Strawman Has a Point/Comic Books

Examples of Strawman Has a Point in Comic Books include:

DC

Rorschach from Watchmen is pretty much built on this. The reader first sides with him, as in a grim and gritty world where crime is unstoppable, isn't evil stark black and good shining white? Next to Rorschach's absolute refusal to compromise, and his cathartic attacks on criminals, the rest of the morally conflicted Watchmen pale in comparison. But while certainly memorable and fun to read about, he's still a violent, ineffectual, anti-intellectual, homophobic, hypocritically mooching, misogynistic, self-righteous hobo. He basically self-destructs because he can't deal with moral complexity above the level of a small child: compare his childhood essay on why bombing Hiroshima was a good thing with his reaction to Adrian Veidt's use of a similar act of mass destruction to ensure world peace—he can't see in shades of gray, which makes him into a hypocrite when he has to deal with real human suffering and the complexity of actions on the global scale. Even those who see him to an extent as Moore intended can favor his belief in telling people the truth, rather than manipulating them and leaving them ignorant. Strawman Kind Of Has A Point (even if on the whole he's not a character to "root for").
In Green Lantern: Rebirth, the fact that Batman immediately doesn't believe in Hal Jordan (for reference, the story retcons Hal's Face Heel Turn into the villain "Parallax" as being the result of an alien fear entity named "Parallax" possessing him) and won't let him lead the charge against Parallax is supposed to be indicative of his mistrustfulness and paranoia. The reader is supposed to cheer when Hal punches him out. But if you think about how in his former time as an Omnicidal Maniac, Hal!Parallax showed no signs of being anything other than Hal Jordan-turned-evil, it seemed very reasonable of him to not put so much faith in him, especially given that there was no proof that Hal's intentions were benevolent except his own word.
Kingdom Come deliberately invokes this as part of its Deconstruction of both the Dark Age of comics and of the Anti-Hero comicbook character (particularly the Nineties Anti-Hero). At one point, one of the "newbloods" calls out Superman to argue the logic that their brand of "lethal justice" has saved lives, thanks to their willingness to kill Complete Monsters like Ra's Al Ghul (semi-immortal ecoterrorist who plans to exterminate much of humanity for the planet's sake) and Cosmic Horrors like Eclipso. While the new "heroes" are clearly reprehensible, vile, and just plain wrong, the reader is almost certain to find themself agreeing that there are some criminals who should be taken down permanently, rather than being given relatively light sentences. Notably, the story really begins after Superman self-exiles himself due to the public support for Magog killing The Joker, who had just killed several hundred people in The Daily Planet Building, the icing on a cake of murder, torture, and madness spanning several years in the series.
From the Silver Age: Action Comics #176 Muscles For Money, where Superman decides to start charging money to save people. While it's certainly true that Superman was doing some reprehensible things (charging insane amounts, forcing people to sign contracts before he'll save their lives, etc) the primary argument seems to be that Superman doesn't deserve any sort of reward for the good he does. The worst part is when Superman politely requests the $10,000 reward for two criminals he brought in only to have everyone declare him a money-grubber for it, despite the fact that this is a reward the police themselves had offered and which anyone else besides Superman would have been given happily.
Batman's Jason Todd (the second Robin, who was murdered by the Joker), following his revival, goes on a violent crusade on crime and becomes convinced that the only true way to defeat crime is by controlling it and killing any villain instead of simply arresting them. While his methods are definitely brutal, he still raises a good point on the naivety behind the idea that someone like Joker can continue to walk the earth even though he'll continue to kill countless people. While he is a typical strawman in the sense that any hero willing to kill is portrayed as a total psychopath, his comments about the Joker are portrayed fairly. Jason challenges Batman, asking him how he could have any justifiable reason for letting the Joker live. In a significant variation to how most writers approach the issue, Batman tells him that it's not a matter of it being too hard; rather, he won't kill him because it'd be too easy. He really wants to kill Joker, but he's scared that he won't be able to stop with just him. Jason points out the slippery slope nature of that argument, asking why heroes always say "there's no going back". He's not asking him to kill regular criminals, or even any other supervillains. He just wants him to kill the Joker, an unrepentant mass murderer who's far beyond redemption and personally killed Jason himself. Batman can give no other answer than a solemn apology.
- Of course, the writer overlooked that Batman had given an answer to this very same question on other occasions. That answer being 'I know it isn't a rational attitude, but I am not an entirely rational person. You have noticed that I have serious unresolved emotional trauma and anger management issues, right? I don't want to start killing because I'm not sure I would know when to stop, even if it's obvious to someone else.'
Batman himself in "Tower of Babel" story arc and it's film counterpart with his contingency plans for rogue League members. He even gives us this comment when the League calls him out on it.

Batman: "My actions don't require any defense. In the same situation, I'd do it again. As individuals, and even more so as a group, the Justice League is far too dangerous to lack a failsafe against any misuse of our power. If you people can't see the potential danger of an out-of-control Justice League, I don't need to hear a vote. I don't belong here."

Marvel

X-Men:
- Robert Kelly's arguments about mutants being potentially dangerous and how "do nothing" was not a rational response to such a situation actually made sense to some readers and viewers. Then they turned an otherwise logical argument into an Anvilicious allegory to McCarthyism when they had the senator hold up a "list of names of identified mutants", shifting the argument from "Some mutants are dangerous" to "All mutants are dangerous". Of course, once the killer mutant-seeking robots come in (and they always do), it seems clear that Kelly is Jumping Off the Slippery Slope, even if his arguments do have a grain of truth to them.
- In The Movie, Kelly specifically mentions a girl who can walk through walls, and asks "What's to stop her from walking right into a bank vault -- or the White House?" In the very next movie, a Brainwashed and Crazy Nightcrawler is able to teleport into the White House and kick the Secret Service's collective ass, proving Kelly right. Of course, Professor Xavier's point (in all versions) is that mutants need to be trained to use their powers responsibly, and that treating innocent mutants who have done nothing criminal as requiring surveillance is counter-productive, the more moderate (and since he's a main character, the one we're supposed to see as "correct") response. According to the director's commentary, this degree of ambiguity was completely intentional.
  - It might be noted that in real life we already have a suspect class that is required to register themselves with the government and regularly check in with assigned case officers and show proof that they're keeping themselves clean, solvent, and employed. IOW, everything that can be expected from even the more humane options for Mutant Registration. That suspect class is 'people on parole', and their own registration has... not been entirely successful at keeping all of them from re-offending, let's put it that way.
  - It's also compliant with the Fifth Amendment in a way that mutant registration is not; the parolees are only being deprived of liberty after having been convicted of a crime via due process of law, while mutant registration applies a global 'guilty until proven innocent' logic to all mutants.
- Sometimes the point for Senator Kelly is intentional, showing that it stems from a genuine concern about safety for normal humans. These stories usually contrast him with Graydon Creed, who's just an outright bigot.
The whole Marvel Civil War arc had this problem.
- It was supposed to be a nuanced exploration of whether or not compulsory registration for superheroes was necessary to curb catastrophic mistakes and potential abuses of power. Both sides were supposed to have valid points (but supposedly supporting the Pro-Registration overall). Unfortunately, due to insufficient coordination between the writing teams of different books (as well as a serious difference in the skills of the writing teams - the anti-reg side got J. Michael Straczynski), Mark Millar failed at making readers sympathize with the pro-registration side and both sides ended up looking like straw men, with the pro-registration side looking particularly monstrous. For starters, the SHRA criminalized the act of apprehending a criminal when you yourself are an average citizen, as well as SHIELD trying to arrest Captain America (comics) for refusing to join the pro-reg side, before it was actually signed into law. To make matters worse, the actual specifics of registration varied from book to book:
- In pro-reg books, registration was treated as a prerequisite to a superhero being a crime-fighter. Supers were given the option of not using their powers, getting trained in using them properly and to establish that they were not a threat to themselves or others, and going to prison. If they did not want to fight crime after they were finished being trained, then they didn't have to, and there was no indication that they would be forced. It was just shown that a lot of people chose to fight crime because they had made friends with their fellow trainees and they felt like they should use their powers for good. However, the pro-registration side was still not sympathetic because Tony Stark and Mr. Fantastic were portrayed as being jerks, who felt like they knew what was best, as well as committing some blatant war crimes. But they were making excellent points throughout and if Mr. Fantastic's math can be believed, it was the lesser of a few evils.
  - Mr. Fantastic's math would have been more believable had it not been for the existence of the Thinker amongst the FF's rogue's gallery, a man who has spent his entire career proving, often painfully, that while psychohistory is mostly reliable for predicting things it inevitably fails in any situation involving superhumans, because superhumans are walking statistical anomalies. A follow-on issue directly Lampshades this—Reed asks the Thinker to double-check his math, and the Thinker asks Reed if he's entirely forgotten about the X-factor that allowed their team to beat him every time.
- In anti-reg books, SHIELD forcibly conscripted anyone who happened to have any kind of superpowers whether they wanted to fight crime or not, and the pro-reg heroes were Well Intentioned Extremists. When Luke Cage, Hero for Hire said he just was going to not use his powers and stay out of it, armed gunmen showed up at his door on midnight of the day the act went into effect. In Avengers: The Initiative, kids recruited were told that they either join the initiative, get their powers taken, or go to jail. Cloud 9, whose power was a little cloud that could make her fly, was recruited, turned into a sniper and sent to killing missions, even though she never wanted to use her power for crime fighting. In addition, Stark orchestrated an attack on Black Panther, foreign chief of state, because his wife (who had diplomatic immunity) refused to sign up. It was quite clearly a case of "work for us or else".
  - Cloud 9's case is particularly horrible in that she was fourteen years old. In the real world, using child soldiers at all -- much less forcibly drafting them -- is considered a war crime in every remotely civilized jurisdiction on the planet.
  - There is also Sally Floyd, the straw news reporter who argued to Captain America that the ideals he represents had already died a long, long time before he did. Though it doesn't bode well for Cap, it may very well be a case of sad but true.
    - Except that her arguments centered around the fact that Captain America was not heavily involved in modern, supposedly important pop culture like Nascar and MySpace. She might theoretically have had a point if she'd actually brought up anything about the basic ideals of the country having shifted, but all she manages to do is point out that she's shallow and a lot of other people are shallow, so obviously Cap is wrong somehow for not also being shallow.
The first comic appearance of Alejandro Montoya/El Aguila (Marvel) has the hero returning to his home village and being attacked by random villain El Conquistador for being "the shame of Spain". Consider El Aguila has just mysteriously returned from (fled?) New York after living there for decades and constantly wears a rather ridiculous bright red and black Zorro-esque suit. Well...
Red Sonja - She-Devil with a sword" #1-7 has the Borat-Na-Fori religion, which practices human sacrifice. The Celestial, the antagonist, and some sort of strawman for organized religion, points out that his religion is the only thing keeping the entire realm from plunging into barbarism, and that Sonja is only going to make things worse by bringing him down. Turns out that he is absolutely right. At best, the moral of the story is that the Mexican Indians had it coming.

Other companies

Jack Chick has works that are afflicted with this trope:
- His Gun Slinger tract assumes that the amount of sin you commit in your life has nothing to do with salvation, because everyone sins at least a little bit, and no one with sin can get admission to heaven. To show this point, it depicts a hardened criminal who repents just before he is executed and gets saved, while the good-natured lawman is condemned to hell because he never thought he needed to repent. It's quite easy to side with the lawman and see him as having been judged far too harshly for what amounts to a petty technicality.
- Similarly, Flight 144 features a pair of elderly missionaries who die in a plane crash and are sent to Hell, while their seatmate, an ex-con, goes to Heaven. The story is an attempt to demonstrate how it is faith, not good works, that save a person; BUT the reader is much more likely to empathize with the sweet, kind missionaries who devoted their lives to serving the less fortunate.
- In the tract Somebody Goofed as well as the "edited for black audiences" version Oops!, a man named Bobby overdoses on speed and as his friends and family are gathered around a Christian shows up to tell them all about how Bobby is burning in Hell right now. When another man shows up to stop him we're supposed to side with the Christian. Of course, whether the Christian is right or not, moments after the death of a loved one is usually not the best time to preach to people, making the other man totally justified in trying to shut him up. Less justified, but still understandable is when he physically assaults the Christian.
- There are many tracts in which straw characters label the people that push Chick's views as "fundamentalist fanatics" or "religious nuts", a perfectly valid description for them.
- In several Creationist Anti-Evolution tracts, an Author Avatar "defeats" the arguments of a science person with long refuted arguments that even other Creationists advise not using.
Magnus, Robot Fighter eventually ascended the straw point—the hero accepted that the robots' reasons for rebellion were basically sound, and tried to arrange a peace. And then it descended it again (or possibly just applied He Who Fights Monsters), and Magnus even destroyed robots that weren't rebellious.