|
I'd nominate Denny O'Neil's Amazing Spider-Man run as a "worst run," at least compared to what came before and after. Marv Wolfman preceded O'Neil, and while he wasn't always great, and sometimes seemed to forget Spider-Man had super powers and really shouldn't get trashed by the Kingpin, he also introduced Black Cat and introduced some cool new story developments including Peter leaving the Bugle to work for a rival paper that seemed too good to be true, together with a dark secret. O'Neil almost immediately hits the reset button on all of that, but more importantly, he does what feels like 18 months of inventory stories. Spider-Man has one of the greatest rogues galleries ever, and he spent this period fighting Hydro Man twice, two different atomic monsters, a new version of the Frightful Four featuring a Namor villain (and a Namor team-up) that lasted about four-five issues, and X-Men minor villain Mesmero. Maybe this wouldn't have been so bad on a useless book like "Web" but this was the flagship book and featured JRJR as he was just becoming a "name." Stern followed this run and blew it out of the water. I'm also not a big Steve Englehart fan, but my least favorite run/time his mediocrity stuck out the most is Fantastic Four. It didn't help that he pouted about editorial interference to the point of inserting his own character as the writer of the in-universe FF comic, and had an extended storyline that was just the characters having dreams about the (dumb) directions he wanted to take the book. He was also in between Byrne's great run (even if it had fizzled a bit by the end) and Simonson's amazing run. I know Austen was objectively worse, and he was followed by Bendis, but Johns's Avengers run felt a bit like a gut punch after Busiek. Johns just crosses out "Batman" and writes "Black Panther" a lot, and there's needless and dumb ret-cons about She-Hulk's power being driven by fear. Also, he hints at a big Zodiac story, then must've realized how lame that sounded, and never brings up the subplot again. Plus, that Hank and Jan issue is just creepy. It also took place during a time period of maximum decompression, so 2-3 issue storylines were routinely stretched to six.
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2013 06:43
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 16:18 |
|
|
Random Stranger posted:Despite being Marvel's flagship title, Fantastic Four has a lot of terrible runs. The worst of them, and that's a tight race, has to be Steve Engleharts. Roy Thomas and Marv Wolfman were just bland. JMS, De Falco, and Millar were terrible enough to be put in this thread on their own, but it's Englehart that hits the bottom. Thanks for all the specific details on just why this run was such garbage. I bought that Fantastic Four dvd that goes up through around Civil War era, and Englehart's stuff was just so bad I had trouble reading it for the first time since the teens of the Lee/Kirby run, where Kirby was clearly penciling about six books. I do love that when DeFalco brings Sharon back she's dressed like a typical heroine on her off-days (tube top, mini-skirt, etc.), even though her one defining characteristic was hating being leered at. Englehart's blog about this time period is really delusional, too. http://www.steveenglehart.com/comics/Fantastic%20Four%20304-321.html "So it was that the series developed into something as rich and unpredictable as its earliest days, and regained all the lost readership - up through issue #321..." Yup, having the characters grow and having a new team was all your idea. Byrne just added She-Hulk, had Johnny start dating Alicia, had Sue become the most powerful member of the team.. And Englehart bizarrely just writes out Reed and Sue entirely, without even bothering to check up with them the way McDuffie did years later when they took a break. Sputnik, Englehart was mad at previous editorial interference, so he proceeded to bring his pet character where she made even less sense- fans in 1990 did not care about Mantis even a little bit. He doesn't get a pass just because he got kicked off another book. DeFalco's stuff is certainly not very good, but he at least keeps things interesting. And Paul Ryan's art is way better than the art during the Englehart era. And as bad as the Invisible Woman costume was during that period, at least there was an in-story explanation. She was being controlled by the Malice entity from the Byrne era, and was becoming more reckless and crazy.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2013 15:56
|
|
|
Lurdiak posted:That makes it much worse, actually. Pointless out of character titillation is one thing, but to explicitly tie overt female sexuality with EVIL INFLUENCE is... well, it's textbook Byrne all right. And that ain't a compliment. It may not be progressive, but I hardly see how that makes it worse than a character just not wearing clothes without explanation? I mean, this wasn't new to comic book fiction, or genre fiction, or... any fiction. Plus, because it was part of a storyline, other characters were like "what's up with that costume?" which is better than comics that don't even acknowledge how ridiculous a costume like Psylocke's is. And the story itself isn't just "oh she's evil now so she dresses like that," either- Sue's consciousness is still around, and agrees to take in the Malice entity. How exactly is that worse than characters just being pointlessly sexy purely for a voyeuristic reader?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 4, 2013 23:21
|
|
|
CharlestheHammer posted:It may not be worse, but its at least as bad. Mainly because they ultimately draw from the same reasoning pool. Also having a story reason for being a certain way doesn't exactly excuse you, because you came up with the story and can change things as you like. I wasn't saying it "excused" anything, I just think it's silly to argue that it's somehow worse when a character has an in-story explanation for their behavior. If nothing else, it gives the writer the chance to say something about the character or the larger issues involved. And since DeFalco and Ryan did say something about the character, I don't agree that's somehow worse than what was going on in about 90% of comics at the time. Speaking as somebody who was familiar with the dumb costume before reading the run, I think they did a decent enough job of telling a story that the silly costume doesn't seem nearly as ridiculous as it seemed out of context. Again, as opposed to most any comic on sale in 1993.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 5, 2013 00:17
|
|
|
I can't comment on all of Byrne and Mackie's Spidey relaunch, but I just read a two parter where all of the supporting cast is kidnapped by Mysterio and put in a virtual reality construct with the apparent attempt being to deduce who's really Spider-Man because... Mysterio wants to know, I guess? It really hits all the "John Byrne" notes in that a villain has a scheme that makes no sense at all (Flash Thompson somehow imagines himself as a super hero engaged to Mary Jane inside the VR, defeating the purpose immediately), is completely an excuse to bring a bunch of Spidey supporting characters into a room together, is based on a Silver-Age-y gimmick that Byrne already famously did (Puppet Master and his "tiny town"), and finally, Flash Thompson says he doesn't need anybody and calls Peter a nerd, ignoring about 300-some odd issues of Amazing Spider-Man, where Flash has been Pete's good friend for years and was the best man at his wedding. But no, Flash was always a bully jerk because a sweaty Canadian pre-teen read him that way in 1963.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2013 15:22
|
|
|
I will say Byrne wrote a pretty good U.S. Agent on WCA, even if he's complained on his forum about how Englehart made him use the character. How weird that Byrne could get into the mind-set of an rear end in a top hat right-wing nut.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2013 19:26
|
|
|
Metal Loaf posted:What's the common consensus on the worst Fantastic Four run? Englehart? DeFalco? One of the non-descript ones from the 1970s when they had really naff villains like Janus the Nega-Man and Salem's Seven? I'd definitely vote Englehart. Most of the 70's runs at least had something to recommend them. John Buscema's art, the divorce storyline from around 140-150 (where Namor tricks everyone into getting them back together), Perez doing art on the next run, or Conway's big Doom showdown around issue 200. Millar and DeFalco have plenty of dumb ideas, but Englehart is just telling awful stories with ugly art. He also seemed to think he'd get great mileage out of a newly married Johnny Storm being around Crystal, but she's married too and there's really no tension at all. Lurdiak posted:John Byrne is responsible for at least some of that, and he definitely has a problem with women, or at the very least his work does. The rest is mostly just "being written in the 1960s". I know it's cool to hate on Byrne for all the dumb stuff he says/does, but only two panels (from one story) are Byrne's, and they're both Reed obviously trying to be a dick to get Sue to snap out of being mind-controlled. Byrne's the one that had her change her name (after calling herself "Invisible Girl" for 20 years), that showcased her powers in new ways, and otherwise finished the transition of her being a Stan Lee waif into a pretty cool character. I mean, if you go back to 1975, the writers both permanently boost her powers from Lee/Kirby levels and show her saving the day for the first time in ages, just so that fans would stop writing in that her character should retire or die and get replaced by Crystal or Thundra.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 14, 2014 19:11
|
|
|
Parahexavoctal posted:
Yeah, that's a big part of why his run was so bad. He turned the book into a months long pout-fest, after introducing Fasaud the video Arab, suicidal Ms. Marvel II, and a whole lot of other just awful stuff. And on his blog he whines about how bringing back Reed and Sue is Marvel being out of ideas and "dragging back" these characters, and while he's right that neither Reed nor Sue are exactly superstars, he basically just blandly wrote them out of the book entirely instead of just putting them on the back-burner. Also his response to getting fired off AWC for a Mantis story no one wants? "I'm gonna write a Mantis FF story!"
|
|
#
¿
Jan 17, 2014 00:23
|
|
|
I've been reading Mackie and Byrne's Spider-Man run, and let me tell you, it is garbage. Re-reading the clone saga, yeah it went on too long, and eventually it became clear there was no plan for getting out of it, but it still made for some pretty fun, dumb comics. Which was a nice change of pace after Peter started referring to himself only as "The Spider" in an attempt to capture the 90's zeitgeist. But Mackie and Byrne's run is just full of bad character choices, half-assed reset buttons, and otherwise confusing "Parker luck" with "Peter Parker is the stupidest man who ever lived." Thus far, highlights include: * more Aunt May! Aunt May gets a new haircut! The Spider-editor finding any halfway positive mail he can find for May being back and using it to "prove" that bringing her back wasn't a terrible, awful decision! * Flash Thompson is a jerk! The best man at Peter Parker's wedding, the guy who dated Felicia Hardy, is a down-on-his-luck loser who might as well wear a letter jacket as he reverts to his Steve Ditko characterization! * Sandman's evil now! After reforming a decade earlier, saving Spidey from Doc Ock during the reformed Sinister Six era, joining the Avengers, joining the Wild Pack, Sandman turns evil because... Wizard made him evil again in an "Id Machine," a Lee/Kirby callback from the 60's. But in the last appearance of the Id Machine (30 years earlier), the FF noticed there was mind control and "de-programmed" the Thing. Here, The Thing shows up in the story to say "I always knew Sandman was a bad guy, that's why I've kept tabs on him!" And the Sandman is his 1960's self again! * Mary Jane is a hugely in demand supermodel who is never around, and, she has another stalker (the last one was her landlord, a Michelinie subplot post-wedding), and then apparently dies in a plane crash on her way to Europe. The resolution is so stupid it deserves its own post. * Peter gets a new lab job, then never goes into work, then is shocked when he gets fired. Typical Parker luck! * With Mary Jane "dead," the new Spider-Woman, Mattie Franklin, a teenager, comes onto Peter, and his friend Jill Stacy won't stop throwing herself at him, even though he's convinced Mary Jane isn't dead. I think this was supposed to create romantic tension, but Peter never shows any interest in Jill and Mattie is like, 15. * somehow Mary Jane's accountant mismanaged all her supermodel money (and she doesn't have insurance for exploding planes), so Peter is broke, and can't get a job at a .com startup because he's "too qualified." He takes a job washing dishes because he is very stupid. I get what Mackie and Byrne were going for, especially comparing it to stuff like Busiek and Perez on Avengers, who were clearly building off of 70's stories and featuring classic characters with a bit of a return to the status quo. But Mackie and Byrne do this in the clumsiest, most irritating way possible, throwing out decades of good stories and have characters act completely out of character in order to hit really dumb plot points. It's also Byrne's weakest art at Marvel.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2014 22:07
|
|
|
Metal Loaf posted:I'd say a lot of the worst stuff in the Mackie run actually comes after Byrne left and JRJR returned to the book. The most frustrating plot was probably the Senator Ward story arc. I think the reveal of the MJ death/stalker storyline is just as bad if not worse. The best part is how Senator Ward gets introduced about a year and a half before his big storyline when Sandman tries to kill him in a throwaway one issue story. It's a rich tapestry of garbage sub-plots and awful choices. As for the actual stalker storyline: Mary Jane is plagued by harassing phone calls, then the stalker disguises himself as a cabbie and terrorizes MJ some more without her seeing his face. He's able to find out MJ's travel route through his laptop, and remains untraceable in his harassing phone calls. He boards MJ's plane, and blows it up, but uses his mutant powers to save both himself and Mary Jane, after drugging her with a lollipop (which she took from a stranger, because she is the stupidest person alive). It turns out he is a homeless person who can't deal with his mental-based mutant powers, and after being saved once by Peter Parker, he mind-melded to him, including a crazy love for Mary Jane. So he kidnaps her and fakes her death, and has her living in a windowless cell for months. This is all so he can... I guess take Peter's identity? Peter shows up, this un-named dude easily beats him, but then decides he can't go through with it and kills himself, without even doing the reader the courtesy of giving himself a name. It doesn't help that he looks like a slightly off-model Peter Parker. It's definitely a super-clear case of a writer trying to hit reset on his subplots (this was Mackie's last arc), and it's also clear he had no intention for mutant powers or being a homeless crazy person during the original Mackie/Byrne issues. In those, he kills a cabbie with a bat, and is some kind of tech genius. It was also clearly the editorial mandate of breaking up the marriage somehow, but the way they did it was so stupid because how was he supposed to do anything but mourn or not believe his wife is dead? Short of another six month jump (which started the Mackie/Byrne run in the first place), how are we supposed to believe he's a devil-may-care bachelor when his wife was just exploded? Howard Mackie is just not a good writer. For more, check out X-Factor in the late 90's or Mutant X.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 8, 2014 00:25
|
|
|
Yeah, Peter apparently forgets he has super powers so he doesn't really have to sleep in an alley if he doesn't want to- he could like, web himself up a nice hammock or something. And there's also the subplot where Peter thinks Jonah looked under his mask while he was unconscious, which might have been an intentional callback to... I think Wolfman's Amazing run back in the 70's? Because it's beat for beat the same story, except in that version, Smythe sticks a bomb between Spidey and Jonah and handcuffs them together. In this version... Smythe's son forces Jonah to lure Spider-Man into a trap? It's bad.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 9, 2014 07:39
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:Oh christ I looked up the Eve of Destruction team and you ain't kidding Giedroyc: I loved the "who?" aspect of that team Jean Grey assembled. It was a nice homage to Giant Size X-Men #1. Omerta was obviously not a breakout hit, as after hitting on Jean Grey in that crossover, I think his very next appearance was at the death camps in Weapon X. I think my favorite part of Mackie's X-Factor is the story/arc where everyone on the team forgot Shard existed for some reason.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2014 00:20
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:Was the whole "who?" aspect of that team really an homage to Giant-Size X-Men #1 (genuinely curious)? My gut tells me no. No, it was pretty obviously an homage. Jean had "recruitment" scenes with the temporary team that were very clearly meant to echo gathering the All New, All-Different team.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2014 00:29
|
|
|
mind the walrus posted:Ahh. Makes sense. Still, what a poo poo line-up. I mean with Giant-Size X-Men you can immediately see conceptual winners in there like Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler as well as "I can see cool things being done with them" like Storm, Banshee, and Sunfire-- with the line-up in Eve of Destruction the best characters are Dazzler and Northstar, neither of whom sets the mind on fire with possibility and were known as permanent supporting characters for good reason. As mentioned, I thought the Eve of Destruction lineup worked fine. There was no danger of this being the regular team, it was just sort of a "this is who we have" sense of desperation that I enjoyed. It was a perfectly cromulent Scott Lobdell comic. He wasn't trying to re-write GSX, he was just referencing it by having Jean forced to recruit who she could get, and that ended up being a motley bunch, and the book doesn't try to disguise the fact in-story. Now, Weapon X as written by Frank Tieri? That was an awful run.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2014 00:41
|
|
|
I think we can all agree Storm was nowhere near the strategist Cyclops was. I don't recall her ever calling out any numbered maneuvers. Also it's really weird for somebody to complain about Claremont-written Storm, considering... has any writer post-Claremont shown any interest in doing absolutely anything with the character? Claremont-leaving and the goofy voice on the cartoon pretty much killed the character dead circa 1991.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 11, 2014 19:58
|
|
|
Favorabilis Solitud posted:I never knew there was a strong following to like Sonic comics (longest running video game comic) and like GI JOE comics until these threads. I guess I always looked at these as vehicles to sell toys/games first then focus on a good story/art second. I get comics in general are always tied into pushing something. I don't know if GI Joe comics have aged well, but they had one writer for pretty much the entire 80's run (Larry Hama), and were generally well-regarded as they were allowed to be their own thing, and were a bit more espionage-action focused than the cartoon.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 25, 2014 22:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 16:18 |
|
|
Yeah, the 90's collapse wasn't "mostly" Liefeld's fault. He contributed to it, but the Marvel and DC marketing departments, and Diamond and Cap City's distribution changes that made it look like there was more growth than there really was were both far more responsible than one dude not hitting deadlines.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 27, 2014 20:36
|
|