Wrong turns made in storylines for DC Comics

[Jim Kelly]

This is going back almost before my time as a reader, but I never understood why in GREEN LANTERN 49 (December 1966), they had Hal Jordan quit his job and leave Coast City. This is something that could have happened in a Marvel title--and maybe that's why they did it--but it made Hal look weak. After this he floats from job to job and doesn't have a consistent supporting cast (no Carol, no Tom). Because Hal is aimless it makes the book look aimless. I think this is the thing that undermined the title. And it's actually something Hal could never fully recover from.

[Thor-Ul]

Bendis YJ comes to mind. Just meandered once the whole multiverse hopping started. It was a solid start though.

Bendis had strong starts but then he don't delivers.

Except the Legion. Bendis Legion was a disaster from the beggining.

[Timothy Hunter]

This is going back almost before my time as a reader, but I never understood why in GREEN LANTERN 49 (December 1966), they had Hal Jordan quit his job and leave Coast City. This is something that could have happened in a Marvel title--and maybe that's why they did it--but it made Hal look weak. After this he floats from job to job and doesn't have a consistent supporting cast (no Carol, no Tom). Because Hal is aimless it makes the book look aimless. I think this is the thing that undermined the title. And it's actually something Hal could never fully recover from.

Personally I loved Hal Jordan moving from job to job. It made him stand our from the rest of the superheroes who held the same job for the entirety of their history.

[John Venus]

I distinctly remember growing cold on Helena Wayne’s Huntress because of that - and I’d been enjoying the back-to-basics approach the story had before that reveal. I still to this day think it was initially a Bertinelli story that then got ordered to change to a Wayne by editorial because of how little trust Didio and co. had in their writers to carry out a reboot that they themselves were arbitrarily changing as it was unfolding.

I was always cold on Bertinelli, mostly because I hated how writers would make Bruce into a jerk in order to justify a conflict between them. Still, I thought her fan base got done dirty with that reveal.

I like having Helena Wayne back but not like that. Overall, the return of Earth 2 Huntress and PG left a lot to be desired.

[Refrax5]

This is going back almost before my time as a reader, but I never understood why in GREEN LANTERN 49 (December 1966), they had Hal Jordan quit his job and leave Coast City. This is something that could have happened in a Marvel title--and maybe that's why they did it--but it made Hal look weak. After this he floats from job to job and doesn't have a consistent supporting cast (no Carol, no Tom). Because Hal is aimless it makes the book look aimless. I think this is the thing that undermined the title. And it's actually something Hal could never fully recover from.

Yeah, I always liked that story, honestly. Hal going through a humbling experience and having to deal with it was a big part of his character growth (which Johns was very eager to undo to make him a one note macho cool guy) and I feel like it fit his restless nature anyway. Mark Waid and Grant Morrison did great stuff with that aspect of Hal's personality, that he needed new challenges, new faces, new everything and that he was, deep down, kind of a lost soul underneath the thrill-seeking and unreliable behavior.

I don't know. I personally felt like all of that gave Hal some complexity and humanity that he really needed.

[dornwolf]

Making Hawkworld take place in the present day instead of being a "year one" type story for the post-Crisis Hawks.

Bringing back the Lost Lanterns just to kill most of them off in quick succession.

Heroes in Crisis, obviously. Good Lord.

Everything that happened in Earth 2 after Robinson left.

Add in aging Jon up and this lines up pretty good

[DABellWrites]

Yeah, I always liked that story, honestly. Hal going through a humbling experience and having to deal with it was a big part of his character growth (which Johns was very eager to undo to make him a one note macho cool guy) and I feel like it fit his restless nature anyway. Mark Waid and Grant Morrison did great stuff with that aspect of Hal's personality, that he needed new challenges, new faces, new everything and that he was, deep down, kind of a lost soul underneath the thrill-seeking and unreliable behavior.

I don't know. I personally felt like all of that gave Hal some complexity and humanity that he really needed.

How can you undo a decades-old storyline? Was that even relevant by the time Hal Jordan came back?

[blunt_eastwood]

I hated having Jason Todd come back to life. That was a wrong turn for me. He should have stayed dead.

They could have done an interesting one off story where a Jason from a parallel universe comes to the main universe and wants revenge on Bruce for not killing the Joker. In the end he could go back to his home universe and Bruce would be left wondering if his Jason would feel the same way.

I don't like having him alive. I don't think you can do anything interesting with him alive and that he works better dead. I also think the Bat family is too crowded.

[Nomads1]

I hated having Jason Todd come back to life. That was a wrong turn for me. He should have stayed dead.

I agree 100%. What was the point of the dawn poll, after all?

Peace

[king81992]

I agree 100%. What was the point of the dawn poll, after all?

Peace

Wasn't the poll(allegedly) rigged?

[John Venus]

I hated having Jason Todd come back to life. That was a wrong turn for me. He should have stayed dead.

They could have done an interesting one off story where a Jason from a parallel universe comes to the main universe and wants revenge on Bruce for not killing the Joker. In the end he could go back to his home universe and Bruce would be left wondering if his Jason would feel the same way.

I don't like having him alive. I don't think you can do anything interesting with him alive and that he works better dead. I also think the Bat family is too crowded.

Only way his arc can culminate in is if he kills the Joker and that can't happen.

Though I wish they had allowed Winnick to stay on and continue to tell Jason's story.

Look at all that Brubaker was able to achieve with Bucky's character during his tenure on Cap's title.

[Guy_McNichts]

- Cassandra Cain's ill-conceived heel turn in One Year Later.
Just the dumbest, poorly thought out, shock for shock value, treating your audience with transparent, giggling contempt. The fact they spent years desperately trying to roll it back just proves what a dumb-assed idea it was. And in retrospect, that it was probably the first shot in Dan DiDio's efforts to regress Barbara back into the Batgirl role just adds another layer of awful to the whole thing.

- Making Zeus Wonder Woman's father and the rapist Amazons.
Just a completely wrong-headed approach to the character and her mythos that misses one of the main points of the character. Wonder Woman was created to subvert the original myths. When you "deconstruct" subversion, you're just regressing. It's like re-making the Shrek movies and deciding this time the ogre will be the villain who kidnaps a princess that doesn't know martial arts. In other words, the exact kind of fairy tale the story isn't supposed to be.


-Wonder Woman's journey/arc in through Infinite Crisis.

I was actually enjoying where they were going with her in the lead-up. Diana's life is falling apart, she's a fugitive, her reputation is getting trampled, her friends are turning their backs on her, the Amazons are being attacked by OMACs, the gods are abandoning her. I was into it. Her back was against the wall, and I wanted to know how it was all going to pay off.

Then Infinite Crisis tells us the real problem is Wonder Woman isn't human and doesn't understand humans. And it's like...since when? Where the hell did that come from?
I imagine if you weren't/don't follow actual Wonder Woman comics, you just accepted it at face value, but going into IC as a WW reader, it honestly comes across like everyone is suddenly gaslighting Diana while she's at her lowest.

Very jarring shift that, speaking for myself, went a long way toward me turning on the idea Batman is one of Diana's closest friends. Because Bruce thoroughly scum-bags her this whole story. The Brother Eye debacle, which directly led to her killing Max Lord in the first place, was all his fault. Then he turns his back on her because she made a difficult choice in a situation HE put her in. And at the end of it all, rather than apologize or admit he did her wrong, Bruce decides she was the problem all along and takes it upon himself to set up a secret identity and government job for her that she never asked for.

In the end, my main takeaway from Infinite Crisis is Bruce hates Diana. He might not think he does, but deep down, he clearly despises her. And this has never been adequately addressed. We have to keep pretending they're the best of friends.


- J. Michael Stracynski's Wonder Woman run, The Odyssey, was an unmitigated disaster and waste of two or three intriguing premises.

For those who don't know, Odyssey tells the story of Wonder Woman facing an evil goddess, failing miserably, and getting turned into the goddess's avatar. The other gods, acting as a deus ex machina, then have what is essentially an alternate timeline doppelganger take Diana's place. They hand-wave how this doesn't screw up continuity with a magic spell. And after an overlong, overwritten, meandering plot that drags on far longer than it needed, we discover the reason WW was so easily corrupted was because she....

.....wait for it.......



...was out of touch with humanity. AGAIN!

And the reason Nu-Diana is able to win and prevail is because she wasn't raised on Themyscira, therefore making her more down to earth and in touch with the little people.
In other words...last of her kind, raised in humble surroundings, comes to believe killing under any circumstance is bad...she was more like Superman.

An alternate timeline where Diana never becomes Wonder Woman? Could've been interesting. We've never seen that done with her.
An alternate timeline where Diana was taken from Themyscira as a child and forced to live on the run in secret? Also an interesting idea.
Diana being forced through a gauntlet of pain and loss because an evil god wants to break her? Could've been a compelling arc.

But none of those was what JMS wanted to tell. He wanted to effectively replace Wonder Woman with his personal fan fic version of the character. And it was torture.

-Levitz's Huntress mini that came out right before Nu52. We were initially lead to thing this was Huntress/Helena Bertinelli but at the end we got the sudden twist that it was actually Helena Wayne all along. A lot of Bertinelli fans didn't like that. There is also no good reason to characterize Wayne as Bertinelli anyway.

I distinctly remember growing cold on Helena Wayne’s Huntress because of that - and I’d been enjoying the back-to-basics approach the story had before that reveal. I still to this day think it was initially a Bertinelli story that then got ordered to change to a Wayne by editorial because of how little trust Didio and co. had in their writers to carry out a reboot that they themselves were arbitrarily changing as it was unfolding.

Oof. This honestly was the final straw that made me stop buying DC Comics for years.

The New 52 (and it actually came out post reboot) had burned me pretty bad. Most titles I was following were cancelled. Characters I liked disappeared into limbo. I was not happy with Azzarello's Wonder Woman. Huntress was all I had left, and midway through this series...SURPRISE! It's Helena Wayne! There never was a Bertinelli! Actually no, there was...but she's dead maybe. Keep buying our comics!

I never cared about Helena Wayne as it was, but this nonsense made me hate her. I don't give a rat's ass about Batman and Catwoman's boring daughter, and this bait-and-switch did not help.

[Kaijudo]

I'd say my biggest one is Identity Crisis...never mind what happened to Sue Dibney or the actions of the League, though both of those are awful, but just the idea that the natural character progression of some longtime villains...Trickster and Pied Piper turning into heroes, Captain Cold and Golden Glider becoming anti-heroes, Dr. Light becoming an ineffectual fool with a fear of children...was done away with as having their minds altered by Zatanna. It was really the first nail in the coffin of DC for me, demonstrating that any kind of reform by a criminal MUST be because of tampering by a hero, rather than actual growth. Just hamfisted fanboy "these guys were bad when I read comics and they should be bad again!" garbage.

Second to that, I say bringing Barry Allen back to life. Regardless of my personal feelings of the character, his sacrifice in Crisis demonstrated true heroism. And the methods in which he was brought back was like Hal Jordan's resurrection turned up to 11, i.e. bending over backwards and not giving a damn about anything that came afterwards because one or two people in power wanted him back. Honestly, even if they brought Barry back as a time-traveling earlier incarnation who knew Crisis was waiting for him at the end, that would've been preferable to the mess we got. And that doesn't even get into the whole Nora Allen thing. The irony being that the same people who felt that Barry had to come back to life also felt he wasn't an interesting enough character without some artificial angst/trauma grafted onto his character...no way he can just be a good guy who became a police scientist to do the right thing. No, clearly his mother had to have been murdered to drive him to do that.

And finally, the last nail in the coffin was the whole Flashpoint/New 52 mess. I still mourn we never got to see the ongoing JLI series spinning out of the Justice League: Generation Lost mini.

[krazijoe]

Wasn't the poll(allegedly) rigged?

Rigged? No it was more biased as a few people robocalled, I believe.

[Stanlos]

Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio on Wonder Woman.