Catharsis: Worst or Most Disappointing of the Decade

[Slim Shady]

Top 3 (bottom 3?)
Heroes in Crisis
King's Batman
Ric Grayson storyline

Honorable (dishonorable?) mentions
Wonder Woman after Azz
Not following up on Morrison's new52 Superman
Titans relaunch

[U.N. Owen]

Rogol Zaar is uninteresting. His design is generic. His motivations are eyerolling. Only the X-Men have managed to make me feel this level of annoyance.

Heroes in Crisis. God doesn't weep over the evil in the world, Spectre. God weeps because Heroes in Crisis sucks and he knows it.

The Polarshield Project isn't bad, but it is massively disappointing.

Booster Gold's wedding gift to Batman is stupidly insulting. Batman the Brave and the Bold did this plot so much better and you know it.

The Wedding of Batman and Catwoman was a pathetic cop out. That still angers me.

[Restingvoice]

New 52 is a half disappointment because the other half is pretty good. I would've fully accepted all the weird changes that makes them different from the classic incarnation I used to watch if they didn't go half and half and keep old incarnations in other characters.

The number of times New 52 Superman got possessed made it looks like Amanda Waller is right. He is a threat to the world. Even if you get past that, it's annoying how most of his story is angsty and depressing. By the time he's killed off, it feels like a mercy killing a tortured dog, which I didn't expect to happen when I first read the exciting Morrison run.

Then there's Wally. I don't need to say more. Everyone already says it.

Then there's the Titans generation. I don't even get a chance to know Titans before finding the story to be annoying. Oh, they're doing the Titans vs League again, like I haven't seen that a thousand times with Teen Titans. Rebirth Titans is absurd. The adult Titans are treated like kids while the actual kids Teen Titans are free to run around without supervision.

The BatCat Wedding is more an "are you stupid" moment than disappointing. That's when I know there really is no limit to DC's stupidity. Like did you really think that people are gonna buy the "we never actually say they're gonna get married" excuse when you literally promote a Wedding Album collection?

Another "are you stupid" moment is aging up Jon, but at least this one I know that Super Sons target audience aren't the type who preorder at comic shops while Superman or Bendis fans do, so it's a tiny bit justifiable. I, for, one, buy trades, so I can't really blame them if sales are down and they let it canceled, but still, out of all writers to pick to continue Super Sons in a graphic novel format, you choose someone who doesn't know that fans, including Arabic fans, don't care if Damian is named after a Hollywood satan.

[Zero Hunter]

Batman #45-47 Way to shit on Booster Gold a little more there Mr King. Even more disappointing as his appearance in Superman written by Dan Jurgens around the same time was top notch.

This is my choice too. In just 3 issues King undid 20 year of character growth for Booster. Like you said it is even worse because at pretty much the exact same time Jurgens was showing Booster to be a hero who would even stand up to Superman to do the right thing. King shit all over Booster to set up Heroes in Crisis period.

[9th.]

I'm not even a big fan of Wally West, but going from his reintroduction in Rebirth, to what happened in Heroes in Crisis might have been the biggest letdown considering how long his fans waited and how much it seemed his return would mean.

This is definitely it for me, I'd also through in that Titans run

[Adekis]

I hate the idea of Rebirth because I'm so invested (to this day!) in the New 52 Superman. It was actually handled pretty well for the most part - at least on Clark's side. I still don't think Lois got to keep all of what makes her a great character, but that might be a longer running problem dating back to the mid '00s.

But Bendis' run on Superman just hasn't given me much I like. Some of the ideas are great - Superman and Zod teaming up, showing the birth of the UP, return of the Legion - but I don't like almost any of the execution. Superman just lost all the backbone and guts that I loved so much about his New 52 and Rebirth characterizations, and went right back to the guy I remember being annoyed at in like, "New Krypton" or even "Wednesday Comics!"

[Arnoldoaad]

I would like to ask honestly
are people aware of how long does a decade take?

Im seriusly surpriced that still so many people are calling stuff that happen on 2019 the worst of the decade
its no really about defending them but ratter saying, there has been worst stuff in the last 10 years

[Tzigone]

I agree with those that said Bendis Superman (definitely including age up of Jon), Ric Grayson, HiC, and King's Batman.

Good point on mentioning War of the Supermen. Not a good story. I liked Chris and Thara (though am iffy on making Nightwing and Flamebird gods), but the entire story was just "bleh" to me. Kryptonians - uncaring and totally just let humans die rather than lift a finger for no particular reason. Alura evil (so sick of good folks, especially parents, turned evil, and now we've done it with Zor-El and Jor-El, too).

I'd like to toss in de-aging and Barbara and Dick and trying to cram all the Robins in way too short a time frame. If they wanted that short a time frame, they should have started over without all of them. I know why they didn't - $$$ - but they end up doing a half the job with that tactic and left things a mess. Doing away with Lois and Clark's marriage was a no-go to me, too.

Court of Owls is seemingly popular, but I hate the idea. Yet another shadowy conspiracy group. And I hate all of that being part of Dick's past. I hate the retconning of weird crap (especially anyone manipulating another person) into the pasts of characters back in their "normal" days. Don't really like in their hero days, either, unless it's a fix-it.

Batman: Zero Year.

Im seriusly surpriced that still so many people are calling stuff that happen on 2019 the worst of the decade
its no really about defending them but ratter saying, there has been worst stuff in the last 10 years

People can have short memories and more importantly the recent stuff is still reverberating through the comics, and people have stronger feelings about it. And, of course, being more recent, it comes more readily to mind. I'd love to see some of what you think is worse (I noticed you mentioned one storyline upthread). Fun to read what others say. Some of the stories mentioned are ones I've only heard of, but not read. Some I'm not even familiar with, since I don't follow those titles/characters.

[9th.]

I'm also going to put New 52 Static, 8 ISSUES?!?!? EIGHT!!!!!

DC completely tossing aside New 52 Superman instead of just progressing his character into who they wanted him to be

Completely abandoning Azz WW after he left

NuTT was pretty awful too

[Tzigone]

Cry for Justice was bad, but did anyone think it would be good (I wasn't in the fandom back then)?

[Rise]

RHATO rebirth disappointed me greatly in 2018 and it's on me for having high hopes for it to be honest. Snyder has a great start with his Batman, but the rest of his run was pretty weak. Was expecting good things form Priest's JL, but end up being disappointed.

None of them deserve to be called "worst/most disappointing of the decade", but I usually don't bother continue reading books I already know I wouldn't like to be disappointed with them and these are the only examples I can think of because I was expecting something good from them.

[CPSparkles]

New 52 is a half disappointment because the other half is pretty good. I would've fully accepted all the weird changes that makes them different from the classic incarnation I used to watch if they didn't go half and half and keep old incarnations in other characters.

The number of times New 52 Superman got possessed made it looks like Amanda Waller is right. He is a threat to the world. Even if you get past that, it's annoying how most of his story is angsty and depressing. By the time he's killed off, it feels like a mercy killing a tortured dog, which I didn't expect to happen when I first read the exciting Morrison run.

Then there's Wally. I don't need to say more. Everyone already says it.

Then there's the Titans generation. I don't even get a chance to know Titans before finding the story to be annoying. Oh, they're doing the Titans vs League again, like I haven't seen that a thousand times with Teen Titans. Rebirth Titans is absurd. The adult Titans are treated like kids while the actual kids Teen Titans are free to run around without supervision.

The BatCat Wedding is more an "are you stupid" moment than disappointing. That's when I know there really is no limit to DC's stupidity. Like did you really think that people are gonna buy the "we never actually say they're gonna get married" excuse when you literally promote a Wedding Album collection?

Another "are you stupid" moment is aging up Jon, but at least this one I know that Super Sons target audience aren't the type who preorder at comic shops while Superman or Bendis fans do, so it's a tiny bit justifiable. I, for, one, buy trades, so I can't really blame them if sales are down and they let it canceled, but still, out of all writers to pick to continue Super Sons in a graphic novel format, you choose someone who doesn't know that fans, including Arabic fans, don't care if Damian is named after a Hollywood satan.

Supersons was a real are you stupid moment. You are correct.

Sales weren't even bad that's the thing that makes no sense.

[ducklord]

Cry for Justice was bad, but did anyone think it would be good (I wasn't in the fandom back then)?

There were reasons for hope initially:

1) James Robinson. The guy wrote Starman, one of the absolute best series of the 90's, and Golden Age, one of the best Elseworlds stories of the 90's. The man had skillz, and he was handed the keys to the JLA.
2) The art looked gorgeous.

Even after the first issue, which had plenty of warning signs ("Why are they all shouting 'Justice' so much?"), there was still some hope.

Then came the delays. And the replacement artists. And the creeping sensation that Robinson had been replaced by an evil clone. And all the gratuitous death.

In the end, it was both capital-H Horrible AND a tremendous disappointment. It was so disappointing that people started to reassess Robinson's Starman, which previously would have been considered nigh-unto blasphemous.

Boy, I hated that story.

[Slim Shady]

I would like to ask honestly
are people aware of how long does a decade take?

Im seriusly surpriced that still so many people are calling stuff that happen on 2019 the worst of the decade
its no really about defending them but ratter saying, there has been worst stuff in the last 10 years

Idk, I thought long and hard about it and I can't think of anything from the previous 9 nine years that was worse than Heroes in Crisis in 2019.

[Godlike13]

Well Ric Grayson is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen put on the selves. And I’m not just saying this as a Dick Grayson fan. But the level of effort, creativity, and ability shown on that series is next level overtly bad. It’s so bad that everyone involved needs to be seriously looked at. Cause this isn’t just a swing and a miss storyline. It’s everything wrong in the industry today. Repackaged lazy ideas trying to be presented as new, driven by old school factory like decompression, and out of touch creators with old voices who don’t really give a shit. From creative to management it’s been a demonstration on how little people within DC actually care about quality of the product. Everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves as professionals.

Most disappointing was probably King’s Batman. And it’s not that I didn’t enjoy it, but when all was said and done my reaction was boy that felt long. I was expecting more I guess.

Honorable mentions,
HiC was controversial, but worse thing from it imo was what it did isn’t going anywhere. You do something like that just to then hand him off to Lobdell. Well gee, that was worth it...

Rebirth Titans I knew was probably going to be bad after Titans Hunt.

Some of the New 52 stuff was really bad too. But out of sight, out of mind I guess.