What Were They Thinking? Worst Comic Ideas.

[Klaus]

Waitasec..!

Wasn't it determined that Nightcrawler was

Spoiler

Mystique and Sabretooth's son

?

 

[stevelabny]

I remember when the Valiant line first came out. People were spending huge amounts of money for the early issues of Harbinger and Magnus. I read a couple of newer issues and while the stories weren't bad, the art was extremely lame. And then the stories suddenly stopped being quite so interesting as well, yet every week a new Valiant book would come out, sell out, and then suddenly reappear in stores with a $10 price tag.
There was a vast amount of absurdity being spread around in the early 90's when it came to comics.

Um, well what happened to Valiant wasnt Valiant's fault so much as the speculators. The universe debuted. It was good. Demand exceeded supply slightly. Orders went up. Back issue prices went up. Then the speculators decided that this was even easier money than POPULAR comics. They scarfed up mulitple copies of every issue of any of the Valiant titles and created a false demand. People unwittingly paid the high prices because Valiant didnt bother releasing TPBs in a timely fashion and nobody realized just how much of the demand was false. Valiant and the comic stores kept raising the supply but the specualtors kept pace for a while. When Valiant tried to cash in themselves (remember boys and girls, comic companies get NO money from back issue sales) by releasing gimmick covers it got worse until they whole thing exploded with Turok #1. I believe you can still find cases of it unopened in comic stores around the country. The REAL valiant fans were either chased off by the speculators or the departure of Shooter, the speculators left when the cow ran dry and the company folded soon after. Valiant was killed by being a great new company at the exact wrong time. Go figure.
As for the art being lame? It wasnt flashy like the Image jumbled messes, but it was almost always good to great. A lot of the artists Valiant "discovered" have then went on to be big names at the big two later in their careers.

 

[stevelabny]

Waitasec..!

Wasn't it determined that Nightcrawler was

Spoiler

Mystique and Sabretooth's son

?

Do we really need to spoiler plotlines never actually ANSWERED from random issues of comic books that are years old? I can understand spoiler warnings for the climax of certain big storylines that people cn easily go buy a TPB for, but this? I'll skip it.

I believe 'Crawler was all but revealed to be Mystique's son.
BUT not Sabretooth's.
Sabretooth and Mystique did apparently mate, but the result was Graydon Creed, the anti-mutant psycho who ran for president before being killed by a mystery assassin later revealed to be Mystique in one of those random months where the x-editors decided to tie up a bunch of loose ends at once.
She spits them out and kills them on an equal basis i think.

Mystique actually being Kurts mom (cuz hey, they both have blue skin they must be related) and Mystique and Sabretooth previously mating (cuz theyre both psychos, they must know each other) should probably both be added to the WORST IDEAS EVER list.

 

[TiQuinn]

Demand exceeded supply slightly. Orders went up. Back issue prices went up. Then the speculators decided that this was even easier money than POPULAR comics. They scarfed up mulitple copies of every issue of any of the Valiant titles and created a false demand. People unwittingly paid the high prices because Valiant didnt bother releasing TPBs in a timely fashion and nobody realized just how much of the demand was false. Valiant and the comic stores kept raising the supply but the specualtors kept pace for a while. When Valiant tried to cash in themselves (remember boys and girls, comic companies get NO money from back issue sales) by releasing gimmick covers it got worse until they whole thing exploded with Turok #1.

Hmmm....overexpansion of the entire line, the aforementioned gimmick covers, emphasis on story to the detriment of art. Funny this last one, since I remember that the simplistic artwork was actually considered a "feature" by the marketing wizs at Valiant and fans at the time. Valiant was even called the Anti-Image at that point. In the end, they made most of the same mistakes that companies like Image and Marvel made at that time as well.

There was hubris to spare at that point, and Valiant played its part.

 

[GMVictory]

I got a few of the other titles as part of those comic packs they used to sell in supermarkets. I know I got an issue of Kickers, Inc (which was so bad I didn't even read it), Strikeforce: Moruturi (or something like that...the tagline was "We who are about to die"), and one or two others. Wasn't there a title called "Nightmask" or something like that?

Nightmask was about a kid who could get into people's dreams.

Strikeforce: Moritouri wasn't part of the New Universe. I thought it wasn't too bad for an alien invasion story though.

There was the not so good "Justice." A guy who could create a energy shield to protect himself and an energy sword. A vigilante type.

Nth Man was another title. About some gaijin uber-ninja.

 

[Villano]

Nth Man was another title. About some gaijin uber-ninja.

Nth Man, the Ultimate Ninja. That wasn't part of the NU though. It was set in an alternate world in which a crazy psychic, in order to bring about world peace, used his powers to make all nukes disappear. With no nukes keeping countries in check, the USSR and China start invading their neighbors and end up at war with each other. With Japan and Europe threatened, the US and UK get involved. Enter World War 3. Good job there, chief.

Anyway, as you can tell, the psychic can do pretty much anything (kind of like one of those god-like aliens on Star Trek). Nth Man was sent by the US to assassinate the psychic.

I actually have one issue of it. I can't speak for the series, but the issue I have isn't very good. For a story about a ninja, he didn't actually do anything. He and two other people just walked and talked about his mission.

Oh, and the psychic turned 50 ft tall and destroyed some jet fighters.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Mystique actually being Kurts mom (cuz hey, they both have blue skin they must be related)

IIRC, mystique having some prior knowlege of Kurt was indicated on their first meeting ever. And he was known to be adopted from his introduction. So her "actually" being his biological mother qualifies to my mind as one of the only cases of the Xmen tying up a dangling plot line in the fashion it had always been aluded to, and thus a very good thing...

It was by no stretch just a random retcon based on them both having blue skin, it was hinted at from the VERY start.

As for sabertooth and mystique having hooked up at some point... he doesn't seem like her type, but he was (at last origen I heard) a government operative, and she'd been faking government clearance for some time when first introduced, so its not as bad a backstory as many of the "and everyone on the planet knows wolverine" stories.

Kahuna burger

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Nth Man, the Ultimate Ninja. That wasn't part of the NU though. It was set in an alternate world in which a crazy psychic, in order to bring about world peace, used his powers to make all nukes disappear. With no nukes keeping countries in check, the USSR and China start invading their neighbors and end up at war with each other. With Japan and Europe threatened, the US and UK get involved. Enter World War 3. Good job there, chief.

I never read that book, partly cause I knew it could never measure up to the "Its the right thing to do, right?" description of the begining that I saw in an editors forum. (or maybe that was still when Marvel Age existed.) It was deliberately set up as a situation where everyone was doing the right things, but probably degenerated into cookie cutter good guys and bad guys early on. There was a bizare Excalibur crossover when that title was degenerating...

Kahuna burger

 

[Richards]

I have the entire run of Nth Man, the Ultimate Ninja, and it wasn't all that bad - up until the end, when the series was cancelled and the writer (Larry Hama, I think, wasn't it?) had two issues or so to "wrap everything up." So all of a sudden we're two years in the future (I even think the title of that issue was something like "Two Years Later..."), and a whole lot has happened that we have to catch in a quick recap. It was a pitiful way to end the series, but the writer did manage to come full circle at the end with the origin of the "ultimate ninja" and the "super psychic" (whose name was Alfie O'Meagan - "Alpha Omegan," get it?).

And as I was a missile launch officer at the time I was reading Nth Man, the Ultimate Ninja, I knew that Alfie's great idea to disable all of the world's nuclear devices at once was a bad one...

Johnathan

 

[Villano]

I have the entire run of Nth Man, the Ultimate Ninja, and it wasn't all that bad - up until the end, when the series was cancelled and the writer (Larry Hama, I think, wasn't it?) had two issues or so to "wrap everything up." So all of a sudden we're two years in the future (I even think the title of that issue was something like "Two Years Later..."), and a whole lot has happened that we have to catch in a quick recap. It was a pitiful way to end the series, but the writer did manage to come full circle at the end with the origin of the "ultimate ninja" and the "super psychic" (whose name was Alfie O'Meagan - "Alpha Omegan," get it?).

I suppose it would be too much to ask how it ended?