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Other Comics
- Astro City: Plenty of them appear in "The Dark Age". Prominent examples include the Blue Knight, Black Velvet, the Point Man, and Stonecold. And that's not counting the sociopaths...
- The Confessor would like to be an out-and-out hero, but he can't escape the dark side of his nature, on account of being a vampire.
- Crackerjack is a lighter version, in the sense that he fights crime and saves people primarily for his own self-aggrandizement and is, simply put, a bombastic Jerkass.
- The Cloak of Night was an early example, being a silent gun-wielding vigilante who went after criminals and bootleggers.
- Billy Butcher of The Boys is an ex-CIA agent with a stone-cold hatred for so-called superheroes, many of whom in this verse (particularly Homelander and Black Noir) are evil as all get-out. He is incredibly manipulative, and will do or say anything it takes in order to get the results he wants, and he can be very sadistic in dealing with his enemies. As the series progresses, he moves out of antihero territory and into Villain Protagonist territory, especially when his final plan — killing all humans with Compound V in their blood, no matter how minute — is revealed, which results in Wee Hughie outright calling him a supervillain.
- Rayek from ElfQuest always does what he thinks is best for the entire elfin race, without ever stopping to ask the rest of the elfin race what they think is best for them.
- Elizabeth Rose
is definitely one, almost heading towards Villain Protagonist levels. The other guy seems to be one too, but only in situations where he can't help it. - Cynosure's resident go-to guy, Grimjack. is willing to do whatever needs to be done to do a job. But despite his gruff exterior, he has a soft spot for people who had the same kind of troubles he had in his past, and has been known to let a deserving person slip out. In the end, he will end up doing the right thing.The name's John Gaunt, a.k.a. Grimjack, and I'm the guy you hire when you need an asshole on your side.
- Cassie Hack in Hack/Slash. Her motivation is mostly admirable, but her tactics and personality are... not role model material.
- The Fixer from Holy Terror may be Empire City's protector, but despite what Natalie Stack says, he's not a very "gentle soul". Case in point, he steals a car.
- Judge Dredd is the top lawman in a Crapsack World, and often the only thing preventing the deaths of millions. He is also a brutal fascist who uses lethal violence as a first resort, and the laws he upholds are generally heartless at best, and cruelly Kafkaesque at worst.
- The titular character of the Lucifer series certainly qualifies, his vast intelligence and strict code of honour tempered by the fact... well, that he is a selfish, self-centered ass who is defined by his own pride and somewhat childish petulance at the fact that he cannot fully define his own existence. His heroic acts include saving the existence and putting himself at risk to save Elane Belloc and possibly Mazikeen.
- All The Metabarons. Steelhead in particular tends more towards Villain Protagonist in his darker moments.
- Monstress: The series protagonist, Maika Halfwolf, is a bitter cynic who is angry at pretty much the whole world, and whose first reaction to pretty much everything is violence. However, since she's constantly going up against militant foes on both sides of a looming race war and a conspiracy of people possessed by Eldritch Abominations, on top of the life she's already led, all that's pretty much understandable.
- The protagonist Joshua Carver of No Hero is one of the darkest antiheroes ever. He is by his own admission a monster that is sent out to kill other monsters and locked up in a cage the rest of the time. It's also heavily implied that he was a Serial Killer before the government found him. The only reason he isn't an outright Villain Protagonist is because the only people the readers get to see him kill are a bunch of supervillains masquerading as superheroes who rule the world with good PR, a chain of deals, and lots of money.
- Unfortunately, the group Joshua Carver kills off was so vitally connected to the world and its affairs that everything goes straight to hell, literally and figuratively. So it is painfully clear that Failure Is the Only Option.
- Preacher: Jesse Custer. Cassidy is a subversion; we think he's an anti-hero at first, but later it turns out he's just a shitheel. Or perhaps a Tragic Monster, depending on how generous you are with your Alternative Character Interpretation.
- Sam & Max: They solve crimes and save the world, but will cheerfully do horrible things along the way, often without strictly having to. Max in particular is a creature of pure Id who will do whatever comes into his head, and while Sam comes across as comparatively more level-headed, he's often only motivated to restrain Max because of potential consequences rather than any real morality. Nevertheless, they are contractually required to be good - their original creator has given free leave to have any writer use them as long as they are "on the side of the angels".
- Every single protagonist in the Sin City series qualifies as an Anti-Hero, though given the Wretched Hive they live in, it's a given. Marv, for instance, feels no remorse for torturing and killing a great deal of people over the course of his story, even bragging about it on one occasion, but he has several lines that he crosses only with extreme reluctance, such as hitting a woman or killing an innocent.
- Shadow, from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics). Lampshaded in issue #133.Eggman: Shadow? What do you want?
Shadow: Your death, Eggman. I'm going to snap you like a twig, then use you for kindling.
Eggman: Not if I avoid you like the... devil? Wait a second! Good guys don't kill! Isn't there a hedgehog moral code?
Shadow: Sonic holds such beliefs. Then again, he's a hero, I'm not. - Spawn (that is, from Todd McFarlane's comic book of the same name).
- The British comic book character "The Spider" (the original version, not the 2000AD non-canon parody) who is egotistical, proud and inclined to be contemptuous of others. He only fights crime because it's more of a challenge than committing crimes.
- Cade Skywalker, in Star Wars: Legacy. Unlike his ancestors, Cade is a death stick smoking, tough living bounty hunter and smuggler who abandons Jedi training and really just wants to be left alone. He develops into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold by the end of the story.
- The Transformers has the Dinobots, a Five-Man Band of Anti-heroes, though how much of an anti-hero they are depends on the individual (and who's writing them). They don't really care about that whole "protect innocent life" thing, they just want to fight. And none of them, not even Swoop (the Only Sane Man of the bunch), like Optimus Prime. Indeed, they spend much of the time they're active doing their own thing, rather than helping the other Autobots.
- From Transmetropolitan, Spider Jerusalem who loves to eat puppies, shatter illusions, knock people's teeth out and drive his poor editor to the brink of insanity, but he's also about the only journalist left in his world who tells the truth no matter what. He was also willing to selflessly sacrifice himself to bring down The Smiler.
- Watchmen:
- Rorschach doesn't differentiate between most degrees of criminal acts. His mask is a symbol for his perception on society, an extreme filter of black and white with no "bullshit grey". If he neglects to kill a criminal, it's either because he simply didn't have time or because he wants them around to snitch next time. Worse still, he seems bizarrely obsessed with branding people he knows nothing about with crimes he has no reason to suspect them of, at one point assuming every patron in the bar he was in, the "human cockroaches", in his words, spend their time discussing child pornography, and repeats his suspicions in those exact words to his friend Daniel Dreiberg.
- The Comedian. Skirts the line between Anti-Hero and Villain Protagonist.
- Dr. Manhattan thinks he's fallen off the end of the scale. He is "so deliberately amoral" that any heroic aspects are essentially non-existent.
