Unintentionally Sympathetic / Comic Books

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Unintentionally Sympathetic interpretations of characters from Comic Books.

• Chick Tracts:
  • Many of the strips' Straw Characters,. particularly those who end up in Hell when they haven't done anything really wrong other than disagreeing with the protagonist. The missionary couple in "Flight 144" are the most infamous example. Most of Chick's Designated Villains are at least given some genuine vices, but these two are genuinely good people and devout Christians themselves, and yet the reader is supposed to root against them simply because they aren't subscribers to Chick's far-right brand of Christianity. Granted, there's likely intended to be a certain level of tragedy involved when good people go to Hell, but it often seems as though God is being unfair in those cases.
  • Esau. Apparently, not fully appreciating his birthright and trading it for some food when he's (most likely literally) starving is bad enough for God to hate him, even if he's largely a victim of his brother Jacob's trickery. He later reconciles with Jacob, but apparently, this, like the conflict between Isaac and Ishmael, is meant to be a parallel to the Israel-Palestinian conflict in Chick's eyes.^note It is unlikely that Chick knew about this or cared, but The Talmud retcons Esau’s character to be much worse than was written in the Book of Genesis, being allegedly guilty of such things as lying about forgiving Jacob (and actually trying to kill him when they kiss and make up), being an Ungrateful Bastard, disrespecting Jacob even after his brother’s death, and raping and murdering a girl. Of course, going only by Genesis there is no textual evidence for any of this whatsoever, and the ancient rabbis seem to have just made it up centuries after the fact because of Esau’s descendants were hostile to the Israelites, and Chick would reject it because he’s a sola scriptura Protestant, so it’s weird that he would go for such an unfavorable interpretation.
• ElfQuest: Rayek comes off as this in the first book. Yeah, he's an arrogant Jerkass, but Cutter won the trial of wits by openly cheating, and the judge let him skate on a flimsy technicality based on the fact that he didn't know any better. Nothing breeds sympathy like watching a competitor being unfairly mocked because he had the audacity to follow the rules while his opponent was ruled the winner for being ignorant.
  • The other two trials aren't any better. The first trial is a hand-to-hand, blindfolded wrestling match, where Rayek is a hunter for a peaceful village that has no enemies, and Cutter is a seasoned veteran of an endless conflict between humans and elves for his entire life. In the third, Savah lays it out that Rayek's fear of losing is a more difficult one than Cutter's fear of heights to overcome, but she chose a contest for both that only tested a fear of heights and made Cutter go first, meaning that the best Rayek could do in that trial was tie for winner, depending on whether Cutter succeeded or failed.
  • However, it's not really fair to say Cutter cheated in the Trial of Wits. The Trial of Wits required him to retrieve his sword from a crevice where it was out of reach, without using magic. He did it by using Skywise's magnetized lodestone that Skywise had lent him for luck. No magic involved, although it looked enough like magic that most of the onlookers, and Rayek, thought it was magic. But Suntoucher, who was judging the contest, apparently knew enough basic physics to know it was not.
  • Similarly, the Trial of Hand is a Sun Folk game. If anyone had the advantage, it should have been Rayek. It's hardly Cutter's fault that Rayek challenged him to a contest where Cutter's natural advantages were enough to overcome Rayek's experience.
• The Incredible Hulk: Writers have a habit of painting anyone who reacts negatively to the Hulk's destructive temper as being in the wrong. Thaddeus Ross is the most frequent victim of this but even other superheroes aren't immune:
  • World War Hulk: The decision of the Illuminati (Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Black Bolt and Dr. Strange) to shoot the Hulk into outer space is a mild case of this. The impetus for the Illuminati's decision was the Hulk going on a rampage which killed 26 people. This was also a period in which anti-superhero political forces were just LOOKING for an excuse to enact registration laws. But in doing so, they lied to their friend, took the law into their own hands, and dismissed Banner’s humanity in favor of expedience. Though they didn't intend for him to land on Sakaar or lose everything, their arrogance and lack of empathy directly led to the rise of Worldbreaker Hulk.
  • Giant-Size Hulk #1: The story "Green Pieces" has the Champions of Los Angeles (Black Widow, Iceman, Hercules, Darkstar, Ghost Rider and Angel) about to be recommended for freeing the U.S from the mind control of Dr. Doom in an older story when they receive word that Banner is back in town. Knowing what tends to happen when the Hulk is around, they scout the city for him. Angel encounters him first when Banner hulks out in the middle of a traffic jam. The Hulk throws a car door at Angel who has to intercept it from hitting a nearby couple. The other Champions arrive and engage the Hulk until he decides to leave for a hospital and turn over a woman who was in the car to the doctors. This woman turns out to be Jennifer Walters (best known as She-Hulk), Banner's cousin, and after her surgery she explains that Bruce was trying to get her to the hospital because her appendix burst. When Hercules asks why the Hulk did not simply explain his troubles, Jen responds that the Champions never tried to ask him what his problem was. The story tries to make it look like the Champions jumped to conclusions and attacked the Hulk without cause but the Hulk did not make himself look sympathetic by attacking the first person who approached him and endangering nearby civilians. And considering that Jen was in the car when Banner hulked out, it's a miracle she was still alive when he got her to the hospital.
• Justice League of America: The narrative of Justice League The Rise Of Arsenal was specifically trying to make sure Roy Harper was Jumping Off the Slippery Slope following the loss of his arm by Prometheus and his daughter being violently crushed to death in Justice League: Cry for Justice, with him verbally lashing out at his loved ones when they try to help before he relapses into his heroin addiction and becomes a violent antihero. Roy fans are still arguing about how sympathetic he comes off in this story due to criticisms over how his friends handled his situation (such as allowing him to be kept on a heavy amount of pain medication while he was comatose despite knowing his history, which coupled with the infection in his arm, led to him waking up already hallucinating and emotionally unstable on top of his grief). The scene in the second issue where he attacks Mia Dearden at Lian's funeral was meant to show him being unreasonable and horrible as he drives Mia to tears, blaming her for leaving Lian alone when she did. It instead comes across as a grieving father enraged that the person culpable in his child's death chose his daughter's funeral, of all places, to vainly attempt to beg his forgiveness for what happened. The fact that everyone else sides with Mia instead of asking why in God's name she genuinely thought this was a good time to approach Roy to apologize for her actions makes his anger at her and them a lot more understandable (even if his insult at Donna Troy about how her son died because "she was whoring in space with Kyle Rayner" is indeed harsh).
• The Red Ten:
  • Androika, from what little is established of her due to being the first to die, was said to have killed her creators. Messages between the two revealed one was worried she was having an existential breakdown regarding her existence, but that and the deaths are all we know. It's never confirmed as to what exactly happened, making it vague if she deliberately killed them. As such, it makes her a bit more sympathetic due to the idea that she might not have been to blame for what happened.
  • Mold. The narrative specifies that Mold isn't technically alive and has no will of its own, so you can't really hate a puppet. You can very much hate its pedophilic creator, but knowing Mold had no choice in the actions it took being used as a weapon by everyone, it's easy to feel sorry for the creature when it had no control over of its life only to die as a puddle of goo.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW):
  • While Shadow attempting to kill a then harmless Mr. Tinker (who's an amnesiac Eggman) is very morally questionable, he's not wrong to fear that Eggman will return to his evil ways. While Sonic does get him to stand down after stating that if Eggman can't be forgiven for his actions, then neither can Shadow. A big difference is that Shadow was brainwashed into doing evil and joined the side of good after getting his memory back and sought to atone for his mistakes, while Mr. Tinker aka Eggman has only turned good because of his memory loss. But thanks to Sonic's Thou Shalt Not Kill mentality, Shadow's fears come to pass as Eggman gets his memories back and immediately returns to evil, and this kickstarts a majority of the troubles Sonic, his friends, and other characters would face in later issues. Proving that killing an amnesiac Eggman may not be the best choice, Shadow was right about his beliefs that suffering memory loss doesn't make someone less dangerous.
  • Shadow in Issues #81 and #82. While he does cause some of the conflict by refusing to work with Sonic and Tails, later attempts to attack Soleil while Soleil is possessing the Chaos Emerald, all while refusing to trust Sonic with its safety. He does make it clear that he only wants to have possession of the Emerald to keep it away from those who would use it for nefarious purposes. He also didn't know about Soleils Split Personality crisis as he wasn't around when Sonic helped Soleil resolve the issues with Soleil's parents. So as far as Shadow is concerned, Soleil aka Lunar is still a thief who stole the Chaos Emeralds for reasons that could possibly lead to another world threatening crisis.
• The Spectre: There is a very old comic story starring the Spectre back when he was just a normal superhero and not the personification of the wrath of God, which opens with a scientist who receives telepathic messages telling him to build a rocket and follow the source. He does, only to be tricked into freeing the villain, and is rewarded by being immobilized forever by the ray which had trapped the villain. And he isn't freed at the end, since the villain never tells anyone how he escaped. The scientist asks for a reward immediately after freeing him, so he’s meant to come across as an Asshole Victim who only helps people for selfish reasons. However, we see so little of his personality and his punishment is so disproportionate to his vice that readers just feel sorry for the guy.
• Teen Titans: Terra from the storyline The Judas Contract is referred to repeatedly as an insane, unrepentant monster who has no one to blame but herself for her behavior. It's hard to believe this one-sided characterization for her. There are several signs towards Freudian Excuses for her. She had a bad home life, was ran out of her home country, and ultimately met Deathstroke. Their sexual relationship is supposed to make Terra seem gross, however instead many view Deathstroke (who is at least thirty years older than her and an adult) as grooming and manipulating the vulnerable teenager. Not helping is that Beast Boy, the teammate most romantically interested in her, was very much an immature womanizer towards her yet received no consequence for it. Terra being unintentionally sympathetic is a large reason why DC retconned her later on, with a movie and several later cartoons applying outright Adaptational Heroism to make her sympathy more intentional (often with a dose of Adaptational Villainy for Deathstroke's manipulative nature), complete with her making a Heel–Face Turn, though the former two works make use of Redemption Equals Death (outright in the film and depicted as petrification in the Teen Titans cartoon), and the latter cartoon had her survive but her brother Geo-Force replaces her in the villains' schemes. A 2000s issue implies that Deathstroke drugged her into being how she was, which was demonstrated to also have happened to Cassandra Cain, while Rebirth depicts Deathstroke seducing Terra as a Moral Event Horizon.
• Thorgal: Dark Action Girl Kriss of Valnor in her debut "The Archers". Thorgal scolds her for sadistically taking revenge on the bandits who captured her. We're supposed to agree that she went overboard, however, it's difficult to blame Kriss given how those bandits gang raped her all night long. As a result, Thorgal comes off as a jerk for having no empathy and slapping her face, which eventually results in her grudge against him. This is remediated in her later appearances where she gets much worse.
• Watchmen: Alan Moore was genuinely surprised to find out how many readers loved Rorschach despite writing the character as a paranoid nutcase and exactly the opposite to Alan Moore politically. The most likely explanation is that 1) even though Rorschach's methods are excessive, they're still cool to watch, 2) Walter Kovacs is very clearly traumatized, and 3) most of the people he fights are even worse than he is.^note Key word being most— the cops who apprehend him are just doing their jobs.
  • Actually, Alan Moore intended for Rorschach to be sympathetic yet flawed, and even mentioned in interviews at the time Watchmen was released that Rorschach was his favorite character. What he never intended was for some readers to uncritically accept all of Rorschach's viewpoints. There is also a bit of Flip-Flop of God involved, as Moore got more critical of superheroes and their fans over time.
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942) Vol. 1: While it's pretty easy to feel uncomfortable at Wondy having any of her villains locked in a Venus Girdle, Byrna Brilyant (Snowman/Blue Snowman) really gets the short end of the stick. Her initial crime is attacking and holding an entire community for ransom using "blue snow" which does not actually harm any of her victims physically. She's then taken, without trial, to Reformation Island and locked in a Venus Girdle indefinitely alongside serial killers and horrific war criminals. She never falls completely under the Girdle's mind-controlling sway, so while she has no choice but to follow every order given to her and can tell the thing is forcing her to act happy about it, she's horrified and doing everything she can to escape. When she joins Villainy Inc. with new armor she secretly made while imprisoned, her anger feels extremely justified.
  • Infinite Crisis portrays Wonder Woman killing Maxwell Lord as cold-blooded murder. However, this ignores that Max had taken control of Superman and was trying to use him to start a war between humans and metahumans by having him kill thousands of innocent people. Diana herself had begged Max to cease his villainous actions, had used the Lasso of Truth to determine that the only way to stop Max was by killing and was doubtful she could survive if she continued to fight Superman; Diana killing Max was less her committing cold-blooded murder and more her being backed into a corner and taking the best option available to her. This wasn't even the first time Diana had killed a villain before but it was the first time she killed one who looked human... which doesn't paint the people angry at her in a good light. Not helping things was the fact that on the verge of defeating Brother Eye, the rogue satellite projected footage of the death scene worldwide in an attempt to drag her reputation down with itself. Some of the heroes that still took her side, like Superman and Batman, were upset for a different reason, regardless of how bad a man is, heroes don't kill, period. Ultimately, the incident causes Wonder Woman to turn right around and convince Batman to spare Alexander Luthor Jr. when the villain puts Nightwing in a coma in what was originally intended to be the hero's death scene.
• X-Men: Marvel spent a lot of effort to destroy Cyclops's legacy as a hero during their push of The Inhumans as essentially a replacement for X-Men, which all came to a head during the infamous Terrigen Mists storyline. Essentially, the Inhumans' Terrigen Mists got released into Earth's atmosphere, creating two large clouds that floated around the Earth. Terrigen Mists caused two things to happen. Firstly, they unlock superpowers in any human that has the Inhuman gene, making the Mists important (and even holy) to the Inhumans as a whole. Secondly, they cause infertility and eventually death in anyone who has the mutant X-gene. Over the course of several months, many mutants died from the Mist. Cyclops, in an attempt to save the rest of mutantkind, led a mission which ultimately destroyed one of the clouds. In retaliation, Black Bolt and Medusa killed him on the spot. Then somehow, society as a whole came to see Cyclops as a monster for this act, with one character explicitly comparing him to Hitler for destroying the cloud. That's right; the character opposed to gassing innocents to death is compared to Hitler. And it's clear that the audience is supposed to agree, even though the Mists were killing Mutants while the Inhumans didn't really care at all. And to top it off, the Inhumans don't need the Mists to survive. They can live their whole life without ever being exposed, they simply don't develop any powers.
  • The worst part is that Cyclops didn't even do these supposedly-terrible acts; he'd actually died from Terrigen poisoning early on, and the "Cyclops" seen afterwards was secretly just a mental projection by Emma Frost. Even after this revelation becomes public knowledge, other characters still talk badly about Cyclops.
• Xanadu (Vicky Wyman): Vicky Wyman later admitted that she didn't establish Reginald Plume as a villain clearly enough in the series' beginning, such as Empress Alicia was rightly concerned he had designs on the throne. After all, he was responsible for the Ever-Changing Palace's security and thus was justified in chasing down Tabbe for breaking into it. Furthermore, Tabbe technically raped his girlfriend, Fatima (It was more like he seduced her, albeit without the explicit option of declining, and she admitted to Plume's face that he was very gentle about it) while in the commission of that trespass and some readers note that one would understand Reginald would really want to make him pay for that. The facts that Tabbe and Jonathan thwarted him, Fatima didn't mind her encounter with Tabbe to the point of falling in love with the cat, and Plume was suddenly saddled with a dragon warrior from the Golden Realm to enhance security that he is not trusted by the Empress to manage as he sees fit are further insults that you'd half understand the villainous deeds he does next.
• Zenith: The titular character is supposed to be seen as a spoiled brat for refusing to become a superhero, despite all the horrible shit going on. Putting aside the fact Zenith is a teenager whom everyone treats like an adult, Zenith has very good reasons for not wanting to be a superhero: he has no actual training, his superpowers are unreliable since they wax and wane in potency meaning he might be not powerful enough to save the day, his parents were superheroes who disappeared and were assumed to have to died in action and he witnessed Red Dragon being horribly killed by Masterman in the first story arc. Even when Zenith actually does something heroic, people are still assholes to him. Not helping matters is that most of the surviving superheroes are actually evil Eldritch Abominations who intend to destroy entire universes as part of their plan to take over the multiverse. As such, Zenith wanting to focus on his pop star career is very understandable.