Reasonable Authority Figure / Webcomics

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• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja's Mayor Chuck Goodrich will listen to you if you have some kind of World of Weirdness related problem. This is because as a time traveler who has to solve the problems of every parallel universe, he's probably heard it before.
• In Cheer!, Mr. Madison is considered nice and well-liked by his students. He's the one the girls go to for help when they find that the class president was chained up in the Student Council room, and when we see him teaching, he tries to make obscure math formulas interesting before admitting that the students can forget them after the test.
• Darths & Droids has Palpatine as one of these. Instead of him corrupting Anakin (like in the films), it's the other way around.
  Jar Jar: Dis meaning war, wesa needs to have a stronger leader! Mesa suggests Chancellor Palpatine gets emergency powers!
  Palpatine: What?!
  Palpatine: In the wrong hands, such a thing^note The Peace Moon (aka The Death Star) could be... disastrous.
  Anakin: But in the right hands?
  Palpatine: There are no right hands!
  • However it does remain somewhat ambiguous just how much is truly Anakin's influence. Palpatine does very promptly put a Restraining Bolt on Anakin once he's forced to don the armor, so at least everything from the end of Episode III on may indeed be Palpatine's doing. Of course, it turns out he actually put it on Padme after Anakin died. And then it turns out that Anakin's vengeful ghost has been haunting him and driving him to madness.
• Mr. Verres of El Goonish Shive is far more reasonable than one would expect from the head of an organization that essentially acts as The Men in Black. He has a reputation for resolving situations in a manner that tends to favor the well-being of those involved over preserving secrets, and he has earned so much respect from those serving under him, that they still often secretly report to him even when he is no longer their boss. Most dangerous plotlines occur when he is impossible to reach.
  • His replacement, Arthur, is likewise quite reasonable, despite being initially antagonistic. While he's positioned as an opposing force initially, it turns out to be due to working from incomplete information — and once he and Tedd get the full story, he immediately agrees that Tedd was correct (to an extent — while Tedd is fundamentally opposed to keeping magic secret, Arthur has merely acknowledged it's not possible to do so) and offers support and funding.
• The mayor in Freefall is not initially an example, but her intern is. Up to and including risking his employment to protect sapient robots from the Gardener in the Dark program, going directly against the mayor's decisions to do so.
  • Both Mr. Raibert and the Police chief also count.
  • The Mayor eventually accepts that the artificial intelligences she'd been dismissing really are sapient, because mounting evidence caused her to rethink the issue. Later, she resigns, because she feels her trouble with seeing AI as genuinely sapient means she can't be a Reasonable Authority Figure.
    • The Mayor also tried to give Mr. Kornada a fair trial after the news about "Gardener in the Dark" broke. Especially notable since there was only one other judge on the planet, and that one literally wanted him to burn.
• An abbot early in Get Medieval establishes the comic's lack of Medieval Morons. He shelters, clothes and feeds two marooned Human Aliens because they're in need. When a paranoid monk points out that one of them has slept in for morning mass, the abbot notes that the one who attended paid more attention than half the brothers.
• Baron Wulfenbach of Girl Genius runs a ruthless dictatorship. He allows his subjects to parody or even mock him in the press, and generally he only uses lethal force when the need for it becomes blatantly obvious - even a full-fledged French Revolution-style uprising is put down with stun guns. A very reasonable dictator.
  • He has two rules: The (apocalyptic) devices of the Other must immediately be turned over to him for study, and nations/city-states are not allowed to go to war with each other (in fact, the motto for his Pax Transylvania is "Don't make me come over there"). Also, aside from keeping crack troops to uphold the peace; he builds and maintains roads, schools, and hospitals; provides support to cities, and even has firefighting and emergency communication forces. On top of that, his tax policies are so reasonable that the only time they're mentioned is when Gil defends the Wulfenreich — people have so little problem with being taxed they simply don't consider it worth mentioning.
  • When he took hostages from the royal families to ensure that they didn't go to war with their neighbors, he didn't ignore them or abuse them. Instead he got the best nanny he could and proceeded to educate them out of being potential Royal Brats and into Royals Who Actually Do Something, his own son being among them. Tarvek mentions that being released from his hostage status was "the worst punishment ever." Also the novelization mentions that he passed an equivalent of a Civil Rights act, forbidding discrimination against constructs.
  • Klaus managed to keep power in most of Europe (mainly excluding England and the city state of Paris) in a world ruled by mad scientists. He accepts aid from Ax-Crazy ex-pirate queen Bangladesh Dupree and former servants of his enemies — having them under his control is more effective and helps keep the peace, so he not only assimilated armies as casually as Genghis Khan but made it a standard procedure. He made sure it's well-known that he also offers surrendering soldiers the opportunity to join his army or take generous severance packages. He also keeps a reasonable base of young sparks and royals loyal to him (or at least completely awed and understanding it's the best place they could find), many becoming good friends with his heir, so that war won't break out once he's gone. It still did the moment he landed in a hospital, but at least with a few clear-cut factions and even possibility to salvage his empire, instead of the open-for-all war he stopped.
• Godslave has Sobek, who takes one good look at Anpu and decides (correctly) that the fennec-shaped god has no qualifications to take care of Edith by himself. He then sets up an account for her to solve her money problems while she's Plot Coupon-hunting, and tells her to come to him for aid anytime. The problem is, of course, that he's supposed to be working for Heru, Anpu's enemy.
• I'm the Grim Reaper: Veronica Carter, Chase’s adoptive mom. She’s the chief of police and somehow has managed to keep herself from becoming a sinner in her quest to improve the world. To be clear, anything bad is considered a "sin," no matter the reason, though sins can be cancelled out by good deeds: Chase's only confirmed sin was killing someone who absolutely deserved it, so he'd probably be judged worthy of Heaven. Veronica probably wouldn't even need judgement, in stark contrast to the rest of the police force, who are so massively corrupt that Veronica actually doing her job left the leader of the Red Spades flabbergasted.
• Princess Voluptua in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! is viceroy of Earth's solar system, and (apparently unlike a lot of Nemesite aristocrats) takes her job seriously and responsibly. Even Zippobic, who hates the Nemesites in general, has conceded that he respects and trusts her. When Bob reported that Earth was being attacked by lobster aliens, she promptly sent help because it was a "legitimate police call." However, when he needed her help to find a home for a baby giant, she again helped, but this time with the warning that he shouldn't count on her to help him out of messes that she and her government have nothing to do with.
• Last Res0rt plays with this slightly with White Noise, Captain of the Executioners... which makes him in charge of a band of criminals.
• Legostar Galactica: President Carl Weyland is easily the best President in the strip's run, being neither a Corrupt Politician, a literal Sith Lord, nor a fascistic reality TV personality. He's introduced as just another run-of-the-mill Beleaguered Bureaucrat before unexpectedly finding himself in the top job when President Darth Creepius is defeated. He sets about doling out Unishments to those who rebelled against Creepius, striking a balance between the fact that it was technically treason and the fact that taking out Creepius was undeniably a good thing. He later provides Captain Smith with as much assistance as the Senate will allow him to during the King in Yellow crisis.
• The Order of the Stick
  • General Tarquin, despite being, you know, a Lawful Evil man behind the man who by genre conventions should be holding at least one of them hostage and assuming they're trying to manipulate him. He recognizes that the heroic party is probably fighting a global scale threat that is as much a danger to him as to anybody else, and aids them unconditionally regardless of the philosophical differences... Until the trope is subverted when he double-crosses the protagonists later on because it turns out Tarquin only sees the main plot as a "side quest" and believes the party's real quest is an epic about Elan aka his son bringing him down in spectacular, myth-making fashion. As soon as it's made clear that he is the side quest, not the other way around, the facade shatters entirely.
  • Lord Shojo, who was quite a capable ruler of Azure City, even when he needed to fake senility to stave off assassination by ambitious rivals, and recruited the Order of the Stick behind the backs of his paladins because he realized that with their hidebound code, they could not both keep their oath and save the other gates.
  • For that matter, Shojo's nephew Hinjo, who is quite reasonable for a paladin, often taking the advice of our heroes and accepting the fact that he cannot do everything himself. Then again, no paladin is bad compared to Miko...
• A PvP arc had Brent being stalked and bullied by a bike cop after he got on the latter's wrong side. When Brent and Francis go complain to the cop's supervisor, we see that he's a nice, down-to-earth, and reasonable person, who promises to look into the matter. Problem solved, right? Well...not quite. Unfortunately for Brent, Francis finds the fact that said supervisor is a midget very (and offensively) amusing...
• Schlock Mercenary has Thurl, whom even Tagon recognizes as the prime source of advice. Elf was promoted after leading a rescue mission, after which she designed a communication device that impressed the local Mad Scientist without being taught such things (or much of anything), but when wondering why Thurl is so effective:
  Elf: Thurl, why did she give you a "yessir?" She won't even listen to me but she outranks you!
  Thurl: That's the difference between personal authority and position authority.
  Elf: I don't get it.
  Thurl: I know. That's why you're in charge, but you're taking orders from me at the moment.
  • Captain Tagon also has his moments; one noteworthy meeting not only saw him ask Lieutenant Pibald about a plan^note "The doctor informs me each week on exactly how crazy you are. I want your favorite." to take over a base as part of a Batman Gambit to get their client to renegotiate a contract, but have Kevyn provide an estimate on how valuable the site was.
  "I gave you an order with loopholes in it."
• The U.S. military from the alternate wraith universe in Sluggy Freelance. Torg, who's somewhat Genre Savvy, is surprised to discover that a post-apocalyptic world can have a very friendly and helpful military-industrial complex.
  • The Prime counterpart of their Secretary of Defense also qualifies.
• Space Boy: Dr. Kim. He stops Oliver from telling Amy the truth about himself, but it's in the interest of her own safety.
• Sparklecare: Most of the nurses seem to be genuinely caring, especially Nurse Kills, who defends and tries to comfort Barry.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent:
  • Mikkel tries to be this, slowly shaping up to be Rare Male Example of Team Mom, but Sigrun just keeps on overruling him.
  • While Sigrun seems like an inversion in the beginning (Absolutely Unreasonable Authority Figure), she proves surprisingly fitting to this trope after the team crosses Oresund Bridge.
• Lero-Ro, a Ranker from Tower of God.

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