Editing Edgy (section)

===Comics===
Comic books in general had an edgy period known as the Dark Age of Comic Books. [[TVTropes]] has a decent summary of all periods including the Dark Age in [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheAgesOfSuperHeroComics which you can find here], recommendation is that you go through chronologically for context. Note that some are defending the Dark Age by calling it the Iron Age but given how badly comic books were being economically mauled in the late 90's, the Iron Age defense is mostly wrong.

This was so common it also gave rise to the "'90's anti hero" trope.  These are violent, ruthless antiheroes with a gritty design, a brutal name, an aggressive and/or rough personality plus more plot armor than GW's [[Space Marines]] despite their skintight and/or skimpy outfits.  Some of them, especially female examples, have ties to the occult.  While this character type existed before the 1990's, that was the decade where they were the most widespread and gratuitous.  Several of the edgelord examples below are also 90's anitheroes. 

* '''The Punisher''' (pictured above), depending on the writer, but especially when it's Garth Ennis.  The ultimate example being Ennis' professionally published Hate Fic [[wikipedia:Punisher_Kills_the_Marvel_Universe|"Punisher Kills the Marvel Universe"]].
* '''Billy Butcher''' from "The Boys", a comic series written by the edgelord Punisher author named above.  He's a black ops agent opposing  [[Original character, do not steal|knock-offs of Marvel and DC supers]] in an anti-superhero genre power fantasy, plus Garth Ennis' mouth piece and possibly his most edgelord protagonist.  Given Ennis' well-earned reputation as an edgelord's edgelord, that's really saying something.  Hint: He sics his dog to ''rape'' animals and people for fun, has not-so-consensual sex with the director of CIA for fun whenever he wants and gets away with it and goes genocidal before the end.  Ennis possibly named the character after the gang leader William Poole AKA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Poole Bill the Butcher].
** The TV show has a more complicated take. Billy is explicitly and repeatedly self-defeating, and called out on his bullshit, making him less of an edgelord, and more a normal antihero.
* '''The Joker''', depending on the writer.
** Batman can be made into an edgelord in an edgy writer's hands (for example, Frank Miller's "All Star Batman And Robin"), although more rarely than you might think, since his respect for at least some parts of the establishment - owning Wayne Enterprises, his unofficial alliance with Gotham's police including his personal friendship with Police Commissioner Gordon - and his "no kill" code usually heads off most of the edgelord tendencies.
*** [[wikipedia:The_Batman_Who_Laughs|The Batman Who Laughs]] is an obnoxious combination of the edgiest aspects of both the Batman ''and'' the Joker. By extension, everyone from DC's Dark Multiverse (Negative companions to the actual multiverse that frequently collapse and involve one person's particular worst nightmares) that escapes to reality produces the edgelord version (or multiple, especially Batman or his female variants) of the actual character, BWL being the apex by being edgy Batman and edgy Joker at the same time.
* '''Darkness'''.  If the name alone wasn't a tip off, he's a former mob hit man who got cursed by titular evil cosmic force on his 21st birthday that gives him great powers but encourages him to be violent and will kill him if he tries to give them up or gets a woman pregnant.  Said power also spawns violent imps who obey him and make edgy remarks, plus his healing extends to his sperm overcoming birth control so for him having sex is like playing Russian roulette (worse for him since he's a womanizer).  Some of these changed depending on the writer, so overall he's a mild example of an edgelord.  While Marc Silvestri and David Wohl created the character, they got Garth Ennis to help and write the first story and it shows (for one, [[Shota|he lost his virginity to a police officer on his 14th birthday]]).  
* '''Spawn''', the title character from the Spawn series, is a combination of everything loved and hated about the 90's antihero.  He was a bloodthirsty soldier killed by treachery and sent to hell for his murders but made a deal with a demon to see his wife again that got him sent back as a hideous, black-clad demonic undead solider for hell... and he's considered the good guy.  Also... never mind, that alone is MORE than enough for the edgelord label already.  Outside the setting, the character was created by comic book writer Todd Macfarlane when he was a teenager and it shows.
* '''Lady Death'''.  She was a woman burned at the stake for her father's crimes, went to a dark afterlife and violently rose to power there.  The original version was a demon who tempted men to serve hell.  The second version was a woman who made a deal with a demon to avoid being killed, gave up her humanity, went to hell and overthrew the devil to become its ruler.  The third version went to a hell-knockoff called the Labyrinth and became the goddess of the dead.
* '''Willy Pete''' from Empowered.  While Empowered began as Adam Warren's superhero spoof on BDSM manga that got a bit grim, Willy Pete comes across as if he's on loan from Jeph Loeb or Garth Ennis.  He's only in the comic for a short while but... Willy Pete is a fire elemental, so his entire body (yes, ENTIRE body including his dong) constantly burns incredibly hot and he cares about nothing but his appetites.  He's perpetually horny and hungry though he doesn't need to eat, and he can't eat or have sex normally as anything he touches tends to be instantly rendered to ash. His "solution" for sex, because the normal orifices burn too quickly for him to "finish the job", was to go for the eyes and eye sockets (he killed Thugboy's gang this way and is hunting him to finish the job).  When he started preying on superhumans, because their bodies are sometimes strong enough for him to rape before they are completely incinerated, he also started eating their flesh for the same reason and liked the taste.  That's not all, but these are two of the worst examples.  His name "Willy Pete" in real-life is the nickname for the highly poisonous and combustible material white phosphorus.  
* '''Lono''' from 100 Bullets skirts the edgelord event horizon so much he might have been one, though himself isn't edgy anymore at the end. Does all the things an edgelord does without the grim unhappiness. Starts out quite mellow and cheerful, kills and rapes for fun, then grows darker and brooding until his extremely painful escape and eventual torture and quasi-redemption as the servant of a catholic orphanage with genuinely good intentions.
* '''Lord Edgelord''', later killed and brought back as Lord Edgegod, from Slackwyrm Keep. He's aware, and <s>he's loving it</s><span style='color:red;font-size:100%'>***CLANG!*** There's no love in edge, only chaos!</span>
*  '''Adversary''' from DC Comics (pictured below), as a jab at edgelord characters and perhaps also their fans.  In addition to meeting most of the criteria above, he works for a demon named Lord Satanus who gave him his powers and is actually a kid in a wheelchair.
* '''The Crossed'''. Dear God, the Crossed. "Crossed" may be Garth Ennis' most edgy work ever, which is '''''really''''' saying something since his claims to fame are [[Imperial Truth|"Preacher"]] and [[Original character, do not steal|"The Boys"]]. A virus that makes the recipient a rapist-murderer-constantly furious cannibalistic monstrosity with sadism and cruelty set to eleven twice.  And they ''are capable of staying semi civilized''.  The only other symptom is a cross-like pattern of boils on the person's face (the reason the infected are called "The Crossed".  And because it wouldn't be a Garth Ennis original work without a potshot at Christianity, but this is a drop in the ocean here).  Turns out the virus may have been originated from a pre-historic hominid species of...
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:* '''Homo Tortor''', the lost evolutionary link in the Crossed series, simultaneously pleasing Khorne and Slaanesh at the same time. A race of red-skinned hominids that have zero restraint concerning anything combined with ultimate cruelty a human brain can dish out. During their arc the Homo Tortor slaughter a village, rape everyone, kill the old, the females and ''make effigies out of every bodily fluid'' of the victims before they leave with the young captives of which older ones have their limbs cut off for transportation and limbs eaten. The captives are taken to gigantic ships made of bones with blinded Neanderthals on oars driven by carefully adjusted screams of slaves being skinned alive and whipped, captives being fed shit and meat of the dead to survive. Occasionally some of the captives are used for torture and cannibalism, screams guiding Neanderthal oarsmen, who, again, are each blinded. The ships land and Homo Tortor slowly burn a slave to death and douse him, burning him to near-death and douse them alive for communicating their arrival to their home city as a smoke signal made of constantly burning slaves(at this rate the edge just gets boring -there is wood everywhere to burn). Taken to a gigantic, absolutely terrifying city made of skulls and bones and sharp stakes, the captives see child slaves herded to be slaughtered, raped and eaten, and limbless adult captives skewered alive to be eaten while being cooked, meat sold for baby teeth as currency by the Homo Tortor. The Homo Tortor vivisect and torture for fun, rape for fun, skin for fun and cannibalize for fun. The city is on a series of jagged rocks surrounded by sharp bones with a twin monolith of the First Brother and First Sister, twincestuous rulers of Homo Tortor who just had young boy as third ruler, who himself wants to rape some captives for fun, and is slapped for "asking his parents for permission". The captives then are jailed for the night, carefully screened to avoid suicide (because even to die on your own terms would be a big no-no, everything must be for the pleasure of the Homo Tortor, oh god the edgeeee), and next morning are painted with every bodily fluid from human organs and put to an arena to be untied by child slaves who run from them and even kill themselves to deny the captive "gladiators" the glee of revenge and destroy the knives they used to cut them loose with. The co-rulers then turn on their incest child and slowly cook him alive and eat his body for a snack as captives are raped and devoured by wild animals, claiming his entire birth and life was a 14-year old joke that would end his happiness with a horrible turnabout ''for their pleasure''.<ref>You may now say, in a shocked tone, "That's a hell of an act. What do you call it?", to which Ennis should reply "[[Wikipedia:The Aristocrats|The Aristocrats]]!", but probably won't. Like we said, Ennis is an Edgelord's Edgelord.</ref> No other fiction in history has reached such a level, luckily the "Crossed" virus makes the empire of horror collapse on itself in one day; just to drive the edge home, the twin rulers make sure the empire collapses on ''their terms'' and make sure none of the escaping rebels survive or take joy of vengeance to the point of risking their lives killing them and unleash a giant god made of mutating, amalgamated bodies which shoots hot semen with pressure enough to tear through bodies. [[Emperor's Children]] would be proud. [[Lulz|Also one of the captives is raped and eaten by a prehistoric Wombat the size of a bear.]]
And then, it turns out that they never existed, because the professor who was researching said lost link made up the whole of the evidence surrounding them when he turned Crossed himself so they have a religion that gave them motivation and purpose to keep on killing and raping everybody. In the end, we never find out what did cause the entire spread of the Crossed- only that it occurred in multiple places at once, with several patient zeros around the world.
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