Unintentionally Unsympathetic in Comic Books.
The following have their own pages:
Other Comic Books
- Berrybrook Middle School: Peppi feels sorry for Mari on seeing the latter's home life, namely when she hears how terrible her father is. It doesn't change the fact that Mari sabotaged the Science Club blatantly by stealing their drone remote and made Peppi as well as the relatively innocent Art Club members take the heat. She said she was panicking, but when Peppi tries to explain to Jaime without naming the saboteur, he says Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse and that no matter someone's issues, cheating is still a problem that affects other people. To top it all off, when Peppi goes to confront Mari, she finds out that Mari and her mother left, without even leaving any contact information for Mari's friends, let alone the club for which she is president. Mari becomes a Karma Houdini as a result while Peppi has to decide whether or not to clean up her mess after the principal suspends both clubs.
- The dragon queen, T'mat from Gold Digger. Gold Digger operates on Rousseau Was Right and everyone is given a second chance. However, it's hard to sweep T'mat's actions under the rug. T'mat was tortured and raped by her former best friend Dreadwing during his rampage 1000 years ago and suffers from PSTD from the incident and sought revenge from two elves who inadvertently helped Dreadwing gain power and threatened death on anyone who tried to stop. This led her to have the elves captured and imprisoned for her to torment at her leisure. When the elves' friends came to rescue them, T'mat went on an assault of violence and murder, all the while ranting like a self-righteous maniac. It only ended because Summoner began to threaten revenge on her for killing Tirant and T'mat saw the error of her ways and was saved by the same elves she was trying to torture. Later, she would try and enslave Britanny for her power to paralyze Dreadwing and would injure a political leader in rage. Naturally, no one's shown any umbrage at her actions.
- ElfQuest: Cutter's smug triumph over Rayek and Savah's cheerful support of his wins during the trial of Head, Hand, and Heart. Rayek's nastiness towards Cutter and possessiveness towards Leetah might not win him a lot of favor in the eyes of the audience, but Cutter wins the trials because Savah uses her authority over the games to nudge them in his favor:
- The Trial of the Hand is conducted fairly, but the game Savah chooses is clearly in Cutter's better interest: the Wolfriders are tree-walking warriors who are reared with weapons in their hands, and the Sunfolk (including Rayek) are completely non-combatant; the trial of the Hand is a one-handed wrestling match on narrow, moving rails.
- The Trial of the Head is a hunt for hidden weapons. Cutter blunders through the puzzles with his physical gifts until he uses what the elves call a lodestone to pull his sword out of a crag, while Rayek is barred from using his own magic and solves the puzzles through actual cleverness. Savah rules Cutter the winner because, even though she was the only one who knew it wasn't magic, Cutter didn't bring the lodestone intending it to be anything but a lucky charm, which means Savah ruled Cutter the winner of a trial of wits because he's too dumb to know what a magnet is and too stupid to intentionally cheat. The smug face he makes at Rayek when he protests doesn't help.
- The Trial of the Heart tests the contestants' greatest fear. Since Rayek's fear is losing to Cutter, the only way for the last challenge to be valid at all is if the the rest of the contest is riding on it, and it's a best 2 out of 3 that have already been ruled in Cutter's favor. Even if Cutter failed and Rayek succeeded in the last trial, it's not a valid test of his greatest fear unless he's confronting a fear of losing. The way the contest is set up, he can't face his fear until the requisite conditions of facing that fear have already lost him the contest.
- Hellblazer: John himself can fall into this, Depending on the Writer. When they ratchet up his negative qualities and downplay, or even out right ignore, his positive ones he just comes across as a Jerkass who treats everyone, friends, allies, and even good people who have never wronged him, like garbage for the crime of not having his bad luck in life or treating his pain as the center of the universe. It becomes hard to sympathize when bad things happen to John, as it feels more like karmic retribution for all the things he usually gets away with, especially when it's the result of his own actions.
- Invincible: Anissa really becomes this much later in the series. In issue 110# she brutally rapes Mark in order to get pregnant with his seed and leaves him traumatised and unable to be with his wife Eve without having panic attacks for a long time after. When we see Anissa again after the Time Skip she’s deeply apologetic to Mark and the comic bends over backwards to try at least make the reader sympathise with her a little by showing that she’s changed after raising her son Markus and only assaulted Mark because that was the “Viltrumite way” and she didn’t know any better. But her reasoning is unsympathetic and flawed since she had spent enough time on Earth to at least comprehend how human coupling worked and had actually been stalking Mark prior to the assault and knew he was Happily Married to Eve as well as creeping on him post-rape (saying that she missed him) showing her feelings were beyond a simple desire for reproduction and were indeed an obsession. This along with the fact Anissa says she ultimately doesn’t regret what she did, meant no tears were shed for her from fans when she dies in the Final Battle, even though its framed as a sad moment and even the heroes like Mark and Eve (who have every reason to hate Anissa) take pity on her. Additionally were the genders reversed, it’s extremely unlikely there be any attempt to make Anissa sympathetic or redeemable at all.
- Transformers:
- The Transformers: Robots in Disguise:
- Metalhawk was supposed to be written as jerkass with a point by addressing the harm that the war caused to all the neutrals and to the planet itself. However many of his points went unchallenged by all but Prowl and eventually Prowl fell under mind control and purposefully tried to destabilize the political climate. Metalhawk continually tried scratching open the divides between factions, from accusing Bumblebee of murdering the Lost Light crew, to undercutting him at every turn. The result was Metalhawk trying to bring the population together under a peaceful rule, by insulting the factions, driving them further apart, and not bothering to see the other side of things.
- Before Metalhawk, there was Spike Witwicky, who was intended to be a badass soldier and prove that Muggles Do It Better by singlehandedly killing a dangerous Decepticon responsible for a lot of deaths. The problem was, he went about it in a patently sadistic way while breaking a number of rules and regulations (including committing a war crime by executing a helpless opponent), and his attempted "The Reason You Suck" Speech was laden with hypocrisy. The fact that the apparent message was "the main focus of the franchise sucks compared to its most mundane element" didn't win him any favors, nor did the fact that the character he killed was a minor Ensemble Dark Horse who'd historically been Out of Focus. The result of the issue was making Spike so patently unsympathetic that pretty much every future writer treated the event as his Jumping Off the Slippery Slope.
- The Transformers: More than Meets the Eye:
- This series gave a pretty big redemption arc to Megatron, who unfortunately suffers from this quite a bit. He's given a Freudian Excuse as to why he turned out the way he was, and he does at times show efforts to change as a person - but the problem is, the narrative also establishes him much too heavily as having been a monstrously horrible person after that excuse, and enjoyed every minute of it, and the characters and narrative are much too accepting of his turnaround. One issue would have a character be treated as firmly in the wrong for refusing to admit that Megatron turned over a new leaf, and another would have the revelation that the Decepticons had explicitly Nazi-style death camps. It seems to treat his actions in the war as some kind of moment of rage or a point where he was at his worst, but he was like that for millennia, and when he's claimed "I would happily wade across a river of corpses, chest-deep in rust and grease and engine oil, just to crush the spark of the last Autobot standing", it becomes pretty hard to take it seriously that he's genuinely shocked and horrified at all the people he's killed.
- The Deceptions as a whole could be considered this in the post-war era. Many stories try to show they had become marginalized but after the aforementioned death camps, numerous genocides and the fact that many of them still hold on to these ideals even after their defeat (even the "nicer" members like Fulcrum harbor genocidal bigotry towards organics) and still blame the Autobots, it's very hard to sympathize with them. There's also the fact it tries to show they were similar to the Autobots but that falls flat when any shady thing done by the Autobots pales when compared to the Decepticons' war crimes and the fact that many Autobots came from the same lower-class backgrounds yet didn't become the same way certainly doesn't help matters. This got so out-of-hand that the push to make the Autobots similar, rather than cast the Decepticons in a more sympathetic light, just resulted in turning the Autobots unsympathetic too. The end result was the setting becoming too bleak and requiring the line to be rebooted.
- The Transformers: Robots in Disguise:
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW):
- The deer from The Root Of The Problem, who were losing their home to an evil construction company, garnered close to zero sympathy from the audience as they somehow believed this meant the ponies as a whole had betrayed them and decided to retaliate by attacking towns and cities full of ponies who had absolutely nothing to do with it with unstoppable vines. Even when they learn the ponies were unaware they instead use their attack as leverage, demanding the ponies do something and threatening that the attacks will continue until they do, not only effectively making them terrorists doing more harm than the villain but also forcing the Princesses to defend said cities instead of actually being able to come and help. Because the construction company was so easily defeated by the heroes it looked like the deer never even realistically tried to deal with them, which even caused some fans to cheer on the construction company for "sticking it to the obnoxious deer elves." Even fans who did still side with the deer were thoroughly put off by how the Princesses apologized to the deer in the end (fans were expecting it to be the other way around, with the deer learning not to violently jump to conclusions), and how nothing about what the deer did to be considered "allies" of Equestria was ever shown.
- Cassie the Kelpie from Friendship Is Magic Issue #23. Even though her goal of helping some water sprites reach the ocean before they got sick was noble, she intended to do this by brainwashing all of Ponyville into destroying their dam which would in turn destroy the town and likely kill all of them which was brushed aside without consequence by Twilight Sparkle and her infamous "we've all done something silly for a friend before" line. Readers were far less forgiving, seeing Cassie as a genocidal moronic Karma Houdini at best who couldn't be bothered to just ask for help or try any methods that didn't involve wholesale destruction of an entire town, to the point that it became a meme to have Twilight apply her easy forgiveness to history and fiction's greatest monsters
. - Equestria Girls: Holiday Special:
- When Sunset Shimmer was framed for leaking secrets online it was supposed to be understandable that the school and her friends would turn on her given her past actions. But this supposedly takes place after Rainbow Rocks, by which Sunset had proven her redemption by saving the school and had no reason to do what she was accused of. Sunset's friends were supposed to redeem themselves by ultimately hearing her out, which was squandered by their immediate forgiveness of the Crusaders despite all the flak they gave Sunset for the same without self-awareness or showing any regret for how they treated Sunset.
- The human Cutie Mark Crusaders are revealed to have framed Sunset out of jealousy for their siblings spending time with her over them, but kept sympathetic as they confessed and apologised, got six months detention, and mentioned having to live with the fact that the damage they caused would never fully go away. But they're being Easily Forgivennote and partaking in the Happy Ending left their punishment and consequences an Informed Attribute. Their continuing their actions after achieving their goal for no given reason and inconsistent portrayals of angst when confessing made it look like they did so less out of remorse than because they were about to be exposed.
- Stardust the Super Wizard is a fairly infamous old-school example. Stardust is meant as a conventional superhero, protecting people from all kinds of villains trying to kill everyone For the Evulz, but his Pay Evil unto Evil mindset, insanely overpowered nature, and habit of not stepping in until the villains have already killed a lot of people mean that he instead comes across as a capricious Smug Super who puts more time into torturing villains than stopping them.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- Locke is meant to be seen as a noble man with shades of grey who is acting for the greater good, and Ken Penders said that he's someone who did what he had to do, and a great father at that. In theory, Locke gets a dream showing him that the then-unborn Knuckles would face a terrible evil and decides to give his son the power he needs to protect his people by empowering him before birth and later faking his own death so that he can watch over Knuckles while his son focuses on his duties. In practice, Locke exposes his son's egg to Chaos Energy and genetically alters himself to obtain new traits for Knuckle's to inherit, because of a dream, and fakes suicide right in front of his ten-year old child. The end result is that he comes off as manipulative and emotionally-abusive, and when Ian Flynn took over as the comic's writer, Locke got called out far more for his actions and he was portrayed as more antagonistic compared to how Penders wrote him.
- We're supposed to sympathize with Hamlin's spite over the neglectful treatment that his old team received from the Freedom Fighters despite being an actual team that Sally personally trained. It falls apart because that team was the Substitute Freedom Fighters so by definition their job was to only go into action only when the regular Freedom Fighters couldn't. Also, the team was led by Larry Lynx who had volunteered to help Rotor in the past, so Hamlin and his teammates could've had more active roles if they had simply asked.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): While Sonic's Thou Shall Not Kill mentality is probably meant to emphasize his purity of heart and make him fit the 'superhero' ideal, some readers point out that he appears hypocritical in his interactions with Eggman, Shadow, Starline and Belle, making it seem like he only cares about his principles to the detriment of his own allies and the rest of the world.
- Street Fighter vs. Darkstalkers: The reader is supposed to root for Morrigan when she fights Jedah because she is trying to save her kingdom, but it's painfully hard to support her when she's been doing nothing but going around the human world killing humans and causing destruction. The first thing she does in the comic is tricking and killing two archeologists that were happy about finding a lost pyramid on Brazil yet the moment she finds out about Jedah's plan she immeadiatly goes to Donovan, Anita and later Chun Li (whom she tried to kill earlier) seeking for help when she's been worse than Jedah. Her defeating him, fusing with Lilith and getting crowned queen of Makai is supposed to be seen as something good but all it means is that she will not face punishment for her actions and is completely free to keep tormenting humans, now even more powerful than ever. Bad if you remember neither her (or Lilith) were like that in the games.
- Protagonist Archer Goodwoody in Gung Ho is supposed to be a sympathetic teenager whose only crime is that he wants to have fun and enjoy himself, instead of being grim and miserable all the time like the adults around him. In practice, he instead comes off as a lazy, self-absorbed Know-Nothing Know-It-All slacker, an impression only made worse when he blithely assures his younger brother Zach that it doesn't matter if they get exiled from civilization, because they're strong enough and smart enough to fend for themselves. This attitude would be grating anyway, but it's made worse by the fact that Archer is living in a post-apocalyptic world where humanity is fighting to survive in the face of the White Plague, so Archer comes off as a legitimate danger to the survival of others with his attitude. It's telling that when some of the White Plague breaches Fort Apache, whilst Zach is risking his life to save a little boy from being eaten by a pair of Drivers, Archer is off breaking into the supply room and stealing valuables like liquor.
- Keeping Scrooge McDuck sympathetic gets notably harder and harder the more the audience becomes aware of social injustices. In Carl Barks' day, stories about Scrooge fighting against an Intimidating Revenue Service were common, which nowadays come across as a monstrously wealthy man trying to avoid paying his fair share. Most stories nowadays focus on Scrooge going on fun adventures or facing up against outright villainous billionaires to avoid this.
- The first story in issue 128 of the first run of the DC-published Scooby-Doo comics has Devon Barton. We're meant to sympathize with him because he didn't get the leading role in a musical his fiance Amara is in; Amara outright states he deserved to be in it over the actual male lead, the aptly-named Rudy. However, a combination of the fact that Rudy apparently got the part fair and square (with no evidence of foul play on his end besides repeated assertions that he "stole" the part from Devon) and the fact that Devon's response to this was to pull a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax and terrorize the production make him less sympathetic than intended. As such, he comes off as a Sore Loser more than anything, and when the story ends with the director replacing Rudy (whose only crimes were being rude and rightfully being mad that Devon crashed the first live performance) with him, it comes off as less of a happy ending and more like he and Amara (who was in on the Phantom thing) are Karma Houdinis.
