Wrong turns made in storylines for DC Comics

[Stanlos]

Another wrong turn deals with the New Gods and folding them into the DCU. Wolfman and company did a phenomenal job providing a solution but for some reason the recent regimes kinda cucked it up royally giving way to the silliness Captain Smith enumerates above. I wonder if should this dawn start all the way over that maybe all the heroes go back to being in their solo or home realities. WW on her earth. Fawcett characters on their earth. Bats and Supes on their respective earths and so on.

[lefthanded]

I lost interest when DC started redoing their creation of the multiverses with new omnipotents with idiotic names and the creation crises always centered around Earth. Big Evil, Huge Darkslide, Popatua, Big Fingers, whatever. Yawn.

Also, too much Batman and Joker in everything.

The worst thing is that they fused Batman and Joker together and forced it down our throats over two different events.

[Nomads1]

The worst thing is that they fused Batman and Joker together and forced it down our throats over two different events.

I really don't get the fascination with the Laughing Batman, nor with the other "bat-amalgams".

Peace

[caj]

I don't mind Hippolyta being in WW2 but I would rather it happen because she is immortal and there were periods where she left her island rather than due to some time travel nonsense. Her being WW is a deal breaker for most fans (although not for me)

I agree.

I LOVED Hippolyta as the WW2 Wonder Woman. And I especially enjoyed her all-too-short stint in JSA.

[caj]

I read it recently cuz someone mentioned it in the Dark Crisis thread.

Shit's horrible. A 5 week event series where a bunch of shit was happening in tie-ins in-between releases.
Most of the JSA gets killed off.
Jurgens killed 3 Flashes for some reason.
Then he kills Waverider and replaces him with Waverider.
Cosmic Boy is the Time Trapper.

I remember reading CoIE for the 1st time and it wasn't that bad.

Oh my gosh, I had forgotten all about Cosmic Boy being the Time Trapper. Horrible idea.

Also someone mentioned Power Girl's baby during ZH. Forgot all about that too. What was that all about?

[Alan2099]

Superman and Batman having kids.

Tim Drake's father being killed.

Hal wasn't to blame, it was a big yellow space bug.

Impulse becoming Kid Flash.

Barry returning as Flash.

The various rainbow lantern corps.

Wonder Woman being the daughter of Zeus.

Superboy being emo over finding out he's half Luthor DNA and ditching his costume for a T-shirt.

Hawkman's multiple origins.

The Killing Joke, both for what it did to Batgirl and what it did with Joker.

Penguin giving up being a proper supervillain so he can just set around his iceberg lounge waiting for Batman to show up and start being him up for information all the time.

[Stanlos]

Superman and Batman having kids.

Tim Drake's father being killed.

Hal wasn't to blame, it was a big yellow space bug.

Impulse becoming Kid Flash.

Barry returning as Flash.

The various rainbow lantern corps.

Wonder Woman being the daughter of Zeus.

Superboy being emo over finding out he's half Luthor DNA and ditching his costume for a T-shirt.

Hawkman's multiple origins.

The Killing Joke, both for what it did to Batgirl and what it did with Joker.

Penguin giving up being a proper supervillain so he can just set around his iceberg lounge waiting for Batman to show up and start being him up for information all the time.

Hi, Alan! Everytime I think about that bug retcon my brain shuts down. Like wtf.

Anyhoos, I wanted to ask you what KILLING JOKE did to Joker?

[Stanlos]

Oh my gosh, I had forgotten all about Cosmic Boy being the Time Trapper. Horrible idea.

Also someone mentioned Power Girl's baby during ZH. Forgot all about that too. What was that all about?

THAT was the one thing I really didn't like about the Atlantean origin. The baby was born, aged hyperfast, and did battle with Scarabus before turning to flowers

[EmeraldGladiator]

Removing Superboy from the Legion's history did irreparable damage to the franchise and didn't really do anything great.
for Superman. True there were some cool characters created in the multiple reboots but all those same characters could have been introduced into the Legion proper.

As mentioned before DC going Metal over Doomsday Clock
.
DC freeing writers from the shackles of continuity. Not all writers are created equal but back in the day even the biggest writers had to at least acknowledge what had come before. Somewhere in the modern age writers were allowed to take over a franchise without any previous knowledge of the history of the character which can work with the right editor to keep the train on the tracks. Having to work under the yoke of continuity is how the greatest stories are told. If you can't that is what, What If and elseworld titles are for.

DC's approach to their lack of diversity issue. Race/gender/ sexuality changing of established characters only invited problems. I prefer the JSA approach create strong diverse characters and add them to the DC tapestry. Thomas tried it with Amazing Man in All Star Squadron and Johns knocked it out of the park with Mr Terrific. The forcing Cyborg onto founding the JLA did damage to the NTT. DC has other established characters of color like Black Lightning who could have been a founding member. All the changing of existing Legionnaires was dumb too. If you want a snake like member of the Legion make one don't change Projecta.

[Rincewind]

Superman and Batman having kids.

Agree.

Tim Drake's father being killed.

Agree, and I'll raise you Tim Drake's mother being killed.

Hal wasn't to blame, it was a big yellow space bug.

I'd say having Hal turn into a GLC killing machine was the wrong turn. But Parallax should have been buried after Hal came back. A yellow fear bug should not be such a big part of GLC mythos.

Impulse becoming Kid Flash.

I don't mind Bart maturing a little, but don't turn him into a Wally clone.

Barry returning as Flash.

1000% agreed.

The various rainbow lantern corps.

I thought the Sinestro Corp was interesting. Then I realized Johns was going to introduce a Corp for every color. Every single color. Including indigo. Did we really need a Corp between the Blue and Purple Corps? Indigo is only listed to make the Roy G Biv acronym work. You might as well add the Pink, Fuschia, and Seafoam Corp.

Wonder Woman being the daughter of Zeus.

Honestly I never cared enough about WW's origin to care about this change.

Superboy being emo over finding out he's half Luthor DNA and ditching his costume for a T-shirt.

Geoff John had an idea that Connor could be a clone mix of Superman and Luthor. And he's going to write that no matter how little sense it makes for the character.

Hawkman's multiple origins.

And every time someone tries to simplify it, the next writer just makes it even more convoluted.

The Killing Joke, both for what it did to Batgirl and what it did with Joker.

Disagree. This was the first step to making Barbara into Oracle.

Penguin giving up being a proper supervillain so he can just set around his iceberg lounge waiting for Batman to show up and start being him up for information all the time.

Disagree. I prefer the 'legitimate club owner' version over the 'top hat with a weaponized umbrella trying to rob a museum' version.

[godisawesome]

This immediately came to mind for me. And I had been pretty excited to have Barry come back too.

I’m a Wally guy through and through, but to me, the moment the Flash Rebirth went off the rails had almost nothing o do with Barry’s return itself -it came once the Flash Family Rebirth idea got shat on hard by the New 52 and the growing editorial obsession with “preserving the In” by limiting it.

I could tell that Barry’s return wasn’t about appealing to me or audience members from my generation of comics… but there was nothing in the premise of Barry returning that really came at the expense of the Wally-derived stuff I loved. The two best Reverse Flash stories were still Wally’s, and Wally was still there to headline a book eventually.

And I hadn’t been interested in Hal’s return either… but that had led to the Green Lantern Renaissance I’d loved, so this had to be good to, right?

Instead, with the way Flashpoint handled Barry’s return, with an almost paranoid fear of him being over shown by any of the rest of the family… well in hindsight, it sort of comes off like an even more wasteful (but not nearly as problematic) decision as Lucasfilm giving the go-ahead the The Last Jedi’s script.

[Sutekh]

The Killing Joke, both for what it did to Batgirl and what it did with Joker.

Disagree. This was the first step to making Barbara into Oracle.

I think one can disagree with an event without agreeing that later writers managed to make lemonade out of it. Like Jason Todd being beaten to death with a crowbar because of a fan poll (cringe), to the creation of the Red Hood character, which was kind of a neat reinvention of the character.

[Stanlos]

I am still unsure of two things from this thread. The first one is how THE KILLING JOKE "hurt" the Joker. The second is why is the Hal Parallax arc (Emerald Twilight?) referred to as a character assassination. As a challenge from another older thread I went and got all the issues beginning from Reign and Return of Superman all the way through the Lantern books and GG Warrior. What he endured was impossible and the progression of the story was natural.

The Rebirth was horrid but it didn't have to be. And they could have used it to comment on mental illness (his mind snapped and the impetus for that was clear and sufficient).

[Jackalope89]

I agree.

I LOVED Hippolyta as the WW2 Wonder Woman. And I especially enjoyed her all-too-short stint in JSA.

You know, I kind of like it myself. I know there's major pushback from the main Wonder fandom, but maybe in an Elseworld. Like the Wayne Family Adventures clearly does its own thing with the characters, but in fun, wholesome ways. Could do something like that maybe?

[king81992]

The worst thing is that they fused Batman and Joker together and forced it down our throats over two different events.

Batman Who Laughs is/was the incarnation of the comic industry being creatively bankrupt.