The Chainsaw Vigilante

The Chainsaw Vigilante is a recurring villain/anti-villain/anti-hero from Ben Edlunds renowned parody superhero comic book series The Tick. He is less emotionally stable than most of the vigilantes in the City and Deertown, but he is not a murderer so long as he can help it. After terrorizing the Tick and other superheroes in the City and Deertown, the Chainsaw Vigilante eventually partially reformed and became a true anti-hero in his own spinoff series.

Life as a villain

Before the Chainsaw Vigilante received his own series, he devoted his life to cleansing the city of delusional and ill equipped superheroes by "shocking them into reality". As a child, his father suffered serious injuries when an incompetent superhero tried to rescue him. The injuries he sustained caused him to lose his job, and his family was submitted to abject poverty. He vowed to one day right the sort of wrongs that superheroes bring about with their very existence. When he grew old enough, he donned the guise of a mask wearing, chainsaw wielding maniac that would terrorize would be heroes back into their normal lives. He did not kill anyone, but he did seriously injure some of his victims before confronting the Tick. Seeing the Tick as nothing more than another incompetent liability, the Chainsaw Vigilante attempted first to scare him off, and then attack with his weapon of choice when that didn't work. Flabbergasted that his powerful tool was so ineffective against the Tick, the Vigilante had a psychological breakdown, and vowed vengeance against the Tick for not being brought down like a normal superhero would be. He stalked the Tick and Arthur as they traveled, and is thwarted at every advance by the blue hero. Eventually, he comes to grip with the fact that he can not defeat the Tick, and half acknowledges that some superheroes provide an actual benefit to society. He commits himself to fighting crime and the conditions that produce incompetent superheroes instead, and becomes a sort of rogue anti-hero.