What do you think has been the most severe punishment to a comic book villain?
 

The trouble with comic books is that the punishment to villains are pretty tame - they get beat up, sent to prison, then they escape. Or they get killed and fantasically come back to life. So out of all the comic books/graphic novels you have read, what are the most memorable punishments to the villains that you will never forget?


Here's the one that I can never forget:
PREACHER by Garth Ennis: Issue #17 (Miracle Man) - Jesse Custer forces the villain, Hoover, to count EVERY SINGLE grain of sand on a nearby beach.

The great thing I like about this punishment that it is not some quick, physically violent form of punishment. It's a form of frustration and stress that will eventually kill the dude due to the impossible responsibility (and of course, starvation).


Which punishments to comic book/graphic novel villains will you never forget?

Hmm. Top of head:

Hulk has been banished to limbo & outer space.
A shitload of ninjas have died at the hands of Wolverine & Elektra. They dissolve when Daredevil hits them (I know he doesn't intentionally kill them like the others, but still...)
Magneto was turned into a baby.
I'm sure some villain has gone to hell (or where ever Mephisto is from)

Not a villain (meh) but Wolverine getting the Adamantium ripped from his body looked kinda painful.

That Yellow Bastard > Junior

Those poor Skrulls being left to live their lives as cows always seemed a bit harsh. And that was back in the '60s.

The retconned story where Dr. Light got pretty much lobotomized and then used as fodder for the kid heroes (teen titans) seemed pretty harsh...

But if they were California cows, then they'd be all happy and stuff. (obscure CA milk industry commercial reference) :shrug:

I guess if they were in the commercials... I doubt that real milking cows, even in CA, are allowed to graze like that.

Not only was there "skrull milk," but they were eventually slaughtered and fed to humans, resulting in the Skrull Kill Krew, so yeah, that's a pretty gruesome fate...

No doubt McDonald's patrons enjoyed the improvement. :up:

As I remember that punishment backfired because yhe people in the community that were drinking the skrull cow milk strated going crazing and developing powers like the skrulls.

How about the indigestion Galactus got from eating the Impossible Man's planet.

Definitely not the worst, but the Punisher let crime boss Ma Gnucci get all of her limbs eaten by polar bears, and later in the story kicked her body back into her own burning house.

In the Authority, Midnighter taught the Commander (Captain America as a sadist) a lesson for beating Apollo by introducing the Commander's ass to some large construction drill.

Damn, too slow.

I was going to mention Midnighter sodomizing the Captain America analogue ("anal"-ogue... heh) with a jackhammer.

Can't think of anything else right off... there was that one issue of Ennis' Punisher where he took the guy who dug up his familes bodies and pissed on their bones/corpses up in the mountains, shot him in the gut, and left him to die slowly and painfully. Frank also did some pretty nasty things to the human traffickers in that one story arc... I remember he strung one man's intestines up in a tree while he was still alive.

(Why should I not be surprised that these are all from Ennis and Millar?)

Sticking with Midnighter, in the very last issue so Midnighter #20. Midnighter was holding an imposter Midnighter captive and tortured him for information. He proceeded to cut off the limbs of the imposter until he agreed to give him information as long as Midnighter promised to kill him. Of course Midnighter didn't keep his word and also cut out the guys eyes and tongue and topped it off by throwing hiim thru the front doors of a hospital so that he would be kept alive.

It was the first and only time I'd actually been disturbed by something I'd read in a comic

any recommendations for collections of the authority? after reading this thread and checking out wikipedia, i am interested in reading a few.

Not as harsh as being turned into a candle and then being burned. Talk about being a real source of light...

Juggernaut was sent to the Ultraverse after Marvel bought them out. I enjoyed the first year or so of Prime and some of the other Ultraverse titles, but by that time the universe was in shambles...

That was so brutal. I felt so uncomfortable reading those sections.

And later on he comes back he's all grizzled and crazy and he's missing teeth and looking for revenge. I love Preacher.