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

* ''[[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. [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] [http://at4w.blip.tv/file/4674807/ featured] on ''[[Atop the Fourth Wall]],'' if you're interested.

* 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 ''[[52]]'' was finished, Dan Didio asked [[Grant Morrison]] to give some of his (work in progress) scripts of the first several issues of ''Final Crisis''; other than that, it was pretty much controlled by Didio. It also pulled away advertising from the infinitely better ''[[Sinestro Corps War]]'' story that was going on at the same time. The whole thing was declared [[Canon Discontinuity]] the minute it was finished, but it still didn't erase the horrible taste it left in readers' mouths. It was so bad that the intended final issue, ''DC Universe #0'', written by Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns, essentially replaced ''Countdown'' as the real lead-up to ''[[Final Crisis]]'' (the only thing that was acknowledged from ''Countdown'' was Darkseid's death, fall, and reincarnation into a human body as seen in ''[[Seven Soldiers]]''). It was built up to be the spine of the DCU, but quickly became the ''colon''.

* ''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.

* 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]] said so. The [[J. Michael Straczynski|writer]] hated every minute of it and tried hard to get himself disassociated with it. It goes like this—Spider Man's aunt May takes a bullet and is about to die. [[Reed Richards Is Useless|Somehow, nobody in the Marvel Universe can do anything to change that.]] So, in a move wholly detached from reality and maturity, he makes a [[Deal with the Devil]] to save Aunt May's life (against her wishes, by the way)... in exchange for his marriage. It was contrived to the point of stupidity, worse in that Quesada claimed having them just plain divorce would piss people off and made only the flimsiest attempts to justify his actions (he was even accused of [[Didn't Think This Through|wholly disregarding any impact]] [[They Just Didn't Care|this would have on anything]]). It essentially created its own [[Continuity Snarl]] by re-introducing elements that were never relevant in the first place, was full of [[Voodoo Shark]]s, retcons (the biggest of all being Spidey's ''public unmasking,'' which they expressly stated would ''not'' be undone) and overall stupidity on the part of all involved.

** 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.

* [[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.

** 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].