Great Potential ..... Awful Execution

[Zero Hunter]

Sometimes you see a character and think wow they could be awesome under the right creator. They have the look and the powers, but every time they have been used in a story it just is not good. I'll start with someone I think has a lot of potential if they can ever get a good writer to take a shot at them.

Monarch. I know, I know the character is a trainwreck and has been almost from the start. He does have some good things going for him though. His design is just fantastic. His armor was the one thing they didn't mess up when they were coming up with the character. He is also extremely powerful which is not a bad thing at all. I even like the idea of him being a fallen hero (just not Captain Atom or Hawk) and it could make for a good mystery about who is in the armor if done right. They can even drop the "he is from the future" thing and just have a hero taking up the title in the present day.

[Korath]

While Monarch looks awesome, I think it would be extremely hard to make use of him as a main Universe hero falling from grace. There is no way anyone as the tech to create something like that in the XXIst Century.

I guess the closer to it would be to have him originate from a fallen world of the Dark Multiverse, and wanting to rule over one of the normal Universe because he believes that had his fellow heroes been as ruthless as he, his world would still exist. But even then, he would ressemble the Extremists a lot.

[Phoenixx9]

Sometimes you see a character and think wow they could be awesome under the right creator. They have the look and the powers, but every time they have been used in a story it just is not good. I'll start with someone I think has a lot of potential if they can ever get a good writer to take a shot at them.

Monarch. I know, I know the character is a trainwreck and has been almost from the start. He does have some good things going for him though. His design is just fantastic. His armor was the one thing they didn't mess up when they were coming up with the character. He is also extremely powerful which is not a bad thing at all. I even like the idea of him being a fallen hero (just not Captain Atom or Hawk) and it could make for a good mystery about who is in the armor if done right. They can even drop the "he is from the future" thing and just have a hero taking up the title in the present day.

I am not familiar with the character.

He looks grim--is he a good guy or a bad guy?

How powerful is he? It seems they often cannot get mega-powerful characters correct.

[Skedatz]

I am not familiar with the character.

He looks grim--is he a good guy or a bad guy?

How powerful is he? It seems they often cannot get mega-powerful characters correct.

That one was originally Captain Atom (in a nutshell) who went around with a ridiculously high level of power who challenged a super-charged Superboy (Superman at the time) Prime and getting his armor ripped apart obliterated all life in a universe, and was definitely not portrayed as a good guy.

[Frontier]

I'm sure there will probably be some who say Parallax.

[Lee Stone]

Parallax.


Just kidding...

Huntress.
-I really liked the grainy ink technique used on the '88 series... but I think she would've done so much better if her book was in the same format as Green Arrow and the Question at the time, with the same type of storytelling. However, the book did have some good stories, it just went unnoticed because it was targeting the wrong audience, IMHO.

Warlord.
-DC is sitting on one of the longest running non-Conan fantasy heroes in comics.
His series should've been great with Bart Sears, but I couldn't get myself to give it a try because it looked like someone poured ink all over the art. It wasn't flattering at all.

[byrd156]

Red Hood. Can't stand his direction since the reboot.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I know this might not be too popular an opinion, but Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman.

I think those three are such great characters, but the vast majority of their comics are either mediocre or terrible.

Superman is one of the greatest fictional characters of all time, but most of the time he's just another guy in tights going through the motions of relatively generic superhero stories.

Batman is extremely popular, but it's based mostly upon the highs of a few great stories with him that showed why he's so cool. Unfortunately, most Batman comics are little more than misery porn with some crime and superhero elements thrown in.

Wonder Woman is an absolutely amazing character that combines so many elements that I adore, but not a single comics creator has managed to ever make me care about her as a person. 80+ years of comics and not one has really figure out a way to make her click with readers beyond the surface level.

[Ascended]

Parallax.

And Im not even joking.

Take *that* Frontier!

[SJNeal]

Batman is extremely popular, but it's based mostly upon the highs of a few great stories with him that showed why he's so cool. Unfortunately, most Batman comics are little more than misery porn with some crime and superhero elements thrown in.

Wow... I've been buying Batman and Detective Comics every month since the mid 90's - often out of habit/obligation - yet he doesn't even make my list of top ten favorite characters. And I think you hit the nail on the head as to why.

[Lirica]

I'll put Parallax too!

And I mean both pre-retcon and post-retcon (I liked both 'ideas').

For the current version of Parallax, it served its purpose for GL Rebirth, yes, but afterward it was still a cool idea to play around with and well... could've been better imo.

[TheCape]

I know this might not be too popular an opinion, but Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman.

I think those three are such great characters, but the vast majority of their comics are either mediocre or terrible.

Superman is one of the greatest fictional characters of all time, but most of the time he's just another guy in tights going through the motions of relatively generic superhero stories.

Batman is extremely popular, but it's based mostly upon the highs of a few great stories with him that showed why he's so cool. Unfortunately, most Batman comics are little more than misery porn with some crime and superhero elements thrown in.

Wonder Woman is an absolutely amazing character that combines so many elements that I adore, but not a single comics creator has managed to ever make me care about her as a person. 80+ years of comics and not one has really figure out a way to make her click with readers beyond the surface level.

Eh, i said that this is true from most long running characthers, we like then for their strong concepts and ideas and some really great stories, but in my opinion, most runs of these icponic characthers are between passable/decent/good, with the odd mediocre/awfull run here and there and most of then don't live up to the legend and hype. Wonder Woman is probably worst case thougth, like most of her fans seem to agreee that anything between Marston and Perez is pretty forgetable or bad, like...wow, not every Batman and Superman are Year One or To The Man Who Has Everything, but they at least had some fun runs in that period.

[Frontier]

Eh, i said that this is true from most long running characthers, we like then for their strong concepts and ideas and some really great stories, but in my opinion, most runs of these icponic characthers are between passable/decent/good, with the odd mediocre/awfull run here and there and most of then don't live up to the legend and hype. Wonder Woman is probably worst case thougth, like most of her fans seem to agreee that anything between Marston and Perez is pretty forgetable or bad, like...wow, not every Batman and Superman are Year One or To The Man Who Has Everything, but they at least had some fun runs in that period.

With Wonder Woman it seems like it's pretty much Marston, Perez, Rucka (twice) and maybe Simone, and that's about it.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

With Wonder Woman it seems like it's pretty much Marston, Perez, Rucka (twice) and maybe Simone, and that's about it.

And even those four, along with Morrison, utterly failed to make Wonder Woman the most interesting thing about their runs. Marston's run is notable mostly for how subversively weird and kinky it all is. Perez absolutely nailed bringing the mythology the forefront in a really interesting way, but Diana herself was left as a virginal cipher. Rucka updated the gender politics of the character wonderfully, but similarly couldn't manage to make Diana work. Simone's run had promise, but was mostly a noble failure. Even Morrison crashed against the rocks of trying to sort out all the crazy elements of Wonder Woman and couldn't quite manage to get inside of Diana's head.

Frankly, the only time Wonder Woman herself has really worked for me has been when there's a real-life flesh and blood actress there like Gal Gadot or Lynda Carter there to fill in the blanks with their own humanity.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Eh, i said that this is true from most long running characthers, we like then for their strong concepts and ideas and some really great stories, but in my opinion, most runs of these icponic characthers are between passable/decent/good, with the odd mediocre/awfull run here and there and most of then don't live up to the legend and hype.

I would agree that most characters coast on a handful of great stories, but I think the gap between how great the concepts of Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman are and their execution is much more egregious--most notably with Wonder Woman, but Supes & Bats suffer from it as well.

For instance, I absolutely love Green Lantern, but I understand that the concept for the character isn't particularly special or unique. There are plenty of hotshot pilot archetypes out there already, but the combination of that with the space cop tropes and the magic wishing ring works wonders for me. Green Lantern stories vary wildly in quality, as most superhero comics do, but I don't feel the same disappointment in a mundane Hal Jordan story as I do when creators consistently fail to do something special with the Trinity.

It's like watching someone take an extremely expensive and delicious cut of beef and turn it into a Big Mac.