes, the same couple discovered an alien child, Last of His Kind, in their yard... and vaporized it, burying its remains in their farm.
- Robin (1993): After Lloyd Waite has the victims, dealers and some others involved in his illegal experimentation to develop a super soldier serum killed and orders the papers destroyed and developers rearranged and threatened to try and hide his misdeeds when he realizes too many people are investigating for him to simply have a few reporters killed he himself is killed by those who were paying him to develop the serum and create a super powered private army for them.
- Seven Soldiers: Bulleteer's husband Lance died when he was trying to experiment on himself in order to fulfill his sexual fantasies with the "superteen" porn star he'd been cheating on her with.
- Superman:
- In Two for the Death of One, evil sorceress Syrene tried to invoke it: since Lord Satanis killed her father to seize the power of the Runestone of Merlin, she absorbed its power to kill him with it. Still, Satanis allies himself with Superman to save his life.
Syrene: "You slew my father to gain control over the Runestone, but now I possess it! The power which you so craved shall now be the very power which kills you!"- In The K-Metal from Krypton, art critic Daryl Bronson and crimelord "Rocks" Gordon make a deal to steal a painting hidding a map to a gold mine and split the profits. However, as soon as he grabs the paiting, Gordon tries to get his partner murdered. Mad with rage, Bronson forces Gordon and his men at gunpoint to walk into the mine. He then blows up the entrance and decides to wait on the cliff overlooking the entrance to make sure they cannot escape. When Gordon and his men manage to get out, Bronson pushes several rocks off the cliff, causing an avalanche and killing them off. However, when Superman is going to catch him, Bronson falls off the cliff and lands on the same rocks which he previously pushed off. As looking down at the mangled corpse, Superman deems it a fitting fate.
- Swamp Thing:
- In "The Destiny Machine", the Mad Scientist Dr. Pretorius is torn apart by the very mechanical wolves he had created as brutal killing machines for brutal would-be world dominator Nathan Ellery.
- Solus, the villain of the story "Requiem", kidnaps the Swamp Thing as a toy to play with, then tries to murder Swamp Thing after Swamp Thing saves his life. However, touching the living mass of soil and vegetation triggers his internal kill-switch, a fatal safeguard against him ever stepping foot on a living world again, causing him to be disintegrated by a radiation pulse from within.
- Wonder Woman (1942): Atomia, a scientist who turned humans into her slaves via Unwilling Roboticisation that involved so badly damaging their brains the people they had been were functionally dead, gets welded into a Venus Girdle by Aphrodite, giving her a Death of Personality.
