Idiot Plot/Comic Books
Examples of the Idiot Plot in Comic Books include:
- Supreme Power:
- The J. Michael Straczynski reboot of Marvel's Squadron Supreme (a typically Marvel-dark riff on the characters of DC's Justice League of America), has large parts of its plot dependent on the chronic tendency (seen before in much of Straczynski's work) for virtually everyone in any kind of government-representative role to be malicious, incompetent, or both.
- The most Egregious example is in the story of Mark Milton, or "Hyperion," the Superman-analogue: when a superpowered child falls from the sky in a spaceship, he is taken within minutes by the government and put in the custody of two dedicated agents, who pretend to be married so they can raise him as an American citizen in an artificially created (and heavily-monitored) "perfect family environment". However, with all the effort put into creating this environment, it somehow fails to occur to anyone in the project that getting an actually-married couple to play the role of Mom and Pop would be far easier on the agents, far more psychologically healthy for the child, and far safer should he ever, oh, find out about any of this. And the most egregious part of the most egregious example? The monster who originates this heartless scheme is... um, Jimmy Carter? "He's history's greatest monster!"
- In the Wonder Woman storyline Amazons Attack!:
- The entire Amazon race (the only apparent exception being Wonder Woman herself) carries an Idiot Ball the size of the moon. On the advice of Circe, an evil goddess who has tried to exterminate the Amazons on multiple occasions, they decide to declare war on one of the most powerful nations in the world; one that is home to many of the strongest superheroes in the DC Universe. The end result? The Amazon race is scattered across the world, the entire USA hates them, and the reputations of heroes associated with them (Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, Supergirl to name a few) are left tarnished.
- Even Wonder Woman wasn't safe from this: one of her powers is that her magic lasso can get rid of mind control. Her mother was clearly under some form of mind control...and yet at no point does she think to use her lasso.
- Oh, and the secret weapon they were going to use to bring the US to its knees? Giant magical bees. While awesome, a bunch of giant bees doesn't exactly measure up to jet fighters, attack helicopters, cruise missiles, anti-aircraft guns, or nukes.
- Quoth Batman: "Bees. My God." It's a perfect Face Palm statement that sums up the idiocy of this storyline.
- Issue #36 of X-Men. To summarize: Professor X and Banshee have been kidnapped in the Alps, and the X-Men need to get to Europe to rescue them before someone uses their powers to conquer the world. The problem? Their plane is out of gas, Warren's parents are out at sea, and the X-Men don't have access to Professor X's bank accounts. They apply for a loan, but get rejected and as they drive away the bank manager notes that they were driving in a Rolls Royce (easily valuable enough to serve as collateral for said loan). The rest of the issue is the X-Men trying to get part time jobs to raise cash. The question is, why don't they just sell the damn car? Surely it would get them enough cash to get to Europe, and hanging onto it can't be as important as rescuing their mentor and saving the world. Sheesh.
- Was the car in Xavier's name? Can't sell cars you don't own.
- ... legally. I'm pretty sure Wolverine at least knows someplace you can dump a hot car for cash.
- Was the car in Xavier's name? Can't sell cars you don't own.
- Norman Osborn:
- The Green Goblin is being hailed as a hero, and is now basically in charge of America's self defense. Just to be clear, Norman Osborn was outed months ago. He was convicted of mass murder. He strafed his own arraignment hearing with pumpkin bombs on live television. He is known to be dangerously bipolar, and that's when he's on his medication. He's the single most infamous example in Marvel of why superheroes need secret identities, given that he's the first MU villain to murder a hero's supporting cast * coughGwenStacycough* . This. Man. Was. Given. Every. Registered. Superhero. On. File. And. Under. His. Authority. Legally. This. Is. Madness.
- In addition, they also disbanded SHIELD and gave Norman Osborn full authority to create and run its replacement, HAMMER. So not only have they given him his own private army and intelligence agency, they're not even maintaining the minimal control that having him direct personnel already chosen and loyalty-screened would give them. Instead, Osborn gets to recruit all his own people. Appointing Charles Manson the Director of Homeland Security would make more sense than this!
- New Avengers #50:
- It ended with Ronin (Clint Barton) actually going on TV and (with understandable shock) rehashing out all the above issues and just how mind meltingly stupid the people are for accepting a known psychopath as their new leader. Of course, this being the Marvel Universe, it didn't work.
- Later Norman Osborn (in Dark Avengers) mentions this, points out the above was a criminal who helped the USSR steal Stark Tech, and gives a heartfelt speech about how he used to be all that, leaving the reader feeling that... the entire Marvel Universe is full of morons.
- Lampshaded in an issue of Spider-Man, when in the narration he lists his reasons for why anyone would elect Norman Osborn to any public office and he states that number three on his list is that everyone in New York must be on stupid pills!!
- Thor: Vikings by Garth Ennis assumes no other heroes are in New York to help out, but it's okay since Doctor Strange is there, but his plan relies on finding a couple people to fight an invincible opponent and his army face to face, instead of using his own powers to temporarily subdue, banish or restrain them, protect the city with some kind of force field, evacuate people, or find a more clever solution than watching and complaining about how invincible the opponent is.
- Any plot that involves Thor or anyone else trusting Loki becomes one of these after, oh, his tenth betrayal (so, since the mid-1960s). The current mega-arc by J. Michael Straczynski would be the most recent example. It is even pointed out, in-universe, that they don't really trust Loki. He's just that good. He manages to get a good way into a plot to destroy Asgard largely by hanging around and making insinuations and perfectly true statements.
- The entirety of the Marvel Comics Civil War storyline. Superheroes and the government lose their minds and start up a pointless brawl over laws that had no authority at the time because one superVILLAIN blew up a school.
- Sonic the Hedgehog:
- In issue 108, Eggman, using a machine and the residual effects of Chaos Knuckles' reality-warping powers, finds a way to reconstitute the scattered atoms of his predecessor, the original Dr. Robotnik. What do these two geniuses do with this startling turn of events? Have Robotnik form an alliance with the Freedom Fighters on the premise that he escaped Eggman's control, and lure them back to the machine so the two doctors can use the process that revived him to annihilate their hated enemies once and for all. Of course! What else could they do in that situation? It's not like they couldn't have combined their respective 300 IQ to come up with another Ultimate Annihilator, or used the alliance ploy to relearn the location of Knothole and/or learn about and/or sabotage their defenses or something diabolically useful like that, right? Fortunately, the Freedom Fighters get wise to this plot from the get-go, and only play along so they can destroy the machine so Eggman can't use it again (having learned that Robotnik's revival was only temporary)...but even they don't seem to realize how much of a freaking security leak having Robotnik in Knothole was.
- And then there's the utterly idiotic "Iron Dominion" saga. Virtually no one gets out of the debacle with their wits intact, and the only way any of the events could've happened is if everyone was written to be so brick-stupid, they could be used as paperweights. The only way to describe this saga is a long, torturous series of Forgot I Could Fly, Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, Love Makes You Stupid, Red Herring Twist, Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, and Villain Ball/Conflict Ball.
- Batman: No Man's Land:
- While many of the stories contained are actually pretty good, this requires a number of astoundingly moronic things to occur to set up its scenario. After an earthquake and ebola outbreak the US government decides Gotham is no longer part of the US because it would be too pricey to fix, blow up all the bridges leading to it, and bans people from going to or from it. Leaving aside the immense political improbability of this, it apparently keeps out most superheroes, who don't even try to help. This includes ones who have no reason at all to respect this order, such as Green Lanterns. Superman shows up, but somehow decides he's no use there. Even though the perennial excuse for why Superman can't help with such and such a problem is that he's dealing with an earthquake or a flood or something in a Third World country, so it's pretty well established that he knows what to do in these situations - certainly better than Batman, who's never demonstrated having any experience with large-scale disasters. But no, no one helps. The entire world just writes off a major city as too much trouble.
- In the short story where Superman shows up and somehow decides he's no use, he effortlessly defeats Mister Freeze and repairs an entire power plant with his powers and the guidance of the chief engineer. Although this restores power, the lawless citizens immediately form a new violent gang under the chief engineer's banner and flood him and Supes with more responsibility than they know what to do with. Superman takes off after Batman gives him a stern talking to. Now why Supes doesn't just fix say, the entire city instead...
- Of course, a lot of No Man's Land's plot hinges on the fact that 1) this was practically a Lex Luthor plot in the end and 2) Batman invokes the Superman Stays Out of Gotham trope on the rest of the DC Universe.
- When reviewing JLA: Act of God, Linkara refers to this trope explicitly.
- One More Day. The sheer number of idiotic things that happen in it is phenomenal, and the amount of dumb that goes into both Spider-Man's decision to make a deal with Mephisto and Mephisto's decision to make a deal with Spider-Man, could fill up a page (it filled several minutes of review time when Linkara explained it); but special credit? To the ENTIRE MARVEL SUPERHERO COMMUNITY. Peter Parker's Aunt May gets shot by an assassin and is dying. Apparently the doctors can't save her. So Spider-Man runs all over the world, seeking out his dozens and dozens of superhero friends who have fantastic powers, abilities, and technologies that can save her...except they don't. Every single superhero throws up their hands and basically says that while they are capable of fighting Galactus, bullet wounds are too much for them to handle, including Doctor Strange, the sorcerer supreme, Elixir, an X-Men member whose entire mutant power is healing wounds, and every single one of the Marvel universe's impressive cadre of supergeniuses. In the words of one scans_daily member, the entire process went something like:
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Peter Parker: My Aunt May's dying from a bullet wound, but that must be a piece of cake for you to cure right? |
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- Linkara may have made Chuck Austen's run on X-Men infamous thanks to "Holy War", but a few issues later, the revelation of who Nightcrawler's father is turns the entire thing into a farce. He's the son of a teleporting demon named Azazel (a name later co-opted into a much more interesting character in X-Men: First Class). His plan was to create enough teleporting children to get him out of the dimension he's stuck in. The dimension which he had to get out of to conceive all of these children IN THE FIRST PLACE! And yet Marvel nixed the plan to have Mystique be Nightcrawler's father and have Destiny be his mother for being too ridiculous.
- The Death of Superman introduced Doomsday, a threat played up as so dangerous that he effortlessly killed anything within arm's reach, or throwing distance, with literally one arm tied behind his back, and handily defeated the assembled Justice League. This led Superman to ponder whether Doomsday's bony growths might, in fact, be part of his skeleton, and dying from wounds inflicted while crushing Doomsday with his own bones. This is not the true portion of the Idiot Plot, however: of all the members of the Justice League, Superman was the one present actually least capable of fighting Doomsday effectively, with each of the others perfectly capable of simply lifting Doomsday off the ground and keeping him out of arm's reach of anything, be it by telekinesis, force fields, a Green Lantern Ring, or even the winch aboard their transport.
- This is actually lampshaded by Hank Henshaw, the Cyborg Superman, when he fully debuts. As he's wrangling the supposedly-lifeless Doosmday, he notes that people like Green Lantern and the Martian Manhunter could have stopped him easily. A few years later, it's noted that Green Lanterns did try to stop Doomsday, but couldn't. Didn't help that he unwittedly stole a Power Ring and went rampaging through the cosmos with it.