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Vigilante Man: Difference between revisions
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* The nameless cabal in ''Already Dead'' doesn't kill their targets themselves. Instead (for a hefty fee), they offer to hunt down the person who committed the crime and turn him over to the victim—complete with a very large table full of things like drills, knives, hammers, and blowtorches.
* Kyle Youngblood in the ''Dr Death'' series of novels winds up living up to his name to his friends and family as well as his enemies, as their retribution drags them into the crossfire often. The only friend he has who never dies is Rafe, the one who accompanies him personally on missions. Everyone else? They're gonna get snapped, gunned down, or exploded sooner or later. Interestingly, he prefers to use traps whenever possible as opposed to charging in guns blazing. The mercenary known only as "Big Cherry" due to his eye having been gouged out, and he refusing treatment or a covering due to the badass points it gives him, plays the trope straighter despite being a designated antagonist. He'll take out [[Even Evil Has Standards|those he finds unpalatable]] on the way to his intended targets. Think Mad Dog, from the Time Crisis games, sans megalomania. (as well as always wanting a fair fight with his rival for example) Kyle usually kills his bosses, causing Cherry to once more swear revenge.
* [[The Saint]] is a [[Gentleman Adventurer]] version who does his vigilante thing not because of any specific need for vengeance, but because he enjoys the challenge of defeating people who believe they are untouchable. In the earlier novels, he was much more likely to kill the villain of the piece; later stories saw this toned down, and by the time the stories were no longer being written solely by Leslie Chartris, it had virtually vanished. Every so often he would remember his 'bad old days' and choose to extract fatal vengeance someone the law could't touch. He at least once made the statement, "There is a justice outside the law..." and he was delivering it.
* [[The Spider]], [[The Shadow]], and numerous literary adventurers of the pre-World War II era fit this trope. In fact, these personages adopted secret identities due to the fact that they knew that they police would arrest them for their sudden justice. Other than Doc Savage (who didn't kill his opponents except when it was completely
* [[Tom Clancy]] dipped into this genre with ''Without Remorse'', which probably owes some inspiration to [[The Punisher]]. Desconstructed in that the protagonist himself is a little worried by his own lack of guilt over some [[Cold-Blooded Torture|pretty]] [[Nightmare Fuel|unpleasant]] methods of questioning, even on an unrepentant [[Complete Monster]].
* The Bluejay, also known as {{spoiler|Mortimer Folchart}} in ''[[The Inkworld Trilogy]]'' shows shades of this, particularly in the third book.
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* In Ian [[Mc Ewan]]'s novella 'Black Dogs' the narrator becomes a Good Vigilante Man after he sees a man in a restaurant ''smack his kid across the face so hard the kid's chair is knocked over backwards and cracks on the floor.'' The narrator challenges the man to "fight someone his own size" and then manages to break the guy's nose and knock him out with a few punches. He is called off by a waitress and stops him just before he becomes [[He Who Fights Monsters]] and kicks the guy to death. This moment provides a contrast from the [[Grey and Gray Morality]] of the rest of the book.
* ''[[Nuklear Age]]'' presents The Civil Defender, a crazed vigilante hell-bent on eliminating all crime, no matter how small. Complete with machine gun and futuristic body armor, the Civil Defender took up being a vigilante when his sandwich was stolen, and gives out tickets written on notebook paper when he's sane enough to have his finger off the trigger of his machine gun. He has repeatedly given out tickets for littering because of the pile of other tickets he personally threw to the ground.
* ''Sisterhood'' series by [[Fern Michaels]]: This series is about Vigilante Women! They obey a [[Thou Shalt Not Kill]] code, give villains a [[Fate Worse Than Death]], and they are usually careful to [[Never Hurt an Innocent]]. The book ''Free Fall'' had them being arrested by the police, but that's okay, because the judge, prosecuting attorney, and defense attorney are secretly on their side, as well as them being considered heroes by a lot of people! Later on, you have a group of Vigilante Men made up of Jack Emery, Harry Wong, Bert Navarro, Ted Robinson, and Joe Espinosa!
* [[Jack London]]'s ''The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.'' was a vigilante organization -- it might '''seem''' to be [[Murder, Inc.]], requesting payment for killings, but always demanded proof that the intended target was someone who'd gotten away with evil actions. When the founder and leader was persuaded that the Bureau was itself harming the advance of civilization<ref>The assassinations functioned as a "safety valve," letting off societal pressure, and thus humanity as a whole wasn't forced to reform laws and customs to bring evildoers to better justice.</ref>, he ordered the Bureau's other members, all of them his friends and fellow [[The Philosopher|philosophers]], to hunt '''him''' down and kill him if they could.
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