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Shaggy Dog Story / Comic Books

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"Shaggy Dog" Stories in Comic Books.


  • 4 Kids Walk Into a Bank: The kids manage to break into the bank and steal thousands of dollars, only to be caught by the cops after a car chase sends their getaway van into the river. And one of the cops accidentally shot Berger, which is implied to lead to his death. And then it turns out the bad guys robbed an entirely different bank, without Paige's dad. Honestly, it might as well be Shoot the Shaggy Dog, though most of the characters survive.
  • The Adventure Time spin-off comic Adventure Time: Candy Capers has Finn and Jake go missing, and Peppermint Butler and Cinnamon Bun being set by Princess Bubblegum to try various methods to replace or find them. At the end of the six issues, we find that Princess Bubblegum sent Finn and Jake to the Vacation Dimension, to see if the kingdom could survive without them.
  • Most of the tie-ins to Age of Ultron. A number of books devoted an issue to the crossover, all of which were rendered moot by the ending, which saw Wolverine and Sue Storm slamming the Reset Button and preventing the story from ever occurring. So you had cases like an Avengers Assemble story that ended with Captain Marvel performing a Heroic Sacrifice and Faiza Hussain becoming the new Captain Britain, only for all these elements to be completely swept aside in the very next issue.
  • Asterix: Asterix and the Black Gold revolves around a quest to find petroleum for the Gaulish village, since it's an essential ingredient of their magic potion. Asterix and Obelix fail to bring back even the single drop necessary, and so the Romans attack the village at their full vulnerability — but fortunately Getafix had experimented with the formula while the leads were away and had found that beetroot juice was an ample substitute. Lampshaded when Asterix tells Getafix to, from now on, do his experiments before sending them halfway across the world.
    • In Asterix and the Chieftain's Shield, much energy is expended on running around desperately trying to find Vercingetorix's shield before the Romans... Only to discover at the end of the book that Vitalstatistix had stolen the thing from Caesar's camp right after the Battle of Alesia, and so it had been in the main character's hands the entire time.
  • The Atom: In one Comic Cavalcade story Pratt's girlfriend orders him to buy a new hat to replace his worn out one or she won't go on a date with him. He promptly does so, but some criminals have hidden loot sewn into the band and he spends the rest of the story fighting to keep it and get it back, only for it to be ruined as soon as he's to meet her.
  • The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman): The Illuminati discover that universes are colliding together, and try to find some way to save it. They try numerous techniques, but no matter what they do, nothing stops the Incursions, and they fail completely.
    • Meanwhile, a team of Avengers travel into the Multiverse to find whoever's responsible and stop them. They fail, and all of them die, only managing to kill a grand total of two enemies when all is said and done.
    • And then the ending of Secret Wars (2015) has the Reset Button being hit, meaning that the whole thing never happened.
  • The Crusader subplot in Avengers: The Initiative was quite compelling - Crusader was a Skrull advance agent who went native, and joined together with the heroes of Earth (in human form) to repel other Skrull invaders. At the end of the story, he has saved the day, gets congratulated by Nick Fury himself... and is shot through the head by 3D-Man, who can see disguised Skrulls. 3D-Man simply shrugs his arms and says "Skrull."
  • Thanks to the AXIS storyline, Eddie Brock's Start of Darkness is this. During The Death of Jean DeWolf, Eddie had confronted Emil Gregg, who had confessed to being the Sin Eater to him. He wrote the story and had it printed on the Daily Globe. However, when an enraged Spider-Man confronts the Sin Eater, he finds out that it's another man completely. Even more, Emil was revealed as a compulsive liar and Eddie fell for it. This, combined with his cancer and divorce, drove Eddie to suicide and ultimately bonding with the Venom symbiote. Years later, Carnage, Venom's offspring who had been inverted into being a hero, confronts a Sin Eater, finding out that he's the ghost of Emil and that, indeed, he was the Sin Eater way back when.
  • This is practically a staple of Kelley Puckett's run on Batgirl. It seems that the universe is absolutely intent on making sure that Batgirl's attempts to help people are met with soul-crushing failure. Examples include her failed attempt to save Good Samaritan John Robinson, her rescue of a government sniper who had outlived his usefulness (which was rendered pointless when he accidentally gave away his location by calling his mother, getting him hunted down by mercenaries), an attempt to stop a boy's father from committing a crime which would send him past the point of no return (she stopped the wrong bank robber, the real father was already past the Moral Event Horizon), and more.
  • The Blood Bowl comic is about Morder, an assassin undercover in the Bad Bay Hackers Blood Bowl team, hired to kill opposing players. Until he gets a contract to kill his own team's star player, Dunk Hoffnung, and make it look like an in-game accident. His attempts to kill Hoffnung are constantly foiled by the chaos of the game, and the both of them narrowly escape death several times. Eventually Morder doesn't care about the contract anymore and wants to kill Hoffnung out of personal spite. When the Hackers win the championship and Hoffnung is distracted by his amorous fiancee, Morder sees the opportunity to finally finish it — and is killed by the team's coach, who has decided to "cut" him from the team.
  • The Gallimaufry arc of Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire sees Buck escaping off-world in a (failed) attempt to dodge his tax service to New Hong Kong. When the events of the main plot aboard the Gallimaufry leads to Godot saving at least two sentient species, exposing a centuries-old crime and untangling a major inter-species political headache, he asks the Sufficiently Advanced Aliens controlling intergalactic politics to have his tax service undone as a reward. They deliver, but unfortunately the tax office of New Hong Kong isn't permitted to accept excuses.
  • Cartoon Cartoons, one of several comic book anthologies based on Cartoon Network shows published by DC Comics back in the day, featured such a story in "Beware the R.O.B.A.A.T.", a Sheep in the Big City story featured in the 12th issue. General Specific tries to capture Sheep by purchasing a giant robot made in his likeness called the R.O.B.A.A.T. from Victor, the spokesman for Oxymoron products. Over the course of the story, General Specific fails to capture Sheep because he keeps finding flaws and weaknesses in the robot that require buying hella expensive upgrades to fix. The top secret military organization ends up having to sell a lot of their stuff to avoid driving themselves into bankruptcy. By the time General Specific has bought all the necessary upgrades for the R.O.B.A.A.T. and successfully captures Sheep while boasting about how Sheep will finally be used in the sheep-powered ray gun, he ends up dropping to his knees crying and letting Sheep go when Private Public informs him that one of the things they had to sell to afford the R.O.B.A.A.T.'s upgrades was the sheep-powered ray gun.
  • Clone Wars Adventures: "The Package" follows eight clone troopers being ambushed while delivering a diplomatic package to Palpatine, with seven of them dying to protect the package. The final page reveals that the package contains a simple trinket, and a disinterested Palpatine has it tucked away in a closet with other unwanted gifts.
  • Deadman's original quest to avenge his own death ends with Deadman possessing the killer's body to try and save his life from a far-worse villain, the assassin Sensei. Deadman loses badly, his killer is killed by another man, and Sensei gets away just after letting Deadman know he ordered his murder at random, and that he wasn't significant to him or the murderer at all. The whole thing leaves him feeling empty and permanently sours his relationship with the god who made him a ghost.
  • Matt Fraction's 2011 Defenders series ended with Doctor Strange altering the past so that the team never formed in the first place. (They had made a fatal mistake in their very first mission, which would have resolved itself without their help anyway).
  • In one issue of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (Marvel), Cobra tricks the Joe team into triggering a fault line which causes an island to rise in the Gulf of Mexico. Cobra claims it as their own country almost as soon as it stops rising. While Cobra's lawyers are busy trying to achieve sovereignty for the new island, Hawk orders an assault to remove Cobra from the island and capture Cobra Commander. What happens is a Curb-Stomp Battle in Joe's favor with them easily overwhelming the Cobra forces. But just as they're about to capture Cobra Commander, they get a call from Hawk telling them to pull out. Cobra's lawyers have succeeded in getting the island declared a separate country and they are now trespassing.
  • Hellblazer had a mammoth 12-issue story spanning two arcs ("Empathy is the Enemy" and "The Red Right Hand") that ended in a manner that wasn't very well received: with the fate of the world being decided by the result of a World Cup football game - something that was entirely out of the hands of the main character.
  • Kid Eternity: A story in Hit Comics had Kid Eternity try to use his powers to stop a wife from abusing her husband. His efforts result in the husband killing the wife under Bluebeard's advice, killing himself to escape consequences for murdering his wife and arriving in the afterlife only to suffer his wife's nagging once more. In the end, Kid Eternity's mentor and guardian Mr. Keeper can't help but brag that Kid Eternity should've left the couple alone.
  • Little Mouse Gets Ready: Little Mouse is told by his mother that he and his family will be going to the barn that day, so he decides to get his clothes on. Then his mom tells him that mice don't wear clothes.
  • Lucky Luke has a story about the Dalton Brothers' uncle, Marcel Dalton, trying with Luke's help to redeem his nephews by buying a bank and having them work in it with him. The whole book focuses on Marcel's and Luke's efforts to have the Daltons adapt to this and struggle against the corrupt banker who tries to get rid of them. Of course, Status Quo Is God in this series, so just when they are done dealing with said corrupt banker, the Dalton finally snap and decide to turn back to crime, Luke is forced to send them to jail again, and Marcel, realizing his nephew are unredeemable, goes back home after thanking Luke for his help.
  • In Mélusine, Melusine goes on a quest to find a legendary and powerful ancient scroll. The road is filled with monsters and dangers. After a long and difficult journey, Melusine finally reaches her goal. She casts the spell inscribed on the scroll to learn its mysterious powers. Melusine finds out it's a teleport spell that instantly bring her back home.
  • Mortadelo y Filemón: If their mission is about searching something, nine times out of ten will be this. For example: one long story is about having to search an envelope hidden in one of the Super's paintings he sold some time ago, which supposedly contains something important. In the end, after a long, grueling mission where they suffer at every turn and the Super punished them for not finding the envelope... it's just a recipe to make fish taste better.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW): "Zen and the Art of Gazebo Repair" starts with Big Macintosh realizing he's out of nails while repairing the gazebo. He tries to go to the hardware store, but there's a festival in town so the streets are packed and lined with vendors, and Mac can go barely two steps without being interrupted. Part 1 ends with Mac discovering that the hardware store is closed (and the Cutie Mark Crusaders accidentally launched fireworks at it). Mac decides to find the owner and ventures back through the town, finding even more obstacles. Finally he finds the owner, who says he was out of nails so he went to Mac's house and borrowed the nails the Cutie Mark Crusaders had left in their clubhouse while building their firework catapult. To top it off, Mac finds when he gets home that the gazebo was destroyed when the Crusaders accidentally launched their fireworks earlier.
  • One More Day and One Moment in Time play this frustratingly straight. In One More Day, Spider-Man is given the option of getting a redo from Mephisto, to prevent his Aunt from getting shot. In exchange, Peter has to trade his marriage. Simple enough right? But then, One Moment in Time revealed that Mephisto changed absolutely nothing by taking Peter and Mary Jane's marriage. History still plays out exactly the same. The only reason that his Aunt comes back to life is that in this new reality, Peter spirited May back to life instead of wasting time making the deal with Mephisto. In other words, May could have come back to life in the original reality if he had just spent more time with her.
  • The first volume of The Old Geezers has one of the three elderly social activist protagonists, Antoine Perron, learn that his recently deceased wife Lucette had a fling with his hated corporate enemy Garan-Servier. He travels across the country to settle things with the retired multi-millionaire once and for all by shooting him to death. But once he actually arrives at his estate, he discovers that Garan-Servier has gone senile and doesn't recognize him or anybody else for that matter due to his memory going bad. Though tempted, Antoine can't bring himself to murder such an oblivious, and even friendly, version of the man who brought him so much misery. Even worse, the only thing Garan-Servier recalls with utmost clarity is his affair with Lucette, which Antoine is loath to discover, went on for much longer than he initially believed.
  • Seven Psychopaths is the story of a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits assembled to assassinate Hitler in the fall of 1941. Little do they know Hitler has already been assassinated. "Hitler" these days is just a role played by a series of body doubles acting as puppets for the Nazi party. The team actually does manage to wipe out the body doubles, thanks largely to the Master of Disguise among them getting himself invited to join them. But the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits idea ultimately backfires, as the Master of Disguise, who also happens to be a narcissistic Glory Hound, decides he can't pass up the chance to become the "most beloved man in Germany", so he kills the only other team member who knew about the body double program and lives out the rest of his days as Hitler. The course of the war remains unaffected.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • After finding a map leading to Uncle Chuck's greatest treasure in issue 7, the Freedom Fighters set out to find it, thinking it might be a great weapon he created. Robotnik, hearing this, tries to beat them to it. After an issue worth of struggles, Robotnik secures the treasure, which turns out to be a bronzed pair of Sonic's baby shoes.
    • Geoffrey St. John's life's work: Restoring Ixis Naugus was pointless because-despite having a Chaos Emerald-Naugus couldn't stop any enemies, couldn't heal the sickness the first Genesis Wave gave him in the old timeline and as of 252 was stripped of his powers by the first Genesis Wave in the new timeline. All that work and the guy's failure spans two histories.
  • The ex-mercenary Darca Nyl's arc in Star Wars Legends. In the series where he was introduced, a Dark Jedi killed his son, a dying Jedi handed over his lightsaber and told him to stop Lycan, and all during the pursuit people assumed that he was a Jedi, and they needed his help. And he gave it, even at the cost of pursuit time, and it felt good. Even after tracking down and killing Lycan, Darca Nyl decides to keep helping people, because it's right and because he thinks that's what his family would have wanted him to do... And then a more recent comic came out, with an older, bitter, isolationist Darca Nyl who failed utterly at helping people and retreated to a cabin where he did nothing but carve statues of his wife and son. The "heroes" of the comic only got him to help by threatening to shoot all the statues.
    • Star Wars comics love this. Old Soldier Able was a clone trooper who survived alone on a forsaken planet for years before the Rebellion found him and recruited him and put him into a commando squad. He was by far the most practical and cynical man there, which sometimes irritated the other Rebels, but he tried to adapt and look out for the last Jedi, Luke... And then a comic came out where the whole squad got transformed into rakghouls by a Sith talisman.
  • Sturmtruppen has them once in a while.
    • A particularly sadistic one is the story arc inspired to Catch-22. A soldier discovers he can get discharged if he's crazy and attempts to convince the Sergeant he's insane, but gets beaten up and called an idiot (with the Sergeant pointing out that being an idiot doesn't count because idiots are the backbone of the army). After a while the Sergeant comes to search for a volunteer to bury some adulterated nitroglycerin (that could explode even more easily than normal), and the soldier finally gets himself declared crazy (because only a madman would volunteer), but as soon as he asks to be discharged, the Doctor points out the catch-22 on the rulebook that says that a madman who asks to be discharged on insanity is not insane. Thus the Sergeant forces him to do the job for which he [the soldier] volunteered... but he snaps and really goes insane due the terror. The last strip has the soldier being dragged into an ambulance bound for the asylum... And the Sergeant bringing him a document that states he's being discharged for insanity.
  • During The '70s, Teen Titans ran a series of back-up stories focused on Lilith Clay as she traveled the country in search of her biological mother. The feature ultimately ended without Lilith ever finding her mom, and instead deciding to abandon her search and stay with the Titans. Her quest to discover her mother's identity would finally be resolved over 12 years later in New Teen Titans, which revealed that Lilith was the daughter of the Greek goddess Thia.
  • One issue of Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was ostensibly about the Backstory of the turtles' vigilante friend Casey Jones. After rescuing the victim of a gay bashing, Casey takes him to a bar and, when the guy wants to know why he does this, spends most of the issue talking about his family and how he became a vigilante after muggers killed his older brother. Only one problem, as the bartender explains after Casey has left... Casey never had a brother. Thus, everything between the initial rescue and that reveal is plot-irrelevant.
    • So... that either makes Casey a victim of a mugging turned brutal beat-down himself. Or a gay man who was once brutally beaten if you want to read between the lines. If not none of this holds true, it was a pretty pointless affair overall, yes.
    • Or it means that Casey is a schizophrenic prone to confabulation, which actually fits very well with the rest of his character.
  • Tintin:
    • The Calculus Affair: The Syldavians and Bordurians spend the whole book trying to kidnap Calculus not only for his knowledge, but because Calculus is carrying plans for his sonic device. At the end, Calculus unscrews his umbrella handle to find the plans are gone... then, when they return to Marlinspike Hall, he finds he forgot to put them in there in the first place, and they were sitting on his desk all along!
    • The Castafiore Emerald: It turns out that the titular emerald was just "stolen" by a magpie.
  • Transmetropolitan features a three-issue subplot (issues #10-12, year 2) involving Officer Stomponato, a corrupt sentient police dog, gradually tracking down Spider Jerusalem in order to exact revenge, only to have the dog accidentally jump to his death, failing to even attract Spider's attention.
    • The main plot of those issues has some of this as well. A cult of people who can't stand to be touched have the frozen head of Spider's ex-wife, and hold it hostage to kill him; said wife intentionally broke their laws before having herself frozen, knowing that since she'd be "dead", they would take their revenge on him instead, and she could be resurrected afterward. Spider points out the obvious: they have her head. He chucks it off a ledge (landing on the dog above), and all is forgiven.
  • Ultimate Spider-Man #28: Peter Parker sees the Rhino tearing up Manhattan on the news, and rushes to go fight him. Over the course of the issue, he's sidetracked by various other problems, including a parent-teacher conference, Flash Thompson being a dick, and Gwen Stacy crying in a dumpster. By the time Spider-Man gets to the scene, Iron Man has already easily subdued the Rhino.
  • Present all the time in the Italian graphic novel Venerdì 12 (from the same author as Rat-Man. The protagonist Aldo was transformed in a monster by a curse because he tried to gift a magic carillon to a woman that didn't love him (who actually dumped him when he tried to give her the carillon. She showed up that day just for that, but still...), and the only ways to lift the curse are to either find a woman who can love him anyway or spill the blood of a virgin:
    • Whenever he tries to get a girlfriend, he miserably fails because of the combination between his uglyness and tendency to pick the Idiot Ball at the worst possible moment. Most notable are the chapters "The Great Isolda" (where Isolda, an extremely fat girl, apparently falls for him in spite of his butler trying everything in his power to separate them. In the end the butler uses magic to make Isolda thin and beautiful... And she promptly dumps Aldo because now she can have better) and "Come Back Home, Aldo!" (where Aldo falls in love with a female dog and escapes with her. The dog calls her master to return home and dumps Aldo);
    • In the chapter "Designated Victim!" Aldo finally decides to cut the knot and kill a virgin. He can't find one. Then he remembers that his butler Giuda told him of his cousin, so ugly she couldn't find a man willing to touch her, and gave him her address, so he breaks in her apartment... And it's not clear who initiated it, but they have sex;
    • The final chapter Subverts it. In it Bedelia, the woman who caused Aldo to get cursed, returns to him, apparently out of love, and he can give her the carillon and finally break the curse... Except that it's Aldo's memory of her, brought to life by the curse, so the act doesn't lift the curse. He then finally finds some dignity and love for himself and lets the memory go, lifting the curse in a completely unexpected way.


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