Irredeemable: Difference between revisions

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The Plutonian was once Earth's champion, its greatest and most admired and trusted superhero. But something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Seemingly without reason, the Plutonian has begun to wage war on humanity, killing indiscriminately, destroying entire cities and swiftly going from the planet's greatest hero to its worst mass murderer. A group of former friends and fellow superheroes, having narrowly escaped the Plutonian's ruthless and swift butchering of the superhero community, have determined to find a way to stop him; however, the Plutonian guarded his identity -- and most importantly, his weaknesses -- zealously, leaving them only with a few scraps of information to follow in order to find out why the Plutonian has turned his back on his former ideals -- and how to defeat him...

Another title in the same universe, ''[[Incorruptible]]'', began in December 2009. Its plot is the obverse of ''Irredeemable'': as a result of the Plutonian's rampage, supervillain Max Damage has an epiphany and decides to undergo a [[Heel Face Turn]].

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== Tropes present in both series ==

* [[Alternate Company Equivalent]]: The Plutonian is essentially one of these for [[Superman]]. Gone very, very wrong. And with none of Superman's weaknesses.

** He's also very evocative of ''[[Supreme]]'' and ''[[Miracleman]]'' in appearance. In fact, his costume is nearly identical to Apollo's from ''Grounded''.

** Some of the other heroes are also slightly familiar.

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** {{spoiler|And now, as of issue #34 Qubit has confirmed that life will be extinct in three generations, and his plans are not going well since the radiation is not behaving like he expected.}}

* [[Arch Enemy]]: Plutonian was this to Max Damage before Max's [[Heel Face Turn]]. Plutonian's [[Arch Enemy]] was always Modeus, the only one Plutonian was ever afraid of {{spoiler|and, suprisingly, Max Damage, who always reminded Plutonian of his less than perfect childhood}}.

* [[Beware the Superman]]: And how. The series is essentially examining what would happen if [[Superman]] went bad for real.

** Later issues appear to reveal that the Plutonian's fellow superheroes aren't as white-hat as they'd like the public to think either.

** In fact, if Lex Luthor bought a comics company and made himself editor, this comic would be exactly what you would expect. Seriously, they should do that in DC!

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* [[Deconstruction]]: Sort of. It really isn't actually deconstructing Superman through an [[Expy]] -- if anything, the writers are celebrating his [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness]] -- but rather, the idea that someone given superpowers would automatically [[Comes Great Responsibility|do the right thing]] without being emotionally prepared, and the concept of happily being a [[Slave to PR]] without actual regard for what people think.

* [[I Just Want to Be Normal]]: One of the motives of both The Plutonian and Max Power. The Plutonian because his powers made it impossible for him to have the same kind of stable life most people have, and Max because he loses most of his senses after being awake for a few hours.

* [[It's Personal]]: The Plutonian hates Max Damage because {{spoiler|Max was the first victim of Plutonian's unrestrained rage back when Max was a teen and Tony was still a boy. Max was a constant reminder to Tony that he wasn't a perfect Ace.}}

* [[Mind Over Matter]]: There are a few psychics mentioned and seen. {{spoiler|Plutonian has this power to a god-like degree, but doesn't realize it (his psychic powers manifest in specific forms, enabling his more conventional-seeming superpowers); his birth parents have his powers to a [[Up to Eleven|greater degree.]]}}

* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: The Plutonian gets this a couple of times throughout the series, [[Ignored Epiphany|but it never takes him long to go back to massacring people]]. Max Power has this after the Plutonian made him realize just what it felt like to be on the receiving end of a supervillain's rampage.

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* [[Body Horror]]: To summon Orian, one has to read the magic word, upon which he ''crawls out through your mouth,'' killing you in the process.

* [[Brain Uploading]]: Modeus {{spoiler|uploaded his brain into Samsara and then later into a robot copy of himself built by Qubit. He later considered putting himself into Scylla, but decided he'd prefer remaining in his robot-body for now. Most recently, he's transferred into Bette Noire.}}

* [[Break the Cutie]]: Kaidan's one of two members of the Paradigm that can fight Tony off and have a chance of survival. She's the only surviving member of the team who's not shown signs of a pending [[Face Heel Turn]], and her origin story strongly implies that she'd see such an opportunity coming and choose death without hesitation. Her powers require her to speak. If she survives, it'll be one hell of a subversion.

* [[Broken Ace]]: The Plutonian had the facade of [[Incorruptible Pure Pureness]] but underneath it all, seems more like he was one of these.

* [[Broken Pedestal]]: Oddly, the Plutonian's pedestal broke ''before'' he went crazy. After he made a crucial mistake in the field that left thousands of children dead, {{spoiler|and he initially lied about his role in this tragedy}} his sidekick stopped trusting him. Knowing his closest friend couldn't look up to him the way he used to was one of the last straws...

** What made it worse was that people from the lab (where he had {{spoiler|turned over the device that led to the tragedy}}) went behind his back and {{spoiler|told Samsara about it, claiming to be too afraid of him to do it themselves.}}

* [[Brown Note]]: The child-killing sonic plague and the sigil that summons Orian.

* [[The Cape]]: The Plutonian, prior to his [[Face Heel Turn]]. He notably only wears the cape in flashbacks when he's still good.

* [[The Cape (trope)]]: The Plutonian, prior to his [[Face Heel Turn]]. He notably only wears the cape in flashbacks when he's still good.

* [[The Chessmaster]]: Modeus. The Plutonian's arch-nemesis, and reportedly the only one he was scared of. Possibly the only one capable of finding a way to kill him. Disappeared a few years prior to the main story. {{spoiler|Is now possessing/controlling the lobotomized sidekick, egging on the Plutonian on his rampage. Oh, and a Robot Double with his exact mental patterns has started making trouble on his own. And now in the body of one of the few people that Tony has non-homicidal emotions towards. [[Oh Crap]].}}

* [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder]]: "Wow. I didn't even get to the end of the ''sentence''." Leads to a wonderful moment of [[Hoist by His Own Petard|self-Darwining]] thanks to The Plutonian's [[Magnificent Bastard|magnificent bastardry]].

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** {{spoiler|After reading a Modeus possessed Cutter's mind, a telepath almost immediately commits suicide.}}

* [[Dying Like Animals]]

** The Plutonian [[Genre Savvy|uses this to his advantage at one point, specifically by making them Lemmings.]] Using a piece of confiscated super-villain technology, he [[Do Not Adjust Your Set|appears on televisions throughout the world]], and informs the citizens he has a secret identity. This puts people into such a paranoid frenzy they begin lynching anyone who even resembles the Plutonian, their panic killing thousands.

* [[Everything Is Racist]]: Volt. There are some scenes where his hair-trigger accusations of racism genuinely find their mark, but there are others that don't, like accusing Bette of preferring Gil because he's not black.

* [[Evil Costume Switch]]: As evidenced in the page image.

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** In one of the issues before Plutonian got captured and dumped on the prison world, it shows Modeus talking to Encana in a supernatural dimension. It turns out that Modeus has moved past super-science and is now experimenting with sorcery.

* [[He Who Fights Monsters]]: {{spoiler|Charybdis, after doubling in power and becoming the Survivor, is basically undergoing an accelerated version of the Plutonian's turn to darkness in his efforts to stop the Plutonian and be a true hero.}}

* [[Humans Are Bastards]]: The Plutonian's [[Sadistic Choice|Sadistic Choices]] and mind games seems to be ultimately aimed at proving that. It also seems that he didn't kill most of his old teammates yet because he's striving to break them psychologically, for the same reason.

* [[I Am Not Left-Handed]]: [[Up to Eleven]]. The Plutonian lays a beatdown on the depowered Charybdis, but the tables are turned when we find out that {{spoiler|Charybdis actually has at least twice as much power as he did before.}}

* [[I Never Told You My Name]]: A variation, when the Plutonian refers to the Hornet's wife by name during a [[Flash Back]]. The Hornet had never mentioned her name to him, and realizes that he's spying on his teammates and [[Beware the Superman|may not be entirely trustworthy]].

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* [[MacGuffin]]: Bette Noir made a bullet of a piece of wax from a candle that, once burned, negates Tony's powers. She shot it at Tony, but Qubit redirected it to kill Orian. While Orian was planning to conquer earth the moment Tony was dead, people call Qubit out on this anyway. {{spoiler|Except Qubit kept the bullet.}}

* [[Meaningful Name]]: Scylla and Charybdis, the legendary rock and a hard place; Scylla appears to be every inch the hero, while Cary's descent since Scylla's death shows that he's lost any sense of propriety.

** Plutonian's name is very meaningful. It means derived or associated with Pluto, Roman god that is [[Alternate Company Equivalent]] to the more well known greek called Hades. God of Death and underworld. He's also as distant as can be from humanity in general (like the dwarf planet Pluto.

** Bette Noire sounds like a fun pulp-style name for an adventuress. In French, it's a colloquialism about a dangerous thing to be avoided at all costs. Bette contributes heavily to Tony's moral decay, but doesn't fully realize it until they visit his Fortress of Solitude.

*** She also has little problem bedding him {{spoiler|after he returns}}.

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* [[Mood Swinger]]: The Plutonian's swings from placid to psychotic are a major element of why he's terrifying.

* [[Mundane Utility]]: We see the Plutonian using heat vision to warm a cup of coffee in the third issue.

* [[My Greatest Failure]]: Before he went insane, the Plutonian gave a piece of alien technology to a mudslinging scientist to be adapted for the benefit of mankind, also giving him a signal device to call him in the case that anything could go wrong. {{spoiler|The device turned out to contain a sound-based virus that only killed children. The Plutonian might have been able to stop it early on, but he was on the moon, enjoying ten minutes of silence from the constant cries for help that his super-hearing picks up.}} This not only rocketed him toward his [[Face Heel Turn]], but seemed to affect him even after he became a villain- He still keeps a (rather unsettling) memorial to the victims he failed to help in his Citadel.

* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: See [[My Greatest Failure]] for the most obvious of these on the Plutonian's part, though his former teammates have their share too.

** As of issue 31, Gilgamos gets this {{spoiler|by Scylla's ghost after killing Cary. It turns out Cary was the source of the power he and his two brothers (they were actually triplets), and with Cary's death, the third brother Elliott, who Gilgamos thought he'd get all the power, loses his own.}}

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* [[Protagonist Journey to Villain]]: The entire point. {{spoiler|(And, apparently, not just for the Plutonian...)}}

* [[Psychopathic Manchild]]: One possible interpretation for the Plutonian's need to be loved.

* [[Reality Ensues]]: In a flashback from his early teens, the Plutonian hears his foster mother is about to commit suicide. He gets there in a fraction of a second. But sound takes almost ten seconds to travel two miles. She was already dead before he left his school desk.

* [[Reality Warper]]: {{spoiler|Tony, albeit unknowingly.}}

* [[Replacement Goldfish]]: Played with. Both Cary and his brother Scylla had crushes on Kaidan and she wound up dating Scylla. When Scylla was killed by the Plutonian and Cary left alive, Cary expected this to come into play so he and Kaidan would start dating, especially when he becomes The Survivor. {{spoiler|It doesn't. Particularly not when Kaidan discovers Scylla is still alive and begins searching for him. This might be one of the many reasons why Cary is deliberately avoiding finding out where his brother is.}}

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** {{spoiler|As of issue #27, [[Oh Crap|he's back on Earth]]}}.

** {{spoiler|His parents are either this or [[Sealed Good in a Can]].}}

* [[Secret Identity]]: The Plutonian had one, and upon revealing it to the woman he loved {{spoiler|she promptly told their four coworkers and rejected his affection.}} It was one of the bigger contributing factors to his [[Face Heel Turn]].

* [[Shout-Out]]: Tony's tragic childhood is a one to ''[[It's a Good Life]]''. [[Lampshaded]] by Hornet.

* [[Smug Super]]: In addition to the rapid walk down a very dark path he seems to be taking, The Survivor is becoming one of these {{spoiler|as he's more than a little bit too pleased with himself in recent issues after the pwning he helped give the Plutonian.}}

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** {{spoiler|He does kill Orian pretty directly, and the fact that he kept the bullet implies that even his technical pacifism has limits.}}

* [[Technopath]]: Qubits actual power.

* [[Teleporters and Transporters]]: Quibit has built several devices that seemingly produce wormholes. {{spoiler|The Vespa, having had access to his technology, weaponize them and defeat Plutonian with them. Seemingly out of action as of Plutonian's escape from the prison-planet}}

* [[Throwaway Country]]: Averted. {{spoiler|The destruction of Singapore}} is shown in full, and is just as horrifying as it should be. {{spoiler|And although not shown, the death of tens or ''hundreds'' of millions in Australia and India is treated with equal horror.}}

* [[Took a Level In Badass]]: Charybdis (later the Survivor), a second-tier superhero, gains a considerable boost of power when his brother dies, putting him on the same level as The Plutonian.

* [[Unskilled but Strong]]: While practically a [[Physical God]], the Plutonian turns out to have next to no hand-to-hand combat skill due to never really needing to learn how to fight.

* [[Unwilling Roboticization]]: what Qubit threatens Encanta with to make her reveal what she knows about Modeus.

* [[Villain Protagonist]]

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*** {{spoiler|Hornet had reason to believe it wasn't an off-chance. Though everyone knew the broadstrokes of each other's lives, and trusted Tony with their secret identities, Hornet never mentioned his wife's name. Tony name-dropped it anyway, tipping Hornet off that the Plutonian was spying on them all.}}

**** Even if {{spoiler|Hornet had known for certain Plutonian was going to turn on the world, he still bought Earth's safety by selling other inhabited planets to alien conquerors. That's a lot of blood on his hands.}}

** The Survivor has caused another. Qubit tries to encourage some victims of the Plutonian's rampage to rebuild their lives, when Survivor comes along to show off and then informs everyone that {{spoiler|Qubit saved the Plutonian from a bullet that could have killed him.}} This leads to everyone abandoning the rebuilding and attacking Qubit.

*** The Survivor has been building one for a while. {{spoiler|Kaidan is his brother's widow, and even before the implication that Scylla was still alive, Cary was quick to try to pick her up again.}}

*** Qubit calls Cary out on {{spoiler|giving murderous supervillains full pardons in exchange for help}} when {{spoiler|Cary should be looking for his brother instead.}}

*** Survivor {{spoiler|gives one to his third brother for not trying to stop Plutonian, or even use his powers to help others.}}

** It's safe to say that Irredeemable enjoys this trope.

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* [[Wonder Twin Powers]]: Scylla and Charybdis are have something like this going on, where they're only super while close to one another. {{spoiler|Except not really; this is a lie that they used to make Scylla feel better about simply siphoning his brother's power. After Scylla's death, Charybdis only faked being powerless to get to the Plutonian, who he felt he could handle with double his normal power.}}

* [[World of Cardboard Speech]]: HORRIFYING subversion. {{spoiler|Tony mentions why as he was growing up he was ostracized, out of fear he might hurt the other kids, and casually explains that now he's [[The Unfettered]] and doesn't have to worry about such things...chucking a grenade at a terrified mass of huddled schoolchildren in what is one of many [[Moral Event Horizon|Moral Event Horizons]].}}

* [[Would Hurt a Child]]: {{spoiler|Tony's first human mother and the one whose desire for a child forge him into a human body, to a horrifying extent.}}

* [[You Killed My Father]]: While the Plutonian needs to die for the safety of Earth and has slaughtered countless people already, the thing that seems to really [[It's Personal|make it personal]] for Charybdis/Survivor is that he also killed his brother.

== Tropes specific to ''Incorruptible'' ==

* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: Recap pages all share Max's [[Wanted Poster]] which informs us that he is wanted for manslaughter, terrorism, armed robbery, conspiracy and interstate flight.

* [[The Atoner]]: Max Damage after his [[Heel Face Turn]].

* [[Badass Normal]]: Sidekicks Jailbait and Headcase have no superpowers, but they can handle themselves.

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* [[The Commissioner Gordon]]: Lieutenant Louis Armadale is roped into being Max's reluctant ally.

* [[Covers Always Lie]]: Incorruptible has become extremely guilty of this since Christian Nauck became the main cover artist. See that epic fight scene between Alana and Headcase on the cover of issue 13? Yeah, that's exactly what happens in the comic, just without Alana and Headcase fighting each other, being angry at each other, or having much interaction at all.

* [[Darker and Edgier]]: Not in the sense that it's more pessimistic than Irredeemable (let's face it, how could it be?) but it has a much more '[[The Dark Age of Comic Books|gritty]]' tone, with villains modelled on Neo-Nazis and magicians who power their spells with [[Villainous Incest]]. Plus, the [[Dark Age of Supernames|unfortunate codenames]] of Max Damage's sidekicks - Jailbait, [[Broken Bird|Headcase]], [[Bondage Is Bad|Safeword]], [[Politically-Incorrect Villain|Hatecrime]] - are practically a [[Running Gag]].

* {{spoiler|[[Deal with the Devil]]:}} {{spoiler|After a brief dust up caught on film where Plutonian and Max are buried in mine, Max makes a secret deal the Plutonian to leave Coalsville alone under his protection. The details of which haven't been revealed on panel.}}

* [[Death Seeker]]: {{spoiler|Headcase}}

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*** Also, going by what happened in the main Irredeemable plotline, {{spoiler|that entire world is probably now slated to be conquered by the Vespa on account of being sold out by Hornet along with every other peaceful world Qubit discovered.}} Which is an entirely different sort of [[Fridge Horror]].

* [[Genre Savvy]]: Max Damage decides to switch sides because he was smart enough to know that the Plutonian turning evil meant there was nobody around to protect the general populace from aliens, demons, and one another. This, coupled with the Plutonian killing millions with no end in sight, meant the human race could die out in a matter of months if someone didn't try to pick up the slack.

* [[Hero with Bad Publicity]]: For painfully obvious reasons.

** {{spoiler|This changes, for a while, after he beats the Plutonian}}

* [[Hero with an F In Good]]: [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] in that Max is actually doing a pretty good job at doing good, but he has no actual idea how to be good, other than to do the opposite of whatever he did as a villain. This is exactly why he asked Alana to join him.

** This is also why his friends are wondering how they will tell Max{{spoiler|, who heard the whole thing, that the Plutonian has been captured, meaning that Max has little reason now to continue on as a hero.}}

* [[Honor Before Reason]]: Max Damage destroying most of his villain gear and ill-gotten loot as part of his [[Heel Face Turn]]. Resources that would've been invaluable in fighting The Plutonian (the reason for the turn in the first place).

** He's invoking this trope intentionally, reasoning that he has to be perfect now, but he isn't sure how to do it. {{spoiler|It's implied in places that he's not very good at this, as he may have killed another supervillain and definitely handed over some white supremacists over to the people they previously attacked.}}

** Another reason he might have done this is because he's [[Genre Savvy]] enough to know that nobody would trust him if he still had all his weapons, after seeing that their [[Big Good]] turned on them.