Good Is Not Nice / The DCU

The DCU

Comic Books

Comic Books

• Pick a Hardboiled Detective from early Detective Comics, and you'll get this. Slam Bradley comes to mind best.
• During Artemis' first outing as a hero in Wonder Woman (1987) she is brash, abrasive, rude and violent as a distinct contrast to Diana's way of doing things. A standout example of this being when she told a domestic abuse survivor that her kids would be better off if she died rather than her living as a coward, but still protected the woman. Her thoughts on such things also changed the more interaction she had with the outside world but she remained abrasive and violent even after becoming more understanding.
• Batman
  • Batman himself is sometimes portrayed as this, Depending on the Writer. He can be callous, rude, vicious, and fully employs nearly every trope in the Terror Hero handbook while crusading to defend the weak and innocent. He'll even show some mercy to bad guys, but never too much (for instance, Batman: Arkham Asylum has him saving a thug dangling over a pit of deadly Joker Gas... and then punching the thug unconscious right on the spot.).
  • Arkham Asylum: Living Hell has this has part of its plot. Warren White, a Corrupt Corporate Executive who committed stock fraud, tries an Insanity Defense—and the jury actually bought it. However, because the city his trial was held in is Gotham City, the judge, who was disgusted with the jury buying it, decides to throw White into Arkham Asylum indefinitely. While he was never nice to begin with, (his behavior even early on being an example of this trope along with being an early sign of his eventual Sanity Slippage) Jeremiah Arkham's behavior towards Warren is implied to be because Jeremiah was among White's victims and likewise, it's also implied the Asylum suffered cutbacks because of White.
• The female Dr. Light: Helping fellow heroes while looking down on them since 1985.
• Green Arrow: Deconstruction. While Oliver Queen is ultimately a force for good, he has never been particularly nice about it. On his best days, he's rude, arrogant, and is always convinced that his idea is better. On most days, he's a sanctimonious, elitist Jerkass. At his worst, he's a complete asshole. Oliver's personal and professional lives are a wreck because of his behavior and actions. His relationship with his friends and family is strained, with him constantly cheating on his long time girlfriend Black Canary (Dinah Lance), neglecting his sidekick and ward Speedy I/Arsenal/Red Arrow I (Roy Harper), abandoning his biological son Green Arrow II (Connor Hawke) at birth and lying to Connor that he did not know he was his son when they met and Connor became his sidekick. Oliver also doesn't have a great reputation among the superhero community due to his smug tendencies and boorish behavior. While Oliver generally tries and usually manages to do the right thing, there are times were even his teammates at the Justice League barely tolerate him. While he made a genuine effort to be a better boyfriend and husband to his girlfriend/wife Dinah, and reconnect with Roy and Connor while being a better father to them, and was able to repair his relationship with them and become a better superhero, things went crashing down in the Cry for Justice & Rise and Fall storylines where Oliver murders Prometheus for destroying Star City and causing the death of his adopted granddaughter Lian Harper. His family washes their hands of him, with his wife returning her wedding ring and declaring their marriage over and Roy and Connor telling him they are through with him. It's implied that Oliver killing Prometheus is the last straw for his family and his mistreatment of them was the main cause of them leaving him. Oliver accepted that his behavior drove his family away and decided to work on himself to be a better hero and person as he protected Star City by himself.
• Green Lantern:
  • Guy Gardner is a pretty good example of this trope. He's rude, crude, slightly sexist, and can be downright mean to certain heroes, but when the chips are down, you can count on Guy Gardner to fight with his all.
  • Jack T. Chance is Lobo with a Green Power Ring— with all that implies. Because of that, he's been ordered to only patrol and protect his native planet, "Hellhole" (every other Lantern gets a whole sector). While he's crude, brutal and very much the '90s Anti-Hero, he did genuinely want to clean up the Wretched Hive that was his world.
  • And lately, the Guardians of the Universe have had this in spades.
  • Emphasized with the White Entity in Brightest Day. It's genuinely out to preserve life- but it's out to preserve life en masse, and couldn't give less of a crap about individuals. The fact that its actions actually seem fairly necessary by the end doesn't make its callous attitude much more comforting.
• Justice League Elite: Naif Al-Sheikh is a sexist, elitist asshole, but he's also usually honest and works to hold his team to high standards.
• King Faraday is gruff, cynical, and jaded. He's also just as determined to help the common good as much as the Heroes in Spandex are, and shows this famously in New Frontier. ... by trying to arrest the Spandex Clad Heroes. But it's definitely supposed to be for a good cause.
• The Spectre is the Angel of Vengeance, tasked by God with punishing those murders, molesters, and miscellaneous malefactors that escape the justice of human hands. He is also one of the creepiest, most unsettling, and cruelest beings in the DC universe. Putting this into perspective: the Spectre needs a human host to do his job, and while the Spectre does dish out horrifically poetic justice to those who think they can escape the consequences of their actions, he doesn't do this to every Karma Houdini out there... which leads us to Crispus Allen, the Spectre's current host. Crispus was murdered, and the Spectre took no steps against the murderer... but Allen's son kills the man, leading the Spectre to punish the boy, with Allen helpless to stop him.
• Jack Knight from Starman (DC Comics). He becomes a better person - outside of being a superhero - as the series goes on but he's still a Jerkass Anti-Hero for a good portion of the early issues. Even at the end, he still shows signs of being a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• The Golden Age Superman had no trouble with threatening crooks to get them to confess. He didn't kill people, but if criminals suffered Karmic Death (which happened a lot) he'd usually comment that they got what they deserved. In one comic he grabbed a doctor, ignored his protests, and flew him through a hurricane and two hundred miles cross-country so he could save a dying kid. This era was later referenced and deconstructed by Grant Morrison. Young Superman tries to beat a confession out of a corrupt media mogul; he succeeds in scaring the guy but what he gets is no way admissible in court.
• Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan is usually very fitting of this trope. He can be perfectly nice to those he considers innocent however.
  • There is an intentional tension between this and Affably Evil in Transmet. Warren Ellis makes some pretty clear parallels between the casually horrific behavior of Spider and the sheer corruption of Callahan. Spider's clear sense of vengeance drives his behavior as much as anything else.
• Captain Marvel Junior. Freddy Freeman is a Nice Guy day-to-day, it takes a lot to get on his bad side, but he does have one in contrast to Billy Batson's Incorruptible Pure Pureness. He's had to be restrained from trying to kill Captain Nazi, but for the most part he's typically been written as much more hotheaded and prone to act before thinking (in other words, more of a teenage boy) than Billy. Rescuing the kids who'd bullied him in school via suitcase wedgie is right on-brand.

Films

Films

• Batman Film Series:
  • Batman: Batman, natch.
    • The earliest example is the muggers at the beginning. One isn't pleased his buddy turned a gun on the kid. Guess which one gets put through a door.
    • He kills henchmen left and right, sends Vicki mixed signals about what's going to become of their relationship , and overall, seems to be more obsessed with enforcing the law and getting vengeance on The Joker than actually doing good.
    • With Vicki, though, it's not so much him being a dick, it's that he himself is unsure exactly where their relationship might go, or if it has a future at all, and he does, in the end, try to tell her the truth about him after deciding they just might have a chance.
  • Batman Returns: Batman himself, as usual. He kills the Strong Man from the Red Triangle gang with a bomb, set the fire breather guy on fire for no reason other than he was there, smacks Catwoman over the side of a building, and flees from the scene of a murder he's the prime suspect of.
    • In Batman's defense, these Red Triangle gang members were actively harming and/or outright killing citizens; several people were seen engulfed in flames (obviously the work of the Fire Breather), and the Breather blew flames at Batman. It's safe to say these creeps at least got what was coming to them.
• DC Extended Universe
  • Aquaman: Arthur Curry
    • He helps a downtrodden Icelandic coastal town enough to earn a reputation as a kind stranger who brings fish when the tide sets in... and yet is more than willing to slam Bruce Wayne up against a wall when slighted. Likewise, after saving a fisherman whose boat got wrecked by Parademons, he simply drops him on a bar table without caring any further (mostly for being dumb enough to fish during a storm).
    • In Aquaman, he has no problem leaving David Kane and his father trapped behind to drown (he later does realize that not showing David and his father mercy resulted in him making himself a new dangerous enemy).

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Wonder Woman (1975): In the pilot, Wonder Woman blows up a submarine, killing all on board. In "Anschluss 77", she kills the clone of Hitler by using her magic lasso to force the doctor to reverse the process.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• Batman: The Animated Series: Detective Harvey Bullock, though especially in the episode, "A Bullet for Bullock". He may be an oafish, uncouth, unpleasant cop who doesn't like the dark knight, but he is one of the few decent, completely uncorrupted cops in the Gotham PD. Pretty much the entire force hates him since you could count the nice things about him on one hand, and pretty much the entire criminal underbelly hates him because of his impressive track record at bringing in criminals.
• In varying degrees, almost any hero on the Justice League except for Wally, J'onn, and in Unlimited, Dove. Especially Hawkgirl.
• Teen Titans (2003): Deconstructed with Val-Yor from the episode "TROQ". While he is hero risking his life to stop an invading army destroying all organic life, his Fantastic Racism toward Tamaraneans is so extreme that it completely erases all his heroic traits and makes him one of the most hated characters both in- and out-of-universe. Good might not be not nice, but at a certain level of "not nice", people stop considering you the good guy.

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