So Bad It's Horrible/Comic Books: Difference between revisions

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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.

** Bruce Jones' run of ''Nightwing'', which followed Grayson's, made her run look like Shakespeare. Nightwing became a male model who slept with his boss, and she just happened to have superpowers. Then Jason Todd showed up and started fighting Dick on a model runway; and then Jason Todd was turned into a ''tentacle monster''.

* ''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 (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.

** [http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/linkara/at4w/3252-superman-at-earths-end At least two good things came out of it]: "[[Atop the Fourth Wall|I AM]] [[Catch Phrase|A MAN!]]" and "Of course! Don't you know anything about science?"

 

 

== Marvel ==

* ''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 On the Roof]] by a schizophrenic primary-schooler.<ref>[[Wolverine]] evolved from an otter (because that's how that works) and, through some reason or another, either becomes immortal or gets a long line of [[Identical Grandson]]s (the comic can't pick one). In the same issue, Jesus Christ is called "the first superhero".</ref> The last two issues were a recap of the series and a guide on how to submit scripts to a now-defunct comic line. Bonus points for increasingly desperate cover art featuring a red-haired woman (who appeared nowhere in the comic) in various states of undress when Jemas was certain he'd lose. (He did.) Watch Linkara rip it apart [http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/2012/01/marville-1.html here].

** 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 artist of ''Minimum Security'' (see below) collaborated with another author to make ''As the World Burns'', a graphic novel starring the characters from ''Minimum Security'', who rant about how terrible modern society is. The graphic novel ends with a speech about how [[Ludd Was Right|humans should destroy everything and go back to being hunter-gatherers]].

* ''[[Transformers]]'' fans [[Broken Base|disagree on just about everything]], [[Fan Dumb|often violently]]. But nobody has managed to find a fan who would dispute listing these works:

** [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 ''[[Beast Wars]]'' cartoon than a description of the character and purge any non-[[The Chew Toy|Waspinator]] related humor, strange and arbitrary change to the personality of the Japanese characters, and a whole lot of typos and other editing errors. Even more disappointing, considering that the ''[[Transformers Generation 1|Generation 1]]'' and ''[[Transformers Armada|Armada]]'' sourcebooks from the otherwise reviled Dreamwave era are generally considered to be excellent.

** Just in case you need any more convincing, 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 [[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.

 

 

* ''[[9 Chickweed Lane]]'': Everyone's a sex-crazed, pretentious asshole, so it's impossible to like anyone except the cat. Homosexuality is handled so badly it manages to insult conservatives and liberals alike — one character quickly breaks up with his boyfriend of several years, dances with a seducing female acquaintance, has sex with her that night, and then swears up and down that he's not interested in women and being gay is just how he is (comparing it to his shoe size). Then he dumps her, she's understandably upset, and he tries to talk to her. Somehow, the readers are supposed to feel ''sorry'' for this guy. And did we mention that the author [[Protection From Editors|has gone through great lengths to silence criticism?]]

* ''[http://comics.com/reply_all/ Reply All]'' doesn't even have the saving grace of a passable artist — it looks like a 5th-Grader's [[MS Paint]] webcomic. Pupils are seen well outside the actual eye, characters' hairstyles make them seem balding, blatant copy-pasting makes the characters appear superimposed upon the backgrounds. Even the jokes are so flatly delivered they become hard to identify. Honestly, do the editors even care?

 

 

** Basically, he's pretty much a rebellious uneducated 12-year-old in the body of a grown man with passable drawing skills.

** He's also said to be ''incredibly'' rude, deleting any comment on his art that doesn't agree with him exactly, including, presumably, people who try to be voices of reason offering constructive criticism. Which is a shame, as he ''has'' drawn some surprisingly heartwarming cartoons advocating peace in the Middle East. It's just that these are lost amid a sea of blood, [[Draco in Leather Pants|leather-pantsing]], and bodily fluids.

** An example of its failure: the son of this [[Strawman Political]] family is named Stalin and wears a Darwin-fish shirt, and his hair is done in a random-ass [[Totally Radical]] 1980s punk style, which shows you how up to date the author is.

** The wife is named Imelda because, you know, Imelda Marcos was evil and therefore...she was a liberal! [[Critical Research Failure|Haha!!!]]