Dork Age/Comic Books/Marvel


 * Speedball, a Fun Personified character who, after causing a disaster that killed 600 people and going slightly nuts, renamed himself "Penance" and donned an iron-maiden-like costume that somehow activated his powers via pain and injury. Fans knew this "secret identity" the moment it came out, which, when coupled with the totally cheesy new outfit and the change of a cheerful character, put Bleedball firmly in the Dork Age the moment he returned.
 * This was acknowledged, unsurprisingly, in a Squirrel Girl appearance where she points out all the flaws in this. Superheroes indirectly causing the deaths of people isn't a new occurrence, and, as revealed in another book, he himself wasn't even actually responsible for it. Penance responded to this by banging his head against a wall and snarling "You don't get it! I'm deep now!" Fans had the same reaction.
 * Speedball eventually came out of his Emo Teen phase. In his own miniseries, he tracked down the supervillain truly responsible for the disaster and locked him in his spiky suit so that he feels the pain of all the deaths he caused. That, and he's going through therapy with Doc Samson over in Thunderbolts. However, in Avengers Academy he is revealed to still be cutting himself with Penance's helmet. He claims it is because that is the only way for him to use his more powerful, Penance-based powers. It is left up to the reader to decide if that is true or not.


 * The Punisher was once hired by the forces of Heaven to become a supernatural force of vengeance rather than a mafia-hunting anti-hero. This was undone with a Hand Wave by later writer Garth Ennis.
 * This event, the idiot demon hunter loop, pretty much killed the Punisher. Ennis didn't just Handwave it, he completely resurrected it.
 * How about Franken-Castle?
 * He will be remembered fondly as a brief period of lunacy in Frank's life. There's no way the powers that be intended for a magic/SCIENCE half robot Frankenstein's Monster Punisher to be a new cutting edge status quo. Even in the Heroic Age.
 * The "Clone Saga" in the Spider-Man titles was so maligned that fans nearly went into apoplexy when a version was announced for Ultimate Spider-Man. Basically, they tried to replace Peter Parker with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute because they thought that a married superhero couldn't sell and fans went livid with rage every time they tried to kill off his wife (you'd think this would clue them in that they might be wrong, but noooooo). But at the last second, they chickened out because Peter Parker had become too synonymous with Spider-Man to turn him into a Legacy Character franchise and the whole thing became a muddled mess. The fact that they kept on drawing out the story to try to sell more crossovers and tie-ins didn't help, either.
 * Happily, the Ultimate Marvel version of the Clone Saga has been much better received, mostly because was much shorter and less convoluted.
 * Marvel brought the Clone Saga back in a six-issue miniseries, penned by original architects Howard Mackie and Tom DeFalco. Apparently, it's supposed to be more in line with the original, much shorter version they had originally intended to do. Ben Reilly, the clone who briefly took over as Spider-Man and was also known as the Scarlet Spider, got eventually reincorporated into continuity, if only to take part in the several multiverse events released during The New Tens.
 * Heck, just enjoy this list of the twelve worst, most bizarre, and most inane Spider-Man storylines. (Aside from the infamous Clone Saga... no, wait, here's the Clone Saga.) One highlight: #3 and its villainess who had "tapped into a part of human DNA that connected us to the point where we split from insects on the evolutionary tree!" (Hey, do you hear Stephen Jay Gould weeping quietly?) Oh, never mind the bit where Spidey turns into a giant spider -- a pregnant Giant Spider -- who gives birth to himself (?!?) and... it's basically a convoluted introduction to the organic web-shooters from The Movie.
 * And speaking of Spidey, by all means, let us (not) forget One More Day, another attempt to abort the marriage (by now twenty years strong), this time by Deal with the Devil. In fairness, only the relationship mess is the Dork Age; other changes from the accompanying Retool tend to be judged more fairly. This is probably because a lot of the stuff implemented post-"One More Day" could have easily been implemented regardless of whether or not the protagonist was married, leaving a lot of people scratching their heads as to why the thing was necessary in the first place. 2011's Spider-Island proceeded to erase most of the changes set in OMD (Peter's identity is revealed to the public once again, Carlie breaks up with him and he bonds with Mary-Jane again), barring the annulment of the marriage.
 * Every Incredible Hulk issue with the Red Hulk. First, it leads off from the well-written and epic (albeit misleading in its title) World War Hulk, where the green giant finally received some Character Development, in the arc prior leading it all the more meaningful what happens and its ultimate climax. And out of nowhere, this asshole of an Evil Counterpart comes, trounces every one of the Marvel heavyweights, including the Hulk and even when a hyped rematch is given, he is downed by a single punch. Made worse by writer Jeph Loeb's constant teasing on the true identity of Red Hulk, which many fans can assure you that they've stopped caring past Hulk #3, and the fact he's written to be everything the Hulk isn't.
 * Apparently, Loeb seems to think this equates to using the Hulk's infinite potential for power, write it in that crimson counterfeit, and use it for him randomly appearing to beat up everyone and laugh about it. It has recently gotten better however. First, Pak is back writing Incredible Hulk, so fans can now go there. Also, since the Code Red arc, Red Hulk has become less of a Villain Sue. Mainly because Code Red and then Fall of the Hulks (co-written with Pak) actually had a plot and we learned more about Rulk (he was finally identified as - someone who had been explicitly ruled out earlier in the story). It also helps he's no longer fighting people at random. Getting a decent writer has also helped a lot.


 * In the 1970s, Marvel rebooted literally the entire universe to turn Doctor Strange into a more conventional superhero with a spandex outfit, secret identity, crossovers, and energy-blasting powers. The change was very unpopular and soon dropped, though the character makes occasional rueful references to it.
 * In the mid '90s, he was changed into a young, long-haired business executive who didn't have any of his previous supporting cast with him.
 * In the 1990s Avengers: The Crossing, it was revealed that Iron Man had been Brainwashed into secretly working for Kang the Conqueror, years earlier. The Avengers defeated him with the help of his teenaged self, who remained in the present to become the new Iron Man. The "Teen Tony" story was undone by Heroes Reborn, and the years of brainwashing was retconned into months in Avengers Forever. However, he has since entered a new Dork Age, along with most other characters directly involved in Civil War, becoming a Jerkass Villain with Good Publicity that the writers insist should be treated as a hero. To be fair, the Civil War arc was originally supposed to show valid justifications for both sides. However, the multitude of different titles involved, as well as numerous cases of a Writer on Board depicted Stark and the pro-Registration side as incredibly negative. Plus, Stark did genuinely feel pretty bad about all the stuff he did during the war.
 * Much of Civil War resulted in Dork Ages for other characters too, mainly because the idea of a Super Registration Act has always been derided by all Marvel superheroes, and therefore the segregation of characters into their opposing positions was pretty much at random, since none of them had ever shown pro-reg sympathies before. This caused many changes for many of the pro-reg heroes throughout the event. For example, Reed Richards was inexplicably shoehorned into the pro-reg side despite the fact that when a SHRA back in the early '90s was debated, he single-handedly torpedoed it with an issue-long Character Filibuster explaining (and demonstrating) to Congress just how stupid, dangerous, and ineffective their idea was, and had not so much as wavered from his opposing position since.
 * Xorn. Initially Magneto, after masquerading as Xorn for so long, was doped up on Kick and went totally Ax Crazy and pretty much destroyed New York, herding humans into crematoria. Some argue Magneto, a Well-Intentioned Extremist, would never go that bad given that he, y'know, survived the Holocaust, so three different creators had three different "remedies" for this continuity glitch.
 * Chris Claremont had it revealed Magneto had been in Genosha since his death and was quick to scold the impostor. All very well and good, but the identity of said impostor was revealed to be...
 * ACTUALLY Xorn, who was quite mad and believed he was Magneto. According to the convenient introduction of his good twin brother also named Xorn. Thank you Chuck Austen.
 * The worst offense was Bendis, who implied that there was never a Xorn, and he and his brother were magical creations of an insane Scarlet Witch. People were just starting to forget it ever happened, but some writers just can't let go.
 * Ultimatum, The Ultimates 3 and Ultimates 4 were already considered as a Dork Age, to the point some people have tried to tie them into the same "Loebverse". How do you treat a well-respected Alternate Continuity that caused one of the biggest shake-ups to the comic industry in the last decade, and has produced three well-written and top-selling series (Ultimate X-Men, Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate Fantastic Four)? Simple. Hire the ill-regarded Jeph Loeb, have him assume writing duties for your big event series, and kill off two-thirds of the superheroes in said universe as a ploy to increase readership. Out-of-character moments, gratuitous violence, strange plot twists and a total lack of respect for the Ultimate superheroes were just the start of the problems with this series. Ultimatum was so poorly received that, over the course of its run, over 25,000 people stopped buying it. Marvel acknowledged this by resetting the entire franchise, canceling the three aforementioned series and hoping no one would notice that they shot themselves in the foot.
 * What Jeph Loeb did to Hawkeye is nothing short of a travesty. Fortunately appointing Jonathan Hickman as writer of The Ultimates and Ultimate Hawkeye seems to have drawn a line under all this.
 * The majority of Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men, which fell into Canon Discontinuity almost immediately after the author left the series, especially in regards to the changes he made to Nightcrawler's personality and background. First he's involved in a plot by religious fanatics to make the demon-looking mutant the friggin' Pope, then the poor teleporter finds out that his real father is actually a demonic mutant named Azazel, and at the end of the story Nightcrawler gains a few half-brothers who are promptly never seen again.
 * Many X-Men fans would argue that some or all of the period between mid-2005 and mid-2011 was a Dork Age. In the aftermath of House of M (itself often considered something of a misstep, since it was a big X-Men Crisis Crossover and yet it was given to the Avengers writer for whatever reason), mutants had been rendered a Dying Race and the books took a nosedive off the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, with various supporting characters having bridges dropped on them or turning evil left and right (The characters hit worst by this? The teenagers) and the "struggle for the survival of the species" theme being anviliciously played up. This culminated in the school being blown up and Cyclops establishing an Egopolis in San Francisco Bay, which even those who think the entire period wasn't so bad consider a Dork Age (the writer of this, Matt Fraction, is generally considered the second-worst to have ever had the book, after Austen).
 * Thankfully, this was fixed into 2011 with the ReGenesis Bat Family Crossover, which saw half of the X-Men head back to New York to rebuild the school (appeasing those who thought the new direction was a Dork Age) and half stay on Cyclops' island and given a better writer (appeasing those who were comfortable with the new direction).


 * 2013-2017 was another Dork Age for the X-Men books. At the time, the movie rights to the X-Men were still held by Fox, who were still making movies competing with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So Marvel's head chose to cancel Fantastic Four (whose movie rights were also held by Fox) and de-emphasise the X-Men in favor of a group the MCU had the rights to -- the Inhumans.
 * Marvel tried its best to put the Inhumans over at the expense of the X-Men, canceling many of the X-Men books while giving Inhumans several series including The Uncanny Inhumans (stealing the 'Uncanny' adjective associated with the X-Men's main title The Uncanny X-Men). Eventually, this led to a situation where the Terrigen Mist that gave the Inhumans their powers was not only unleashed upon the Earth and creating new Inhumans, but it was also killing mutants, leading to the Inhumans vs. X-Men event in 2016. All this was met with negative reactions from the fan base, who were not in the least bit thrilled about the X-Men not only being de-emphasized, but seemingly being replaced due to obvious corporate politics. It didn't help matters any that the X-Men (who had long been a civil rights metaphor) were being de-emphasized in favor of a group that had (prior to the 2010s) been portrayed as an isolationist monarchy, whose Royal Family enslaved those they considered to be inferior, adding an unpleasant layer of Unfortunate Implications to the whole thing.
 * Fortunately for X-Men fans, this Dork Age came to an end in 2017, when Disney (which owned Marvel) bought Fox studios and got the movie rights back. Soon afterward, the X-Men returned to prominence with a well-received relaunch written by Jonathan Hickman in 2019. The Inhumans, meanwhile, due to the failures of both their short-lived television series and the attempt to replace the X-Men, ended up on the other end of the de-emphasis sword, with many of the newer characters killed off in 2018's Death of the Inhumans series and most other Inhuman characters dying, fading into the background, or disappearing altogether. While Kamala Khan (the popular Ms. Marvel who received her powers via the Terrigen Mist during this period) remains popular, the Inhumans as a whole have mostly dropped off the radar and returned to being the obscure, rarely seen characters they were prior to the 2010s.


 * There's time in the '90s when Captain America (comics) suffered seizures because the Super Soldier formula in his body was breaking down. He became so paralyzed that he could barely even talk, relying on armor just to move. He ended up being cured by the Red Skull, of all people. People tried to forget about it.
 * Before that, there was a storyline where Cap gets turned into a werewolf for reasons unknown. And even before that, there was the time where he fought an evil group of female supervillains who wanted to sterilize the Earth's female population just to eliminate men from the planet.
 * Then came Liefeld!Cap. And oh, how harmless and endearing those stories seemed.
 * Another Dork Age came for Cap just after 9/11, where his comic became an all-encompassing commentary on post-9/11 America and the nation's role in it. Watch, as Captain America angsts at length about The War on Terror and the US' role! This lasted for about 16 issues before getting back to Cap beating up villains the way he used to.
 * Cap dropping his identity and adopting the name "Nomad" after becoming disillusioned with America wasn't a Dork Age in and of itself... but his costume change was a sort of isolated mini-Dork Age within the plotline.
 * Howard Mackie's Mutant X (not the TV show). And arguably his run on X-Factor leading up to it.
 * For a while, The Mighty Thor was replaced by a bumbling '90s sitcom family dad by day, bumbling '90s antihero cliche at night. He had a mini-Mjolnir in a mace called Thunderstrike, fell short at Spider-Man's snark and genre-savviness, and wore a ponytail and a leather jacket in battle. None of the Asgardians took him seriously, and most of the Avengers hated him; even Captain America constantly scolded and told him to shape up and fly right.