Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • From the Dean Koontz graphic novel In Odd We Trust: Odd is beating on a child killer with a bucket, each statement accompanied by a stronger blow than the last. "This is for killing Joey! This is for kidnapping Sherry! And this... IS FOR SAYING MY PANCAKES SUCK!"
  • Presented for your consideration, the opening to D.R. & Quinch Go Straight from 2000 AD is a long List of Transgressions that include:

Judge Thorkwung: Ernest Errol Quinch and Waldo Dobbs, also known as "D.R." or "Diminished Responsibility", you are charged with arson, kidnapping, theft, grievous wounding, possession of unlawful atomic weapons, taking and driving away, conspiracy to overthrow the government, coveting thy neighbour's ox, graverobbing, torture, criminal libel, blackmail, polluting the environment, shoplifting, 714 separate driving offenses, forging sacred relics, transmuting base metal into gold, genocide, spitting, and thirty-two offenses so unusual and horrible they do not have names.

    • Another D.R. & Quinch adventure has the boys in the Space Marines. The Corps anthem is full of threats against people they don't like and include:

We'll nick your dogs, We'll nuke your schools,
We'll stretch you on the rack,
We'll borrow all your garden tools,
And never give them back!

  • Deadpool tends to fuse it with And This Is For...generally with the Jaywalking item being utterly unrelated to whoever he's attacking.
    • Including attacking Roxxon Oil (an Expy of Exxon) for the crash and oil spill of the Exxon Valdez.
    • He also likes to add Squirrel Girl as the jaywalking. During the Civil War he compared the walking nukes like the Iron Mans, the Thors and the Squirrel Girls. Later on he compared the psychos like himself, Dr. Dooms and Squirrel Girls. However, this is an averted trope since Squirrel Girl really is that dangerous.
  • Practically every time he's described in G.I. Joe comics, Major Bludd is noted to be a high priced mercenary, a sadistic killer, and an avid but terrible poet. Then again, it can be said that he's never been so cruel to any human being as he has to the English language.
  • From The Warlord #1:

"June 16, 1969: Gasoline is up to 35 cents a gallon this summer, censors are in an uproar about Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, a story about a man who has become disconnected in time. The provisional IRA is throwing bricks and bombs in Belfast... students are protesting the war in Vietnam... the Soviet Union and China have been fighting along their border. And NBC have just cancelled Star Trek.

  • In Hal Jordan's brief tenure as The Spectre, a situation once necessitated calling for aid from "Superman! Batman! Zauriel!" Yes, after naming two of the most iconic characters in all of fiction, the next person he names is unknown even to most comic readers. That said, Zauriel was a teammate of Superman and Batman in the JLA just a few years previous. (And he's an angel, so he's the right guy to call for theological problems.)
  • Variation: Archie Comics' resident Big Eater Jughead Jones once lost a bet to Reggie Mantle, and the former has to go through a Humiliation Conga, watched by fellow students, with some even participating in the punishments to Juggie. The punishments go as follows: buying a dozen eggs dressed up as a clown, getting all the eggs dropped on him, followed by mud. In order to wash himself up, Reggie then has Jughead take a bath, with the bathtub in the middle of the road. Juggie goes through these harassments stoically, until the last one, where he had to get a kiss from Ms. Riverdale, which actually pushed his Berserk Button. Justified, seeing as Juggie is a woman hater...
    • Another from the same comics:

Archie: Jug! I did it! I finally did it!
Jughead: Figured out the riddle of the Sphinx? Went for a ride in a UFO? Got better than a D in History? I know, I know, that last part was a bit far-fetched.

    • And again, sort of:

Mr. Weatherbee: Jughead staying in school when he doesn't have to? Something's going on... And that could involve anything from creating atomic energy to a candy bar with 10 flavors!

    • And yet again:

Mr. Weatherbee: (trying to convince Archie to take Ethel out on a date) Think of your school. Of helping a team to win a championship they've worked so hard for. Of how happy you'll make a lonely girl. Think of our newly decorated detention room.

      • That seems to be more of a Such a Lovely Noun-ish threat: "Think of our newly-decorated Detention room (...which you'll be seeing a lot of if you don't help)"
  • Lobo's List Of Crimes:

"Wanted for crimes against the Galaxy including: Genocide ... Fratricide ... Patricide ... Matricide ... Impersonating a member of the Intergalactic Church of Truth ... Impersonating a member of the Green Lantern Crops ... Carrying a concealed thermo-nuclear device ... Breaking into the Justice League Satellite ... Fishing without a license ... Jaywalking ... Grand theft plasma rocket ... Disturbance of the peace across three space sectors ... 1,978,643,896 unpaid parking permits ... Illegal bounty hunting ... Wanton destruction of government property ... Demolishing a city without a permit ... Reckless endangerment toward animals ... Hijacking ... Selling/distributing radioactive material to cute fluffy bunny rabbits ... Noise infractions level 5.0 ... Illegally poaching Starros ... Bounty Huntering in a restricted zone ... Stepping on the grass ... Defecating in a public garden ... Loitering ... Advocating the overthrow of the heads of state ... Not honoring the bounty hunter code

  • Phil Foglio likes this one, in XXXenophile:
    • Now Museum, Now You Don't features the four goddesses Okaraska, Boolatraaca, Xynotreen and Trixie.
    • The intro to Blue Opal: "The Matriarchs of the Corporate States had renounced the ancient Treaty of the Blind Carp; the Mountain Tribes were overcoming their fear of being at ground level; the Master of the Gutta-Percha Throne had begun his mad jihad against the color orange; and the Warriors of the White Deserts were tracking sand all over everything."
    • InThe Adventures of Rex Kevlar, Chapter 17, Iolanthe lists all the weird places where she and Rex have had sex: "In Zero G, underwater, in a time dilation field, by remote control and in the back seat of a Volkswagen Bug."
      • That isn't ordinary, that's damn near miraculous.
  • In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures #23, a space criminal named Bellybomb is sentenced to a toxic prison planet for seventeen life sentences for extortion, armed robbery, hijacking, kidnapping, torture, murder, man-eating, brain poaching, soul thievery...and impersonating a primitive deity named Bob. After the jailers read off these crimes, Bellybomb points out that they didn't mention his unpaid parking tickets.
  • From Secret Six #5

Deadshot: I been shot a few times. Stabbed and blown up too. And one or two guys may have even said an unkind thing about my mustache.

    • And again from Secret Six #32, when Theus explains why he's in Hell.

Theus:I am an adulterer, Lord.
Ragdoll: That hardly seems fair, to be consigned just for...
Theus: And a mass murderer, and a wearer of shoes made of human leather, Lord Ragdoll of the Infernal Bend.
Ragdoll: Well, okay, ewww, but still...
Theus: I also lied about my commitment to recycling.

  • In Don Rosa's The Three Caballeros Ride Again, a wanted poster for bad guy Alfonso "Gold Hat" Bedoya reads "Bandito, Killer, Plain Rude Hombre".
  • Issue 2 of The Life and Times of Scrooge Mcduck (Master of the Mississippi): Scrooge demands that the Beagle Boys be arrested for "stealing gold, demolishing a riverboat without a permit, and wearing women's clothing!"
  • Used regularly in De Cape et de Crocs. For example when pirates finally catch up with the heroes who stole their ship: "We'll make you bleed! We'll make you suffer! We'll make you apologize!"
  • In IDW's Megatron: Origins miniseries, Starscream is brought before the Senate to give testimony about the Decepticon "fight club"...

Senator: Prisoner Starscream, I am required to list your charges as follows...assault, murder, armed robbery, destruction of state property, inciting civil disobedience, extortion, receiving and selling stolen goods, passing counterfeit funds, firing up on a state senator, multiple counts of attacks on state officers and state property, supplying known criminals with illegal weaponry, vehicle theft, and misrepresenting yourself as a state official.
Starscream: Heh. Nobody's perfect.

"Best I've found for blood, monster guts, chili..."

    • Unlike blood and (presumably) monster guts, chili juice on your fingers hurts.
  • In the Batman: Black and White story "Innocent Guy", the titular average joe lines up his plan to kill Batman. "One day he'll be face to face with Two-Face... or he'll be tangling with Poison Ivy... or in the lair of . . . those three guys with animal masks whose names I can never remember!" For the record, he means the Terrible Trio; the Fox, the Shark, and the Vulture.
  • The Legion of Steves in Amelia Rules is responsible for the Hindenburg, Three-Mile-Island and Dr. Phil.

Captain Amazing: How ... how evil!

    • Also this:

Kyle: If my parents ever got together their mere proximity to each other would create a burst of antimatter that would DESTROY LIFE ON EARTH! Plus they'd probably argue a lot.

  • In the Mad Magazine story "Mad goes to an Alfred Hatchplot Movie", the protagonist is greeted in one scene with "I know who you are, Sidney Zinn! I'm another Hatchplot villain! By ze vay, ze plot for zis movie has gotten quite complicated since you first got here! Namely, you are wanted for murder, grand larceny, treason, and holding an overdue library book! Climb aboard!"
  • Marvel Year In Review 1993's mentions the "boy scout oath" of Silver Age superheroes: "I promise to do what's right, to treat others decently, as I would like to be treated, to help old ladies across the street, to take my hat off in the presence of our flag, to hold myself to the highest standards of the Comics Code Authority, to never take human life under any curcumstances, even when they really deserve it, and to eat all of my vegetables, even the brussels sprouts."
  • Moorish Evilness (Perfidia Moruna) is an hilarious Spanish comic. Its villian, Mohammed-el-Klithoris (the name "Mohammed" sounds almost exactly as the Spanish word for "wet my", so...) is showed to the reader with this description:

The Big Bad, Mohammed-El-Klithoris: cruel and sinister unscrupulous criminal, specialist on: mugging, kidnapping, smuggling, minors perversion, murders, slave trading, piracy, raping, abortion, prostitution, conspiration, desertion, corruption, fornication, desecration, vampirism, sadism, cannibalism, materialism, vandalism, bolchevism, nepotism, tribadism, separatism, terrorism, astigmatism, schizophrenia, homicide, parricide, genocide, blasphemy, bribery, paranoia, morphine, heroin, naphtalene, tax evasion, Aedippus, hives, double parking, adultery, obstinacy, divorce, premeditated suicide, and even masturbation...

  • In Wildsiderz, Dr. Tyberius Spydre lists among his inventions "the anti-anti-aircraft missile, the internet, and, of course, those lovable, huggable Pumpkin Patch Kids."
  • In Max Und Moritz by Wilhelm Busch, after the boys put gunpowder into teacher Lämpel's pipe and it explodes, the author (or Lämpel?) muses: Who shall teach the children now? Who shall multiply the knowledge? What should the teacher use for smoking now?
  • Iceman and Angel #1 had the locations of anyone who could help the X-Men in question stop "Goom, the Thing from Planet X!" The Avengers: taking on Kang. The Fantastic Four: taking on Annihilus. The military: um...

Namor: For the last time, I can't "surrender"! This isn't an invasion of your surface world! I just wanted a bagel!

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