Scarlet is a political action comic by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev. The first miniseries was published by Icon Comics in 2010-2016. A second miniseries was published by Jinxworld, Bendis's personal imprint with DC Comics, in 2018-9 and a complete omnibus was published by Dark Horse Comics in 2022.
The hero of the comic is Scarlet Rue, a young punk from Portland, Oregon whose life was changed when a dirty cop murdered her boyfriend Gabriel and tried to kill her, and the police lied to the press that Gabriel had been a big-time drug dealer to justify it. She begins a vigilante campaign, murdering and exposing corrupt cops, but is unprepared for how much the city's population comes to support her and how quickly things escalate.
Scarlet includes the following tropes:
- Aggressive Negotiations: The discussions with the mayor go sour when he hears Guzman start broadcasting them over the police public address systems. When he calls Scarlet a bitch, Buddy loses her temper and shoots him in the head.
- Big Brother Is Employing You: Going joins Scarlet's group when a bunch of dirty cops try to kill Scarlet while she and Daemonakos are trying to get her out of the police headquarters, killing Daemonakos.
- Boom, Headshot!: A couple of times, most notably when Buddy shoots the mayor.
- Bowdlerise: Issue #4 of the first series was released with two different cover designs, one showing Scarlet Flipping the Bird with both hands, and the other with an identical image except for her hands being covered with brown paper bags.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Scarlet narrates the comic in speech bubbles, directly addressing the reader. A couple of other characters sometimes break the fourth wall, especially Going.
- Covers Always Lie: Many of the covers show Scarlet in a revealing black leather bra top that she never wears in the comic itself, or in other very sexualised outfits. She only dresses sexily a couple of times, when trying to seduce targets.
- Dark and Troubled Past: All of Scarlet's allies have their own reasons for being anti-authority.
- Brandon was Gabriel's best male friend and was with him and Scarlet when Dunes first started hassling them.
- Isis saw her father shot dead in front of her when she was a little girl, by racist cops who mistook him for a suspect and killed him for disrespecting them.
- Lowe was traumatised by witnessing civilian casualties during the Iraq War.
- Buddy's best friend (or maybe more) Amy killed herself when she was gang-raped by footballers who got away with it because of their status, and vilified by their fans. Buddy's father was the team coach who was involved in the cover-up.
- Going was sexually assaulted by an older cop when she was a rookie, and bribed/threatened by senior officers into not making a fuss about it. Later, she was attacked by dirty cops trying to murder Scarlet, and her partner Daemonakos was killed.
- Deus ex Machina: While Scarlet and her supporters were besieged in Portland and cut off from communications, similar revolutions erupted in other American cities, leading to regime change.
- Dirty Cop: The Portland PD is infested with dirty cops, who are the antagonists of the comic. The least dodgy thing they do is rob and kill drug dealers and then sell the drugs themselves.
- Do Not Adjust Your Set: Scarlet and her crew invade a breakfast TV studio to address the city.
- Flashmob: Scarlet first realises how popular she's become when she puts out a social media appeal for a demonstration in central Portland. Hundreds show up.
- Flash Mob Cover Up: Scarlet calls for a second mass demonstration to get the police away from City Hall.
- Genre Shift: Starts as a noirish urban vigilante story. By the end of the comic, there's been an armed revolution throughout the USA.
- Homoerotic Subtext: Scarlet speculates that Brandon might have been in love with Gabriel himself, and that Buddy is sexually attracted to her. It is also left unclear whether Buddy and Amy were best friends or lovers.
- In Medias Res: The comic starts with Scarlet strangling a man in a back alley, after which she starts narrating.
- Just Like Robin Hood: Scarlet uses some of the money she took from the dirty cops to give homeless people cash, food and toiletries.
- Killed Mid-Sentence: Happens when Buddy loses her temper and shoots the mayor while Scarlet is arguing with him.
- The Lost Lenore: Gabriel's murder motivates all Scarlet's actions.
- The Mole: Guzman, Dunes's partner when he shot Gabriel and Scarlet, left the force in disgust over the cover-up. Initially unwillingly but with increasing enthusiasm, he uses his remaining police connections to get info for Scarlet.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Averted, Special Agent Daemonakos is the most positively-depicted authority figure in the comic.
- Reasonable Authority Figure:
- FBI Special Agent Daemonakos, who sympathises with Scarlet's motivations and tries to restrain the Portland PD from attacking demonstrators. This eventually gets him killed.
- The US army negotiator Troy acts sympathetic towards Scarlet and warns her that the military might try to drug her after she surrenders to make her look crazy.
- Redemption Equals Death: Going is shot dead in the first battle of the Portland uprising, which broke out after she went public about the assassination attempt on Scarlet while in FBI custody.
- The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: There are a couple of loose cannons on Scarlet's side, but the comic is overall pro-revolution.
- Sacrificial Lion: Daemonakos is killed while protecting Scarlet from murderous dirty cops.
- The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction: Scarlet dresses up in a sexy red dress to pick up Dunes in a bar before killing him.
- Shout-Out: When Scarlet is talking to the US military negotiator Troy, she speculates that maybe this is all her wish-fulfillment dream while dying after Dunes shot her, like in Jacob's Ladder.
- Subverted Trope: Various people try to tell Scarlet that even if her cause is heroic, she'll end up dying pointlessly. This would inevitably happen if the comic were being written by a conservative, centrist or soft-leftist who didn't want to endorse armed rebellion, or if it were a shared universe where Status Quo Is God. She survives and becomes the leader of a national revolution.
- Tomboyish Name: Buddy, birth certificate name Rachel.
- Troubled Backstory Flashback: All of Scarlet's allies get one, sometimes with an Art Shift.
- Vigilante Man: Scarlet starts as a vigilante gojng after dirty cops.
