Well-Intentioned Extremist/Web Comics

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• MAG-ISA: The school shooters in this comic are well-intentioned extremists. They honestly believe that by shooting up a school, they help create a world of love and peace.
• Celesto Morgan in Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire. Compare him to the far more ruthless (and detestable) Knight Templar Raf Maliksh, who tries to kill Celesto for being insufficiently fanatical.
• As shown somewhat earlier in the strip, Miranda West of The Wotch walks full stride into Well Intentioned Extremity in a recent arc, where she punishes Ivan for being too intrusive in his desire to discover Anne's secrets, also condemns two innocents, and then refuses Ivan's plea that he has (apparently) learned his lesson, as well as refusing to help the ones who had nothing to do with her concerns, threatening him when he calls her out on it. But her status as a Well-Intentioned Extremist comes not just from her actions, but also from her attempt to justify it to her familiar (and herself).
• Another example: Professor Broadshouders in Zebra Girl has made it his life's mission to rid the world of demons - and doesn't care who he has to hurt, damn, or kill to get the job done.
  • Up to and including himself.
• Baron Klaus Wulfenbach in Girl Genius rules with an iron fist to protect the world from the sociopathic, unwittingly violent genius of the "Sparks". Attempts are made to paint him as a Necessarily Evil ruler whose methods are indeed improving the world, though; it is stated a few times that Klaus doesn't enjoy babysitting Europe.
  • Klaus is actually an extremely interesting example as he could actually be called a "reluctant tyrant". He hates his job, and would much rather be off adventuring or making crazy inventions (he rarely gets to partake in the latter). As a dictator, his rule basically comes down to "Don't make me come over there!" (Don't start a war, or tamper with forbidden technology of the Other.) Don't break that rule (or make a move to do so), and he is quite content to leave people alone.

Baron Wulfenbach: "So I stopped it. And I did it my way this time. No more negotiating. No more promises. No more second chances. And I did it alone. Because I had to. And it worked."

• • • Of course, this is only what we see as readers. Lots of people living under his rule are not as happy. Even if they agree it's still better than "everyone against everyone" bloodbath or Zombie Apocalypse.

Tarvek Sturmvoraus: ...And you know, even at a distance, I still learned a lot from your father: If someone can't handle an unpleasant truth? Lie to them. If someone won't listen to reason? Make them. If people don't choose to live peaceably? Don't give them a choice. If you don't like the rules - change the game.

• • Othar Tryggvassen, "Gentleman Adventurer!". He has the same goal as the Baron but a different method: He plans to kill every Spark in the world, ending with himself, due to the sorry state Sparks have left the normal folks of Europa in. As a result he's a hero to the common folk and non-sparks, while the sparks (including our protagonists) all despise him and tend to throw him out of airships. Of course, being a madman himself, Othar is not willing to get into fine differences and errs on the side of following his goal - e.g. he needs only to know that the guy invented a new water filter to conclude "must die". Also, after one incident he is really unpopular with the Baron's Questors, though he insists that while they indeed tend to be squeaky clean, that guy was really corrupt. Yes, Othar is crazy enough to become both Villain with Good Publicity and Hero with Bad Publicity at the same time.
  • Pretty much EVERY Spark (who isn't already a full-time villain) is, at one time or another, one of these. It goes with the Sparkiness. Even Agatha. As demonstrated here.
• In Kid Radd, GI Guy believes that humans and sprites are too far predisposed to hurting each other to hope for peaceful existence, and that a mercy-genocide is in order to stop the suffering.

Radd: He was just... well, like a lot of madmen. Somewhat accurate view of the problem, really insane view of the solution.

• Redcloak from Order of the Stick, if one reads Start of Darkness, falls squarely into this. He wants to improve life for the goblinoid races, but attempts to do so by putting down the other humanoids via divine blackmail, instead of by actually helping the goblins improve their lot.
  • Even more so, Miko Miyazaki from the same strip. A case study in what Lawful Good can do, when taken to its extremes. Justice untempered with Mercy, blind to the possibility that she could ever be wrong.
  • On the heroic side, Vaarsivuus is getting there as well in recent comics. At this rate, (s)he'll end up like Belkar...
    • ...quite possibly by saying the right four words to the right being at the right time for all the wrong reasons. Confirmed.
    • Fixed after a "The Reason You Suck" Speech from big bad Xykon makes him/her realise that might does not make right.
• It can be argued that VespAvenger from Questionable Content is a well intentioned extremist in the punishment she doles out to those who mistreat their girlfriends.
  • However, Faye, Dora, and Marten then quickly point out how wrong this is by asking her what she'd think if a man did what she did to women who mistreat their boyfriends. She'd ask him out. And then she orders her Vespa-bot to shoot Dora and Faye, with the lasers set to "disfigure".
• Ian Samael from Errant Story comes from a culture where Elven oppression is common and many Elves wouldn't think twice before wiping him out. His goal to keep his people from being hunted down by Elves is fine; pity that he tries to do so by attempting to wipe out the Elves himself.
• Darkbringer from Lightbringer strongly believes that the only way to fight evil is to embrace its ways, abandon all hope, and give up himself to darkness and despair. He believes that Lightbringer's actions give people false hope, so he wants to kill him.
• SUEPR Team One, from City of Reality, attempts to protect Reality's Mary Suetopia by destroying the entirety of the neighboring World of Magic, which has threatened to wreck their way of life. The protagonists are forced to try to stop them, despite nearly falling victim to the very same cynicism.
• Weijuaru of Juathuur basically wants to make every juathuur a god, because that would mean absolute freedom.
• The robot Blunt in Freefall. Just wants to protect humanity...and has no problems with a plan to lobotomise millions of robots to remove the chance that any of them could harm a human.
• This is exactly how the main character started out in To Prevent World Peace. Until her Face Heel Turn, anyway.
• Schlock Mercenary had a few.
  • Levaughn Matsui ("Hugo") Xinchub started out as one of these... in his own words -

Xinchub: I sold my soul a long time ago, believing that I was helping Humanity, and all our Terran cousins. Xinchub: I've done all kinds of atrocious things, and somewhere along the line I started to enjoy them.

• • Admiral Manyara Emm working in UNS military intelligence. She is not malicious and would rather prefer that people be happy as long as it's all the same for status quo. She also first tried to kill some private parties and UNS official to suppress leakage of a particularly ugly secret (greater than what already happened), then was relieved when given an option to pull it without killing anyone... then overdid it... then scrambled to cover it again and was willing to risk a hopeless war, that could easily double as a Revealing Coverup.