What Were They Thinking? Worst Comic Ideas.

[Khynal]

...(when new mutants was being perverted into the new X force, the artist basicly drew a bunch of characters and the writer tried to find places for them and make up personalities...)

That would be Rob Liefeld, I presume.

 

[Samnell]

That would be Rob Liefeld, I presume.

Who was credited for months for writing X-Force when he really had no part in doing so aside from the afore-mentioned drawing random characters that all just happened to look exactly alike. I'm just going to list employing Liefeld period as my worst comic idea.

A close second is the out of hand killing of Cypher from New Mutants. Easily the best point of view character ever created, with no combat-useful powers that just kind of fell into it and tried to do his best. Shot by a jackass in a ratty animal skin because the new writer didn't know what to do with him. And then his so-called friends start off talking about how they're sorry he die and end up playing dress up and getting new outfits, which just happened to be totally out of character for all of them.

I'll second the bringing in of high concept hack storyteller Grant Morrison to write any mainstream book, and I also hate the recent practice of replacing costumes with uniforms so all the heroes look exactly alike all the time, and they never take them off.

 

[Villano]

I'm just going to list employing Liefeld period as my worst comic idea..

What? Employing Liefeld was your idea? Damn, you!

What's funny is that I was reading an old article today at quarterbin.net (a pretty cool comic website) about Rob which had this great line:

"My research hasn't caught him doing anything more important than comic books. And come on, folks; while even Adolf Hitler has sites on the web that say he's a cool guy, I can't find anything that Liefeld didn't compose himself that suggests that he might be less evil than the Prince of Darkness."

I seriously considered making this my sig.

 

[Maraxle]

I'm sorry, but that's got to be the dumbest thing I've heard in a long time. So if you watched a couple bad movies, like say 'Leonard Part Six', or 'Freddy Got Fingered', you'd swear off all movies for the rest of your life? Huh? Or how about this one--"The smell coming from this one particular rotten thing made me wretch, so now I've decided to quit breathing altogether." Pretty extreme, but it's the same kind of logic.

No, it's not that at all. It's kind of like that last GI Joe figure (or whatever your favorite toy line was) that you bought right before you realized that you were too old to be playing with GI Joes anymore. I'm not suggesting that anyone here is too old to read comics, but Savage Dragon #2 had the unfortunate distinction of appearing on the scene at the exact time that my friends and I lost interest in comics. Looking at it gives me the same feeling as poor Tigerforce Roadblock.

 

[Ghostwind]

I quit collecting about 10 years ago, so I'm not up on all the bad stories since then, but I have to say that out of the many dangling plotline X-Men stories that Claremont penned, one of the worst in terms of execution and explanation has to be when the X-men saved the universe and then stepped through some portal set up by Roma only to emerge changed (kinda) and no longer registering to electronic equipment. This was the time when Besty Braddock went from armor wearing telepath to ninja knife psi-blade wielding oriental girl/assassin. If I recall correctly, Storm was brought back as a very young girl only to battle the Shadow King again and wind up back to her proper age. There were plenty of other changes to team members that made no sense (except for Wolverine). And as typical Claremont, as the issues moved forward over the next couple of years suddenly it was like nothing had happened. The X-men were now registering again and no one seemed to recall that Betsy was really English (even her brother). Neat concept overall, but really bad follow through.

The single worst comic idea, however, has to be the continual relaunch of Marvel series with new numbers and lame explanations. How many times have we seen a Hulk, Thor, Spider-Man, or X-men series relaunch? Seems like once a comic goes past 100 issues it's time to realunch as a new number 1. Seems like an idea that has foundations in the 90's gimmick cover boom.

 

[Alzrius]

I haven't read nor bought this, so if I'm off-base here, someone please correct me, but one especially dumb comic idea I heard of was Superman: Peace on Earth - as it was described to me, that graphic novel (which for some unknowable reason was made too large to fit on any bookshelf) can be summed up with the catchphrase, "Superman faces his greatest foe ever: world hunger!"

I keep seeing it at the store, but I shan't be buying it!

 

[garyh]

An old one: Spiderman/Transformers crossover.

As a Transformers fan, let me elaborate on that one...

Originally, the TF comic was going to be a silly 4 issue limited toy tie in. So, Marvel figured, no harm slapping Spidey on the cover of TF#3. But then TF sales soared, and it ended up reaching issue #80... not bad for a toy-based comic (though not up to GI Joe's 140-something). Marvel couldn't have giant alien robots running around the main Marvel Universe, and the Spidey appearance was made non-canon. So, for the next six years, the TF editors would explain on the letters page every few months that Spidey didn't really fit into the TF universe.

An interesting tangent, though, was that there was a GI Joe / TF crossover (logical, as both were toys made by Hasbro with comics done by Marvel.). Through the transitive property, if the Spidey/TF crossover did happen, I've always thought it'd be a kick to see a GI Joe / S.H.I.E.L.D. crossover... Nick Fury and Duke saving the day!

 

[garyh]

For me was the old GI Joe comics. Storm Shadow and Snake Eyes teamed up on some renagade mission inside Cobra HQ. In the end Storm Shadow was killed by the Baroness. A few months later Storm Shadow came back from the dead and was a good guy. I always wondered what they were thinking. I don't collect comics very much

See, Stormshadow came back from the dead because he was revitalized after being used as the physical template for Serpentor, the Cobra Emperor created by cloning a fusion of the greatest military minds of history.

And then Stormshadow ended up being a good guy because, as it turned out, he had only joined Cobra to find out who killed his uncle (who headed their family ninja clan). The killer turned out to be Zartan, employed by Cobra Commander to kill Snake-Eyes, whose family was involved with CC's brother in a no-survivors car crash as Snake-Eye's family was going to pick him up at the airport upon his return from service in Vietnam. Zartan ID'ed Snake-Eye's through a mystic ninja hearing technique, but the man he shot was actually Stormshadow's uncle, who was teaching Snake-Eyes a mystic ninja technique of altering one's heartbeat and breathing to sound like another person!

So, um, yeah, that's the story behind that.

 

[blackshirt5]

See, Stormshadow came back from the dead because he was revitalized after being used as the physical template for Serpentor, the Cobra Emperor created by cloning a fusion of the greatest military minds of history.

And then Stormshadow ended up being a good guy because, as it turned out, he had only joined Cobra to find out who killed his uncle (who headed their family ninja clan). The killer turned out to be Zartan, employed by Cobra Commander to kill Snake-Eyes, whose family was involved with CC's brother in a no-survivors car crash as Snake-Eye's family was going to pick him up at the airport upon his return from service in Vietnam. Zartan ID'ed Snake-Eye's through a mystic ninja hearing technique, but the man he shot was actually Stormshadow's uncle, who was teaching Snake-Eyes a mystic ninja technique of altering one's heartbeat and breathing to sound like another person!

So, um, yeah, that's the story behind that.

Dear god. I now know Horror.

And what's up with these Transformers/GI Joe comics that I saw yesterday at the comic shop?

 

[Randomninjareborn]

Humph! Pretty good(bad) stuff here I admit. But top this.........

Ya see, in the 90's there was an amazingly fresh, hip, and all around brilliant character known as the Ferret. Had his own comic, starring role, the whole schebang. The ferret wasn't one of those loser reporters, photographers or college preppies either. Nah, he was so cool, he had his own edgy and happening rock band. With groupies. Oh yeah, you heard me. As if that wasn't cool enough, he had all sorts of mind-blowing FERRET powers. Damn straight. Ain't nothing scarier than a ferret, except maybe a scrawny white rocker that thinks like one eh?

Having the awesome ferret power of being scrawny, wasted-looking, and ill-tempered was just the start. I don't have time to get into overwhelming powers like "unbreakable ferret grip" and "I can hear your heartbeat" Just give you nightmares to hear the details anyway. Now I know what you're all thinking.

"But Randomninja" you say, "You can't tell how good someone is by looking at their powers on paper. It's who they fought that counts"

Not to worry all, I've got the goods. You see, early in the Ferrets run, he had a friendly sparring match with a certain big name character from the brutal Street Fighter Universe.....................Yeah, you know where I'm going with this, give it up for E. HONDA, Yo! Thats right, when you think of Street Fighter and winners in the same sentance, it doesn't get any better than the Fat guy named after a car company.

I don't want to spoil it for those pitiful fools who haven't read this amazing book, but.......................Well ok, Honda kicked his ass. Bad. But he took it like a man and thats all that counts right? Right?