Marvel Universe
- Daredevil: The series spent decades being defined by just how much Matt Murdock suffers, something that Mark Waid decided to address for his run on the character. While it's still pretty macabre and doesn't outright deny the darkness or trauma in Matt's life, the series is much more idealistic, with its title character making a vested effort to grow past his demons and accept happiness, making his stories more in line with swashbuckling adventures that the character very originally started with.
- Marvel Adventures: Spider-Man, The Avengers, Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, and Iron Man all have kid-friendly, self-contained stories in the line. In Marvel Adventures, the heroes tend to be friends, everything works out predictably, and there are a few meta comments on the storylines in the "main" series."Don't be ridiculous. We would never shoot the Hulk into space!"
- What's ironic is that the Mini Marvels comic strips included at the end of the mainstream Marvel universe actually parodies the shallowness and silliness. The Mini Marvels strips point out how the stories taken seriously are much more ridiculous than their Lighter and Softer counterpart.
- Marvel Noir: Iron Man Noir by Scott Snyder is this compared to the rest of the comics in the Noir Universe. While Spider-Man Noir, X-Men Noir, Daredevil Noir, Luke Cage Noir and Wolverine Noir deal out loads of Adaptational Villainy to characters, have Thou Shall Not Kill characters use guns and kill people and generally have the Darker and Edgier-ness dialed up to eleven; Iron Man Noir in comparison is considerably more lighthearted being tonally closer to The Rocketeer. Instead of being stuck in the Wretched Hive that is New York like other Noir universe comics, Iron Man Noir has globe trotting adventures filled with much more optimism, though this makes the comic more Pulp than Film Noir. It's especially lampshaded when Baron Strucker is deriding a captured Pepper for clinging to the hope that Tony will save her, saying while holding the skull of Thor that "they don't live in a world of Marvels" and no knight in shining armor is coming to save her - just as Tony and Rhodey fly into the Nazi castle in Powered Armour to rescue Pepper.
- Power Pack: The original 1980s series, while not nearly as angsty as Marvel's other works, took itself seriously and attempted to be a serious, but not as serious as usual, comic about kid heroes, with a fair amount of characterization, intelligent plots, and good quality storytelling. It actually tries to realistically portray what children who find themselves with superpowers might actually go through, but still falls short of stereotypical comic angst. The 2000s remake is aimed squarely at a quite young audience and has much cuter art and simpler storytelling.
- The Pulse is a Lighter And Softer continuation of Alias that while still serious and grim in places, also has Spider-Man, J.Jonah Jameson and other more lighthearted MU characters and aesthetics brightening up the previously extremely gritty and edgy journey of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. Jess also gives birth to her daughter Danielle bringing more happiness into her life, most of which she's spent as a Broken Bird, not to mention Luke and Jess's love life being portrayed as far less rough as it infamously was in Alias.
- Nearly all post Alias comics are this for Jess. The New Avengers, The Defenders (2017) and Jessica Jones (2018) while still pretty dark in places are significantly more upbeat and (more or less) family-friendly compared to what Jess has gone through in her debut series, having moved on from her past trauma and taken a new lease on life.
- Spider-Man:
- Spidey Super Stories, a Marvel book for the younger set, inexplicably featured Thanos
at one point. Yes, the Thanos with a hard-on for Death, the one who killed half of everyone in the universe in an attempt to impress her. In a book for little kids. They must have just made him into a big purple guy. He has a helicopter with his name on it. And he gets arrested by the police in the end. It's awesome. - Discussed in Spider-Verse when Morlun drops in on the Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends universe. He notes that the universe is much lighter than the other ones he's been to. So light that that universe's Spider-Man cannot describe the fact that Morlun just massacred the Spider-Friends and he's next.
- Spidey Super Stories, a Marvel book for the younger set, inexplicably featured Thanos
- Ultimate Spider-Man while still dark and violent in places is nevertheless far Lighter and Softer than then rest of the Darker and Edgier Ultimate Marvel books such as Ultimate Fantastic Four, The Ultimates and Ultimate X Men. Notably while the rest of Marvel heroes (with only a few exceptions) are up to eleven Jerkass Anti-Hero versions of themselves, Spider-Man conversely retains the All-Loving Hero idealism of his main universe counterpart though he is regarded as a naive kid for it.
- X-23 is typically an even Darker and Edgier Distaff Counterpart to Wolverine. When she takes up the mantle in All-New Wolverine, however, Laura demonstrates to be highly idealistic and moral, striving not to be the killer she was created to be, and comes across as the Team Mom and Only Sane Woman in the entire Marvel universe. Thou Shall Not Kill are her watch words, Laura calls out Logan for being anything less than prim and proper, she pulls a What the Hell, Hero? on Steve Rogers, and generally has a Good Is Not Soft nature.
- X-Men: X-Men: The Krakoan Age (starting with House and Powers of X), while dark, violent and thematically menacing and creepy in places, in the grand scheme of the Marvel Universe is the biggest Lighter and Softer turn for the X-Men ever. Compared to the previous big storylines such as The Dark Phoenix Saga, Onslaught, Apocalypse: The Twelve, House of M, X-Men: Messiah Complex, Avengers vs. X-Men, Days of Future Past and Age of Apocalypse which killed loads of characters for shocks, had many characters pick up the Conflict Ball, turn evil and generally empathised Failure Is the Only Option and had near or complete genocide of mutantkind (before Status Quo Is God reverts everything), House of X is leaps and bounds more lighthearted. All (and we do mean ALL) Mutants come together on Krakoa which is now a Utopia for their kind, separate from the human world and putting their past differences aside to try and build a better outcome for their race, and thanks to the new Phoenix Five led by Hope Summers most mutants can be resurrected from death. Oh, and Wolverine, Cyclops, and Jean put their famously bitter Love Triangle to bed, having a three-way polymerous relationship.
- Granted Darker and Edgier storylines do come in later on, but regardless life has never once been so genuinely hopeful and happy for the X-Men and mutants before in Marvel history.
