Better Than It Sounds/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Comic books are not just kids stories! They're a viable art form capable of telling mature stories with deep characters. Just look at these examples:

A-E

  • Action Philosophers!: A comic book about the life stories of famous philosophers.
  • Albedo Anthropomorphics: The feature series is a Funny Animal science fiction military series where every major adventure ends with a serious discussion of its sociopolitical ramifications.
  • All-Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder: A rich man kidnaps a young boy and tries to make him live in a cave eating rats.
  • American Born Chinese: The heartwarming stories of, respectively, a Chinese boy, a Chinese stereotype and a talking monkey.
  • American Splendor: A grumpy file clerk and jazz fan tells stories about his own life and thoughts.
  • Animal Man: A C-List superhero from the '60's goes through a literal life crisis and has to deal with his existence via Rage Against the Author.
  • Annihilation: C-List superheroes fight bugs in space.
  • Archie Comics: A blonde and a brunette fight over a Redheaded Hero.
    • Archie Comics meets The Punisher A gun-toting vigilante teams up with a teenager to capture a criminal who's escaped to idyllic small town America.
  • Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth: A man remodels his house, then his family dies and he goes insane. Decades later, a clown and his crazy friends take over the house and invite a vigilante who likes to dress up to visit. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Astro City: A guy who is depressed because of overwork, homesickness and lack of romance, a ten year old girl who doesn't know what hopscotch is, a guy who beats people up while dressed as a clown, a metallic former crook, a teenager who dresses as an altar boy because he's annoyed at his dead father and other inhabitants of the same city have adventures and are psychoanalyzed.
  • Aquaman: The adventures of the mutant bastard child of a sailor and a mermaid.
  • Associated Student Bodies: College kid from conservative family gets stuck in gay dorm. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Asterix: The adventures of old-fashioned Frenchmen with a penchant for fighting and pork.
  • The Authority Bunch of popular superhero ripoffs want to make the world a better place by killing people.
  • The Avengers: A man with a mechanical armour, a steroid-enhanced man in an American flag get up, the God of Thunder, and other costumed cuckoos get together to fight the forces of evil.
  • Avengers The Initiative: Superheroes go to Boot Camp.
  • Baby Blues: An early 90s couple have trouble raising their babies.
  • Batman: Rich kid watches his parents get shot. Decides to squander their fortune by building himself a rocket powered car and becoming a vigilante. His arch-nemesis is a drugged-up clown.
    • Alternative: Rich man beats up the poor, the insane, and a clown.
    • Alternative: Rich guy dresses up like a bat, lives with a kid in short shorts, and fights the mentally compromised.
    • Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: A 55-year-old billionaire with a death wish fights a gang of mutants, a homosexual clown, and Superman with the help of a 13-year-old girl.
    • Batgirl: Abused and learning-disabled runaway girl finds a constructive outlet for her death wish.
    • Batman And Robin: An acrobat and his Tyke Bomb stepbrother fight the mentally ill, estranged family members, and sometimes a mentally ill estranged family member.
    • Battle For The Cowl: Brothers fight over their apparently dead step-father's stuff.
  • Birds of Prey: A paraplegic, a screamer, and a crossbow-enthusiast develop a social club.
  • Blacksad: A feline detective in a world of furries must solve cases of murder, racism, and the rather gritty realities of life, while dealing with a hygiene-challenged sidekick. Originally in French.
  • Bloom County: A naive talking penguin and his woodland creature friends hang out with a boy in glasses, another boy who wants to be a ballerina, and a Vietnam Vet.
  • Blue Beetle: A high school kid who wants to be a dentist teams up with a homicidal alien superweapon, and fights an array of Genre Savvy villains with the assistance of his family and friends.
    • Ted Kord: Batman without the psychological problems.
  • Bone: A slacker, a corrupt politician, and a literature buff are chased into the desert and plunge into a valley, where they meet a queen and princess who specialize in cows and fight a crazy old woman who spits out bugs.
  • The Boondocks: An angry black kid with a huge afro bitches about the current black celebrities. Also his brother is an 8-year-old gangsta.
  • Booster Gold: A disgraced athlete travels through time to make money.
  • Brother Juniper: The day-to-day life of a joyful monk.
  • Buck Godot Zap Gun for Hire: On a lawless world, a man protects a woman from religious fanatics, prevents a kidnapping, stops a hijacking, and works to save the population of a doomed world. It's a comedy.
    • Buck Godot, zap gun for hire: Psmith: Love blossoms amidst assassination attempts by a stubborn drunk.
    • Buck Godot, zap gun for hire: The Gallimaufry: Tax law causes a man to visit a brothel.
  • Bullet Points: What happens if Professor Erskine gets shot one day earlier. Alternate History ensues.
  • Cable and Deadpool: Cyborg Mutie Jesus and a brain-damaged, motormouthed mercenary have morally questionable adventures that involve one of them turning into goo and the other eating him, then vomiting him back up. Hijinx ensue!
  • Calvin and Hobbes: A boy and his talking stuffed animal travel through time and discuss politics.
  • Captain America (comics): Scrawny shrimp is rejected from the army, takes drugs and becomes icon of America.
  • Captain Atom: A Vietnam veteran tries to reconnect with his now-adult children after having been absent from their lives since they were babies, and also tries to get over his dead wife. He falls in love with and eventually marries a terrorist..
  • Catwoman: A crazy cat lady goes running around the city waving a whip.
  • Cerebus the Aardvark: A funny animal sets out on an adventure that is really just a thinly-veiled way for the author to work through his beliefs. Then the author goes apewire and everything gets really, really weird.
  • Chew: A Chinese man eats things.
  • Civil War: Concerned citizens protest government legislation. Things go out of hand. YouTube and Myspace are somehow involved.
  • Close To Home: Everyday life is really, really weird
  • Concrete: A man gets his brain transplanted into a stone body by aliens.
  • Crisis on Infinite Earths: A man and his counterpart decide to end their long feud, getting many people involved. This destroys most of existence. The survivors don't remember most of this after the fact.
    • Infinite Crisis: The few people who did remember that fight are pissed off by the fact that no one else does and that they are all too Darker and Edgier than they used to be. A teenage boy becomes one of the most dangerous threats to all of existence, but is very whiny.
    • 52: While the real stars of the DCU are Put on a Bus, minor side characters you barely recognize have their own struggles, sometimes against their own alter egos. Culminates in an epic battle against a sarcastic Butterfly of Doom for the fate of something which hadn't existed for over twenty years.
    • Final Crisis: Turns out the original man and his counterpart weren't exactly who we thought they were. The real man is now a threat to that thing that hadn't existed for over twenty years and more. Only one or two (relatively) small group(s) of people know about this; everyone else is distracted by the more immediate, yet equally serious threat of an old man destroying everything by sitting in a chair, who eventually kills Batman. Needs to be read a few times to be understood completely.
      • Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds: The teenage boy discovers that people don't think to highly of him in the future and decides that just being whiny about this won't do much, so he decides to make people respect him. Two previously dead characters are brought back by three versions of the same team (who have never met prior) to stop the teenage boy. The teenage boy manages to get back to home, but wants to go back since people think he's a psycho.
  • Daredevil: A blind man beats up ninjas, assassins, hitmen, and mobs. They cannot hurt him, so they kill his girlfriend instead.
  • Dark Empire: A Magnificent Bastard who was thrown down a shaft six years ago comes Back from the Dead.
  • Dark Reign: After he kills the leader of an alien invasion, a man who's secretly an insane supervillain is put in charge of the nation's new top crime-fighting agency.
    • No, that sounds better than the actual thing, really.
  • Darkhawk: Teenager finds an amulet that allows him to transform into an alien android and uses his powers to fight crime while trying to keep his family from falling apart at the seams.
  • Deadpool: A cancer patient gets healing superpowers that leave him deformed and crazy, so he kills people for money and never shuts up. He has No Fourth Wall.
  • Dick Tracy: A dude always dressed in yellow and armed with gadgets that are almost ridiculous pursues people easily identified by their hideous deformities.
  • DMZ: A photographer goes to New York City, turns out it's not such a great place.
  • Doctor Strange: Surgeon attempts to get his hands treated and ends up becoming the most powerful sorcerer on the planet.
  • Doom Patrol: People with unfortunate medical/metaphysical conditions save the world repeatedly, but people mostly don't notice.
  • Dork Tower: A bunch of nerds bicker with each other and play role-playing games with a muskrat. One of them has the hots for a Perky Goth.
  • Earth X: Everybody gains superpowers, but are powerless to stop an egg from hatching.
  • Elf Quest: Elves go on a quest. Um, did I make that one too easy?
    • Magitek aliens go looking for their old spaceship and otherwise adventure.
  • Empowered: An artist best known for his print adaptations of a Japanese cartoon decides to base an ongoing superhero series on a set of soft-porn bondage sketches he did on commission. The titular heroine is aware of this and not really thrilled by it. The art of the final, published comic is uninked, uncolored pencil sketches.
  • The Eternal Smile: A fantasy hero's life falls apart because of an anachronism, an Uncle Scrooge knock-off discovers his life is a lie, and a shy office worker gains self-confidence after falling for a classic Internet scam.

F-J

  • Fables: A Massive Multiplayer Crossover featuring characters from Fairy Tales and folklore, who are forced out of their homelands by a ruthless dictator and take refuge in New York City.
  • The Family Upstairs: A guy tries to drive his noisy neighbors as mad as they've driven him. Those Two Guys eventually get their own strip.
  • Fantastic Four: A Nerd, his girlfriend, her brother and the nerd's best friend live together and spend their time bickering and fighting the Nerd's insecure college rival, who really doesn't know how to let go of a grudge.
  • The Far Side: Weird things happen to animals and fat people with glasses.
  • Fell: A good cop tries to make a difference in a bad city. He doesn't.
  • Fish Police: An alcoholic fish, who may have once been a human, has to solve crimes.
  • The Flash: One habitually late forensic scientist gets struck by lightning and chemicals and goes real fast, while later on another young man gets struck by lightning and chemicals and goes real fast, then real slow, (relatively speaking) then real fast, then REALLY fast, then has a suit made out of "goes fast".
    • Jay Garrick: A man breaths in hard water vapors, then starts to run really fast.
  • FoxTrot: A nerd, his siblings, and his pet reptile discuss current things.
  • Frazz: An elementary school janitor ex-musician philosophises with the students.
    • If you want people to actually give it a try, tell them it's when Calvin and Hobbes grows up gets older and becomes a school employee.
  • Fritz the Cat: A Funny Animal feline con artist goes on wild adventures and has a lot of sex. Crows stand in for African Americans. Created as the result of an early form of what later became the Furry Fandom.
  • Garfield: The everyday life of a lazy, gluttonous Deadpan Snarker who lives with a perennial loser and his dumb friend, usually with No Fourth Wall. Some think he may have died 20 years ago.
  • Garfield Minus Garfield: Perhaps the most iconic, well-known newspaper comic strip character outside of Snoopy is removed from his own strip. Predictably, this makes the strip a lot less funny.
  • Get Fuzzy: Similar to the above comic, but the Deadpan Snarker is NOT lazy nor gluttonous.
  • Global Frequency:Heroes-R-Us with crowdsourcing.
  • Gordon Yamamoto and the King of the Geeks: A bully gets a spaceship stuck up his nose, and teams up with a geek to get it out. He pays the geek back by using animal crackers and a donut to help the geek deal with his daddy issues.
  • Gotham Central: Police officers fight crime while dealing with the interference of an obsessed billionaire.
  • Great Lakes Avengers: A guy discovers he's immortal and teams up with a mute dinosaur, a 2-dimensional man, the grim reaper and a bulimic fat chick to fight crime. There are lots of squirrels and murders. They Fight Crime, and a guy in bondage gear who likes to dress up as the leader of a small European country.
  • Green Arrow: An aging hunter gets involved in political situations and cheats on his girlfriend.
    • The team is a lady who wears fishnets to work, a (former?) Buddhist, an AIDS patient, and a LIBERAL! Cool huh?
  • Green Lantern: The adventures of various humans who serve as troopers of a stateless police force wearing the ultimate in functional jewelry.
    • Alan Scott: A railroad engineer finds a magic rock the stateless police force threw away.
    • Green Lantern: Rebirth: The most famous human (who had been dead for years) comes back in a way that retcons his Face Heel Turn so his character assassination could be reversed. This does not get rid of any of the other humans (especially his replacement) and helps the police force get rebuilt.
    • Green Lantern: Sinestro Corps War: The police force is attacked by newly formed counterpart group with robots whose leaders are a disgruntled ex-cop, a cyborg, a whiny teenage boy and some dead guy's newly reborn evil counterpart (see entries above for latter two). Many asses are kicked in the process.
    • Blackest Night: Death is tired of being cheated by superheroes and decides to destroy all life in the universe with the aid of a necrophiliac and the power of some dead guy's evil counterpart. Everyone decides to stop fighting each other to prevent this from occurring.
  • Groo the Wanderer: A well-meaning idiot causes mayhem wherever he goes.
    • I would have guessed Deadpool.
    • This troper thought you meant a graphic novel adaptation of The Phantom Menace.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: After the galaxy survives a pair of wars, a spaceman puts together a team consisting of a living tree, a talking raccoon, a space madonna, a mass murderer, a femme fatale, and a resurrected space wizard with the intent of preemptively keeping the peace. They run the operation out of a base with a psychic cosmonaut dog as the head of security.
  • Hack Slash: Goth girl with a troubled past involving an overbearing mother and her gas mask wearing sidekick raised by a butcher travel around the country fighting dead people.
  • Hellblazer: A con man repeatedly escapes the consequences of associating with demons. His friends do not.
  • Hellboy: A demonic pancake-enthusiast fights Nazis and magic things.
    • This troper once had to explain to a friend what Hellboy: The Conqueror Worm is about. "Well.. it's about a demon working for a secret agency, that fights space-nazis who are trying to summon an ancient god/s by using the dead to communicate with space-ghost-aliens. It's way better than it sounds." Also in this few pages he fights a cyborg gorilla, undead, a floating head in a jar, frog-people and a giant space-worm with the help of a pyrokinetic psychic, an homunculus and an alien disguised as a soldier.
    • This troper once fell asleep on the couch in his sharehouse, and woke up to find his housemates halfway through the sequel, where a demon and a fish-man are singing Barry Manilow, asking 'what the f--k are we watching?' came with hilarious results as the group realised at that moment they were in an extreme example of this trope.
    • BPRD: Pancake-enthusiast's friends fight evil frogs.
  • Horndog: The strange life of a Funny Animal dog whose life revolves around cannabis and sex. Black cats stand in for African Americans.
  • Howard the Duck: A free-thinker gets stuck in Cleveland and has to take on strange jobs to make ends meet while he and his roommate make pointed commentary about life in The Seventies.
  • Identity Crisis: Years after the fact, a group of co-workers face the consequences of a cover-up while one of them re-unites with his ex wife.
  • Incredible Hulk: Stupidity during a nuclear test causes a scientist to turn into a giant green monster that represents his repressed anger.
  • Infinity Gauntlet: A nihilist tries to make a woman love him, but ultimately sets himself up for defeat.
  • Invincible: A teenager fights his dad after finding out that he's been living a double-life. The dad skips town, and his son has to take over the family business. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance.
  • The Invisibles: This 59-issue comic series is a retelling of Philip K. Dick's last 9 seconds before he died.
    • Or: A diverse group of people take drugs and discuss political philosophy
  • Iron Man: Drunken, selfish, narcissistic industrialist builds a mechanical outfit to keep his heart beating and fights crime on the side.
  • Irredeemable: Superman-expy works out his frustrations.
  • It's A Bird...: Comic artist contemplates turning down plum job because of personal issues.
  • Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: A skinny goth philosophizes about the human condition while killing people and drawing comics about a crazy, foul-mouthed stick figure. Also there might or might not be a monster in his basement, and his best friend is a dead rabbit.
  • Judge Dredd: A complete fascist rides around on a motorbike beating the snot out of half the criminals he encounters and executing the rest with a massive gun.
  • Justice League of America: A journalist who sometimes feels alienated in human society, an obsessive planner who has probably like five different mental illnesses, a woman from a society with (presumably) rampant lesbianism, a member of an organisation of space cops, a lightning strike victim, a man with a paralyzing fear of fire, and a winged man/a winged woman/an aquatic man save the world.
    • Cry for Justice: In the wake of a disaster which claimed the lives of two of their colleagues, a number of people decide they want justice, but end up looking for vengeance. A supervillain who'd been confused for his incompetent ward decides to go on a rampage, resulting in major casualties. And in the end, a man avenging his adoptive son and his granddaughter permanently stops said supervillain. NOT AS BAD AS MANY CLAIM IT TO BE.
    • Justice League International: A wealthy businessman establishes by means of political intrigue an international law-enforcement agency under United Nations sanction. The members of said agency frequently have difficulty getting along, and some of them behave immaturely.
  • Justice Society of America: Octogenarian superheroes and a bunch of their legacies (including at least three teenage girls) fight Nazis and the legacies of supervillains.

K-O

  • Kingdom Come: Superman retires because he thinks the world doesn't need him. He is wrong.
  • Krazy Kat: Mouse goes to jail for feeding a cat's head trauma addiction.
  • The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: A neurotic divorcee, her drug-addict boyfriend and their murderous, amoral sidekicks run black ops for The Empire while a math teacher battles a crimelord over the right to take over the world. Then the aliens attack.
    • Alternately, A Massive Multiplayer Crossover with characters from Victorian-era novels, several of whom form a team of troubleshooters in the service of Great Britain.
  • The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck: A Promoted Fanboy's combination of a bunch of old comic book stories about a cheapskate.
    • The Last Of The Clan McDuck: A Scottish kid's life is changed by an American coin.
    • The Master of the Mississippi: A teenager, his card shark uncle, and the grandfather of a future colleague -- They Fight Crime. And get muddy.
    • The Buckaroo of the Badlands: A Scottish cowboy befriends Teddy Roosevelt.
    • The Cowboy Captain of the Cutty Sark: Cattle rustling in Java.
    • The Raider Of The Copper Hill: A copper miner gives up copper mining.
    • The New Laird of Castle McDuck: A near-death experience inspires a Scotsman to take up gold mining.
    • The Terror of the Transvaal: A Boer teaches a gold miner how to be cynical and mistrusting.
    • The Dreamtime Duck of the Never-Never: A duck turns down a chance to be a jerk and get rich.
    • King of the Klondike: A prospector is kidnapped, a piano is thrown, and a riverboat is destroyed.
    • The Prisoner of White Agony Creek: Funny Animals have hatesex.
    • Hearts of the Yukon: Gal tries to make up with her ex by having him arrested.
    • The Billionaire of Dismal Downs: Rich Scotsman finds out You Can't Go Home Again.
    • The Raider of Fort Duckberg: Rich Scotsman and his sisters fight the American military over a run-down fort.
    • The Sharpie of the Culebra Cut: Rich Scotsman accidentally thwarts a military coup in Central America after he gets into a fistfight with Theodore Roosevelt.
    • The Empire-Builder from Calisota: A zombie chases a duck as punishment for an Out-of-Character Moment.
    • The Richest Duck in the World: A Retired Badass, his smallest fan, and Single Minded Triplets -- They Fight Crime and plan to fight more.
  • Locke and Key: A group of kids try to stop a psychopathic villain who uses his Magical Keys to find more Magical Keys.
  • Loyola Chin and the San Peligran Order: Cornbread leads a teenage girl to fall in and out of love with a eugenicist who looks like Dr. Manhattan. This eventually helps restore her faith in God.
  • Lucifer: A Wicked Cultured man, tired of being blamed for things he didn't do, gives up his position and travels the world.
  • Mafalda: Girl complains about world politics... and soup.
  • Manhunter: A divorced attorney takes on a second job.
  • Marvel 1602: In XVII century Europe, a group of people with strange powers get intertwined with events of international politics. And they save the universe.
  • Marvels: A photographer loses an eye while documenting vigilante activity.
  • Maus: The Holocaust with... we would say Funny Animals (or Funny Aminals), but that just doesn't work.
    • Alternately, a comic book artist tries to reconcile with his estranged father in order to do a comic book retelling of the latter's tragic past. And it's all done using animals as caricatures.
    • Alternately: The heartbreaking tale of a Talking Animal during the Holocaust. Based on a True Story.
  • The Mighty Thor: The made-up adventures of a god that nobody has worshipped in hundreds of years.
  • Moon Knight: A mercenary finds religion.
  • Mutts: Unconventional friends try to understand the people around them.
  • Nextwave: Government employees read their employer's financial information, steal a business vehicle, and go off to violate their now-former boss's purchasing agreements.
  • Nodwick: D&D characters hire Only Sane Man short guy to carry their loot. He dies and comes back frequently.
  • Non Sequitur: A young girl discusses with her friend, a talking horse, regular schemes of world domination.
  • Omaha the Cat Dancer: A Funny Animal sexually explicit Soap Opera about a feline stripper and her friends told with a sex-positive feminist point of view.

P-T

  • Paperinik New Adventures: A Funny Animal created 80 years ago find the toys of a rich guy reclutant Mad Scientist. He use them to dress up and fight crime and aliens.
  • Peanuts: The everyday life of a boy who fails at everything, his weird friends, and his delusional dog. The dog's best friend is his paruline ex-secretary.
    • OR: The story of a boy who fails at everything and is mocked by the whole world, while being observed by a dog and a bird who sit atop a doghouse.
  • Pearls Before Swine: Animals with no expressions are used to make Incredibly Lame Puns.
  • Phonogram: Rue Britannia: Indie music snob with magical powers attempts to stop Disco Dans from rewriting his musical tastes.
  • Planetary: A hero from the Thirties discovers that a hero from the Sixties is secretly a villain from the Fifties. The hero joins up with a dude with ADD and a woman with ADHD. They Fight Crime by digging things up.
  • Pluggers: A Funny Animal comic on suburban life. Most romances are Interspecies Romance.
  • Power Girl: Superman with tits fights super intelligent gorilla, alien 70s porn star, and bestiality fetishists.
  • Powerless: The Marvel Universe, only without anyone having powers.
  • The Pro: Hooker with superpowers teams up with Justice League rip offs. Fights crime. Urinates on villain. Saves world.
  • Proposition Player: A gambler wins a bet and gets hounded by lots of people trying to get at his winnings, including an overweight man, a hellish woman, and two talking crows.
  • Preacher (Comic Book): An extremely charismatic priest, his girlfriend, and his alcoholic best friend take a cross-country trip/crime spree.
  • The Punisher: A Vietnam vet gets upset when his family's picnic is ruined.
  • Queen and Country: A spy deals with job stress by drinking.
  • The Question: A journalist/gambler examines various philosophies after a near death experience.
  • Rapunzel's Revenge: Long-haired Action Girl and her wacky sidekick team up to take down an Evil Overlord in a fantasy Old West setting.
  • Red Robin: A teenager in denial about his stepdad's death runs away from home and fights assassins. Turns out he's correct
  • Rex Libris: A look at the daily life of a librarian.
  • Rocketship Rodents: All-male Funny Animal crew have erotic Flash Gordon-esque adventures in space, watch equally Ho Yay-loaded Doctor Who parody.
  • Ronin: A samurai's master is killed in a whore house. Samurai comes back to life but not really in the future and fights his master's killer with a science babe.
  • Runaways: Five teenagers have a spat with their parents and run away from home.
  • Sam and Max Freelance Police: A pistol-packing dog and rabbit annoy everyone they come across.
  • The Sandman: Emo Kid breaks out of prison, gets his jewelry off some weirdos, gets into trouble thanks to a White-Haired Pretty Boy and tries to get his sister to accept him.
    • Or: A depressed workaholic stages an elaborate suicide. His family doesn't really care.
  • Sandman Mystery Theatre: An insomniac tries to fight crimes that are mostly incest related.
  • Scott Pilgrim: A guy from Toronto falls in love with a girl from New York and decides to prove his love for her by systematically killing everyone else who ever loved her. It's a comedy.
  • Secret Six: A hitman, a Bifauxnen lesbian, a recovering drug addict, a dominatrix banshee, a feral animal activist, and an insane contortionist try to make money. And they eat eggs.
  • Secret Warriors: A Badass Grandpa recruits a bunch of youngsters that nobody's ever heard of before to fight terrorists.
  • The Sentry: Superman-expy with emotional problems.
  • Seven Soldiers: A team of superheroes who never actually meet fight to save the world from fairies.
  • Shazam/Captain Marvel: Orphan kid inadvertently crushes an old man to death in an abandoned subway tunnel, and becomes a champion for Good as a result.
  • She Hulk: The second-strongest member of the Avengers becomes an attorney and participates in lengthy superhuman court proceedings.
    • Or: Woman turns green after blood transfusion.
  • Silver Surfer: A political exile loses his job and complains loquaciously about the foolishness of the residents of his new location.
  • Sin City: The adventures of a collection of psychopaths in a dark city composed entirely of grimy back alleys and populated entirely by prostitutes, other psychopaths and Film Noir cliches.
  • The Sinister Man: A Jerkass makes people's lives miserable.
    • The Sinister Woman: A complete bitch makes people's lives miserable.
  • Sky Doll: A clockwork mannequin wonders about the nature of her existence. We wonder if the next issue will ever come out.
  • Sleepwalker: Alien from another dimension gets trapped in the mind of a human college student, and manifests in our world to fight crime when the human sleeps.
  • Spawn: Man gets a new job, and frequently battles co-workers and people from a rival company. His main rival moonlights as a clown.
  • Spider-Girl: Teenager tries running the family business, finds it's harder than she thought, sometimes dad comes back and helps out.
  • Spider-Man: Nerdy journalist fights crime with the help of a radioactive spider and his own brand of super-glue.
    • OR Nerdy teenager gets superpowers in a lab accident, spends rest of life getting crapped on for it.
  • Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane: A teenage girl nurses a crush on a boy whose name she doesn't know (although maybe she does) whilst having to deal with high school and the complicated relationships she has with her best friends.
  • Spy vs. Spy: Two groups of secret agents Gambit Pileup each other to death. The presence of a woman makes them Too Dumb to Live.
  • Starman: An antiques collector tries to impress his father by taking on his brother's old job.
  • Static: Teenager in Detroit gains electrical super powers and fights crime while learning that being a super hero makes life harder and strains relationships.
  • Strangers in Paradise: Ambiguously Gay Artist pines after her fat-ass roommate who's being stalked by her Jerkass Casanova Wannabe lawyer ex-boyfriend (Who dumped her 'cause she wouldn't put out). Meanwhile the Dogged Nice Guy spends nearly ten freaking years chasing after the Artist, who most certainly Does Not Like Men. Worth the time to read it? You tell me.
  • Steady Beat: Girl discovers her sister is a lesbian and it turns out the world has more ghey people than you think. She meets a hot Jewish guy who hits on her except he doesn't.
  • Suicide Squad: Things go wrong with a federal prison's work release program.
  • Superman: Ayn Rand totally has an orgasm over a guy with his underpants on the outside.
    • Or: An orphaned immigrant gets a job as an investigative journalist and works with a fellow reporter to expose corruption and injustice.
  • Superman Versus Muhammed Ali: Aliens force Superman and Muhammad Ali to box in the ring under a red sun to decide who will face their champion in another red-sun boxing ring. The fate of the world depends on this.
  • Squee: The story of a little boy who is the neighbor of a homicidal maniac, has neglectful parents, and his only friends are a talking teddy bear that is a "Trauma sponge" and the son of Satan.
  • Teen Titans: Young vigilantes gather in an elaborate clubhouse.
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mirage: Four unusual looking teenagers live in the sewers of New York City with their adoptive dad. This dad teaches his kids how to take revenge on a guy who wronged him several years ago.
  • The Thanos Imperative: A team of cosmic superheroes try to stop their counterparts from an alternate universe from making it so that everybody gets to live forever.
  • Therefore Repent: A couple survives the Rapture only to discover that all the Christians that thought they were being bodily taken up to heaven have suffocated to death and now form an orbital ring of corpses.
  • The Tick (animation): The adventures of an escapee from a mental institution and a bored accountant.
  • Tintin: Freakishly talented, seemingly ageless guy goes everywhere with a hairy old drunk and a dog.
    • The Calculus Affair: An entire nation can conspire against Tintin and his Favorite Mad scientist and lose.
  • Tovarich: The actions of a Dirty Communist Magnificent Bastard.
  • Transmetropolitan: A drug addict attempts to make the world a better place by swearing a lot and shooting people. The president is not pleased.

U-Z

  • Uncle Scrooge: An obscenely rich old man pays his nephew and his nephew's nephews an absurdly small wage to, alternately, guard his house or accompany him around the world on bizarre adventures. Occasionally they battle a gang of identical masked idiots who have numbers instead of names.
  • Usagi Yojimbo: A Funny Animal version of Feudal Japan where the hero is a rabbit who is tougher than most.
  • V for Vendetta: A psycho declares war on the government. He may or may not be right to do so.
    • Alternately: Crazy guy dresses up in a purple wig, Guy Fawkes mask and Badass Cape and gallivants around London talking like an eccentric English professor and blowing stuff up.
  • The Walking Dead: People attempt to defy mortality.
  • Watchmen: A group of really screwed-up losers investigate a murder whilst a big blue naked man contemplates the nature of time and space. Then a giant Space Squid kills most of New York.
    • Alternately: Washed-up former celebrities deal with their sexual identities on the eve of the apocalypse.
    • OR, A group of people have fun playing superhero, until a real superhero shows up and ruins everything.
    • OR, Guy spends twenty years cooking elaborate seafood dish, invites friends over for party. They arrive late.
  • WE 3: Three weapons specialists leave their current job. Their bosses aren't happy about it.
  • When the Wind Blows: Your grandparents diligently prepare to survive World War III, then slowly die.
  • Witchblade: NYC cop destroys crime and clothing with help from her magical bling, then is knocked up by a supernatural mafioso.
  • Wolverine (series): Amnesiac from Canada travels the world, admires the sights and sounds, and has a drink with his Cajun friend every once in a while.
  • Wonder Woman: A bondage enthusiast hailing from a society composed entirely of (presumably) lesbians attempts to bring peace to the world by beating people up and subjecting them to her slightly kinky tie-up games.
  • X-Men: A bald old man in a wheelchair who likes watching teenagers sweat founds a school for people with genetic abnormalities. They fly everywhere in a supersonic jet and fight giant robots, a fat guy with a big appetite, and a magnetic Holocaust survivor.
    • Or: A bald young man with functional legs fights a metal-associated survivor of a holocaust (who is sometimes a jerk).
    • Or: a school principal tells his minority students they can improve their reputations by beating up others in their ethnic group.
    • New X-Men: A vomiting woman, a self-loathing birdman, a Chinese immigrant with a helmet and a French assassin all help a legitimate school fight crime.
  • Y the Last Man: The only guy in town and his monkey are dragged all the way around the world by a cloning expert and a secret agent so secret she doesn't have a name.
  • Young Justice: A geeky ninja, a Kidanova clone, a boy with the world's shortest attention span, an amnesiac ghost, a girl with super strength, an archer with an overbearing mom, and a robot hang out in a mountain and have wacky adventures.
  • Zerogirl: An outcast teenager has a crush on her school counselor and fights square people with circles and blue slime that leaks from her feet.
  • Zits: Perpetual teenager whines intermittently on how it sucks to be 15.
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