The Woobie/Comic Books: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

* Squee from ''[[Johnny the Homicidal Maniac]]''. You just ''really'' wants to give him a mug of hot chocolate and an everlasting hug.

* Barbara Gordon's teddy bear is gonna have to give up the title. Babs herself was humiliated and crippled by [[The Joker]] just to [[Mind Rape|torture her dad]]. Later she was sort-of reborn as Oracle, the [[Hot Scientist|best hacker in the world]], but lots of her fans [[Unpleasable Fanbase|still aren't pleased]].

** Jim Gordon's a pretty solid contender, too. Not one, but ''two'' murdered wives, and, as above, his daughter being crippled to torture him, all from being the commissioner in a city with exactly one clean cop who's since left the force, one [[Lovable Traitor]] on the police force, and a few trustworthy vigilantes against...well. His daughter's shared in most of this, and wins by being the one shot, but this is ''not'' a fortunate man.

*** {{spoiler|And now his son is probably a serial killer, or at least very seriously mentally ill.}} Yikes!

*** Does she let all that stop her from [[The Pollyanna|living life and being the best superhero she can be?]] [[Plucky Girl|HELL. NO.]]

** Jason Todd, of all people. Usually closer to sympathetic [[Anti-Villain]], or [[Jerkass Woobie]], but when you have been abused or betrayed by your biological mother and adoptive father, was outright killed by the Joker, had no punishment levied on him for that, and in your quest to stop crime have killed so many people that you have moved from liking it as a punishment, to apathy, to outright disliking it in self defence. He views his life as too miserable to share with others, and his death had insufficient meaning to stop a similiar situation happening to another of your mentor's sidekicks, at around the time you return to confront him. Also, he gets treated as a failure by Batman, who makes no active attempt in his life to help him, merely giving suggestions in his hologram message, which happens to mention how much of a failure he is, driving him insane. A couple of poorly thought out attempts at at testing his replacement and proving points to the Batfamily don't go well either, due to their stubbornness. Combine that to the dildo-head costume Grant Morrison gave you, and people might see where he's coming from.

* ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'', pictured above is the [[Unlucky Everydude]] king. He alternates between Woobie and [[The Chew Toy]] as Peter Parker, especially during his high school days. More recently, there's the problems his dual identity causes with his wife, and then there was the time he got [[Body Horror|turned into a grotesque spider-critter by a villain]] and then [[Mister Seahorse|impregnated]]. Then, the greater angst like [[Stuffed Into the Fridge|losing Gwen Stacy]], or Aunt May's [[Disney Death|"death"]], or her being shot more recently, or the aftermath of the Clone Saga (infant daughter kidnapped, never to be seen again. [[Word of God|Writers don't always agree]] on whether she's alive or not, but do agree that aging the character by adding a kid won't do. So worse in a way than a certain death is that Peter will never, ever know what happened to his daughter, who may be out there somewhere and just as likely may not. He gets to live the parent's worst nightmare for the rest of the foreseeable future.)

** Nicely inverted in the ''[[Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane]]'' series, in which Mary Jane is the insecure woobie who can't seem to catch a break with her love life.

* [[Spider Girl]] confirms that Woobiehood is genetic. Although May doesn't have it quite as bad as Pete, just the usual life-complicated-due-to-heroics deal... until she finds out she [[Cloning Blues|might be a clone]] and is forced to fight [[People Puppets|Norman Osborn in her father's body]].

** Speaking of clones, there's April Parker, who no one likes because she's the [[Dark Action Girl]] [[Annoying Younger Sibling]]. Peter's so bad about it that April once says NORMAN treated her more like a daughter.

** Then there's Spidey's [[Luke, You Are My Father|nephew]], Darkdevil. Let's just say he wasn't lucky enough to [[Abusive Parents|live with nice relatives like Uncle Ben and Aunt May]] and [[Street Urchin|it]] [[Clone Degeneration|got]] [[Demonic Possession|worse]].

** Also note Ben Reily, Peter's late clone, who was like a brother to him. Firstly, due to cloning magic, he has all of Peter's memories and experiences up to just after Gwen died. Secondly, he's forced to fight Peter, while not sure if he's even the real Peter or just a clone. Then, during the convulted plot, they go back and fourth between which is the real Peter. He eventually finds love himself, but that doesn't work out good, while also being framed for a series of murders. He eventually joins Peter as a super hero, and during the Clone Saga he even gets to become Spider-Man. However, he's then taken over by Carnage, gets toyed around with, before sacrificing himself to save his 'brother' and finding out he's the clone after all. Now, take a look at Kaine...

** And the reason they choose Jessica? because, as is explicitly stated, ''no one would care if she went missing, or notice anything was wrong if the queen slipped up.'' Ouch

** Add to the fact that she almost has a normal happy life with her aunt and cousin...until it turns out that {{spoiler|her aunt's boyfriend is an agent sent to find her}}. She ''very'' narrowly avoids killing her aunt and cousin {{spoiler|mainly because they made it to the shower while she was hacking said agent (who spilled the 'trigger scent' on himself by sheer dumb luck) apart}}, and said disciplinary invulnerable sadist returns to recapture X-23 and kill the family ''slowly'' as an object lesson, {{spoiler|forcing her to cut off her own hand and blow up their house to save them.}}

** Oh, and now she just found out she doesn't have a soul.

* Although he may be considered unsympathetic at times, this troper always considered Monroe from [[Mad Magazine]]'s recurring feature of the same name kind of a woobie.

** [[McNinja|Ninjette]] and [[Alpha Bitch|Sistah Spooky]] get their Woobie moments too. [[Troubled but Cute|ThugBoy's]] moment is [[Foreshadowing|coming]].

** Sistah Spooky, while a bitch, falls firmly into the 'nobody deserves ''that''' camp in volume 6. {{spoiler|Her teammates do the sum total of asking Emp to keep an eye on her after the death of her girlfriend Mindf*** leaves her near-catatonic with grief. She can't talk to anyone except Emp, her worst enemy, because no other person knows. Mind' left a neural clone in her memories, twisting the knife further as she couldn't save the real one. Then Spooky's [[Deal with the Devil|Infernal Service Provider]] contacts her to [[Hannibal Lecture|say Mind's soul was in hell suffering unimaginable torture because she loved "a loathsome piece of shit like her." And BTW you're still damned, so call me?]]}} Get this woman some ther- [[There Are No Therapists|oh wait]].

* Even [[Crazy Awesome|Deadpool]] can be subjected to this. {{spoiler|His mother died of cancer when he was five, his father was possibly killed by a drunk in a bar fight, his wife was killed by a crazy mercenary, he joined Weapon X because they promised to make him a superpowered hero and cure his cancer (most likely the same cancer that killed his mother), but instead was thrown in the reject pile and experimented on by a mad scientist, began to wish for death so strongly that he ended up having a love affair with the anthropomorphic personification of Death, and when he stood up to the bully bodyguard Ajax the guy got back at him by torturing one of his friends to death and then killing him. Then his healing factor activated which allowed him to defeat Ajax and save everyone, but also caused him to be separated from his lover Death and suffer severe brain damage that screws up his memories and he's also horribly scarred from the cancer. During the series, he gets attacked by the guy who killed his wife, who now claims that he is Wade Wilson and Deadpool was the mercenary who killed his wife, and Deadpool can't refute his claims because his memories are so messed up, when he tries to stop killing people and become a hero, he's forced to kill Ajax to save the spirits of his old friends from Weapon X, then he's recruited to save the world by killing a being who stands in the way of the prophesied savior, but the savior "saves" the human race by sapping them of free will so he ends up killing the thing to save the world the whole time wondering if he's doing the right thing.}} And that's not even getting into Cable and Deadpool, which admittedly does make things a bit better for him, but seriously, the guy can't catch a break. Of course, this is subverted a bit because he's sensible enough not to angst about it all the time, but still.

*** Deadpool's been fleshed out as one of these in the new X-Force, as he feels like an outsider.

* [[Donald Duck]]. [http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i212/Kerrah_photos/Fired.jpg He gets fired from whatever job he has once an episode], has to support three children whose real parents seem to have abandoned them for good, follows his uncle on adventure hunts which he never gets profit for, [http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i212/Kerrah_photos/Douchebag.jpg has the biggest jackass of all history as a close relative] and constantly gets abused by his girlfriend for stuff he's not responsible for.

* [[Daredevil]] isn't "adorable" or anything, and he certainly isn't what anybody could call "pathetic," but he inspires a deep sympathy and a need to compose fanfics that somehow relieve his pain, or at least make the rest of the world sympathetic to it. He's completely blind (through having a canister of radioactive waste explode in his eyes as a boy), his father was killed, he fights to get through law school to help the downtrodden who don't have anywhere else to go, he becomes Daredevil to help the people on the street who otherwise wouldn't have anybody on their side... and ''because'' he became Daredevil, the two women he loved were both slaughtered right in front of him, he's been mind-raped more times than one can count, and then, to top it all off, he's {{spoiler|exposed by an uncaring public, attacked by the public, the press, and the FBI when he tries to keep his sadistic enemies away from his friends' homes, put in jail for ''obstruction of justice'' of all things(!! Daredevil is ''about'' justice!), forced to sit in solitary confinement while listening to his best friend get stabbed to death ''and nobody lifts a finger to help'', his wife is driven permanently insane, he himself goes through numerous breakdowns, each one worse than the last (and this is just the stuff I can think of off the top of my head)}}, he's getting more and more isolated and alone all the time... and he ''still'' tries to save everybody else.

** The fact that he's seriously mentally ill is rather vital to the sympathy factor - as it is, being short, ugly, sociopathic and deeply right-wing just makes you go, "Gawd, look at how screwed up he is. Poor guy." {{spoiler|This Troper defies anyone to watch his last scene without intense sympathy.}}

** That's true, but also highlights a real problem at the heart of nearly all alleged Misaimed Fandoms: at the end of the day, they come not from the fandom making a "mistake", but from the writer confusing his own opinions with everyone else's opinions. Rorschach touches a chord with many people for various reasons (This Troper respects his courage and discipline, for example) with the exception of Alan Moore...who seriously believed that just because ''he'' disliked Rorschach ''everyone else'' would too. [[Deadpan Snarker|We should have a trope called Misaimed Author]].

** Just remember that after you have given her a hug and a hot chocca, she is just as likely to smile in gratitude as she is to turn you into a goldfish because she liked the colour of your spectacles.

** Or (which seems at least as likely or more so as being physically transformed) [[Blue and Orange Morality|break your mind and honestly believe it's a reward.]]

** Despair has some woobie moments too, mostly in ''Brief Lives''; it ''is'' her own fault that she didn't help Delirium look for Destruction, but I'm probably not the only one who wanted to give her a hug when she realised what she missed out on. Especially since Destruction seems to have been the only one who treated her warmly.

* [[Fantastic Four|Ben Grimm]], alias the Thing. His friends all get cool superpowers that they can control and become super-celebrities. He gets turned into a giant rock monster, and all because he volunteered to help out his best friend Reed. The Ultimate version really hammers this home: he [[Driven to Suicide|attempts to kill himself]], but ''can't''.

** For consolation though, the Thing is possibly the most beloved Marvel superhero, both in-universe and out, who has his friends and family all helping him deal with his issues. The angst really only remains because it's such an integral part of his character.

* Nothing here for ''[[WE 3]]''? Nothing?!

* Rahne Sinclair, Wolfsbane of the ''[[New Mutants]]''. Terminally shy, raised by the only parent she knew to believe that her powers were sinful (and who let her believe she was an orphan who had caused her mother's death during her birth) but clearly enjoys experiencing her powers. Has not one, but two teammates save her life by substituting their own. And that doesn't even get into the arc where she was trapped in her hated werewolf form by the Genoshans, knowing that if she shifts back to human, she'll lose all intelligence. Then she must kill some anonymous terrorist (never being able to tell anyone), gets imprinted on a man who loves another, loses her adoptive mother, is shot and de-powered, mugged, re-powered while trying to re-start her life, loses her job as a teacher at Xavier's, falls out with her best friend and only person who loves her, is humiliated by Monet, sleeps with a suicidal Rictor, is shanghaied into a superteam of razor-wielding psychopaths (losing the respect of Rictor, who assumes she left him), is drugged, brainwashed, orphaned by her own hand and not involved in the New Mutants reunion book. Puir gel...

** And it gets worse: She finally gets some happiness when she reunites with Hrimhari the Asgardian Wolf Prince. She becomes pregnant with his baby, becomes dangerously ill due to said pregnancy, and looses Hrimhari due to a deal made with Hela. Then, as she returns to X-Factor, she walks in on {{spoiler|Rictor and his boyfriend about to share some alone time. She ends up fighting with Shatterstar because she thinks Rictor's been brainwashed. Then, due to all of her mental trauma and extreme religious background, she ends up telling Rictor that he's the father of her child.}} Yeah, someone has it out for her.

*** Things seemed to be looking up for him after Shatterstar returned and they attempt a proper relationship, but with Star's interest in [[Anything That Moves]] and Rahne telling him that he's the father of her baby when he's not, promise for some delayed angst in Ric's future. And then he was the first mutant to get his powers back when the penitent [[Scarlet Witch]] attempted to reverse her spell...

* Kid Devil of the newer [[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|Teen Titans]]. While his back story is not as overtly tragic as many other characters like Raven or Cyborg, he does have the most pitiful back story. To sum everything up, Eddie has had to deal with not being taken seriously by his hero Blue Devil, parental abandonment, the death of his only parent figure indirectly caused by his hero, fired from every job he's had and becoming broke and homeless when he tried to become a super hero. What's more, Eddie wasn't lucky enough to have been adopted and trained by a billionaire, have had a demon/Greek god/alien for a parent, or found a piece of alien tech to give him powers. He had to make a deal with Neron (a Satan Expy) to get super powers. Eddie got to keep his soul as long as he kept his trust in Blue Devil; otherwise he'd lose it when he turned 20. He then found out Blue Devil's hand in causing his aunt's death and ended up losing his trust. And after he joins the team, he still isn't taken seriously by anyone, but he still managed to keep and smile on his face and never gave up on the team. It also helps that he's a cute, geeky demon boy.

* The [[Green Lantern]] Guy Gardner can count as this, although it's not that obvious. I came to this revelation mostly due to an [[Alternate Character Interpretation]] that has developed after some psychology classes and a new understanding of brain damage. [http://kalinara.blogspot.com/2006/04/so-whats-up-with-guy-gardner-obsession.html This] article (not mine) outlines a lot of my reasons for this. I don't think the poor [[Incredibly Lame Pun|guy]] ever caught a break for a long time...

* Jules Hedgehog from [[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Sonic the Hedgehog]]. he had to stay a robot, and thus can not eat or sleep. Poor guy needs a hug..

*** Don't forget {{spoiler|Her best friend and the person who was most likely to be able to help her was recently captured and Robotized by Robotnik, with her possibly having been able to help and stop it from happening if the person who started the hate plague didn't intentionally interupt her actions...}}

*** And whats worse is that most of this cr@p is coming from people she trusted and who she's helped many times, and who where fully aware of why she did what she did, and they're stil condemning her. This troper was almost wishing Robotnik would win over the "heroes"...

* [[Runaways]] is what happens when you have an entire ''team'' of woobies. [[Parental Abandonment]] is sort of built into the premise.

* Cassie Hack of ''[[Hack Slash]]''. Abandoned by her father, relentlessly bullied, raised by an overbearing, somewhat unstable and possibly abusive mother who committed suicide in front of her when it was discovered she was a [[Serial Killer]], with Cassie later being forced to personally kill her (by ''shooting her in the face'') when she returned as an undead monster. Oh yeah, and when she finally does meet her father and learns [[Daddy Had a Good Reason For Abandoning You]], he gets killed... by her resurrected mother... who she is forced to kill again. Really, its no wonder she's a bit of a [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]].

* The membership of the Red Lantern Corps is full of these. According to Atrocitus himself, the specific rage powering the Red Lanterns stems from personal pain, "those whose lives were ravaged by greed, lust, and control." One really notable example of this would be Dex-Starr a.k.a. Ruffles the Rage Kitty {{spoiler|who, as we learn, was once a simple house cat named Dexter that was rescued as a kitten by an impoverished woman in New York, and one of the few things that made her life bearable. One night, Dex-Starr wakes up his master when a burglar breaks into her apartment, which results in the burglar killing the woman and running off before the police arrive. When the police do arrive, they toss Dex-Starr away so that he doesn't contaminate the crime scene, forcing him to live as a stray. And then [[It Got Worse]]. Some thugs stuff him into a bag and drop him from the Brooklyn Bridge to his almost certain demise... until the Red Ring looking for a recruit in Sector 2814 shows up and chooses Dex-Starr. At this point, he was the angriest thing in our sector of the universe. Think about that for a second. His first act of business is to incinerate the thugs that tried to kill him. The last few panels of his origin story are him sleeping on the streets, curled around a human skull, remembering his owner and promising revenge on the one who killed her, complete with actual tears of grief which should technically be impossible for a Red Lantern and a housecat.}}

* [[Green Lantern]] can easily become this for readers of ''[[All Star Batman and Robin]]''. He's [[Only Sane Man|one of the few genuinely heroic members of the otherwise psychopathic cast]], and he gets constantly denigrated by Batman and beaten up for no real reason.

* Eliot, from issue 4 ("Between The Cracks") of volume 1 of [[Generation X]]... {{spoiler|He isn't even a mutant, he's "just ugly" according to Synch, but that doesn't stop everyone from [[Kick the Dog|hating him]].}}

* Matt McLimore from ''[[Dork Tower]]''. He is part of a gaming group that drives him nuts with their insane tactics, anything he enjoys is instantly discredited as outdated or dull, his blog gets ''zero'' hits, his attempts at self-publishing have yet to succeed, the girl he has a crush on is only vaguely aware of his existence, and his on-again off-again girlfriend is a [[Clingy Jealous Girl]] who belittles everything he does and everyone he associates with.

* [[Captain Atom]] in his Charlton Comics period was a fairly average stock hero. Upon being incorporated into [[The DCU]], Captain Atom started closely fitting the trope. His heroic Charlton past rewritten as a Metafictional story baked for the general public, young soldier Nathaniel Adam was framed for a crime he never committed. Desperate to get back to his family, Nathaniel agreed to be strapped to an atomic bomb, acting as a guinea pig for an alien alloy. Upon waking up as a superpowered powerhouse, twenty years later, he finds that his Jerk superior, Colonel Wade Eiling (the same dude framing him, by the way) had married his beloved wife, who died sadly of old age believing Nathaniel dead, and a traitor. Due to Nathaniel having been pronounced dead after his disappearance, Eiling never got his pardon sent, thus he becomes literally a pawn in his hands, forced to act as a mole in the superhero community for his power-hungry commanding officer. From there, Captain Atom's life becomes a never ending series of pain and suffering, briefly summarized in: his only son, raised by his worst enemy, hating him as a traitor to everything the All-American boy Adam used to stand for, being constantly blackmailed into obedience by Eiling, getting married again, and dumped, by a Canadian Terrorist, sacrificing his life to save the universe without ''anyone at all caring about'', save for Superman and Batman, getting shunted into a parallel dimension of Jerks (the [[Wildstorm]] universe) and becoming a Big Fat [[Reset Button]] for that reality, being shunted back to his Earth, getting [[Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds|enough battleaxe crazy to amass an army of enslaved superheroes to take back the Multiverse]], falling into a coma, being enslaved by a magic evil chick from another world, and getting back to normal just to find how everyone hates his guts now. Just to make his life more miserable, during the [[Brightest Day]] storyline {{spoiler|Captain Atom finds out that his quantum energized body is still evolving, so he's [[Not Even Human]] anymore}}.

* Rosemary Almond from ''[[V for Vendetta]]'', whose whole life looks like a [[Lifetime Movie of the Week]], except it's done well and ''without'' the [[Straw Feminist]] undertones. She once was a happy housewife and had a man she loved but then [[It Got Worse|shit happened]] and her husband, Derek, went to serve the totalitarian regime that took over UK. Derek began to drink and grew into a full-blown [[Domestic Abuser]], who would batter and neglect his gentle and faithful wife every evening. Then Derek dies at [[Anti-Hero|V]]'s hands and the government refuses to give her any pension. She resorts to going out with one of her husband's co-workers, Roger, who was hitting on her, but his sole purpose was to sully the memory of Derek by fucking his widow. Roger is also killed some time later. She is then expelled from the high society she was a part of and resorts to being a showgirl to support herself. Think it ends here? [[It Got Worse|Think again]]. Having lost everything and everyone that mattered to her, Rosemary eventually decides to make somebody pay for all what was done to her. She utterly shoots dictator Adam Susan in the head, who failed to even recognize her even though they had met many times before. She ends up tortured by the Fingermen, the state's police, knowing full well it would happen to her but preferring to [[Heroic Sacrifice|die with honour]] rather than being just another victim of the state. Poor, ''poor'' Rosemary...

** Proof in point, the first of the X-Men: Cyclops lost his parents in an accident and was seperated from his only family and grew up in a foster home where he was bullied by kids and staff alike because one mutant was obsessed with his genes. He also can't control his power either due to brain damage, psychological repression, or because someone made him unable to. This is worse since his power is to shoot a neverending, potentially unlimited ammount of destructive energy from his eyes, meaning he hasn't been able to look anyone in the eye since he was forteen. As the leader, he's had to repress every emotion he has, causing most to view him as cold or distant, which is followed by the woman he loved dying, his marriage breaking down (for which he's blamed for), before the love of his life to die AGAIN while everyone blames him for a psychic affair he didn't actually consent to. Oh, and everybody seems to hate him because he had to [[I Did What I Had to Do|cross the line]] in order to save everyone, and since he's basically sacrificed everything in order to keep the few mutants left alive, its caused his best friend to abandon him, his rival to take moral superiority, all the children he worked to protect sided against him, his girlfriend and his only friend left only sided with him out of loyalty, and throughout all of this, he's constantly ignored in favour of a hairy Canadian bloke who heals fast.

* Poor [[Iron Man|Tony Stark]]'s never-ending train of life-suckitude is probably second only to that of [[Spider-Man]], especially before the [[Modern Age]], living through kidnapping, torture, heart problems, evil girlfriends, murderous ex-friends, alcoholism, brainwashing, terrible luck, and dozens of plots to make his life a living hell that would put Daredevil's iconic torment by the Kingpin to shame, all sprinkled with [[Survivors Guilt]].

** And, to make life worse, after one drink during [[Apocalypse How|The apparant end of the world]] during The Serpent's invasion, where he gave up everything he could to make Odin see that humanity wasn't worthless, he's now being blackmailed by the Mandarin-controled American govornment, they've somehow managed to twist one drink during the end of the world into permission for them to attatch a power limiter to Iron Man which can shut off his powers (when the General doing so in question deserted during fear itself...). Due to this, he's had to watch {{spoiler|his best freind die jsut a few feet away from him}}.

* ''[[Justice Society of America]]'' has Cyclone, granddaughter to the original Red Tornado, and DC's first [[Genki Girl]]. Her bubbly personality, high intelligence, and [[Motor Mouth]] causes people to alienate her, resulting in her having no friends until she joins the Society ''ever'', she was abducted as a child and experimented on, and her first day in the team had someone ''die''. It adds to her [[Moe Moe]] appeal.