Even Evil Has Standards/Newspaper Comics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Even Evil Has Standards in Newspaper Comics include:

  • In Rocky, the owner of a pornographic magazine fires Rocky because he was offended by a gag strip Rocky drew involving pedophilic incest.
  • In Garfield, Garfield will eat almost anything and has no problem with killing the food himself, and will eat birds alive. He is shocked, though, when he finds out Jon's parents have turned Jon's pet chicken Nadine into "Nadine Noodle Soup" because "she was family!"
  • This trope comes into play, at least via invocation in This Modern World. Tea Party Tim and Plutocrat Pete both have disdain for the federal government, but when Tim wants to force the government to default in order to control spending, Pete is horrified.

"I thought your uninformed outrage would be useful in my eternal struggle to avoid taxation! I didn't realize you were a nihilistic moron willing to crash the entire economy!"

  • Popeye character J. Wellington wimpy is not a good person, technically. He's at best a mooch and at worst a con artist. But when offered a hundred thousand dollars if he'll kill a man (Offered because Wimpy looks like he'll do anything for money), Wimpy mournfully tells his would-be employer that while he does need the money, "But, too, sir, the man I am about to murder needs his life."
  • Bloom County Steve Dallas may be an Amoral Attorney with no ethics or morals whatsoever, but he prefers jail to working for Donald Trump.
  • In the 1960s version of Modesty Blaise, the narrator frequently explained that during Modesty's criminal career (i.e. before the tales of the comic strips), she rejected only drug-dealing and prostitution, and no violence against innocents was allowed. She was also against killing, unless it was absolutely necessary, preferring to knock out people who got in her way. Also, she gave her henchmen pension funds, when she retired her operations. It's hard to consider her a villain at all.
  • In a Dragon Magazine Nodwick strip parodying D&D's "Slave Pits of the Undercity" module, evil slave lords Blackthorn and Markessa are shocked, appalled, and disgusted when Artax pretends to be a merchant seeking slaves to staff his chain of convenience stores.

Piffany: I told you: even they have standards!

  • Dilbert example: Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light and former ruler of Heck, looks for a job.

Phil: I would probably be good at any job involving sin.
Dogbert: Marketing?
Phil: I have a soul... it's just a small one.

  • A Doonesbury story arc had Zonker's "Uncle" Duke drugged by a witch doctor and enslaved. When Zonker tried to buy Duke's freedom, he wanted proof that this was Duke he was purchasing, so he told one of the slavers to describe a certain tattoo Duke had. There was a pause, and then the slaver said, "That's the most sick, disgusting..."
  • In Candorville gangsta Con Man Clyde feels that his friend Susan has been making poor decisions lately.

Clyde: You're in a graveyard at midnight playing fetch with a wolf!
Susan: It's nice and private!
Clyde: You lent money to me!
Susan: Aye Dios Mio, what's wrong with me?!

  • Political Cartoons:
    • After the terrorist attack on the school in Beslan, a political cartoon showed Satan having his lawyer-devil send a cease-and-desist order to the terrorists because they were "giving evil a bad name."
    • More "crazy" than evil, but one cartoon about birthers had Charlie Sheen watching one on FOX News and telling him to get some help
    • One World War II political cartoon demonstrated the Germans preparing to blow up Rome. Even a ghost of a Vandal (the Vandals sacked Rome during the days of the Empire) is appalled by this attempt at destruction.
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