"It all started in the Seventies with the appearance of "heroes" like The Punisher and Wolverine. Instead of being hurled through a swirling dimensional vortex to seeming oblivion, a super-villain was now more likely to take a bullet to the brain, or a claw through the heart! Committing crimes and fighting super-heroes became dangerous!''
No wonder the bad guys starting acting a little rowdier — can you blame 'em? Suddenly, villains like Doctor Doom — who'd up till now pranced around with an air of menace but never actually did anything to anybody — started bumping off people left and right — some of 'em just for snoring too loudly!
— Marvel Year in Review 1993
The following have their own pages:
Other Comics Books
- Amazing Agent Luna is becoming this as of Year 2. Not only does Luna undergo TWO Plot Mandated Friendship Failures in the course of Volume 7, but it's hinted from the brief description of Volume 8 at the end of Volume 7 that she may pull a Face–Heel Turn in Volume 8. In fact, a Face–Heel Turn may be her only option if she wants to win Francesca back, though that's just because she rejoined Elizabeth when she thinks Timothy had dumped her because of Luna.
- Archie Comics, surprisingly enough, has done this several times:
- Life With Archie: The Married Life presents stories from the "future" in which Archie has grown up and gotten married, and now has more realistic, adult-sized problems to deal with. It's so dark that Archie gets killed in the final issue.
- Afterlife with Archie sounds like a funny concept: Archie meets the Zombie Apocalypse. The series is anything but funny. You know something's up when there are Cthulhu references in an Archie comic. It's drawn in a dark realistic style and the first issue has Hotdog being hit by a car and dying. Jughead gets Sabrina to bring him back but he's brought back as a zombie. He bites Jughead and...
- The original Life With Archie series (1958-1991) featured longer, more "adventure" oriented stories than the typical Archie titles, including elements like five-alarm fires, attempted kidnappings, and... mysterious Satanic boxes that melt people's faces off
. - One of those stories, "Secrets of the Deep", was a pretty standard scuba-diving-shipwrecks-and-sunken-treasure adventure... in which an evil treasure hunter shot at the gang with a spear gun and set an electric eel on them!
- The above story wasn't even the only Archie comic to feature face-melting action. From 1972 to 1974, Archie published a Sabrina the Teenage Witch spinoff, Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as Told By Sabrina. It had the odd combination of straight-up horror stories with art in the familiar Archie house style. One story in particular stands out, featuring a boy who teases a stutterer at school. The kindly teacher happens to be a witch, and gives him an enchanted book that melts his face off, and possibly kills him! The story probably violated several rules under The Comics Code, but somehow gained the CCA seal of approval (perhaps because Archie ran the CCA?)
- Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is in a similar realistic art style as Afterlife with Archie and has the same writer. It emphasises the horror aspect of Sabrina The Teenage Witch heavily.
- In one Josie and the Pussycats story, Josie gets possessed by Satan!note
- Archie vs. Predator sees several supporting characters from the series getting gruesomely killed by the titular Predator, firmly planting it in this territory compared to the main books. Interestingly enough it's also something of a case of Lighter and Softer too, since as opposed to both Afterlife and Chilling Adventures it isn't played as seriously and several bits in the book are played for (very dark) laughs primarily from the sheer bizarreness of seeing the Archie Gang mix it up with the Predator of all things.
- Archie and The Punisher met halfway in their unlikely 1994 crossover in which The Punisher tracks an Archie lookalike to Riverdale with orders to apprehend rather than kill him. The original pitch involved Archie hiring The Punisher to kill a psychopath who murdered his entire family, but this was considered too dark.
- Parodied in an Asterix one-shot with the conceit that they were fulfilling reader's suggestions, one of which (pictured) was to add Steampunk elements, give them all guns, draw them in a less childish style, and have them talk in a more naturalistic way rather than just punning all the time. The characters are shown drawn in a hyperdetailed Dark Age style (Asterix's feathered helmet wings are replaced with bat wings) with Gross-Up Close-Up-type details on the normally cuddly characters; Obelix is wearing a Badass Bandolier Pistol Whipping Romans with a BFG in a missile stockpile (Asterix is phoning Getafix to tell him these new gadgets don't work), and everyone is engaging in dreadfully-written Pulp Fiction-esque Buffy Speak, rendered in the UK English translation as Geordie (and still making a wholly unnaturalistic Hurricane of Puns).
- Before this were a few twists on dark storytelling in the series; Asterix in Switzerland's plot involves the heroes' efforts to save an innocent from murder. Quaestor Vexatius Sinusitus' potential death offered a jarring but refreshing sense of drama to the otherwise frivolous comedy strip. The same story also contains a more serious look at the Romans than usual — normally, Asterix villains tend to be Punch Clock Villains, Ineffectual Sympathetic Villains or just ordinary people who happen to get in the heroes' way (occasionally even Designated Villains, Played for Laughs), but Varius Flavus's actions (corruption, insane decadance and poisoning his opponents) are much more like what evil Roman patricians in history actually did. Oh, yeah, and an actual Roman orgy (if limited to eating like slobs, getting drunk and hideous makeup) is depicted.
- Stories featuring similar moments of deadly menace include Asterix and Son, where the village is burned to the ground, and the impending threat of Orinjade's execution in Asterix and the Magic Carpet. Also Obelix All At Sea, in which both Asterix and Obelix almost die (and the villain does, breaking Nobody Can Die), and Asterix and the Picts, which involves Scarpia Ultimatum and a much more complicated plot than usual. To a lesser extent, The Roman Agent and Caesar's Gift are both about just how ridiculously awful living in their Quirky Town would be.
- In Uderzo croqué par ses amis, a compilation album of short stories drawn by various artists about Uderzo, one story is a realistically-drawn, historically-accurate, painfully serious take on the concept of a pair of Gaulish warriors fighting Romans using magic potion. For instance, the magic potion appears to be a kind of religious Magic Feather, they put the skulls of dead Roman soldiers around their village to keep them out (like the historical Gauls did), and they murder Romans with swords. It turns the usually ridiculous little Gauls into something quite dramatic and mystical and badass.
- Uderzo croqué par ses amis also has another story in a similarly realistic art style, but with the usual characterisations of the Gauls. The story contains a gag where Asterix and Obelix accidentally catch Vitalstatistix in flagrante delicto with a hot blond who is not his wife, which is depicted in intentionally Squicky detail (since Vitalstatistix is both a beloved childhood character and a fat, ugly middle-aged man). Asterix is not exactly sexless but a gag like that would never get into the main stories.
- Astro City:
- Possibly justified in "The Dark Age" story arc, as an extradimensional dark energy enters people's minds as they revel in sadistic behavior. Lampshaded when some characters wonder if the energy turned people darker... or if it was simply attracted to them because of it.
- One character specifically notes the phenomenon when he sees Street Angel beat up a bar full of bad guys and thinks about how he used to be all smiley, telling jokes all the time and using gimmicky (but non-lethal) throwing halos. When he sees that the halos he uses now are "high-impact ceramics with a steel core", he thinks it's a perfect metaphor for Astro City in The '70s.
- Another character mentions that while he didn't appreciate the previous generation of heroes, "at least they seemed to mostly care about helping people."
- Jack-In-The-Box II's two bad-future possible sons are perfect examples of the absolute worst kind of "heroic" characters from the Dark Age of Comics — one is a Sabertooth Expy, the other is a cyborg killer (with a spring-loaded head, no less), and both are absolutely convinced that they are entitled to kill anyone they want because they are the good guys. Jack spends the rest of the story arc moving heaven and earth to make sure they never come into existence.
- Possibly justified in "The Dark Age" story arc, as an extradimensional dark energy enters people's minds as they revel in sadistic behavior. Lampshaded when some characters wonder if the energy turned people darker... or if it was simply attracted to them because of it.
- Parodied in issue #10 of the old Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers comic book. In it, the Rangers are brought to the set of a movie featuring a dark-and-gritty version of a superhero squirrel puppet who originally appeared in a Sid And Marty Krofft-type children's show. The character's creator is shown working as the movie's creative consultant and is not at all happy with the way the movie portrays his creation.
- Dare, a 1991 take on Frank Hampson's iconic British 1950s space explorer Dan Dare. The 1991 version was written for Toxic magazine by Grant Morrison, and illustrated by Rian Hughes. Dare awakes in the 1990s to find that Britain has become a capitalist society, and that a thinly-disguised parody of Margaret Thatcher has sold Britain to the evil Mekon. During the course of the story all of the main characters are killed - Digby even has his arm blown off — and the final edition ends with Dare blowing up London with a nuclear bomb.
- Image Comics' March 1993 one-shot Darker Image is this, featuring the first appearances of Dark Age of Supernames heroes Bloodwulf and Deathblow. It is also notable for containing one of the first appearances of The Maxx.
- Really, Image tends to be this compared to Marvel or DC. Mainly due to the emphasis on creator freedom, thus there's a lot more leeway for mature content that the Big Two won't usually allow.
- Parodied extensively in the Belgian comic De Kiekeboes, where in one issue, The Simstones, a character from the comic buys the publishing rights to the comic (very meta) and introduces a darker and edgier style.
- GoBots is noticeably darker fare than Challenge of the GoBots, with the miniseries having a premise involving Cy-Kill leading an uprising towards humans and featuring much more violence than the Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
- Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters is this to the entire Godzilla franchise. How dark is it? Godzilla reduces Japan to rubble in the first two issues. The rest of the series has the monsters tearing apart civilization and bringing out the worst of humanity.
- However this actually brings it closer to the tone of both the original film and the Heisei era. One of the complaints people had about the series was that, even with that knowledge in mind, it was little too much of a tone shift. Especially in reference to the scene of Rodan eating a child alive. There's another dark scene where Godzilla lets loose his atomic ray on a bunch of people trying to escape Los Angeles which he was currently destroying at that time.
- This is parodied in the "Comic Book Carnage" issue of Hack/Slash, set at a comic fan convention. A new comics company is depicted reviving an old comic called Wunderkind (a blatant Captain Ersatz for Captain Marvel) in a ridiculously over-the-top grimdark manner, whereupon a pair of Loony Fans are so outraged that they start murdering the comic's creators (who are real-world writers and artists who were pals of the comic's writer Tim Seeley and didn't mind getting bloodily slaughtered on paper).
- It's also revealed in The Stinger that the survivor is planning to do something similar to "Chippy Chipmunk", a old-timey cutesy comic that Creepy Good protagonist Vlad is fond of. Thankfully, he later turns out to enjoy "Chippy the Slasher Slayer" as well.
- Parodied by Alan Moore, at about the same time as he was getting a rep for it, in In Pictopia, set in an absurdly darker and edgier version of a Captain Ersatz comic strip setting, with things like not-Blondie (1930) as a prostitute, who gets raided by not-Judge Dredd. The main character, Nocturno the Necromancer (Mandrake the Magician) is horrified by what's happening to the place, especially when his goofy buddy Flexible Flynn (Plastic Man) is replaced by a snarling '90s Anti-Hero.
- Jem and the Holograms (IDW): Multiple:
- The comics is this to the cartoon. In the cartoon the main characters nearly died dozens of times but always escape without a scratch. The comics are aimed at a slightly older audience than the cartoons were, so they get away with light curses like "hell" and characters being shown injured. Clash nearly kills Jem in an early issue but Aja pushes her out of the way. Aja ends up with cuts and bruises, as does Jerrica. A few issues later Pizzazz gets into a violent car crash which leaves her unable to be in her band for a while.
- Played comedically in the second arc. In the "Dark Jem" arc Jerrica and her sisters get brainwashed by Synergy. They start dressing in darker toned outfits, start wearing black makeup, begin talking in monotone, act dismissive about everything, and generally act like stereotypical goths. Their new moody attitudes clash heavily with their typical, sweet and energetic ones.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is a Darker and Edgier take on all Victorian literature, though said literature was hardly light and fluffy to begin with.
- A lot of Disney comics are often this. The Little Mermaid and The Lion King have quite a few dark examples. For example, The Little Mermaid comic "Serpent Teen" has Ariel meeting a race called the Moray. They thought that mermaids wee a myth and consider them dangerous. The princess ends up keeping Ariel as a pet, and when Ariel's older sister Aquata arrives to help her she's almost eaten by a monster. Ariel ends up revealing she's a princess and is held hostage. The king of the Moray wants to kill all the merpeople however when Triton appears he destroys a lot of their town to get his daughters back.
- Alan Moore did a Darker and Edgier reboot of UK superhero Marvelman. What had originally started out as a British Captain Marvel rip-off, turned into a gritty, Total Recall-ish, what-is-real head trip, that even turned his Freddy Freeman-esque sidekick Kid Marvelman into a sadistic psychopath, with graphic violence that was unprecedented in the genre at the time and is still shocking today.
- In the Brazilian children's comics Monica's Gang, several lines are more directed towards older readers and use more mature elements:
- The graphic novels of the "Graphic MSP" line aim to please older readers and deal with mature themes that would not be allowed in the regular comic book. "Magnetar" shows Astronaut slowly descending into insanity; "Tina: Respeito" builds its narrative around the topic of sexual harrassment; and "Jeremias: Pele" realistically depicts the racism suffered by Afro-Brazilian children.
- Within the manga-inspired "Monica Adventures" series, which stars the cast as teenagers, Emerson de Abreu's "End of the World Saga" is an outright horror story, with explicit violence, death and references to the occult. As such, even if it still has moments of the author's trademark humour, it's considerably more frightening and depressing than both the original comics and the other issues of the manga.
- The European G1 My Little Pony comics are darker than the toy-line and American cartoons. While they were usually cute and fluffy, they delved into certain stuff other parts of the franchise wouldn't. The most infamous issue had an explanation for the Twinkle-Eyed ponies. They were enslaved by a wizard and forced to live in darkness so long they went blind. Applejack accidentally pushes the wizard to his death and saves the ponies. The rescued ponies end up using the jewels in place of eyes, and that's their backstory for characters like Fizzy.
- My Little Pony (Generation 4):
- IDW's My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comic series is noticably darker than the animated show it was based on. Issue #3 starts with Queen Chrysalis (who by herself is portrayed much more sinisterly here) and her changelings invading a little town of cute loving kitties and sucking all the love out of them. One month later the whole land is converted into the new changeling kingdom.
- My Little Pony: Fiendship Is Magic #1 is perhaps the darkest G4 comic to date. Highlights include the Body Horror of Sombra's transformations, his shattering of Amore after turning her into Crystal, and the Star Crossed Lover story between Sombra and Hope. In contrast to the usual comics and show, there is very little humor in Sombra's tale; it's pure tragedy.
- Paperinik New Adventures is a rare case of this done well. Those stories are way darker than the ones on "Topolino" (the Italian magazine where it is usually published): Paperinik stops fighting the Beagle Boys to defend the Earth from aliens, time travelers and crazy A.I.s, creating a new roost of supporting cast and using weapons which are much more powerful. However, he remains a very optimistic hero, and the comic gives us several funny and heartwarming moments to balance the mood.
- Disney Italy does this as an habit. Aside for publishing some 'normal' stories with classic characters and settings with darker themes and complete rejection of Family-Friendly Firearms (to the point Scrooge mentioned having at least a 149mm artillery piece and threatened to fire Donald from it), once in a while they bring back Doctor Vultur (a Nazi in everything but the name orango trying to Take Over the World) and a truer to the origins version of the Phantom Blot, and, in chronological order, they created the following: Paperinik himself (theorically Donald Duck's superhero alter ego. In practice even his lighter stories show the sadistic streak that in two occasions prompted him to set off lynching mobs), Paperinik New Adventures, Mickey Mouse Mystery Magazine (where Mickey is forced to temporarily move in a city more corrupted than Gotham and survive in spite of his very existence being a danger to the men who control the city), W.I.T.C.H. (where the heroes have no qualms in trying and killing their enemies), Monster Allergy (explicitely a horror, and as scary as the authors could get away with) and Double Duck.
- Disney Italy does this as an habit. Aside for publishing some 'normal' stories with classic characters and settings with darker themes and complete rejection of Family-Friendly Firearms (to the point Scrooge mentioned having at least a 149mm artillery piece
- Régis Loisel's re-imagination of Peter Pan is most definitely this. Forget the cute Disney version of your childhood, this one is most definitely not for children, as this adaptation has abusive and alcoholic parents, Attempted Rape, and self made orphans.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- The comic started out as a Gag Series similar to Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Around issue 20 or so, it shifted to a more serious, interconnected tone similar to Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM). The Endgame arc, where Sonic becomes a fugitive after being accused of killing Princess Sally, and Robotnik is Killed Off for Real, is where it dove off the deep end, and established itself as one of the darkest incarnations of Sonic, dealing with themes such as abusive relationships, birth out of wedlock, drugs, genocide, and bigotry. It stayed that way for 10 years or so, before Ian Flynn took over as writer and returned the comic to a lighter tone, though still not as light as the games.
- Way back when the comic was humor-oriented, the cover for issue #4 parodied this by promising an "all-new, darker, grittier" Sonic. Turned out he was just covered in dark grit from cleaning the chimney.
- Sonic the Comic was much darker compared to the games at the time it was being produced. The most well-known aspect is that Super Sonic is a Superpowered Evil Side who eventually splits up from Sonic and becomes basically a physical god. Sonic once believed he killed his friends following one of Super Sonic's outbursts and fell into a Heroic BSoD when he regained control.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW):
- The Metal Virus Saga, spanning Issues #13-32 and an Annual one-off, is a Sonic-style Zombie Apocalypse played totally straight, and a top contender for THE DARKEST Sonic story ever told. After a brief stint as an amnesiac, Dr. Eggman unleashes the Metal Virus, a bioweapon which roboticizes all organics into evil robo-zombies called "Zombots". From #16-29, things constantly go From Bad to Worse for heroes and villains alike: the plague picks off the heroes one by one as it spreads, with the survivors faring no better than the victims, and even Eggman loses control of the situation before his Eviler than Thou rivals, the Deadly Six, usurp control of the Zombots. It takes a tense Enemy Mine, Silver the Hedgehog's presence in Sonic's time, and Sonic and Silver's use of a mysterious warpstone and the Chaos Emeralds to finally set things right. Severe Schedule Slip, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, resulted in the Metal Virus/Zombot arc dragging on for well over a year, frustrating many fans who by Sonic and co.'s Darkest Hour were fed up with the depressing storyline. After the arc finally concluded, Evan Stanley succeeded Ian Flynn as head writer and quickly returned the series to its Lighter and Softer roots.
- The Tangle & Whisper miniseries pits Sonic's new friends Tangle the Lemur and Whisper the Wolf against an Ax-Crazy Shapeshifting mercenary with a Nightmare Face. Previously, this mercenary helped Eggman wipe out Whisper's old team, leaving her traumatized. The same mercenary tries several times to murder her and Tangle, almost succeeding at one point, and Whisper initially shies away from Tangle for fear of losing her. It takes quite the effort by Tangle to get Whisper to brighten up.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- Spencer & Locke parodies the cast of Calvin and Hobbes and pushes it through the lens of Sin City. The result is Hardboiled Detective with a Dark and Troubled Past and a seven-foot-tall blue panther Imaginary Friend.
- Suske en Wiske now also has it. The new spin-off/reboot series. The first album entitled Amoras features partial nudity, swearing, blood, substance abuse and a mature theme. The series is written als a multi-album story. So far, critics like it. But old time fans expecting the milder tone of the original series will be in for a very unpleasant surprise.
- The new series was actually announced to the press as an obituary for Wiske, making it very clear that she dies in the first album. In fact, her death scene is the first album's front cover. Look Here.
- The new series was actually announced to the press as an obituary for Wiske, making it very clear that she dies in the first album. In fact, her death scene is the first album's front cover. Look Here
- A 2004 Thunder Cats mini, Thundercats: The Return. Lion-O gets trapped in the Book of Omens for five years, and when he gets out he finds the Thundercats beaten, Bengali killed and enslaved by Mumm-Ra. Like Wilykit and Wilykat. Let's just say that puberty has been good to them, and that Mumm-Ra has the same tailor for his slaves as Jabba the Hutt. There is also implied rape of Cheetara by the Mutants. And then there's Lion-O brutally breaking the neck of an ape mutant.
- The Transformers: Generation 2 comic books, loosed from even the moderate Contractual Immortality restrictions they had been operating under before, promptly started massacring the cast. Issue #1 cover copy: "This is Not Your Father's Autobot." #2: "Fort Max Gets the Ax." #3: "Killing Frenzy." The characters would also kill without hesitation and use guns that weren't their signature weapons.
