What Were They Thinking? Worst Comic Ideas.

[billd91]

wanted to jump back in with a few mor comments about other people's comments.

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west coast avengers: this was a great series. john byrnes run on this title was amazing and the last good thing he did. force works was an incredibly stupid idea. Killing off Wonderman (again) mere weeks after he found out he was basically immortal and couldnt die because hes an energy being was ridiculous. replacing him with grey-skinned alien with fighting staff Century was even worse. oh well, all good things come to an end.

the ultimate line: without ever spending a dime, ive read the first issue or ultimate spiderman and first six issues of ultimate x-men. theyre awful. a lot of people swear by ultimate spider-man now, but this simple fact remains, if its a good spiderman story, they couldve just used it in the REGULAR series and there was no reasont o create the ultimate line. period.

aging characters: saying that the simpsons or peanuts dont age so its ok that superheroes dont age is easily the least thought out reasoning ive EVER heard.
the reason it doesnt matter for those characters is because they just exist for jokes. there is no DRAMA. in order to have dramatic tension, the characters need to change and grow. if the characters dont evolve, and only exist for "cool superhero battles" then i'm not interested.

wolverine's claws: i've never seen so much outrage about this subject. back in the day, when marvel mutants were only allowed ONE mutant power, wolverine's heightened senses and healing power were grouped together under some sort of "feral" label and fanboys used to wonder if his claws were real or not. it was a natural porgression. having Magneto rip his adamantium out was an amazing visual. popping bone claws was another great visual that revealed more about wolverine that actually MADE SENSE. The story arc of wolvy having to get used to life without the adamantium was actually a character defining moment. which is impressive for a character who is already an icon and usually a bad parody of himself. i really dont understand how anyone coul dhave thought this was lame or stupid.

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and as for what numion said about being grateful that the movie producers dont stick too true to the material. you couldnt be more wrong.
the reason the spidey and xmen movies are so great is because they are VERY CLOSE to the source material.
and as much bad stuff that has come out of the comics industy in the past 60 years, there has been more good stuff than television, movies, or books have produced. when it comes to best medium, comics wins easy.

Vive le difference, I guess. I haven't seen a view toward the comix that may be more opposed to my own (in general) than the postings that you have contributed to this thread.

I think the continual retooling of Wolverine has been awful, and the bone claws is just the capper on a festering pile of crapulence. In my opinion.

As far as the Ultimate line goes, I haven't been spending much time on Spiderman and X-men, but the Ultimates perfectly rocks. Coolest Avengers stories in a LONG time.

I will agree that West Coast Avengers was very good, particularly Byrne's run on it. But then, Human Torch was always one of my favorite characters. Invaders was one of my favorite titles as a kid.

Aging characters, can be good for some books but not for all of them. It works for "For Better or Worse". But most monthly comics might not work too well. Actually both systems create potential problems. Never aging leads to major continuity problems as characters get retooled, elements of character are forgotten, and they build up goofy baggage (bone claws, seriously?). On the other hand, over the course of 40 years, how many generations of X-men should we have seen? What if there's a particular mix of the characters that everyone just prefers and they're all now too damn old to be a bunch of superheroes? In many ways, it's the special miniseries that do best in portraying possible storylines outside of the regular timeline.

And I think we really SHOULD be grateful that movies don't stick too closely to the comix in all cases. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But treading too closely from time to time could be really disappointing. The X-men movies could be heading for serious trouble on the Jean Grey front because the original story (much abused by subsequent events in X-Factor) was so damn good. Still the highwater mark for the X-men in my opinion. Just think how bad you'll think the movie is if it doesn't come close to the same emotional feel of the original.
Look at the Dark Knight Returns. Now imagine them making a movie of it. The comic is so good, with brilliant cinematic imagery, that an adaptation of it that comes too close would probably suck like Van Sant's version of Psycho, a shot-by-shot redoing of the original. Ugh. The whole thought sickens.

Other stuff I've considered so bad as to be mind boggling in the history of comics:

Elementals Porn
Contest of Champions
Cargo costumes for characters who DON'T carry stuff in them ... like Thor's costume at this time. Blech.
X-men, c 1989 with their extended and boring stay in the Outback
Just about anything Cerebus "Reads" and later
Storm in punk style - I still cringe
Retconning Apocalypse into Cyclops's past

 

[Aaron L]

Capper on a festing pile of crapulence sums up my feelings pretty well I'm not really concerned about it, I just wanted to explain why someone WOULD think it was lame or stupid

 

[Villano]

[OT] hey Villano, you're in Mansfield? i went to college there for a few years long time ago. nice little town, if a bit isolated...

LOL! Small world. I moved here a few years ago when my parents got sick and I needed to be closer. It's a nice town (if you don't count the occasional snowstorms in May).

You wish the origin was that good

This sums it up better than I can.

http://www.lostsoulwolverine.com/origin.htm

A lot of people seem to like it.

I don't.

Oh. My. God.

2) Crisis on Infinite Earths. The story made no sense, and was born out of some overriding need to explain why there's a golden age Flash and a silver age Flash, golden age Superman and silver age Superman, etc., etc. The end result? Huh? Who cares? John Byrne comes along and rewrites the history of Superman anyways so the whole point is moot.

I think you are misunderstanding something here. Crisis in essense rebooted the DC universe. That's the reason Byrne revamped Superman. All the heroes got a rewrite (major or minor) in the months that followed...well, except Hawkman, which led to mucho confusion when they reinvented him in the 90s, screwing up the continuity of many titles where the old Hawkman appeared. This partly led to Zero Hour.

Like I said in my first post, it had to do with all the alternated Earths (with a bunch of redundant heroes) out there, not to mention a lot of overpowering and storytelling baggage, particularly Superman. Pre-Crisis, Supes could push planets, fly through time, hear a pin drop in another galaxy, and blow out a star. Plus you had Kryptonite in every shade of the rainbow.

Also, there was a problem that Byrne pointed out so well when he started the revamping: It seemed like the only people who died when Krypton exploded was Superman's parents and a few of their close neighbors. He wasn't kidding. You had dozens of Phantom Zone villains, Supergirl, Superboy, Krypto the Superdog, Comet the Superhorse, Streaky the Supercat, and a SuperChimp whose name I can't recall. I think there was even a Supermouse. Plus you had the entire bottled city of Kandor.

Is the Legend crew still doing non-mainstream stuff? Or are they all back on Marvel and DC titles? Miller, Byrne, Chadwick, Mignolia, and Adams were the members If I remember. Next Men was a great book and too bad nothing else ever came out of it.

Mignola is still doing Hellboy. I'm not sure what Adams has been doing, but I miss Monkeyman & O'Brien.

The Eisner's are now dominated by stuff that, frankly, hasn't even been mentioned in this thread.

Weel, I hope the good series aren't mentioned. This thread is for terrible ideas.

aging characters: saying that the simpsons or peanuts dont age so its ok that superheroes dont age is easily the least thought out reasoning ive EVER heard.
the reason it doesnt matter for those characters is because they just exist for jokes. there is no DRAMA. in order to have dramatic tension, the characters need to change and grow. if the characters dont evolve, and only exist for "cool superhero battles" then i'm not interested.

As others have pointed out, comic characters do age. Spidey was in high school in the 60s and now is in his mid-20s. Frankly, as others have pointed out, the way a 4 issue arc may represent only two days in comic time, not 4 months, any attempt to work out a scale would be a headache.

Also, I honestly don't want to read about a 55 year old Spider-Man.

I'm a fan of the Rex Stout Nero Wolfe mystery novels. Stout started them in the 30s or 40s and continued until his death in, I believe the late 70s or early 80s. During that time Wolfe's legman, Archie Goodwin, didn't age a day. e could still run and fight and charm a young lady (which would be hard to do as a 68 yr old). So, you see, novel series do the same thing.

I think you're in the minority on this one.

Elementals Porn

What now on the what what?

Storm in punk style - I still cringe

Dude, don't dis punk rock Storm! That's the way she looked when I first started collecting X-Men. I loved her!

I once saw an altered pic of Halle Berry as punk rock Storm. It was great! LOL

Retconning Apocalypse into Cyclops's past

That didn't bother me as much as Cyclops' dad being revealed to be a space pirate. That's just wrong, man.


Oh, and for you Teen Tony anti-fans, I found a story on the net about why that came about. I haven't been able to find anything to verrify it, but supposedly writer Len Kaminsky insisted on Tony becoming evil and being replaced because he couldn't in good conscience write a comic with a capitalist as a hero.

If that's true, that is one of the stupidest things I've heard. Apparently, it escaped his notice that he is being paid by a corporation to write mindless entertainment for people with disposable incomes.

I shudder to think of what he'd do to poor Batman if he wrote it. He'd probably have Bruce arrested for molesting Robin or something.

 

[buzzard]

from the original list:
the evil green lantern story made sense to me.
hal jordan was always crazy (almost as much so as batman)
seeing him snap and go on a rampage was cool and logical.
saying all the fans hated it is just wrong.
the only fans who hated it were those who considered hal jordan their favorite character. the rest of us were just fine with it. and LIKED it even.

Where did you get this? Hal Jordan crazy? Did you ever read GL stories with Hal in them? Did you ever hear of The GL/GA series? Hal was about the most level-headed hero around (hence the choice to use him as offset by Green Arrow). I have to say that this particular claim stands out as the most ill-founded comment of yours among what I considered a wealth of ill-considered opinions.

buzzard

 

[Kesh]

Good god. I've seen fanfiction origins for Wolverine I'd rather have made official than that. >.<

 

[Piratecat]

I have to say that this particular claim stands out as the most ill-founded comment of yours among what I considered a wealth of ill-considered opinions.

What we have here is a fine example of a sentence that should have been truncated. C'mon, Buzzard... you know about being snarky and picking fights with people. You don't have to agree with a guy, but please stay away from personal insults.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

I just remembered another one (yes, I'm another one of these guys who quit reading comics 5 years ago). Magneto getting mindwiped by Prof X was pretty cool. Magneto mysteriously coming back as a younger, amnesiac do-gooder version of himself was not so cool. Having that guy turn out to be a clone or something of the real Magneto who just magically gets his mind back was laaaaaaame. Not that I missed Joseph (Worst. Codename. EVAR.) but they couldn't find a cooler way to bring back Magneto?

 

[Psychotic Dreamer]

On the subject of characters aging in a more realisitc fashion. Personally I wouldn't want to see this. First off it would render many popular characters/titles dead after 10-20 years. If Spider-Man aged in a realisitic fashion his comic would have been dead 10-15 years ago. Spider-Man is about a young man trying to find his place in the world. Trying to balance being a super-hero and paying the bills and when married about trying to balance all that with a family. Unless you'd want to see other people picking up the Spider-Man mantle, be it imposters or his child or what not. The Fantastic Four is another title that would be severly hurt by this type of thing. Let's face it the Fantastic Four is truely about Reed Richards, Sue Storm-Richards, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm. Basically the FF is about family. Titles like the Avengers, X-Men and others would be able to survive more in a realisitic aging style since they have had majorly changing rosters over the years.

Secondly this would also require comic book writers to create many more original charatcers and somedays it seems they have trouble creating original characters as interesting and compelling as ones from the past. Quite often we end up with ones who are just altered versions of someone else or just plain silly. I've picked up a few issues of X-Men recently and it would appear all the new mutants to appear recently are begining to look less and less human and more and more silly.

 

[stevelabny]

Where did you get this? Hal Jordan crazy? Did you ever read GL stories with Hal in them? Did you ever hear of The GL/GA series? Hal was about the most level-headed hero around (hence the choice to use him as offset by Green Arrow). I have to say that this particular claim stands out as the most ill-founded comment of yours among what I considered a wealth of ill-considered opinions.
buzzard

Piratecat... I'm not considerign that a personal attack. He's basically just saying my opinions are wrong. Which is what I'm gonna say about his opinions too. As long as we keep the subject on comic books and not personal lives or mommas we should be ok.

Buzzard, I'm glad you used GL/GA as an example, because I havent read a lot of old Hal stories and I was basing my opinion almost entirely on the gl/ga series, the first 50 issues of the current green lantern series and emerald dawn which is the new "official" origin of hal. it was clear to me that hal was not in touch with reality at all. (hence the choice to have the real world explained to him by GA) Anyone who can't see that Hal was so far out of touch with reality is probably gonna try to convince me that Batman is sane too.

Hal never looked into anything for himself. he was oblivious, then took GA's spoon-feedings. follow the guardians, follow GA, follow the league. The man defined himself by his surroundings constantly. So when one of the places he considers "home" is destroyed it, and the woman with who he has an unhealthy relationship that he calls love is presumed dead...he snapped. Everybody has their breaking point. ALmost anyone wouldve snapped in the same situation. Hal was definately NOT above snapping. the idea that he is the greatest hero ever is a joke. he is a sad little clay man with vast cosmic power who will fight whatever evil you point him at and nothing more.

 

[stevelabny]

. If Spider-Man aged in a realisitic fashion his comic would have been dead 10-15 years ago. Spider-Man is about a young man trying to find his place in the world. Trying to balance being a super-hero and paying the bills and when married about trying to balance all that with a family. Unless you'd want to see other people picking up the Spider-Man mantle, be it imposters or his child or what not. The Fantastic Four is another title that would be severly hurt by this type of thing. Let's face it the Fantastic Four is truely about Reed Richards, Sue Storm-Richards, Ben Grimm and Johnny Storm. Basically the FF is about family.

Spider-man started as being about a "nerdy" high school kid given super-powers and how it didnt immediately clear up all his problems. The premise of the story is "with great power comes great responsibility" thats it. You can apply that to any person with spider-like powers under the mask. And if after one or two or three people wear the mask and there is no good way way to continue the story...the title ends. there will be newer heroes to take his palce. Spider-man will become a LEGEND.
As it is, spidey has graduated high school, gone to college, been in a few serious relationships, got a job, GOT MARRIED, had a kid, and progressed through his 20s to the point where he was CLEARLY about 30 years old. the writers panicked and de-aged him. Marriage? over. kid? kidnapped, presumed dead. dead aunt? brought back to life in the most retarded way possible to once again give Peter the "adult figure" in his life, reverting him back to 23.and they will probably do this again ina few years.
This is infintely more ridiculous, insulting and NOT fun than if he aged normally, had a kid, becomes a cripple (like in spidergirl) ,the spider-clone or some other character took over the suit for a while and the kid actually DID grow up and become spider-girl living in her dads footsteps. Peter eventually returns to action one last time for his blaze of glory and the spider-man mythos ENDS but lives on in legend amongst the other super-heroes.
Of course ANYTHING is better than what they did to de-age poor petey.

As for FF, yes, its about family. Absolutely. And replacing any of the orgiinal four with other characters for anything more than one or two issues DOESNT work.Because theyre not part of the FAMILY. But lets look at a real family. Is your relationship with your brothers/sisters/parents the same now as it was when you were all younger. We've already had 500 issues of the other three treating johnny like a little brother. and 300 (?) issues of franklin being 4 1/2 (except when he was 6 and when he was kidnapped to the future and returned as an 18 year old like every silly sci-fi series with a baby). So Franklin aged 3 1/2 years then stopped. The Power Pack kids have aged since they hung out with him but he hasnt and this is why the whole thing is silly.
One of the keys of FAMILY in the real world is how it changes and evolves from generation to generation. we are doomed to NEVER see this in the FF. Imagine the possibilities if Johnny Storm, the former hothead was leading his nephew Franklin, a niece , and a boy named Grimm into battle as the FF. Imagine the emotional impact of seeing the foursome grow into an actual full-sized family. And all the many different relationship themes and cliches the writers would be able to play with. But no, we sit stuck in neutral for 500 more issues.

Some people are completely against my idea for characters aging and evolving, but there are plenty who would love it. How do i know?
The what if? concept, Earth X, Elseworlds, alternate dimensions, even the ultimate line to some degree are sucessful because the characters are stuck in neutral. Things can happen, characters can die, relationships can actually suceed happily or fail without having to be dredged up every year, mantles can be passed for longer than a story-arc. the status isnt quo.

CHANGE IS GOOD. and change, mr anderson , is inevitable.