Thread:LucidPigeons/@comment-2175012-20160315140658/@comment-26205772-20160319051239

If they don't receive a proper punishment, that's not always a sign that they're "not evil" enough to count as a CM. That's what the Karma Houdini trope is for. On the other side concerning Monsters being Karma Houdinis (in that having a character committing a surplus of evil deeds and ultimately getting off scot-free for it may be an indication that the work is too dark to have a CM), plenty of CMs are Karma Houdinis, and you can have a character like that in a darker work (say, 20,000 AD or even Mighty Max, in which fighting against the main villain Skullmaster is implied to be all but a lost cause) without it veering into torture porn.