Tailor-Made Prisons in Comic Books.
- In the Marvel Universe, the only way to imprison the Absorbing Man, a supervillain whose body becomes any form of matter he touches, at one time was to put him in a cardboard box and put it in a prison cell since he would otherwise become the materials of the cell (like stone and steel) and smash his way out. Unfortunately, there was eventually a water leak that dripped on the box, allowing him to change into water, move to the cell floor, change into stone and break free.
- A later issue of Avengers Academy used his difficulty in controlling his water for against him; having the cell made from water programmed to act solid by Hank Pym's technology. If he absorbed it, he would be susceptible to the water-bending technology until his transformation wore off.
- The Authority has a prison located in a distant prehistoric era, before mankind ever evolved.
- Batman:
- Despite being an infamous Cardboard Prison, Arkham Asylum is actually partially built on being a tailor made prison for the psychos of Gotham. For example, the crazed serial killer Zsasz is permanently restrained due to his Ax-Crazy psyche, Poison Ivy is kept in a glass prison with no space for her to control plants to break herself out, and Mr. Freeze is given a modified meat locker for his cold body. Not that any of these ever stop the more unpredictable criminals like the Joker from breaking out at will more easily than the power specific villains.
- During Knightfall, the Corrosive Man was sealed away in a special room that constantly sprayed him with material that suppressed his acidic abilities. He ended up covering his hand long enough to allow him to use his powers and escaped.
- In Captain America, Bullseye, who can throw anything with deadly accuracy (literally), was kept in a straitjacket in a cell with no furniture. He was fed a nutritional paste (nothing solid, since he could even use a solid bowel movement as a deadly weapon) that was piped in a bowl that was set in the floor. He eventually escaped by slamming his head into a wall until he broke off a tooth and then feigned unconsciousness, using the tooth fragment to kill the guard who came to check on him.
- Chuck Dixon's Avalon: Fazer is imprisoned in a facility for specials. Conditions are designed to neutralize their various powers or debilitate them if they try to use them. Fazer himself, for example, is given drugs that prevent him from concentrating and if he overcomes those, the electrical charges running through his cell door and walls stop him from phasing through them.
- Pretty much any cell Diabolik and his accomplice Eva Kant are put into is made specifically to keep them in and prevent the currently free one from breaking the other out. The fact they still can break each other out is more a testament to Diabolik and Eva's skills than the prisons being easy to break out from.
- Fantastic Four: Reed Richards once tried to end the threat of Doctor Doom for good by trapping both of them in a Tailor-Made Prison; this being the only way he could be sure Doom would never escape. The team discovered Reed's sacrificial plan in time to rescue him, but Doom got out too. Note that Reed only trapped Doom inside of that prison because he didn't think Hell would be secure enough, and he was right. Doom has been known to escape from Hell.
- Incognito: The Black Death is an extremely powerful supervillain who is kept in a specially made cell that uses up massive amounts of energy and acts as a Power Nullifier.
- Invincible featured the Superman-esque villain Conquest beaten into a coma, then sealed in a 400-ton block of solid steel kept in an unmanned facility seven miles below ground, with motion sensors designed to collapse the entire compound if he so much as twitched. He escaped in a single page.
- Iron Man: There was a period where War Machine was able to assimilate any technology into his body. After being arrested, he was imprisoned in a special cell made entirely of plastic and ceramics so that he couldn't interface with any nearby metal or technology.
- Judge Dredd: Since the four murder-happy Dark Judges are actually immortal spirits, Justice Department decided to imprison them in a high-security containment facility known as 'The Tomb'. It's deep underground, with a Psi-Division detail on permanent stand-by and manned by robot guards in the innermost layer so they can't possess living hosts should they ever break out of their crystals. It's said that dropping a nuke on the place wouldn't be enough, and this looks to be true; every time they have escaped since it's because of an inside job.
- Justice League of America:
- One recurring rogues is The Key, who in recent years can count among his powers the ability to open any door or lock. He's escaped everything from interdimensional prisons to being imprisoned within an infinitely-branching mental prison created by the Martian Manhunter. At one point, he decided to try and trick Batman into killing him so he could impress the hero by escaping from death itself. Ultimately, Batman neutralized him by claiming that the only thing that would impress him is a prison the Key couldn't escape from, prompting the villain to voluntarily enter Arkham Asylum and instruct everyone on exactly how to imprison him for good, one step at a time.
- Another JLA villain, the Queen of Fables, was a Wicked Witch who had formerly been trapped in a book of fairy tales, and could reshape reality to her whims using the same tales and other imaginative fantasy, turning Manhattan into an enchanted forest and cursing Wonder Woman with a thousand-year slumber. Wonder Woman recovered, however, and did away with the Queen by trapping her in a very different book, the U.S. Tax Code, where she'd never find anything to use as a weapon.
- Star Wars Expanded Universe comics:
- The multiple-series comic arc Vector focuses on a Jedi named Celeste Morne who lived 4,000 years before the films. The arc ends 130 years after the films. Morne survives the first nearly-4,000 years thanks to the Tailor-Made Prison of Lord Dreypa, which works as basically an indestructible Bag-of-Holding version of this trope. How does she get out? She's released 18 years before the original trilogy. Who's the idiot who releases her? Darth Vader. Another one figures in the Knights of the Old Republic comic series (where Vector begins), but this time it's used only as suspended animation to hold an old woman for a month or so to keep her from dying. It also keeps her from stopping the Big Bad from ripping a nice schism in the Jedi Order, in a Xanatos Gambit planned out by said Big Bad. She gets released eventually and dies within thirty minutes.
- Dark Empire introduces the universal energy cage
, a transportable cell designed to hold Jedi by suspending them in an antigravity field, electrifying the bars, and featuring feedback systems that would cause the use of Force powers to rebound upon the user.
- If you want to make real sure a Transformer isn't going anywhere for a while, you take his spark out of his body and put it it in a box. Standard feature of a TF prison in the comics; rare in shows but has happened once or twice.
- Though if Arcee is to be believed, it's actually rather pleasant.
- Superman:
- Carl Draper, at times The Master Jailer, or Deathtrap, was originally the architect of a tailor-made prison for Superman's convicted criminal enemies, who could not be kept in in a standard prison. The prisoner's own powers were used to keep each other locked up. This fell apart when Draper got mad that no one — not even Lana Lang, who he was obsessed with — acknowledged his work, and he became a threat to Superman — ironically the only person who gave him credit for his work and skill — and even Supergirl.
- The Phantom Zone is a parallel dimension where Kryptonians lock up their worst criminals.
- In H'el on Earth, Lex Luthor is the only prisoner in a prison that he designed himself. He built the prison when Superman challenged him to create a prison that even he couldn't break out of.
- Also of note is the way Superboy-Prime has been confined over the years. When the Flashes drew him into the Speed Force, he was kept in a place with only red sunlight until he was able to build a set of armor that converted it into yellow sunlight. When Infinite Crisis ended, the Guardians Of The Universe locked him in a special Sciencell inside a red Sun Eater, which was itself guarded at all times by fifty Green Lanterns. Then after he was rescued by the Sinestro Corp and landed in the future, he was sent back to Earth Prime. This was maybe the most hellish prison of all, since he got what he wanted and was sent home, only to find his parents knew everything he'd done and he was hated and unloved by everyone, unable to get back to the comic book world - not that he wanted to. When he finally did get drawn back, he tried to kill Conner Kent and ended up imprisoned in the Source Wall for his trouble.
- During the New Krypton arc, Lex Luthor designed all kind of tailor-made prisons for Kryptonians.
- In Supergirl (Rebirth): Plain Sight, the D.E.O. makes Feminum-enhanced glass cells to hold Supergirl after capturing her (Feminum being the metal the Amazonian bracelets are made of):Chief Bones: I have to thank you, Magog. Testing our new Feminum-enhanced glass-cells has been a valuable service. Thanks to our arrangement with Doctor Mokkari, the D.E.O. should even be able to hold a Kryptonian.
- Brainiac's Blitz: Subverted. Brainiac builds a Kryptonite cage especially designed for Superman. However, he decides to use it to get rid of Supergirl, and Kara escape because she is smaller and slimmer than Superman, hence she can squeeze herself through the bars.
- In The Trigan Empire, The Worst Man On The Planet a.k.a. The Prisoner Of Zerss (we never learn his actual name) is kept in a cell on top of a tall pole surrounded by walls on an island in a "monster-infested sea". A henchman blackmails Peric, the Omnidisciplinary Scientist who designed the place to show him how to escape. There's an Air-Vent Passageway right under the rug in the middle of the cell.
- W.I.T.C.H.: Kandrakar's prison, the Tower of Mists, traps its occupants by forming the cells according to one's flaws, as shown by the two known examples: Cedric, a shape-shifter who can lie extremely well and is extremely cultured is locked in his (fake) human form and surrounded by books that contain only fiction and lies (he liked it, and when he got a visitor he started saying Blatant Lies to keep up with the joke), and the power-hungry Phobos, who had drained the magic of an entire world and tried to steal his sister's immense power, was tied up to tendrils that constantly drain his magic.
- Wonder Woman:
- Wonder Woman (1942): When Atomia proves capable of escaping Reformation Island Aphrodite herself comes up with a new set of restrains for the "queen", by welding her permanently into a Venus Girdle. This is ironic considering how Atomia destroyed minds in order to create her own brainwashed loyal minions.
- Wonder Woman (1987):
- When the Sangree Empire captured "Julia" of Daxam they tore out her eyes and stuck her in restraints that depowered her, while keeping her on display to the slaves on Hope's End as a warning against trying to revolt.
- When the Amazons imprison Circe her cell is a garden of plants that nullify magic, and is in a prison on a small floating island semi-detached from reality making escape incredibly difficult all of those imprisoned there.
- In Wynonna Earp, Black Rock is The Alcatraz built to house paranormal criminals. Each cell is specifically designed around the inmate it holds. The immortal cannibal Boone Helm is held in restraints that shackle his arms to the ceiling and his feet to the floor, has a mask affixed over his face, and is kept in a permanently sedated state.
- X-Men:
- One version of containment for an incarcerated Cyclops has him held in a giant cube of ruby quartz, the only substance immune to his optic blasts and from which the containing lens of his visor is made. This is a precaution in case the massive ruby quartz headpiece comes loose.
- In the Crimson Dawn story arc, Psylocke is forced to concentrate all her telepathic power on the Shadow King (an extremely powerful and malevolent psychic entity which feeds on the hatred of humanity) in order to keep him permanently trapped in the Astral Plane.
- Some time later, after the Shadow King escapes and comes looking for vengeance, Psylocke ends up trapping him inside a mutant that eats psychic energy. Because she'd already lobotomized said mutant, there's no way for the Shadow King to get out again.
- During the Fall of the Mutants storyline, the X-Men were fighting a monster known as the Adversary, and the only way to defeat him was to sacrifice their lives and souls to seal away into the form of two stone tablets. Needless to say, even Roma sees this as only a temporary set-back for the villain and once the smoke clears, she resurrects the X-Men so that they can get on with their lives while Adversary takes his time out.
