Butt Monkey/Comic Books



"Hank Pym: You can take over from here? You? Tony Stark? Mister Fought-against-Cap-in-the-civil-war, shot-Hulk-into-space-and-caused-World-War-Hulk, gave-the-Skrulls-everything-they-needed-to-invade-Earth. You're taking over? Come on, give me one good reason why--\"
 * Jon Arbuckle of Garfield is an extreme example, as seen to the right.
 * Peter Fox was proven to be the Butt Monkey of FoxTrot by the strip's first week.
 * Ziggy.
 * Erica Pierce from Solar Man of the Atom is a rather unlucky woman. First off, she was with Solar when he had his accident in the reactor which gave her powers as well (she doesn't notice...at first), she later tries to have sex with the titular Solar but is turned down, Solar takes Erica with him outside the universe where she ends up cracking up do to her self-esteem issues, she tries to kill Solar due to the previous trip, Solar later on goes haywire which results in the universe being sucked into a black hole, . In the new universe, it's revealed that Erica (a another one albeit the same) has a abusive husband who impregnated her, said baby coming to life with powers similar to Solar, the baby ends up killing herself due to it's power which traumatizes Erica even more, and finally she kills her husband in a fit of rage..
 * Manhog from Frank, he is shown to be quite bitter about his lot in life but is usaully to stupid to fix anything about it.
 * One of the last good things about Mad Magazine after all its old regular artists and writers started dying like flies, Monroe's title character is a definite example of a Butt Monkey, with ridiculously neglectful parents, a cruel bully who constantly leaves him battered and bloody, his only friend is a nerdy toadlike kid who is the only person liked even less than him, and any spot of hope for him is usually destroyed by the end of the story.
 * While we're on the subject on Mad Magazine, I also want to point out that in Spy vs. Spy, Whenever the Grey spy makes the scene, the black and white spies lose every time. When she isn't present, though, whenever one spy wins, the other looks fitting for this trope. But since the victor alternates, this randomly switches at will.
 * Herr Starr from Preacher is the recipient of ever-increasing quantities of humiliating violence. As a child, he has one of his eyes put out and goes bald; during the plotline of the comic, he gets raped by a male prostitute, has a large scar carved into his head (which makes it look like a giant... Uh...), has one ear shot off, narrowly escapes cannibals who eat his leg, and finally has his genitals eaten by a Rottweiler, leading to his forlorn use of the phrase "my cock is in the bitch's mouth and not in a good way".
 * And finally, to add insult to injury - literally - at the crescendo of his crusade of vengeance against Jesse Custer, he is handed prank binoculars and winds up addressing his troops for his final battle with black circles inked around his eyes.
 * Though one wonders why a trained military man, who never goes unarmed, who is the second most powerful man in the entire WORLD...could get overtaken by a male prostitute.
 * Filler Bunny from various Jhonen Vasquez comics was created purely to entertain the audience by being tortured. Appropriately enough, at one point he has a monkey climb up his butt.
 * Don't forget Todd (Squee) from Jhonen's comic Squee; throughout the series, he gets frequently harassed by space aliens who want to probe him, a gigantic dust mite, and his cyborg-Grandpa; his parents continuously ignore him, the worst offender being his dad, who constantly says stuff like, "I haven't smiled since the day you were born" (at one point he's even seen watching a video of Squee's birth being played in reverse); his classmates constantly pick on him and laugh at him for no apparent reason whatsoever; his only real friends are Shmee (his stuffed bear), Pepito (the son of Satan), and Johnny (Nny); heck,
 * Marvel's Trapster, favored punchline of heroes (especially Spider-Man), despite being reasonably dangerous with his glue-based weaponry. He simply can't live down his initial moniker of "Paste-Pot Pete" (or the costume he wore with it). Just calling him "Pete" usually puts the fight half in the bag.
 * The Ringmaster flirts with this status as well; he was once beaten by Howard the Duck.
 * Speedball is a bit of a Scrappy, simply for his ridiculous power. For this reason, he's often referenced, at least in the Ultimate line of comics, where he doesn't even EXIST.
 * Hank Pym is the Butt Monkey for the Marvel superheroic community. In multiple universes. And it's carried over into the animated adaptations too, thanks to Ultimate Avengers.
 * In the Ultimate comics, Captain America gave him a serious beatdown for beating up his wife. Just an example.
 * This has gotten kind of ridiculous in recent years, perhaps epitomized by this quote from Mighty Avengers #23 (to give it a certain amount of context, Iron Man has showed up and told Hank he's going to now lead Hank's newly assembled team):

Iron Man: Three words. You're. Hank. Pym. "Deadpool: Your mother's so fat, Hank Pym had to beat her up in the back of a Quinn Jet."
 * Speaking of that, during the Skrull's infiltration, one Skrull impersonated Pym. Then he complained to the Queen why Pym got no respect, because by impersonating Pym, he's got the butt-end of jokes by many heroes. The Queen's response? "Nobody cares about Pym/Ant Man"
 * Pym does have his moments of awesome. For example, the efforts he went to in redeeming himself after his period of psychosis that brought about the original Yellowjacket identity, and his current run with the Mighty Avengers. However, these come so few and far between that it's like every "badass" period is just set up as another grace for him to fall from.
 * Like this cover image of the final issue of Mighty Avengers, for example.
 * Dan Slott claimed in interviews that he was going to redeem Pym as a character, after he'd been handed Butt Monkey status for so long. Since that interview, the comic's taken a huge swerve where we've seen Pym reduced to an obsessive, useless jackass, whose only good work was adaptations of other people's discoveries, and who has apparently been using a sentient gynoid he previously treated as a friend/daughter as a stand-in for his ex while not telling her he was trying to revive said ex using all of the apparent upgrades he'd given her. And as of the latest issues, the team has fallen apart under the opinion that he's lost his goddamn mind, and Ultron and even the infamous slap have been brought back yet again as further proof of his failures. What was that about redeeming the character, again?
 * His Marvel Zombies counterpart was fairly respected amongst his comrades, although he was a Complete Monster even for zombie standards.
 * Hank Pym's Butt Monkey status was cemented when he recently met Eternity, the Anthropomorphic Personification of everything. The first thing Eternity does after saying "Hi!" is punch Hank in the gut. That's right: the universe itself is literally hostile to Hank Pym.
 * It Got Worse; Deadpool and Spider-Man recently had a "Yo Moma" battle and guess who was the punchline of the joke?


 * The main reason people use Hank as a Butt Monkey is because of his reputation as a wife-beater, making him an Acceptable Target. People don't seem to remember that Hank only hit Janet once, he was under extreme stress at the time, and he immediately felt awful afterwards. Hell, Reed Richards has hit his wife more often than Hank.
 * Except Hank had been the Butt Monkey of the Marvel Universe for almost 2 decades when the wife-beating arc happened. By the second issue of Avengers, he was already well on his way.
 * After the controversial Civil War storyline in Marvel Comics, several heroes who were on the side of registering metahumans were very unpopular among the fans and turned into Butt Monkeys. Tony Stark, leader of the pro-regs, spent every guest appearance for a month or two afterwards being yelled at and slapped around by other heroes, including getting beaten up by THOR; Tigra, who spied on the anti-regs while being pro-reg the entire time, was shot and beaten by the Hood while barely putting up a fight, constantly screaming "AIIEE", and being videotaped. She also joined Stature in being kidnapped by Puppet Master, almost sold into slavery, and being forced to fight her rescuer, Ms. Marvel (and losing). Interestingly, she also has a relationship with Hank Pym around this time.
 * The Hood is later retconned into having earth-shaking magic powers but... yeah.
 * Not really, in that same arc he transformed into a demon (the same demon he took the Hood from in his mini) and beat the crap of Wolverine. The only thing that was changed later was that he was an agent of Dormmamu and even then he did show magical abilities in his original mini (though he didn't fully control them then) and he was able to beat Shocker, Jack O'Lantern and Constrictor in said mini.
 * The Hank Pym Tigra slept with was revealed to be a Skrull and she's now pregnant.
 * The aforementioned Stature really deserves her own bullet. Her former team, the Young Avengers, were anti-reg and the others stayed anti-reg after she left. It's possible that the popularity of other members over her and the former cohesiveness of the team made her betrayal seem particularly outrageous, which would explain her treatment in the later comics. Stature was kidnapped by Puppet Master, almost sold into slavery and had to fight Ms. Marvel. During this fight, she had a car hit her in the face. She joined a superhero boot camp some unspecified time after Civil War. Other instructors included former supervillains, including Taskmaster, who had fought Stature's superhero dad (Ant Man). New Ant Man Eric O'Grady mocked the former Ant Man to ingratiate himself with Taskmaster. Stature promptly tried to kill him, only for O'Grady to grow to giant size and smack her with a bus. They both were taken down by Taskmaster without Stature hitting O'Grady once. Later at the camp, a clone gone wrong combined with an alien weapon ran around maiming and beating trainees, including her. When she was eventually sent home, she had a screaming fight with her mother and stepfather and accidentally crippled her stepfather during a fight with a supervillain. Just prior to the Siege crossover, she discovered that her teammate Scarlet Witch was really Loki in disguise, but was unable to reveal this potentially life-saving information to her teammates because of a magical mental gag that was placed on her. And then after the Avengers reformed, she tried out to become the nanny of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones' baby, and was even denied that. The only good things were off-screen reconciliations with the other Young Avengers and some Epiphany Therapy. Keep in mind that the last time we were updated on her age, she wasn't even fifteen.
 * Though after she returned to the Young Avengers full time, things did finally start picking up for her. The biggest win for her? During the Children's Crusade, she was able to reunite with her dead father after he was resurrected by the real Scarlet Witch.
 * As depicted on Www/superdickery.com, almost anyone that ol' Supes encounters becomes a Butt Monkey -- he forces Lois and Jimmy to marry apes, leaves civilians in mortal peril (or just refuses to untie them) while he goes to hunt the bad guys....
 * Some writers seem to think that the biggest appeal of Spider-Man is that things constantly go wrong for him. As a result, we get countless stories of Peter suffering humiliation, lack of money, sickly aunt, girl trouble and just all around unpleasantness, to the point that reading the stories can actually get a little depressing. Note that after John Romita Sr started working on the title with Stan Lee, the book became much Lighter and Softer than it had been recently, a move which led most fans to label it as the golden age of Spider-Man.
 * Originally, Peter Parker and Scott Summers of the X-Men had something in common, their characters were supposed to be guys who things often tended go wrong for, but not just for the sake of that, and they were impressive, each in his own way, in how they dealt with it. But too many writers just can't grasp the difference between that and 'kick them harder!'
 * Tails in the Fleetway Sonic the Comic. He's frequently the victim of Sonic's "strange sense of humour" and the people he rescues tend to complain that they wanted to be saved by Sonic.
 * Detective Soap from the Garth Ennis era of The Punisher. Just a few of many examples; Assigned to a joke squad to catch the Punisher after the brass is blackmailed. Sleeps with a convict and his own mother, both of which could have been avoided if the one person he thought was his friend said anything. Intimidated by the Punisher into feeding him info on crooks to kill. Regularly gets splashed in bodily fluids. Gets blackmailed himself, left and right. His love interest turns out to be gay. As a CHILD... dropped on his head as a baby, avoided rape because the pastor thought he was ugly... In the end, though, he gets his just rewards. It.
 * Charlie Brown from Peanuts. Woodstock and Snoopy have their moments as well.
 * Word of God says that Charles Schulz based Charlie Brown's eternal pessimism and butt monkey qualities off himself. So Charlie Brown is an Author Avatar.
 * Weasel, Bob Agent of Hydra.... Any of Deadpool's side-kicks really.
 * With the possible exception of Blind Al, who dished it out as much as she took it.
 * The writers after Joe Kelly have all claimed that Blind Al was removed from the series, and won't be a fixture again, because of just how much she stole the show.
 * Tryco Slatterus (a.k.a The Champion) in Deadpool Corps is also one. Considering he's always humiliated at the end of each issue he appears in.
 * Garryn Bek from L.E.G.I.O.N. is almost always the most picked on member of the cast. Nobody in the whole galaxy takes as much punishment and humiliation as Garryn Bek, at least for the first forty issues or so.
 * Surprise there's been no mention of this, but if anyone's a Butt Monkey in comic books, it's Daredevil. Daredevil is literally Marvel's deconstrtuction of the trope; Every. Single. One of his romantic interest has either been Killed, mentally broken, or driven to any type of physical or psychological torture, his secret identity was learned by his archenemy, and his life has been generally hellish because everyone knows his secret identity.
 * The life of Remy Lebeau alias Gambit (X-Men) starts by not being Remy Le Beau - he was kidnapped as a baby because of a prophecy and will never know his real parents. He was brought up as a thief, never having a chance to a normal life and we don't know about normal education. He was regularly targeted by the Assassins Guild and other bad people because he was designated a successor to his "adoptive" father, the head of the Thieves Guild. Then he had to marry his best childhood friend out of political reasons, only to be ordered to a duel by her evil brother which he couldn't refuse without banishment. He took the duel, killed the brother and... was banished. Later it is revealed that his wife even planned all that and was very happy about it, no matter making his life hell for years and trying to kill him. His powers are burning him out, so he gets a power limiter, only the price for that is leading people somewhere where these people kill a whole folk - the Morlocks- without knowing. He saves one kid who will become a mass murderer later. When he tries to steal paintings, he meets Storm who is made into a kid and stumbles into danger. Later he joins the X-Men but is never really a part of it, always an outsider among the outsiders. He falls in love with the only women never able to touch (Rogue) who plays on- and- off with him, dumping him regularly for other people (Joseph, Fantomex, etc.) leaving him to die in Antarctica. Now he is a character that hardly appears at all, only to have his love life telepathically broadcasted by Rogue, who he can now touch but who dumped him yet again. On top of all of that, he has spent the majority of hero-life wearing a pink breast plate, what made him ambivalent among X-Men fans.
 * Hacken from Hitman, perhaps the best defining moment of his crappy luck was when the characters were fighting their way out of an aquarium full of zombie sea animals (Long Story) he gets his hand bitten by a baby seal and in panic chops it of only to find out a few scenes later that these zombies aren’t contagious, cue to panel of him staring sadly at his new stump.
 * Sonny Tuckson from the Buck Danny series.
 * Walter The Softy and Cuthbert Cringeworthy from The Beano have to undergo torment, harassment and bullying that would destroy any normal boy their age
 * To say nothing of Calamity James!
 * Transhuman by Jonathan Hickman has a group of literal butt-monkeys. That is they are supposedly the showcase for a new type of genetic modification designed to give you superpowers, yet upon being sent to recapture a group of escaped, enhanced intelligence monkeys, they are captured and anally raped these monkeys live on TV. People make jokes about this, even to their faces, for the rest of their lives. The genetic modifications eventually have horrible side effects as well.
 * Captain Haddock, Cuthbert Calculus and Thomson and Thompson are the Buttmonkeys from Tintin.
 * Black Canary becomes this whenever she pairs with Green Arrow. Every. Single. God. Damn. Time. Their first pairing? Kidnapped by drug lords in a botched sting operation and physically tortured so bad it renders her infertile and strips her of her superpower. (Both would eventually be restored). Rejoins Ollie after he gets resurrected? Her adopted daughter is kidnapped and Ollie himself makes her believe she's dead. Despite that, she still marries him - and proceeds to be reduced to a Distressed Damsel who's Canary Cry accidentally causes an innocent bystander's hearing loss. And then Ollie leaving to form a second Justice League team somehow devastates her so much that she breaks up the primary team that she the leader of. Suffice it to say, there are likely a lot of Birds of Prey fans who really really don't like seeing Dinah and Ollie together.
 * She kept this in Birds of Prey, what with being held hostage by Savant and stuff like that.
 * Brainy Smurf of The Smurfs is the village's butt monkey.