What Were They Thinking? Worst Comic Ideas.

[buzzard]

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.

I absolutely have to disagree here. You are implying that people can be focused on everything at once. Hal Jordan was rather occupied with threats on a scale that left the issues presented in the GL/GA series as inconsequential. He did have them brought to his attention, and then he dealt with them. He also dealt with them in a matter far different from GA's method. You did read those books right? The dichotomy of how the two characters interacted with society and it's laws is the core concept. You make Hal sound like some kind of robot, which he certainly wasn't.

As for Emerald Dawn, well I do my best to ignore that. It was lousy. It consisted of some author slamming GL for being "the man without fear". I would describe it as a bout of 'Marvelitis' where the character must be made flawed to be interesting. Feh. Instead of being Hal after the end of that series, he was transformed into a reckless, but lucky doofus. Don't mind the 20+ year history of the character as established.

I read GL for about a solid 15 years(~78-93). I think I have a reasonable claim that I knew how Hal Jordan was protrayed as a character. Emerald Twilight would not have happened had they been describing Hal Jordan.
Must have been an evil clone (belay that- I better not start giving them even worse ideas...).

buzzard

 

[billd91]

I absolutely have to disagree here. You are implying that people can be focused on everything at once. Hal Jordan was rather occupied with threats on a scale that left the issues presented in the GL/GA series as inconsequential. He did have them brought to his attention, and then he dealt with them. He also dealt with them in a matter far different from GA's method. You did read those books right? The dichotomy of how the two characters interacted with society and it's laws is the core concept. You make Hal sound like some kind of robot, which he certainly wasn't.
<snip>

buzzard

If I remember correctly (I have a more limited experience with the title), GL/GA sometimes dealt with and worked through certain thorny and real social issues. If GL was being clueless, it also served as a literary device so that the reader was drawn in and could make the same revelations as the character as the story progressed. An effective story-telling technique, especially if the writer is making a point.
I think we'd do well to remember that these are not real people but are literary characters and are thus subject to literary devices like a normal person would not be.

 

[stevelabny]

Regardless, my point is worrying about any of that was silliness in and of itself. I didn't understand the overwhelming need to retcon history in a comic book, as if said history actually mattered.

I wonder how prevalent this thought process is throughtout this thread.
People seem to be holding comic books to a lower standard than other forms of storytelling entertainment. Or maybe they hold them to low standards to. And I take all of my televisions shows/movies/comics/ novels VERY seriously.I strive for things to make sense and be dramatic and be exciting. not just be a couple of minutes of mindless action that looks cool.

 

[Skade]

I don't so much hold them to a lower standard, as much as I recognize that they will rarely meet my standards. very few things do, though, so this is not puttin comics down at all.

The main problem being that there are simply far to many people involved with a title over the years, with conflicting ideas and goals, and often no interest in researching what has been before.

 

[Black Omega]

I think you're alone on your views of this one, too.

Oh, and I also remembered a few other bad ideas in comics:
New Character, Major Changes

Who finally killed Superman? Was it Luthor? Brainiac? Darkseid? Nope, it was a brand new character, Doomsday.

Luthor is the iconic Supers villain. But if he could have killed Superman, he'd have done it years before. He's failed so many times already, a 'and this time, Luthor finally gets lucky, proving if you just try enough times...' storyline wouldn't have been too impressive. Darksied could have worked, but where's the motivation? Or emotional connection? It's not like Superman is his arch enemy, or he's obsessed with killing Superman.

Who broke Batman's back? New guy, Bane. Who did Batman turn over the cape to while he was crippled? Another new guy called Azrael.

I admit to a certain fondness for Bane. He was basically a dark side Doc Savage. Complete with a similar supporting cast. Your idea of new characters isn't totally true with Azrael. Unless you mean to say a character around for two years is still considered 'new'.

But then, if anyone was going to beat Bats it's someone he doesn't know. Batman plans obsessively and knows all his usual foes so well.

 

[Villano]

Luthor is the iconic Supers villain. But if he could have killed Superman, he'd have done it years before. He's failed so many times already, a 'and this time, Luthor finally gets lucky, proving if you just try enough times...' storyline wouldn't have been too impressive. Darksied could have worked, but where's the motivation? Or emotional connection? It's not like Superman is his arch enemy, or he's obsessed with killing Superman.

Following what you said, why bother using the classic villains since they never defeated Superman in the past, they can't in the future.

Darkseid isn't really one to obsess over enemies since he considers himself above everyone else. However, Superman is a thorn in Darkseid's, er, side. Eliminating him as part of a larger plot would make sense. Perhaps Lois is one of the humans who has part of the key to the Anti-Life equation?

I admit to a certain fondness for Bane. He was basically a dark side Doc Savage. Complete with a similar supporting cast. Your idea of new characters isn't totally true with Azrael. Unless you mean to say a character around for two years is still considered 'new'.

I like Batman series, both in his wrestler look and S&M style.

As for Azrael, 2 yrs in real time means that Bats knew him about a month in comic time. Seriously though, the character was only in a couple of story arcs and then was thrust into the role of Batman.

 

[WizarDru]

I wonder how prevalent this thought process is throughtout this thread.
People seem to be holding comic books to a lower standard than other forms of storytelling entertainment. Or maybe they hold them to low standards to. And I take all of my televisions shows/movies/comics/ novels VERY seriously.I strive for things to make sense and be dramatic and be exciting. not just be a couple of minutes of mindless action that looks cool.

Comics are held to a lower standard, by necessity. Individual arcs or independent titles can enjoy that luxury, perhaps, but it's neither fair nor logical to try an hold a several hundred issue run of a title to the same standards as a novel. Consider that even on the few titles that manage to keep the same writer for the length of their run (such as James Robinson on Starman or Neil Gaiman on Sandman), the format causes inherint problems. The art is almost never consistent over the course of the series, and a variety of demands make themselves known, such as publisher issues. I sincerely doubt Robinson originally envisioned being asked by an editor to include a crossover with a character who didn't exist when he started writing his series (namely the new star-spangled girl...Star, is it?).

Now look at X-men, a victim in many ways of its own success. When Claremont got ahold of them in the mid-70s, they already were saddled with some ridiculous continuity and back-pedalling ("Prof X isn't dead, he's been hiding out, preparing for an alien invasion! Thanks for letting us nearly get killed multiple times in your absence, sir!") Now over the course of his run, he's got to incorporate large crossover events, ranging from Secret Wars to some of his creation, like the Mutant Massacre or Inferno. Editorial decisions eviscerate his best contribution to comics, namely the Death of Jean Grey, and writers in unrelated titles get to write story elements that he has to adapt into his own title. How can that be held to the same literary standard?

Never mind that several rules governed comics for decades, such as the idea that their core audience would outgrow the material and so they could thematically repeat themselves, even contradict themselves, as no one would notice. A well-known DC stategy was to creat a cover ("Zowie! How did Superman become a watermelon?" Find out in Curse of the SuperMelon!) and then toss it to an artist, who had to make a story out of it and make a page count in a few weeks. It was in the mid-60s that Marvel changed all that, and raised the bar. Suddenly, a comic line appeared with intelligent writing and a consistent, persistent world. Since Stan Lee was writing or editing everything, all 16 or so titles meshed together. Spiderman dropped in on the Fantastic Four in Spiderman #2, and the FF commented on it in FF #10, which might have come out a couple weeks after Spidey's issue. Nick Fury blows up an AIM base in Strange Tales #75, and the AIM agents show up trying to set up a base in the Avengers #26, where Fury contacts them to tell them about what happened in ST #75.

Add to that the fact that a company policy or editorial change can completely change the face of a title, and you have even more problems. Look at the line up of X-factor, the New Mutants, the Avengers, the Justice League, Batman and other titles. Hell, look at half of the ideas discussed in this thread. How can you hold the Monarch travesty up to the light of day? In three hurried pages, they killed off Hawk & Dove, one of the best comics at that time, and simultaneously killed off my good will towards their brand for years to follow.

Different comics can be held to different standards. I would hold Midnight Nation to a different standard than Cerebus or X-Factor or Powers. They have different constraints, and different standards.

 

[Alzrius]

Glad you liked it! Those images came from Cosmic Rust, so pop over there to see more. They've got a HUGE gallery of TF cover art for all the different comic lines that have been done.

EDIT: While I'm thinking of it, here's the infamous Spidey issue as well:

This is incredibly geeky, but I can't stop myself:

I notice that on the above cover, Spider-Man is in the black costume. What I want to know is, is that the actual living symbiote that later went on to form Venom, or is it the normal cloth costume that the Black Cat made for him later?

 

[Alzrius]

Comics are held to a lower standard, by necessity.

I disagree...there is no necessity in the fact that comics are held to a lower standard. The only grain of truth in that statement is that the comics of today deliberately do not aim higher because to do so would be to create a product that falls outside the range of what is expected of the omic format...which would, almost by definition, be something that would be lacking in profit to such a large degree that it could not survive.

Needless to say, that's a very sad state of affairs (which is what prompted Scott McCloud's excellent books, "Understanding Comics" and "Reinventing Comics" which I recommend to everyone)!

Comics are, at their core, just another communication medium. There is nothing truly inherent in them, anymore than there is in television of radio. The largest problem comics face is that somehow, over the course of time, we've come to expect them to have nothing but superheroes...making it, as I said, a self-fulfilling prophecy that anything beyond that tends to fail.

The bottom line is that it isn't that comics are any sort of lower grade art form/medium...it's that we need to be more broadminded in regards to them.

 

[TiQuinn]

I wonder how prevalent this thought process is throughtout this thread.
People seem to be holding comic books to a lower standard than other forms of storytelling entertainment. Or maybe they hold them to low standards to. And I take all of my televisions shows/movies/comics/ novels VERY seriously.I strive for things to make sense and be dramatic and be exciting. not just be a couple of minutes of mindless action that looks cool.

I don't see it as holding comics to a low standard. Not at all. Comics are held to unrealistic expectations of continuity. Superman, Batman, Capt. America, Green Lantern, and so many others have been around for 60 or 70 years. The Marvel line has been around for 40 years. Their writers and artists have changed countless times. Name a television show, novel, or movie that has had to try to uphold some sort of continuity for this long a time? Star Trek, perhaps? But then, Star Trek had numerous casts spread out over different points of time.