Memetic Badass / Comic Books

aka: Comics

Batman is so badass that Darkseid's Omega beams can't hit him. The text? "Die you insufferable Mary-Sue!" ^note because batman! duuh! by nebezial.

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• The Authority: The Midnighter is a literal version of this. His superpower is that he doesn't lose fights. Ever. Seriously, Midnighter wins every fight, whether he's actually in it or not unless he's fighting Captain "Why Don't You Try That Trick On Me" Atom, at which point Midnighter (and Apollo, for that matter) becomes just another super-powered punching bag.
  • He managed to kill an unkillable-except-with-this-singular-magic-gun demon lord by head-butting one of the magic bullets into his skull. And then he won a fistfight against the literal personification of Hell in his own domain — in the DC universe, this guy (Neron) even outranks Lucifer. (Though admittedly, Midnighter only beat him by channelling the power of a major angel during the fight, which resulted in him ending up near-dead, too.) Neron still won, though only through trickery and lies.^note Thankfully, Apollo had already managed to defeat him through similar mind games, and then came back to rescue Midnighter.
  • He also beat HIV in 6 weeks, and doesn't have the common cold for more than a couple of minutes. His immune system is as badass as he is.
• Batman:
  • BATMAN WINS! No matter who is fighting who, the answer is Batman!◊ Batman is famously able to beat anyone with enough "Prep Time." Because he's the goddamn Batman!
  • And he can breathe in space.
  • In the Marvel vs. DC Crisis Crossover, Batman said that if he fought Captain America, the fight would go either way. Therefore Batman's badassitude equals Captain America's. Kurt Busiek side-stepped the fight entirely in JLA/Avengers, with the two testing each other before deciding to work together to get to the bottom of what's really going on. Although according to him (through Batman), Cap would have won after one of the longest comic book fights in history.
  • Alfred is generally considered the only being capable of defeating Batman in-universe, as his Servile Snarker and Team Mom. Also, there's Injustice Alfred who curb-stomped Superman so hard◊ that beating Doomsday gave Supes looks like a mere playground scrape in comparison.
  • The Joker is a Memetic Badass in-universe. As the Trickster once put it: "When villains want to scare each other, they tell Joker stories."
• Blue Beetle: Give Paco an opponent and a stick to beat them with and he will fuck their shit up. Anyone, ever.
• Captain America: Captain America is on this page for roughly the same reasons as Batman. Despite being a mostly normal human superhero in peak condition (since he's a Super-Soldier, he's at the peak of human potential), the Cap has gone on to defeat villains and heroes alike whose strength, speed, and powers greatly exceed his own. He's able to battle toe-to-toe with the Hulk, and in the Ultimates comic, he defeated an enormous Giant Man with his bare hands (just to name a few examples). Captain America's feats, much like Batman's, can either be seen as the very peak of badass and cool, or over-the-top bad writing that borders on God Moding and writer bias.
  • During the Nineties, there was a period where Cap was missing and presumed dead, and a bystander asked the other Avengers what was so great about Cap. Hercules replied that in Olympus, they consider Zeus to be the paragon of wisdom, Hermes for speed, but they measure courage... by Captain America.
  • So Thanos the Mad Titan has won. He has collected all of the Infinity Gems and created the Infinity Gauntlet. He has wiped out half of the population of the UNIVERSE with a thought. He's toyed around with super heroes, defeated every cosmic being imaginable and he reigns supreme. You have a plan to take him out, but you need someone to distract him. Captain America calmly walks up in Thanos's face and dares to take him on.
  • According to Word of God (see above), he can beat Batman in a fight.
• Deadpool: Deadpool can beat anyone, except Squirrel Girl, while talking to the audience and being an asshat all the way.
• Fantastic Four:
  • Doctor Doom has picked this up due to decades of being an Invincible Villain. Originally introduced as a megalomaniacal Mad Scientist who was Too Clever by Half and Always Second Best to Reed Richards, his ability to effortlessly escape any defeat by means of undetectable robot duplicates led to fan enthrallment with him. Then the writers began buying into the hype. Doom has since attained such canonical feats as being a viable candidate for the title of Sorcerer Supreme^note originally, he was a mere dabbler in magic, and it was used as a sign of him not being as clever as he thinks he is; he had to use magic to cheat his way around technological limits he couldn't overcome, stealing the powers of Silver Surfer, effortlessly resisting the mind-controlling abilities of the Purple Man (one of Marvel's most powerful mind-controllers) through the sheer strength of his arrogance & god complex, and surviving being sent back to the dawn of time by using the sheer strength of his willpower to live for millions of years until he returned to the present. He is, literally, the villainous counterpart to Batman and Wolverine in terms of popularity-bestowed power.
  • The Fantastic Four are considered in-universe as an example of this trope. Despite not being anything close to the most powerful superheroes in the Marvel universe, they are still always the automatic go-to guys for cosmic-level threats, due to their innate ability to just awesome their way to victory, no matter how insanely powerful the threat may be.
    • In one occasion, Reed Richards stumbled on some alien invaders, tried to reason with them, introduced himself as "Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four", and then looked at them running away in terror.
• Green Lantern: DC Comics' own "F-Sharp Bell", Rot Lop Fan. For a character who has only made three appearances in the entire history of the comic, he's one of the most popular Green Lanterns. The two appearances after his origin story depicts him performing amazingly badass deeds (how do you take down a diamond-bodied villain whose body naturally deflects green light rays? Hit him with sound...), hence his ascension to Memetic Badass status.
• Iron Man: Tony Stark: Genius billionaire, playboy, a philanthropist who kick-started the most successive film franchise on Earth in a cave with a box of scraps. Tony also builds hundreds of cool suits of Powered Armour (even Humongous Mecha) and much like Batman has the right suit to deal with anything e.g Hulkbuster, Thorbuster, Phoenixbuster, and even the Galactusbuster. Not even heart issues are a problem for Tony, an excerpt from Two Best Friends Play.
  Pat: Iron Man has heart problems, he can't even take the viagra.
  Matt: Iron Man doesn't need to take viagra, he is viagra.
• Judge Dredd: When the Face of Fear kills anyone who gazes into it, Dredd is the only one it can't kill. Fear is not so resistant to the Fist of Dredd. Also, he once got an entire army to back down by simply appearing on a comm screen. He's also talked down zombie judges simply by tapping into their vague memories of respecting him.
  • To varying degrees, most individuals who pass full Judge training can pull of insanely badass feats. There's a whole fan-film about Judge Minty taking on an entire gang of mutant raiders by himself and coming out on top.
• Kick-Ass: An in-universe example. Even though the clip clearly shows him being terrible at being a superhero, because he refuses to give up the fight, he becomes so popular that he inspires a comic based on himself as a legitimate superhero along the lines of Green Arrow or Batman.
• Legion of Super-Heroes: Karate Kid is the Memetic Badass of the thirtieth century.
  • To clarify: In a group of super heroes where admission requires a UNIQUE superpower at a level that can put you on par with the greatest of the Silver Age, Karate Kid is a normal human being. His superpower? "I can put Superboy in a headlock." And he CAN.
    • Karate Kid lifted the entire Sydney Opera House from two thousand miles of ice, with his bare hands. With nothing but "focus."
• Luke Cage: Luke Cage gets some of this, owing largely to the infamous instance of him invading Latveria and attacking Doctor Doom on his lonesome because Doom owed him money (200 dollars). Several quotes from the issue are quite memetic by their own right, such as Luke's demand upon busting into the throne room: "Where's my money, honey?"
  • Also During Earth-11080, he killed Squirrel Girl while under the infection. That's Right. He killed the other memetic badass on this page who defeats everyone by being herself.
• The Incredible Hercules: Zeus from Marvel Comics is usually considered a badass because editors and stories stated him to be as powerful as Odin and his few on panel feats show him as very powerful. This was blown to huge proportions when, after Chaos War, he gave the Hulk one of the worst beatings of his life. A large part of it is because at the time the Hulk was being pushed as a virtually invincible force that could heal from anything, crack planets apart with ease and beat all of Earth's heroes on his own. Many fans were pleased to see a limit to the Hulk's power and finally put down after being treated as invincible.
• The Mighty Thor:
  • Thor. Now, you've got the above mentioned Hulk, who's the memetic 'strongest one there is'. Thor was explicitly created to be more powerful than the Hulk, and while Popularity Power has since dialled Hulk's strength up even further, Thor's pretty much the one character who can be relied upon to face the Green Goliath on even footing and have better than even odds of actually winning. He's shattered planets, tanked supernovas to the face, and cracked the armour of a Celestial. He's generally been considered to be the smackdown (and smack-talk) King of the Marvel Universe, with JLA/Avengers having a brutal, no-holds barred fight between him and Superman, and while Superman did eventually win, he was dead on his feet afterwards, remarking that he'd never fought anyone that tough (which considering that the list of people he's gone up against includes freaking Darkseid and Doomsday, is impressive as hell), while Thor later remarked to a gloating Aquaman that now he had Superman's measure and a rematch would go rather differently.
  • Oh, a few years ago, there was a serial killer of gods called Gorr the God Butcher, who tortured his victims before butchering them. Not only did a young Thor last nearly twice as long as any god Gorr had ever tortured before nearly breaking, when he broke free he nearly chopped Gorr in half with his axe. It got to the point where Thor was the only being in the entire universe that Gorr was afraid of, and with good reason — he ended up thwarting Gorr's plan to use his 'Godbomb' to destroy every god through history by absorbing the blast into his and his future counterpart's versions of Mjolnir, while still having enough in the tank to absorb Gorr's weapon (which gave him the power to kill gods), give him a mocking Pre-Mortem One-Liner, before blowing his head off.
  • And then you've got Odin, Thor's dad, who's his son dialled up to eleven. This is someone who can and has gone toe to toe with Galactus, destroyed and restored galaxies, and punked his son without even making an effort.
• The Punisher: The Punisher punched a polar bear in the face. As a distraction.
• Rex the Wonder Dog: Rex once nuked a T. Rex, has had a successful career as a newspaper photographer, knows how to operate heavy machinery and vehicles, can fish, operate a parachute, and rope cattle. Then, after he did all that, he gained the ability to talk and became a wizard. One might even go so far as to say that is is truly top dog.
• Nick Fury: Nick Fury in Secret Warriors: Surrounded by HAMMER agents and ordered to surrender, Fury replies, "Son, you got about five seconds before I take that gun away from you and beat you to death with it." The HAMMER agents give up.
• Sgt. Rock: Sgt. Frank Rock is more badass than Batman. Seriously, there was voting and everything.
• Spider-Man: Spider-Man is known by many fans as the poster boy for badass when his loved ones are in danger, especially Mary Jane and Aunt May. Even against Heralds of Galactus or the Juggernaut, he still beats them down and wins.
• On some debate forums May Parker and Ma Kent are sometimes referred to as the most powerful beings in their respective universes on the argument that their power has never shown an upper limit. This is usually brought up when someone Fails Logic Forever during a a debate.
• Squirrel Girl: Pick a character, pick any character, even some cosmic super teams, against Squirrel Girl, and Squirrel Girl will be the accepted winner. Unicron and Galactus versus Squirrel Girl? Squirrel Girl.
  • Squirrel Girl versus Squirrel Girl? Universe implodes. Then Squirrel Girl wins.
  • Squirrel Girl versus Chuck Norris? Same result but Chuck Norris wins and then Squirrel Girl wins because she has one big advantage; being Squirrel Girl.
  • Deadpool thinks she's the greatest threat in the marvel universe.
    • Squirrel Girl Vs. Batman? Batman could defeat Squirrel Girl with Prep Time, but Squirrel Girl wins because she doesn't need prep time to beat Batman.
  • The world needs a real Squirrel Girl, so whenever someone gets too pompous, they have to lose to an army of squirrels.
• Star Wars: It is widely agreed among the Star Wars fandom that K'Kruhk can survive anything — General Grievous, Dark Jedi, getting Impaled with Extreme Prejudice, not one, but two Jedi Purges—thanks to his hat.
• /tg/, influenced by Don Rosa, has concluded that one should not fuck with McDuck.
• The Transformers: Buzzsaw was a yellow Laserbeak, meaning he was one of the smallest Transformers ever. However he was very effective in the Marvel comics, taking down several Autobots by himself. Most prominently, he beat Omega Supreme, one of the largest Autobots in the series, in one shot. The Captions on TFwiki are an indication of how badass he is.
• Watchmen: Rorschach. He's not locked in here with you people. You're locked in here with Rorschach!
  • Rorschach once ate an entire seven-layer cake all by himself, then killed the stripper inside for being a whore. Add many more to that effect, usually involving breaking some specific number of fingers and killing dogs.
  • When nobody was looking, Rorschach broke five people's fingers. That's as many as five tens. And that's terrible.
  • Time management, Adrian Veidt-style: DO IT 35 MINUTES AGO.
• X-Men:
  • Wolverine is the best at what he does and what he does isn't very nice. There's a reason why he's the Trope Namer for Wolverine Publicity.
  • Only by having power over adamantium (Magneto) can you really stop Wolverine for a long while, which reminds him why he hangs out with the X-Men at all... it's to gain even more badass aura without having to kill every villain once the villain's stamina runs out and Wolverine's regeneration doesn't!
  • Thunderbird has a surprisingly large fandom as well, most of whom think of him like this.
  • Gambit while not quite to Wolverine's level, still looks badass in pink, took Rogue's virginity (Touch of Death be damned) and once defeated a villain with chewing gum. Gambit also told his brother Bobby to SHUT UP.
  • Can't forget the Juggernaut BITCH
  • Jamie Madrox is a relatively unknown superhero. His power is to make duplicates of himself. On the occasion that he got stranded in the Arctic, what did he do? Did he make duplicates of himself and cuddle together for warmth? NO. He duplicated himself, then killed the clone and ate it.
    • And it wasn't just some mindless duplicate either. Each clone Madrox makes has all of his memories, abilities, and free will. Madrox killed and ate himself to stay alive.
• Wonder Woman: Wonder Woman spins around with the catchy theme, dated both Superman and Batman, beheaded Ares, was almost an ambassador at the UN, has sick invisible jet and best of all supported the struggling DC Extended Universe all by herself◊.

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