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** 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. [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|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 -- theorders—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 ''[[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 [[Lampshading|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...
* JMS retconned Uncle Ben's death as having occurred OUTSIDE and revealed that Ben had argued with Aunt May before he died -- whichdied—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 [[Canon Discontinuity|swept under the rug and forgotten.]] Of course, it seems [[Joe Quesada|certain people]] at Marvel didn't get the memo and decided to more or less [[One More Day|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 [[Complete Monster|who murdered his brother and his own child]]. And [[Brand New Day|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 [[Complete Monster|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% [[:Category:Yandere|Yandere (disambiguation)]], 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 [[King of the Hill|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 Love Interests|derailing every other]] [[Character Derailment|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 [http://i53.tinypic.com/a10b47.jpg 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?
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* 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 <ref> a different comic series revealed that she disclosed privileged information about a client in a fit of rage, which was a wallbanger in itself</ref> 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'' <ref> 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.</ref> 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 [[Idiot Ball|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 <ref> a defense which would have been ''illegal for her to make'' since she had to know it was false</ref> and dragging [[Iron Man|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 initial 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. 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*
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** [[American Pie|"Angel, son, I just want you to know that what you are doing is normal. Perfectly normal and natural."]]
* A small wallbanger in the greater scheme of things, but many readers hated Austen's handling of Polaris. Mental issues, fine. Romance issues, fine. [[Derailing Love Interests|Turning her into a completely batshit, likely unfaithful harpy]] to make the [[Muggle]] character he'd based on his own wife look like the [[Relationship Sue|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 (Comic Book)|The Avengers]] -- specifically—specifically, the decade-late resurrection of the [[Memetic Mutation|"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 [[Face Heel Turn|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 [[Character Derailment|is not in any way what Jean was like before]].
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** 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 [[Unobtanium|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 -- Wakandacivilizations—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 any foreign trade, then they should have sent the damn invitation back with a diplomatic note reading, 'Wakanda's foreign trade policy is thus: we don't want any. Thank you and good day.'
** 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.
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** 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.
** In the early 1990s, Wolverine nearly '''died''' in the "Fatal Attractions" storyline when Magneto ripped the adamantium out of his body. That's far less an injury than what Wolverine would effortlessly live through later.
*** He has been [[Nerf|nerfednerf]]ed down. Shortly after the aforementioned battle against Nitro, Marvel pulled an [[Author's Saving Throw]] with a convoluted Wolverine arc, which explained that a supernatural entity (some kind of [[Our Angels Are Different|Angel of Death]] guardian) used to [[A Wizard Did It|magically bring him back to life every time]] (after the blast from Nitro in "Civil War", after the "Fall of Avalon", during "Enemy of the State" and many other times), but only if Wolverine managed to defeat him in battle. After a conversation with this guardian, Wolverine at last told "death" that he didn't want its help anymore, even if that meant (as the guardian warned him) that his healing factor would return to what it used to be (that is, ''not'' at a "regenerating from a single cell" level).
* 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. [[Unexplained Recovery|She gets reassembled and turned back later]]; but this leads into further [[Wall Banger (Darth Wiki)|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. [[Unexplained Recovery|Dust gets revived again]], but apparently the process will [[Face Heel Turn|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 -- orMagik—or rather, a demonic copy of her that Warlock has already ''warned the leaders isn't the real Magik'' -- is—is pulled back into Limbo. After Colossus goes completely berserk over this, Cyclops agrees that they need all the teleporters they can get and says they'll get her back. How do they plan to do this? By forcing ''Pixie,'' who has a legitimate beef with Magik, to be the transport for a team to get her. Unfortunately, she is {{spoiler|their ''sole remaining teleporter'': Ariel and Nightcrawler are both dead, the X-Men booted out Cloak because he was a science-based mutate, and Vanisher has, um, vanished}}. And to top it off, Sam chews out Anole and Trance for siding with Pixie when she initially refused to go. Hey, grownups? When the kids you're ''supposed to be protecting and teaching'' have come to the conclusion that you'd let them die in a ditch to save a ''fake, evil copy'' of one of your own, and they might well be correct -- ''you're doing the 'protecting mutantkind' thing wrong!''
** Kyle and Yost busted out with their own [[Wall Banger (Darth Wiki)|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 Dead|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...
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* [[The Incredible Hulk|Red Hulk]] started as merely a powerful villain. Then he fought Thor. The fight ends up in space; then [[Fan Nickname|Rulk]] ''takes Thor's hammer and beats him up with it.'' Thor's hammer, by the way, is [[A Wizard Did It|enchanted]] so that nobody can lift it but Thor himself or a pure-hearted and worthy individual in a desperate situation. Obviously, [[Captain Obvious|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 [[You Fail Physics Forever|objectively false]]). [[Fridge Logic|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.<br /><br />Let's repeat that: The judge ''threw out a "Not Guilty" verdict '''in a criminal trial.''' ''<br /><br />For those not familiar with the American justice system, this is patently illegal. Jeopardy ([[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:
 
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 ([[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:
{{quote|"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 -- inclone—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]]. {{spoiler|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''.
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* ''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, [[Moral Event Horizon|Xavier erases everyone's memory of the slaughtered rescue team]] and [[Mind Rape|creates a new version of the story in their heads.]] There are many reasons [[Character Derailment|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 [http://ragnell.blogspot.com/2010/05/forget-death-character-needs-to-be.html 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.) [[Iron Man|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 ([[Idiot Ball|despite that being a drunk bit]]), and they disperse. All these events were conveniently [[Retcon|Retconned]]ned 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 [[Retcon|Retcons]]s. 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 [[Fantastic Four|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 -- andterrorists—and remember, Doom is a head of state, and commands an arsenal (if not troops) equal to any First World superpower -- impliessuperpower—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.<ref> 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.</ref> 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 [[Retcon|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.
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*** The big reason this doesn't work is because, due to the [[Teen Titans (Comic Book)|New Teen Titans]] characterization taking hold in the 80s, Nightwing is essentially a well-adjusted, likeable Batman.
* ''[[Green Lantern]]: Rebirth'' [[Retcon|revealed]] that Hal Jordan had [[Face Heel Turn|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 events surrounding the [[Face Heel Turn]] were themselves a Wallbanger. Hal Jordan had been one of the nobler heroes in [[The DCU]]; but, after his hometown was destroyed, and after it was determined that recreating it by [[Green Lantern Ring]] was unacceptable, he ''genocided his organization!'' He killed all the Green Lanterns and all the Guardians; then he tried to destroy the timeline with the intention of restoring it with the events he most objected to [[Retcon|retconnedretcon]]ned out (no, seriously); and then he died in a [[Redemption Equals Death]] [[Heroic Sacrifice]]. The problem was, this attempted crossing of the [[Moral Event Horizon]] seemed enough of an [[Out-of-Character Moment]] that the next [[Green Lantern]], Kyle Rayner, got the [[Replacement Scrappy]] treatment. The yellow fear bug was a [[Author's Saving Throw]].
* The writer switch on ''All-New Atom" from [[Gail Simone]] to [[Rick Remender]] led to the [[Character Derailment|derailment of every single character.]]
** Which led to Ryan Choi being [[Stuffed in The Fridge|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.
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*** 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 {{spoiler|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 [[Comic Book Limbo|limbo]] a few issues after his revival with hardly anything done with his character and not resurfacing until a couple years later [[Heel Face Revolving Door|evil again]]. But wait, [[It Got Worse|It gets better!]] This leads in to a horrible, drawn-out storyline where formerly gentle Jericho becomes a [[Character Derailment|homicidal psychopath]] and not only the Titans, but the JUSTICE FREAKIN'LEAGUE are [[Idiot Plot|too incompetent]] to stop him (EX. Their only protection against Jericho's possession-through-eye-contact powers are [[Goggles Do Nothing|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 [[In the Blood|"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 {{spoiler|Jericho suffers [[Eye Scream]]...for awhile}}.
* ''The Adventures of Superman,'' a [[Recursive Adaptation|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 -- andfamous—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 [[Captain Obvious Aesop|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.
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*** 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 -- withbelongs—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 ([[Heel Face Revolving Door|Titans turned Traitor again!?]]) were rampant.
* The new 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 [[Retcon|Retconned]]ned into speaking solely [[Gratuitous Japanese]] and being a stereotypical [[The Stoic|stoic]] [[Samurai]] type obsessed with honor. Furthermore, she went up against a bunch of supervillains who are all horribly [[Yellow Peril|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: ''[[Did Not Do the Research|She never does judo]]'', just [[Fan Service|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.
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** 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 [[Executive Meddling|editorially mandated]]. He once proudly stated that "Countdown is 52 done right".
*** *ahem* [[Angrish|AAAAAA]][[Go Mad From the Revelation|AAAAAAAAAA]][[Heroic BSOD|AAAAAAAAAAAAA]][[Overly Long Gag|AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH]]
* ''[[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 Feminist|Straw Feminists]]s 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:
{{quote|[[Narm|"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.
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** 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.
* ''[[Batman: No Man's Land|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 [[American Civil War|war]] about that once.)<ref> 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).</ref>
** 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!
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* During ''[[Batman|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 [[Axe Crazy|Jo]][[Monster Clown|ker]] an official diplomat with official diplomatic immunity is, um, insane.
* ''[[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 [[Character Derailment|derail]] Roy Harper from a stable, well adjusted single father into a [[Wangst|wangstywangst]]y drug addict who sinks to using Black Canary's infertility as a point to lash out at her <ref>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</ref> 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. [http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1971988.html 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 [[Foe Yay|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.
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** 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 {{spoiler|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 -- butunderwater—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, [[Badass Normal|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 [[Voodoo Shark|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 -- waitanymore—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.
*** The story involves ''every single'' super-powered being losing their powers. [[Big "What?"|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 [[Atop the Fourth Wall|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.
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* ''[[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 [[Reason You Suck Speech|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 [[Straw Man Has a Point|he raised some valid points:]]
{{quote|"...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 [[Let's You and Him Fight|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--inNope—in fact, The Corps actually [[What the Hell, Hero?|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 [[Esoteric Happy Ending|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 [[Diplomatic Impunity|"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--ohoutcome—oh look, the rapist just gave her a phone call threatening to come after her again and [[Driven to Suicide|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 ''[[Conviction by Counterfactual Clue|doesn't actually exist,]]'' and that's why people wanted him to die.<ref> 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.</ref>
* 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''.
 
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** 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 -- somethingbook—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.
* 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 -- whysense—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 -- clumsilygame—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 -- roughlythings—roughly akin to compromising between lunch and disgusting, decaying, disease-ridden offal by making the offal into a sandwich -- issandwich—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 (Darth Wiki)|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!!!''
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