Marvel Universe
Deconstructed Trope in this series.Comic Books
- The Avengers's .1 issue deconstruct the Ragtag Band of Misfits trope. Set during the Cap's Kooky Quartet era, Captain America ends having Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch dropped on his lap when Thor, Iron Man, Ant-Man and the Wasp left the team for their own things. The public isn't keen on Captain America leading a team of super villains, Captain America himself isn't keen on it, the former villains can't stand each other and a horrified Wasp realizes they've made a mistake when they get trounced by the Frightful Four.
- Daredevil: Born Again deconstructs Cut Lex Luthor a Check. Wilson Fisk is trying to expand into legitimate businesses and be a Villain with Good Publicity, but his vendetta against Daredevil is costing him money and putting that ambition in jeopardy. The first crony to try and point that out to him is "bought out" and later has both his legs broken off-panel; the second is murdered by Fisk then and there. Fisk is trying to turn his criminal genius into more acceptable enterprises, but his obsession with Daredevil and his violent instincts keep overriding his sense.
- Fury: My War Gone By deconstructs Elites Are More Glamorous greatly throughout the series. Elite formations such as the SAS, Green Berets, Delta Force and Spetsnaz are more glamorous to civilians and rank-and-file soldiers, and they're certainly trained and equipped to make spectacular splashes... but ultimately, they're too few in number to actually win wars. That's the job of the great masses of the regular armies, navies and air forces, who endure horror, boredom and vastly more casualties (and for much longer) to assure a lasting victory. So, they may be glamorous, but they're not as effective as many would believe. And that belief - that a handful of elite "super-soldiers" could make the rest of them irrelevant - was what ultimately led America to attempt some very stupid things, thinking the elites would always succeed.
- It's especially evident with Fury himself. A highly trained soldier with extensive experience in covert operations, he time and again endures horrific battlefield injuries and is subject to torture more than once in the series. Apart from that, it's clear that he doesn't enjoy his life much and war is the only thing he truly lives for. He may be elite, but there's very little glamorous about his life.
- Guardians of the Galaxy, the 2008-2010 series, deconstructs the Ragtag Bunch of Misfits. Yes, the Guardians are a rag-tag bunch of misfits and they don't work well together, so much so that Peter Quill had Mantis use telepathy to convince them all to join. They immediately split up when they find out about this. Meanwhile, they have serious trouble with authority figures, who for some reason just don't trust a team which has two known mass-murders on it, along with several others members who have been arrested at one point or another, and refuse to listen to them on several occasions.
- In Nova, it's shown that Sam Alexander's Butt-Monkey status -pretty much everything he does seems to make the other heroes dislike him, often through no fault of his own- be taking a real toll on him.
- It's almost the purpose of Marvel's Runaways. The characters are meant to be real kids who just happened to live in a superhero universe. The results of them gaining superpowers and fighting supervillains is fearing for their very lives everyday and trying to avoid actual superheroes by seeing them as the same as their supervillain parents in how immature their viewpoints are. Gert even gets into an intellectual argument with Spider-Man on his "With Great Power" philosophy.Gert: Really? That's inane. Most people in life don't have great power, and the few that do are almost never responsible with it. The people who have the greatest responsibility are the kids with no power because we're the ones that have to keep everyone in check.
- This continues into Runaways (Rainbow Rowell) era. The "Canon Fodder" arc, deconstructing Legacy Character and C-List Fodder, has the kids run into Doc Justice, a hitherto recently unknown hero who had protected Los Angeles since the 80s. He recruits them to become the latest iteration of his team, the J-Team, though Gert ends up as Mission Control of sorts. However, Gert smells a fish and starts snooping around, learning the Dark Secret of the J-Team: they're killed off when Doc Justice believes people do not remember them and uses their death to reinforce his own "story". Gert's more than upset at this because these were kids who believed they were doing good and that they should be able to live their own stories. It probably helps that she realized that Karolina, who is the fifth person to take up the identity of Princess Justice, is up on the chopping block.
- Secret Wars (2015) deconstructs Godhood Seeker. After vanquishing the Beyonders, Doctor Doom takes their powers and becomes a God. Instead of repairing the universe or making a reasonable facsimile, he instead makes the ultimate Egopolis, Battleworld, and makes everyone his slave. In due time, the survivors of the final Incursion of Earth 616 and Earth 1610 arrive and proceed to turn everyone against Doom, leading to a final showdown between Reed Richards and Doom. Doom is finally forced to admit Reed would have done better, only to have Owen Mercer, the Molecule Man, take that power and give it to Reed, who proceeds to fix the universe with the aid of the Future Foundation. And to add insult to injury, Reed repairs Doom's face, something Doom couldn't do to himself.
- Spider-Man: The series is a deconstruction of the secret identity trope, as Peter's duties as Spider-Man have a constant, lasting, and almost always negative impact on his social life, and he has to endure bullying because using his powers to get revenge would blow his cover.
- The Amazing Spider-Man (2018) also provides a deconstruction of Spidey being a Hero with Bad Publicity. During a confrontation, J. Jonah Jameson makes the argument that Spider-Man's bad public image is, at least in part, his own damn fault; while most other superheroes tend to work in teams and communities and are fairly open with the public, Spider-Man is usually a lone wolf and frequently gets into fights with other superheroes before teaming up with them (though as Peter points out, this is very common for other Marvel superheroes). Furthermore, whenever Jameson made a false accusation against Spider-Man, the Wall-Crawler's response was never to reach out and set the record straight but rather to insult, antagonize and sometimes even threaten Jameson, which does not help his case at all.
- Thunderbolts: deconstructs Good Powers, Bad People; the gemstone that grants Karla Sofen her powers was originally crafted for a Kree space hero, and it's imbued with a portion of their heroic instinct, which began to come out while working with the Thunderbolts, particularly when Hawkeye came around. However, this personified largely by giving her a conscience and a sense of empathy, two things that were completely alien to her and confused the hell out of her. The dichotomy of having an "artificial" conscience while being a natural sociopath caused a great deal of mental instability, and nearly drove her insane. Later, it succeeded.
- X-Men:
- Joss Whedon's "Breakworld" arc from Astonishing X-Men deconstructed the Always Chaotic Evil trope with its portrayal of the eponymous Planet of Hats. At first glance, the Breakworlders seem to be a clear example of this, since their entire culture is built around endless war, and their governments are universally led by barbaric tyrants who consider freedom an abomination. But then there's The Reveal that the arc's true Big Bad is actually the leader of a seemingly noble resistance group that wants to end the wars forever...by destroying the Breakworld and wiping out its entire population. The conclusion points out that most people in a species like the Breakworlders wouldn't be truly "evil", since their actions would simply reflect the cultural values that they were raised with. But on the other hand, someone willing to completely reject every underlying value of their planet's culture would probably be far less sane than the common citizenry who simply follow cultural norms (even if that culture seems evil to us). At the same time this also deconstructs Token Heroic Orc by making the aforementioned "heroic" orc a lunatic who wants to blow up her own planet.
- X-Force deconstructed Pet the Dog in Eli Bard's backstory. He was a Roman senator named Eliphas that was regarded as a push-over by his family and peers, but he had a Morality Pet in form of a little girl that served as a slave. When he crossed paths with Selene, she offered to love him forever and make him immortal if he sacrificed every soul in Rome to her. Eliphas agreed to do it, but decided to warn the little girl to leave the city with her family. She told her parents, who proceeded to warn the guards about him, who interrupted him just in time he was about to perform the spell to sacrifice all Romans. This lead to him getting cursed by Selene and turned into a vampire-like mutate, living in constant torment for not being together with his beloved. In short, after he took the path to evil, his one moment of kindness cost him everything.
- Cyclops and Wolverine's relationship could be considered a deconstruction of the typical The Leader/The Lancer dynamic. What happens when two men, both with alpha male personalities, very similar in many ways and very different in others, with opposing outlooks and both obsessed with the same woman are forced not only to work together, but provide leadership to a group of volatile and diverse characters. Do they eventually gain a grudging mutual respect and put aside their differences? No, they're constantly at each other's throats and eventually end up splitting the X-Men into two rival factions because they simply can't coexist.
Films
- Big Brother Instinct is deconstructed through Charles and Raven in X-Men: First Class. Despite having good intentions about being concerned about his foster sister, Charles inadvertently becomes overprotective of her and denied Raven the chance to embrace her true appearance and abilities, as well as obliviously ignore her crush on him. This led to her turn to Erik as a mentor and love interest and eventually join him in his cause against humanity.
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Captain America: Civil War deconstructs the team's initial Teeth-Clenched Teamwork that occurred in The Avengers (2012) and continued in Avengers: Age of Ultron. While the Avengers were able to work together, they never fully trusted each other or worked out their initial grievances. All of this made it much easier for politics and Zemo to drive a wedge in and break them apart.
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 deconstructs Even Evil Has Loved Ones. Ego, Peter's father genuinely fell in love with Meredith but their evil goals was still their ultimate ambition, leading them to willingly give Meredith a brain tumor to kill her and stop himself from returning to Earth. This is also the case with Peter whom he liked and bonded with. But once Peter rebelled against him, he had no problem using Peter as a living battery. In fact, the only reason why he bonded with Peter is because the latter possessed the same powers as himself, making them useful. Ego's other children weren't so lucky.
Western Animation
- A whole episode of X-Men: The Animated Series is dedicated to deconstruct Super-Strength. The puny guy who steals Juggernaut's powers... promptly ruins his own life by becoming an unintentionally-destructive human demolition crew. He doesn't get better until losing said powers and having them restored to their owner... who, by the way, needs these powers to actually survive.
