They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot/Comic Books


 * Lets just get it out of the way and say every single running story arc ever derailed by a Crisis Crossover...
 * "Here Comes Tomorrow" is the Distant Finale to Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, touted as a throwback to the classic Days of Future Past. Sounds promising...until it devolves into four issues of typical disjointed, Morrison-esque weirdness that never goes anywhere. Eighty years after Jean Grey's death, Earth is an apocalyptic wasteland where the continents have been renamed for some reason, a Brainwashed and Crazy Beast has taken over the Earth (we never learn how he pulled this off), the X-Men are led by a not-evil Cassandra Nova (never explained), and Jean turns up alive in a giant egg on the moon (also never explained). Instead of tapping X-Men's rich mythology for possible Future Badass characters, we're treated to a nonsensical slugfest between Beast's army and a slough of newly-introduced characters who we, on average, only get to know for about ten pages before they're unceremoniously killed off. They include a psychic Scottish whale, some British kid with a pet Sentinel, and a kingdom of giant termites. It all culminates with the sky spontaneously raining blood, Jean muttering something about the universe "dying" (for some reason), and somehow fixing it all by traveling back in time to the day after she died and convincing Cyclops to make out with Emma Frost...in front of her tombstone. It's one of the most ridiculously convoluted Die for Our Ship moments ever conceived.
 * A certain Story arc in Preacher (Comic Book). Jesse Custer explores his now Tulip-less life and somehow becomes a sheriff. He gets a female black deputy who is a pleasant non-stereotype. Things happen and a rich, racist old man and his Nazi assistant (who may or may not be racist... don't ask) threatens and screams and basically makes our heroes unhappy. The problem? He's TOO racist. Every other word is the N-word and how blacks are worthless and ruin everything. Did his girlfriend run off with a black guy? Did black people open factories that would end up taking profit away from him? The book never answers these questions, instead going on to show him If you've been reading Preacher (Comic Book) for this long, this scene not only won't disgust you the way it does the assistant, but will also be obvious from the first time he starts breathing heavy.
 * The story even makes mention of the rich, racist man's overuse of the N-word. During a Ku Klux Klan meeting, several Klan members discuss how he seems to only want to discuss how he hates blacks people, whereas they have interests besides just racism. They seem to think he's overcompensating just to impress them.
 * Femforce is overflowing with this. A running plot was long time hero Ms. Victory becoming the villain/anti-hero Rad, not really villainous just very self centered and violent. The military then pressure her daughter to take V-47 and become the next Ms. Victory, she refuses and Major Tom Kelly uses his influence to: get her husband fired, costs them their insurance and breaks his leg, essentially forcing her into the role. She begrudgingly accepts but isn't accepted by the rest of Femforce, one member She-Cat repeatedly attacks her. She constantly struggles with her dual life and her family life falls apart. Eventually during a fight with her mother her son is killed in the melee. Eventually despair and the mad god Capricorn cause her to become the next Rad...And nothing happens. Despite being more villainous, attempting murder on several occasions, she is wholesale ignored by Femforce and the military. While her mother was hounded constantly despite committing very minor crimes, there was little to no effort to save Rad. Then the plotline just ends, she just decides to stop, her mother never express sorrow and never faces any repercussions for causing her grandsons death. Major Kelly never faces punishment nor does General Gordon. Rad just quits and it's never brought up again.
 * Early Femforce was more about real world superhero's in the vein of Elementals for example in the beginning Tara acted very childish, had a love hate relationship with her father, was hinted as being gay and the book implies her revealing costume was chosen to spite her narrow-minded father. These plot points were all dropped mid series as the book began to focus more of outlandish storylines rather than character driven ones.
 * David Mack's Kabuki begins with a secret Japanese organisation of masked assassins and an interesting mix of action and philosophy... then quickly degenerates into a lot of internal monologues where the protagonist recaps the first story arc -- over and over - and spends issue after issue reminiscing about her childhood, in gory detail.
 * The much reviled The Brotherhood started out with a great premise -- mutant high schoolers who use their powers for their own selfish interests based on their own misguided anarchic philosophy and desire to rebel against the system (think Runaways with terrorism) leading to the destruction of their own school in the first issue. The repercussions of their actions aren't really followed up on, and instead the series derails and gets rid of its characters just for the sake of ending the series, making the entire story useless.
 * Joss Whedon introduced the concept of a mutant "Cure" in his first arc of Astonishing X-Men. Basically, a scientist believed that mutants were an aberration, and not the next step in human evolution. She also felt that some mutants may not be happy being mutants, and had created what she termed a "cure", to help mutants who suffered as a result of their status. This could have been good for years' worth of storytelling, but never made it past the six-issue arc thanks to the "House of M" conclusion which saw 99.99 percent of mutants in the Marvel universe de-powered instantly with Wanda Maximoff just saying "No More Mutants". The scientist has since joined the X-Men to help in trying to find a way to reverse Decimation.
 * Ironically, despite its flaws, the movie X3: The Last Stand did a pretty good job with its handling of the Cure storyline. If the Mutant Cure story had been allowed to continue in the comics, it could have gone in a similar direction as in the movie.
 * One thing in Rising Stars definitely could have been handled better. We are introduced to Cathy, a woman who unknowingly has the power to return the dead to life with a touch. Soon afterward we find out that every time a Special dies, their energy and vitality is redistributed among all the surviving Specials. Surely the comic would eventually deal with the ramifications of Cathy returning a Special to life: would they now be a normal person, or would they take their energy back from the rest? And what would Cathy do when she found out about her ability? What we get is a Time Skip to where she's already found out about it, and sacrifices herself to touch the main protagonist after he's killed.
 * The "threeboot" Legion of Super-Heroes. Finally, a version that made the Legion not just a generic superhero team IN THE FUTURE! but gave them a cause... and it went nowhere with the idea. Why was there a generation gap? In the 1960s, it was because the older generation had lived through depression and war, giving rise to "What are you kids so upset about? We had it worse." But in the 3000s, there hadn't been war in centuries. Supposedly, the world had been very stable -- "boring". So the older generation wouldn't have had different experiences, so what put them at odds? A potential plot element. Some characters didn't (or wouldn't have) fit in so well with the new universe, but others would mesh with it. How come Waid never did anything to suggest that Light Lass's gregariousness was completely unusual in this dehumanized society? And what about the brief mention of a Singularity War? A possibility of making this series into the first ever transhumanist take on the Legion. But Waid's run, and then the title as a whole, were cut short by Executive Meddling.
 * Another plot point that was completely disregarded in Threeboot? In the last story to feature the post-Zero-Hour Legion, one of that team's characters, Shikari, was separated from her teammates and wound up trapped in the Threeboot timeline. Never gets any follow-up whatsoever.
 * Broken Trinity had a rather disappointing moment. A brand new female character was briefly introduced which had stylish design and appearance as well as cool charisma and was overall quite promising and interesting. But very soon it was revealed to be just another of Angelus shells... Duh.
 * From the quote referenced at the top of this page, Superman: At Earth's End, or as Linkara and his fans call it, Bearded Idiot at Earth's End. Superman fighting Nazis and/or twin clones of Hitler in the future is a perfectly serviceable, and extremely awesome, plot format. Hitler being resurrected via cloning to revive the Third Reich in the future is also a perfectly serviceable plot format. Superman fighting the aforementioned clones of Hitler and their rebuilt Nazi armies to stop them from reviving the Third Reich is a great plot format. Yet somehow the creators of Superman: At Earth's End managed to completely squander this perfect opportunity for an epic Superman story by inserting a pointless side-plot about Superman dealing with his advancing age (again, something that could have made for a good story if only they had bothered to go anywhere with it), making Superman into a complete moron spouting nonsensical gibberish, violating one of the most sacred tenets of the Superman mythos by having Superman eagerly use lethal force against his enemies, and topping it off with a completely idiotic Broken Aesop about guns.
 * Omega Flight. Ooooooh boy. We had the opportunity to see the effects of Civil War on an international scale, what with its premise of the Canadian Government having to assemble a new metahuman team for fighting all the supervillains that were fleeing to Canada after the passing of the Registration Act. Which would have given us a few interesting reflections about the effects of American politics on its neighbors. What we got in the end was a generic "let's fight the Wrecking Crew and some interdimensional demons !" plot, and also the official Canadian superteam being mostly composed of American characters. At least it showed us Beta Ray Bill in action...
 * Even worse, having the team's leader, dressed up in a Canadian Maple Leaf-themed outfit being an American under the suit. Yeah, it's like having a Canadian become the new Captain America (comics) or something. Though that's probably not as bad as the fact that said American also killed the last incarnation of Alpha Flight while possessed by an Energy Being.
 * The X Wing Series was pretty good, really, particularly towards the end. At the end of the arc Mandatory Retirement, Big Bad Ysanne Isard had just finished toppling opposition and become Empress in everything but name. Quarren pilot Nrin Vakil had fallen in love with the Mon Calamari pilot Ibitsam, a species traditionally opposed to his, only to have her killed by Imperial pilots. Plourr Illo was having to juggle life in a squadron of X-Wings with life as the leader of a struggling world, and the attentions of her cousin and husband with those of a commando. Isard-hating ex-Imperial Soontir Fel, who had joined Rogue Squadron after extracting the promise from them that they would help him find and save his wife, had still not seen her, but was going over the ramifications of switching sides and working with the pilots he had trained before they defected, his previously-unmet brother in law, and the friends and colleagues of people he had killed. Some subplots wrapped up then and there, others -- like the maimed and now heavily cybernetic pilot Fel had shot down, who told him she would be happy to work with him to destroy the Empire -- had just started.
 * And... it ended right there. There was No Ending. The novels are set a year and a half after the comics, by which point most of the Rogues from the comics are no longer in the squadron. A few questions get answered, there and in the Hand of Thrawn duology, but many more are Left Hanging. It's like arcs were missing from the end. When six years after the comics ended someone put together a short new arc, it was set before any of these comics, decompressed heavily, and was about the Rogues and Luke Skywalker fighting a painfully generic torture-happy villain unrelated to any of the comics arcs. There wasn't even any interesting character interaction. Argh!
 * Speaking of Star Wars, Dark Empire had Dark Side!Luke and Clone!Palpatine. How exactly do you mess that up? Well, you have Luke go to The Dark Side for no particular reason, a bunch of planet-killers, and Leia naming her son after the dude who tortured her, to name a few Egregious mistakes.
 * If you think about it, One More Day: if you were that determined to break-up Peter and Mary Jane's marriage, there's plenty of ways that the creators could have chosen to do so which could have been both more interesting and, more likely, would have made a lot more sense than what we eventually received. And, of course, there's the possibility of what could have happened had Aunt May died, and how Peter could have reacted.
 * Ultimatum. Magneto goes over the edge, crossing lines he normally never would. He kills millions using natural disasters caused by shifting the Earth's magnetic field, and justifies this with his own dark philosophy. Because the story isn't hindered by normal Marvel continuity, no hero or supporting character is safe. Unfortunately, large swaths of the series were devoted to simply killing off as many characters as possible as gruesomely as possible, and the characterization and dialogue that did make it in were completely abysmal.
 * Some of these deaths didn't even make sense in story. A slow-moving wave killing a teleporter? Multiple Man randomly showing up and suicide-bombing the European team?
 * And then Dormammu shows up, having imprisoned Johnny Storm inside an amulet to increase his own power, which would have made for a great story arc on its own. Instead, he just graphically pops Doctor Strange's head like a giant zit, and then just vanishes. Never so much as mentioned again. You'd think a giant demon capable of casually murdering Doctor Strange would merit at least a little consideration.
 * The late 90s "Electric Superman" arc. The new powers were interesting and, arguably, made Superman even more powerful than he used to be. And the fact that he became a normal human being when his powers were "switched off" could have been used to explore Superman's psyche (much like they did in the aftermath of Infinite Crisis when Superman spent a long time powerless). But none of the stories ever seemed to go anywhere or do anything unique with his new powers. Each story seemed exactly the same as it would've been if he'd had his classic powers.
 * Grant Morrison did some pretty cool things with Electric!Supes in his run on JLA, though.
 * In the comic version of WITCH, several characters play significant roles in one or more storyarcs, occassionally get their own subplots and then disappear without a trace. 1) When Elyon becomes ruler of Meridian, there is a spotlight issue having her discover the responsibilities of the position. It doesn't develop into a storyarc. She returns to prominence in a later arc, only to fade into obscurity once Phobos effectively dies. 2) The Nerissa arc intoduces Kadma, Cornelia's immediate predecessor. The aging former Guardian effectively blames the Oracle for Nerissa's corruption, Cassidy's death and his poor treatment of herself and Halinor. She is revealed to be at the head of a mysterious organization which has observed and subtly manipulated Will's life since birth. The subplot goes nowhere and the character seems to vanish. 3) The Astral Drops rebel and an entire arc has them trying to establish lives of their own. The Oracle sends them ... somewhere and their status remains unclear. 4) As part of Orube's acclimation on Earth, there were efforts to get her a few supporting characters of her own. She entered college and joined the local newspaper, acquired a couple of quirky co-workers and a new next-door-neighbour/stalker/love interest. When Orube's role was reduced, all these characters vanished. Followed by Orube herself quitting the team and leaving earth. And so forth
 * Most of the series created by Marvel to fill the void left by "Onslaught" and Heroes Reborn ended up falling prey to this after the Avengers and Fantastic Four returned, with the paranoia-and-government-conspiracy-fueled Alpha Flight, post-modern wildman Ka-Zar, and corporate do-gooders Heroes For Hire being the worst hit; the only book to thrive after the heroes returned was Thunderbolts.
 * Teen Titans Go was a fundamentally-sound continuation/cross-promotion of the Teen Titans animated series, and even over-achieved its minimal requirements by building a sort of rich alternate Titans universe with many elements from the comics brought in and reused in creative ways. However, it failed at being completely compelling because unlike both the original comics and the TV series upon which it was based, it had no arcs. Each issue was its own story established and resolved within a small amount of pages, leaving little room to really explore new stories.
 * For example, Rose Wilson's introduction as Slade's vengeful daughter.
 * The Frankenstein/Dracula Wars could have been completely awesome--it's Frankenstein vs. Dracula, for God's sake--and they even went to the trouble of making the Creature accurate to the source material, but the story was incredibly cliched, mediocre, and dull.
 * Exactly why Doctor Maggie Burroughs (aka Kathryn Krueger) turned evil and joined her father in Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash: The Nightmare Warriors. She appeared to be a genuinely goodhearted person in Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare and absolutely no explanation is ever given for her Face Heel Turn, she just randomly turns bad. To make matters worse, she dies pretty anticlimactically when, right before the final battle, she's crushed by a tank. The subplots with Stephanie Kimble and Jacob Johnson's powers being awakened never really went anywhere either. All of this is presumably the result of Executive Meddling, as the six issue story was originally going to be a twelve issue epic until WildStorm stepped in.
 * The Iron Man storyline "Armor Wars" featured Tony Stark, going batshit crazy when he finds out that his armor designs had been stolen by the now dead Spymaster several years prior and sold to the villainous Justin Hammer, who used the designs to augment the armors of many of Iron Man's enemies, as well as other mercenary villains like Stilt-Man. Sadly, Hammer gets away with EVERYTHING and most of the storyline is devoted to Iron Man targeting ANYONE (with the exception of Doctor Doom, who thankfully doesn't appear in the arc as far as even Tony figuring that Doom wouldn't lower himself to form an alliance with Hammer in exchange for access to Tony's technology) with a suit of armor and basically not only alienating Captain America, but the rest of the world to the point that he has to fake Iron Man's death (leading to a craptastic running gag with Tony having to fake being a new Iron Man suit operator to the rest of the Avengers, who knew Tony was Iron Man and calling him out on his crap).
 * How much of Iron Man was not screwed over with extreme prejudice from some point on? The whole thing is buried under Idiot Plots, each with cartload of straw. A borderline mad scientist who sought an excuse to wear Powered Armor rather than look for good surgery ASAP like anyone else would  decides to abandon weapon design and make teddy bears from now on upon meeting a few bullies? A roboticist actually expects mass Laser-Guided Amnesia to make something a secret again? An inventor and businessman does everything possible to give nameless bureaucrats more control? Did Stark go raving mad long ago, or his writers?
 * Several plot points from Ian Flynn's more recent entries into the Sonic the Hedgehog comic go this way. In the past two years alone, we had: a revolution and restructuring of the Kingdom of Acorn into a republic that had little impact or focus beyond the initial shake-up (despite recognizable secondary characters as Prince Elias and Rotor Walrus being on the new Republic council), a team-up between the Dark Legion and Eggman resulting in a Why Am I Ticking? plot that lasted over 18 issues with nothing being accomplished with it, and Eggman becoming a Talkative Loon that had several different directions it could've gone (from the Freedom Fighters using it to rehabilitate him to him faking it, the entire time), but ended up - you guessed it - getting glossed over with nothing resolved. And that's not mentioning the Red Herring Twist of Espio turning traitor, or the convoluted mess of Knuxerjak (aka Enerjak revived in Knuckles), or NICOLE being controlled by the Iron Queen, only to be broken free the next issue (leaving the "Iron NICOLE" plot pointless)...
 * Before that, the original 25 Years Later storyline was a bit of a let-down. Originally planned for inclusion in an oversized special issue, it was built up throughout the Knuckles solo series as the reason for Knuckles' unnaturally potent Chaos powers and the machinations of the Brotherhood of Guardians. It would have pitted Knuckles against an alien menace in an epic battle to decide the fate of Mobius. Instead, it was a ten part series in which Sonic and Knuckles discuss married life and their wives and daughters spend an entire issue at a sleepover. A lot of interesting developments are only alluded to (Robotnik's fall from power, Knuckles recovering his Chaos powers, Sabre reduced to a vegetative state, Julie-Su and her sister, who has tried to kill her several times, are the best of friends) and the series just fizzles out randomly. The sad thing is that a decent plot is set up for this one as well - it's implied in the first couple of issues that the heroes' use of the Chaos emeralds are threatening to destroy Mobius and they have to try and stop it. Instead, it seems like an underwhelming soap opera.
 * And even before that, there were several stories that wound up being wasted. Several notable ones include: Tails' stint as "the chosen one" (which got three different resolutions before the writers gave up), Eggman reviving the original Dr. Robotnik, the reveal that Mobius was Earth in the future (which was never taken anywhere), the Dingoes' attack on Angel Island (which petered out shortly before Ken dropped out and Ian took over), Rotors Word of Gay reveal, and Tommy Turtle (neither of which were developed nearly enough to justify their existence, sadly).
 * Cry for Justice is a textbook example of this. Throughout the mini, the villain Prometheus was teasing a device that would teleport cities into pocket dimensions, trapping them in limbo and leaving the heroes no way to find the people who were lost. It was heavily hinted that those lost in time would include Red Arrow's daughter.
 * JLA: Act of God had every single superpowered being on Earth lose their powers in a black light. Rather than show all the heroes joining together to find out what happened and to overcome their lack of powers, they showed Superman drinking heavily, Wonder Woman working on Wall Street and turning Catholic, Kyle Rayner throwing tantrums, Flash becoming a whiny bitch, Booster Gold and Guy Gardner becoming huge money-hungry dicks, and various heroes bowing down and worshipping Batman. Worst of all, nearly every single page of the comic had a shoehorned scene where someone wondered whether the superheroes had been "arrogant" and "abusive" and whether God had taken away their powers to teach them a "lesson" because they were "superior" to humans, even though at no point in the story (which, while being an Elseworlds, had the official DCU past continuity) were any of the heroes shown to have previously abused their power at all, rendering the entire Aesop of the story completely pointless - especially since Batman is shown to take a level in arrogance.
 * Not to mention the enormous logical problems with the premise.
 * Mark Millar's run on The Authority included a battle against an evil version of The Doctor (not that one) who turned the planet itself against humanity before even getting his powers back. He was a threat demanding the evacuation of all human beings from the dimension. Once powered up, he survived decapitation and being dropped in the sun, and he could cause anything he imagined to happen, explicitly including traveling back in time to kill his opponents as they were born or going so far as to undo the Big Bang. Before an admittedly solid ending, he
 * Thanos: The End by Jim Starlin started off with an interesting story of the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten having been given ultimate power, returning to Earth after thousands of years of becoming used to it, and using it to conquer the universe. What set it apart is he did the intelligent thing by quickly getting rid of anyone that could have opposed him. He killed most of Earth's major heroes, the Council of Skyfathers, trapped all major time-travelers among other actions. It left only Thanos and a handful of others to try and stop him. However, instead of exploring this further about halfway through the series Akhenaten was defeated and it once more became a story about Thanos acquiring ultimate power and everyone in the universe having a big slugfest with him to try and stop him. Of course, the story was heavily criticized for taking what could have been an interesting plot and turning it once more into a "Thanos is better than everyone, can beat anyone, and has ultimate power" story. The last half was essentially a repeat of the three or four other times Thanos had acquired ultimate power, beats everybody else up, and could only be defeated by the same set of characters.
 * DC Comics Infinite Crisis crossover. While what we got was entertaining in its own right, what was promised by the lead-in minis - a bunch of unrelated, but large scale, threats piling on top of the heroes at the same time - had a lot of potential that was ignored when the main story started.
 * Countdown to Final Crisis IS this trope: Jimmy Olsen gets all his Silver Age powers back! There's actually fifty-two freakin' Monitors! Brother Eye merges with Apokolips! Mary Marvel, "deserted" by Captain Marvel turns to Black Adam! Harley Quinn and Holly Robinson vs. Granny Goodness! A crazy, universe-hopping adventure searching for a character missing for (relative to the reader) years! A kajillion fascinating Alternate Universe counterparts! Paul Dini writing! A lead-up to the biggest Crisis of all! A followup to the beloved 52! A look at the seedy underbelly of the DC universe from the perspective of two repentant Flash villains! A heroic version of the Joker! Jimmy Olsen vs. Darkseid! A shocking murder mystery involving the death of an entire race of gods! Evil Versus Evil! The genesis of the Kamandi-verse! What Could Possibly Go Wrong???! Short answer: EVERYTHING.
 * Civil. War. While we have had the threat of registration acts in Marvel before, this is the first time the true effects of such an act would be felt EVERYWHERE (in the US), not just in mutantlands. And having two long time friends and iconic heroes divided on the issue, driving home the "brother vs. brother" vibe of most civil wars? Brilliant! Awesome! Spectacular! And what happens? A severe case of Cool People Rebel Against Authority on most of the writers' part causes them to go against the stated message of head writer Mark Millar, i.e. that the pro-reg side was supposed to come out right. This resulted in nearly every character involved getting dreailed in some way, practically destroying Reed Richards and Iron Man in the eyes of fans (the latter epically brilliant, considering they were promoting HIS MOVIE during the storyline), while dismissing the point that there ARE a lot of heroes that could use Avengers training, resources and oversight in order to make the pro-reg side look bad, and leaving the USA in shambles and easily run over by both an alien invasion and a coalition of supervillains who end up doing the very thing the Avengers Initiative was created for. But at least we have Sally Floyd to make it all worthwhile.
 * Speaking of perfectly good plots, Kingdom Come dealt with a lot of the same issues and plot points as Civil War did, except DC's version was awesome. Of course, having Superman on the Lawful side helps. So does hiring Alex Ross.
 * Andy Diggle's run on Daredevil started off with Daredevil being the leader of the Hand (an evil ninja cult), a plot point which started at the end of Ed Brubaker's run. After a fairly decent initial arc (titled The Devil's Hand) showing Daredevil setting some things up with the Hand and trying to teach the ninjas not to kill, it suddenly leapt into the Shadowland event, which turned Daredevil completely evil. It was partially justified, but the event turned out to be incredibly anticlimatic, and would have been much better had Daredevil's descent to evil been more gradual, and more potential for Daredevil as the leader of the Hand utilised beforehand.
 * Even earlier than that, Brian Michael Bendis' run on the title was massively acclaimed and a hit with fans. This all culminated in the "Hardcore" arc, which ended in complete insanity. Villains start attacking Murdock in public, Wilson Fisk puts out a hit on people associated with the crimefighter, and the whole thing culminates in a brutal fight between Fisk and Murdock, which ends with Fisk getting driven through the wall of a bar and Murdock declaring he's the new Kingpin of Hell's Kitchen. The potential for stories was obvious and massive - is he a public target now? What will the other Marvel superheroes say? How will this affect his law career? As it turns out, the whole thing was mostly pointless. He cleans up the neighbourhood and marries his girlfriend Milla offscreen between arcs, gets into a fight with the Hand, the Black Widow shows up to help him fight crime, he gets kidnapped and beaten by the Crusader, and then Fisk comes back, Murdock gets arrested and the whole storyline is shoved under the rug for a new writer.
 * Every Batman title by Frank Miller since Batman: Year One fits this trope.
 * The sequel to The Dark Knight Returns seemed like the kind of thing you couldn't screw up. At the end of the first book, Batman's got a new army of Batkids. He's got Green Arrow with him, and he has a Robin who's even better than he was at her age, and he's now rebooting into a sort of guerrilla leader or revolutionary. The potential for asskicking is high. And The Dark Knight Strikes Again, at least starts out with some cool concepts: the Atom has been imprisoned in a Petrie Dish, the Flash has been forced to run in basically a giant-sized hamster wheel for years on end, and Superman is basically a slave to governmental interests. Then we get artwork that looks like a kid drew it; we get basically a girl pop band that does nothing for the storyline at all; Lex Luthor is somehow in charge of everything, which was never even a part of the first story, and sex scenes between Wonder Woman and Superman that just evoke very bad Kevin Smith style conversations. And then there's
 * Even then, All Star Batman and Robin again seemed the kind of thing Miller couldn't screw up. Dark Knight Returns had established Dick Grayson and Batman hadn't spoken for years, and that Batman had given crimefighting away out of a promise he made to Tim Drake. You also had Batman Year One which establishes the character so firmly it influenced movies, and provides a solid foundation for anything you could write from then on. Fans rejoiced when they heard ASBAR was basically going to be a prequel to Dark Knight Returns. And then what happens? I'm the goddamn Batman. Yellow-painted rooms, "here's some freshly-squeezed lemonade", Green Lantern as a dunce, and Batman performing a fucking tracheotomy on GL after Robin gets too enthusiastic and crushes his windpipe.
 * After Blackest Night gave us "the unprecedented scenario of all four Flashes still alive", fans were "hoping the writers could take advantage of that". Cue Flashpoint, thanks to which the New52 universe has now gone through a Cosmic Retcon with effects including, you guessed it, having only one Flash. That was... fast.