One-Man Army/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
One Man U.S. Army, that is.

Examples of One-Man Army in Comic Books include:

  • OMAC, from The DCU, whose name is an acronym for "One Man Army Corps"; also a Shout-Out to a WWII medal of Honor winner who got the nickname "One Man Army Klein". Note that this is out of necessity; in a future where every country is nuclear and international tensions constantly threaten to boil over, where the risk of war is both ever-present and too great to comprehend, one man must stop conflict before it grows. Troops take too long to assemble and deploy, and a large scale conflict is not an option in the world that's coming.
  • The Punisher. Most Marvel characters already consider him not right in the head. Just look at the arc in the "gritty" MAX series where he responded to his family's grave being defiled by killing 68 organized crime members in one night. Also, he is shown to end up in a pretty bad shape after many of his self-assigned missions. It's implied he has to recover several weeks at time after the ones in which he's most injured. The new movies have him end in a pretty bad shape after each assailant sent against him, and in the final showdown in Warzone he responds believably to the shots that, thanks to his Bulletproof Vest, don't manage to penetrate. For more about the movies, see below.
    • In the MAX series, one police officer mentions that Castle's body count exceeds 2000 confirmed kills.
  • Batman. Whether it's dozens of Faceless Goons or merely half the Legion of Doom, you can bet that he'll get through them (without killing them, of course; this is Batman). This can often be drawn up to him being Crazy Prepared (you can totally see Bruce just sitting around going like "Okay, if a President Evil took over and I was surrounded by the Green Berets, how'd I get through them all?"), but he can do it on the fly, too.
  • Both Rogue and Friday in Rogue Trooper. To make it more impressive, each comes from an army of similarly enhanced soldiers.
  • The Saint of Killers. He is Heaven's army. Heaven's entire army.
    • At the end of the series, anyway. ("You killed the heavenly armies!" "They were in the way.")
  • IDW's run of Transformers comics has Sixshot in the earlier comics for the Decepticons. Sixshot is such a One Bot Army, his specialty is wiping out ENTIRE PLANETS. Other notable examples from the IDW G1 continuity are Overlord, who takes on the Wreckers and came so very close to beating them, and Thunderwing, who became so powerful thanks to Pretender technology it took the combined efforts of BOTH the Autobots and Decepticons to bring him down and he didn't even stay dead.. And, of course, Megatron.
    • Then there's Galvatron, main antagonist of the Marvel UK storyline and Megatron from another time, who regularly takes on entire squadrons of Decepticons and Autobots, and usually emerges unscathed (his foes less so). He has singlehandedly tore apart elite squads like the Wreckers and the Dinobots and in his last battle, the combined of Autobots and Decepticons from the past and future are unable to truly stop him, and only a rift in space and time ends him.
    • On the autobot's side, there is Optimus Prime, obviously. Omega Supreme, Fortress Maximus and Ultra Magnus also follow this trope.
      • Nearly every 'leader' Transformers fits this trope to varying degrees.
    • Grimlock and the Dinobots are basically this turned into a Badass Crew.
  • Captain America (comics) (see trope image): No other hero has been the subject of more angry commanders shouting "Kill him, you fools! He's only one man!"
  • John Doe, of Nth Man: The Ultimate Ninja, who is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
  • Wallace and Marv from Sin City took on several armed Mooks on more than one occasion. In fact, Wallace was flat-out called a one man army by the Big Bad.
  • In Last Man Standing, his character bio uses these exact words to describe Gabriel.
  • Conquest from Invincible. He claims he has conquered entire worlds with his bare hands.
  • Obelix in Asterix is a prime example of this, on more than one occasion taking on entire Roman armies single-handed, for fun. Any of the Gauls are capable of this when tanked up on magic potion, though.
  • Groo the Wanderer would be one of these, if it weren't for his stupidity. He has an unfortunate tendency to forget which side he's on in the middle of a battle.
  • Wolverine has literally fought hundreds of mooks at once. A comprehensive documentation of his combat history would include the phrase "piles of ninjas" more than once. Per page. Wolvie himself even lampshades it in the first issue of his own comic, the cover of which already shows him Atop a Mountain of Corpses:

Wolverine: I figure about a hundred pirates, give or take a few. Real ratrace cutthroat lowlifes who probably consider themselves as rough an' tough as men can be. My kind'a crowd. My kind'a odds.

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