Hate Sinks in Comic Books.
The following have their own pages:
Other Comics
- Blake and Mortimer:
- Basam-Damdu is the Emperor of the Yellow Empire and the Big Bad of The Secret of the Swordfish. Despite his claims of wanting peace, he proceeds to attack the free world, bombing several capitals in order to break the free world's minds, successfully taking over the world. When the international resistance started to fight back, Basam-Damdu and his High Council put the blame on Olrik, Basam-Damdu's dragon, threatening, in two days, to send someone to torture Mortimer if Olrik doesn't manage to force Mortimer into revealing the Swordfish's plans. Basam-Damdu doesn't even care for his own empire, attempting to use its nuclear weapons to destroy the world out of spite when the resistance starts winning.
- Professor Septimus, the Big Bad of The Yellow "M", wrote "The Mega Wave". The book dealt with aspects of the human brain, with Septimus stating that a part of the brain, the Mega Wave, could be used for brainwashing purposes. After scathing articles attacked the book, his publisher James Thornley instigated libel action against scathing press articles attacking the book and died after losing the case. After meeting a mind-raped Olrik, Septimus brainwashed him through his Mega Wave and had him commit robberies all across London, before having him kidnap all of those who attacked his book and brainwashing them as well, forcing them to constantly apologize to him. He also sent Olrik after Blake and Mortimer to kill them, and verbally abuses him when he fails, even threatening to kill him. While he didn't deserve to deal with the press attacking him, especially since his theories turned out to be right, he became a much worse person than those who humiliated him.
- The Boys
- Homelander the Smug Super leader of the Seven from The Boys who can barely keep his true abrasive and volatile nature from boiling over a thin unconvincing All-Loving Hero surface. His Establishing Character Moment is using Sexual Extortion against Naïve Newcomer Starlight in exchange for securing her spot on the team. Even when we find out he didn’t rape Butcher’s wife Becky or do any of the horrid things that Black Noir framed him for, we’re still left with a racist, sexist, abusive, hypocritical, childish, tantrum prone asshole with no redeeming or likable qualities whatsoever. To drive it home when he’s led to believe he’s done those things by Black Noir, instead of having a Heel Realization, he simply doubles down on his already horrible behavior.
- Black Noir is the true Big Bad of the series. Being a clone of Homelander specifically designed to kill the original if ever turned evil, he orchestrated much of the series events, so he'd be allowed to do so, going so far as to gaslight Homelander into believing he is a murderer, rapist, and cannibal when it was actually Noir who did those things. There is absolutely nothing more to him, he is just a murderous psycho.
- A-Train puts very little effort into hiding how much of a complete douchebag he is. He kills Hughie's girlfriend (albeit accidently), coerces Starlight into giving him a blowjob, tries to outright rape her later, is a complete coward, and just in general acts like a Schoolyard Bully All Grown Up.
- Stormfront is the real leader of the super team Payback. He is also a Nazi who murders minorities for fun, uses racial slurs constantly, is a colossal asshole to his teammates, and is shockingly bad at actual fighting despite his super strength, flight, and electrical powers. This makes it all the more satisfying when the titular team kill him via group bludgeoning.
- John Godolkin, leader of the G-Men, gained his super team by kidnapping, molesting, and brainwashing children while making money off them every step of the way. Needless to say, his death at Vought's hands due to his refusal to stop was well earned.
- The Angelic Host in Crimson aren't necessarily villains, but they are written to be as despicable as possible being obnoxious, obstructive and self-righteous zealots who attempt to execute The Hero because he is a vampire, yet refuse to do anything about the Big Bad, directly or not.
- Disney Ducks Comic Universe: Gladstone Gander, the unbelievably smug, obnoxious and infuriatingly lucky cousin of Donald Duck. In any story he appears as a rival to Donald, you're guaranteed to root against him, even if Donald himself is being a Jerkass.
- Although in an episode of DuckTales (1987) Gladstone had his lucky streak stolen and he briefly experiences a serving of misery and humble pie, especially when he realizes he relied solely on his luck to get through life. Tellingly, in the comics, after suffering the same loss and regain... he appears to learn absolutely nothing and is as smug as ever. His DuckTales incarnation is noticeably more sympathetic than his comics counterpart by comparison.
- He isn't a bad duck by any means as well. His most admirable trait is he is a strong Heroic Bystander. If someone needs to be saved, either through luck or skill, he will save them. Best seen when he dove to save Donald, swimming upstream and keeping him stable until help arrived.
- Elsewhere (2017): Meyrick is revealed to actually be this, making deals with the US Government so that they can experiment on Gwenore against her will, with the finding out of this resulting in instant disgust amongst the main characters and later banishing him from the tribe.
- Nemesis the Warlock: Tomas De Torquemada, the main antagonist of the series, was deliberately made to be hated by readers as Nemesis himself was basically just an amoral alien fighting a man much worse than he is. Torquemada is the human dictator of Termight who is a religious zealot with an insatiable obsession with killing aliens, even aliens who are peaceful and want nothing to do with humanity. Torquemada is also not above killing members of his own species to further his own selfish plans and is also a huge Hypocrite who would keep aliens alive either to use them for his schemes or try to stop his wife Candida from divorcing him. Torquemada fully cements himself into a hate sink during book 6 when he crosses the Moral Event Horizon by brutally and mercilessly murdering Nemesis' 10-year-old son, Thoth.
- Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is, oddly enough, one of these in-universe, having been more or less randomly selected by some unnamed power to be a receptacle for everyone else's negative emotions. This has made him somewhat... wacky. An out-of-universe example is Jimmy, an absolutely repulsive scumbag who rapes and murders civilians partly because he idolizes Johnny and because he enjoys it. Noticeably, Johnny wasn't happy to learn he existed.
- Preacher: The culmination of the author's distaste for religion, God is portrayed as a brash, intolerant, narcissist who kicks off the whole plot by hiding from responsibility after creating an entity strong enough to threaten countless lives and after a history of bloodshed in wars fought so he could feel loved. Running at the first sign of danger, God never displays so much as an ounce of nobility when it doesn't stroke his ego.
- Scott Pilgrim:
- The Final Boss of the series, Gideon Gordon Graves, is definitely a powerful villain and a threat in his own right, but he also happens to be a vain, selfish, petty, misogynistic young-money douchebag whom even the narratorial voice calls a huge dick. Of particular note is that his formal introduction in the series occurs shortly after we learn that Scott himself is hardly the hero he's been presenting himself as and has numerous acts of dickishness of his own to his name - but after Gideon steps into the story in full, Scott himself and the other characters become more willing to forgive his past transgressions, as Scott realizes that Gideon is what he could become and resolves to not let that happen. In The Movie, Scott's roommate Wallace sums Gideon up as "What a perfect asshole."
- Before Gideon steps in to the stage, Todd Ingram takes the role of being the worst of the Evil Exes for half of the story. The other Exes besides him and Gideon are mostly just hammy and over-the-top without doing anything too relatably bad, and Lucas isn't even really "evil" in the first place. (In the comics at least.) Todd does have impressive telekinesis, but he's too much of an asshole to fall under Evil Is Cool. He's an arrogant, lying cheater who attacks his own girlfriend once she finds out he cheated on her, and he claims that he can get away with all of it because he's a rockstar. He didn't even earn his powers, as they're brought on by being a vegan, and he cheats with that too.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- Drago Wolf from Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics), big time. This guy is unpleasant in every single way; among other things, he was an abusive boyfriend to Hershey, manipulated her into trying to assassinate Sally and frame Sonic, and betrayed his fellow members of the Wolf Pack and the Freedom Fighters to Robotnik all for power. Even the writers themselves hate Drago's guts, and every time they write him in, they ensure he gets at least a punch in the face; Ian Flynn in particular has openly and gleefully admitted that he only brings Drago in when he wants someone to get beaten up.
- Dr. Starline from Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) is this in spades. Initially, he comes off as a Loony Fan of Dr. Eggman and the Only Sane Man between them. Gradually, however, he's revealed to be an absolute, egomaniacal bastard willing to betray whoever he works with and totally bereft of Eggman's few redeeming qualities, all while being hardly as clever as he thinks he is. Right off the bat, he masterminds an amnesiac Eggman's return and helps him cause a robo-Zombie Apocalypse, ruining Belle's life in the process. After a falling-out with Eggman, Starline goes on to mentally/emotionally torture Belle and forcibly convert Surge and Kitsunami into doppelgängers of Sonic and Tails, all to fulfill his delusion of "controlling" the Vicious Cycle between Sonic and Eggman and proving his methods superior to the latter's. His final, karmic, humiliating doom in the comic's 50th issue was well-deserved indeed.
- Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
- Subtly set up and then set off with Getaway. Originally introduced as another wacky Sixth Ranger Lancer for the core cast, they slowly set up his more unsettling tendencies over the course of several issues, giving him a discomforting Wife Husbandry subtext with Tailgate before pushing into the distressing reveal that he's a sociopathic Knight Templar, dedicated to making Decepticons pay for their crimes...including a reformed Megatron, who's now co-captain of the Lost Light. He doesn't hesitate to play on Tailgate's needs for affection and validation as a catspaw to try and make Megatron lash out, not caring if the Minibot were to be killed in the process (and actually hoping for it, to justify Megatron's subsequent execution). He later abandons the core cast on a planet at the mercy of Decepticon Justice Division all to get Megatron killed in some form or fashion as punishment for his not-inconsiderable crimes—again, without worrying if the other Autobots survive because, well, they supported Megatron, they must deserve it. Quite a few fans actually Love to Hate him because he is one of the most ruthlessly competent and morally gray (if not outright evil) Autobots we've actually ever seen in the franchise—other openly evil Autobots are usually complete nutters like Flame or Mirror Universe equivalents of our heroes.
- While he's not the only terrible figure from the pre-war era, Senator Proteus is far and away the least sympathetic. The Functionist Council and Sentinel Prime are cruel and tyrannical in service of maintaining the Fantastic Caste System, but it's made clear that Proteus is only acting in his own self-interest. Deceitful, petty, and arrogant, nobody shed any tears when Starscream executed him.
- Fangry is established as a petty Blood Knight who starts fights just to show his dominance, and tries to beat up Tailgate and Cyclonus just for this purpose in his first scene. That alone makes it hard to feel sorry for him when Tailgate trashes him for Misplaced Retribution, but what Fangry does in response makes him even more loathsome; Fangry becomes Kaput's assistant and murders him in cold blood during his treatment on Tailgate so that he can leave Tailgate down in a radioactive chamber meant for a six month period for six million years where he will almost certainly die, and then buries the top of the chamber so no one will find it. It's really hard to feel sorry for Fangry when Fortress Maximus smashes him upon arriving at Necroworld.
- The Walking Dead:
- Subverted with Negan. Taking it back to 2012, you'd think that the author was deliberately trying to get readers to hate the then-new villain Negan when he makes his grand entrance by brutally beating fan-favorite Nice Guy Glenn to death with a baseball bat — and with heaps of insulting disrespect and jokes at Glenn's expense on top of it. But he's also given a few traits to make him at least somewhat less evil than he could be ( such as his dislike of sexual violence). It also probably helps that, unlike the Governor, he only really killed one protagonist during his time as the main antagonist.
- And speaking of The Governor — the comic's first Big Bad — he was a straight example who was written to be utterly despicable and unlikable. In contrast to Negan, he has literally no redeeming qualities and all of his screen-time is spent Kicking The Dog. Repeatedly. To make a short list, he kills over 50 (mostly) innocent people (3 of them being fan-favorites Tyreese, Hershel, and Axel), rapes and tortures Michonne for days, french kisses his zombified daughter, cuts off The Hero Rick's hand for no reason, and orchestrates the murder of a baby. And unlike Negan, he does it all without the least bit of irony or witty self-awareness of the over-the-top scale of his villainy.
- Charlie Farmer from The Leopard from Lime Street is the uncle of the main character, and not only doesn't care about his wife who needs money for surgery to fix her hip but physically abuses his nephew. He never has any sympathetic moments and is shown to be completely selfish, trying to find ways to get money for himself without ever thinking that he should spend it on his family. Given that the main character is a Spider-Man Send-Up, that makes Charlie a Corrupted Character Copy of Ben Parker.
