I’ve
talked a lot about how great DC Comics can be, but that doesn’t mean
all of their ideas were hits. Very often in an attempt to change the
status quo they take existing established characters or teams and decide
to tinker with them…and while it can work it usually ends up hurting
them in the process. For example I already discussed the awful Electric
Blue Superman. And I mentioned how they screwed Batman up when they
made Jean Paul Valley in that stupid armor.
It didn’t take long for either of these to be returned to the status quo. But that isn’t the only time DC took one of their big heroes or teams and screwed them over in the name of improving them. Here are ten more, in no particular order..
10.Wonder Woman Without Powers
At about the same time Superman was being de-powered, the same thing was happening over in Wonder Woman. This was the idea of Denny O’Neil who has admitted it was a mistake. And it was really stupid. She basically lost her powers and her costume and became a regular working woman. Yeah that sounds exciting. This was supposed to reflect women’s lib but all it did was water down the character. It didn’t last long but is a fascinating era in the character’s history.
9.The Justice League of “Detroit”
It wasn’t really called that but that’s what this stupid era of the JLA has been called over the years. For whatever reason, the creators decided to strip the JLA of all their main members. In the book, Aquaman disbands the team and reforms it with a bunch of new heroes. Based in Detroit, the heroes were Vibe, Steel, Gypsy, Elongated Man, Vixen, Zatanna, and later Martian Manhunter. As you can imagine this didn’t fly and was replaced with the all new Justice League. And while that wasn’t quote the same either, it was different enough to keep people interested. It was the 90’s when the JLA finally returned to form.
8.Hawkman’s never ending retcon’s
Sometime’s creators just don’t know what to do with a character so they keep trying to recreate him. Even if it makes no sense whatsoever. Aqauman suffered from this to, but man did Hawkman. He suffered so badly there was a point when creators gave up and he disappeared from comics. Ok, after Crisis an attempt was made to explain how Hawkman could have been in JSA during WW2 and the modern JLA. For awhile it made sense, Hawkman had a short lived series in the 80’s, until Hawkworld came along. This rebooted Hawkman and threw everything about him out the window. It was established the golden age Hawkman was the same one, and then it was established that the Hawkman in the JLA was a spy not really Katar Hol, and then Zero Hour tried to merge all the variants together to form one character…who no one understood. It was the JSA series later in the 90’s that finally straightened this all out and made Hawkman good again.
7.Power Girl’s Crazy Origin
If Hawkman was screwed over then Power Girl didn’t stand a chance. Before the Crisis, she was the cousin of the Earth-2 Superman. But when the world’s merged and there was no Earth-2 Superman, who was she then? DC came up with this idea that she was the descendant of the Atlantean sorcerer Arion, and was frozen in suspended animation for millennia until the present day. Sounds pretty stupid and yeah it didn’t last. Years later in the pages of JSA Arion admitted it was a lie. The new origin? She was a survivor of Kyrpton from the old Earth 2, enough said. Gee wonder why they didn’t think of that at first? Oh yeah they did! By the way remember when Power Girl had a mystical pregnancy and gave birth? Yeah the creators forgot too.
6.Sword of the Atom
This one may not have been the worst but I never got it. Poor Ray Palmer, if DC isn’t making him a teenager they’re turning his wife into a psychopath and sending him into Countdown. In the 80’s, Atom gets divorced and becomes the heroic paragon of a tribe of six-inch tall yellow-skinned humanoid aliens called Morlaidhans in the jungles of South America. This lasted for a few specials before the status quo was restored. The jungle was wiped out and The Atom was back in form.
5.Hal Jordon Goes Insane!!
This one personally pissed me off! I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that but man did this kill me. I never gave Kyle Rainer a chance because of it (though it doesn’t seem like there was anything wrong with him). After Coast City is obliterated, Hal kind of took it bad. Really bad. Denied the ability to restore the city, he snaps, flies to Oa, and kills all the Green Lantern’s and destroys OA. What?? Yeah in the end Hal becomes Parallax and the last ring is handed off to Kyle. This was so stupid that it was finally explain, and reversed, almost ten years later.
4.Titans Hunt
This was sooooooooo bad. I had a bad feeling when this storyline started, and it only got dumber and dumber after that. The idea was to shake things up, which is OK I guess, but what we got was just a mess. It would take a whole blog article to cover these 14 issues of crap but we got Raven killed, Cyborg turned even more cybernetic, Jericho turned evil and killed, a pointless detour with a group called The Team Titans, and new heroes Phantasm and Pantha who would ultimately go nowhere. It was long and convoluted and I stopped reading once it was finally over.
3.Everyone in Identity Crisis
This one deserves a mention, even though it didn’t just affect one hero. First, Elongated Man lost his wife for no good reason. Sue Dibny had been a popular recurring characters for years and deserved better. Then we get the end of the story with Atom but I already mentioned that. Tim Drake lost his father for no good reason, and Firestorm was killed for no reason. But the big change in this comes in the retcon, or revelation, of the mind wipe. After Dr.Light had been mind wiped (following the rape of Sue Dibny), Batman didn’t take it well. The solution was to mind wipe him too, which Zatanna did. This was all so stupid and ultimately pointless. It was meant to make Batman paranoid and darken the universe as a whole. Did it succeed? I don’t know I didn’t want to read it.
2.Arsenal Turns Evil
Needed one more contemporary and this one will do. After the event of “Cry for Justice”, we got “Rise of Arsenal” where Roy Harper acts like a jerk to his friends, starts doing drugs again, becomes impotent, talks to a zombified version of his daughter, and in the end becomes a villain. It was stupid and since Linkara covered it in depth, just watch that review if you want to know more.
1.The New 52 Starfire
Was anything they did here a good thing? There were a few good choices made from what I’ve heard, but judging by the “Re-birth” event now going on it’s clear that most of the changes done were just stupid. I think the worst is what they did to poor Starfire. She was an interesting character in the days of the New Teen Titans. But in Red Hood and the Outlaws she was just a sex object. I’ve heard her portrayal got better but her first issue made her look like a ditzy slut who only cared about sex. Starfire is much better than that.
Course that’s only ten, I’m sure there are lots more out there. Comment if I missed one and if I come up with another five I’ll be back with that.
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It didn’t take long for either of these to be returned to the status quo. But that isn’t the only time DC took one of their big heroes or teams and screwed them over in the name of improving them. Here are ten more, in no particular order..
10.Wonder Woman Without Powers
At about the same time Superman was being de-powered, the same thing was happening over in Wonder Woman. This was the idea of Denny O’Neil who has admitted it was a mistake. And it was really stupid. She basically lost her powers and her costume and became a regular working woman. Yeah that sounds exciting. This was supposed to reflect women’s lib but all it did was water down the character. It didn’t last long but is a fascinating era in the character’s history.
9.The Justice League of “Detroit”
It wasn’t really called that but that’s what this stupid era of the JLA has been called over the years. For whatever reason, the creators decided to strip the JLA of all their main members. In the book, Aquaman disbands the team and reforms it with a bunch of new heroes. Based in Detroit, the heroes were Vibe, Steel, Gypsy, Elongated Man, Vixen, Zatanna, and later Martian Manhunter. As you can imagine this didn’t fly and was replaced with the all new Justice League. And while that wasn’t quote the same either, it was different enough to keep people interested. It was the 90’s when the JLA finally returned to form.
8.Hawkman’s never ending retcon’s
Sometime’s creators just don’t know what to do with a character so they keep trying to recreate him. Even if it makes no sense whatsoever. Aqauman suffered from this to, but man did Hawkman. He suffered so badly there was a point when creators gave up and he disappeared from comics. Ok, after Crisis an attempt was made to explain how Hawkman could have been in JSA during WW2 and the modern JLA. For awhile it made sense, Hawkman had a short lived series in the 80’s, until Hawkworld came along. This rebooted Hawkman and threw everything about him out the window. It was established the golden age Hawkman was the same one, and then it was established that the Hawkman in the JLA was a spy not really Katar Hol, and then Zero Hour tried to merge all the variants together to form one character…who no one understood. It was the JSA series later in the 90’s that finally straightened this all out and made Hawkman good again.
7.Power Girl’s Crazy Origin
If Hawkman was screwed over then Power Girl didn’t stand a chance. Before the Crisis, she was the cousin of the Earth-2 Superman. But when the world’s merged and there was no Earth-2 Superman, who was she then? DC came up with this idea that she was the descendant of the Atlantean sorcerer Arion, and was frozen in suspended animation for millennia until the present day. Sounds pretty stupid and yeah it didn’t last. Years later in the pages of JSA Arion admitted it was a lie. The new origin? She was a survivor of Kyrpton from the old Earth 2, enough said. Gee wonder why they didn’t think of that at first? Oh yeah they did! By the way remember when Power Girl had a mystical pregnancy and gave birth? Yeah the creators forgot too.
6.Sword of the Atom
This one may not have been the worst but I never got it. Poor Ray Palmer, if DC isn’t making him a teenager they’re turning his wife into a psychopath and sending him into Countdown. In the 80’s, Atom gets divorced and becomes the heroic paragon of a tribe of six-inch tall yellow-skinned humanoid aliens called Morlaidhans in the jungles of South America. This lasted for a few specials before the status quo was restored. The jungle was wiped out and The Atom was back in form.
5.Hal Jordon Goes Insane!!
This one personally pissed me off! I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in that but man did this kill me. I never gave Kyle Rainer a chance because of it (though it doesn’t seem like there was anything wrong with him). After Coast City is obliterated, Hal kind of took it bad. Really bad. Denied the ability to restore the city, he snaps, flies to Oa, and kills all the Green Lantern’s and destroys OA. What?? Yeah in the end Hal becomes Parallax and the last ring is handed off to Kyle. This was so stupid that it was finally explain, and reversed, almost ten years later.
4.Titans Hunt
This was sooooooooo bad. I had a bad feeling when this storyline started, and it only got dumber and dumber after that. The idea was to shake things up, which is OK I guess, but what we got was just a mess. It would take a whole blog article to cover these 14 issues of crap but we got Raven killed, Cyborg turned even more cybernetic, Jericho turned evil and killed, a pointless detour with a group called The Team Titans, and new heroes Phantasm and Pantha who would ultimately go nowhere. It was long and convoluted and I stopped reading once it was finally over.
3.Everyone in Identity Crisis
This one deserves a mention, even though it didn’t just affect one hero. First, Elongated Man lost his wife for no good reason. Sue Dibny had been a popular recurring characters for years and deserved better. Then we get the end of the story with Atom but I already mentioned that. Tim Drake lost his father for no good reason, and Firestorm was killed for no reason. But the big change in this comes in the retcon, or revelation, of the mind wipe. After Dr.Light had been mind wiped (following the rape of Sue Dibny), Batman didn’t take it well. The solution was to mind wipe him too, which Zatanna did. This was all so stupid and ultimately pointless. It was meant to make Batman paranoid and darken the universe as a whole. Did it succeed? I don’t know I didn’t want to read it.
2.Arsenal Turns Evil
Needed one more contemporary and this one will do. After the event of “Cry for Justice”, we got “Rise of Arsenal” where Roy Harper acts like a jerk to his friends, starts doing drugs again, becomes impotent, talks to a zombified version of his daughter, and in the end becomes a villain. It was stupid and since Linkara covered it in depth, just watch that review if you want to know more.
1.The New 52 Starfire
Was anything they did here a good thing? There were a few good choices made from what I’ve heard, but judging by the “Re-birth” event now going on it’s clear that most of the changes done were just stupid. I think the worst is what they did to poor Starfire. She was an interesting character in the days of the New Teen Titans. But in Red Hood and the Outlaws she was just a sex object. I’ve heard her portrayal got better but her first issue made her look like a ditzy slut who only cared about sex. Starfire is much better than that.
Course that’s only ten, I’m sure there are lots more out there. Comment if I missed one and if I come up with another five I’ll be back with that.
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