Creator's Pet/Comic Books

DC

 * Superboy-Prime is a funny case in that the authors hate him personally, but like using him. He's their concentrated embodiment of the Straw Fan arguing that They Changed It, Now It Sucks, and is every bit as overpowered and irritating as a Fix Fic protagonist who destroys everyone's lives to make things go the way they "should." Those who see the insult and fit it are, of course, pissed. Those who see the insult and don't fit it are really pissed. Those who don't see or care about the insult wish he would stop interrupting the plot or at least lose a little power.
 * They may have gotten the message after Countdown to Final Crisis, which proved how poorly he was written because of the insult. Blackest Night seems to have tried to take steps to make him a little better.
 * Danny Chase from DC Comics' New Titans was universally loathed by fans within a few issues of his first appearance. He was a Cousin Oliver (he even looked like the original Cousin Oliver) introduced to make the team seem younger, as he was only in his early teens while everyone else was pushing 20. Despite his age, he constantly argued with the other members of the team, criticized them, was supposed to be a genius superspy teenager with telekinetic powers, but then totally went crazy with fear whenever an actual fight took place. The only person who didn't seem to grasp how loathed this character was was writer Marv Wolfman who, to this day, still insists it was the readers' fault for not "getting the character".
 * As a tip, in a series about costumed superheroes with codenames, whose fans presumably enjoy reading about costumed superheroes with codenames, having a character who continually goes on about how lame costumes and codenames are and how he's too cool for a costume or codename probably isn't going to go down too well.
 * It also hurt that Marv Wolfman had no idea how to write a telekinetic to complement the Titans' diverse power set. Chase's powers were mainly shown to be (at best) extremely limited: at best he could levitate himself (but only while sitting Indian style) and throw small objects around at bad guys to annoy them. Jean Grey he wasn't; this combined with his wussy behavior during combat, made him practically useless in battle. As bad as Cypher was power-wise, at least he had training in hand-to-hand combat and was willing to take a bullet for his teammates when necessary.
 * Cypher was also a nice guy who got along well with all his teammates and provided emotional support, while Danny was... not. Protip for DC: having a character be genuinely likeable within the comic often helps him be likeable to the readers of the comic.
 * When written by his fanboys, Batman becomes this in spades. Frank Miller and Doug Moench are especially guilty of this, having him being perfect in every way, capable of easily defeat all other superheroes like Superman or Spawn just by virtue of being Batman, other characters gushing about how awesome he is and him easily thwarting every danger just because he is Batman. Thankfully, DC has tried to balance out this by establishing Hal Jordan as Batman's better; granted, Bruce has been shown to be able to steal Hal's ring off his hand, but Hal has had the pleasure of punching Batman in the face and generally speaking, shown as the only person in the DC Universe that Batman can't bully or intimidate or outright threaten into subservience. And then Batman punched him right back in a later issue.
 * JLA: Act of God gets this particularly bad, with all the heroes becoming utterly useless except those who opt to train like Batman. Those that do practically worship him and he insults them and denigrates their previous contributions. Because the superpowered heroes were never at risk. Even when they were fighting demigod-level threats like Darkseid and Doomsday who could splatter Batman with an errant breath.
 * While you might think the comic is making a good point, the problem is more how EVERYONE talks about how Batman (and just Batman, other tech based heroes are barely mentioned) was always the BEST of them EVER. All characters are derailed into whining fanboys for Batman who does almost nothing in the story. He doesn't actually try to help anyone or gather the heroes together, instead just stays in Gotham and only helps once the heroes come to him and ask for help. So it isn't even a very heroic version of Batman.
 * Dwayne McDuffie had Green Lantern John Stewart, though this was largely part of self-fulfilling prophecy; a lot of fans didn't like Stewart for the way that leapfrogged Kyle Rayner to be the JLU Green Lantern, which led to McDuffie (a black creator who was quite vocal on what he felt was racism within the TV and comic industry and who had inherited Stewart on the cartoon from the previous showrunner) making some rather off-putting comments where he basically accused anyone who hated Stewart as being racist, which led to the widespread notion that Stewart was McDuffie's pet character. Fast forward a couple of years when McDuffie DID take over the JLA comic, he was made to use John instead of Hal as the JLA Green Lantern on orders from above (partly due to the fact that Hal was being given HIS OWN JLA TEAM!). Sadly, McDuffie failed miserably with regards to the transition process and the overall backlash (aided by the fact that Hal's JLA spin-off was reduced to a mini-series when it became apparent that James Robinson's artist was never going to get the book done on time) led to Hal being restored to the title until Cry for Justice was released/John re-instated just long enough for him to be bounced again and replaced with Hal (who was then quickly replaced with Jade when they needed a book to focus on her Brightest Day storyline).
 * One could argue that the Green Lantern has been a source of shilling the creator's pet since the 90s. Start with Kyle Rayner replacing Hal Jordan and the writers trying to shill him to win over the fan base disgusted by Hal's Face Heel Turn in Emerald Twilight. Fast forward 10 years, and a number of those fans are now writers/editors for DC, and they promptly retcon the heel turn and restore Hal to being GL Numero Uno - and now must shill him to the fan base who grew up with Kyle and are upset with him getting booted down - not to mention John Stewart as described above.

Marvel

 * Wolverine of the X-Men. It's a trend which no adaptation of the X-men has escaped. Any issue with the lineup of them, and Wolverine will be front and center. There was even a cartoon series called Wolverine and the X-Men, where the X-Men get second billing. The first three X-Men films (especially the third one) are arguably more like Wolverine films than X-Men films. Even in the old Marvel RPG, Wolverine violates a cardinal playing role, he doesn't lose Karma (Experience Points) when he kills because he doesn't feel guilty, essentially making him the only playable hero in the entire system that is immune to consequences.
 * Another card related one was the tie-in Top Trumps-like card game for the third film (one which arguably solidifies Logan as the Creators Pet). Each card had four traits, Speed, Strength, Fighting Ability, and Intelligence, each ranking one to seven. Most characters had about two for two of the traits, a four for one more, and six or seven (EG, Angel had lower traits for the latter three, but a six in speed, while Mystique had low for all but fighting skills and intelligence, and Colossus excelled at strength). Logan had six or seven for every trait. He's apparently a better fighter than Mystique (which as X-Men #1 showed was not the case), faster than Angel, stronger than Colossus, and smarter than Doctor Doom.
 * Wolverine started out cool, but then he was on every cover, even issues he wasn't actually, you know, in. The fact that Marvel has been pushing him as their main hero has not endeared long-term comic fans at all.
 * Part of what went wrong with Logan is simply that he has been so overused that he has no character core anymore. So many writers have used him, and played mainly on his appeal to the fantasies of young teen males who think the caricature version is kewl, and his Healing Factor and other powers so used and misused, that there's nothing much left.
 * However, thanks to the skilled pen of Jason Aaron, it's apparently become cool to admit you like Wolverine again; he won the Comic Book Resources X-Books forum's "Best Hero of 2011" award.
 * X-23 gets hate for this too. Being a teenage Opposite Sex Clone of Wolverine, she is everything everyone hates about him, with very few of his redeeming qualities like wisdom and compassion. Instead, she comes across as an antisocial jerk, and yet the writers fight themselves over who puts her in what.
 * Her role in New X-Men in particular, once her creators Craig Kyle and Chris Yost took over the title, you could be forgiven for thinking was written by a thirteen-year-old girl. She's portrayed as having New Powers as the Plot Demands, usually something related to animalistic senses, that enable her to figure things out before anyone else, as well as ten times the competence of the other kids with none of their charm coming with the territory of being inexperienced teenage superheroes. As the final punch to the gut, she hooks up with the hot bad boy character after his original love interest is clumsily written out.
 * And it didn't do her any favors that the original main characters of the series were either unceremoniously Killed off, written out, and Demoted to Extra to make room for X-23 being the primary focus.
 * This is ironic, given that she was initially an Ensemble Darkhorse when she originated on X-Men: Evolution. Perhaps it's the fact she has poor characterisation these days whilst being a regular (always a failure of a combination for any character).
 * The Sentry from Mighty Avengers, Dark Avengers, Age of the Sentry, World War Hulk, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign, Siege, Fall of the Hulks, New Avengers, and The Sentry mini series. Writers love using him, fans hate seeing him. If they wanted to see Superman with mental problems, they would've just gone to Super Dickery.
 * The Good News: The Bad News:
 * He's also an example of a God Mode Sue. He's better at molecular manipulation than Molecule Man, for instance. Of course, all this may come with the territory, given that he's heavily implied to be and all that...
 * Kitty Pryde became Peter Parker's girlfriend in Ultimate Spider-Man and, after they broke up, remained a part of the cast and was fit into as many plotlines as possible. Brian Bendis has gone on the record to state that he's always liked Kitty Pryde from back when he was a kid and that he enjoys using her. Some don't mind the attention paid to her...but others do.
 * Some characters in his Avengers comics - Spider-Woman, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones and Ares- are accused of being Creator's Pets. Of course, Bendis has a tendency to showing his affection by heartlessly breaking them, so all five went through some serious crap under his care. And that's not counting Bendis's "love" for Hawkeye, who has become nothing more than a vehicle from which Bendis attacks his critics (and to spite fans whose overwhelming hatred for Bendis' attempt to permanently kill Clint off led to Bendis being forced against his will to bring him back to life, at which point he turned him into a ninja to further spite fans).
 * Mary Jane Watson-Parker of the Spider-Man comics is an inversion: Most of the fans like her and want stories featuring her, while creators (especially Joe Quesada) hate her and are willing to ruin the franchise to get rid of her. This might be because they were readers when they were young, when MJ became the target of Die for Our Ship from Gwen fans following, and MJ and Peter's marriage became a Base Breaker move. As MJ went through massive amounts of character development and became a much more beloved character, a combination of lazy writers using her in uncreative ways during The Clone Saga and old hatred of her and/or the marriage led to people like Quesada gaining control over the writing.
 * Carlie Cooper, however, has been playing this frustratingly straight:
 * Introduced at the start of the BND reboot, she was quickly established as being Peter Parker's next love interest. Initially she started off as a minor character who just happened to have a crush on Peter, but recently writers have been cranking it up how much she's perfect for Peter, having both Peter complain about not being worthy of her and even Mary Jane telling him he needs to hook up with her. Oh, and did we mention she's named after Joe Quesada's daughter?
 * Also she's coming off as a Composite Character to many. Tries hard to invoke the Nerds Are Sexy trope, presumably so that she's "on the same intellectual level" as Peter or some such nonsense? Deb Whitman. Has a tragic past involving her father (really, couldn't even make it the mother? Or another authority figure?), that really doesn't come off as being as bad as MJ's was. Tuted as being the "perfect girl" for Peter, being idolized (this time by people in-universe, as opposed to in fans' memories). Gwen Stacy (Fans hope she will complete this set by dying) Falling in love with "plain ol' Peter Parker? Mary-Jane again.
 * However, there's a light at the end of the tunnel: the recent Spider Island storyline ends with Carlie breaking up with Peter precisely because he didn't tell her he was Spider-Man, while Mary Jane gets closer to Peter. The comic also focuses on Carlie's negative traits and MJ's positive ones: when people in New York start developing Spidey's powers, Carlie uses hers to play around while MJ helps Peter and the Avengers fight the Big Bad.
 * Unfortunately, she's still not going anywhere anytime soon. Despite having had broken up with Peter, Carlie is still sticking around in the book. In addition, she's starting to pop up in other books like the Punisher. Not only won't she go away, she's being featured in more titles despite an utter lack of enthusiasm on the part of the readers. And if you were thinking that she'd be portrayed in a negative light, the creators insist that she- out of anyone else in the books- is perhaps the "sanest" member of the cast.
 * Nurse Annie in Uncanny X-Men. Universally maligned "writer" Chuck Austen introduced the single mother/apparent expert in mutant physiology shortly into his equally despised run on X-Men. Word of God stated she was based on Austen's real-life wife, never a good start. He quickly made her the inane central character in many of his story lines. This usually included:
 * Vapidly gossiping about sexy men with once-intelligent characters Husk and Northstar.
 * Throwing tantrums/acting holier than thou during battles and various X-Men crises.
 * Dispensing shallow advice to other characters on their "romantic woes".
 * Wrapping bandages around injured characters' heads (regardless of their actual injury)
 * Apparently boning Iceman for no apparent reason.
 * Annie is mostly remembered for her creepy relationship with Havok, which started as a crush when she was caring for the longtime X-Man whilst he was in a comatose state. Once revived, Alex showed an immediate and totally unfounded attraction for Annie also. It was eventually revealed Annie's equally creep mutant son Carter had been setting the two up on 'psychic dates' for months, allowing Austen to place the two characters in a relationship without needing to bother about annoying things such as context or developing a rapport between the characters. To further infuriate and confound readers, Austen also depicted Havok's longtime partner Polaris as an insane, homicidal, bitchy ex to further drive home the point that Annie was The Virgin Mary and Ghandi rolled into one.
 * Fan reaction to Annie (and Austen's run in general) was overwhelmingly negative, a fact that the writer dismissed as unreasonable "trolls". With his final story arc with the X-Men franchise, Austen wrote Annie and Carter out of the X-Men books. The pre-Austen Polaris/Havok relationship was restored in time and Annie was never mentioned again, presumable dying on the way back to her home planet.
 * Roger Stern really liked Monica Rambeau, the Captain Marvel of The Avengers, and actively pushed her into the limelight. He repeatedly had other characters talk about how powerful she was, men gushed over her beauty, and she was even made Avengers leader. The fans never quite took to her, but she was never really hated. She did develop a larger fanbase once Warren Ellis made her a member of his Too Good to Last Nextwave series.
 * Thanos Of Titan and Adam Warlock have fans but readers find Thanos's continual presence at the center of crisis crossovers annoying, along with the fact Jim Starlin will delete or handwave less glamorous showings of his pet Thanos, unless the reason for them was his other pet Adam Warlock. This is also part of the reason Squirrel Girl has fans because she was part of a gag that parodied Thanos's uber competence and the tendency for his screw-ups to be explained away as inferior clones or part of his plan.
 * Many of Thanos's fans like him for being a vile villain but don't like the attempts to make him seem sympathetic despite hardly doing anything sympathetic ever. He routinely kills billions of people and not just in A Million Is a Statistic ways but takes much joy in causing as much suffering as he can individual to individual. We're supposed to feel bad because he's in love with the personification of death and was rejected when she realized he was no good.
 * Most Thanos fans enjoy Thanos not from his original appearances but from the 90s, when he was a Deadpan Snarker and someone who sought to save the universe not because it was the right thing to do but because Thanos pissed off Death and doesn't want to even contemplate what would happen to him if the universe was destroyed since Death won't let him into the afterlife.
 * This created a bit of irony of sorts, as Thanos received a great deal of character development from Starlin in the 90s at the expense of Adam Warlock in terms of Warlock being reduced to Thanos's emo sidekick.
 * This created a bit of irony of sorts, as Thanos received a great deal of character development from Starlin in the 90s at the expense of Adam Warlock in terms of Warlock being reduced to Thanos's emo sidekick.

Other

 * In the Sonic the Hedgehog comic, a character was introduced named Tommy Turtle, a childhood friend of Sonic that had never been mentioned before, but had once taught him a valuable life lesson. He died in his first appearance while performing a Heroic Sacrifice to save Sonic, but about a year later was revealed to not have actually been killed and was brought back. Unfortunately, after bringing him back, the writers didn't seem to have any real idea what to do with him, and attempts to make him more relevant (such as having him become infested with nanobots, causing him to develop Transformers-esque abilities) ended up just appearing ridiculous and making fans hate him. In Sonic Grams while Archie staff admitted that they knew a lot of their fans hadn't liked the character, they'd hoped they could change their tune, showing the clear divide between the staff at Archie at the time and the people actually reading the book. In the end writer Ian Flynn said when compiling a list of the comic's most unpopular characters, Tommy still ranked very high among the fanbase despite efforts to make him popular by previous writers. Tommy was therefore killed off (performing another Heroic Sacrifice) and hasn't been seen since.
 * Different writers have met criticism over over usage of certain cast members. Ken Penders was noted for his expansion of the Echidna brotherhood, which by the end of his run had its population and story background bloated to a convoluted rate. This treatment did not seem mutual with later writers, who decided to limit their numbers and had numerous Echidna characters Killed Off for Real. Ian Flynn however has been noted for his recent usage of Sally Acorn, reestablishing her as an active Freedom Fighter and love interest for Sonic and giving her a fairly notable role in nearly every arc (ranging from main character to prominant supporting character). Granted in both cases there are still a fair amount of supporters, though it's obvious the fanbase is very polarized by their heavy usage in the comics.
 * Drift from IDW's Transformers comic hit this status before he even debuted because the promotion of the character was so obnoxious. He was hyped up at conventions as "The Wolverine of Transformers," which struck many fans as odd because Grimlock pretty much has a lock on that role. Drift has a Weeaboo vibe thanks to the rising sun motif and Gratuitous Japanese on his car mode, as well as being described as a "drift-racing Transformer" created because he filled a niche no other character could (never mind the Loads and Loads of Characters in Transformers and the fact that at least one drift racer already existed). He boasts Implausible Fencing Powers, an annoying arrogant smirk that never goes away, and copious shilling from fan-favorite Kup. He debuted alongside the Wreckers, a group of well-loved badasses, with no explanation except that everyone thinks he's so awesome. There are even instances of characters asking where he is when he's off screen. Oh, and did we mention that he's some sort of mysterious wild card who is not really an Autobot but is trusted by Kup and company anyway? And that he has a level of morality far greater than those mean old Autobots, and holds it over them in their darkest hour with a "Maybe you deserved this."? Essentially, he's a heavily promoted character who is cool pretty much because the comic tells us he's cool and lets him curb stomp scary Insecticon drones (while wearing that Primus-damned smirk) and impress the actually likable characters. The similarity to The Simpsons parody of Creator's Pets has led Transformers fans to start a meme of quoting "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show" in reference to Drift, hoping desperately that his home planet needs him and that he dies on the way back.
 * Shoehorning Drift-chan in the children's "I Am Optimus Prime" Robot Heroes book sure doesn't help his case any either. And he does nothing, he's just there because we're supposed to believe he's awesome. The Transformers Wiki even gives as picture captions, "He's your horrible fancharacter." and "Seriously, you made this guy up when you were eight."
 * The new Drift miniseries shows his Backstory with the 3rd neutral faction, which is apparently made of Ninja Samurai Gundams.
 * Who reside in a Mary Suetopia, to boot.
 * One of the biggest problems with Drift is that he's not only writer Shane McCarthy's totally awesome fancharacter, he's also become editor-in-chief Chris Ryall and editor Denton J. "Doubledealer" Tipton's pet character. Hence his inclusion in the children's book "I Am Optimus Prime" (ensuring kids reading the book would remember the totally awesome character that IDW totally invented) and under Tipton's penmanship, ended up having his horrible advice taken by Perceptor over the veteran, experienced Kup's more sensible advice, abandoning science in favor of becoming a dull-as-hell "sniperer".
 * You know Drift's bad when Flatline (from the movie spin off comics and another writer's personal creation) is more likable than he is.
 * Rescued From the Scrappy Heap is taking effect thanks to now being written by fan-favorite James Roberts.
 * Well, considering how Roberts is playing up The Fundamentalist aspects of Drift and including entertaining little tidbits like him being Rodimus' speechwriter (which is even funnier when you remember the core of his personality aside from swords was "delivers a lot of pseudo-philosophical rousing speeches)... It seems Drift is ascending from the Scrappy Heap as we speak.
 * The Silent Hill comics had more than their fair share of problems, but worst of all was the addition of Christabella, a Creepy Child who commands an army of monsters and constantly spouts off curse words and wisecracks in a manner befitting Freddy Krueger. Not only does her inclusion run completely contrary to the plot and mood of Silent Hill, but when most readers would have preferred to see her fed to the Slurper.
 * At least she was forgotten when Tom Waltz took over the writing chores of the comics.
 * In the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comics, Donatello was Peter Laird's favorite Turtle, and Raphael was Kevin Eastman's favorite. Add that Leonardo had much focus due to his role as a leader, and Michelangelo had a much minor role (which started to reverse in the original cartoon).