Because
Status Quo Is God, just about every time a superhero
Saves The Villain turns out to be this. The villain rarely if ever appreciates the effort or even makes an effort to mend their ways or refrain from endangering the city and stay in prison. It just means the villain will live to make life hell for everyone else another day.
- Captain America:
- During "The Captain", Steve has to break into the White House to save everyone in Washington, D.C. from being turned into snake people by Viper. The Commission on Super-Human Actions try to have him arrested for this. They're only stopped because unlike them, the President is not an Ungrateful Bastard and insists they pardon him. (The CSA's head is working for the Red Skull and for reasons never explained has a personal axe to grind against Steve. The rest are just being obstructive idiots.)
- Cap briefly teamed up with Red Skull in an attempt to stop a resurrected Hitler from gaining the Cosmic Cube. This likewise rewarded Captain America with temporary exile from America by the US Government due to the latter thinking he turned his back on America.
- After the events of Civil War, minor supporting character Jack Flag is in effective retirement, until he hears a woman being attacked by a gang of local thugs. Jack goes out to save her, which quickly results in the Thunderbolts coming after him, followed by Jack being beaten up, crippled, arrested, beaten up again, and then thrown into an other-dimensional prison without trial. The prison is shortly thereafter attacked by an alien army and the prisoners left to be killed. (Fortunately, Jack is sort-of rescued by the Guardians of the Galaxy, and manages to get his legs back thanks to alien doctors. No word yet on whether he eventually managed to get his girlfriend back, though.)
- Daredevil: When he was a boy, Matt Murdock pushed a blind man out of the path of an incoming truck carrying radioactive chemicals. While this saved the man's life, it also cost Matt his sight but enhanced his other four senses. In the limited series Father, Matt takes on a woman named Maggie Farrell as a client. It is ultimately revealed that she is the serial killer Johnny Sockets who has been blinding and murdering Matt's other clients. When she tries to kill Matt and Foggy, the FBI swoop in and shoot her. With her dying breath, Maggie reveals that she is the daughter of the man whom Matt saved as a boy and the reason she was killing Matt's clients was because her father had molested her as a child and she blamed Matt for letting him live long enough to destroy her childhood. Not only did Matt's first heroic deed unintentionally ruin a woman's life and drive her to villainy, it also cost some of his clients their lives.
- Deadpool's bad luck is compounded by his own insanity and off kilter morality. He might do good, but even if he's acknowledged by the other heroes, instead of acceptance he'll receive a swift boot out of the city. Acceptance is all the guy really wants, which makes Wade's case even more tragic. The Fantastic Four eventually invited him to their weekly heroes-only poker game. He didn't go, but it's the thought that counts.
- Fantastic Four: Reed Richards's well-intentioned warning to Victor Von Doom concerning a few miscalculations in an experiment would be rewarded with decades of stories revolving around Doom's attempts to destroy Reed and everything/everyone he loves.
- The Incredible Hulk is another series that springs from this trope, with Bruce Banner paying an even more personal cost for saving Rick Jones.
- Runaways: The main goal of the first arc is to free LA from the grip of the supervillain parents of the protagonists. All subsequent arcs deal with the Evil Power Vacuum left behind, as countless other villains try to take over the area. And with most of the Marvel heroes stationed in New York, it pretty much entirely falls to the protagonists to keep the town safe. And later, Gert dies in one of those fights, in a situation that arose entirely from the fact that they killed off the Pride.
- Spider-Man: Spider-Man's damned if he doesn't do (as in the death of Uncle Ben) and damned when he does (courtesy Jameson and others). Specific examples:
- In The Amazing Spider-Man (1963), after Green Goblin unmasked him and Spider-Man fought him off leading to Norman getting Easy Amnesia, Peter decides to give his Arch-Enemy a second chance, partly out of fear that his identity would be compromised, and because of compassion for Harry Osborn his college classmate. The end result: a few years later the Goblin regains control and kills Gwen Stacy out of spite and he goes on to make Peter's life a world of pain for years to come, spitting on Peter's mercy and his second chance and gloating at him for doing so.
- At the end of Ends of the Earth, when Doctor Octopus established himself as an irredeemable Misanthrope Supreme and wannabe dictator, Peter insists on bringing him in alive and having him face justice, and even escorts him to prison out of duty even when many of his team-mates wanted him dead. The end result, Doctor Octopus hijacks his body for nearly a year ruins all his relationships, screws over his life and saddles Peter with the consequences of actions that he did not take well after he has "redeemed" himself.
- Ultimate Marvel:
- In the first issue of Ultimate X Men, Bobby uses his ice powers to save a large group of people from a falling sentinel. He gets a bottle thrown at his head for doing so, since it just outed him as a mutant.
- During Ultimatum, a lot of the X-Men die to stop Magneto, and the ones who survived did just as much. Mutants were just as affected by the attacks as everyone else, and most tried to stop it. Afterwards, mutants are being openly hunted by the government, the level of abuse they get has increased, and even though mutants like Kitty Pryde risked their lives to help the public during the attacks, her peers are all bullying her and even report her to the government which causes them to come looking for her.
- This happens to Ultimate Spider-Man almost Once per Episode. A recurring form is that he tries to stop a villain that is wreaking havok, and when the police or SHIELD show up, they target both of them, or sometimes flat-out ignore the supervillain / rampaging monster and try to shoot Peter.
- Ultimate Galactus Trilogy
- Captain Marh-Vell stops the Kree killbot and saves the prototype of the ASIS... and gets locked in an interrogation chamber as a result, with plastic explosives strapped to his neck just in case he tries something.
- Misty Knight is attacked in her office by a Silver Wing, who wants to kill her to keep his existence a secret. She attacks him with a fire extinguisher which causes an explosion which brings Captain America and the Falcon to the scene. They drive him away, and try to detain her for the whole incident.
- X-Men: In Iceman's origin in the mainstream comics. Here young Bobby Drake is out on a date with a girl called Judy Harmon, when a local bully attacks and tries to drag her away. Bobby saves her by encasing the bully in ice, which leads Judy to reject Bobby as a monster. Also, soon afterwards a group of locals forms a lynch mob and attack the Drakes' home.
