Catharsis: Worst or Most Disappointing of the Decade

[lemonpeace]

it's simple, what would you say were the worst stories. most disappointing stories, or simply the stories you felt didn't live up to their potential this past decade?

to get the ball rolling I'll say a couple of mine off rip (I'm bout to be alone on a ledge with this one):

Doomsday Clock and Green Lanterns' finale story "evil's might" were two of the most personally disappointing storylines for me. The Green Lantern by Morrison, while the art was great, was overhyped and not good enough to make up for the cancellation of the other GL books; aka didn't live up to the potential of the Green Lantern mythos for me. that one shoulda been a Black Label.

there, now that you can't have a worse take than mine, don't be shy now

[j9ac9k]

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.

[Frontier]

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.

Yeah, Heroes in Crisis does it for me.

I'm also not sure what the point of Event: Leviathan even was in the end.

[Sergard]

I was personally disappointed by the introduction of the new Arkham Knight in Detective Comics. The backstory is too convoluted and a lot of stuff doesn't add up. The character isn't interesting at all. In the end, I didn't even finish the arc.

[Vampire Savior]

Both of Cyborg's solo series, because instead of elevating a character that DC was trying to push, I feel they drove him further into the ground. And for that matter, Justice League Odyssey, because it had complications from the get-go, and drove Cyborg even further into the ground to the point where the character is somewhat of a laughing stock to me.

New 52 Superman was completely botched. This is probably the biggest missed opportunity of the decade for DC. A clear chance to reinvigorate the character was just...totally mishandled to a mystifying level.

The Justice League book was not been good at all in the previous decade. Every. Single. Run. TERRIBLE.

Anything Venditti wrote about Green Lantern was bad, and I'm baffled he was writing those books for like 5 years.

There are a lot more stories to bring up, but I guess I'll leave it at that for now.

[astro@work]

For me, Heroes in Crisis would have to be number 1.

Other least liked arcs, or runs would have to include
The Finch run on Wonder Woman (ESPECIALLY the horrific new origin for Donna; my God they had a clean slate opportunity...you had ONE job Finches!)
The nu52 run of Superman (with the exception of Morrison's run)
The entire Superwoman title (with her origin undone by the end of the first arc, and the rest of the run dancing around how Lana even had any powers).
The nu52 Teen Titans (so many missed opportunities, and missing the point of teen superheroes being teens).

UPDATE: OMG, can't believe I left out the Ric Grayson debacle. The worst abomination of Rebirth. Tied with HIC for worst treatment of a beloved character.
Haha I guess I blocked it out, like most survivors of a horrible event do.

[Jackalope89]

New52. It came out when I wanted to get into comics. But I wanted pre-Flashpoint universe, not that.
Heroes in Crisis in general.
Age up of Jon Kent, and overall direction of the Supers since Bendis took over.
Rebirth Batman.
"Ric" Grayson.
Rebirth Justice League (barring a few oneshots).

[Ulysses]

Bendis coming over to DC and falling flat.
Rebirth fizzling out in favour of DK Metal and Man Who Laughs.
Doomsday Clock (quit telling stories about the DCU! Tell stories IN the DCU! You know, with superheroes going on adventures and punching villains and that kind of ****.)
Azz had a great run on WW and then Rucka came back and told a story specifically running counter to Azz’s. WTF bro?!
DC chickening out on giving Azz a BOP ongoing.
Most of New 52 was trash.
Pretty much all of DCU being gutless.

I am loyalty reading a total of 2 books in DCU canon and one of them sucks a big fat wang-chang and the other would be ok if not for all the YOTV interruptions. DC is in the ditch except for Black Label.

[superduperman]

New 52 Superman was completely botched. This is probably the biggest missed opportunity of the decade for DC. A clear chance to reinvigorate the character was just...totally mishandled to a mystifying level.

Probably this for me. New 52 was the clean slate Superman needed and they acted like they didn't know what to do with him. Taking him back to his GA roots was such a great idea and they just botched it.

Second place would probably be the Wally thing. Again, I'm not a big fan of his either but this guy was the official Flash 20 years ago and they just made him a murderer.

[skyvolt2000]

Both of Cyborg's solo series, because instead of elevating a character that DC was trying to push, I feel they drove him further into the ground. And for that matter, Justice League Odyssey, because it had complications from the get-go, and drove Cyborg even further into the ground to the point where the character is somewhat of a laughing stock to me.

The Justice League book was not been good at all in the previous decade. Every. Single. Run. TERRIBLE.

Anything Venditti wrote about Green Lantern was bad, and I'm baffled he was writing those books for like 5 years.

There are a lot more stories to bring up, but I guess I'll leave it at that for now.

That is what being a BRAND NAME gets you. Quality of book does not matter because of the following-

1) Silver, Bronze & Modern age.
2) Outside media like tv shows and movies.
3) Merchandise

This will always get you a place on the shelf be it comic book stores or places like Barnes & Nobles, library and other places. So that allows bad writers to stay on books for way longer than they should. Unless you get a person universally hated by fans and stores-that book will never suffer. Because that person does not exist. Because someone in or out of comics tolerates them.

Worst of the decade-

Heroes in Crisis... a horse that will get beaten enough so need explanation is needed.

New 52 Static-the poster child of why New 52 stunk. How do you mess HIM up? Someone who has his OWN everything yet needs to go to Harlem with his cloned sister (and one of himself).

Every book with Cyborg. How is that a push? Constantly showing him inferior to everybody else even those in his own books.

The introduction of Wallace West.

[SiegePerilous02]

Heroes in Crisis
Ric Grayson
Abnett on Titans
Robinson and Finch on Wonder Woman
Everything Superman related aside from Morrison's Action run, and Lois and Jimmy's books
GL between Johns and Morrison
Every JL run

[Zaresh]

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.

Titans was pretty disappointing too.
I mean, it was Ok. but...

[Arnoldoaad]

Of the Decade

I feel dissappointed at some people mentioning last year stuff like it was that terrible.

let me educate you a bit.

thinking back on the last ten years i have read comics there is one thing that have always affected me very badly
its not that a character died or that X bad thing happen, it is the feeling that somehow I wasted my time reading an story because it somehow invalidates itself.
for an example of what im NOT talking about, I think Cry For Justice is one of the worst stories ever made, the art is ugly, the story has a bunch of plot holes and it mostley makes no sense,however i loved the Green Arrow book that came out of it that was tied to Brightest Day
and even both Green Arrow and BD and many others were retcon and invalidated by New 52, i never felt that i wasted my time reading those, and some other stories like Justice League: Generation lost are on my top comics.
ergo, I dont regret reading those.

But there is one.
One comic that made me feel AWFUL like all the time that I spend reading the story following up was wasted, that somehow I had been robbed of something
and that comic is...
from the begining of the decade, 2010

WAR OF THE SUPERMEN



For those who dont know the story, this is the "culmination" of the New Krypton Saga that started all the way back on december of 2008 with Geoff Johns under that direction.
basically the Kandor that Superman had had all this time is a fake, which is why he could never return it back to normal size, then when he encounters "the real Brainiac" he discovers the real Kandor and return it back to how it was. later Kandor creates its own planet on the other side of Earth's solar orbit and names it New Krypton.
the following year it introduces a bunch of changes to the entire Superman line of books.
Superman moves to New Krypton
Supergirl meets with her now alive mother
Action comics is taken by 2 Kryptonian heroes named Nightwing and flamebird in an extremely comboluted story in which an 8 year old is aged up and then starts dating a hot 19 year old and the plot makes no sense
and finally Mon-el finally is released from the phantom zone and cured of his lead poison dicease and takes over for superman on earth

and all of these plots sound interesting
the problem is that they arent very good
New Krypton drags a lot after the second arc because everything builds up to the war
Supergirl's mom is terrible and closer to an antagonist than anything else
AC made no sense at all, and it was superweird but it mostly goes nowhere allegedly because the Writer(Greg Rucka) had problems with the editorial of where the storyline was going
and Finally Mon-el
I know I read it, but I cant remember anything about it.
it was also noticible that this was during Dwayne Mcduffie's JLA run in which he was force to put Mon-el instead of superman because of this POS.

so then when War of the Supermen was announced I actually had a theory of what was goign to happen
the whole plot revolves around NK entering in a war with Earth, but then what happens next?
the most popular theory at the time was that since Earth cannot withstand the power of 100k supermen then the planet was goign to be put back into the phantom zone, which at the time was not available but that was going to be the main plot of the miniseries.
I had a better theory
New Krypton was goign to be teleported to the future, exactly 1000 years to the era of Legion of Superheroes since they would be able to deal with this better and supergirl was going on it too as its a classic set up too.

instead what happen was this:



New Krypton is destroyed
most the population of Kandor is gone, most of the few survivors are dealt with during the war.
Supergirl's mom dies
every single secundary character that we meet on World of NK dies
Flamebird dies, Nightwing(Chris Kent) is deaged again and with the help of Mon-el they seal the rest of the Kryptonian forces into the Phantom Zone, LITERALLY RIPPING OFF THE END OF NEW SON OF KRYPTON

and then next month it was like nothign had ever happen
between the 4 superman comics and the miniseries that happen over a year we are over 90+ comics of this saga
and that panel of NK was like nothign ever mattered

and it genuelly didnt matter
immidiately after this saga we get The infamous JMS Superman story "Grounded" in which superman just starts walking through the US, absolutely nothing to do with NK or its fall out
the only comic that really tackles it a bit was Supergirl with the Bizarro Supergirl story arc but it becomes quickly irrelevant

so yeah, this was my worst comic experience by a long shot this decade

[married guy]

My top three worst stories would be:

Heroes In Crisis
Heroes In Crisis
Heroes In Crisis

Then rounding out the Top 5 would be:

Batman #45-47 Way to **** 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.
The Flash (I want to love this book, but it's just so damn pedestrian! I can't remember an issue where I HAD to read the next issue.)

[Flash Gordon]

The New 52 Superman dying, or whatever, and being replaced by some other iteration of Superman- or whatever. That almost killed the character for me, interest wise. Between that and BvS/JL....not a good time for Big Blue. The New 52 Superman wasn't in the best shape, but they could have just moved the needle forward and marched ahead with him.

The strength of REBIRTH, across the line, being squandered for a WATCHMEN crossover and the Batman Who Laughs. I love a lot of the JL stories being told but I do think Rebirth could have led to more. It seemed like a strong course correction after the New 52 fizzled out.