Catharsis: Worst or Most Disappointing of the Decade

[Slim Shady]

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. It’s everything wrong in the this industry. 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 ****. 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 Kings 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.

The Ric storyline is one of the few instances in all my time of reading comics that I seriously felt sad for a character. Usually with a writer or run I don't like, I just say eh not for me, and push it to the side until a change is made. Those cats actually made me feel bad for a fictional comic book character because of how they handled him. It's bad, lazy, and downright disrespectful lol.

[lemonpeace]

The Ric storyline is one of the few instances in all my time of reading comics that I seriously felt sad for a character. Usually with a writer or run I don't like, I just say eh not for me, and push it to the side until a change is made. Those cats actually made me feel bad for a fictional comic book character because of how they handled him. It's bad, lazy, and downright disrespectful lol.

damn I'm bout to step even further off the ledge with this one; I actually dig the Ric Grayson storyline. I besides being a bit less optimistic, the character doesn't feel all that different imo (mind you I wasn't a massive Nightwing guy before) and I actually really enjoy some of the members of team Nightwing for what they're supposed to be. I can understand the Wally West crowd feeling a type of way about Heroes in Crisis but honestly (and I don't want anyone to take this as a slight against them personally) the worst part about the Ric Grayson storyline for me has been how pithy Nightwing fans have been about the story, on every outlet possible, since the announcement of the plotline.

[Godlike13]

The Ric Grayson storyline awfulness and management mess speaks for itself, while the Nightwings are just a blatant rip off of We Are Robin. Which didn’t even work. Trying to hide behind Ric and blame the readers is the same thing the crappy creators try to do, and it’s bull. Look at Grayson. If it was actually any good people would have been open to it, or at least would have become more open to it.

Btw there was no announcement of the plot line. They had to keep it secret for the Batman moment, and then the Nightwing writer backed out. So they had to make up whatever they could last minute and fill in the art they had. Nightwing readers was literally presented with *read Batman, and now here is Ric by we don’t know yet...it’s Scott Lobdell and others

[Arnoldoaad]

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).

one of the things that was really weird about Alura being evil was that when she appeared she was fine, then there was this moment in which she is hit by some radiation or explosion or something and then she became a b****
and I say its weird because the istory heavily implied that somehow she was affected by this radiation but it is never clarified that this made her evil or not because she dies and then no one cares
This story is FULL with aborted storylines everywhere
like I said before, it was a year and a half completely wasted to the point that Superman might had not been published during that time

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.

I dont know if maybe I have matured more in the past decade or it is simply that im not invested as before because I get why people dont like Heroes In Crisis
but to me HiC is just: yeah it sucks for Wally West now, but by next year either everything will be fine or somethign worse will happen and no one will remember it

same thing wit Ric
Ric Grayson is one of the stupidiest ideas in comics
But NO ONE will remember it ever happen once the real nightwing is back
Its future is not this mark as one of the worst or controversial, it will just be a black hole in everyone's memories.
it will be as quickly forgotten as that time that Arkham Asylum was moved to the Wayne Mansion

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

Well actually this was a very heated topic all the way back
I remember discussing it on the official DC forums before they were eliminated and rightfully so since they had practically no moderators like here

the whole thing didnt started as a miniseries, it started as a pitch for a second Justice League book.
As ducklord mentions James Robinson still had a reputation back then, he had made a couple of blunders here and there(like Face the Face, the arc that preceded Morrison's Batman) but he was still "The guy who made Starman" still one of the best comics ever made.
so yes, there was actual genuine exitement. specially because also at the same time this is when Mcduffie started his run on JLA, which wasnt well regarded so people were hungry for a good JL story

this wasnt it.

the main problem is 100% Robinson's writing
he might have been one of the greatest but on that era he became LAZY
If you havent read Starman(and you should) there is an arc in which The Mist defeats the Justice League of Europe and bit by bit it is exactly the plot that Prometus uses on Cry for Justice even to the point of disguising himself as a hero to enter the JL HQ
he simply copied himself and when the mini was done later on 2010 he took over the JLA book to the disdain of many people.
and the worst part is that It actually had a good setting, a lot of people called this the replacement JLA because Donna Troy was in instead of WW, Dick Grayson was Batman, Mon-el was still around, Starfire was part too, Jade joins in later, so it felt like the Titans finally took over the JL.
Its been years since I read it but from what I remember Robinson pretty much copied the same plot for 4 arcs straight, some unbeliebable powerful force appears out of nowhere and the JLA pretty much looks for someone who can help them stop it, usually an obscure character and then everything is resolved by a deus ex machina
rince and repeat

James Robinson's JLA run is one of the worst comic runs of the decade.

[Godlike13]

Wasn’t Cry for Justice at the end of the previous decade?

[Avengers1986]

New 52
Heroes in Crisis
Justice League of America Meltzer run ( I know this was in the 2000s but I have a short list)
Ric Grayson
Aging Jon Kent which ruined Super Sons, don't know if this was done so Bendis could write a teenage character ala Peter Parker in the dc universe

[married guy]

New 52
Heroes in Crisis
Justice League of America Meltzer run ( I know this was in the 2000s but I have a short list)
Ric Grayson
Aging Jon Kent which ruined Super Sons, don't know if this was done so Bendis could write a teenage character ala Peter Parker in the dc universe

You DIDN'T like Meltzer's run on the JLA?? I loved his Justice League run. Vixen, Roy as Red Arrow, Black Canary. Great stuff. The only hiccup he has for me was Identity Crisis. THAT was a stinker.

[lemonpeace]

The Ric Grayson storyline awfulness and management mess speaks for itself, while the Nightwings are just a blatant rip off of We Are Robin. Which didn’t even work. Trying to hide behind Ric and blame the readers is the same thing the crappy creators try to do, and it’s bull. Look at Grayson. If it was actually any good people would have been open to it, or at least would have become more open to it.

Btw there was no announcement of the plot line. They had to keep it secret for the Batman moment, and then the Nightwing writer backed out. So they had to make up whatever they could last minute and fill in the art they had. Nightwing readers was literally presented with *read Batman, and now here is Ric by we don’t know yet...it’s Scott Lobdell and others

I count solicitations as announcements, as soon as Nightwing got shot people start complaining and then they saw the solicits and it's been nonstop ever since.

clearly the "awfulness" doesn't speak for itself because I checked out the storyline mainly due to how much dick fans we complaining about it, expecting some kind of horrible travesty of a story, and it just wasn't remotely as bad. like the way people talk about this storyline you'd think Dick Grayson lost his memory and started raping and pillaging orphanages or something. at worst it's a mediocre amnesia plot, I've seen the story all kinds of ways in all kinds of mediums, just rest in the glooooory that they are ephemeral.

eh, the similarities between team Nightwing and We are Robin is pretty superficial, THAT speaks for itself. while we're on We are Robin, i don't get the idea that We are Robin "didn't work" because people act as if the premise lent itself to replace the concept of Robin. both Bruce Wayne Batman and Damian Wayne Robin were still in stories and were clearly meant to come back; so what exactly were people expecting We are Robin to do? and I'm asking that as someone who personally loved much of We art Robin (I didn't much care for Robin War). not every story concept needs to be endlessly dragged on; that's one of the biggest issues with american comics tbh. as for Grayson, from what I have gauged, people were more than receptive to it. in fact, I'm fairly certain that title helped raise Tom King's profile at DC and (while I never read it myself because I largely avoid Nightwing's stories) I've rarely if ever heard anyone who has read that storyline that didn't enjoy it. but hey, different strokes my guy. personally there are FAR FAR worse things to happen to characters at DC than creators tripping over themselves to try and find new angles for a character like Dick Grayson.

[9th.]

I count solicitations as announcements, as soon as Nightwing got shot people start complaining and then they saw the solicits and it's been nonstop ever since.

clearly the "awfulness" doesn't speak for itself because I checked out the storyline mainly due to how much dick fans we complaining about it, expecting some kind of horrible travesty of a story, and it just wasn't remotely as bad. like the way people talk about this storyline you'd think Dick Grayson lost his memory and started raping and pillaging orphanages or something. at worst it's a mediocre amnesia plot, I've seen the story all kinds of ways in all kinds of mediums, just rest in the glooooory that they are ephemeral.

eh, the similarities between team Nightwing and We are Robin is pretty superficial, THAT speaks for itself. while we're on We are Robin, i don't get the idea that We are Robin "didn't work" because people act as if the premise lent itself to replace the concept of Robin. both Bruce Wayne Batman and Damian Wayne Robin were still in stories and were clearly meant to come back; so what exactly were people expecting We are Robin to do? and I'm asking that as someone who personally loved much of We art Robin (I didn't much care for Robin War). not every story concept needs to be endlessly dragged on; that's one of the biggest issues with american comics tbh. as for Grayson, from what I have gauged, people were more than receptive to it. in fact, I'm fairly certain that title helped raise Tom King's profile at DC and (while I never read it myself because I largely avoid Nightwing's stories) I've rarely if ever heard anyone who has read that storyline that didn't enjoy it. but hey, different strokes my guy. personally there are FAR FAR worse things to happen to characters at DC than creators tripping over themselves to try and find new angles for a character like Dick Grayson.

We Are Robin was great, idk what anyone says

[Godlike13]

I count solicitations as announcements, as soon as Nightwing got shot people start complaining and then they saw the solicits and it's been nonstop ever since.

clearly the "awfulness" doesn't speak for itself because I checked out the storyline mainly due to how much dick fans we complaining about it, expecting some kind of horrible travesty of a story, and it just wasn't remotely as bad. like the way people talk about this storyline you'd think Dick Grayson lost his memory and started raping and pillaging orphanages or something. at worst it's a mediocre amnesia plot, I've seen the story all kinds of ways in all kinds of mediums, just rest in the glooooory that they are ephemeral.

eh, the similarities between team Nightwing and We are Robin is pretty superficial, THAT speaks for itself. while we're on We are Robin, i don't get the idea that We are Robin "didn't work" because people act as if the premise lent itself to replace the concept of Robin. both Bruce Wayne Batman and Damian Wayne Robin were still in stories and were clearly meant to come back; so what exactly were people expecting We are Robin to do? and I'm asking that as someone who personally loved much of We art Robin (I didn't much care for Robin War). not every story concept needs to be endlessly dragged on; that's one of the biggest issues with american comics tbh. as for Grayson, from what I have gauged, people were more than receptive to it. in fact, I'm fairly certain that title helped raise Tom King's profile at DC and (while I never read it myself because I largely avoid Nightwing's stories) I've rarely if ever heard anyone who has read that storyline that didn't enjoy it. but hey, different strokes my guy. personally there are FAR FAR worse things to happen to characters at DC than creators tripping over themselves to try and find new angles for a character like Dick Grayson.

The solicitations were changed. Nightwing got shot and then the next week they were introduced to Ric. Solicitations had to be change after they were already ordered even.

It’s not just Dick fans complaining, no one is into it. It’s not drawing in a new audience any more then it’s keeping the audience the book had. Every month the book sees new lows under this direction. It’s been widely rejected. But your right, he’s not killing orphans. He’s not doing anything. It’s a 2 year long text book example of mindless decompression and creative lazyness.

The similarities are not superficial, they are blatant. So blatant they one of the issues had “We Are Nightwing” on the title. They took an idea that didn’t take off, which isn’t saying We Are Robin was necessarily bad but more just no one really gave a crap, and tried to lazily repackage it in their desperation.
No one is tripping over themselves to find new angles for Dick Grayson. They tried to propel an angle off a Batman stunt, but failed to actually find anyone to actually create anything with it. So they instead got there fast working in house guys, who can’t even crack the top 100 anymore, to rip off and come up with whatever they can last minute. And when it was clear it isn’t working, they just kept going anyway. This level of blatant we don’t give **** will take years for the character to rebound from.

Ric isn’t them trying something different and it not connecting, cause Ric really isn’t doing anything new or different, it isn’t even them them doing something controversial to invoke a reaction. Ric is them thinking they can produce whatever no effort dog **** they can, with no care to the actual quality or standards of what they are producing.

[Arnoldoaad]

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.

As a way to keep moving this thread I will dig a little bit on the way-back-machine that is the internet to remind myself what stuff happen in the decade and try to mention the worst DC comics of those years
Also I hope that I will remind some people of some old traumas

I dont know how far will I go so I invite anyone else to continue

2010s
starting with January and all the way to the end.

First the good side

this was actually a great year for comics

Morrison was still writing Batman & Robin
An unknown writer who just the previous year had worked impersonating Buzz Lightyear on disneyworld by the name of Scott Snyder got his break into DC with a little indie-like horror book named of American Vampire.
Green Lantern and GLC were great as Blackest Night was still going on and later it would bring Brightest Day and with BD it also brought Justice League: Generation Lost, the last thing that Judd Winnick wrote for DC and one of his best works by far.
If you want to know why my avatar is Maxwell Lord, it is because of this book. I love it! go read it!
Rucka took over Tec and started his Batwoman run.
Gail Simone was writing Secret Six and on this year she starts the Cats in the Cradle storyline which is literally the best thing she has ever written in her entire career.
Stephanie Brown had started Batgirl on a very memorable run by Brian Miller.
A deeply underated title by the name of R.E.B.E.L.S. was still going on
Chris Yosh's Red Robin was an excellent title with some of the best art provided by Marcus To
Once New Krypton endeds Sterling Gates takes over Supergirl in which I would like to say is the best Supergirl run of the decade, as she keeps changing directions constantly, this run always stuck with me and it was probably because it had the most human version of Kara.
Also after NK, Paul Cornel takes over Action Comics with Lex Luthor trying to look for a ring of power of his own.
Following Cry for Justice we got a new Green Arrow book in which the ruins of Star City brought a magical forest


Now the bad side
I got reminded that the comic book of MAGOG existed


Does anyone remember this horrible thing?

The New Krypton saga was going on still which later finalizes with The Last Stand of New Krypton and The War of the Supermen and I already explained my thoughts on that. and then after that we got the infamous Superman Grounded Storyline By JMS
on the side of Wonder Woman she was dealing with the Rise of the Olympian storyline in which basically Zeus creates a Wonder Man for some reason that is never well explained as Gail Simone's WW run is not good at all.
However that was not all that DC had in store for WW at the beginning of the decade as JMS also took over Wonder Woman for an All-New direction that was not very well received to say the least.
for some reason DC thought that JSA could handle a second title and made JSA:All-Stars, excellent cast pretty mediocre content.
Another book I completely forgot existed was Felicia Henderson's Teen Titans, mediocre storylines, mediocre team, no wonder I forgot about this era.
Justice League was finishing the mediocre run of the late Dwayne Mcduffie only to land on the terrible run that was James Robinson's run after finishing Cry for Justice
and from the horrible deeps of the bowels of cry for justice came a little miniseries named
RISE OF ARSENAL


say what you want about Heroes In Crisis.
It never got as bad as this.

and even that isnt as bad as another little title brought by Brightest Day .
Eric Wallace's TITANS

This is not just one of the worst of the decade, it might be one of the worst comics ever made
a set of completely unlikable characters doing shocking and unredeamable deeds, the big difference between this and something like Simone's Secret Six was that you actually like the S6 even though they were villains because they fought people who were worse than them
but on this book, there was no one worse than them.
The run starts by the shocking assasination of the Atom Ryan Choi whose dead body is then put inside a match box and then it only gets worse. at some point Cinder a character whose power is that she lits on fire kills a guy by simply having sex with him then turning on her powers while he is inside her.
The worst of the worst.

and thats basically the good and the bad of 2010 I may continue with 2011 later

[Arnoldoaad]

Wasn’t Cry for Justice at the end of the previous decade?

It started at the end of 2009 but ended on 2010
I still count it as such

New 52
Heroes in Crisis
Justice League of America Meltzer run ( I know this was in the 2000s but I have a short list)
Ric Grayson
Aging Jon Kent which ruined Super Sons, don't know if this was done so Bendis could write a teenage character ala Peter Parker in the dc universe

Meltzer's run happen on 2007
so it doesnt count

[Agent Z]

Heroes in Crisis

Azz had a great run on WW and then Rucka came back and told a story specifically running counter to Azz’s. WTF bro?!

Azzarello did the same thing with his WW run. Both were working with reboots.

[Agent Z]

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.

How did the mid 2000s remove what made Lois a good character?

[Valentonis]

New 52 Birds of Prey
The handling of the Titans
New 52 Static
The lack of commitment to the new age of heroes
The treatment of Dick and the rest of his gen

@lemonpeace: I respect your take on Ric Grayson, even if I don't necessarily agree, but if you didn't really like NW in the first place it's probably easier for you to not be bothered by Ric. Like, I'm not the biggest Stars Wars fan, for instance, so while some of the fanbase reviled the newest movie for valid reasons, I enjoyed it as a mindless popcorn space flick.