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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"I '''hate''' this comic. I hate '''everything''' about this comic! I never want to see it ever again! I don't want to remember that it exists! [[Joe Quesada]]... '''[[Punctuated!
Certain comic book storylines get written off as [[So Bad It's Horrible (Darth Wiki)|So Bad Its Horrible]], especially if the fans complain loud enough. Maybe the writers were [[Creator Breakdown|having a bad day]]... or perhaps they failed an [[Author's Saving Throw]]. Nevertheless, these things have been condemned by a vocal portion of the fanbase.
In some cases, they're ''so'' bad that [[Canon
'''''Important Note:''''' Merely being offensive in its subject matter is not enough to justify a work as So Bad It's Horrible. Hard as it is to imagine at times, there is a market for all types of deviancy (no matter how small a niche it is). It has to ''fail to appeal even to that niche'' to qualify as this.
'''''Second Important Note:''''' It is not a Horrible comic just because [[Atop the Fourth Wall
{{examples|Examples (more-or-less in alphabetical order):}}
== DC Comics ==
* The miniseries ''[[Amazons Attack]]'' was thrown together last-minute to cover delays in ''[[Wonder Woman]]'', and was nothing more than [[Character Derailment]] for the entire Amazon people, turning them either into [[Straw Feminist]]s or complete morons by way of [[Idiot Plot]]. The initial attack is because [[Wonder Woman]] was tortured; later, it's stated that they decided to do it because they hate men. The reason Wonder Woman was tortured was to learn the Amazon secret technology; later, the heroes figure out that the Amazons aren't behind a certain attack ''because'' it's high-tech. Please note that this is a miniseries which [[Plot Hole|isn't getting its facts straight]]. Wonder Woman herself is presented as [[Faux Action Girl|absolutely helpless throughout]]; she confronts her clearly-brainwashed mother at least ''thrice'' without thinking to use her lasso, which has previously been shown in-canon as ''able to break brainwashing''. The US Army is [[Rock Beats Laser|challenged by spears and bows and arrows]] — an arrow pierces a cockpit at one point; Air Force One is chased down by women on flying horses. Also, unless you read the tie-ins, the characters who are Amazons (Wonder Woman and Donna Troy) or affiliated with the Amazons (Wonder Girl and Super Girl) barely appear for the first half of the series. Icing on the cake? Those tie-ins, where most of the big plot points happen, got left out of the trade paperback collection. It's obvious that the creators didn't research the characters' past or the history of [[The DCU]] Amazons at all. Oh, and the Amazons' secret weapon is [[Bee-Bee Gun|bees. My God.]] To make matters worse, the entire series was a lead-in to ''Countdown''...which is at least as reviled as ''Amazons Attack''.
** [[Atop the Fourth Wall
* Bruce Jones' run on the once-spectacular ''Checkmate''. He knew the title was going to be canned when he took it, so he felt free to go insane. How bad was this? He took a gritty, realistic spy thriller and made it about a morphing, amnesiac animal man fighting giant porcupines.
* ''[[Cry for Justice]]'', a DC miniseries by James Robinson that featured [[Green Lantern|Hal Jordan]] trying to create a proactive Justice League (because that always ends well). Nicknamed "Gay for Justice" by readers, thanks to some unfortunate lettering styles. The series features gratuitous gore and violence, characters being dismembered, horrible writing and gross characterization, and everyone constantly shouting "[[For Great Justice|For justice]]!" Put it this way — when the author directly and explicitly apologizes to the fans over the quality of the work, ''twice'', '''before the series has finished''', then you know you're dealing with something '''''awful'''''. It was pointlessly [[Darker and Edgier]], even killing off Lian Harper last-minute for no real reason, and that was just one among a great almighty ''fuckload'' of senseless deaths. Robinson got himself under all manner of fire for its release, despite the fact that he fought tooth-and-nail against the editors, who wanted much, much more in the pointless death and destruction departments. Not two years later, it and both of its follow-ups were retconned in full. [https://web.archive.org/web/20130908055647/http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w/29265-justice-league-cry-for-justice-1-2 It] [http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w/29356-justice-league-cry-for-justice-3-4 got] [https://web.archive.org/web/20110128181013/http://at4w.blip.tv/file/4674807
* DC Comics' weekly series ''[[Countdown to Final Crisis]]'', by most accounts. Bad Writing, bad art, bad characterization, three different names (it started as ''Countdown'', then ''Countdown to Final Crisis'', and the final issue was titled ''DC Universe Zero''), three alternate Earths destroyed to prop up villains fans don't like, tie-in mini-series that explain key plot points that are equally horrible, and an ending that completely contradicted the events that it was created to build up. Shortly after ''[[
** As with many others of the comics listed here, [[Atop the Fourth Wall|Linkara]] reviewed it. His review was on four parts, but only two of them were dedicated to the [http://atopthefourthwall.com/countdown-part-1/ comic] [http://atopthefourthwall.com/countdown-part-2/ itself], because in his opinion the plot was so thin that he could chuck half of the comic's run in 20 minutes and his public wouldn't lose nothing of importance. The other two parts were [http://atopthefourthwall.com/countdown-prologue/ a prologue] to explain the background, conception and characters involved in the disaster, and a countdown of [http://atopthefourthwall.com/the-top-15-worst-moments-of-countdown/ the 15 most awful moments] of the comic.
* ''DC Challenge'' was an interesting concept — a 12-issue miniseries in which teams of people who normally did not work together would take turns doing stories which could not prominently feature characters they normally worked on, each issue setting up a [[Cliff Hanger]] that the next team would have to solve in the next issue. Unfortunately, [[Round Robin]] stories are hard enough to manage as fanwork. Doing ''this'' professionally would've been difficult, so it wasn't. This quickly degenerated into a confusing mess. By the end, major plot threads had been dropped completely and nobody was ''quite'' sure what was going on — not even the editors at DC.
* Devin Grayson's run on ''[[Nightwing]]'', particularly her attempt to re-enact the plot of ''Born Again'' on the least suitable character in the entire DCU. The sheer amount of characters that would need to be retconned from the DCU (assuming they didn't detach Dick Grayson completely from it) should have kept this from passing the concept phase, but that's just one issue; other gems from this include the rape scene courtesy of [[Author Avatar|Tarantula]]—which she tried to defend as being [[No Except Yes|"nonconsensual" rather than rape]]—and Richard's inexplicable [[Face Heel Turn]] and poorly-explained alliance with Deathstroke, the result of a failed attempt to manufacture a "hero from the ashes" storyline (''[[Infinite Crisis]]'' got in the way) by pointlessly giving Nightwing hell.
** To very briefly sum up the suitability issue for non-readers -- the plot of ''Born Again'' (one of the most famous ''[[Daredevil]]'' arcs ever written) requires the hero to have so few allies that they could potentially turn to in a time of crisis that they could successfully be prevented from reaching them, or simply despair at contacting, that they are forced to struggle through the entire arc alone. Nightwing's list of close allies includes the entire Bat-Family (of which he is a founding member), Superman, and the entire lineup of every incarnation of the [[Teen Titans]] or the Titans (which is ''dozens'' of people). And that's just his ''close'' allies, the ones who are like family. At the time of Devin Grayson's run, Dick Grayson's list of ''friends'' encompassed literally 95% of every superhero then published by DC, excepting only ones in alternate continuities/time zones such as [[Vertigo Comics|Vertigo]] or the [[Legion of Super-Heroes]]. Entire plot arcs have been based on the premise that Dick Grayson is the single most well-networked superhero in comics. It would be easier to make ''[[Captain America]]'' into a friendless abandoned loner than Nightwing, and yet, they tried to make us believe it could happen. To this day, despite now being [[Canon Discontinuity]], it is still one of the most infamous stinkburgers in Bat-Comics.
* ''Rise Of Arsenal'' is the spiritual sequel to ''Cry for Justice'', which ought to warn readers off. The story is jarringly offensive and bad, attempts at gaining emotion from the reader feel forced and manipulative, Roy Harper is massively [[Out of Character|out of character]] (even after considering that he's a grieving father), and the art is often inconsistent. To sum up how bad this book can be: there's a moment where Roy beats up a bunch of thugs in an alley to protect a dead cat that he thinks is his dead daughter while strung out on heroin... yes, that ''does'' happen. Oh, and they solve the plot point of Roy's grief by [[Ret-Gone|retconning Lian out of existence]], [[Shaggy Dog Story|so his grief disappear because he never was a father in the first place!]]
* ''[[Superman: At
** [https://web.archive.org/web/20130908172420/http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w/3252-superman-at-earths-end At least two good things came out of it]: "[[Atop the Fourth Wall
== Marvel ==
* ''The Crossing'', an insane [[The Avengers|Avengers]] [[Bat Family Crossover]] supposedly about Kang trying to take over the world. The plot makes no sense and is so convoluted that it's hard to tell where it begins. It also features the [[Face Heel Turn]] and death of [[Iron Man|Tony Stark]] and his replacement by his alternate dimension younger counterpart, "Teen Tony". Eventually, in ''Avengers Forever'', Kurt Busiek said that pretty much everyone involved was a Space Phantom and it was a plot by Immortus, pretending to be Kang ([[Timey-Wimey Ball|his younger self]]), to troll the Avengers so that they didn't leave Earth for a while.
* ''Marville'', written by Bill Jemas, was created on a bet between him and [[Peter David]] to see who could write a better selling comic. The problem here is that at the time he worked for Marvel, Jemas was an '''editor'''. And boy, does it show. The book is filled with terrible jokes that feel like they were stolen from a rejected [[Seltzer and Friedberg]] script, ham-fisted political commentary, characters from the mainline Marvel universe showing up just to act out of character and do unfunny things, and tons of mean-spirited digs at DC while Marvel got off Scott-free. Eventually, this fell in favor of what read like a [[Chick Tract]]... as adapted à la [[Shoggoth
** Let's not forget the issue that didn't have word balloons. Oh, it had dialog, just not word balloons. Apparently, the artist couldn't be bothered to actually ''put in the word balloons'', leaving them putting the terrible dialog (in script form) in a corner of the panel.
** The worst part is that apparently Bill Jemas ''does believe'' everything he put in this comic. Meaning that every crazy theory, all the scientific inaccuracies, and every philosophical nonsense in this thing? [[Fridge Horror|All those are his sincere beliefs]].
* The ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'' storyline ''[[One More Day]]'' is perhaps the most hated case of [[Executive Meddling]] since [[Doctor Who|the Sixth Doctor.]] ''Decades'' of continuity and characterization were [[Diabolus Ex Machina]]'d out of existence because [[Joe Quesada|some guy]]
** To twist the knife even more, came the "sequel", ''Brand New Day'' where we are informed that it was ''Mary Jane'' the one who strongarmed the above mentioned deal with the devil and that she was on board on it all the time. This, despite having previously shown as objecting all the way. Because it wasn't enough to [[Ship Sinking|retcon away her marriage,]] they ''had'' to [[Ron the Death Eater|demonize her too]].
** It should probably be noted that the reason Straczynski objected to the story to the degree that he did was not actually due to the story's quality and more to do with the fact that his original proposal for it had been turned down, a proposal that would've jettisoned ''three and a half'' decades of continuity (as opposed to the two that that final product did away with). Whether this would've been better or worse than what we got is [[Broken Base|debatable]], at that three and a half decades would've included nearly every infamously-awful ''[[Spider-Man (Comic Book)|Spider-Man]]'' story ever told, such as the [[Clone Saga]] and ''[[Character Derailment|Sins]] [[Squick|Past]]'', which remained in-continuity in the story that ended up being told.
** Linkara really didn't want to review this because of the utter hate he had for this storyline (as quoted above), but eventually relented and reviewed it for his [http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/2012/07/200th-episode.html 200th episode].
* [[Jeph Loeb]]'s ''[[The Ultimates]] 3'' is accused of having exceptionally-poor writing and [[Flanderization]] ''en masse''. Many critics argue that Loeb [[Did Not Do the Research|doesn't seem to have bothered reading any of the other books]] in the [[Ultimate Universe]] or familiarizing himself with their characters, and has merely made the characters caricatures of their counterparts in Earth-616 regardless of whether this is appropriate. It was loaded with [[Plot Hole]]s, [[Wall Banger (Darth Wiki)|WallBangers]], and stupid, ''stupid'' writing mistakes.▼
* ''Sins Past'' (and its sequel ''Sins Remembered'') is the other contender for most infamous Spiderman storyline of the Oughthies, and until ''One More Day'', it was considered the actual worst. It gets like this: apparently Gwen Stacy secretly got pregnant and gave birth to twin children, that were raised and artificially aged up by Norman Osborn to get back at Peter Parker, whom the kids believe are their father and mama's killer. Except that the real father of the twins was ''Osborn himself'', and they were conceived under unclear and probably rapey circumstances. No, this isn't a [[Crack Fic]] written for the Marvel [[Kink Meme]], this was an actual story that got published. This was [[Character Derailment|so out of character]] for every character involved, the fans intermediately declared this [[Fan Discontinuity|out of canon]] and the rest of Marvel hadn't actually mentioned its events since.
** And then there's ''Ultimatum'', a [[Crisis Crossover]] which is filled to the brim with [[Dropped a Bridge On Him|meaningless and cruel deaths]], [[Contemplate Our Navels|pretentious dialogue]], the same characterization flaws as ''Ultimates 3'', [[Artistic License Physics]], and all kinds of [[Bloodier and Gorier|violent, gory]] deaths that served no purpose other than to apparently "wipe the slate clean." Once again, watch Linkara rip it to shreds, [http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/2011/05/ultimatum-1-2.html here], [http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/2011/05/ultimatum-3-4.html here], and [http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/2011/05/ultimatum-5.html here].▼
** It says something when the writer of this crack fest, [[J. Michael Straczynski]], complained about the [[Executive Meddling]] received while writing it, which turned out to be [[Joe Quesada]] overruling Straczynski's original choice for the twins father, Spidey himself, despite being way more logical, on the amount that "[[Harsher in Hindsight|it would age the character too much]]". Note that this book [[Foreshadowing|came before]] ''One More Day'', where Straczynski and Quesada also worked.
* Kirkman's run on ''[[Ultimate X Men]]'' ended with him retconning almost every major change he had made. Still, sadly, not enough to wipe the long, dragging "Magician" arc from readers' memories. Kurt Wagner going batshit from his time in the Weapon X program could've been done as [[Character Development]]; coupled with his sudden off-the-wall homophobia and super-creepy [[Misery|Annie Wilkes-like]] behavior towards Dazzler, it just wound up being the [[Character Derailment|final]] [[Wall Banger (Darth Wiki)|Wall Banger]].▼
▲* [[Jeph Loeb]]'s ''[[The Ultimates]] 3'' is accused of having exceptionally-poor writing and [[Flanderization]] ''en masse''. Many critics argue that Loeb [[Did Not Do the Research|doesn't seem to have bothered reading any of the other books]] in the [[Ultimate Universe]] or familiarizing himself with their characters, and has merely made the characters caricatures of their counterparts in Earth-616 regardless of whether this is appropriate. It was loaded with [[Plot Hole]]s, [[Wall Banger
▲** And then there's ''Ultimatum'', a [[Crisis Crossover]] which is filled to the brim with [[Dropped a Bridge
▲* Kirkman's run on ''[[Ultimate X
== Other Comics ==
* The artist of ''Minimum Security'' (see
* ''[[
** ''[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Beast_Within The Beast Within]'' is poorly drawn, incoherent, badly written, and completely independent of any known canon. Not even Hasbro acknowledges it. Special mention goes to the Beast, a Dinobots combiner. Fans had been pondering what one would look like for years—the fact that [http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070710211127/transformers/images/thumb/1/10/Butwhy.gif/413px-Butwhy.gif this] was its canon appearance came off as a slap in the face.
** [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/The_Transformers_Continuum:_The_Definitive_Chronology Continuum], a typo-riddled, poorly-organized "definitive chronology" of IDW's ''[[Transformers]]'' stories up to the present, is jam-packed with erroneous facts, skipped-over plotlines, and events out of chronological order...and it gets even more sickening when you realize it was written by one of IDW's two ''Transformers'' editors. It was meant to let people know their official stand on ''TF'' continuity, but it was absolutely useless as a resource. Its writer, Andy Schmidt, while he [[Old Shame|regrets the book]], was [[Never Live It Down|never allowed to forget it]].
** The [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Beast_Wars_Sourcebook Beast Wars Sourcebook] is also pretty infamous. Terrible layout and ordering, wildly varying art quality (with Frank Milkovich's [http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Image:Silverboltbeastwarssourcebook.jpg take on Silverbolt] being especially infamous), boring writing that reads more like a plot summary of the ''[[
* ''Chronos Carnival'' in terms of writing is widely considered to be the worst strip ever run in ''[[
* The [[Valiant Comics]]-[[Image Comics]] [[Intercontinuity Crossover|crossover]] ''[[Death Mate]]'' helped [[Creator Killer|destroy]] [[Valiant Comics]] and was one the contributing factors that led to [[The Great Comics Crash of 1996]]. The writing was horrible
* The original ''[[Family Guy]]'' comics from Devil's Due Publishing. Nothing good can happen when you take a show that mostly derives its humor from delivery, timing, and voice acting and adapt it into a medium that has ''none of that''. There is zero attempt to make this in any way comic-like. The panels are just rows of boxes, composed into a vaguely comic-like simulacrum. A joke or conversation will start in the third-to-last panel on one page and end halfway into the next. Everything looks stiff, like someone just took a screen cap of the show. The comic is almost always at 3/4 view, and the artwork is full of blatant cutting and pasting, facial - expressions, poses, even entire panels are copied wholesale. The book only lasted three issues, all three were collected into a TPB lovingly named "The ''Family Guy'' Big Book of Crap." [[Old Shame|Really says something about what the people who worked on it thought of it.]]
* ''Holy Terror'' is the comic that made people realize that [[Frank Miller]] has lost the genius he once had. The plot is that two blatant [[Expy|expies]] of [[Batman]] and [[Catwoman (comics)|Catwoman]] <ref>The book was originally going to be a Batman [[Graphic Novel]] until DC balked out.</ref> have a very long and boring fight until some Islamic terrorists make an attack on their city, at which point the couple of former freenemies team up to caught and torture the terrorists in very gruesome ways. Besides the incredible amount of anti-Muslim racism featured in the comic (which Miller tried to pass off as [[Parody Retcon|a throwback to propaganda comics from the World War II]]), the writing itself was very thin, and the art is probably his worst to date. Linkara reviewed it for his [http://atopthefourthwall.com/holy-terror/ 300th episode], and declared it the worst comic he has even read, even worse that ''One More Day''. [http://io9.gizmodo.com/5845828/frank-millers-holy-terror-isnt-just-a-bad-comic--its-a-bad-propaganda-comic This review] on io9 says its all: "isn't just a bad comic — it's a bad propaganda comic".
* ''[[Incarnate]]'' is a comic written and "drawn" by [[Kiss|Gene Simmons']] son Nick. "Drawn" is written in quotation marks because he allegedly traced and copied most of the art from various manga. In case he gets cleared of that — most of the dialogue is broken and fragmented, and the story is completely incoherent. It's so bad that the company has ceased distribution of the comic because of legal claims from the company that publishes the manga he stole the art from, which, by the way, included ''[[
* Antarctic Press' ''[[Robotech]] Sentinels: Rubicon'' was an effort by AP at continuing the long-running ''Sentinels'' comic that was cancelled when they acquired the ''Robotech'' license (and this was after Ben Dunn had said that AP would not continue the Sentinels comic, a [[Take That]] aimed at both the fans [[Armed
* The sleazy French spy-action series ''SAS'' is already bad; it's like [[James Bond]] without the humor. But the [[Comic Book Adaptation]] tops itself, with ''[[Osama Bin Laden]]'' being presented as a [[Worthy Opponent]]. Sure, the author probably wanted a [[Take That]] against France-bashing post 9/11, but surely there were less stupid ways of doing it.
* The
** The second lowest point was the villain Whateley. He gets a brief mention in ''Dying Inside'', a confusing cameo in ''The Grinning Man'', and a ludicrous connection in ''Dead/Alive''.
* ''[[
** Just in case you need any more convincing, according to some family friends, Mark Millar's wife herself read about six pages and tossed the book at his head.
* Behind the already bad but copied-enough-that-no-one-cares-anymore [[Rob Liefeld]]-esque art of the ''[[Warrior (Comic Book)|Warrior]]'' mini-series lies unheard-of levels of walls and [[Walls of Text]] that contain bad grammar and made-up words used to explain "destrucity", a philosophy of former [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]] wrestler [[Ultimate Warrior]], which makes no sense to anyone in the world except him. If you manage to figure out what is being said, then it makes less sense than [[Time Cube]]. Oh, and then there was the Christmas special consisting entirely of pinups, several of which have violent and disturbing imagery. [[The Spoony Experiment|Spoony]] and Linkara [http://atopthefourthwall.com/tag/ultimate-warrior/ teamed to tackle it].
▲* ''Chronos Carnival'' in terms of writing is widely considered to be the worst strip ever run in ''[[Two Thousand AD]]''. Featuring a travelling carnival [[Recycled in Space|in space]] its embittered [[Handicapped Badass]] protagonist raised a few [[Unfortunate Implications]] that were only gotten away with because the artist who drew it was handicapped himself.
== Artists, Writers, Editors, etc ==
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** Upon being inexplicably hired by DC immediately thereafter (presumably dodging villagers armed with [[Torches and Pitchforks]] on the way across Manhattan), Austen gave an interview where he made ''very'' unflattering comments about Lois Lane. His opinions of her influenced the Superman books he wrote, too. This didn't win him any fans; he didn't last long, and the changes he made were ignored or retconned.
** His work in ''Avengers'' depicted Wasp having an affair with Hawkeye due to the time Hank Pym slapped his wife. This actually contradicted a few decades worth of stories involving the mental trauma causing Hank to lash out, the implication that Hank was always abusive (something other writers have been guilty of as well), the fact that Hawkeye has always been good friends with Hank and even refused to date Wasp while they were divorced, and that Hank and Wasp has reconciled in recent years and were happily remarried.
* Greg Land's recent "art", which mainly consists of tracing off porn, magazine covers, and even [[Self
** In one of the Wizard drawing books, he explains the use of reference in drawing comics. Thing is, he showed reasonable ways to do it (using a picture of an ice skater for a drawing of a girl flying), and the comic drawings were different enough from the references for it to be considered ''his'' drawing. Now, he simply traces his reference pictures, and in later drawing books, he flat-out traces. [http://jimsmashextended.blogspot.com/2008/07/greg-land-tracing-swiping-recycling.html You can see some of this here.]
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