The Doom Patrol characters are pretty damn depressing.
The Doom Patrol characters are pretty damn depressing.
Depressing to whom? The readers, or the characters themselves?
Seeing Harley-frickin'-Quinn's face plastered everywhere gets me pretty depressed, but I doubt anyone would label the character herself as "depressed".
Bruce is pretty depressing. He doesn't always have to be and I enjoy when he isn't, but all things considered, his history is full of trauma.
His parents' death is a recurring theme with no healthy resolution.
He displays OCD tendencies and dysfunction in his closest relationships.
He's lost his biological son once, his adopted son Jason (and worse, seen him come back as a villain), lost Tim, and saw Barbara crippled.
His most memorable story (TDKR) is about a broken old man with nothing left to lose living in a society that has criminalized him.
Love and happiness forever elude him.
Gotham's levels of crime and the terror of the Joker seem permanently destined to haunt him.
They've given us very little reason to want to be Bruce, once the thrill of springing some tactical plan or kicking a bunch of spooked ass in an alleyway is stripped away.
Rebirth Wally West and Donna Troy are my picks.
Being depressing is Darkseid's superpower. I'm surprised no one's mentioned him yet. The Anti-Life Equation is existential depression.
"You can't be everywhere, you can't do it all"
"I'm not Batman, I have friends."
"But listen, call yourself Bat-Chick, Knightbat, or Black Robin- the point is, don't forget- you have a family."
"You don't need me. This is a job for.........Alfred!" -Tim Drake
"Dear Diary, I know what my next science project is going to be called: "My love/hate relationship with Gravity........And it was only then that young Stephanie truly realized gravity would forever be her enemy. "-Stephanie Brown
Pariah saw the entire multiverse die, universe by universe. Hundreds, thousands, hundred thousands... who knows?... worlds dying, civilizations falling, so many dead I would need a sheat of paper the size of the Milky Way to try and understand so much destruction. There was no breather, no ceasing. He saw a world die, then the next. Over and over. While thinking this destruction was his fault.
"No... mine is not the hand which slays worlds. I can do nothing more than cry."
Harvey Dent, hands down. Because there's a great guy in there somewhere, buried under all that tragedy, delusion and trauma.
Does Morpheus count? I almost got depressed while reading Sandman