Not So Different/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Examples of Not So Different in Comic Books include:

  • Xavier and Magneto of X-Men...
    • An interesting variant occurs during the "Acts of Vengeance" crossover, where Magneto decides to ignore the stated purpose and kill the Red Skull. Red Skull launches into a Not So Different speech, essentially taunting Magneto about the fact that his quest for mutant supremacy is quite similar to the Red Skull's own ideology. In the end Magneto spares his life but seals him inside an underground room filled with food and water.
    • Or Cyclops and Prof. X. After taking charge of the X-Men Scott has begun to keep secrets and make unilateral decisions, the same things that made him kick out Xavier.
    • Then there Emma Frost to X-23, who explains to the latter the reason she wants her to leave Xavier's Institute is because Emma sees in her the same capability to hurt (and kill) those close to her that she has as a young girl. However, Emma also points out one big difference, whereas she would do this willingly, X would likely have no choice in the matter due to her conditioning to a "trigger scent."
  • Also X-23 and Vampire Jubilee realize they have much in common, with X-23 having to struggle with finding herself and the trigger scent and Jubilee struggling to control her newfound blood lust. They get along really well though.
  • That he is Not So Different from his greatest enemies, especially The Joker, is repeatedly shown to be one of Batman's greatest fears. It's not an unfounded idea either; he may not be cruel or a murderer, but he's still not the sanest guy.
    • The Killing Joke has the Joker try to prove this to Batman in his own psychotically twisted way. In the end, after Batman proves that the Joker's biggest point, that everyone was just like him, false, he and Joker share a big metaphorical Not So Different moment, and end the book laughing maniacally together. One of the Joker's primary goals is to prove that everyone else is Not So Different from him. He tried it in The Killing Joke, and he tried it again near the end of Batman: No Man's Land when he shot Gordon's wife Sarah. The Dark Knight Saga also has the Joker trying to show the people of Gotham that deep down they're no better than he is. He fails with the people of Gotham, but succeeds in corrupting Harvey Dent. The Joker is driven to show people that all it takes for someone to go crazy is One Bad Day—by giving them that Bad Day.
    • Mr. Zsasz gave Batman one of these speeches during the Knightfall crossover. His main point was that they both hunted people.
    • The whole point of Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth is about questioning Batman's sanity and showing him being Not So Different than his villains.
    • Batman himself is also regularly used as the unsavoury person from whom the hero is not so different, when other heroes accuse their Bat-raised team members.
      • Oracle (Barbara Gordon): while Barbara is more emotionally stable than Bruce and is actually willing to let people get close to her without being compelled to push them away, she can be every bit the Manipulative Bastard Control Freak that he is. In an early Birds of Prey storyline, Huntress called out Barbara on her secret attempts to "fix" Huntress (Huntress took issue with being considered "broken") and left the team. As she left, she accused Barbara of turning out to be a manipulative jackass just like Batman.
      • Nightwing (Dick Grayson): as the leader of several groups of heroes, he's occasionally being judged as becoming way too much of a drill sergeant by less, ah, obsessive heroes. Happened a couple of times in The Titans and Outsiders.
      • Tim Drake: more prevalent in earlier years, when Tim's Crazy Prepared Properly Paranoid tactics hadn't come to be as accepted by his friends, and they tended to blame the fact that he could be distant, manipulative, and distrusting on Batman. Nowadays they know better.
      • Doesn't happen with as much regularity to the members of the Batfamily who would most rejoice in the comparison, Cassandra and Damian, both of whom want to become Batman.
  • Iron Man has been compared to Doctor Doom quite a bit. Especially since his behavior in Civil War. It really doesn't help when Doom discovers that the technology behind their Powered Armor is nearly identical.
  • The Punisher gets a lot of these, although he usually just shoots the guy before they get beyond "we're no--".
    • A quadriplegic mob boss goes on a rant about how the Punisher is a evil monster who is no better than her. Frank's response:

Tell me something I don't know. (throws grenade)

  • Here's a weird one: In the first issue of the new Azrael, Az is on the hunt for a serial killer. During the course of his investigation, he realizes the killer is targeting people who allowed a horrible crime to happen. When they finally confront each other, the Avenging Angel gives himself the Not So Different speech, and allows the killer to depart.
  • In the Archie Comics Sonic the Hedgehog comics, Scourge often brings this up to convince Sonic to be 'evil' like him. As he puts it, "All it takes is one bad day, and you'd be just like me." Throughout the series they compare themselves to one another (in one issue, Sonic says something along the lines of "My evil 'twin' conquered a planet on his own. What do you think will happen if I let loose?")
    • Promptly after the aforementioned Scourge quote, Sonic catches him off-guard with a counterattack, and while he's on his back, proceeds to throw the same thing right back at him, saying the real reason he hates Scourge is that if he only had a little kindness and decency, he'd be just like Sonic.
  • The Mist (Nash) from the 1990s Starman series gave this speech to Jack Knight, citing the fact that they were both carrying out the roles because of their fathers. Jack goes out of his way to prove her wrong by being nice to her father, the original Mist.
  • The Incredibles comic has this when Mirage and Elastigirl have to work together on a mission, Mirage bringing up the point that Helen ended up having to lie to her family about a new adventure as well as having been the ex-girlfriend of the supervillain they're going after.
  • In Blackest Night, Saint Walker tries to connect with Atrocitus by pointing out that he has lost his family as well, so he can understand his pain. However, Atrocitus retorts that Saint Walker lost his family in an accident, while Atrocitus' family was murdered.
  • dWARf!/Fleshmaster calls this between himself and Empowered, but she proves him wrong. Also, Sistah Spooky claims this to be true about her then-partner Mindf??k and Mindf??k's brother, a Complete Monster. (She just wanted to hurt Mindf??k.) What's really sad is that Sistah is right. Mindf??k had to psychically lobotomize herself in order to remove her less savory personality traits.
  • Deconstructed in this strip from Quino. For those who don't understand Spanish, it's about how a rich and a third world country woman comment on their food restrictions: While they both claim that they only eat cereals, the rich woman does so to keep her weight, while the poor woman does it because its the only thing left to eat, and they both complain of that their children eat a lot of "trash" like junk food in the rich woman's case and worms, infected water and rotten food in the third world woman's case.
  • In one classic Doctor Strange story, our hero finds out that the only way to defeat Shuma-Gorath is to become him. He destroys Shuma-Gorath and then kills himself.
  • Read this article about Norman Osborn and you'll see that he and Peter Parker are not so different.
  • Scott Pilgrim makes the realization that he's as much of an asshole as his greatest enemy, Gideon Graves. The only difference is that Scott wants to change and be a better person. This realization causes him to level up and gain a sword called The Power of Understanding which he uses to defeat Gideon.
  • Done across two different dimensions by Jonathan Hickman with Reed Richards, scientist, explorer and leader of Fantastic Four from Marvel Universe and his evil Ultimate Marvel counterpart. Compare the two speeches, both written by Hickman:

Marvel Universe Reed Richards: So we'll begin here. With you and me. With a new focus for your ongoing and never-ending education. Our curriculum will start at survival and end at the edge of an eternal tomorrow. The rules are simple. I teach one class and it's pass or fail. Welcome to the Future Foundation.
Ultimate Marvel Reed Richards: And we'll begin here... with you and me. We're going to have a new focus for my ongoing and never-ending education. The experiment will start with survival and end on milennial tomorrow. My rules are simple. In the dome it's evolve or become extinct. Welcome children. Welcome to tomorrow. I'm sorry. Most of you are not going to make it.

  • Tony Stark once allowed an anti-war activist/documentarist named John Pillinger to interview him knowing the man was heavily biased against him. When Pillinger later asked him why Tony agreed to the interview, Tony responded with an Armor-Piercing Question that essentially asked if Pillinger's work has actually changed anything at all. When Pillinger admitted that he didn't know, Tony said that he didn't know if anything he has done has changed anything either. The two shake hands before parting, realizing that for all their differences they are both just trying to make the world a better place.
  • Kamen America recruits two members of her Kamen Corps, Kamen Comet and Kamen Victory, this way.
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