Tranquil Fury / The DCU

The DCU

• Batman:
  • Batman starts off as The Stoic, then goes into an Unstoppable Rage, and then... let's just say that you really don't want to make him go past that point.
  • During the second Batman/The Punisher'' crossover, while The Punisher rides the hate and enjoys it, Batman reminds himself to remain calm and emotionless, to ignore the hate and use it to take out those who are overcome by it.
  • Mr. Freeze is essentially this. He carries out his evil plans almost without even a slight smidgeon of emotion, yet brutally freezes anyone that stands in his way, and leaves them to die without any sign of remorse.
  • Hell, even the freaking Joker gets in on it during a story arc in Batman: Hush Returns (which takes backstory from The Killing Joke.) He learns by overhearing the Riddler that the accident that killed his wife and unborn child (except not really) was actually a deliberate crime committed by a Corrupt Cop, Oliver Hammet. The Joker's humor goes out the window and he goes into a frighteningly cold mode and proceeds to find and tear Gotham to find the man who killed his family.
• Shazam!:
  • Captain Marvel of all people can do this when sufficiently angry. Most of the time Cap's just about the sweetest guy there is, but even he has his limits. When a group of hired killers murdered Billy Batson's best friend, Captain Marvel stormed into the police headquarters and grabbed the lead killer by the head, and started speaking to him in this trope.
    Captain Marvel: Who hired you? Tell me now. Or I'll crush your head ... Then I'll walk downstairs to the holding cells and ask your partners... I'll bring your dead, headless body with me... and then they'll tell me. So... for the last time... who hired you?
  • The next scene showed Captain Marvel hovering outside Dr. Sivana's office, revealing the assassin Sivana had hired had told Cap everything he wanted to know. Beware the Nice Ones indeed.
  • Made worse since the person making this chillingly effective threat is a little boy.
• This is one of the things that embodies Darkseid; incredibly Axe-Crazy, but also incredibly well self-controlled to temper that rage. He never raises his voice other than to make grand speeches, calmly makes certain that his enemies perish and almost never loses his cool despite how angry he gets. But if you look at his son Orion when he loses his Mother Box, then you'll have an idea how Darkseid is under the surface.
• Huntress: Helena Bertinelli is usually a hot-tempered, passionate person, but it's when she gets very calm that you should really be afraid. Whenever she gets ready to murder someone in cold blood, she's invariably totally calm. When she killed Stephen Mandragora in Year One, she was almost totally dispassionate about it. In Cry for Blood, when she gives Santo Cassamento the kiss of death, you can tell by her facial expression that she hates him, but she is totally in control. One of the clearest cases, though, was when she was about to drop Yasemin off a roof. When she was beating Yasemin with an aerial antenna, she was screaming, but when she was dangling her off the ledge, ready to drop her, she was completely calm.
• In The Sandman (1989), the first hint we get that there's something off about Thessaly is when she wakes up and calmly kills off a Cuckoo by smashing its head against a wall.
• In the middle of a fight between the Secret Six and the Doom Patrol, something clicks inside Mad Hatter's badly addled brain and he manages to put Negative Man and Bumblebee out of commission with just one word each, while another word turns Elasti-Girl against her teammates. This manages to turn the fight in the Six's favor.
• Superman:
  • Superboy (1994): When Amanda Spence murders Superboy Conner's first girlfriend, then taunts that she is eternal, all he says is a calm "Prove it." before blasting her into the cold vacuum of space. His narration of her fate is hauntingly cold.
    Superboy: She said she didn't need to breathe. Said she had no heart. Said she couldn't die. Fine by me. But she'll pay. She wants to be eternal. I give her eternity floating in cold nothing.
  • Supergirl is usually Hot-Blooded and short-tempered. So, if she talks and acts calmly when she is obviously angry, she's about to deliver an epic butt-kicking.
  • In Justice League United #3, Lobo suckerpunched her. She calmly grabbed his neck, lifted him off the ground and said she hated him before punching him across a valley◊.
  • In Red Daughter of Krypton, Sheko is different from other Red Lanterns. She is full of fury... but it's a cold, methodical kind of fury. In Supergirl #31, Kara realizes this:
    Supergirl: She's different for a newborn Red Lantern. She can think and speak — but deep down she's just as full of rage as any new Red. It's a cold, methodical rage, and she's not really in control of it.
  • Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl: Once she finds out about her cousin's fate, Kara alternates between hot-blooded rage and informing Lex Luthor quietly and calmly that she's going to kill him. On the other hand, Batgirl always remains cool and controlled, even when she's confronting someone who pisses her off.
  • Many Happy Returns: When Rebel ambushes Kara, she is furious and upset and her eyes glow golden, but she talks to him calmly and quietly to tell him she is barely restraining herself and will most certainly kill him in horrible ways if he attacks.
  • Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow: When Krem gets her and Krypto shot, Supergirl calmly gets up, walks towards him and his goon, and states she does not care for their stupid weapons before stomping all over them.
  • When Superman gets angry and you don't have kryptonite on you, run. Sure, no one but The Flash can outrace him, but he'll respect the effort, and your best shot is to hope that something more important will distract him in the seconds he lets you run. However, when he's gone past the point of anger, Red Eyes, Take Warning and all, pray to your maker, because you'll be lucky to end up in critical condition.
  • Superman Vol. 1 #655: When Superman narrowly managed to defeat Subjekt-17, an alien with strength and speed on par with him coupled with Psychic Powers, Subjekt-17 comments:
    "You get cold inside when angry, Superman, but never wild."
  • Superman/Shazam: First Thunder: When Captain Marvel rampages after his friend Scott died taking a bullet for him, Superman comes to berate him, only to find Marvel crying his eyes out over Scott's death. After Marvel showed Supes his secret identity, that of a ten-year-old boy, Supes' eyebrows arch with fury, and without any emphasis whatsoever, asks a single question.
    Superman: Who did this to you?
    • This is followed by him, rather less tranquil, absolutely reaming out the Wizard for what he did.
  • In Girl Power, Dark Supergirl smugly tells Kara her father wanted her to kill her baby cousin. Supergirl seems outwardly calm when she softly -and rightfully- calls her evil clone a liar...but the soft, alarming red glow filling her eyes shows she is anything but that.
• Tom Strong: Dhalua Omotu-Strong, princess of the Ozu, wife of Tom Strong, mother of Tesla Strong, has at her mercy genetically engineered Nazi baroness Ingrid Weiss. Weiss is obsessed with Dhalua's husband, colluding with who she thinks is Tom's arch foe Paul Saveen, deluded into thinking they have a relationship, and essentially raped him decades ago and stole his sperm to inseminate herself and have a child she raised to be as much of a Nazi as she is. Armed with a pair of atomic gauntlets, Dhalua makes Ingrid understand just how very, very, very angry she is without ever raising her voice. To the point Tom and Tesla are too scared to intervene as she quite literally has Weiss's life in her hands. She only relents after she's thoroughly broken Weiss's will, as the Nazi's bluster finally breaks and she begs Dhalua not to kill her in front of her own son.
  Dhalua: Miss Weiss, I do not believe you have yet understood the trouble you are in. I do not believe you understand just who you have offended.
• Watchmen: Unlike the other characters, who express fury through violent outbursts, Rorschach is almost always calm and quiet in his violence. Even when pushed to his very limit in 1975, he didn't yell or lash out, he retained his quiet demeanor. Rorschach is emotionally withdrawn and during his adulthood he only makes a facial expression twice in the book (Panel 8 of Page 7 of Chapter 6, when he remembers a childhood incident, and when he orders Manhattan to kill him. For the rest of the story his face is either covered by his mask or a blank stare.
• Wonder Woman Vol 1: Giganta may have started out as Unstoppable Rage incarnate but she learns to be more cold and methodical without ever becoming any less angry. Even then she has her moments where she slips into a less tranquil attitude, but that's generally when her foe is already unconscious.

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