Spoilers Off applies to all Tear Jerker pages, so all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
- When (a pre-Robin, original look) Batman takes down a cult that's preparing to sacrifice a child for the Centre, he succeeds in striking terror into the hearts of the cultists (and even a disguised Martian)... but also the child he's trying to save. When the child begs Batman to "stay away", you can tell he's shocked to the core. As he explains later in the story, "(He) set out to scare criminals, not children".
- As the two remaining members of Task Force X blow up a spaceship full of nuclear warheads, they share a passionate kiss.
- Everything to do with John Henry. The man fights in Korea for his country, comes home, marries and has a kid. Then the KKK just decide to burn his house to ground, killing his wife and daughter, and the police just dismiss this. So John decides to get revenge on them. But it doesn't work.
- Worse still is how he dies. Injured and being chased, he tries to hide, and runs into a little white girl, who just stares at him with dead eyes. And then she calls out the posse to his location. A sad reminder of how toxic and corrosive racism is even to this day.
- Nathanial Adam's death while trying to harm then escape from the inside of The Center. Despite the knowledge that he'll be back, there's still a part of the daring pilot that died that day trying to save the world.
- King Faraday and the government's attempts to capture metas reaches a head when they target the Flash. Barry, who only tried to do good but winding up a target of his own government, can only ask, "Why?" before he manages to escape. Then, when he announces his retirement on TV, most of the populace writes him off as being a communist sympathizer and good for nothing. This is the last act that finally (for a time) breaks J'onn's faith in humanity.
- The deaths of the Losers (not even their Team Pet survives), including John Cloud's epitaph and final moments. Rick Flagg names the rocket project after Cloud, to honor the man who saved his life.John Cloud: Ask my family, and they'll tell you I was a Navajo. Ask the Army Air Force and they'll say I was an American. But if you ask my brothers, they'll set you straight. John Cloud was a Loser.
- J'onn mistakes a cheesy movie demonizing invaders from Mars for a ridiculous comedy, then is disturbed to see that the other viewers take it seriously.
- Red Ryan's girlfriend is unable to help him with nightmares about the plane crash he was in, and he leaves without being sure when he'll be back. This quickly leads to a Mood Whiplash, though, when he joins the Challengers of the Unknown and his life takes a better direction.
