Villainous Violence and Purposeful Power: An Essay On Child Abuse In Superhero Stories

By Kodi Gonzaga

First published on Sunday, December 31, 2023.

CWs: mentions and descriptions of child abuse, mentions and descriptions of murder, mentions of rape

There’s a trend I often see in popular superhero media that has always rubbed me the wrong way. Specifically, in movies and TV shows, superheroes, if abused as children, are rarely if ever abused by their biological parents. Supervillains, on the other hand, as well as many antiheroes and even some non-villain antagonists, often are. It’s a trend I first noticed in the TV show Daredevil, which premiered on Netflix in 2015 and can currently be viewed on Disney+, but since noticing it, I’ve been unable to stop noticing it in other popular pieces of superhero media. I’ve seen it in the Jessica Jones TV show, the popular Batman movie The Dark Knight, in other less popular characters from the Batman mythos, the first season of The Umbrella Academy TV show, and even in J. Jonah Jameson of the Spider-Man stories. Even when considering examples of heroes suffering child abuse, like Bruce Banner (a.k.a. The Hulk), something always felt amiss to me in these representations. So naturally, I decided to dig deeper.

It’s important to note that trauma has been used in superhero media as an inciting incident for both heroes and villains since the genre’s inception. Popular superheroes like Bruce Wayne and Peter Parker often become heroes due to witnessing the unjust death(s) of their caretakers or people important to them. Child abuse, however, is a very specific sort of trauma, and child abuse from specifically one’s biological/birth parents even moreso. Natasha Romanov/Black Widow of the MCU’s Avengers certainly suffers child abuse, but it’s not perpetrated by her birth parents—instead, she’s abused by the mysterious organization that created her as a living weapon. All the kids in The Umbrella Academy are undoubtedly emotionally abused and neglected by their father, but he is very specifically their adopted father. To reference yet another Marvel Netflix TV show, Danny Rand from Iron Fist does suffer from child abuse; however, it comes at the hands of the monks who rescued him from a plane crash, not his own parents.

In terms of villains being abused as children by their biological parents, on the other hand, there are quite a few that come to mind. Wilson Fisk from Daredevil is a prime example, suffering from emotional and implied physical abuse from his father, until Wilson kills Fisk Sr. by beating him to death with a hammer. Kilgrave from the first season of Jessica Jones is experimented on by his parents until he develops the power to control people with vocal commands (and then uses it to escape their grasp). Trish Walker from Jessica Jones—who, granted, doesn’t become a true “villain” until season 3—is abused in a multitude of ways by her mother and acting agent. Leonard Peabody, the villain of season 1 of The Umbrella Academy, has a physically abusive father who he, similar to Wilson Fisk, beats to death before being imprisoned for 12 years for the murder. Even the Joker claims to have had an abusive father in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (though his actual past and the veracity of any of his statements in the movie are up for debate).

Even more interesting are the instances in which superheroes (or at least non-supervillains) are abused as children. The most notable, of course, is Bruce Banner, though this may come as a surprise to anyone unfamiliar with his character from the comics. After all, only one of the movies about him, Hulk (2003), really addressed the child abuse aspect of his past, and most movies about the Hulk aren’t very popular in the first place. Other instances include some members of the Batfamily, Jason Todd and Cassandra Cain, who both had fraught childhoods due to the actions and abuse of their biological parents, and J. Jonah Jameson, the notorious head editor of the Daily Bugle in the Spider-Man mythos (and a real piece of work), who, according to Wikipedia, had an abusive father who was also a war hero in the U.S. military. In the cases of Jason Todd and Cassandra Cain, both of these characters often vacillate between hero and villain status in the comics, and additionally, they have almost no appearances in popular superhero media (and certainly not as a main character). Jameson’s history is even more curious; his father’s hero status and abusive behavior towards his son and wife explains Jameson’s hesitation in fully believing Spider-Man is a hero, and yet in later editions of the Spider-Man storyline, it’s clarified that his abusive father is in fact his uncle and foster father (his biological father had to, quoting from the J. Jonah Jameson Wikipedia page, “leave his son behind for undisclosed reasons”).

Bruce Banner, however, I found to be a fascinating case study for this topic. According to the Wikipedia page for the Hulk, “As a child, Banner's father Brian often got mad and physically abused both Banner and his mother, creating the psychological complex of fear, anger, and the fear of anger and the destruction it can cause that underlies the character.” In the aforementioned 2003 movie, Bruce’s father tries to kill his young son, believing him to be a danger, but instead kills Bruce’s mother when she tries to stop him, causing Bruce to repress most of his childhood memories. In both instances, this abuse is considered one of the driving forces behind the Hulk, a monstrous, destructive, and very green force within Bruce Banner that reveals itself when Bruce becomes too emotional, excited, or angry. However, the Hulk is almost always considered a wild factor in situations, both out of control and often unable to be fully controlled. It is useful and even heroic, yes, and Bruce does manage to control it in some stories, but the Hulk is ultimately violent and destructive. That is what makes Bruce’s superpower useful. The Hulk is considered dangerous, volatile, and sought after by other violent factions like the military (and even, that one time, a gladiatorial ring). The result of Bruce’s abuse is a violent, uncontrollable, rage-filled monster, and only in controlling this monster can Bruce be considered a hero; otherwise, he is simply considered a threat.

Compare this to Wilson Fisk in the Daredevil TV show, who is depicted as a soft-spoken, deeply traumatized, and terrifyingly violent man in charge of a criminal empire. Wilson, like Bruce, has developed emotional and aggression issues as a result of his child abuse, and though he uses these issues throughout the course of the show to both his own benefit and detriment, he is always cast in the role of a villain. Additionally, Wilson only attacked and killed his father to stop him from beating his mother, and one possible reading of his character might be that both his need for safety and control and his drive to protect others are what drove him to become the leader of a criminal empire with the intention of reshaping Hell’s Kitchen.

What, you might ask, is the point of listing all these different depictions of abuse in superhero stories? To that, I ask you to examine the trend of agency in these depictions. In the case of those cast in more heroic lights (Bruce Banner, perhaps even J. Jonah Jameson), these children suffered from abuse but had little to no hand in stopping or escaping from that abuse. The more extreme the action taken to stop or escape the abuse, however, the more likely the individual is to be cast in the role of villain. Jason Todd and Cassandra Cain both ran away from their abusers, but the former was killed as a child, came back to life, and became a crime lord, while the latter eventually killed her own parents and then became a notorious assassin. In both these instances, Jason and Cassandra are cast as villains in their respective storylines. Trish Walker, though she doesn’t start out as a villain by any means, ultimately becomes one due to her desperation to prove she can save not only herself, but also others, due to her childhood abuse. Kilgrave develops his powers and immediately uses them to perform absolutely heinous acts, including repeatedly raping the main and titular character, Jessica Jones, as well as killing his own parents as an adult. And of course, Leonard Peabody and Wilson Fisk kill their abusive fathers as young children in brutal, violent ways.

Let me make something clear; I think the Daredevil TV show is a fantastic piece of superhero media. But it still falls prey to this trend I’m describing even in its attempt to deconstruct it. Wilson Fisk is not painted in a purely villainous light during the show, at least not for the murder of his father. Even though the heroic protagonist hopes to use this fact (once he discovers it) to put him away in jail, the other protagonists argue that Fisk was, perhaps, justified in his actions. Fisk is a character we’re meant to understand and even sympathize with; the juxtaposition of his motivations against the hero’s motivations are what make the story so compelling. And yet, Wilson Fisk is undeniably a villain, because even though his violent rages and desire to help others allowed him to save his mother, they have also led him to murder innocents in the name of creating a better Hell’s Kitchen. Despite his “good” intentions, he is a villain. He is the villain of this story. And the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father isn’t the reason he is considered a villain, but it is the driving force behind how he became one.

Perhaps it’s easier for people to give a backstory of child abuse to villains. Most people have no knowledge or understanding of what it’s like to grow up in a home where your parents, your birth parents, the people society claims should love and care for you and keep you safe, hurt and scream at and scare you. Perhaps these people cannot fathom how someone wholly good can be created in such an environment. In this way, attaching child abuse to villains is viciously puritanical in its narrative efficiency. When this is the story you see, the implied lesson is that good people always come from good parents (from “good stock”), and bad people come from those who are themselves bad. It is simple and easy to stick to the black and white tale of good vs. evil, hero vs. villain, to repeat (even unknowingly) the idea that good people beget heroes, and bad people beget villains. To show a superhero as flawed is compelling, and to show a supervillain as virtuous is revolutionary. In fact, even in today’s world of superhero story reimaginings (e.g., The Boys TV show, the Invincible TV show), it is far more common for heroes to live safe and healthy home lives before being thrust into their trauma, and it is far more likely for villains to have suffered abuse from their earliest moments.

I would argue it’s also more “tasteful” to write off those suffering from abuse as villainous if they kill their abusers. Suffering and being saved, like Bruce Banner, creates someone who could become a hero, as long as the emotional results of their abuse remain monitored and controlled. Suffering and daring to rise up, to take your power back from those who have hurt you and save yourself, on the other hand? That is the mark of a villain. Villains wrest power from those that hurt them with bloody hammers and bruised fists. And because in so many pieces of superhero media, heroes do not kill, they are doomed by that very action to be the villains of an inherently violent story.

It is a sign of great and unrealized privilege to write stories that center around violence and immediately villainize those that kill. Especially those that kill as children, and especially those that kill their abusers and tormentors. Superheroes have always been larger-than-life figures, bastions of hope and justice that people are meant to admire, so it makes sense that killing others would not be something they do with abandon. But these abused children were not killing with abandon. For those who have been abused by the very people society claims should love them, there are few depictions of how to survive such abuse in superhero media. Either victims of child abuse are meant to stay helpless and sad, props to be saved and then to be regulated and controlled lest their violent, traumatized urges hurt others too, or they are doomed to become villains from the start for daring to deliver a child’s justice to their abusers. After all, in these kinds of stories, killing is wrong, no matter what.

Perhaps now you can see why this would rub me the wrong way.

The world is not black and white. The world is not good vs. evil. It is a privilege to grow up loved and safe and happy and accepted, and most people don’t even realize this because it’s more common for that to already be the case. And for the world to be so safe and happy is a truly wonderful thing. But when the people who grow up without realizing their own privilege then saturate the popular superhero mythos with images of children murdering their abusive parents and becoming villains for heroes to fight, what do they expect to happen? What would you do if your favorite stories said your only two choices were “suffer in silence and control your violent urges” or “take action and become an unforgivable villain?” How is that message any better than the rhetoric used by abusers everywhere to keep those they hurt in line?

I implore those writing superhero stories to read this and think. Think about violence, about killing and murder, about abuse, in the stories you are crafting. Think before you create your heroes and villains, and have empathy for those who were, perhaps, not as lucky as you growing up. Think about the reality being created in your story, where problems can and are often encouraged to be solved with violence, and then consider what it means to villainize those who are violent and suffer violence from their earliest moments. Think about how you use abuse in your story, with your supers and their powers, between your heroes and villains. And think about why suffering abuse at the hands of your birth parents seems to be so different from suffering abuse at the hands of someone or something external, and why it’s alright for heroes to attack and target their abusers, but damning if villains do it to theirs.

Think about what it means to take your power back in a world where violence is not only commonplace, but a viable option for solving problems, and then examine why a child killing their abusive parent is considered a villainous act. Are you afraid of what children in this situation will learn if such an act is not considered evil?

Should you be?