Wall Banger/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


A reader will often expect cool things to happen within the pages of a comic book. It doesn't always work out that way.

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

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Other Works

Marvel

  • In Civil War: Frontline #11, reporter Sally Floyd accuses Captain America of being out of touch with the "real America" because he's focused on moral values such as truth, justice, and freedom, as opposed to the pop-cultural shallowness that she and all the "average Americans" she knows focus on, such as American Idol, Myspace, and YouTube. That concentrated essence of outspoken stupidity instantly cemented Sally Floyd's status as the Stupidest Person In Comics.
    • It's not just that Sally Floyd is an incredible jackass. It's clear from the writing, particularly from the way that a man famous for speeches about doing the right thing no matter what bows his head and accepts this, that we're supposed to be on her side. According to the writers, Myspace, YouTube and American Idol are more important to Americans than truth, justice, freedom, and democracy. Even if they're right, it feels wrong.
      • Thankfully, other Marvel comics have started to criticize this. For instance, Floyd is ridiculed for it in the Patriot issue of a recent Young Avengers mini-series. Moon Knight also saved her from some street thugs in his own comic, and then stated that if he had known who she was, he wouldn't have bothered to help her.
    • Cap's response to this is priceless. Sadly, it's just a Photoshop.
    • World War Hulk: Frontline parodies this with Top 10 Reasons to Hate Sally Floyd. #1 features her drunkenly kicking dirt onto Captain America's grave and asking him when was the last time he posted on YouTube. Also there was the time she dated Captain Rectitude, which is apparently "you don't want to know" territory.
  • In the same issue that she declares her opinion on what the American way is, Sally Floyd and Ben Urich confront Iron Man and tell him that they found out about his plan to start a war with Atlantis in order to make the pro- and anti-registration sides join forces against a common enemy. That plan would also have provided him with some tidy war profits from Stark Industries' contracts with SHIELD, which he would then funnel into his pet projects like nanite-controlling supervillains, prisons in the negative zone, and cloning his dead friend, who happens to be a God. Anyone who has ideas like that cannot be trusted with the power Stark got after Civil War. But Floyd and Urich, without any logical reason, decide not to tell the public about Stark's plan and applaud him for his stoic "heroism." And they dare call themselves reporters!
    • This is the moment that cemented Iron Man as a villain, even though the writer Paul Jenkins intended to show what he planned as a necessary evil or "shooting the dog." Starting a war that could kill millions of civilians because of a comparatively "trivial" issue of a few hundred people blowing up is beyond excuse. And this is coming from someone who otherwise agreed more with Iron Man's argument than with Cap's, but it also completely contradicts Stark's otherwise extreme philanthropic, heroic moral fiber, and the story has been completely ignored and never referred to again by anyone. Which still isn't the right approach of course, as it is still in continuity. Better to offhand retcon it into a Skrull, mind-control, or similar.
    • He was going to start this war by having a nanite-controlled Norman Osborn, aka the Green Goblin, shoot an Atlantian Ambassador at a diplomatic negotiation! <shudder> To keep Osborn from revealing this, he puts him in charge of the other nanite-controlled supervillains of the Thunderbolts, which put Norman in a position to take over SHIELD after Tony screws up during the Secret Invasion.
    • Pretty much everything related to Civil War was a horrific Wall Banger, though the height of awful was Tony Stark's completely irrational Face Heel Turn (and the writers' insistence that it was in-character and hero-compatible and not a Face Heel Turn) from a man with such deep moral principles and who strongly rejected the "ends justify the means" philosophy that a major part of his origin story has him convert Stark Industries from an arms manufacturer to a futuristic technology R&D because he found the idea of developing lethal weapons abhorrent, funded the Avengers and used his money and influence to vigilantly protect them all from exactly the same kind of crap they were subjected to after the bombing that kicked off Civil War, whose Rogues Gallery included people who wanted to take over Stark Industries to develop the same kind of amoral abominations that Nazi-Stark used during Civil War, and who for decades had been portrayed as a person who would do anything for his friends and colleagues (especially his BFF Captain America), including sacrifice his life in a heartbeat several times over rather than risk one of theirs; into a ruthless manipulative Nazi who would engage in any number of horrific actions just because he though a SHRA was a good idea that should be implemented. Not to mention that he knows perfectly well how dangerous superheroes handing over their secrets is, and has refused to create blueprints for or tell anyone how to make his Iron Man armor out of fear that the information could fall into the wrong hands and be used for destruction.
    • Also, Reed Richards being Pro-Reg in the first place, when in the past he explicitly said the idea of a SHRA was a stupid idea and spent an entire issue (Fantastic Four #336) outlining the reasons for why passing one would cause more harm than good. And no, he never was shown changing his mind, since he has always had an extremely dim opinion of the government's ability to deal with superheroes. It was just a irrational flash of whatthehellery that handwaved decades of past characterization. Not to mention that he is so ethical he once saved Galactus's life because he could not rationalize letting an unmalicious being die, yet during Civil War decided it was a good idea to make, program, and sic an evil Thor clone on his friends.
  • Before the SHRA was a law, Cap is walking around with Maria Hill, and he says he won't enforce the SHRA. She immediately tries to arrest him. He beats up several soldiers, jumps out the window, and hijacks a fighter jet from the outside by embedding his shield into the canopy and telling the pilot where he wants to go. Awesome as it is, it still doesn't change that Hill tried to arrest him for saying he would not enforce a law that wasn't in force yet. The most they should've been able to do is court-martial and fire him, like they've done before - and even THAT assumed that Hill, as director of SHIELD, actually had the authority to do so (Whether or not SHIELD was an international group or under the Department of Defense seemed to change Depending on the Writer.)
    • It gets worse. Cap has been in the Army more than long enough to qualify for retirement (time spent "missing in action" is counted as time spent actively serving for purposes of pay, allowances, and retirement eligibility, so Cap's been on active duty for 60+ years), so if he doesn't like his next assignment he has every right to say 'Fuck this shit, I quit', and legally the Army has to let him unless the President has already declared a global freeze on discharges and separations due to an ongoing war. They can't even court-martial him for refusing his orders—the most they can do is ask him to hand the shield and the costume back (as those are government property) and send him off to enjoy civilian life. As they already did once before during the John Walker arc.
    • In addition, in NEW AVENGERS #4, published only shortly before this arc, it was explicitly shown that Director Hill is not in Cap's chain of command and does not have the legal authority to order him to do a single damned thing he doesn't feel like doing. In fact, Cap's chain of command was clarified in that issue -- the one person who can give Cap orders is the President of the United States, and even that ceases to exist the day Cap chooses to retire.
  • In Ultimate Fantastic Four, evil zombie counterparts of the eponymous team are locked up in a high security cell. Evil!Mister Fantastic tells the guards that he converted a ballpoint pen into a teleporter and is about to set the team free. The four disappear, and the guards think they are gone and open the door to the cell. What they planned to do if it had been a teleporter is unknown. But stopping a second to consider that one of the baddies involved could turn things and people invisible would have been a good idea.
    • The evil zombies immediately point out how stupid the guards are for taking such obvious bait before, y'know, devouring their flesh.
    • In the same storyline, Reed Richards refuses to kill the zombies even though he knows they are literally endangering all of humanity (it took the zombie virus literally 24 hours to wipe out their own world). There's a moral code, and then there's just stupidity...
      • To quote Liara from one of my favorite Mass Effect fanfics, "If your moral principle leads you to refuse to take the action necessary to save a trillion lives, then it's a bad principle."
  • JMS retconned Uncle Ben's death as having occurred OUTSIDE and revealed that Ben had argued with Aunt May before he died—which made his death MAY'S fault. Marvel Comics left that in continuity and had to counter-claim it. That's Marvel Comics for ya.
  • There was a point in the Nineties where Mary Jane was killed off in a plane crash so that new stories about Swingin' Single Pete could be made. It did not work. MJ turned out to be not dead, and the whole mess was mercifully swept under the rug and forgotten. Of course, it seems certain people at Marvel didn't get the memo and decided to more or less try it again, but without her death involved. It still did not work.
  • Another Spider-Man one: "Sins Past", where we find out that Gwen Stacy, in a moment of weakness, slept with Norman Osborn and got pregnant with twins; now the kids are back (with a Plot-Relevant Age-Up) and out to get Spider-Man. The original plan was that they were Peter's kids, but Quesada ruled that Pete was (or should be) too young to be a father. Unfortunately, this is still canon in the 616 Marvel Universe.
    • To add insult to injury, Peter's reaction to learning this was ridiculous. He cried a bit, broke some furniture... and that's it. His only thoughts about kids are "They are all that's left of Gwen." Never mind that their father is his archenemy who murdered his brother and his own child. And later he keeps her photo in his room. So Peter still views Gwen as some kind of a saint when revelation like THIS should have shattered that image forever. That's a major Moral Dissonance. And, even though MJ hid this truth from him during their whole relationship, this never caused any problems later... If it had, we could've been spared that Deal with the Devil and its attendant baggage.
  • After his Aunt May's wedding, Parker gets hammered and sleeps with his roommate Michelle (also drunk). Later they "reveal" that Michelle slipped Parker cider when he wasn't looking, so HIS inebriation was due to his own lack of experience being drunk.
    • After Peter attends Aunt May's wedding, and starts drinking heavily when he sees Mary Jane, he wakes up in bed the next morning with Michele, his Tsundere roommate. Fair enough. He accidentally calls her "MJ". She throws him out of the house. She later leaves cookies out, but padlocks the fridge so Peter can't get any milk. The Chameleon later imitates Peter and sleeps with Michele, and she thinks they're now boyfriend and girlfriend. Peter doesn't tell her what happened, until she ticks him off by forcing a curfew on him. She doesn't believe him, and punches him. When Peter's coworker ticks her off, she draws a line down the apartment, and destroys any of Peter's things on "her" side. At this point, the character is basically >90% Yandere, by volume.
  • As if One More Day wasn't bad enough, Quesada has introduced Carlie Cooper, a new woman being pushed as Peter Parker's soul-mate, to the point where even MJ is telling him to be with her. Aside from being such a blatant Creator's Pet who looks more like Peggy Hill than anyone you'd want to date, there's two major problems with this: Carlie is supposed to be a stand-in for Joe Quesada's daughter to the point of being named after her...and Joe is using Peter as a stand-in for himself to the point of his looking like Joe in recent issues. It may not be intentional, but it's still Squick.
    • The amount of Creator's Pet shilling going on with Carlie Cooper is bad enough, but the fact that their main strategies for trying to get fans to accept her as Peter's new girlfriend consist of that, and derailing every other character to do so. And of course, like all of Quesada's finest work, most of it is targeted at Mary-Jane. Although they've really taken the cake as of recent when they even went so far as to suggest Mary-Jane only loved Peter because he was Spider-Man, from PETER'S OWN MOUTH... Yeah, no she didn't. Otherwise she wouldn't have rejected Peter's marriage proposals twice, or refused dating him seriously for so long, when canonically she knew he was Spider-Man since the night Uncle Ben was killed. And in the retconned history presented in One Moment in Time she even refuses to marry him outright because he was Spider-Man. It doesn't even make sense in the newer continuity presented! Linkara went through a pretty damn big rant when JLA: Act of God suggested Lois only loved and married Clark for Superman. Can anyone imagine the rant he would go through if he ever reviewed the storyline where this was brought up?
      • As the issues go on, it seems the current staff behind Spider-Man are trying their absolute hardest to make the fanbase like Carly, both as a character and as Peter's new girlfriend... it isn't working. All of their attempts are so far, making the fanbase dislike her even more and hoping for the day when him and Mary-Jane will be back together (should that day come). And relating to that last part in context with the first... throughout every single one of her appearances, Carly's design has never stayed consistent outside of her having glasses. She's gone from blonde, to brunette, to ginger whilst going from long hair, to shoulder length hair, to short hair, as well as having an incredibly non-distinctive facial design. So, when it looked like Peter was about to get into bed with a long-haired redhead with freckles in Amazing Spider-Man #658, certain fans were quick to point out that Carly looked suspiciously like Mary-Jane. What's wrong with this?... Making a disliked love interest look more like a more popular love interest, is not going to make people accept the status quo. If anything, it'll only help reinforce they want the old one back. And of course, there's the matter that Peter and Carly are already trying to sleep together here... when they've barely had any time to develop a their relationship, especially compared with every single other prominent love interest Peter has ever had (making Carly the very definition of a Relationship Sue).
      • ASM #659 has Carlie getting upset after finding out Peter lied to her, getting drunk, and plotting a way to get back it him. How? By getting a tattoo...of the Green Goblin. The guy who murdered Peter's first girlfriend. Especially galling when you consider that Gwen Stacy was retconned to be a childhood friend of Carlie.
      • But in #660, it turns out that the tattoo she got was of Spider-Man's head instead. You heard that right, Spider-Man's head! This turned out to be a blatant Bait and Switch, all to make it clear just how perfect Carlie is!
      • However as of Spider-Island's Finale, Carlie has broken up with Peter. And there was great joy in the land.
        • And worse, The Green Goblin is now a symbol of White Supremacy in the Marvel Universe... For some reason. So, not only was she planning to get the tattoo of a complete monster who killed his girlfriend and her childhood friend, but its also a symbol of Neo Nazism. While she doesn't go through with it, to even contemplate doing that makes her one of the least likable people since Sally Floyd.
      • Even worse, Carlie is now one of the select few that know Peter and Spider-Man are the same person. This is something that only a privileged few get to know, and not even Aunt May is privy to that information anymore. What's worse, it's was argued that she could "totally handle" the information had Peter just told her. But May, who we do know can handle it and handle it well, is still left in the dark and still argued that she couldn't deal with Peter being Spider-Man even though there are years of stories that show otherwise. So a character that has barely been in the book (and most likely won't be in the book for very long) is allowed to be in on the inner circle of a very private and exclusive club, but a character that has been in the books for decades and was previously one of these few secret keepers is no longer allowed to know.
        • Not only that, but her finding out REALLY proves otherwise. Whe she found out, her reaction was to break up with him and call him out on lying to her, despite the fact that he's been Spider-Man a LOT longer than he knew her and all. So, this raises two points: Carlie's suposed ability to handle it is complete bull, and Carlie Cooper is now a non-rescuing example of an Entitled Bastard. Let me explain that, Carlie Cooper seems to think that Peter 'should have told her the truth' and shouldn't of lied to her about being Spider-Man, except that they'd ONLY JUST started going out. Did she just expect him to tell her when they first met, or during conversation? Peter would need to build up to telling her something so big, and she acts like she deserved to know it. If they were dating BEFORE he became Spider-Man, than sure, not telling her would be bad, but in universe, they've only known each other for about a year (a couple more in real life), and he hasn't told people like Harry or Robbie or even Aunt May (well, she DID know for a while, but not anymore) despite knowing them much longer. In short, she somehow feels she's entitled into his secret and he betrayed her by treating her as equally as he did with his family and friends. Bitch.
      • Another big 'Carlie is great' moment of hackery would be one of the following issues after Spider-Island. Just when people were thinking that the writers had realized she was a horrible character and Peter and MJ were going to be finally reunited, somewhat evidensed by the fact that Joe Quesada had been replaced as EIC nearly a year ago and his current whereabouts unknown, with his name no longer popping up much, They decide to give one more fuck you to Carlie's detractors. In a moment of total Suefication, Carlie is the only person in the New York police department, or at least of the precint she works at, who notices that the 'obvious accidental suicide victim' was too far from any great height to have caused his own death. Her captain, for some reason, rights it off as nonsense and ignores the obvious, until she points out why, which to anyone capable of becoming a police chief would have been obvious. To make her look like The Woobie, the chief then kicks her off the case for making him look stupid, forcing her to do the case herself when the chief closes it, and absolutely no one points it out. Its an utter insult to every real life police officer to say they could ever possibly be that incompetant to both miss obvious clues and to close a case just to spite one person. Its insulting to the readers to believe they would believe something would ever happen and that they would really have any sympathy for her in an obviously Idiot Plot set up. And lastly, its almost a spit in the face to think any human being would ever be such a douche to do something like that, regardless of their position of power. This officially laments Carlie as the Creator's Pet. This is the moment that makes you realize that she's on par with Wesley Crusher.
  • If Chuck Austen is loathed for any one thing (though there are many), then it's the storyline known as "The Draco" from his run on Uncanny X-Men. Here's a summary: it turns out Nightcrawler is the son of a demon named Azazel. No, wait, Azazel's just an immortal mutant who was banished to an alternate dimension, and it turns out that the angels and demons of Biblical myth were all early mutants. Oh, and Archangel's one of them, so his blood burns Nightcrawler. Until then, Nightcrawler was a devout Catholic, and his demonic looks were supposed to be ironic.
    • The entire plot of the Draco involved Kurt's devil-lookin' daddy teleporting out of Limbo to knock up women to sire him some teleporting young'uns that he can use to.... get out of Limbo? Yeah, you read that right.
    • It turns out Nightcrawler's entire religious education and time as a priest was part of a brainwashing operation by an anti-mutant group that also hates the Catholic Church. They planned to get Nightcrawler installed as the Pope and then have his image inducer fail so he can be "revealed" as the Antichrist, while they simulate the Rapture using communion wafers that dissolve those who imbibe them.
    • From the same story: "Your power to detonate the air into superhot plasma, and, when pushed, to blow up people's brains from the inside, cannot affect me! I have stitched my eyes shut!" It's a paraphrase, but that's exactly what happened in-story. Luckily, Iceman then casually kills the villain in question by sucking out her body's moisture.
    • The "fake Rapture via disintegrating communion wafers" needs further explanation to understand the sheer, raw, blistering fail of it all. After a bunch of X-Men are lynched, the X-Men track the lynchers back to a church that Nightcrawler says made him a priest. Turns out he was made a priest by an insane Catholic sect (with its own pope!) as part of the most circuitous plan in the history of supervillains: Nightcrawler would be made a priest (done!) and then he would be made pope (how?); then they would have his hologram projector fail and reveal him to be a mutant and "the devil" and then use bioweapons hidden in communion wafers across the nation to stage a false Rapture. After this, mutantkind would be hunted down and killed (why?), and mankind would turn to the Church of Humanity to find salvation (why?) after western civilization falls... for some reason. Now, presumably, if you have ever read an X-Men comic or, you know, a book in your life, then you understand all the flaws in this plan...for instance, Catholics don't believe in the Rapture...but beyond that, it raises a myriad of questions it utterly fails to answer. What happened to the rest of the communion wafers? (You know, the ones in the other churches.) How did this sect get its own pope? Why was this pope female? Why Nightcrawler? Why not any other mutant? (Okay, those last two can be guessed.) Why, just why?
    • And then we have Iceman shattered in thousand of pieces. The other X-Men come up with a plan to revive him: "Well, both ice and the human body are made mostly of liquids, so why don't we all just urinate on his remains?" Squick. Basically, Ice-Man just revived himself after overhearing that plan.
  • Austen's thankfully retconned treatment of She-Hulk. Shipping She-Hulk and Juggernaut is wrong on... several levels, the obvious ones being professional, ethical, moral, and his having tried to kill her cousin. She-Hulk hasn't shied away from sleeping around, but she beat the SHIT out of Tony Stark just for sending her cousin to another planet (although she did sleep with him at some point, that point was before she discovered he did that). But by science, Chuck doesn't need logic, continuity, or anything else to fuel him - just his own uber-hackery! Why should a tiny thing like attempted murder of family members factor into such things as sexual partners? Dan Slott retconned this and many other things by explaining that there's a universe that used the regular Marvel Universe for recreation, and so all the times people appeared in the wrong uniforms or Out of Character... those were just people from another universe... PRETENDING to be those people.
    • This was retconned back. Someone up there must like She-Hulk/Juggernaut.
    • A whole slew of She-Hulk wallbangers from the pen of Peter David (who should know better): After She-Hulk was fired from her law firm and disbarred [1] she became a bounty hunter. While on the road she was present at an incident where an alien terrorist murdered a woman who was out camping with her husband. Long story short, She-Hulk resolved the situation with the help of an alien bounty hunter and continued on her way. Later she found out the husband to the murdered woman was arrested. The police didn't believe his story that "space aliens did it" (probably not his exact words) and assumed he killed her himself. Now, you would think the obvious solution to this problem would be for She-Hulk to walk up to the front desk of the police station and say "That man is innocent, he's telling the truth, I was there." Especially since the husband specifically named her as a corroborating witness. But does she do that? NO! She instead decides to merely visit him in his cell [2] and ends up spending a night in jail herself after she accidentally rips the door off the husband's cell. Oh, but wait, it's not over yet. After spending a night in jail because of her own inexplicable stupidity, she shows up in court the next day and attempts to testify on the husband's behalf. At his arraignment hearing. A hearing where, by definition, no witness testimony is heard. The judge himself chastises her for not knowing this. Apparently Peter David expects us to believe that in the short time since being disbarred She-Hulk has somehow A) forgotten 3 years of law school and who knows how many years of personal experience as one of the most successful attorneys in New York City, and B) taken up juggling Idiot Balls. In the end She-Hulk had to resolve the situation by metaphorically crawling back on her hands and knees to her old law firm (which she was on very bad terms with at the time) and begging her old rival Mallory Book to come to her rescue and get the charges dropped. Which, incidentally, she accomplishes by slapping together a phony-baloney "national security" defense that renders the defendant's testimony classified information [3] and dragging Tony Stark along with her (in full costume no less) to back it up. There was, quite literally, no good reason for any of the above to have occurred. The only purpose of the story was to humiliate She-Hulk, give Tony Stark a Pet the Dog moment, and squeeze in another idiotic "superheroes are evil" rant in the wake of Civil War and World War Hulk.
      • Oh, hey, here's another wallbanger related to that story. As a bounty hunter She-Hulk works for a bail bond company known as Freeman Bonding Inc. which she abbreviates to "FBI" when she's working. She does this because, no joke, people "don't know to ask" what the acronym stands for and assume she means the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In other words, She-Hulk is impersonating a law enforcement officer.
        • Actually, the law is that in order to be impersonating an FBI agent, your alleged insigniae actually needs to have "Federal Bureau of Investigation" written on it and spelled out, or spoken out loud. The initials are not enough, precisely because there are other legally incorporated businesses and organizations that exist with the acronym "FBI" and the government has no legal monopoly on abbreviations. This is why, when you are trying to determine whether or not someone is legitimately a law enforcement officer, you should make sure that his credentials spell it out in longhand. (You should also make sure he has an accompanying photo ID from his department and not just a badge, because the ID is actually the legal credentials. Replica badges can legally be anything.) Of course, the scene still fails because She-Hulk is taking advantage of a legal technicality to act in bad faith, which is extremely bad behavior for a lawyer. Its just not quite enough to get her arrested despite still being skeevy... which is, come to think of it, extremely typical behavior for a lawyer. *sigh*
  • X-Men Angel and Husk hooking up, flying up in the sky, and having sex right in front of everyone, including Husk's mother.
  • A small wallbanger in the greater scheme of things, but many readers hated Austen's handling of Polaris. Mental issues, fine. Romance issues, fine. Turning her into a completely batshit, likely unfaithful harpy to make the Muggle character he'd based on his own wife look like the perfect saintly match for Havok? Not cool.
  • Another exhibit of "Why Chuck Austen Should Never Be Allowed To Handle Romance Ever": his treatment of Hank Pym, Janet van Dyne, and Clint Barton during his run on The Avengers—specifically, the decade-late resurrection of the "WIFE BEATER" meme and his failure at treating the characters as anything more than cardboard cut-outs with writer-imposed Issues pasted on.
  • Speaking of X-Men, Scott Summers marries someone who looks like Jean, and we are expected to believe that it's not a rebound. When Jean comes back, he isn't excused for abandoning his wife; but the only way the writers knew to fix it was to make Madelyne a clone of Jean. Then they not only made her immediately Ax Crazy and evil, but also told us that she was Ax Crazy and evil ever since Scott left.
    • Then some guys get to Running the Asylum, declare that they didn't like Jean coming back, and order Grant Morrison to kill her off and have Scott start dating Emma over Jean's grave. To justify this, Jean's ghost made Scott forget his feelings for her to keep him from leaving the X-Men. But the way it's done makes it look as though she cares about nothing but Scott's happiness, which is not in any way what Jean was like before.
    • Not many people realize it, but Scott Summers is the Butt Monkey of the Marvel Universe. Writers LOVE doing bad things to him AND making him look bad at the same time.
  • Reginald Hudlin, when writing Black Panther, gave us these:
    • Black Panther refuses to reveal the cure for cancer to the outside world because Western Leaders are unwilling to or incapable of granting the King of Wakanda proper respect. It's probably "incapable of" because Western leaders cannot possibly know what proper respect would entail. There's a flashback scene with T'Challa's father that also covers this territory: Ambassadors of the various Western powers offered him literally anything he wanted regarding trade terms, only asking for access to Wakanda's vibranium in return. T'Chaka sneered at them for assuming he could be bought off 'cheaply' and then went into a full "The Reason You Suck" Speech about every part of the world that wasn't Wakanda. Why did T'Chaka bother showing up at this trade summit if he was prepared to insultingly reject a blank check? What on Earth could be more generous than "We'll pay any price you ask"?
      • "Here's the title deeds to the White House. Congratulations, T'Chaka, you are now the President of the United States of America." That's about it.
      • It is possible that T'Chaka took this stand because of how Western governments tend to treat non-Western civilizations—Wakanda no doubt had noticed what happened to nations in Darkest Africa that traded with white men. But if Wakanda is ahead of them... well, there's still a risk, but it's considerably lower than usual....
      • It's still rude and arrogant for T'Chaka to accept an invitation to a trade summit and then make his sole reason for attending the desire to insult every other participant in the discussion. If Wakanda didn't want to risk selling any vibranium - which to be fair they historically didn't, and have every right not to do - then they should have simply sent the invitation back with a diplomatic note reading, 'Wakanda's foreign trade policy is as follows: we don't want any. Thank you and good day.'
      • At one point in the storyline one of T'Challa's ministers suggests releasing the cure for cancer to the world in exchange for the US' cooperation in extraditing T'Chaka's murderer, which is at least a reasonable if not very charitable position. His idea is argued down on the grounds that "They would just weaponize it, as they weaponize everything." First off, the mind boggles at how a cure for cancer could be weaponized into anything comparable to or worse than the WMDs the US government already has. Second off, that is not an argument against agreeing to at the minimum let cancer patients untreatable by any other means be allowed to see Wakandan doctors under Wakandan supervision. The sheer lack of empathy here is astounding; every single living soul in the 'Western' (read: non-Wakandan) world is treated as a black box to be either placated or threatened in return for receiving what rewards Wakanda might want to receive from them, and otherwise ignored. At no point does even the most charitable Wakandan minister in the council discussion act like they might be talking about other people who actually have feelings and suffer and die and could be helped.
    • Elevating Wakanda, which was previously on par with the rest of the world technologically until T'Challa took the throne, into a Mary Suetopia that has been light-years ahead of the rest of the world, including that cure for cancer that they won't share.
    • During a diplomatic meeting with T'Challa and Storm, Dr. Doom remarks that "the African is a superior physical specimen." A scientific genius like Doom buying into eugenics? Must be a racist Doombot. (He could have been sweet-talking them, but that isn't normally Doom's style.)
    • Storm suddenly falling in love with Black Panther and marrying him. This was done solely to have a "strong black couple". No one at Marvel seemed to have a problem with taking the tough, independent leader of the Uncanny X-Men and making her a supporting character in a book with one-third the sales. Hudlin seems to honestly believe that the most powerful black heroine becoming the bride of the most impressive black hero is thematically fitting, long overdue Character Development.
      • Tucked into X-Men: First Class #4, we have this: While going hand to hand with the mercenary Nightshade, Storm, in the middle of her Shut UP, Hannibal speech, talks about how she grew up in the slums of Cairo and knew all about life on the streets. Then she met a young man who "showed [her] a better way" and inspired her to be a better person. Here, there is a side insert of what is clearly a young T'Challa. In other words, she would have still been a street rat in Cairo when Professor X found her if not for T'Challa. Doubly Wallbanging because it derailed a nifty Crowning Moment of Awesome for Ororo.
    • In Christopher Priest's run, there is a World War II flashback in which Captain America encounters T'Chaka when they stray too close to Wakanda. Thinking it's an invasion, T'Chaka attacks Cap; they fight to a standstill before the misunderstanding is cleared up. T'Chaka allows Cap to follow him to Wakanda, where T'Chaka gives him a nugget of vibranium as a display of respect. Cap responds in kind, giving him his original shield. Hudlin apparently didn't like the thought of a black man and a white man being equals, and so he rewrote the story so T'Chaka just kicked Cap's ass and that was the end of it.
    • Speaking of racism, one issue has Panther helping a group of Skrulls in human form being oppressed by other Skrulls in human form. In an amazing coincidence, all the oppressed Skrulls look like black people, and all the oppressor Skrulls look like white people. The leader of the oppressed Skrulls looks like Martin Luther King Jr. Subtle, Hudlin.
    • It's even seeped into Marvel vs. Capcom 3; Storm's ending? She starts getting mopey about fighting a seemingly losing battle against tolerance (how ironic), and is cheered up by T'Challa... by pimping the awesomeness of Wakanda and that, as long as she loves him and swears to protect the land, she's doing "good". Yeah, way to turn An Aesop about The Power of Love into another Creator's Pet message for your own bigoted view of blacks, Hudlin.
  • The Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas Limited Series began with Tony Stark enjoying a nice relaxing plane flight over Paris, only for it to be interrupted by a suicide bomber who begins making threats. Stark promptly puts on his outfit and hurls the man outside, saving the day...and causing those dirty nasty French passengers to call him a brute and a bully; they note how the nice man strapped with C4 was willing to negotiate. Because, of course, all us non-Americans pray for the day where we can sit & negotiate with a psychopathic madman 10,000 feet in the air and would be insulted if an American in a cool high-tech suit saved our lives.
    • They're probably just jealous that he has a powersuit and they don't.
    • It manages to be a wall-banger the OTHER way, too. The man in the flying bomb-proof armor didn't bother to follow the bomber out the door and take him alive - not even to interrogate him. Or prevent a needless death. It's not like he would have had to return the terrorist to the plane.
      • He decided that it was just fine to threaten a suicide bomber in a plane full of innocent civilians who would die if the suicide bomber decided to set off the bomb.
      • Suicide bombers tend to, y'know, die. It's not like he was going to hold still while Iron Man patiently disarmed the bomb, one-handed, in the middle of a jetstream.
      • This is Tony Stark we're talking about. If he can't disarm a bomb in midair then there is some serious character derailment going on.
  • Grant Morrison's New X-Men - The twist that Xorn (a superpowered being who was locked up in a Chinese prison for having a black hole contained in his head) was Magneto. That specific plot twist was built up for two years, and was interesting and unexpected. You can't believe you didn't see it coming. The Man from Room X turning out to be the X-Men's biggest enemy was critically-praised and was the most interesting thing to happen to the franchise in years. The problem is how it was handled after that. It turned out that it wasn't Magneto. No, Xorn just thought he was and looked just like Mags. Oh, and Xorn has a brother with the same powers and the personality he pretended to have as one of the X-Men, just so that they'd still be able to use either character. The status quo IS God, huh?
    • Even worse was the way "Xorneto" acted upon The Reveal. Trashing Manhattan? OK, Magneto's done it before. But drug use? Herding innocent Muggles into crematoriums?! The reason he got INTO villainy in the first place was being a victim of the Holocaust! While this was all relatively in line with Magneto's original characterization, it doesn't match what the character had evolved into since then. The Retcon that Magneto had nothing to do with Xorn's actions was a critical Author's Saving Throw.
    • Magneto's last use of something that enhanced Mutant powers - or, rather, someone, one Fabian Cortez - backfired on him spectacularly! "Magneto" shouldn't have gone anywhere near the stuff.
    • From the classic Floating Hands production "Death Becomes Them"...

Magneto: That wasn't me.
Wolverine: Oh really now?
Magneto: That was actually Xorn's evil twin brother, possessed by the sentient mold Sublime, pretending to be me, pretending to be Xorn.
Beast: That defies all logic!

  • In Ultimatum, Ultimate Marvel's latest Crisis Crossover event, every character insists on referring to every other character by name, which is bad writing. The random deaths of characters have long since ceased to be interesting. The thing that sends the comic flying at the wall? Wasp is dead, and the Blob is eating her.
    • This happened less than a month after her 616-verse counterpart was given a badly-handled death at the end of Secret Invasion.
    • This was after her magical transformation from Asian to White in Ultimates 3, right?
      • Wasp magically changing race was about the least of the problems with Ultimates 3 - which is at least one of the reasons the Ultimate Universe is getting rebooted. Ultimatum was just a final "fuck you" to the fans.
        • Is it rebooted or going to be? As far as I can tell, they decided to just run with the Ultimate U as is. The same one in which more than half of the major players are dead. It's not all bad, I suppose, because I do enjoy the new Status Quo in Ultimate Spider-Man, with a Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends-type setup.
  • Avengers Disassembled. It retconned out that Wanda already remembered her children to justify her going insane at the revelation of them. Then there's Doctor Strange's stupid comment about chaos magic not existing when he himself had used it in past stories. (This ended up being one of the big factors taken on in the What If...? for the story. Strange claimed that he'd been busy elsewhere, and that the one they saw at the destroyed Avengers Mansion was a decoy made by Wanda.) The Avengers hand Wanda over to Magneto with no questions asked. This was what set up House of M, one of the most hated storylines in X-Men history. And then there was the writer's I Meant to Do That at the end. If he had known as much about continuity as those tossed-in pages implied, then the story never would have happened in the first place.
    • Note that, shortly after Bendis retconned William and Thomas into soulless automatons who had never existed, they turned out to have been reincarnated as Billy "Wiccan" Kaplan and Tommy "Speed" Shepherd of Young Avengers. How does one reincarnate someone who has ceased to have ever been incarnate?
      • Then there's the fact that Wanda, whose powers had been impressive enough but not outlandish, suddenly became omnipotent, on a level that she could threaten the existence of not just the multiverse, but the entire omniverse. She could now eat the original version of the Beyonder for breakfast and use Galactus as a toothpick if she wanted. Not only is no explanation given for how this happened, but none of her friends even try to figure out how it happened.
      • The existence of at least one What If? issue dedicated to this mess means there is at least one alternate world with another version of Wanda capable of erasing all reality. Probably more. Even Mad Jim Jaspers and the (sigh) Marquis of Death were at least established to be unique in the multiverse. If there are a bunch of batshit-crazy omnipotent Wandas running around, how is anything still here?
  • House of M came about because Quicksilver was afraid the Avengers and X-men would kill Wanda because her powers were out of control; it was even suggested that this might be necessary. This was around the time Astonishing X-men was running a story arc about a way to remove mutant powers, seemingly safely and permanently. Poor Communication Kills.
    • Well curing Wanda's powers wouldn't have fixed the issue as she is still suffering severe mental health issues and needed profession help. The real wall banger is the story resorting to There Are No Therapists who could help Wanda despite the existence of certified therapists such as Emma Forst (who is one the side of killing Wanda) and Doc Sampson who could help Wanda cope with her issues. In addition some of the memebers of both teams did consider killing her so Pietro was right to be concerned.
  • In Wolverine #43, Wolverine was Stripped to the Bone from a blast by Nitro (yes, that Nitro). It took less than five pages for Wolverine to fully regenerate. If Wolverine could survive that, then he can survive lethal threats like being shot, stabbed, drowned, nuked, etc.; this kills some of the suspense. To add salt to the wound, after being cornered, Nitro decided to take Wolverine hostage by putting a knife up his throat after HAVING WITNESSED WOLVERINE FULLY REGENERATE FROM BEING STRIPPED TO THE BONES BY A NUKE!
    • An additional Wallbanger comes when Wolverine starts beating up Nitro, while he explains in his narration that he has noticed how Nitro's explosions don't harm himself. He then concludes that Nitro has a safety area around him, in which the blast doesn't effect anything. So Wolverine can beat him up because any blast wouldn't effect him from that range anymore. However, back at the beginning of Civil War, Namorita stands all of 10 centimeters away from Nitro, whom she holds against a bus. We clearly see her getting blasted to bits when Nitro causes the Stamford incident.
    • To put that in perspective: the creators of the X-Men Origins: Wolverine game considered having a scene where Wolverine was skeletonized by a nuclear meltdown and could briefly be controlled as a walking skeleton. They dropped it because it was too over-the-top. For a video game.
    • According to the 2008 Logan miniseries, on August 6, 1945, Wolverine was in Hiroshima when the nuclear bomb dropped on it. He was in the blast radius. This bomb killed 140,000 civilians, but Wolverine survived - and no one else in the blast radius did. Mark that in your history books.
      • To be fair, the Hiroshima bomb was a 16 kiloton airburst with the detonation point over 1900 feet above the ground. The circle of total destruction barely even reached the surface, and the majority of the casualties were from the explosive blast wave and the burning fires afterward - and Logan routinely survives those kinds of things.
    • 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 nerfed 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 Angel of Death guardian) used to 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).
  • Following the Messiah Complex event, Kyle & Yost's New X-Men got cancelled, and a new series titled Young X-Men (written by Marc Guggenheim) came out with several of the fan favorites in the lineup. The first arc features Magma, one of the New Mutants, killing New X-Men Dust by turning her to glass and shattering her. She gets reassembled and turned back later; but this leads into further Wall Banger territory. Not only does no one mention that this was all Magma's fault, but she also never apologizes for it. Oh, and Dust never fully recovers from the process and drops dead a few issues later. Dust gets revived again, but apparently the process will turn her evil and lead her to murder every single X-Men in the future. Yikes.
    • 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 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!
    • Kyle and Yost busted out with their own Wall Banger at the start of their run on the series. Following the vast majority of mutants getting depowered (for the heinous editorial crime of having too large a population numbering about half the number of colorblind people in the world), the X-men are handed a big ol' Idiot Ball and proceed to boot all the depowered students out of the school without protection so they can be blown up by rockets, and then leave the school undefended so a few more students can be killed. What was the plot reason for this? The writers didn't know what to do with the characters. You know, the characters they already Put on a Bus. Expect a few Back From The Deads in ten years.
      • 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 using a neighbour's Wi-Fi to illegally download music; this causes a plane to crash into their house, killing Old Lace. Can't Get Away with Nuthin' doesn't even begin to cover this, even if you think piracy is wrong.
  • Why, exactly, is the general public in the Marvel Universe anti-superhero these days?
    • THESE DAYS? Read any bit of Spider-Man, Hulk, or X-Men. The people in Marvel have always been suicidal retards. Besides, that's a focal point of the Marvel Universe: even JLA/Avengers noted it!
      • However, it didn't reach true wall-banging status until Civil War.
      • True, but there was reason for those characters to be hated in-universe. Spider-Man was a Hero with Bad Publicity because of J. Jonah Jameson and multiple attempts at a Frame-Up from villains like the Chamelon and Mysterio. Hulk is at best a Nominal Hero and at worst a Destructive Saviour and the X-Men while victims of Fantastic Racism are not helped by the fact that the majority villains including Magneto are mutants themselves who end up giving the rest of their kind a bad name.
  • Red Hulk started as merely a powerful villain. Then he fought Thor. The fight ends up in space; then Rulk takes Thor's hammer and beats him up with it. Thor's hammer, by the way, is enchanted so that nobody can lift it but Thor himself or a pure-hearted and worthy individual in a desperate situation. Obviously, Rulk is neither. Rulk says that he can bypass this because he is in zero gravity (which, considering he was between the Earth and the moon, is objectively false). The hammer doesn't obey the laws of gravity for anything else, and its observable property of unliftable attraction to the ground would logically cause it to plummet to the planet's surface instead of fulfilling the directive of the enchantment. Even without the gleeful violation of Magic A Is Magic A, this is when Rulk hit Villain Sue and never looked back. Note that, as the image on the Villain Sue page demonstrates, Rulk topped this in terms of Sue-ishness.
    • Rulk will now be joining the Avengers...
  • Daredevil #502: Two protest leaders (of the same group that Bullseye blew up in Daredevil: The List #1) are acquitted of any wrong doing in the explosion. The presiding judge - portrayed as either corrupted by or emboldened by Norman Osborn - threw out the verdict and sent the men to prison.
Let's repeat that: The judge threw out a "Not Guilty" verdict in a criminal trial.

{For those not familiar with the American justice system, this is patently illegal. Jeopardy (No, not that one) is attached the moment "Not Guilty" is read into the record. Throwing that out represents "Double Jeopardy" - being tried for the same crime twice - a clear and flagrant violation of the Fifth Amendment. It also violates the Seventh: the right to convict defendants in criminal trials is vested solely in juries (unless the defendant chooses to waive this right) -- judicial review can flip a 'guilty' verdict to 'not guilty' if there is suitable legal cause, but the reverse is absolutely forbidden. Any judge who even attempted something this stupid would be staring Impeachment in the face by next day's court. As Scans Daily poster toby wan kenobi put it:

"I like how one guy becoming a vaguely-powerful government figure has resulted in IMMEDIATE TOTAL WIDESPREAD CORRUPTION."

  • J. Michael Straczynski's run on Spider-Man had a couple of notorious Wall Bangers in its first story arc with Villain Sue Morlun, not the least of which was Spidey's assertion that Morlun was the first villain who really "ticked him off". Now remember, the Green Goblin (one of Spidey's oldest enemies) has murdered his first true love, kidnapped his infant daughter, ruined the lives of some of his closest friends, threatened his family, and made him doubt his existence by manipulating him into thinking he was a clone—in short, he's made Peter Parker's life a living hell. But Morlun made Spider-Man angrier than the Green Goblin ever did?
  • Mighty Avengers #34 is headache-inducing. Between Pym allowing Pietro to torture Loki for information on Wanda, whom he'd been impersonating for months; Thor showing up to rescue Loki; the ensuing fight having Thor go full on arrogant-asshole-god mode by proclaiming that no one was allowed to judge Loki but other Asgardians (you know, the idiots he's been manipulating for centuries); Pym, out of nowhere, inviting Loki to join the team; and every member of the team walking out in response. Yes, the writer had to break up the team somehow, since the series is ending soon and some of the characters were required in other plotlines; but this issue was solicited three months before its release. Wasn't there time to make a breakup that made sense?
    • Oh, It Got Worse. There's the Ten Billion Bride Hive Mind. Janet's body was revealed as having become the Big Bang to start a new dimension, and Dimension!Jan is controllable because her soul's not in it -- and Ultron and Jocasta both control it. Jocasta agrees to marry Ultron, and Pym is drafted as the unwilling techno-priest. Ultron goes to live in Dimension!Jan, and Jocasta uses her regained bodyhopping ability to go back and forth between that world and the central one. The entire series finale was an exercise in wallbanging What the hell?. Thankfully, from the looks of it, Christos Gage is currently ignoring all of the above in Avengers Academy.
      • Unfortunately, no, he didn't. While issue seven had the perfectly legitimate explanation that Pym was waiting to bring Janet back until he was sure he could bring her back whole, because she'd had a longstanding fear of ending up like her mother, who'd essentially become a vegetable after a brain injury, issue eleven completely blew that out of the water with the revelation that the dimensional entity isn't even really Jan,, it's actually Korvac's wife, Carina, who'd disintegrated herself to get away from him and her molecules got mixed in with Jan's, as the dominant form and personality. In other words, even if Jan could technologically be brought back, without some reality warping, she wouldn't even have her original body to come back to, as it no longer exists because that body is now solely Carina's. My God, cut the woman a break already. Aside from the fact of how shitty her death was to begin with, I think more than enough posthumous indignities have been piled on by now.
  • In Exiles, the villain Proteus ends his Body Surf by taking over Morph. Fine. They solve this problem by brainwashing Proteus to think he's Morph. Disturbing but not unreasonable. Then they find out that, if Proteus/Morph ever learns the truth, he'll slaughter them all and then escape into the multiverse to kill every living thing everywhere. Their response? Go to the beach and hope it doesn't happen.
  • Deadly Genesis. So the third Summers brother mentioned by Mr. Sinister is finally revealed. He wants to kill everyone because Xavier sent him and some friends on a suicide mission to Krakoa to rescue the original X-Men. The original story said firmly that Xavier wouldn't send rookies to save his team when he could call his friends in the Avengers or Fantastic Four or something. This massive retcon has him sending not one, but TWO, teams of completely inexperienced mutants to rescue his students; and the second rescue team goes AFTER the first team was butchered. When Cyclops and Havok are upset that their brother was killed, Xavier erases everyone's memory of the slaughtered rescue team and creates a new version of the story in their heads. There are many reasons Xavier's behavior makes no sense. There is also no way in this version of the story for Mr. Sinister to know about the existence of the third Summers brother.
  • In a Punisher/Eminem crossover comic we have Punisher vs. Eminem. In this corner, we have The Punisher: Marine Corps combat veteran with hundreds of confirmed kills; spec-ops trained; highly trained in numerous fighting styles and weapons; demolitions and tactical expert; in near-Olympic physical condition. Personally responsible for thousands, if not tens of thousands, of murders, more than any other non-powered Marvel character. Kills criminals on a daily basis. Is along with Nick Fury one of the only two non-powered soldiers in the MU to get into a fistfight with Captain America and lose only on points, instead of by KO. And in this corner over here, we have Eminem. He's a completely normal guy who doesn't even qualify as a Bad Ass Normal, and spends most of his time in a studio. Oh, and he hangs out with Fifty Cent. OK, then, this is going to be over quickly; someone get Em's next of kin on the phone and...what the hell? Eminem just pistol whipped the Punisher and is shooting him in the chest?! Eminem shouldn't be able to get the drop on a Marine and tactical expert with spec-ops training!
  • For many fans, The Sentry: Fallen Sun has a story worse than even the Incredibly Lame Pun in the beginning. The story is that The Sentry, having been killed by Thor after giving in to his Super-Powered Evil Side and threatening the universe and possibly even killing his wife, is remembered positively at his funeral. Rogue of the X-Men runs off distraught since, apparently, the Sentry was the only one she could touch. It is revealed that she slept with him; this is discussed in a single panel between Johnny Storm (The Human Torch) and Cyclops. (For a full analysis of why this sucks, see here. The Thing admits that he hated the Sentry because he was a better man than he was for not killing the Wrecker, before he'd killed a group of schoolkids on a bus For the Evulz, which is out of character for the Thing, the Sentry ,and the Wrecker. (Remember the reason for this funeral.) Tony Stark talks about how he was nothing but a drunk before the Sentry came along. Daredevil talks about how he was a good counselor (LOLWUT?). Dr. Strange basically says that, for someone with the power of a million exploding suns, he taught him a lot about darkness. (No kidding.) They pay their last respects. Stark gives them beer (despite that being a drunk bit), and they disperse. All these events were conveniently Retconned in and never shown. But the readers are supposed to empathize with the guy who nearly destroyed the world...
    • Reed Richards then finds the last letter from his BFF the Sentry with his Robot Sidekick C.L.O.C., which implies that he may return. (This is why Marvel Comics should never do funeral storylines.) Honestly, the whole thing was nothing more to show how fabulous the Sentry was. We're told that the pivotal moments of the lives of the major Marvel heroes...is because of the Sentry, which he couldn't do without Retcons. All we saw of him in life was his being agoraphobic and schizophrenic and being Achilles in His Tent when the shit hit the fan. At least Paul Jenkins clearly showed us what he was intended to be: a Gary Stu, whose claim to greatness was Remember the New Guy? with a failed attempt of Too Good for This Sinful Earth...which makes less sense when you consider that he ripped Spider-Man villain Carnage in half and did the same to Ares after he went crazy. Even in death, some bullshit about the greatness that is the Sentry comes to light.
  • In J. Michael Straczynski's otherwise good Thor, when talking to his Asgardian guests, Doom said he "had no idea what a winkle was until he looked in up on Wikipedia". He was sweet-talking them, but come on! The guy is so arrogant that his whole grudge with Reed Richards stemmed from his inability to accept that he was wrong. Either he would pretend to know, or he would pretend that he didn't care.
  • Doom has had a lot of Out of Character lines in recent years. One Out-of-Character Moment in Brian Bendis's Mighty Avengers is the page image for Character Derailment.
    • Not to mention the infamous 9/11 comic, which has him crying in response to a terrorist attack. Yeah, right. Given how many times he's tried to destroy parts of New York, folks found that this made no sense whatsoever.
      • Or as someone put it, if Doom had actually been offended by bin Laden's actions then you'd have known it from the part where he dumped bin Laden's smoking corpse on the front steps of the UN next week. The fact that he doesn't actually go after the terrorists—and remember, Doom is a head of state, and commands an arsenal (if not troops) equal to any First World superpower—implies that he just didn't care, making the tears even more unjustified.
  • In the 1990s, Marvel decided to put Rogue in a romantic subplot with fellow French-speaking Southerner Gambit, which resulted in a major Character Derailment for Rogue to suit the "man of mystery" status of the Cajun. Firstly, he hinted that he might be immune to her absorption power, secondly when he was monologizing away from the others he had a deep, dark secret in his past (which later turned out that he had worked for Mr. Sinister and had been involved, albeit in a non-killing capacity, in the Mutant Massacre). Rogue got handed the Idiot Ball, and so even though Gambit continually teased her about it, she always was too scared to put the immunity hypothesis to the test by simply touching him. Which was a complete break from how she had used her power before.[4] Before Claremont left, she had often absorbed other people's powers and memories, sometimes even playfully, and experience showed that it usually did not cause great problems to her or the "donors". So in order to motivate her out-of-character hesitancy or phobia Marvel decided to rewrite her origin by now declaring that Cody Robbins, the first person on whom she had (accidentally) used her power, never woke from his absorption-induced coma. Well, if that is the case and the permanent absorption of Ms. Marvel's memories that had plagued Rogue for so long, then it is understandable that she is hesitant to try touching Remy, right? Maybe, but now her entire behaviour before she met him makes sense no more. Had this happened, then Rogue must logically have concluded from the first time it was used that her absorption power always put the people she touched into a permanent coma, and thus she would not have kissed another boy shortly afterwards or her surrogate mother Mystique (both of these things happened in Classic X-Men back-up stories set in her pre-Brotherhood years).
  • In Brand New Day J Jonah Jameson becomes an eager supporter of Norman Osborn hailing him as a real American hero. Despite the fact that several years earlier Osborn bought his newspaper from under him via threatening to kill his family.
  • Recently, after almost a decade of fan demand, the original Hobgoblin returned in Amazing Spider-Man #648. Chilling, cunning, and sane, Hobgoblin was one of the most unique, interesting, and underutilized of the Goblins, and is in the Magnificent Bastard comics section. During his career, he had three times fooled Spider-Man with red herrings. Finally, in a case of Know When to Fold'Em, he set up a patsy, the third red herring, to take the fall and die for him while he retired. It was ten years before he reappeared. Finally brought to justice, he spends at most a month comic-book-time in prison before manipulating Norman Osborn into breaking him out. He then retires to the Caribbean to live off of his illicit gains. Surely, his return is going to epic. Wrong. After a decade of anticipation, the Hobgoblin is killed by a Z-list ex-superhero gone crazy named Phil Urich and replaced by said ex-superhero. This was after making the Hobgoblin the Kingpin's, one of Hobgoblin's old enemies, b---h. They even have a line almost paraphrasing that. So first, they derail the Hobgoblin's characterization. Then they kill him off at the hands of a character nowhere near as skilled or powerful in a disrespectful manner without him putting up anything resembling a fight (I mean, if you're going to kill an awesome villain, it should be in awesome fashion) for nothing more than a cheap shock and what could possibly be a thinly-veiled Take That to fans demanding his return. They replace him with his killer, who when introduced had been written purposely as an incompetent hero who found himself way over his head, thus introducing yet another insane Goblin (how creative), as well as limiting future storylines with the original Hobgoblin. Why was killing Roderick Kingsley, the original Hobgoblin, necessary to make Urich the new Hobgoblin?! They could have easily made a Hobgoblin without resorting to offing the old one! Many fans have outright refused to believe that the Hobgoblin that was killed was Kingsley, preferring to assume that it was another stooge set up to take the fall, but seeing how the trend in his appearances, it will probably be yet another (third) decade before he returns.
    • Even if he is Z-list, there are people who remember reading and enjoying the "Green Goblin" series that first introduced Phil Urich, and many others who became familiar with an older version of the character from reading Spider Girl. In the latter, Phil is a good friend and mentor to May Parker, and it's difficult not to like the guy. So to turn him into an insane killer is even more of a Wall Banger for fans of Phil due to the enormous Character Derailment.
  • Avengers Prime: Captain America, who was dating Sharon Carter at the time, who happens to be his primary love interest and has been on-and-off for over forty years, cheats on her by kissing an elf girl in one of the nine realms. He doesn't regret it right after, he doesn't feel guilty. One might get the feeling that Brian Michael Bendis, the series writers, simply didn't do the research. Until the end of the series, when he kisses her again, in view of both Iron Man and Thor. Who then have a chuckle and remark, "Isn't he dating someone on Earth?" So yes, Bendis DOES know the character is dating someone, and he doesn't give a shit, portraying the Marvel Universe's pinnacle of heroism, morality and character as cheater, and his two closest friends who are among the finest heroes of MU as a pair of douche-bros.
  • The over-arching plot in Avengers Vs X-Men is that the Phoenix Force is returning to Earth, keying in on Hope Summers. The Avengers and a few of the X-Men want to try and hide Hope from the Phoenix, fearing that if the Phoenix gained a human host, it would be Dark Phoenix all over again. Among the current X-Men is Rachel Summers... the last human host of the Phoenix Force, who wielded the power for years as a hero and never once went as out of control as The Avengers have talked about. You'd think someone, like say Wolverine, who is an Avenger and knew both Rachel and Jean Gray, would mention this. Nope. You'd think the X-Men - many of whom, like Logan, were teammates with both Phoenixes - would mention this or the fact that Jean didn't really go crazy until her mind was mucked with by Mastermind? Again, nope. Rachel herself? Again. No. Basically the laziest, dumbest Excuse Plot ever devised to set up a Crisis Crossover EVER. (and with competition like Civil War and Dark Reign, that's saying something.)
  • Captain America: Steve Rogers #1 just revealed that after the 'Secret Wars' continuity reboot of 2015, Steve Rogers is now and has been since the 1930s a double agent for HYDRA. Yes, that's right, Captain America was secretly a Nazi world domination cultist all along. I believe I speak for the entire fanbase here when I say what the fucking hell?!?
    • Sure, its almost certainly going to be retconned into 'Not a dream! Not an imaginary story!' territory within six months, but seriously, Steve Rogers going "Hail Hydra!"? You shouldn't do that crap for even six seconds, unless you're well into What If territory. Which this is not.
      • The writer, Nick Spencer, has repeatedly affirmed in interviews that this is not a case of Cap clone, Cap mind control, Cap possession, or similar, and that the story arc is intended to portray that Steve Rogers has willingly been a believer in HYDRA ideals since his mother was inducted into a HYDRA cell in the 1930s. So one of two things is true; either the creator is deliberately lying to the fanbase to build up cheap suspense (which has happened at Marvel before), or else this plot twist is as genuinely awful as it appears to be. Neither alternative is remotely palatable.
        • Apparently the plot twist is 'the Red Skull used the Cosmic Cube to travel into the past and alter Steve's life from an early age, thus leading him to the Dark Side via his mother's recruitment into HYDRA'. While that does provide an adequate in-story explanation for this bullshit, the creation of 'Captain Nazi: Marvel Universe Version'[5], its still regarded as staggeringly tasteless.

DC

  • Everything Adam Beechen has done with Batgirl Cassandra Cain since Infinite Crisis. Before then, she was a near-mute hero who didn't kill because her ability to read people was so strong that she practically saw people's death from their own eyes, causing her to be more anti-killing than pretty much anyone. He made her a villainess who ranted at length about killing and who was extremely pissed at her father for something she already knew about for a long time and was okay with - and in a weird way, they both love each other. And she's gone from being a better martial artist than Batman to no longer able to beat Robin. One hasty Retcon later, and it's explained as drugs and Deathstroke's fault. Except Beechen's still doing the next Batgirl miniseries, 'Redemption Road,' in which she... is planning on going kill-vengeance on Deathstroke and her father. Despite it being the drugs that made her want to kill in the first place now, and despite Batman taking Cassandra back in. And despite her emotion-reading returning - not only should she be totally unwilling to kill like she had before, but the whole "seeing death" thing would also be a problem. And her father is apparently sending assassins after her despite his caring about Cassandra more than anything else on Earth. Most work ever to deal with three issues of character assassination? Quite possibly! And she's being handed back to the character assassin to boot.
    • Nightwing, the world-class nice guy who believes in second chances so much that he recruited bleedin' Ravager for the Titans, was screaming that Cassandra couldn't be trusted and should never be allowed back in the Batcave. Batman, The DCU's most legendary paranoid misanthrope, was giving the "trust and family" speech. Did the artist draw the speech balloons on the wrong characters?
    • It is pertinent to point out that changing Cass (AAAARRRRRGGH!) was DC's idea, not Beechen's. Higher-ups told the writer (new to the title) to come up with a reason for "Evil Cass" for their approval, and he did what he was told. Comic Book Resources has an article about it; scroll down some to get to the part about Batgirl. (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=8504 ). That being said, the execution of what was already probably a bad call was far worse than it had to be for the reasons given above.
  • Superboy-Prime, an alternate version of Superman, literally bangs on a wall made of Time because he got angry, warping the reality. This is the explanation for various inconsistencies, such as Superman's multiple contradictory origin stories and Jason Todd's return from death. Yeah.
  • One story arc by Devin Grayson tried to re-make Daredevil: Born Again, but with Nightwing. The idea is to isolate a character, forcing them to fight alone. For Daredevil, it was a brilliant idea; for Nightwing, not so much. Daredevil was already a relative loner. Nightwing was and still is Batman's heir apparent; as such he knows, has served with, has allied with, or has founded every superhero team in the DC Universe. He is close friends or allies with almost every hero alive. The JSA, the JLA, the Birds of Prey, the Outsiders, Young Justice, and a whole alien species all are friends with him. And the Teen Titans...he basically is BFFs with every member who has ever been on any incarnation of the team, and he led most of them personally. As a result, it's practically impossible to isolate Nightwing that completely. The only way to do it reasonably would be to send him to the far distant future (further than the 30th century even, like the DC One Million timeline) or the distant past (like Vandal Savage's time). Even if you sent him to another universe, the odds of him finding an Alternate Universe ally is high. The only character less capable of handling this story would be Captain America pre-Civil War, since he was basically the adopted father of 99% of the Marvel Universe heroes. Nightwing is only BFFs with about three-quarters.
    • Upon further thought...even transporting Nightwing to the One Million timeline wouldn't really work, since superhumans are worshiped, basically, in that era and no doubt he'd find an army of Nightwing otaku waiting for him like rabid Twihards waiting for Robert Pattenson to step out of a shower. Really only sending Nightwing to the remote past, or to another company's universe altogether, would make this work...
    • And then Tarantula rapes him after killing Blockbuster. And a few months later, Tarantula is accepted as part of the Batman Family!
      • The big reason this doesn't work is because, due to the New Teen Titans characterization taking hold in the 80s, Nightwing is essentially a well-adjusted, likeable Batman.
  • Green Lantern: Rebirth revealed that Hal Jordan had turned evil years earlier because he'd been possessed by an evil yellow fear bug from outer space. The yellow fear bug is now an interesting and integral part of the Green Lantern mythos, but there were a few years when this felt like a serious wallbanger.
  • The writer switch on All-New Atom" from Gail Simone to Rick Remender led to the derailment of every single character.
    • Which led to Ryan Choi being unceremoniously killed off in an issue of Titans so Ray Palmer could take up the mantle again. And in the middle of Asian Heritage Month, no less! Smooth, DC. Celebrate Asian culture by killing off one of your few non-stereotypical Asian heroes so his white male predecessor can come back.
  • Teen Titans has had a few of these lately. For example, the beginning of one issue starts off with Kid Devil attacking the villain Shockwave, as any normal hero would in that situation. He's blown back by an attack, which causes a building to fall on the team and and allows Shockwave to get away. Somehow, Robin and Wonder Girl blow this accident out of proportion and blame Kid Devil for screwing up their plan that would have taken the villain down, acting as if he should have known even though they had not bothered telling him about it. The rest of the issue goes on to give Kid Devil the Idiot Ball and turn him into a Woobie. Rose, his best friend, mocks him and calls him childish for playing video games, which is frustratingly Out of Character for her.
    • Deathstroke created an evil Titans team and put Rose and Joey through hell in an elaborate plan to make sure that the Titans will be the family they need.
    • Rose Wilson, having struggled time and time again to prove herself a good person and a good hero, is finally pushed too far by Wonder Girl and quits the team.
      • Made worse because, after driving Rose off the team, Cassie welcomes Bombshell, a known (ex?)traitor who actively tried to kill half the team in an earlier storyline, onto the team. Bombshell goes on to duplicate Rose's role with less charm and firmly establish herself as The Scrappy.
    • Wendy and Marvin, caretakers of Titans Tower and civilian sidekicks to the heroes proper, adopt a cute little dog who is presumed to become Wonder Dog. Then it turns into a monster and eats them. Eats them! In the base of one of the premier superhero teams in The DCU!
      • As if Wonder Dog killing Marvin and mauling Wendy wasn't enough, this was an excuse to turn Wendy into a bitter cripple. Marvin...let's not go there.
      • Another wall-banging moment is the Titans not giving a rat's hide about their missing teammate Kid Eternity, who was KIDNAPPED by Marvin's dad in an attempt to bring Marvin back. The Titans haven't noticed. If the Calculator's dialogue is to be believed, then Kid Eternity died and is now stuck as Marvin's decaying corpse.
    • Many Beast Boy/Raven shippers, and even some readers who aren't, consider their breakup a Wall Banger.
      • ...If you want to cheat, Geoff Johns's version of the matured BB/Raven are probably still a couple in one of the multitudes of Earths left behind by Infinite Crisis (since it's obvious that a lot of the Titans have somehow regressed in maturity).
      • Let's not forget that many who aren't BB/Raven shippers considered them becoming a couple a wallbanger in the first place and probably breathed a sigh of relief at their break-up.
    • Things have gotten worse again with the new writer Felicia Henderson. In the latest[when?] issue (#82), Bart and Connor finally rejoin the team, but it appears that the villain Holocaust has killed the rest of the team. Bart and Connor whale on him and knock him out. What do they do next? They say a few words about their supposedly dead friends, do a fist bump, and say "Titans Forever." They seemed to take the deaths of their best friends a bit too well, and the fans hated it.
      • Henderson has effectively ignored and derailed the developments made by other writers to Cassie and Connor's relationship. Instead of Cassie being pleased that Connor has returned and the two reconciling, she's back to being the embittered shrew that she's become infamous for being. And Connor is coming off as a Jerk Jock.
    • Raven coming back from the dead? Fans are happy. Raven coming back with Trigon's corruption? Well, less happy, but it was a part of her character, so it's at least plausible. Raven coming back as a younger teen than when she first appeared? Fans slightly confused. Raven, The Stoic, coming back and getting a TRAMP STAMP?!...
      • And Judd Winick, Master of Wall Bangers that he is, takes this up one step further in Titans #1 where he has Raven wear a THONG and act like a bitchy teenager. Then gives her six demonic half brothers the same age as her when she was suppose to be Trigon's only surviving offspring.
    • Also teammate Jericho after coming back to life and becoming a hero again is shipped off to limbo a few issues after his revival with hardly anything done with his character and not resurfacing until a couple years later evil again. But wait, It gets better! This leads in to a horrible, drawn-out storyline where formerly gentle Jericho becomes a homicidal psychopath and not only the Titans, but the JUSTICE FREAKIN'LEAGUE are too incompetent to stop him (EX. Their only protection against Jericho's possession-through-eye-contact powers are goggles that can be easily swatted off?!?). There's also some Double Standard remarks from the Titans concerning their old friend, such as The Flash saying Jericho can't be trusted because of "bad blood" to the guy who had a sweet little girl with an assassin and when they're already friends/teammates with a Daughter of a Demon and have Teen Titans (including Jericho's sister) with questionable lineages. And also Donna Troy having flimsy reasoning on why Jericho (Who is being evil not by choice but being controlled by evil personalities via his possession power) would be held accountable for his actions when there is Raven who at this point has gone evil via Trigon just as many times as Jericho and can be just as if not more dangerous, is not. At the end of this Jericho suffers Eye Scream...for awhile.
  • The Adventures of Superman, a comic based on the DCAU, has an issue involving a man in Smallville who is ridiculed for his belief in the existence of aliens. This is well after Superman has become famous—and in this universe, he openly says he is an alien! Hey, just because he looks human doesn't mean he is human.
  • Writer Judd Winick pulls Wall Bangers a lot:
    • Green Lantern #154, in which we learn the important lesson that Beating People Up For Being Gay Is Wrong after Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's personal assistant Terry Berg is beaten up by a group of random thugs while leaving a club with his boyfriend. Much earlier, Kyle lost his first girlfriend to supervillain violence in the incident which defined the Stuffed in The Fridge trope. He saw numerous other violations of basic human decency on a daily basis; in fact, for a few weeks in a storyline shortly before this one, he had felt all of them on a daily basis as Ion. As Ion, he had universal empathy, but he was at least nearly omni-omnipotent. It appears one Green Lantern can't do much to protect a 15-16 year old boy who barely tips the scales past 100 pounds from getting beaten up by three punks with bricks and baseball bats, all of whom Terry knew and loved... This particular display of man's inhumanity to man (any sense of "man" you prefer) was so bad that it inspired Kyle Rayner to abandon the Earth to wander outer space and help random non-human species. It was also the start of what we Rayner fans call 'The Great Kyle Screw', wherein he just plain started getting screwed over so he could just be shoved into space, period.
    • Green Arrow #44, in which we learn that Oliver Queen's adopted daughter Mia is a recovering methhead AND HIV Positive. Despite having been portrayed by Winick as being an unrepentant womanizer and having been one during a time when knowing about AIDS would be vital, Oliver is completely ignorant about what HIV is and how it is contracted, prompting a text-book recital on how HIV is contracted and treated.
      • It's happened with Oliver Queen before.

"My ward Speedy is... a junkie!"

      • Being shocked that your foster son is taking drugs is not that surprising. Being shocked that your foster daughter has HIV when she used to be a street prostitute, and clearly not understanding how this could possibly be...is a different level of ignorance.
    • Outsiders #17-19, in which the Outsiders approach real-life hero and Very Special Guest Star John Walsh for help in tracking down the leader of a child slavery ring. It doesn't speak well of the team that when their leader, a Batman-trained detective, is unable to find any leads, his next plan of attack is, "Let's get that guy on TV to help us!"
      • Walsh is featured prominently on the cover (it features his photo instead of artwork, a rarity in comics), and DC hyped the guest appearance as a way to attract new readers who don't typically read comics...but Walsh doesn't show up until THE VERY LAST PANEL OF THE ISSUE. All those new readers must have felt gypped.
    • Green Arrow/Black Canary #14: Winnick's farewell issue consisted of wrapping up the 'Connor was kidnapped' arc by turning Connor Hawke, an interesting and unique character, into a generic street-level brawler with a healing factor. He threw in some amnesia so that Connor would lose all of his former personality and his fighting skills; only the healing factor kept Connor from dying of bullet wounds while trying to stop four generic drug dealers in an alley. Connor was once one of the four best martial artists in The DCU; he is now inferior to Misfit. As an added bonus, Winnick threw in a Take That from Amnesiac Connor about how 'ridiculous' the idea of a Buddhist monk who fought crime was in the first place, and capped this entire pile of crap off with Black Canary squealing about Connor's story having a 'happy ending'. Yes, because having your entire life and personality stripped away from you and being reduced to a shell of your former self is so happy. It's bad enough that Dinah's become a complete Faux Action Girl in this run; did she have to become Too Dumb to Live as well?
      • Connor's skill nerfing was so savage that he was unable to hit a standard archery target. At 35 feet. At leisure, not with snap shots. After trying repeatedly for an entire afternoon.
        • Which is worse marksmanship than I managed the first time I picked up a bow and arrow. Which was also the only time I picked up a bow and arrow. When I was ten years old. Sure, I didn't come remotely close to the bullseye, but I at least managed to hit the damn target a few times.
    • Trials of Shazam, in which he attempts to revitalize the Marvel Family for a new generation of comic readers. So what does he do?
      • He upgrades Captain Marvel to the Wizard Marvel, now wielding the Power of Shazam as the Wizard Shazam did before him. Which sounds cool, except that it forces him to stay in the Rock of Eternity virtually 24/7, essentially writing the Captain out of the Captain Marvel series.
      • Mary Marvel had her powers removed and was placed in a coma.
      • Captain Marvel Junior was depowered and then went on a quest to prove himself worthy of wielding the Power of Shazam. This sounds cool, but the very first trial involves his telling the embodiment of wisdom how much he hates Captain Marvel and will never forgive him because it's Captain Marvel's fault his grandpa died. It is not, and Freddy should know that: Freddy's grandfather died because he and Freddy saw a man fall out of the sky and tried to rescue him, only for it to be Captain Nazi, who promptly killed Grandpa and crippled Freddy. Captain Nazi fell because Captain Marvel punched him real hard, so obviously it's a case of Captain Marvel being careless in battle and endangering innocent civilians, right? Nope, Cap hit Nazi with everything he had because there was a cruiser full of people that was sinking, and the only way to get time to save them all was to knock Captain Nazi away as hard as he could, to a place he was sure would be empty at that time of day. Freddy KNOWS Cap was saving other people, he knows that it wasn't Cap's fault they were at the wrong place at the wrong time, and for decades he laid the blame for what happened where it belongs—with Captain Nazi. This is the first time Freddy blamed Cap, and Winick fails to sell it.
      • Combine that poor characterization with a story that has almost no internal consistency, a bland villain, and a group of bad guys clearly meant to be stand ins for the fans (who whine because everything is changing), and you have a real shitstorm of a series that fails to please anyone. The only good things about this series were the art and Mr. Tawny.
      • The most telling thing was Winick's initial reason for the series, which was to make Captain Marvel/Shazam a superhero who fought only mystic threats. He said in an interview, "Why is a guy with the powers of the gods stopping bankrobbers?" He's a HERO, you moron! Heroes do things like stopping criminals and villains and saving people. It's like saying Superman shouldn't waste his time stopping powerless criminals because it's beneath him. MADE. OF. FAIL!
    • There's also Winick's Titans series where there were eleven issues of poor characterization, plot holes, and recycled plot lines (Titans turned Traitor again!?) were rampant.
  • The new[when?] writer of "Green Arrow/Black Canary" doesn't like Dinah, either. Her humiliations continue apace in the next issue, #15, where she's taken hostage by a lone muscleman with a knife. She needs both the intervention of Green Arrow and her Canary Cry to drop this Mook, and she still takes severe injuries. Then she uses her Cry so carelessly that it deafens an innocent bystander, and she doesn't even notice. Is the writer aware that Dinah Lance is the chairman of the JLA, is supposed to be one of the greatest martial artists in the world, and has spent over half her life as a superheroine? Or that her control over her powers was precise enough that she could shatter a pool ball held in someone's hand without mussing their nail polish?
  • Justice Society of America has been a consistently good series, but it's had its low points. Probably the worst was issue #11, which introduced Judomaster to the team. She was introduced in Birds of Prey a few months earlier; there, she spoke perfect English and had a snarky sense of humor. In JSA, she was Retconned into speaking solely Gratuitous Japanese and being a stereotypical stoic Samurai type obsessed with honor. Furthermore, she went up against a bunch of supervillains who are all horribly racist Japanese stereotypes, including a gigantic, literally yellow-skinned sumo wrestler called Kamikaze whose superpower is blowing himself up when he says "Banzai". Judomaster herself is now a full-time member of the team but exists solely for the male characters to make goo-goo eyes at. It's a terrible waste of what could have been an interesting character. Oh, and just to seal the deal: She never does judo, just a lot of high-kicks!
  • Birds of Prey and Misfit: something went wrong with issue #113. Misfit (a sympathetic character) decides to push a blinking red button that is under a plexiglass safety cover (traditionally used for self-destruct buttons) inside an evil giant city-destroying robot despite being told not to. Unsurprisingly, it explodes, taking possibly hundreds or thousands of lives with it. But nobody blames her for it. She doesn't blame herself, either. The idea that she might be at fault is never even discussed in the text. Neither is any reason given for her doing this in the first place, since the giant city-destroying robot had been defeated!
    • In an otherwise excellent story early on in Birds of Prey, Black Canary claims to be Oracle and the villains buy it without question it. This could be totally logical, except that they used a conversation that Black Canary had with Oracle to try to track Oracle earlier in the story. This could have been Handwaved by saying she was talking to another vigilante, but it never comes up, they never question it or anything.
      • Note that intercepting a radio conversation doesn't automatically tell you which person is on which end of the radio.
  • So many things to say about All Star Batman and Robin. Was it Batman's constant allusions to Robin's age coupled with a pedovibe? Was it Vicki Vale trouncing around the apartment in a bra and panties like vapid eye candy quoting lines from Clueless? Was it "I'm the goddamn Batman"? This is prime material for unauthorized MSTing.
    • Since when did MSTing require authorization? Criticism and parody are both explicitly allowed under copyright law.
    • Here you go.
  • The Mary Marvel plot in Countdown to Final Crisis. She wakes up from a coma with no powers; okay. She ends up getting powers from Black Adam (who later manifests the same powers again somehow). Okay. She wanders the entire multiverse for a while struggling to deal with this 'cursed' power rushing to her head, gets tempted by Eclipso, ultimately turns back to the side of good, and is rewarded by the gods. Okay. So far so good. Then Darkseid shows up in her living room and says, "Hey, want to help me kill innocents to get your evil powers back?" She immediately agrees. In about one page, with zero Foreshadowing. It's the absolute worst turn to the dark side (no pun intended) since Anakin.
    • It gets even better than that. At the end of Final Crisis, she finally snaps out of the mind control spell or whatever Darkseid had her in and then swears "never again". Less then a month later, she's hanging out with Black Adam.
      • And it still gets better than that. In the newest issues of Justice Society of America, Mary Marvel helps Black Adam and Isis (yes, the one from 52) take down Billy as Guardian of the Rock of Eternity and corrupt Billy with... evil magic? It wasn't supposed to be Bad Powers, Bad People, but Billy does turn evil. Isis goes to Kahndaq, where people still praise her, and starts turning people into sand or soil or whatever and states her intent to do that to all of humanity. The wizard Shazam is revived to stop all this by Jay Garrick and the spirit of Billy and Mary's father. Shazam takes all the Marvel powers away from everyone, turns Teth Adam and Adrianna into statues, exiles Billy and Mary, and announces he's going after Freddy Freeman (who was nowhere near when all this was happening). It might make sense later, but seriously, what the hell!?
  • Countdown isn't compatible with Final Crisis; the real "official" lead-ups are 52, Seven Soldiers, and the "Dark Side Club" issues of several other books. That makes Countdown more Wallbangering than should be possible, given what it claims to be. Two cases in point:
    1. Mary Marvel turned evil in Final Crisis because she was possessed by Desaad, not by her own volition as seen in "Countdown."
    2. Ray Palmer was needed for multiversal travel along with Ryan Choi, not to combat some sentient, mutative virus.
    • And oh, how they screwed up the Monitors! But to ensure you have a nice dent in your wall (assuming you have a trade paperback of "Countdown" on hand), here is the kicker: Dan Didio hated 52 and demanded Countdown be more editorially mandated. He once proudly stated that "Countdown is 52 done right".
  • Amazons Attack: Even though it's supposed to be a Wonder Woman comic, she's barely in it; she only appears in two pages in the first issue. The Amazons are turned into Straw Feminists under the command of Queen Hippolyta, even though she herself dissolved the monarchy and voluntarily stepped down. They invade America to rescue Diana, who they believe is being held prisoner by the government. But not only do they believe this because Circe, a long-time enemy of the Amazons, told them this; but also, when Diana turns up safe and sound, they keep invading. Continuity is shot to hell; the scale of the Amazon invasion and the amount of time it takes changes constantly. And there's the most memorable line:

"Bees. My God."

    • Oh, there was enough straw for everyone. The US government put random trainloads of women in concentration camps all over the nation because 'they might be Amazon sympathizers!' There were US troops so murderous that they're willing to try and gun down these unarmed unresisting women en masse, and so stupid that they try doing this when standing directly in front of Superman. Superman was standing right next to them and talking to them, but it never even occurs to any of the soldiers that he might possibly have an objection to mass murder of the unarmed.
    • Supergirl and Wonder Girl get duped into siding with the villains, help take down Air Force One, and lead the President of the United States into an ambush. This act of high treason is met with... mild public displeasure after the event.
    • The Amazons use bows and arrows to take down F-16s!
    • Apparently the entire war started because the Amazons thought that Wonder Woman was being held prisoner by the U.S to gain access to the Amazons' advanced technology. The problem with that? Later in the series when some of the superheroes look at the attacks they note that the Amazons couldn't have been responsible for them because the attacks were using advanced technology.
    • The war is stopped by the honest-to-God Deus Ex Machina at the end -- WITHOUT THE MACHINA.
    • Let's not forget that this whole event is really a Countdown tie-in, and as Linkara pointed out they wasted four months worth of comics and destroyed Wonder Woman's mythos just to make a stupid tie-in to Countdown.
  • No Man's Land, a story arc in the Batman family of books during the 1990s, in which an earthquake ruins Gotham City. The U.S. government, deciding that it's too expensive to rebuild it, chooses not only to leave it like that, but also to declare it no longer part of the United States! Anybody who chooses to stay inside is abandoned to his or her fate, and people who try to smuggle in provisions are SHOT AT by border patrols! The whole idea was to do a "Batman as Mad Max" story, which isn't bad in and of itself. In fact, the story is awesome in and of itself. But it should have been an out-of-continuity story like those of DC's (excellent) Elseworlds line. Instead, they made it part of the main DC Universe, despite these facts:
    • It is impossible for a territory, once it has joined the Union, to leave it, without mutual consent. (They even fought a war about that once.)[6]
    • Not long before, the city of Metropolis had been similarly wrecked (by Lex Luthor), but it was soon repaired (literally by magic: Zatanna the Magician did it, combined with the willpower of Metropolis' citizens). It was never explained why the same could not be done for Gotham. However repairing Gotham with the willpower of Gotham's citizens might have created a Hellmouth.
    • Batman wanted Gotham City to pull itself out of its own mess instead of having someone like the Justice League (who had come in to help) swoop in and fix everything. BIG help, Bats!
    • There were appearances by Superman in the arc where he tried to help 'fix' Gotham. It didn't end well...
      • That was an attempt at handwaving the lack of interference from other DC heroes in the Gotham disaster. It wasn't convincing. In the first appearance, Superman gets a power plant back in working order, and people line up for hand-outs. He concludes that Batman was right: Gothamites aren't "ready".
      • A slightly better handwave was the JLA story explaining that the League was busy immediately outside the city stopping supervillains from breaking in to take advantage of the chaos.
    • It gets worse. Declaring a part of the land no longer under the control of the states goes against everything a state is supposed to be. How can the US keep control over its territory if the people know they might get kicked out of the union in case of disaster? Why would they pay taxes?
      • Hurricane Katrina resulted in mass outrage because of a government response that came across as heel-dragging and negligent. Can you imagine the outrage if the government responded to an even bigger disaster by outright abandoning an entire city?
    • Shooting people who try to leave is a violation of the general human rights treaty that the US signed [along with other countries] and a violation of the US constitution. US citizens should have the ability to cross into its borders. The US laying siege to GC made no sense at all: they just needed to set up a border and put some checkpoints on it. Bombing everything that goes in and out made ZERO sense, even if the premise in general wasn't stupid.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

  • The lead up to the classic Green Arrow/Green Lantern team-up, in which they dealt with various social issues across America, was kicked off by by a Black guy chewing out Green Lantern for not helping Black people. Yes, perhaps Hal needed soul-searching concerning how his work as as a super hero unwittingly propped up "The Establishment" (and, for that matter, the silliness of the comic book world in general concentrating on interstellar action while ignoring problems closer to home)... But Green Lantern saves the the friggin' world on a regular basis. Apparently, Black people don't live on the same planet as the rest of Earth's population.
    • It's Hal Jordan. An argument doesn't have to make sense to send him on a guilt trip. He's a sucker for that.
  • From The Dark Knight Strikes Again, a particularly egregious one is when it's revealed that the government has forced Wonder Woman, Superman and Captain Marvel to work for them. Linkara had a few things to say about it in his review.
    • Lex Luthor had nukes aimed at Themiscyra, Brainiac was holding Kandor hostage, and they were also holding Mary Marvel prisoner.
    • And the heroes couldn't have worked together to stop each threat because...?
      • Because we saw what happened to Superman after just one Nuke, and they don't know where Kandor or Mary is being held ,so there's no way that they could have saved any of them for sure in this universe.
        • Except...Batman pretty much did it all by himself. So three of the most powerful heroes in the DC universe could not save their respective targets, but Batman could do it without trying. Didn't it occur to the trio that they knew plenty of superheroes who could have easily solved the situation? They knew plenty of magic users, telepaths, shapeshifters, etc. etc.
    • The ending, with Batman calling Dick Grayson "a failure" who "didn't have the chops" and "couldn't cut the mustard" and killing him without remorse. Sure he went Ax Crazy and evil, but just blowing him off like that, after all they went through together, is new levels of Batdickery.
      • After seeing what Dick went through, which was ever so-lovingly covered ASBAR (which is technically a prequel to both of Miller's "Dark Knight" stories), it is really easy to see just why Dick went crazy. You actually feel sorry for him and understand why he went evil. With the "heroes" that Miller set up in his little Bat-verse, who WOULDN'T do what he did?!
    • Batman has flat out goaded Superman to abandon his humanity and take over the world with Lara. What was he thinking?
  • During A Death In The Family, the Joker makes a visit to the Middle East and Africa to wreak havoc and ends up killing Jason Todd. The worst part of the storyline is what happens later; a man with the likeness of Ayatollah Khomeini appoints the Joker as Iran's UN Ambassador, thus granting him Diplomatic Immunity. Granted, it was 1989, and this particular method of painting countries evil has been in use since World War II; but the idea of ANY world leader in their right mind making the Joker an official diplomat with official diplomatic immunity is, um, insane.
    • The idea that any world leader in their right mind would attack the embassy of a country capable of removing their own nation from the map and hold its personnel hostage for over 400 days is also insane, but Khomeini did that shit in real life so apparently he sorta was.
    • The comics later retconned the story so Joker got his Diplomatic Impunity from the ficticious Qurac -- the terrorist capital of the DC world. They would be crazy enough to do that.
  • Cry for Justice #7 and its aftermath. To expand, the death of Lian Harper, Roy Harper's young daughter. Killed off for no reason in a particularly brutal example of Stuffed Into the Fridge.
    • Somehow, it's getting worse. It seems that they're using Lian's death to derail Roy Harper from a stable, well adjusted single father into a wangsty drug addict who sinks to using Black Canary's infertility as a point to lash out at her [7] calling Donna Troy a whore and blaming her for her family's death, and blaming Mia for Lian's death. It sends several decades' worth of Character Development down the drain to make some half-assed Punisher clone out of Roy.
      • He blamed Mia for that?! Lian was killed by orbital artillery! What was Mia supposed to do, block it with an Anti-Kill-Sat-Arrow?
    • It's getting worse. In the next issue, Cheshire shows up and blames Roy for Lian's death. They fight. Somehow, he doesn't die from the poison in her fingernails. But, just as they're about to have hatesex, he can't get it up because he's on drugs and impotent. LOL. Needing "some release," he goes to find some other druggies and beats them with a dead cat. The bit with the dead cat is crap icing on the ass shaped cake that is this series.
    • And then It Got Worse. In the final issue, Roy is checked into a rehab program at a prison built specifically for supervillain prisoners. This decision is made by Dick Grayson, who you would think would have more sense than to take a superhero with a public identity and put him in a place full of people who would want to kill him, even if the didn't want to spend any of the Wayne Family fortune on a private-treatment option that would surely be a lot more effective. And Black Canary has a massive Character Derailment when she basically writes Roy off completely as a lost cause - this being the woman who was the only person who stayed with him and supported him when he was originally going through withdrawal for his heroin habit and the closest thing he's had to a mother.
    • As a coda to the whole debacle, the "New 52" retcons have given Roy back his arm, and removed his drug addiction entirely. On the other hand, Lian's existence has been completely removed, and Roy has never been a father. One feels that the DC editors somewhat missed the point.
  • A less-enraging, but just as stupid fridging was the death of The Three Dimwits, comic relief characters from the Golden Age Flash comics. They were brought back just to be killed off to motivate Jay Garrick to join the gang of Jack Bauer superheroes, featured in one panel, where they weren't even mentioned by name, and then never mentioned again. It was impossible to feel bad that these characters were killed off, because almost nobody knew who the hell those guys were supposed to be, and those who did simply marveled at the sheer, utter pointlessness of bringing such obscure characters back from Comic Book Limbo only to stuff them in the fridge without even giving their names, and then shove that fridge back into Comic Book Limbo.
  • Green Arrow #32, wherein Oliver Queen is on trial for murdering Prometheus, manages to be so mindbendingly awful on multiple levels that we're gonna need multiple bullet points just to add up all the dumb:
    • First off, Ollie is facing a jury trial for an offense that he freely admits he's committed and sincerely believes (even if maybe he doesn't) that he deserves to be punished for. There shouldn't be any jury trial if Ollie was willing to plead guilty, merely a sentencing hearing! So... he thinks he did wrong and should pay a price, but he still pled "not guilty"?
    • Oliver is on trial for murder. Even though he deliberately intended to kill Prometheus and deliberately sought the man out after the murder of his granddaughter, Oliver is still a law enforcement agent (as a JLA member, he has comparable status) shooting a felon who had just nuked a city and who was on his feet, facing Ollie, hands free, and armed. Given that Prometheus has taken on entire JLA lineups and won, Oliver facing him alone is most definitely "in legitimate fear for his life". It's still justifiable homicide even though Ollie would have killed Prometheus even if he had surrendered, because that's not how it actually happened in practice and the law sentences you based on what you've actually done, not on what you would have hypothetically done under different circumtsances. The worst he should have faced is being dismissed from the JLA for deliberately violating JLA policy in going off on a solo vengeance quest.
    • Oliver killed Prometheus in the Ghost Zone, where Prometheus's dimensional hideout was. How on Earth does a Star City criminal court have jurisdiction? The crime didn't even occur on Earth!
      • Actually, the US court system still gets involved because criminal offenses involving United States citizens (such as Ollie) that take place in territory claimed by no other sovereign nation are by US law presumed to fall within US jurisdiction by default. The problem here is that this would mean the trial should be taking place in US Federal Court, not a California state court.
    • Another comics writer fails law school forever. The jury finds Oliver not guilty, and yet the judge still sentences him. And the sentence? Exile from Star City! That sentence doesn't even exist in American law! Being barred from living in a specific city, or being forced to live in a specific city, can be a condition of parole or probation, but not a stand-alone judicial sentencing!
      • To further explain why the part about the jury would be a wallbanger a judge in the United States cannot discard or ignore a verdict from the jury of "not guilty" unless he can prove that a juror or jurors have been bribed, and even then the only thing he can do is declare a mistrial and have the case tried again from scratch with a different jury.
  • JLA: Act of God, an Elseworlds story about what would happen if all the superheroes on Earth lost their powers. The answer, apparently, is that they would turn into mopey idiots who just sit around whining instead of trying to figure out what caused their powers to stop working which they never do. Batman is elevated from Badass Normal to Mary Sue; other heroes constantly gush about him and make him out to be soooo much more awesome than everyone else because he never had superpowers. Aquaman loses the ability to breathe underwater—but he's a native-born Atlantean, so he should have lost the ability to breathe air. Lois Lane leaves Superman, even though it's been established that she did fall in love with Clark Kent. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
    • The story is supposed to have tech-based super heroes remain functioning and magic-based heroes cease to be. (No, it is never explained what happened to them.) But the story has no idea which heroes are "tech" and which are magic. Green Lantern rings are extremely advanced tech, but they no longer work. The Atom's powers are based around a supertech belt, and yet his abilities no longer work. Wonder Woman is a Golem given life by the gods, but she is still around, just unpowered. Red Tornado is a wind elemental but still around (though he is limited to a cameo). Captain Marvel is given his powers by a wizard, transforms through magic words, but is still around (though unpowered). Supergirl, at this point in history, is an angel, but is still around). Then there is The Flash, who gets his powers from a Freak Lab Accident and the Speed Force, a god of sorts, but is still around unpowered. Then there are the countless magical heroes like Dr. Fate and Zauriel, who simply never appear.
      • And Martian Manhunter kept saying this was God smiting them for hubris... even though they were constantly helping and saving people with no expectation of recompense. Even Booster Gold is past that phase. In fact, Batman was by far the biggest ass on the superhero side.
      • This could be Handwaved by saying that the depowering was just God (the story is called "Act of God") arbitrarily choosing people to render mortal, what with him being God and all. This is even stupider.
      • Wonder Woman herself suggests this and becomes a Christian and begins praying in church. Wonder Woman is from an ancient society of Greek Amazons who worship the Greek Pantheon, who Wonder Woman got her powers from; and she has met her own Gods! She's practically a demi-God herself. Did getting Hijacked by Jesus become so literal in that story that the Greek Gods don't exist anymore—wait, maybe it is, what with magical beings disappearing, but we are getting into thorny ontological territory here. It's as if Marvel's Thor became Jewish.
        • It gets worse. In the same period where Superman was killed by Doomsday and Batman was crippled by Bane, Diana was killed off but returned as the Godess of Truth. Let's repeat that: Wonder Woman was once a Goddess on Mount Olympus and she is converting to Christianity.
      • The story involves every single super-powered being losing their powers. WHAT?! HOW is that possible?! This isn't Marvel Comics, and they aren't mutants - they got their powers from different sources, for different reasons. At least some of them should have kept their powers!
      • And as Linkara rightly pointed out, alien heroes like Superman or the Martian Manhunter shouldn't have been de-powered at all because they don't have superpowers in the first place. Their "powers" are the natural abilities of their respective species. Being a Flying Brick with laser-vision and a shape-shifting telepath is normal for them. It's like if the moon had an atmosphere, was habitable, the population consisted of weakling deaf people, and a human arrived on it. The human would be six times as strong as the weakling deaf people and could hear. Then this Act Of God happened, and all of a sudden the human is now deaf and is 1/6th as strong as he used to be.
        • Particularly awful in that in the Invasion storyline, the alien Dominators release a superweapon that completely screws with the source of superpowers for life on Earth, rendering every metagene-powered hero dying and powerless... and aliens like Superman and J'onn remain entirely unaffected the entire time, and in fact play a key role in defeating the Dominators.
          • Worse yet, "Invasion" is the DCU storyline that introduced the meta-gene as the explanation for superpowers existing among humanity. So, "Act of God" not only directly went against prior canon, it went directly against the original Trope Codifier.
    • The whole thing finally comes full circle when Superman and Wonder Woman have a son who ends up with super powers, rendering the aesop of super powers being "wrong" completely moot.
  • The first issue the the new Zatanna comic begins with Zatanna tied up and threatened by Dr. Light and the Joker. She managed to escape and beat them. Then it's revealed that these are just actors, and this is all part of her act. Let's run that by you again: she incorporated two remorseless murderers into her act, one of whom is also a rapist. That's like David Copperfield hiring actors to play Richard Ramirez and John Wayne Gacy. And it's two murderers whom she has a personal grudge against.
    • How is this a Wallbanger? What is more entertaining than seeing two serial killers, one of whom is a rapist, getting their asses handed to them? Plus, since she has a personal grudge against both of them, she gets the satisfaction of beating the crap out of them.
      • Well considering she knows Batman (whose adopted son was killed by the Joker) as a colleague if not good friend and potential romantic interest, and considering who the hell Dr. Light rape and the how fall out. Using these guys in a show comes off as highly insensitive at the very least.
  • "War of the Supermen," the end of the "New Krypton" arc. "New Krypton" took the Superman mythos in a different direction than ever before. There was now millions of Kryptonian survivors. Lex Luthor had lost his good publicity and was in federal custody. General Zod was portrayed as a complex, sympathetic Anti-Villain rather then a straight Super Villain. Superman had taken an extended leave of absence from Earth to help his people rebuild their civilization... Now cue "War of the Supermen," in which New Krypton is destroyed, leaving only a handful of survivors. Lex Luthor, who was behind it, is given a presidential pardon and control of Lexcorp for genociding a people who only became an immediate threat to Earth when the US military provoked them. Zod reverts back to his desire to conquer Earth and destroy Superman. Superman and Supergirl once again must bemoan the fact that they are the last children of Krypton. By the time it's all over, Superman regards the fiasco as a pointless war. Ironically, the point of the war seemed to be to render everything before it a Shaggy Dog Story.
    • The events that serve as a prologue to the next Superman arc, "Grounded," doesn't make things any better. The idea of Superman Walking the Earth is good, but his reason for doing it is silly. To wit, when he tried to explain the events of New Krypton to the general public, Superman is verbally attacked and slapped by an unnamed woman who chews him out for not saving her husband who died of an inoperable tumor during the events of the war. Yes, a woman blamed Superman, the DC Messianic Archetype who saves the Earth on a regular basis, for not saving her husband from an inoperable brain tumor because she believes that he could have used his X-Ray Vision to pre-emptively notice the tumor and use his heat vision to remove it if he hadn't been wrapped up in the events of New Krypton. This Superman has never displayed the willingness or the skill to try such an operation, and there are other superheroes around who are recognized as skilled surgeons. Even if he did, there would be no guarantee that Superman would have noticed the specific medical problems of one human out of a planetful he spends most of his time helping. Most critically, this woman thinks that the life of one person important to her was more important than trying to prevent an all-out war between Earth and a planet of people as powerful as Superman, and she doesn't even consider how Superman is feeling after literally witnessing his people annihilated before his eyes. While this is meant to suggest to Superman that he has lost touch with humanity, it comes off to many as a woman acting incredibly selfish and entitled in the midst of a horrible tragedy.
      • It's an In-Universe Wall Banger. The reporters around Superman mention that it's unreasonable to expect Superman to have known about this or done anything about it even if he had been on Earth at the time. Superman's reaction to this (the "Grounded" arc) is even seen by some people, such as Batman (Dick Grayson), as Wangst on his part.
      • See Hal Jordan's illogical guilt about African-Americans above. Clark Kent works the same way. Being stupid like that is endearing 99% of the time, so his reaction wasn't all that implausible. The woman, on the other hand...
  • Green Lantern v.2 #85: Hal Jordan is trying to get his life back on track. How? By becoming the Green Lantern of sector 2814 again. But that about Guy Gardner, the current Green Lantern? He'll just have to step down...whether he wants to or not. Guy, naturally, isn't willing to do this, and gives Hal a long list of reasons why he isn't worthy of being a Green Lantern anymore. But here's the thing: Guy may have been a Jerkass about it, but he raised some valid points:

"...And what happened when you started feeling down? You quit! What happened when Carol dumped you? You took off runnin'! What about when Arisia dumped you? And when the gremlins gave you the boot? Did you stand up? Did you fight? Yeah, you talk about bein' 'back,' but here you come to me, tryin' to bargain. Beggin' me. Face it, Jordan. You're just an old chicken."

    • This, understandably, enrages Hal, and they come to blows. The resulting battle destroys most of the surrounding cityscape, attracting the attention of both the Justice League and the Green Lantern Corps. Do they stop the fight? Nope—in fact, The Corps actually prevents the League from interfering because supposedly Hal and Guy need to settle it by themselves. Eventually, Hal wins the fight, and forces Guy to give up his ring. And both the League and the Corps are okay with this, even cheering that Guy isn't a Green Lantern anymore, right in front of his face. First off, HOW does Hal get to be a Green Lantern again because of this?! The Corps isn't a street gang! They don't pick their members based on who would win in a fight, and the Guardians didn't have a say in it anywhere! Second, why the hate on Guy?! He may be a jerk, but he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who ultimately tries to do the right thing, and as stated above, has far more willpower than Hal. But no, Hal gets his stolen ring back, Guy gets the boot, and the readers are supposed to be okay with it. *WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM*
  • The revelation of Catwoman's baby daughter Helena's father. In Ed Brubaker's run, Selina had a lot of romantic buildup with Bruce Wayne. They'd even consummated their relationship at one point...later, she has a daughter. That Bruce Wayne takes a strong interest in... Selina hints that her baby's father had an incident of violence in his past...that he used to be out during the night. And the baby's name is Helena, the same name as Bruce and Selina's daughter from the alternate continuity Earth...surely this is what we've been waiting for? No, sorry, it's Sam Bradley Jr! Let's discuss why this is stupid: All their romantic buildup happened offscreen and is totally stupid (the flashbacks basically have Selina decide she likes him and decides to sleep with him once because of events unfolding...despite this making little sense.) Selina had just come off a relationship with Sam's FATHER, Slam Bradley...Sam is an annoying little twerp of a character who never gave a reason why we should care about him at all, let alone the stupidity in throwing Selina at him after Bruce and Selina's buildup as a couple to that point. The day this is retconned out and Bruce is revealed as Helena's father will be a good one.
  • If you ask someone who voted for Jason Todd to die why they voted that way, they'll usually cite his actions in Jim Starlin's "The Diplomat's Son" from Batman #424. Problem is, that story is a blatant Idiot Plot. The story opens with Jason beating down a rapist and turning him over to the police, only to discover that he's the titular diplomat's son. Yes, this is one of those stories where "diplomatic immunity" means "diplomats can commit any atrocity they like and law enforcement is powerless to stop them," so he walks. Seriously, ask any FBI agent and they could list a dozen different ways they could legally nail him. As for the rape victim, she is left alone in her apartment, with no police protection or counseling of any kind. I'm sure this won't lead to any negative outcome—oh look, the rapist just gave her a phone call threatening to come after her again and she hanged herself. This leads to Robin confronting the rapist on a balcony, where he falls to his death and it's strongly implied that Robin pushed him. That's right, Jason Todd (allegedly) broke the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule against a Complete Monster who got away with his crimes due to a legal technicality that doesn't actually exist, and that's why people wanted him to die.[8]
  • Chuck Austen's Godfall: Preus Returns makes his "vaporizing Communion wafers" story look downright respectful by comparison. How bad is it? There is a scene with the titular racist Kryptonian kills women by having sex with them, and continues to do so.
  • Under writer Chuck Dixon in his own series, Peter David's Young Justice, and Geoff Johns' Teen Titans, Tim Drake's Robin exhibited constant attraction to women and none for men. A lot of years and several writers later, with the character losing his focus in favour of Damian Wayne's Robin in the wider DC Universe, the character is revealed to be bisexual at the end of Batman: Urban Legends Issue 9. Many fans noticed how continuity-breaking this was with previous appearances of the character which didn't even seemed to hint at it, and Chuck Dixon himself said he never wrote the character as bi.

Other

  • The Star Wars Expanded Universe comic Requiem for a Rogue involves a truly idiotic artifact: an ancient temple that lets people control wild beasts with evil Sith music!
    • There are TIE Interceptors - fast, fiddly spaceships - made out of wood and piloted by those wild beasts controlled by evil Sith music. Everything about "Requiem" was bad. It marred an otherwise fine series and killed characters who had been around for a while.
    • From earlier in the series, "The Rebel Opposition" was the first arc. The general idea was Stackpole's, but it was written by Baron, who... oy. Tycho Celchu, mildly famous Rebel, goes undercover as an Imperial while using his real name and real planet of origin. The colorist can't be bothered to remember if it's night or day. A Wookiee hits a flying TIE with a stick, and it blows up. Reportedly, Stackpole was angry about the stuff Baron came up with.
    • Oh, Wallbangery in Star Wars gets better with the "The Clone Wars" Volume comics. The FIRST issue already had gaping plotholes. The Banking-Clan was found building seperatist battle cruisers in their shipyards, so the Jedi proposed to destroy it. All fine and good, but Palpatine gives the explanation that the Banking-Clan is neutral in the war and an attack on their ships would make them side with the Confederacy. This would be the Banking Clan whose chairman San Hill verbally signed on with Dooku in "Attack of the Clones" while Obi-Wan was watching. That makes them about as neutral as the Trade Federation.
      • 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).
      • Even before the Clone Wars, Attack of the Clones had San Hill specifically claim he would be supporting the Separatists "in a non-exclusive arrangement of course". Given that the IGBC is the galactic equivalent of the Federal Reserve and mints currency, the last thing they would want is to lose the Galactic Republic as a customer.
  • A 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. 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 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 Yan Lin gets through to the girls near the end that they get their act together and defeat their foe. And now, most of the children of Heatherfield are magic-endowed -- NOT just the girls! Ladies and gentlemen, the 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!
    • Who would do this? The military would be the Resistance who just spent their lives living in the dirt, eating garbage, and trying to stop the machines. A reaction akin to that in the Dune universe seems infinitely more likely than a cover up. No one alive is going to want to cover this up.
    • Why would anyone do this? Given that "never forget" was etched into the minds of every single participant of World War II AND pretty much that entire generation and is still an enduring sentiment, and given that Judgement Day and the war against Skynet would be something that everyone was directly involved in, the notion that there wouldn't be acres and acres of memorials and monuments to the fallen is absurd.
    • How would anyone do this? Let's assume that there is some group of crazy machine lovers who want to hide the war. Earth got nuked to dust, billions of people died - covering that up would be impossible.
    • Where would you get the resources to accomplish this feat? What about the billions of corpses, what about the cities in ashes, what about the vast skull-strewn wastelands, what about the millions and millions of Skynet robots now dormant, what about the vast, sentient factories the size of cities that produced Machine warriors day and night and were mentioned in the movies, comics and novels? Where did all of this go? Into the ether?
  • Youngblood: Judgement Day by Alan Moore. One of the team members, Kinghtsabre, is accused of murdering another member, Riptide, and is put on trial. It is eventually revealed that the team leader, Sentinel, killed her for trying to take a book that dictates the events of the universe by whatever is written in its pages; the book itself has a storied history of being found, used to change history, and lost or stolen by countless owners. The Wallbanger comes in upon learning how the Book of All Stories works: if one can dictate the future by writing in its pages, WHY OR HOW WOULD ANYONE EVER LOSE POSESSION OF IT AGAINST THEIR WILL??? When people wrote their life stories into the book, didn't they think to put safeguards in to make sure that no one took the book—something like "and a magic force field went up around the book whenever X wasn't using it, preventing anyone from even knowing it existed"? (Add in an immortality clause, and things could get really fun.)
    • The creator of the book was a Trickster God who intended his "gift" to spread chaos and mayhem on Earth. This means it's probable that the Book is intended to change owners repeatedly... if it could be infallibly sequestered from loss or theft, it would rapidly stop being a random factor and instead just become a tool for one particular entity's total domination of the world, which is boring! For that matter, the creator is still out there, and no one save Glory and his fellow deities even know he exists, so none of the book's owners could possibly be on their guard against him. He could just show up and arrange for the book's loss or theft whenever it had stayed too long in one place.
    • It's also an actual plot point that Sentinel is, underneath all his self-granted retcons and power-ups, ultimately just a stupid, greedy punk who lucked into the big time. Sure he'll use the book to rewrite history so that he's living his Gary Stu fantasy of being the World's Greatest Superhero, but that doesn't mean he'll actually do it intelligently and with thoroughness. If he'd had those qualities to begin with, or even just self-awareness to admit to himself that he lacked those qualities and would need to develop them in himself, then he'd never have gotten himself into that mess in the storyline in the first place.
  • From a Gears of War comic: The cities on the Jacinto Plateau (the one place the Locust can't dig) still allow women in its Gears, although they are strongly encouraged to have kids everywhere else. Girls are locked up in breeding farms when they turn 14. The girls are artificially inseminated; if that doesn't work, then they are gang-raped; if they turn 18 and still have no kids, then they are sent to the front lines. This makes literally no sense—why would they ever allow them into the military short of the abovementioned conscription if they consider having them breed that high a priority... and why would they consider having them breed that high a priority right now when the entire human race at this point could be wiped out tomorrow and render the entire thing moot? The sane thing to do would be to force any able-bodied man, woman and child into the military to keep the Locust from flooding Jacinto and killing everyone. Worry about breeding later.
    • 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.
  • The EC Comics series Piracy had a Wall Banger in its first issue -- "Shanghaied" tells the story of a ship captain who was shanghaied twelve years earlier, and finds Mike, the "crimp" who'd originally kidnapped him, in a batch of unconscious men another crimp is trying to sell him. After telling the crimp how Mike had kidnapped him, his torturous life growing into the role of a sea-man, and his years-long quest to track Mike down, the ship captain approaches Mike as he awakens and... shakes his hand and THANKS HIM FOR HAVING MADE A MAN OUT OF HIM!!!
    • 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 Captain Bligh reborn, so Mike's victims may have wound up being brutally tortured and murdered.
  • The Future Shark Trilogy (#42-44) in Ninja Turtles Adventures completely screwed up Shredder's story for the entire series by saying the Shredder in that trilogy had been brought to the future from all the way back in Issue Four. How Shredder returned to the past is never explained for the next two years before the series was canceled. But the real Wall Banger is: Why would Shredder spare Splinter in Issue 36 when the Turtles reminded him of saving him from Krang in Issue 25, because that was the Shredder from the future in #36, and getting possessed by Krang wouldn't have happened to him yet...Ow, time travel hurts on my brain.
  • 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 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.
  • 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?
  • In Chuck Billy'n'Folks, a major source of this is Chuck's girlfriend, Rosie Lee, who went from a Shrinking Violet to Clingy Jealous Girl. Case in point, one comic, where it was photo day at Chuck's school, had Chuck meeting a new girl at school and Rosie Lee accusing Chuck of cheating on her (Her argument being that Chuck was all groomed up). Chuck says it's photo day and She doesn't believe him, saying that photo day was the next day, calls him a liar and breaks up with him on the spot. Then she starts being passive-agressive with Chuck for the remainder of the story. Then when Chuck's about to answer a question asked by his teacher, Rosie Lee says "Showing off for the new girlfriend?", prompting Chuck to make a joke. Then he has to clean up the erasers, Rosie Lee finds out that photo day was, in fact, that day, and that the girl Chuck was talking to already had a boyfriend. The Wall Banger is not really Rosie Lee's behavior, but how Easily Forgiven she was. She just came to Chuck and said "Can you forgive me for doubting you?". Chuck just accepts the apology, and no one calls out on her behaviour.
  1. ↑ a different comic series revealed that she disclosed privileged information about a client in a fit of rage, which was a wallbanger in itself
  2. ↑ Incidentally, this is a wallbanger within a wallbanger. In order to see the husband while he was in a jail cell She-Hulk would have had to ask permission at the front desk of the police station. If she had, the cops would have naturally asked her why she wanted to see him in the first place. Which would have forced her to reveal that, yes, she was in fact present for the entire incident, just as the husband said she was, and she could corroborate his entire story. At the very least the police would have required her to make an official statement and would probably have released the husband altogether. In other words, She-Hulk somehow managed to visit a murder suspect in jail without telling the police why she was there. The pain you are feeling in your forehead right now is from the impact of your head against the nearest desk and/or wall.
  3. ↑ a defense which would have been illegal for her to make since she had to know it was false
  4. ↑ Needless to say, while in the past there had been many situations when during a fight Rogue would absorb an (unconscious) teammate's power and memories, no such situations ever arose with Gambit. Convenient.
  5. ↑ DC has had a Captain Nazi since the Silver Age. He is, not surprisingly, a Nazi supervillain.
  6. ↑ Technically speaking, secession from the United States is legal "through revolution, or through consent of the States" as stated in Texas v. White. It would only be illegal for a territory to unilaterally secede (as happened in the Civil War), or for the federal government to arbitrarily declare a territory no longer part of the United States (as happened in NML).
  7. ↑ which in fact is a Series Continuity Error since Dinah's infertility was cured when she took a dip in a Lazarus Pit a few years back when she was dating Ra's Al Ghul, which just shows how poorly the series was researched
  8. ↑ Nowadays it seems that fans who wanted Jason dead were actually a Vocal Minority, with one person having made dozens of calls for his death and many others who wanted him to live being children at the time, so they weren't allowed to make the not-so-cheap call.
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