Wrong Genre Savvy/Comic Books

Examples of Wrong Genre Savvy characters in Comic Books include:

• In the second volume of The Invisibles, a redneck in a diner is giving Lord Fanny, the Brazilian transvestite shaman, a hard time. In response, King Mob grabs the man's groin (and not in a good way) and gives us the speech shown above. At first the redneck apologizes, but then he decides to attack King Mob anyway, and thus we get to witness the other trope invoked by King Mob in his little speech.
• In a Judge Dredd comic, a perp tries to escape from Dredd by jumping into what he assumes to be a laundry chute, but ends up being a waste disposal unit.
• In the Donald Duck comic book "Sheriff of Bullet Valley", Donald keeps comparing the present situation to various Western movies he's seen, resulting in his getting everything backward and inadvertently helping the villains.
  • In one European comics Pete and Commisoner O'Hara are forced to join forces to make it clear to former's wife and latters superior, that they don't live in the world of Cowboy Cop action movies.
• Garth Ennis: Crossed features many characters thinking like a "normal" zombie or invasion movie, not realizing it's a Garth Ennis comic and the butt rape zombies will get you no matter how clever you try to be.
• In Ennis' earlier Hitman story, "Zombie Night at Gotham Aquarium," Hacken also thinks he's in a "normal" zombie movie, and thus takes swift, decisive action after a bite from a zombified animal, hackin' off his arm to avoid infection. Unfortunately for Hacken, this particular branch of DC Universe Weird Science does not work that way, so it turns out that Hacken cut off his own arm for no good reason.
• Yet another Garth Ennis example: the Preacher (Comic Book) spin-off The Good Old Boys features Cal, who thinks that he's an Action Hero, and that he has Belligerent Sexual Tension with the female lead that will eventually lead to a Love Epiphany. Turns out he's actually the Butt Monkey of a Black Comedy with two villain protagonists.
• There were two Batman villains who went by the name "film freak", and both were defeated (and in the case of the first one, killed) because they thought life would play out like a movie. Of course, it was a comic book.
• In Fun Home, Alison considered herself the heroine of a Coming Out Story, until she finds out about her father and realizes she's only the comic relief to his tragedy.
• In the weekly series 52 Renee Montoya is hired by The Question to surveil an old abandoned warehouse. As a veteran of the Major Crimes Unit of the Gotham City Police Department she is very familiar with the process of surveillance and Gotham crime, and is not even surprised when the old warehouse turns out to have a trap door hidden inside...and then she finds the nightmarish alien thing beyond the trap door and the crates full of laser weaponry. Those she did not see coming.
• When he is guest starring in more optimistic comics like Spider-Man, The Punisher clearly thinks he is still in his own series, which is far more on the cynical side of Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism. Which is why he usually ends up as a villain. On the other hand many super heroes appearing in his comics also seem to think that they are still in their own series and often end up humiliated in various ways.
• In one Dilbert strip, Dogbert finds a magic lamp and summons the Genie in a Bottle. He expects it to grant him three wishes but the Genie says they don't have a contract and turns him into a wiener.
  • At least it was an experience he could relish.
• A Garfield strip has Jon Arbuckle catch the cat strenuously shaking a can of soda pop. He deduces correctly that Garfield was planning for him to open the can and get sprayed in the face, so instead he turns the can so that it is aimed directly at Garfield and then pulls open the tab - and the fizz in the shaken soda can backfires, sending him crashing backward into a wall.
• Early in Fables there was a journalist who discovered that certain New York residents seem to have been living for centuries without aging. He believed them to be vampires. Residents of Fabletown decided to play along and convinced him he was mind-controlled by them and forced to have sex with a little boy (in reality they knocked him out and took some suggestive photos with him and Pinnochio) and if he tells anybody their secret, they will send the evidence to the police.
• In Irredeemable Plutonian, being Captain Ersatz of Superman, was expecting things to turn out in his life like they do in your average Superhero comics. The problem is that he is not in your average superhero comics, but a Deconstruction of one. This actually plays a part in what leads to his Face Heel Turn, after which he becomes Dangerously Genre Savvy.
  • Max Damage has similar problem - he is Genre Savvy enough to realize that the best thing to keep reformed supervillain like himself from sliding back to his old ways is to get a Morality Pet, so he gathers several people who serve him as those. However, he doesn't realize that he is in a deconstruction either, so most of his new friends gets broken in one way or another.
  • Gilgamos had become this, when he killed Survivor. He presented perfectly reasonable explanation why he did it that proved he knows tropes of the world he lives in very well, but was not savvy enough to consider that Cary and his siblings may not share the same power, but his power - by killing him, he just depowered his brother, instead of empowering him.

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