You Are What You Hate in Comic Books.
General Use
- The "homophobes are all secretly gay" idea shows up in a few comics, including Preacher and The Authority.
- In DC Comics, government agent Cameron Chase has a dislike and distrust (and occasional hatred) of super-beings (both heroes and villains alike) due to her father's murder. (He was a minor superhero, and his career as one resulted in his daughter witnessing his incredibly gory murder at the hands of a villain named Dr. Trap.) Unfortunately for Chase, she fits the bill herself, having a psychic ability to dampen the abilities of other "metahumans", which she apparently triggers subconsciously whenever she is threatened.
Specific Titles
- Done intentionally in the Astro City arc "The Dark Age". Although Royal and Charles Williams didn't care for superheroes and supervillains, seeing them as pretty much the same, by the mid-'80s they have almost become a vigilante team of their own due to their unrelenting pursuit of the man who killed their parents.
- In Empowered, Mindfuck (yes, this is her actual superhero name) takes a peek into (ex-)lover Spooky's memories and instantly grasps that her public persona has been subconsciously patterned after the same vain blond bimbos she was so traumatized by. Both physically (sans actual blond hair) and personality. The bimbos even sold their souls for "supernatural hotness" (sans superpowers) just like Spooky did, and for the exact same reasons. Spooky discovered this when she tried to use her powers to take revenge — her patron demon didn't allow it because he is forbidden from interfering with other demons' clients.
- In the EC Comics title "Shock SuspenStories", there was a story called "Hate!". An all-American everyman who leads a mob to kill his Jewish neighbors by burning their house down finds out that he was adopted and that his real parents were Jewish. He then is victimized by his Jew-hating former friends.
- Infinite Crisis-era Maxwell Lord was prone to making speeches about how metahumans were the cause of all society's ills, and claiming that non-powered heroes like Blue Beetle should be on his side, as fellow normal humans. When Beetle pointed out that Max was currently using his metahuman powers, Max simply shrugged this off as beside the point. He knew who he meant by metahuman, and it wasn't himself.
- In Irredeemable, The Survivor (briefly) helps defeat The Plutonian out of vengeance for killing his twin brother, and soon takes the spot of the world's most powerful hero. The power and reputation quickly corrupt him though, and he soon becomes just as petty and vindictive as the Plutonian was before he became evil. This includes feeling entitled to having Kaidan, who had picked his brother over him, and considering murdering his other brother so he could keep his top spot once The Plutonian comes back.
- In the Judge Dredd story "The Neon Knights", Dredd unmasks the leader of the eponymous robot-hating "Klan", revealing him to be...A CYBORG! "I thought his voice sounded synthetic; like all bigots, he HATED HIMSELF and transferred that hatred to the thing he most resembled...Robots!" is Dredd's explanation.
- Xander Payne from the Mega Man (Archie Comics) comic is leader of the anti-robot group Emerald-Spears but is actually part robot himself. His brother had Xander's eye surgically replaced with a cybernetic implant after Elec Man fried it during Dr. Wily's first world domination attempt.
- The titular character of Marshal Law is a "hero hunter" who positively despises superheroes with every fiber of his being. This is despite the fact that he wears a personalized outfit with a mask, operates under a colorful pseudonym, upholds the public order, and has superpowers. Quite a number of times, other characters either compare him to a typical superhero or just outright call him one, much to his utter displeasure.
- Marvels: Phil Sheldon hates the Nazis with a vengeance like any American, not least of all because he was a war correspondent in World War II and personally witnessed the horrors they committed. Despite this fact, when mutants begin appearing, Phil is initially caught up in the anti-mutant fervor and hates them like many others… until he meets a young mutant girl his daughter has befriended hiding in his house during an anti-mutant race riot, and sees that the fear in her eyes is exactly like that of the concentration camp prisoners he saw in the war. The experience shakes him badly.
- In Thor: God of Thunder, the God Butcher, Gorr, lived his life believing gods did not exist, because he and his people suffered through so much tragedy, particularly those who deeply believed in the gods, that he thought there was just no way anyone with that level of power would allow this stuff to happen... Then two gods in a grudge match crash land next to him, and he realizes that gods aren't helping people because they're too busy fighting each other, so he kills the remaining god with the other's power. He then dedicated himself to killing all gods across all of time, so that everyone would have to learn to cherish what time they had, and would turn to each other for help. He does this by basically empowering himself into a god, and waging war on various pantheons. A god he is torturing asks him if he is so powerful as to be able to do these things, who is more godly than he is? He...does not react well.
- Mocked to hell and back in Rat-Man, where Brakko's mother in law is openly racist and hates him for being black while being black herself (hence how the author gets away with her constant use of the N-word). Considering the series, she's likely too stupid to realize she's black.
- Red Hulk is implied to be someone who really hates the Hulk. He turns out to be General Ross.
- Star Wars (Marvel 1977): Valance hates droids and cyborgs with a seething passion, but is secretly a cyborg himself. He hides his condition by covering his cybernetic parts with false skin, and in his first appearance, he destroyed the hospital where he was rebuilt to keep anyone from learning the truth.
- In Ultimate Spider-Man the biggest mutantphobic person turns out to be a mutant.
- In the Ultimate Universe Magneto and most, if not all, mutants are actually human beings, who have been genetically altered by an airborne variation of the super-soldier serum.
- There is a theory that Rorschach was deeply closeted because of his apparent dislike for homosexuals (and women). See the WMG page for the graphic novel. Somewhat wobbly, since Rorschach dislikes all forms of sexuality.
- In a comic so full of bigotry as X-Men there are bound to be examples:
- Graydon Creed, the founder of the anti-mutant Friends of Humanity in X-Men, is not himself a mutant — but his parents were Mystique and Sabretooth. However, in a twist that Marvel Comics themselves once pointed out, a mutant is a being that differs markedly from their genetic parents. Thus, by not having powers in any way, Graydon Creed is a mutant.
- Larry Trask, son of Sentinel-maker Bolivar Trask. He very nearly succeeded in having his giant robots wipe out all (then-known) mutants, but when his dad's friend Judge Chalmers ripped the power-suppressing amulet off of him, surprise surprise, Larry's a mutant too.
- In God Loves, Man Kills, Anne — The Dragon of the Purifiers, a fanatical religious terrorist organisation who go around executing every mutant that they find, due to their belief that they are agents of Satan, was most devoted and loyal to the leader of this group — Reverend William Stryker, even killing children under his command without batting an eye when they turn out to be mutants. At some point late into the story arc to her horror, she discovers that she is a mutant herself. Stryker soon kills her after this discovery.
- Sentinels can technically be considered mutants, according to Sebastian Shaw. He once outfitted a series of them with a Logic Bomb built in, in the event that he could use it to destroy them if they turned rogue, as Sentinels often do. The logic being that Sentinels were derived from the blueprints of the original Mark-Is, and since then, they have evolved and grown stronger, thus they are Mutants. Since they are Mutants, they must be destroyed, as per their prime directive. Sadly, it doesn't work out as Shawn plans, as Loki fuses three of them into the deadly Tri-Sentinel, his magic overriding Shaw's command; only confuses them long enough for Spider-Man to use his recently gained Captain Universe powers to take them out.
- A surprisingly large number of anti-mutant bigots from the X-Men's Rogues Gallery are cyborgs — including Pierce, Akab, Cameron Hodge, Bastion and the Phalanx. So while they're not mutants, they're not exactly normal humans, either. If you are a truly determined soldier in the war against mutanhood, you cannot not be afraid to let Cybernetics Eat Your Soul.
- The villain Magneto is also an example. He hates Nazis for what they did to him and his family, but as a result became a mutant-supremacist, hating all humans and just becoming a different kind of bigot. (A major case of Depending on the Writer. He's dated humans, and he's gone way out of his way to protect them… but, yes, he's also tried to wipe them out. He's conflicted.)
- In Ultimate X Men, Rev William Stryker Jr is as much a mutant hater as his 616 counterpart, due to his abusive father (based on General Stryker from the movies), and said abusive childhood has left him in utter denial that he's a mutant himself.
