Automoderated users, Autopatrolled users, Bureaucrats, Comment administrators, Confirmed users, Moderators, Rollbackers, Administrators
213,518
edits
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot/Comic Books: Difference between revisions
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot/Comic Books (view source)
Revision as of 21:22, 6 December 2022
, 1 year agono edit summary
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
| (3 intermediate revisions by 3 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{trope}}
Examples of [[{{TOPLEVELPAGE}}]] in [[{{SUBPAGENAME}}]] include:
* Lets just get it out of the way and say every single running story arc ever derailed by a [[Crisis Crossover]]...
* "Here Comes Tomorrow" is the [[Distant Finale]] to [[Grant Morrison]]'s ''[[New X-Men]]'' run, touted as a throwback to the classic ''Days of Future Past''. Sounds promising...until it devolves into four issues of typical disjointed, [[What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?|Morrison-esque weirdness]] that never goes anywhere. Eighty years after Jean Grey's death, Earth is an apocalyptic wasteland where the continents have been renamed for some reason, a [[Brainwashed and Crazy]] Beast has taken over the Earth (we never learn how he pulled this off), the X-Men are led by a [[Heel Face Turn|not-evil]] Cassandra Nova (never explained), and Jean turns up alive in a giant egg on the moon (also never explained). Instead of tapping X-Men's rich mythology for possible [[Future Badass]] characters, we're treated to a nonsensical slugfest between Beast's army and a slough of newly-introduced characters who we, on average, only get to know for about ten pages before they're unceremoniously killed off. They include a psychic Scottish whale, some British kid with a pet Sentinel, and a kingdom of giant termites. It all culminates with the sky spontaneously raining blood, Jean muttering something about the universe "dying" (for some reason), and somehow fixing it all by traveling back in time to the day after she died and convincing Cyclops to make out with Emma Frost...in front of her tombstone. It's one of the most ridiculously convoluted [[Die for Our Ship]] moments ever conceived.
Line 44 ⟶ 46:
* DC Comics [[Infinite Crisis]] crossover. While what we got was entertaining in its own right, what was promised by the lead-in minis - a bunch of unrelated, but large scale, threats piling on top of the heroes at the same time - had a lot of potential that was ignored when the main story started.
* ''[[Countdown to Final Crisis]]'' IS this trope: [[Weirdness Magnet|Jimmy Olsen]] gets all his [[Silver Age]] [[Superpower Silly Putty|powers]] back! There's actually fifty-two freakin' Monitors! Brother Eye merges with Apokolips! [[Shazam|Mary Marvel]], "deserted" by Captain Marvel turns to Black Adam! [[Batman|Harley Quinn]] and [[Catwoman (film)|Holly Robinson]] vs. Granny Goodness! A crazy, universe-hopping adventure searching for a character missing for (relative to the reader) years! A kajillion fascinating [[Alternate Universe]] counterparts! Paul Dini writing! A lead-up to the biggest Crisis of all! A followup to the beloved 52! A look at the seedy underbelly of the DC universe from the perspective of two repentant Flash villains! A heroic version of the Joker! [[Shout-Out|Jimmy Olsen]] vs. [[David vs. Goliath|Darkseid!]] A shocking murder mystery involving the death of an [[New Gods|entire race of gods!]] [[Evil Versus Evil]]! The genesis of the Kamandi-verse! [[What Could Possibly Go Wrong?]]??! Short answer: '''EVERYTHING.'''
* ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil. War.]]'' While we have had the threat of registration acts in Marvel before, this is the first time the true effects of such an act would be felt EVERYWHERE (in the US), not just in mutantlands. And having two long time friends and iconic heroes divided on the issue, driving home the "brother vs. brother" vibe of most civil wars? Brilliant! Awesome! Spectacular! And what happens? Nearly every character involved gets epically derailed in some way, [[Fantastic Four|Reed Richards]] and [[Iron Man]] are pretty much destroyed in the eyes of fans (the latter epically brilliant, considering they were promoting HIS MOVIE during the storyline), the point that [[Straw Man Has a Point|there ARE a lot of heroes that could use Avengers training, resources and oversight]] is arbitrarily dismissed in order to make the pro-reg side look bad, the point that [[Straw Man Has a Point|government abuse of power has a problematic history in the real world and an even worse one in the Marvel Universe, meaning that allowing them vast discretionary power over superhumans with no oversight could and DID end up going horribly wrong]] is likewise arbitrarily skipped over by the storyline in order to make the anti-reg side look bad, and the USA is left in shambles and easily run over by both [[Secret Invasion|an alien invasion]] and [[Dark Reign (comics)|a coalition of supervillains]] who end up doing ''the very thing the Avengers Initiative was created for''. [[Sarcasm Mode|But at least we have]] [[The Scrappy|Sally Floyd]] [[Blatant Lies|to make it all worthwhile]].
** Speaking of perfectly good plots, ''[[Kingdom Come]]'' dealt with a lot of the same issues and plot points as Civil War did, except DC's version was ''awesome''. Of course, having Superman on the Lawful side helps. So does hiring Alex Ross.
* Andy Diggle's run on ''[[Daredevil]]'' started off with Daredevil being the leader of the Hand (an evil ninja cult), a plot point which started at the end of Ed Brubaker's run. After a fairly decent initial arc (titled The Devil's Hand) showing Daredevil setting some things up with the Hand and trying to teach the ninjas not to kill, it suddenly leapt into the Shadowland event, which turned Daredevil completely evil. It was partially justified, but the event turned out to be incredibly anticlimatic, and would have been much better had Daredevil's descent to evil been more gradual, and more potential for Daredevil as the leader of the Hand utilised beforehand.
Line 52 ⟶ 54:
** Even then, ''[[All Star Batman and Robin]]'' again seemed the kind of thing Miller couldn't screw up. ''Dark Knight Returns'' had established Dick Grayson and Batman hadn't spoken for years, and that Batman had given crimefighting away out of a promise he made to Tim Drake. You also had ''Batman Year One'' which establishes the character so firmly it influenced movies, and provides a solid foundation for anything you could write from then on. Fans rejoiced when they heard ASBAR was basically going to be a prequel to ''Dark Knight Returns.'' And then what happens? '''I'm the goddamn Batman.''' Yellow-painted rooms, "here's some freshly-squeezed lemonade", Green Lantern as a dunce, and Batman ''performing a fucking tracheotomy on GL after Robin gets too enthusiastic and crushes his windpipe''.
* After ''[[Blackest Night]]'' gave us "the unprecedented scenario of [[The Flash|all four Flashes]] still alive", fans were [[Tempting Fate|"hoping the writers could take advantage of that"]]. Cue ''[[Flashpoint]]'', thanks to which the ''New52'' universe has now gone through a [[Cosmic Retcon]] with effects including, you guessed it, having only one Flash. That was... [[Incredibly Lame Pun|fast.]]
* Marvel's Spiderverse is a [[Crisis Crossover]] with ''every'' incarnation of [[Spider-Man]] ever made (including a highly hyped up appearance by [[Japanese Spider-Man]]) ''and'' some really cool new ones like Peni Parker, a ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' inspired Japanese female spider-person. How do they fuck it up? By doing nothing with the characters that people wanted to see (Japanese Spider-Man quickly dies jobbing, like "killed in one panel" jobbing) and focusing on some new [[Villain Sue]] nobody cares about who isn't even thematically linked to Spider-Man (he's just a vampire thing).
{{tropesubpagefooter}}
| |||