Superheroes are typically seen as beacons of hope. They are there to catch us when we fall and protect us when we’re in dire need of saving. Ever since the first heroes appeared in comic books, the popular imagination was forever captured by their endless heroic exploits. Heroes like Superman (who we’ll address later) demonstrated a noble example, emphasizing clean living and using their powers to make the world a better place. Through example, he, and other symbols for peace, inspire other to follow suit and do what they can to change the space they inhabit positively.

While there are many heroes who are wholesome and only serve the interests of the people they protect, there are also an astonishing number that are also bullies. After all, many masked men and women subscribe to the theory that punching is the only way to solve an issue. To those who a simple bop across the noggin isn’t enough, there are those willing to go so far as to torture, kill, and even mock their fallen foes, adding insult to injury. They may strive to do the right thing, but their bully mentalities leave something to be desired. Today at CBR we’re looking at 15 superheroes that are bullies.

15 SPIDER-MAN

Prior to getting bitten by a radioactive spider and becoming the amazing Spider-Man, Peter Parker was just your average high school student. Extremely intelligent, Peter was a bookworm who was constantly getting picked on and bullied. Once he got spider powers and donned the guise of everyone’s favorite wall-crawler, he finally had an outlet to vent all the abuse he’d suffered throughout the years.

As Spider-Man, Peter gets to tease and make fun of any villain he comes across.

His mask allows him to shed the disguise of “puny Parker” and be the type of guy who gets to dish it out, rather than take it. Unfortunately, his mocking of villains can definitely come across as bullying. Multiple villains, including regular crooks, have had their feelings seriously hurt, as Spider-Man’s insults and taunts are unrelenting and enough to drive most people mad.

14 BATMAN

Don’t get us wrong, Bruce Wayne has done plenty of good, both as a philanthropic billionaire, and also as his dark, gloomy, and horribly bullying alter ego, Batman,. That said, “bullying” is where we start to take notice. Batman is a master of intimidation and will threaten criminals to no end, going so far as to occasionally use torture. What’s worse, he doesn’t care who objects to his methods, Batman is going to do what he wants whether you like it not. He barely listens to reason and will stare down someone (including his friends and family), threatening bodily harm, until he gets what he wants.

One of the most classic case of Batman being a bully is seen in All-Star Batman and Robin, when the Dark Knight relishes in breaking limbs, bullying his protégé, and generally looking down on his fellow heroes.

13 WOLVERINE

Logan, aka Wolverine, is one of the toughest mutants on the X-Men. With little else besides adamantium, hard liquor, and cigar smoke pumping through his veins, he’s earned the reputation of being the team’s resident bad boy. His healing factor and unbreakable claws have saved his friends multiple times, but it’s his penchant for violent outbursts that’s gotten him in trouble on multiple occasions. It’s not even his berserker rages that make Logan a bully, but a long list of other factors. First, there’s his dismissive and callous attitude.

Logan doesn’t do well with authority and will try to intimidate whoever’s giving orders, just to prove a point.

Additionally, if ever interrogation is needed, Wolverine has zero compunction with slicing and dicing information out of you. Heck, if you interrupt his drinking time he’s likely to take out any frustrations on your person.

12 SUPERMAN

Known for upholding truth, justice, and the American Way, Superman is looked at as a symbol of hope and peace. Don’t let his Midwestern charm fool you, Superman is prone to bullying just like a great many people. Though generally a peaceful soul, when he’s angered, there’s no one quite as intimidating as the Man of Steel. His eyes will glow red hot, his heat vision priming below the surface, as he puts the fear of the divine in you.

It doesn’t matter that everyone knows Superman doesn’t kill, when you’re staring down an angry Kryptonian, all rationale gets thrown out the window. To make matters worse, when Superman wants to be a jerk, as happened a lot back during the Silver Age, there isn’t a power on the planet that can stop him. He’d usually bully someone to teach them a lesson, but these “lessons” were horribly traumatizing.

11 NAMOR

Namor, also referred to as the Sub-Mariner, helped Marvel achieve success in the '30s and '40s. Since then however, the Prince of Atlantis has proved to be one of the haughtiest people around. Coming from royalty, Namor doesn’t believe he needs to respect anyone. Rather, he feels everyone should respect him; if they don’t, what’s a punch to the face to some commoner? As time has worn on, his moods have become borderline psychotic.

Which is saying something, considering back the ‘40s he didn’t second-guess drowning New York in a tidal wave.

Namor also retains the status of a jerk and bully, for his constant disrespect of Sue Richards of the Fantastic Four. Trying to steal her from her husband, Reed, he carse little that his actions are deemed offensive. Later, after destroying Wakanda, he would continually goad and mock Black Panther, relishing in delight at ridiculing the hero.

10 PUNISHER

Is there a more socially defunct antihero than Frank Castle, aka the Punisher? We’re thinking the answer is no. The Punisher might be an anti-hero, and even perform heroic deeds, but tell that to everyone he’s ever buried. Unlike most superheroes, Frank Castle believes a bullet is the answer to the majority of problems. Where a bullet won’t suffice, there are plenty of other tools at his disposal. If he needs some poor soul for information, he’ll torture them ruthlessly to get said information, and then wipe them from the face of the earth.

A brute if ever there was one, Frank is as calculating as he is thuggish. So possessed is he by his desire to eradicate criminals, he’s practically cast aside his humanity. The Punisher won’t ever stop. Just please, stay out of his way.

9 DAMIAN WAYNE

The son of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al Ghul, Damian Wayne is a spoiled, loud-mouthed brat who was trained to be a killer since birth. While being raised by an assassin guild gave him a few less-than-charming personality quirks, it also explains his willingness to straight up murder an opponent. Unlike his dad, Damian doesn’t believe in restraint. Yet similar his dad, Damian also doesn’t have time for social niceties.

Any hero who teams up with the child protégé can expect to suffer a barrage of condescending remarks.

Damian’s world revolves around the idea of survival of the fittest. If you don’t meet his ridiculous standards he won’t hesitate to kick you off his team (as seen in Teen Titans when he banished Kid Flash from the group) or at the very least insult you in front of your friends and colleagues.

8 EMMA FROST

Emma Frost is a saucy little minx who is the resident mean girl in the X-Mansion. Haughty and self-serving, Frost began her career as a villain. With that being the case, no one should be at all surprised that she calls fellow teammates fat or even persuades dutiful men to cheat on their girlfriends. Anyway, she later joined the good guys after her Hellions were killed in a Sentinel attack, but it did nothing to change her bullying nature.

If Emma Frost doesn’t like it, you’ll know. In fact, everyone in the surrounding vicinity will probably know as she has practically zero issue with rummaging through a person’s mind and doing dastardly things to them. She can, and has, forced people to endure their deepest nightmares.

7 IRON MAN

Iron Man might be a billionaire, playboy philanthropist, who moonlights as an Avenger, but if the situation calls for it, he can be a bully. In both the films and the comics, Tony Stark is prone to emotional outbursts, resulting in nearly discarding his personal relationships.

However, it was during Marvel’s Civil War that Stark nearly became a dictator.

In attempting to enforce his will on every superhero, he was willing to do anything short of killing, including locking up heroes who disagreed with him in the Negative Zone, to ensure society ran like he wanted it to. His closed-mindedness cost him his friendship with Captain America and even lead to Cap’s death. Then in Civil War II, Tony again goes about things the wrong way. Though he’s “right”, his approach, which was nothing short of bullying, to prove he was right lead to trouble of the worst kind.

6 CYCLOPS

Under the leadership of Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, the X-Men have saved the world time and again. Though in spite of all the good he’s done, Cyclops has been a jerk and bully on a number of occasions. In recent years especially, the character has endured a dark and unkind makeover. One of his first demonstrations of bullying was way back in Uncanny X-Men #126 when he bullied Wolverine, who was just recovering from a horrible possession by another mutant, and throwing sludge in his face, ordering his teammate pull it together.

There’d be other instances, like when he killed Professor X or emotionally abused his loved ones, but it was his later militaristic approach in dealing with humans that made both readers the rest of the Marvel Universe extremely uncomfortable. Cyclops doesn’t mind bullying his teammates or students so long as he sees the results he demands.

5 SCARLET SPIDER

When Professor Miles Warren clones Peter Parker, Ben Reilly was born. Taking the mantle of Spider-Man, Ben was eventually killed by the Green Goblin. In recent years he’s come back, cloned once more by the Jackal. Only this time, to satisfy his macabre experiments, the Jackal put Ben through a continual state of death and rebirth…it left Ben a bit unhinged.

Now that he’s the Scarlet Spider again, Ben’s spent time as a bully and a villain.

In trying to make up for his villainous ways, he moved to Las Vegas to try and move on with his life. Yet heroism proved elusive. Committing acts like threatening people to give him money, and manipulating folks so as to improve his station in life, Ben’s having a difficult time with the “power and responsibility” ideology that makes up Spider-Man. He’s currently one of the biggest jerks in the Marvel Universe.

4 ODIN

Thor would have a pretty ideal life, if not for living in the shadow of his dad, Odin. A brute of a god who’ll never win the "Father of the Year" award, Odin is a dichotomy. On the one hand, his subjects in Asgard venerate him, but on the other, he’s a bully who’s willing to go to extreme lengths to get his way.

Odin was responsible for banishing Thor to Earth. While this turned out for the best, Odin would intervene in his son’s life many more times, and in exceedingly less-helpful, and overly mean, ways. He’s stripped Thor of his powers on multiple occasions, lied about the history of Asgard and his role in it, and has even treated his own wife disrespectfully, believing her to be inferior if only because she’s a woman. Odin’s temper is now such the Mjolnir, the hammer he helped create, won’t respond to him.

3 U.S. AGENT

John Walker, or U.S.Agent, is what you get if you give Captain America steroids and then some. He began his superpowered career as the Super-Patriot and after Cap gave up his superhero identity in the '90s, Walker became the new Captain America. He later lost the title and became the U.S. Agent, watched the Avengers West Coast team for the government. He moved on to Tony Stark’s Force Works and then to a litany of teams.

During it all, most of his colleagues despised him, but no one could kick him out since Walker’s results on the battlefield were great.

Yet in spite of having a brilliant tactical mind, his teammates would constantly call him out for being a bully and a thug. Walker is prone to violent frenzies and is one of the least politically correct heroes out there. He doesn’t care who’s feeling he hurts; Walker is going to say and do whatever he wants.

2 RED HULK

General Thaddeus Ross hated Bruce Banner even before the scientist was the Hulk. Once Banner transformed into the Jade Giant, Ross spent the rest of his career trying to hunt the Hulk down. Having tried every option, he turned to the villain the Leader to turn him into the Red Hulk. With his newfound power, the Red Hulk became more of a bully than ever before. With his transformation giving him the edge to challenge anyone he met, Red Hulk listened to no one and demonstrated a passion for bullying and intimidating both friends and foes.

Truly believing that might makes right, Ross revealed in this power, almost losing himself in it; his nearly fractured mind lead him to his being overly aggressive, delighting in taunting fallen foes. Though he later reformed his ways, few heroes trusted him, much less wanted such a military hothead watching their back.

1 GUY GARDNER

Green Lanterns are often depicted as noble, stalwart individuals. And then you have Green Lantern Guy Gardner. With an abrasive and downright offensive personality, it’s nothing short of a miracle that the Green Lantern Corps, and even superhero teams like the Justice League, have allowed him to join their ranks.

Unlike Hal Jordan, who was seen as a model Green Lantern that was respected by all, Guy was full of bravado and aggression.

Guy’s the sort of fellow who’ll show up to work with a beer in hand, laughing about some offensive joke he heard on the way over. Guy comes from a school of toxic masculinity. With hardly a sensitive bone in his body, he’ll berate fellow Green Lanterns like Kyle Rayner for being too artsy or not manly enough to his liking.