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So Bad It's Horrible/Comic Books: Difference between revisions
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** 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.
* 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. Oh, and they solve the plot point of Roy's grief by [[Ret Gone|retconning Lian out of existence]], so his grief disappear because he never was a father in the first place!
* ''[[Superman: At Earth's End]]'' is a truly failed attempt to make Superman fit in [[The Dark Age of Comic Books]]. From turning the Man of Steel into a gun-toting, incoherent, moronic Santa Claus lookalike, to the overall stupidity of the plot (the main villains are [[You Cloned Hitler|clones of Hitler]] — such a plot could be effective in a comic that didn't take itself seriously, but here it comes across as lazy).
** [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 "[[Memetic Mutation|Of course! Don't you know anything about science?]]"
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** 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? 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]] didn't like the direction the character was having. 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.
** 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 retcon away her marriage, they had to 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 (as quoted above), but eventually relented and reviewed it for his [http://atopfourthwall.blogspot.com/2012/07/200th-episode.html 200th episode].
* ''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 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 to 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.
** 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 "it would age the character too much". Note that this book came before ''One More Day''.
* [[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].
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* 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; [[media:DeathMate.jpg|the art]], [[Rob Liefeld|Liefeldian]]; the concept was flawed, and Image released its contributions years late.
* 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]] unil 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 ''[[Hellsing]]'', ''[[Deadman Wonderland]]'', ''[[One Piece]]'', ''[[Death Note]]'', ''[[Bleach]]'', and various [[Deviant ART]] pages.
* 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 with Canon|and the former creative team]]). The result had nothing to do with anything that had come before (or after); it instead consisted of a largely incoherent story filled with [[Flat Character|unidentifiable characters]] and a plot that was largely incomprehensible (the most coherent part consisted of a White Light in space destroying random ships accompanied by an "EEEE" sound effect). The artwork was terrible; the half-arsed computer toning effects vanished after the first issue, and two pages of the second issue [[Ashcan Copy|consisted of raw pencils]]. The series was [[Cut Short|canned after two issues of a planned seven]] without resolving anything; many fans considered it a [[Mercy Kill|mercy killing]].
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