Off THEIR Minds: What's the Worst Thing That Could Happen to a Hero?

@g_man did jeff parker really ask his son?

When there's no more crime to fight, making their role obsolete.

Losing their powers. I mean think about it? If you were Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, etc. How meaningless and boring would your life be? You'd kill yourself or while but fat and depressed... just like what happened to Sentry.

Supergirl is at risk. She's only 14 or 15. Robin was at an 'at risk' age group also, but he is not anymore :(

@teerack: Thats pretty much what this was

All objectively wrong answers. The worst thing for a hero is to be forgotten.

Being a superhero in the real world.

Too many choices and risk of failure. Even Superman can't be in two places at the same time. If he makes the wrong call he ends up saving two people from a burning house, while at the same time terrorists wipe out a whole shopping mall because he thought it was a local shooting incident.

A superhero would have to be monitoring the media for any early reports of an incident, but unless you have incredible speed and the ability to notice catastrophes from the very start, you end up being little more than a glorified bulldozer and corpse digger ... If you are the only person in the world with superpowers, there are no supervillains to focus on and your ability to deal with real life problems and their fallout is enough to give even the best of characters a bad case of ragequit.

And then there is politics, no matter what you do, there will be somebody who will use your actions as political leverage and denounce you at every step. Make one or more bad calls and people will hate you with a passion. How long before a talk show pundit Alex Jones style gets on your nerves and you want to use your claws on him ?

And can you stand idle when there is a famine or a civil war claiming innocent lives ? "The infidel terrorist Megadude has been supporting terrorist movements in our country claiming he is merely offering humanitarian aid, when in fact he is smuggling in weapons and attacking our troops in support of said terrorists. I general Amundi of the People's Liberation Front of Bongolostan, defy Megadude from intervening in our national affairs. Every intrusion of our national borders or violation of our sacred airspace will result in the execution of a hundred terrorists. Their blood will be on your hands Megadude !!!"

Beware of pranks, idiots and masochists who want to have fun at your expense.

Or worst of all somebody who does fancy themselves a real supervillain ends up capturing you. "OK Captain Invincible, you're supposedly invulnerable, let's see what happens when we use a blowtorch on your eyeball for a few hours, put your family jewels under this hydraulic press, or ram this mining drill up your Khyber Pass ..."

@mezmero: It sure screw up Sentry's life.

Maybe the worst is what happened to Captian America after Civil War, where he was portrayed as a bad guy.

The answer is being Spiderman.

Sins Past - Old girl friend cheated him with his worst enemy and give birth two kids.

One More Day - He made a deal with Devil and his marriage erased from history.

Superior Spider - His another enemy took control his body.

The secret identity is the right answer. Friends and family being persecuted by villains because of their ties to the hero is the whole reason for a secret identity. "If I was not a hero, my family would still be alive." A million times worse than a teammate, who has chosen to take those risks as well as the hero.

I would imagine that it would be failure at doing your duty.

Haha, Humphries' answer is the best. That WOULD suck if as a hero someone came along with your identity and started playing it better. Ouch...

I think Superman could adjust. I mean, he was raised as Clark Kent. He's still a morally upstanding person who, instead of fighting crime with powers, would fight injustices everywhere with his reporting. Barry Allen is a forensic scientist, so he would still operate against crime. Recently, Hal Jordan actually lost his ring, and for awhile he was b!$ching about it, but he actually got a life and seemed to settle down with Carol....for once.

Bottom line, power isn't everything to these people.

I think the worst thing that could happen to a superhero is everyone else close to them dying due to either something they did or their villains did.

I know what happened in the comics. I was just being realistic about it.

Getting old like the rest of us( save immortals like Thor, Hercules, Valkyrie or near immortals like Wolverine or Wonder Man)!

Terry

Going bad.

Maybe to become like your enemy? In Injustice: Gods Among Us, Superman killed the Joker and became like the very monster he hated.

Actuallly Spiderman has suffer all that and much.

Gf gets sex with his arc-enemy.

Secret Identiy gets known.

Body taken by enemy and then gets killed after watching enemy ( in his body) kiss ex-gf.

And way more things...like OMD

Being tricked into killing your family and friends.

There is no wrong answer here

I don't know, I think that depends of the character; but I believe that the worst thing that can happen to a superhero due his or her value system is to being manipulated by a villain without notice and do all the dirty work for him or her until he or she realizes what he/she has done, and being tormented in his/her conscience for all his life when he/she realizes what he/she have done. That or being controlled for someone else and forced to do terrible things against his o her will. Interesting question.

So many good answers, all of them terrible things.

I really like Sam Humphries' answer but I agree with Mezmero.

Flashpoint.

That's not even me being a troll. After Flashpoint, Barry Allen lost his wife, his two children (the tornado twins), his nephew and his nephew's entire family. I am talking about Barry here because he was Flashpoint's protagonist but the same goes for most characters, especially the members of the JSA.

Going bald

they could end up in a relationship with Superman

I always looked at Wolverine like the comic worlds go-to chracter for worst things. Some of these I may have a little inaccurate, Im at work going from memory, trying to do it as chronologically as I can. There are a good bit of things Im sure I dont remember or dont stand out to me as terrible things, but if they happened to someone else, Im sure they would be "defining" moments in their development.

Born sickly and weak.

Kills Dad, Results in mom shooting herself.

Kills girl he likes/loves.

Basically immortal. Doesnt get attached to ppl because he will out-live them.

Fought few wars, black ops missions. Did terrible things to people (Nuke as an example). Haunted by memories.

Wife gets killed (presumably son).

Weapon X project. Terrible onto itself.

Sabretooth and the Indian woman (terrible I forgot her name) on his birthday.

Kills Mariko to save her from painful death.

Gets Adamantium pulled out of him by Magneto.

Genesis (Cable's kid) puts him back into the tube and puts it back in him. Explained as pain on a molecular level. Rejects implants, and shoots the metal out of his own body explosively.

Apocalypse puts the Adamantium back into him (this time succesfully). Thats a total of 3 times it was bonded to him. A process that has been labled extremely painful.

Gets mind controlled into killing people on a contant basis. (Horseman Death, Enemy of the State, Wolverine goes to Hell)

In constant physical pain due to his claws. Was explained by Rogue absorbing his powers and basically crying because of the pain.

His best friend died (Kurt) right after learning about the his squad. Bothered Logan quite a bit.

Gets sent to Hell. Seriously.

Kills his kids in his own book (didnt read the story, heard it was terrible)

Kills Daken in uncanny x-force.

Gets blamed for what his x-force squad did (killing Apocalypse) even though he was against it. Takes the blame like a leader should. Still has to weigh on him.

Not many can compete with that kind of crap.

Most other things that happen to other character are a walk in the park for Logan.

*edited* rememered a few more terrible things

You know what? The ComicVine YouTube account has some great comments about this question:

Your archenemy finding out your secret identity and proceeding to make your life a living hell. Like what Kingpin did to Daredevil, and what Osborn does to Spider-Man.

Being written by Scott Lodbell/Dan Slott

having your "greatest" enemy (and I use that term loosely) use your body as a "meat sack" as some ridiculous, poorly written freaky friday knockoff.. (or your life written by dan slott in general)

Let's face it.

It's castration.

It just is.

@zombiepie said:

You know what? The ComicVine YouTube account has some great comments about this question:

lol

Super hero memes

Secret Link

Humphries wins.

crimes becomes to advanced for you to fight it, like in computer age where crime is off the streets and into computers.

Losing belief in yourself, having all that power or wealth or tech and lacking the inner strength to use them would be the worst thing. Living with the fact that you should of done something but when the time arose you didn't and the ramifications of that decision being the loss of life, relationships, family and respect would be the most debilitating thing to ever go through.

It's obvious isn't it? The worst thing that can happen to any hero is people stop buying their books.

Becoming Spiderman(Peter Parker) is probably as bad as it gets. Any bad thing that could have possible happened to him has happened. most of the stuff they said in the video has happened to him and then some.

Dan Slott...mic drop

I think there would be few things worse than being Superboy Prime.

Comic book limbo.

@kfhrfdu_89_76k:

ROB LIEFELD is the worst thing that could happen to a hero. He may be the catalyst for the limbo of which you speak.

@ravisher said:

What the h**l is that s**t?

@matteopg:

Garth Ennis writing the JLA in an issue of Hitman... or Hitman appearing in an issue of Joe Kelly's run on JLA. I forget which.

@misteranderson: that is hilarious!

@matteopg: =)

@doombert: you forgot "his DNA was used by the Facility to create a perfect assassin".