Badass Normal/Web Comics
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- The Title Character Of The Fancy Adventures of Jack Cannon. One character put it best: "Jack is like the toughest guy in the universe and he will kick your nancy arse if you try anything." And just so you'll know, this was said to a freakin' Reality Warper.
- Also, Max Facepuncher. The most powerful agent in Mega Intelligence, an agency that fights the supernatural, paranormal, and the just plain freakin' bizarre. His "superpower"? He can punch people in the face. And monsters. And robots. And ghosts. And mummies. And giant squids. And, in the story he was original created for, the moon. That one took both hands. Please note, he's not actually super strong, or made of iron. He's just insanely good at punching.
- The Raccoon of The Incredible and Awe Inspiring Serial Adventure of The Amazing Plasma-Man is a vigilante without super-powers in a city of superpowerful heroes and villains.
- While the world of Errant Story is filled with powerful time ninja, mages, elves and other overpowered sorts running about, Jon Amraphel is just good at shooting things with a gun. While his relative lack of power is something he complains about often, it hasn't stopped him from killing or subduing many of those mentioned above with the skills he has.
- Jason Chesterfield of It's Walky! is about the only character who's an entirely normal human, and yet also among the only ones who's never had a severe mental incident. In the finale, he's gotten so annoyed with people telling him he and the human species have to wait for their god-like protector to show up, he knocks out the person who claims this, takes command, rallies everybody to fight an unstoppable extraterrestrial invasion with his commanding voice, takes control of the the conspiracy that was trying to kill him minutes before with a bit of charisma and a well-placed kick, and is the only one who isn't moved by the climax. And he never stopped being snarky.
- That's not Badass Normal, that's simply being British.
- Anyone in Antihero for Hire not relying on truly epic amounts of Applied Phlebotinum, particularly Shadehawk.
- The eponymous character of The Adventures of Dr. McNinja. Ninja status aside, when you're a (relatively) normal human that can punch Dracula in the face without flinching, you know what you are. His Sidekick Gordito on the other hand is a Badass Normal among Badass Normals, a twelve-year-old gunslinger able to hold his own among a family of ninjas. As the Doctor himself notes, he doesn't bring a twelve-year-old along for his lack of experience with girls.
- The Doctor also punched out DEATH. Between that and Gordito's growing a Mustache from force of will alone, we have this trope somewhere over... Must resist obvious joke.
- On the other hand, neither ninjas nor doctors are considered normal in the Dr. McNinja universe.
- Girl Genius has a plethora of badass normals, but Airman Third Class Axel "The Unstoppable" Higgs takes the cake. He may be a nobody in the Baron's fleet without any special training, fancy gadgets, or a mysterious family past, but he's so badass that his introduction is a Crowning Moment Of Awesome.
- To expand, for those who don't want to look at the pretty pictures: He is awakened from a peaceful sleep (in a ship that had previously been hit by cannons) by the alarms set off by getting shot, rather than the shot itself. He then finds the crewmates he was summoned to assist were totally dead in the first place. He dual-wields wrenches to fight off the Sturmhalten-sewer-native monsters and finds an unconscious Baron von Wulfenbach. Then, while attempting to get the Baron to safety, he goes through the following: he encounters Bangladesh DuPree, who breaks his arm and who he knocks out, breaking her jaw in the process; MacGyvers an autopilot for the escape gig; gets his leg broken by DuPree; is bitten by her; lands in a farmer's pond; has his other arm broken by an angry swan; and is shot in the leg by soldiers who mistake him for a Revenant. His resolute disposition only breaks after he has had a great deal of rum, at which point he very agitatedly informs his maimers and rescuers just what he has been through in the process of rescuing these two.
- This comic and the next one call the "normal" part of the trope into question.
- Moloch von Zinzer is more of an Action Survivor, but he briefly ascends into badassery by having a trained (if by her own admission rather inept) ninja go wow over his survival skills.
- And "Ol' Man Death" was "pretty good" at fighting (and still is). Yes, he was given nickname like this by a bunch of Super Soldiers most feared in Europa and earlier shown as being able to beat just about anything, confident in their superiority and occasionally bullying other superhuman constructs.
- To expand, for those who don't want to look at the pretty pictures: He is awakened from a peaceful sleep (in a ship that had previously been hit by cannons) by the alarms set off by getting shot, rather than the shot itself. He then finds the crewmates he was summoned to assist were totally dead in the first place. He dual-wields wrenches to fight off the Sturmhalten-sewer-native monsters and finds an unconscious Baron von Wulfenbach. Then, while attempting to get the Baron to safety, he goes through the following: he encounters Bangladesh DuPree, who breaks his arm and who he knocks out, breaking her jaw in the process; MacGyvers an autopilot for the escape gig; gets his leg broken by DuPree; is bitten by her; lands in a farmer's pond; has his other arm broken by an angry swan; and is shot in the leg by soldiers who mistake him for a Revenant. His resolute disposition only breaks after he has had a great deal of rum, at which point he very agitatedly informs his maimers and rescuers just what he has been through in the process of rescuing these two.
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Ol' Man Death: No. Listen to me. I'm just a human. Rode with the Jägers. Never. Lost. A. Fight. |
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- Likewise, despite being an elderly seneschal, Carson von Meekhan rode with the Jägers in his younger days.
- Wooster is upping his levels as well, from an Offhand Backhand to Bangladesh Dupree to repelling into and airship window and leaving the same way. Dolokov in the same scene is a borderline case, as he started as a baseline human but...isn't anymore.
- Unless we learn there's more to her parentage than human genes, Zeetha would also qualify.
- "Commander Kickass" from Looking for Group. The first time we see him, he defeats most of the hero party by turning a table on them and disarming their caster with a thrown helmet. From all we know, he's just a standard human (or half-elf).
- Nanashi from Earthsong. She's now in possession of All Your Powers Combined, but before that, she attacked the physical incarnation of a planet. With a stick.
- The main cast of characters from Faans! before they all got implanted superpowers. To start out, the only real muscle they had on their side was a quiet martial arts expert and a big bruiser. The leader was scrawny and two others had/have severe weight problems. Nevertheless, they hold their own against demigods, vampires, government agents, just plain stab-happy psychopaths, time-traveling warlords, frost giants, mental-brainwashing...the list just goes on. Granted, they did tend to grab their enemies weapons and unleash a wave of energy-blasts but that is just common sense. And the returning threat against all this is a simple rapist/cult leader. Badass normal villain. The 'Faans' make gods run in fear but this creepy bastard has scored some nasty wins.
- Roy, Belkar and Haley in The Order of the Stick. There's a reason the series churns out CMOAs like it does.
- Acrobat has the title character and a few of his allies.
- Emergency Exit has Saya. She shows up a demon with a (shootable) video game zapper.
- Mob Ties has Sidney Burns who, In a World filled with cyborgs, werecats, dragons, and worse, he only needs his two fists to solve most problems. This is because he's a former soldier and a former cop. And as a soldier, he was once tortured for several months straight when he was taken captive during the war in Afghanistan/Iraq. This torture included repeated beatings, electro shock to his privates, and being forcefed gasoline to the point that it ended up giving him a stomach condition that would later allow him to breathe fire. Word of God is that Sid only managed to keep his toes during that time by using his legs to snap the neck of anyone who tried to cut them off.
- Dr. Tip Wilkins of Skin Horse. He's on a team with an unkillable zombie and a genetically engineered battle-dog. Yet he's the one with the CMoA's. People keep forgetting that he was a decorated U.S. Army captain in Afghanistan, just because he's also a Wholesome Crossdresser and Kavorka Man. He rescued his teammates from a town of werewolves after being handcuffed to a bed. He stopped a rampaging clockwork mechanoid that had a nuclear weapon, and he did it with therapy puppets.
- Alice of Freak Angels is an ordinary human smuggler who falls in with a group of godlike psychics. When one of them uses mind-control to rape a human girl, and nearly kills two of his superpowered bretheren, she uses her superior knowledge of the terrain to hunt him down take him out with nothing more than her trusty shotgun.
- Tyler in PS238 is the only student in the school who doesn't have superpowers, and has to learn to be badass very quickly just to survive. Despite his unwillingness to be a superhero he's usually the one who winds up getting his powered collegues out of trouble.
- His mentor and Batman Expy Revenant would also count, as he relies almost completely on wits and gadgets. Revenant mentions that other superheroes generally don't like Badass Normals because they feel the heroing should be left to the special people.
- Quite a few Trolls in Homestuck have Psychic Powers of some sort. But Terezi still manages to outmanuever both the Mind Controlling Vriska, who has possession an ancient relic that predicts the future, AND a Humanoid Abomination Chessmaster at the same time with no special abilities whatsoever other than her knowledge of which buttons to press.
- Rhea in Slightly Damned.
- Big Red McLane from Attack of the Super Wizards certainly qualifies.
- Alex Rayne of the comic Wright As Rayne gets this twice. In his original identity, he's a very talented super-hero who gets by on his wits and fighting skills. When he's forced into the boy of Dorothy Wright, he's again forced to be a badass normal, but is a little miffed that he didn't get sent into the body of someone with actual powers.
- Shadowgirls has a few. Patrick Sawyer slayed a vampire with his sidearm. Then there's everyone's favorite, Lindsey, who'll attack any monster that's threatening her BFF. Heck, if it weren't for her paranormal powers, Charon would qualify, with her "Bitch"-stamped knuckle-dusters and a willingness to deal out untold amounts of pain to whomever so much as utters an unkind word about her daughter.
- Grem of the Viper Clan in Goblins has no adventurer levels like the GAP and Saves-A-Fox, nor unusual body enhancements like Dies Horribly, nor racial disposition for badassery like K'seliss, a Lizardman/Ogre hybrid. He is by all means an ordinary goblin, but he still manages to pull his own weight in battle.
- Walking on Broken Glass gives us Kennedy Parker, prior to the current arc she was just an informed Badass, due to the fact that an entire pack of werewolves respects her authority. Now in the current arc she has taken on a supernatural shadow creature with her bare hands and informed it that she will dial the pain Up to Eleven if it doesn't cooperate, which it currently is not, guess what the last two scenes of that page look like.
- For the above I forgot to mention that she managed to pull off the barehanded Curb Stomp Battle while a pack of transformed werewolves and a Squishy Wizard were having trouble fighting them, now can you honestly say someone like that doesn't belong here.
- In No Rest for The Wicked, the Prince Charmless does at least have the prowness to rescue princess after princess without any signs of magical enhancements. Red may also be this -- at least, her abilities thus far are limited to powerful ability to wield an axe -- though her Mysterious Past has hints of the magical.
- Flipside introduces Bernardette by having her take out the most sorcery-boosted thug in town. It is later revealed that she does not use sorcery.