Wall Banger/Comic Books: Difference between revisions

 

'''No Real Life examples including [[Executive Meddling]] and [[Fan Dumb]]. Those belong on their own pages.'''

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== Marvel ==

** In the early 1990s, Wolverine nearly '''died''' in the "Fatal Attractions" storyline when Magneto ripped the adamantium out of his body. That's far less an injury than what Wolverine would effortlessly live through later.

*** He has been [[nerf]]ed down. Shortly after the aforementioned battle against Nitro, Marvel pulled an [[Author's Saving Throw]] with a convoluted Wolverine arc, which explained that a supernatural entity (some kind of [[Our Angels Are Different|Angel of Death]] guardian) used to [[A Wizard Did It|magically bring him back to life every time]] (after the blast from Nitro in "Civil War", after the "Fall of Avalon", during "Enemy of the State" and many other times), but only if Wolverine managed to defeat him in battle. After a conversation with this guardian, Wolverine at last told "death" that he didn't want its help anymore, even if that meant (as the guardian warned him) that his healing factor would return to what it used to be (that is, ''not'' at a "regenerating from a single cell" level).

** Yeah, turning a devoted Muslim evil is going to work out ''great''!

*** Given that the comic in question was cancelled and replaced in record time, odds are no one at Marvel even remembers that ridiculous plot point. Or cares about it.

** It gets even worse in the New Mutants series. Illyana Rasputin, aka Magik, had previously stolen a part of New X-Men Pixie's soul during a New X-Men arc where Belasco had kidnapped the New X-Men and trapped them in Limbo. During the X-Infernus event, Pixie loses another piece of her soul to Belasco's daughter; everyone ignores the traumatized girl who just had part of her soul ripped out and only focuses on Magik. Later, Magik shows up on Earth, having escaped from Limbo, and the rest of the New Mutants welcome her back with open arms. When Pixie's teammates are understandably upset at this, the New Mutants claim, "She deserves to be here more than you do." Yeah, and Magik is laughing about it right in front of them. Once again, the New X-Men are treated like whiny children for ''daring'' to be upset at the girl who stole part of their friend's soul being welcomed back with open arms. Face meet palm.

*** Think it couldn't possibly get worse when it comes to the X-Kids and Magik? Think again. After the Purifiers mess up her teleportation ability, Magik—or rather, a demonic copy of her that Warlock has already ''warned the leaders isn't the real Magik''—is pulled back into Limbo. After Colossus goes completely berserk over this, Cyclops agrees that they need all the teleporters they can get and says they'll get her back. How do they plan to do this? By forcing ''Pixie,'' who has a legitimate beef with Magik, to be the transport for a team to get her. Unfortunately, she is {{spoiler|their ''sole remaining teleporter'': Ariel and Nightcrawler are both dead, the X-Men booted out Cloak because he was a science-based mutate, and Vanisher has, um, vanished}}. And to top it off, Sam chews out Anole and Trance for siding with Pixie when she initially refused to go. Hey, grownups? When the kids you're ''supposed to be protecting and teaching'' have come to the conclusion that you'd let them die in a ditch to save a ''fake, evil copy'' of one of your own, and they might well be correct -- ''you're doing the 'protecting mutantkind' thing wrong!''

*** Then this follows up with Cyclops shutting the whole place down and sending all the kids home, when in reality they were just moving the team to San Francisco and would get the kids later. So why not just bring the kids with them in the first place?! Mutants are almost all gone, you'd think Cyclops and all X-Men would make sure to try to keep the few remaining young mutants left in the world as safe as possible! This leads into Trance going back to the parents who hate her and getting kidnapped by a duo of villains and needing to be rescued by Wolverine. Even worse, it leads into the first story arc of the horrid Young X-Men, where Donald Pierce, disguised as Cyclops, recruits four of these young ex-students (and some guy named Ink) and tricks them into taking down some of the New Mutants. Let's ignore the fact that two of these kids could have probably recognized a cyborg in the room, cloaking device or not, and focus on one of these kids, namely Nicholas Gleason, better known as Wolf Cub. Despite seldom getting any time in the comics, for those who paid attention, he was one of the youngest mutants remaining on the entire planet, and was a rather naive and impressionable kid, with examples being his believing Rockslide's ludicrous stories, and later on trying to act like Wolverine, right down to the speech patterns, and as the series chugged along, we saw he was really not the tough guy he was trying to be and was still just a sensible young teen. So who ends up dead in Young X-Men? Yup, Wolf Cub. One of the kids Cyclops sent back home. Except that Wolf Cub was an orphan (with hints that his parents were murdered), and he first came into Xavier's because Chamber and freaking Cyclops himself were the ones who rescued him from some mutant haters who were trying to kill him! Way to go, Cyclops, kick out a kid no older than 14 years old, one of the youngest of the very few mutants remaining on the planet, whom you know is an orphan and has no place to go, let him fend for himself in a world that mostly hates his kind, don't keep tabs on him or most of the other kids, all cause you want to play sullen hero that returns with big fanfare in a new city! The kids will be just fine in the meantime, but oops, sorry, Nicholas is dead now. Freaking eye-blasting moron, leader my ass...

* ''[[Runaways]]'' #11 had Victor [[Digital Piracy Is Evil|using a neighbour's Wi-Fi to illegally download music]]; this causes a plane to crash into their house, {{spoiler|killing Old Lace}}. [[Can't Get Away with Nuthin']] doesn't even begin to cover this, [[Don't Shoot the Message|even if you think piracy is wrong]].

*** It seems that in ''[[Star Wars: The Clone Wars]]'' cartoon series, the Trade Federation was still part of the Republic and disavowed Nute Gunray while one of the Holonet News broadcasts seemed to have a neutral/Republic supporting Techno Union guy. It may be that the Commerce Guilds had internal divisions with regard to the war (or more likely, maintain a veneer of plausible deniability to play both sides against the middle and exploit the situation for maximum profitability).

* S storyline in ''[[Peanuts]]'' where Charlie Brown goes up to bat, but loses the game because he got distracted by the fact that the Red-Haired Girl is watching him. What cheesed me off was the fact that, on the third pitch, Charlie was clearly looking the other way when the pitcher threw the ball. In other words, the pitcher deliberately threw the ball when Charlie had his back turned. And that somehow counts as strike three?! If you ask me, it provides proof of my theory that the reason Charlie Brown's team keeps losing is that the other teams are cheaters.

* The ''New Power'' arc from the [[W.I.T.C.H.|W.I.T.C.H]] comic series easily qualifies. Sure, it's a simple "new, more powerful bad guy shows up, so characters get a power boost" story on the outside; but the details are enough to make your head spin and wonder what they were thinking! Probably the worst of the wall-banging points would be having Matt Olsen, the boyfriend of main character Will Vandom, go from guitar-playing normal guy to sage-like person {{spoiler|who's from Kandrakar DESPITE having a family on Earth AND knowing the team's secret since day one, before Will told him}}; and he acts like a jerk and is utterly cryptic while training them. And it isn't until {{spoiler|Yan Lin gets through to the girls}} near the end that they {{spoiler|get their act together and defeat their foe.}} And now, {{spoiler|most of the ''children of Heatherfield'' are magic-endowed -- NOT just the girls!}} Ladies and gentlemen, the [[Jumping the Shark|shark has been jumped!]]

* The quality of ''[[Alien]] vs. [[Predator]]'' comics varies wildly... but ''Alien vs. Predator vs. [[Terminator]]'' has a moment of brain imploding super handwaving that results in INSTANT head desk. Following the events of Alien: Resurrection, the writers clearly felt a need to reconcile the two continuities. Ready for it? The characters find a message from John Connor explaining the threat from the [[Terminator]] that's spoiling everyone's day - naturally, he exposits on Skynet, Judgement Day and the like. Someone comments they missed, oh, the whole genocide of humanity by sentient machines and reduction of most of the world to rubble. What possible explanation could there be for almost the entire human race being oblivious to this? MILITARY COVER UP!

** This is an ill-considered compromise between the much-loathed Karen Traviss novel ''Aspho Fields'' and its breeding farms, and the games, which have ''outright rubbished this concept from Day One'', with Anya being a communications officer and Lieutenant from the start of the first game—clumsily retconned in ''Aspho Fields'' as being due to her being infertile -- ''Gears of War II'' establishing that there are female Gears in such a way that ''any unvoiced generic Gear throughout the series'' could have been female, and the upcoming ''Gears of War III'' prominently featuring new female characters in its trailer. Exactly why there was a need to compromise between these two things—roughly akin to compromising between lunch and disgusting, decaying, disease-ridden offal by making the offal into a sandwich—is unclear to anyone with half a brain.

**** It's the Emperor's New Clothes thing; they can't exactly admit they screwed up by retconning it entirely, and they can't use it straight.

** Okay, the Captain may have grown into the roll of a sea-man, and a successful one at that, but this Mike, plus any other crimp in the business, has been basically kidnapping people and selling them into slavery, often into a job they had no training whatsoever for. On top of that, ''Piracy'', and many other [[EC Comics]] stories concerning early life on board a ship, are filled with stories rotating around how the captain is [[The Neidermeyer|Captain Bligh]] reborn, so Mike's victims may have wound up being brutally tortured and murdered.

* The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund once had several comic writers pen short stories for a PSA comic encouraging people to donate. One of those writers was Garth Ennis. His short story consisted of ''[[The Boys]]'' sadistically torturing and mutilating DC and Marvel heroes and telling the readers that if they donate, they can see even ''more'' of that. It's bad enough when he uses superheroes as [[The Chew Toy|Chew Toys]] in his regular comics, but this?! Not only is it stupid and sophomoric, but it's a slap in the face to the very worthy organization that asked him to deliver a message about freedom of speech. This was far more likely to ''discourage'' people from donating.

** In ''"The Pro"'', Ennis wrote his prostitute superhero (yes, that is what the story is about, a whore who is given superpowers) giving a thinly-veiled expy of Superman a blowjob and encouraged him to not be so boy-scouty all the time. That's what he writes. Also, Ennis has issues with religion too, not just with superheroes. She also bitches that superheroes should improved the world because she sucks dick to feed her kid, even if she's the one who screwed up.

* ''[[The Simpsons (Comic Book)|Simpsons Comics]] #47'' took Lisa's attitude as a liberal Strawman to heights far worse than on the TV show. Bart starts a "fish log" business during school lunch that all the kids love, leading to them getting better grades (since fish is brain food!) and spending their extra money across town, skyrocketing Springfield's economy. Everyone's happy except Skinner, since it's taken away the cafeteria revenue that the school somehow can't run without, so he shuts down the school four months early to take away Bart's customers - unknowingly sending the kids rioting through the town since they have nothing to do (no summer movies or water parks open yet) and they aren't getting lunch money to spend. Thirty years later, everyone who benefitted from Bart's business is willing to give him his needed organ donation, and Lisa scolds them all, claiming he doesn't deserve it since he was just being selfish the whole time. Let's forget that Lisa basically said ''her own brother's life didn't deserve to be saved'' - Bart starts a successful enterprise that the city benefits from, Skinner responds with an abuse of city power that ruins everything, and Lisa claims the near-destruction of the town was ''Bart's fault''?

** Another story also had Chuck wanting to be a farmer like his father, and Rosie Lee called him out for not having any ambition. After a while, she mutters that she will never have a doctor or a engineer husband. Then Chuck starts thinking of a new career that will please both him and Rosie Lee. Yes, because [[Sarcasm Mode|changing your career plans just because your girlfriend doesn't think it's prestigious is a good thing, isn't it?]]