Irredeemable / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation: This may very well be the point of the whole series.
- Plutonian: A self-absorbed Ax-Crazy Psychopathic Manchild in waiting whose rampage was guaranteed as soon as he found an excuse? Or a deeply emotionally damaged Broken Ace who suffered from a lifetime of rejection and alienation and tried to be a good hero (even if it was ultimately for selfish reasons) until he was pushed over the edge after making a tragic mistake that cost him the things that he valued most? In light of the reveal that Tony was a probe sent by his multiverse traveling parents that took on a human form after responding to the strong emotions of an insane woman who had killed her child, possibly corrupting him from the start, one could even debate whether Tony ever really had a choice to become a monster or not.
- Max Damage: Is he a former career criminal who was pushed to make a genuine effort to reform after seeing the horror the Plutonian inflicted and how helpless he was when it happened, along with figuring that the Plutonian's fall would have dark consequences for humanity? A man who had the potential to become a great hero all along but wasted it on crime? And just how much of his reformation was pushed by genuine regret for his crimes as opposed to rational self-interest or even trying to one-up his longtime arch enemy?
- Survivor: Is he a heroic man who snapped from the stress of the Plutonian's rampage, losing his brother, and bearing the responsibility of keeping order in the world, all of that combining with the distrust he knew everyone else had for him? Or a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing whose power boost and loss of his admittedly reckless brother (as he no longer needed to keep him in check anymore) gave him the opportunity to act upon his hidden desires? And in regards to Kaidan, is he trying to act like his brother in the hopes of winning her over, or is he acting like his brother as a coping mechanism due to his brother's death?
- Alana: Is she a kind woman who suffered from the dangers of dating a man like the Plutonian (who also played her for a fool using his Dan Hartigan persona) and justifiably got angry at him for keeping her in the dark about his human disguise? A reformed Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who took advantage of the prestige that came from dating Tony and was petty enough to out Tony's secret identity even if her anger was warranted? Alana is shown to blame herself for the Plutonian's rampage since she tattled his secret identity so either one can fit with this.
- Qubit: Is his stubborn desire to save Tony despite his crimes a display of optimism and compassion? Or is it selfish moralizing that, as Survivor claims, leaves him responsible for every single victim of the Plutonian’s rampage from that moment forward.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: One occurs late through Irredeemable. When Plutonian is sent to Gehnom, his unconscious body is recovered by a group of aliens that take him inside a building, and they robe him. Then they start humping his body immediately afterward. This is immediately lampshaded by someone who sees it over surveillance footage - "Okay, this just got really weird." The aliens are then called off by security, and this is never mentioned again.
Complete Monster: The Plutonian was once a superhero who only saved lives for the adoration it brought him. However, his inability to handle any form of criticism led to him snapping and becoming the most evil being the world had ever known. Starting his evil campaign by painfully lobotomizing his teenage sidekick, Plutonian later massacred the population of Sky City, numbering in the millions, to keep a mistake he made from going public. After hunting down his former teammates and brutally murdering them and their entire families, children and babies included, Plutonian annihilates the country of Singapore solely because an ambassador from said country lied to him. Seemingly locked away forever on an alien planet, Plutonian rejects an alien's attempts to redeem him and leads a breakout with a group of psychotic criminals. Returning to Earth, Plutonian carves his own insignia into the U.S.A., killing thousands of people, slaughters entire cities and uses dozens of superheroes as ammo to fling into space. After trying to murder the last remaining superheroes, Plutonian is fully willing to let the entire Earth perish due to radiation poisoning just to spite his nemesis, Qubit, only saving the planet because his own life is on the line. Though having many possible excuses and sympathetic moments throughout the story, it is slowly revealed that Plutonian was ultimately nothing more than a childish sociopath who would kill innumerable innocents just because he wasn't universally loved, while caring for no one but himself.
Cry for the Devil: As atrocious as his deeds are, it's hard not to feel terrible for how the Plutonian seemed to have the deck stacked badly against him from the start, what with the circumstances of his "birth", a childhood spent being thrown around from one foster home to the next where everyone feared him, a Friendless Background, and just not having the right headspace to handle the enormous responsibilities of superheroism.
Foe Yay Shipping:
- Deconstructed. Modeus both hated the Plutonian and loved him, leading to him building robotic sex dolls and trying to destroy everything that might be competition, among other things.
- Possibly inverted in issue #23. During his mental fugue, Plutonian sees Alana, his ex-girlfriend, turning into Modeus. While it's left up in the air for interpretation, it does seem to indicate that Plutonian, on some level, is so desperate to be loved that he'll take it even from his arch-enemy Modeus.
- One possible interpretation for Qubit's quest to redeem the Plutonian (to the point of saving his life on occasions) is that he's in love with the Plutonian. As Qubit is an expy of the Tenth Doctor who has always tried to redeem his arch-nemesis The Master (with whom he has a lot of Foe Yay himself) in spite of the latter's lack of repentance, there is some ground. And on the flip side, Tony seems to take a particular delight in pushing Qubit and testing his moral boundaries.
Harsher in Hindsight: The Beware the Superman trope itself is used in Injustice: Gods Among Us, where Superman himself goes rogue due to a tragic event that causes him to abandon all of his morals. Or rather, a Superman in an alternate dimension has a Face–Heel Turn and establishes a dictatorial regime over the Earth just like the Plutonian. But then again, unlike Plutonian, Injustice Superman is more Well-Intentioned Extremist rather than Omnicidal Maniac. He isn't out for revenge, he is genuinely trying to save the world. And he is still reluctant to kill his former friends, even Batman who tries to take him down multiple times. Even at his worst, Superman is nowhere near as evil as Plutonian - he was definitely done right.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Volt complaining about black men with electrical powers being a cliché was funny before The Amazing Spider-Man 2 gave Electro a Race Lift. Now it's riotous.
- Not to mention his comments about wanting to be a black speedster and hoping that wouldn't be too racist; some time after the start of The New 52, the post-Flashpoint DC Universe gained a black speedster, no less than five years after the issue in question.
- In a scene of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Batman has a nightmare where Superman goes evil and acts much like the Plutonian.
- The Plutonian's backstory in general becomes this when not only would there be a film adaptation of the comic but there would be one similar to his own.
Jerkass Woobie:
- Max Damage, for many of the same reasons as the Plutonian, (who, while rather pitiful, quickly becomes too evil to count as this) with a good helping of Sense Loss Sadness added on to his own list of troubles. He becomes more of an Iron Woobie as the series goes on, as he grows into more of a genuine hero.
- Annie, AKA Headcase. As her codename implies, she's pretty far off her rocker, but it's hard to blame her considering the big sack of crap the world's become after the Plutonian went rogue and seeing her whole family getting brutally murdered by the Diamonds.
Moral Event Horizon:
- The first thing we see the Plutonian do is incinerate the Hornet's wife and child right in front of him — and that's not even the first atrocity he's committed. Chronologically, Tony likely passed the MEH when he destroyed Sky City and lobotomized Samsara.
- Max Damage, in the spin-off comic Incorruptible, is doing his best to be a hero despite the fact that he passed his Moral Event Horizon years ago and never looked back until now.
  - Even then, Max was about to cross the line by unleashing a supervirus that may have killed even him when the Plutonian showed up. Max thought the Plutonian was there to stop him before the Plutonian killed everyone in sight.
- The Survivor started inching towards it since Scylla's death, but the action that puts him over this line is when, upon Tony's escape from the Vespans' captivity, he was willing to murder his other brother Elliot in order to become even stronger and have enough power to kill Tony. This could be taken as a Shoot the Dog moment, but given the Survivor's sizable ego, growing temper, the many levels in jerkass he's taken since his power boost, and the fact that his main claim on personal suffering was Tony killing Scylla, that rings a tad hollow.
- Modeus taking control of Bette Noire's body and raping Tony, and the fact that his possessing Bette's body and accessing her true powers can actually destroy a whole star system, which he knows and doesn't care about makes it scarier in showing just how far he'll go to achieve his goals. Add also his possessing of Samsara, exploiting Tony's lingering paternal feelings for the boy and spreading carnage with his "beloved".
- The Reveal of what Hornet did to secure his Betrayal Insurance seems to be one in-universe. Namely, he sent the coordinates of peaceful, defenseless worlds to the Vespans to help them secure and expand their empire on the condition that they return to Earth to take Plutonian away if it came to that. Hornet himself is almost breaking down as he discusses it, Qubit dismissively grunts, "Go to Hell, Jim." as he terminates the message, and Survivor is shocked and appalled to hear about it. Made worse by the fact that, as he admits, had Tony never snapped, he would have done what he did All for Nothing.
Once Original, Now Common: One of the first major "Superman goes bad" stories... which, now that those are a dime a dozen, can make a late arrival to the series wonder what's so impressive about it, if anything.
Squick:
- When Modeus, in Bette's body, rapes Tony (using her powers to make this possible), he mentions at the end that the release from that would probably have blown a normal woman's head off. That's a little more information than we needed there, buddy.
- The very adult Max Damage dating a teenager, since before the series start, where by the series she is still currently only 16.
Unintentionally Unsympathetic: The fact that the 30-something Max Damage's "lover" is a 16 year old girl who he's waiting for to be legal (her codename literally being "Jailbait") has some readers completely revolted by the man, even beyond the actions that are portrayed as supposed to be bad by him. Ironically, one of the first things he does after his Heel–Face Turn is distance himself from her because he's fully aware of how messed up their relationship is.

YMMV / Irredeemable

Edit Locked