Paying evil unto evil in webcomics.
- Axe Cop: The title character devotes most of his time to cleaving the skulls of "bad guys". Enforced in that the author is six-years old. Also, he can tell good guys from bad guys by their front kicks.
- Jessica tries to do this to Tess in Bittersweet Candy Bowl, using the "fact" that she's a whore (a rumor created by Tess two years before the present time; Jessica was, in fact, a virgin) to seduce Tess's love interest Paulo, going on a date with him and finally having sex with him in the bathroom of a dance club
. It backfires on her though, as she gets no satisfaction out of it and in the end feels like a whore - a real one. - Reflected in Darths & Droids
Episode 64:Qui-Gon: We'll have to find some money somehow. What's my character's alignment again? <...>
GM: Lawful Good. In theory.
Qui-Gon: Right. So if we rob people, we should make sure they're gangsters first. - In El Goonish Shive, the first in-comic victim of the Aberration known as Gullet was comically evil enough to merit the death.
- Girl Genius:
- Dr. Vapnoople was systematically lobotomized by Baron Wulfenbach in a process known as "brain-coring" until nothing remained of either his abilities or his original personality. However, when his injuries are healed, he proves to be exactly the kind of person that really needs to be lobotomized for the greater good; namely, a Mad Scientist of absolutely terrifying ability and marginal sanity, as well as a Social Darwinist who unleashed monsters on villages simply because he believed that the people who couldn't hold their own against his creations were unworthy of life.
- What Colette does to Beausoleil after he murders her father is undeniably brutal (destroy all of his clank bodies at the same time in various, increasingly creative ways and make his real body physically feel the pain of each death), but there's no question that he deserved every second of it.
- Goblins has done a fair job of pulling up the monster view of this trope. The start of the comic features a goblin "war camp", but it is eventually revealed that the camp was established simply to distract heroes and keep them from going deeper into the forest and discovering the village where the women and children live.
- When the Fortuneteller confronts Forgath, she manages to point out to him the horror being inflicted on the goblins. For a brief moment, Forgath realizes that their actions are even more evil than the goblins who had simply been arguing about various things in their camp. Then Fortuneteller ruins it...
- Minmax also throws Dellyn Goblinslayer through the bar window before picking a fight with him. Then immediately at the end of their fight, Goblinslayer is stabbed to death by Kin, whom he spent his time raping.
- An alternate universe Dellyn killed Kin and tortured Forgath to death. Minmax found a magic orb that let him see what happened to them, and then tortured Dellyn with the exact same methods in one go. Dellyn made it through all of Kin's torture and six of Forgath's before dying.
- Ame from Heart Core hopes to gather food for both herself and her sister by tearing out the hearts of a couple of would be muggers/rapists, thinking that there would be no consequences if she only harvested and killed criminals. She was wrong, leading to both a demonic demon hunter and a paladin being assigned to find her.
- In Looking for Group, Richard the Undead Warlock embodies this trope. He can turn the tide of pretty much any battle, is lord of his own legion of undead villagers (ones he most likely killed himself), slaughters indiscriminately, eats babies (even once being placed into a nursery by a woman mistaking him for a child after he was shrunk, which he is later removed from and asks why he had to leave the buffet with lamenting women in the background), and he would fit Always Chaotic Evil perfectly if not for the fact that he does have a few moments where a softer personality shows up, if only for a moment, and the fact that the majority of the slaughtering he does is to help the Heroes win the war against their Big Bad, even going out of his way to ensure the survival of his allies despite constantly saying that he's only along for the fun of killing. Richard rescues Cale'Anon, cauterizing a mortal wound in his throat with fire to keep the elf from bleeding to death, carrying him down a mountainside, slaughtering a massively fat Black Dwarf, slicing the dwarf open, putting Cale inside it, sealing it shut again, and encasing the dwarf in a massive block of ice in order to protect Cale from a massive wave of hot lava that was rushing towards them from the mountainside, simply standing outside the block of ice and waiting for the wave to hit him rather than trying to save himself, as seen here.
- Being based on Dungeons & Dragons, The Order of the Stick addresses this. It's notable that usually the heroes don't go "kill evil and take their stuff", as a general rule. They have a quest to kill a very evil person, and have to fight and kill said evil person's minions. When resident Heroic Comedic Sociopath Belkar mentions it, the others look at him strangely.
- An interesting case occurs across nearly the whole comic's run. Early in the comic, the party comes across a black dragon, considered Always Chaotic Evil due to its chromatic nature, and Vaarsuvius kills it. Shortly afterward, paladin Miko's essentially confirms it's okay to kill black dragons. Much later, however, the vengeful, grieving mother of the dragon attempts to kill Vaarsuvius's children. In retaliation, Vaarsuvius casts a spell that kills everyone related to that dragon. V later learns that the spell murdered hundreds of innocents, including the defenders of one of the gates holding the world together. The overall message being, no, you shouldn't just kill things because they're listed as "evil" in the book.
- The prequel book On the Origin of PCs has an interesting subversion of this: Roy and Durkon meet up when they're with an adventuring party that's supposed to wipe out a group of unruly orcs. Roy manages to deduce that the orcs are just rowdy music fans in town for a concert, and decides to spare them... much to the chagrin of his party, who wanted the XP. That's when he and Durkon decide they really need to part ways with the rest of the party.
- Also an example of this in the prequel Start of Darkness. Since the goblin race is supposedly "Always Chaotic Evil", normally good and honest paladins burn and pillage a goblin town without a second thought. This starts Redcloak on his quest to control the god-destroying, soul-eating Snarl, which later leads to him conquering those paladins' city. In essence, the Paladins raid the goblins to protect the gate and to gain strength to do that better, and the goblins raid the humans to keep from being EXP fodder for life. It's a Two-Way-Vicious-Cycle of pay evil unto evil. They each attack the other because its what the other does to them and to ensure their own survival.
- Exploited by Haley when she has to fight her old fellow Thieves' Guild members. She remarks first that she knows everyone there, so this will be difficult ... then, upon seeing the guy who runs the dog-fighting ring, she realizes..."...everyone I grew up with is an asshole. That's George at the top of the stairs. He beats his wife. Full attack!"
- An interesting case occurs across nearly the whole comic's run. Early in the comic, the party comes across a black dragon, considered Always Chaotic Evil due to its chromatic nature, and Vaarsuvius kills it. Shortly afterward, paladin Miko's essentially confirms it's okay to kill black dragons. Much later, however, the vengeful, grieving mother of the dragon attempts to kill Vaarsuvius's children. In retaliation, Vaarsuvius casts a spell that kills everyone related to that dragon. V later learns
- Schlock Mercenary:
- The thing that keeps Sergeant Schlock as a Heroic Comedic Sociopath rather than Token Evil Teammate is that a decent number of the people he eats just suck. Colonel DeHaans, for example, really enjoys his work as a government torturer, making it hard to feel bad for him when Schlock emerges from his shower head with an evil grin and an appetite.
- Pirate commodore Shufgar racks up a lot of hate by killing Pronto just to see if he can resurrect himself like Kevyn did. Once the Toughs finally capture him, Nick wants to have a piece of him, only for Kevyn to point out that the fate that awaits Shufgar when they deliver him to his homeworld is far worse than anything Nick could do to him.Nick: Lemme hit 'im too, sir. I promise not to kill 'im too quick.
Kevyn: I know he murdered our friend, but that will take you into a very dark place, Nick. We are going to turn Shufgar, alive and healthy, over to judges of House Est'll. Then, per ancient tradition, he will be killed and eaten a little bit at a time.
Nick: Your place sounds darker, sir.
Kevyn: It has the advantage of being legal. - After the greedy Wing Marshal of Beskin-Sashik manipulates events to turn his people against the Toughs, which culminates with Tagon sacrificing himself to defend the ship from boarders, Chinook gets herself deputized by the First Provident, tracks down the runaway Wing Marshal's ship and lets him know how and why he's about to die before she vaporizes him from across the galaxy. There was hardly a need to do that, but Chinook wants the bastard to die in fear.Chinook: I have your location, and a weapon that fires through wormholes.
Wing Marshal: If you had that I'd already be dead.
Chinook: You hurt my friends, so I'm adding three seconds of fear to your sentence.
Wing Marshall: Wait! Let's make a—
(Wing Marshal's ship gets obliterated by Chinook's long gun)
- The thing that keeps Sergeant Schlock as a Heroic Comedic Sociopath rather than Token Evil Teammate is that a decent number of the people he eats just suck. Colonel DeHaans, for example, really enjoys his work as a government torturer, making it hard to feel bad for him when Schlock emerges from his shower head with an evil grin and an appetite
- Oasis from Sluggy Freelance adopts this practice when she becomes Podunkton's resident vigilante. Most characters in this storyline have at least a couple moments where they're uneasy about Oasis's casual attitude towards murdering criminals, but considering her history as a Brainwashed assassin and Yandere, this is still seen as a step in the right direction.
- In Strong Female Protagonist, a webcomic dealing a teenage ex-superhero (Allison, aka Mega-Girl) wrestling with questions about the efficacy and ethics of traditional superheroism, Moonshadow is of this view, and takes to killing rapists who escape justice under the law. Allison admits she'd like to Pay Evil Unto Evil sometimes, but recognizes it's wrong.
- Pretty much the standard response for Chuck a.k.a. Weapon Brown. Among his more notable accomplishments is tearing off the cybernetic limbs off his old tormentor Croc, brutally beating and torturing him for a bit, then shoving him ass-first onto a flamethrower and firing it, and cutting out Dr. Van Pelt's tongue and watching her try to beg for mercy without it.
