Mooks / Comic Books

• All Fall Down: The Order of Despots have a small army of mooks on their moon base.
• Asterix: Most Roman legionaries exist to get beaten senseless by the Gauls.
• Batman:
  • While occasionally one of them will get a bit more characterization before being killed, like Zed in Red Robin, Ra's al Ghul's masked faceless ninjas who work for the League of Assassins have a high mortality rate even if their primary antagonists, the Batfamily have a no kill rule. The Batclan also has no trouble taking down droves of them in non-lethal ways.
  • Lampshaded in Batman #321, in which Batman notes that one thing has always remained constant in the Joker's long career: "The poor quality of his hired muscle."
• Daredevil: In a very early issue, the Masked Marauder explains why he started recruiting tried-and-true criminals rather than relying on his costumed peons as he did before. The reason? Simple; they were incompetant morons. In a meta sense, you can argue that his chances of success are increased dramatically because now his thugs don't even wear masks.
• Empowered: Being a superhero comic, there are mooks. Subverted by Thugboy's gang "Witless Minions", who stole from the villains they worked for. And definitely weren't willing to die for their bosses.
• Harley Quinn: A mook who had once worked for the Joker commented that you worked for the Joker if something had really gone wrong in your life. Later, he even admitted that he'd long been aware of the likelyhood of being killed by Batman or the Joker himself.
• Henchgirl. Subverted, as the series focuses on the life of a fairly competent twentysomething Mook with a conscience and the contrast between her being skilled at a well-paying job she hates versus her relative inability to adult in the legitimate world. Her friends alternately revel in her adventures and try to convince her that being a Mook is illegal and dangerous (she comes home beaten up often), but never turn her in to the police or heroes. Her superhero parents are horrified, but her teenage superhero sister admires her rebelliousness and saves her from capture twice and death once.
• The Invisibles: Subverted in Grant Morrison's comic series-cum-"memetic hypersigil". In the very first issue, King Mob guns down a large array of cannon-fodder, all wearing helmets with visors. Later in the series, we see the life and times of one of these nameless mooks, and his widow eventually saves Mob's life, calling in medical help for him when she finds him dying of gunshot wounds. When asked about her motive, she replies that her husband was likewise gunned down.
• Marvel Universe: Used extensively in Marvel Comics in the form of Hydra—and then deconstructed by Deadpool's new bud Bob, Agent of HYDRA. He explains that he's in for the great benefits, and also to impress his girlfriend (which doesn't work.)
  • And A.I.M., The Hand and HAMMER.
  • Flag-Smasher's ULTIMATUM.
• Sin City: Stories often involve the hero destroying an increasingy larger number of mooks before fighting the Big Bad.
• Spider-Man: In Superior Spider-Man (2013), one of the more subtle signs that the new Spidey isn't quite as used to heroics includes the army of "ex-military types" in jumpsuits and visors (the "Spiderlings") that do his bidding.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: In all incarnations of the franchise, the Shredder (or, in the comics, whoever's running the Foot Clan today) has an endless supply of completely masked ninjas for our heroes to kick the crap out of. When the shows wanted to have things busted up, they used Mecha-Mooks. The comics weren't so choosy about showing the actual death of living Mooks.
• The Ultimates: The Liberators' foot-soldiers will die in about a month, but since their bosses just need a disposable army, they're perfect. They all die.
• Wolverine: Wolverine vs. the Yakuza has an extreme rare example of killed mookesses (if only 2 of them count as mookdom). They are masked as Geishas and obviously never heard of Don't Bring A Hairpin To An Adamantium Claw Fight. (Since we are talking about Wolverine, he just says <SNIKT> and "What a waste.")
• X-Men: Subverted with the character Strong Guy. Guido started out as just an anonymous mook working for some bad guys... but then he reformed and joined the good guys. At the time, he joked that he was just doing it for the paycheck, but he has proven to be a worthy hero.

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