If You Could Undo Three Events In Comics

[Gail Simone]

What would they be?

It can be anything--a creator on a run you dislike, a creator LEAVING one you do, a story you feel ruined a character, whatever.

[Pink Bat Maxine]

What would they be?

It can be anything--a creator on a run you dislike, a creator LEAVING one you do, a story you feel ruined a character, whatever.

The death of the Fiddler. DAAAAAAMN you Gail!

Just kidding, just kidding.

As much as I love my crises.... I'd undo COIE.

[ninjapeps]

Right now, One More Day is the only thing that comes to mind that I want erased from existence.

[BnL]

1) Everything following the relaunch of Wonder Woman, up until your run began.

2) The aging, and subsequent death of Bart Allen.

3) Black Canary leaving the Birds of Prey just so she could go back to playing second fiddle to Green Arrow.

[Eliseu Gouveia]

1) Return of Barry Allen -I know it´s coming, I can smell it in the wind. God, please let me be mistaken

2) OYL Bizarro Cass

3- Gwen Stacy and Norm Osborn... no, please, God, no....

4- the Bat/Wonder Woman ship

[Chris Hansbrough]

Chuck Dixons Green Arrow
Identity Crisis and the last page of arcers quest
Winicks green arrow

[SUPERECWFAN1]

What would they be?

It can be anything--a creator on a run you dislike, a creator LEAVING one you do, a story you feel ruined a character, whatever.

I'd retcon the Kendra and Roy Harper sleeping togethor story from Justice League of America. Its clear that the story hurt Hawkgirl's character making her desperate and lonlely enough for sex , to bed Roy after seeing his daughter.

The relationship hasn't clicked period. There was little work on panel for Brad Meltzer to make the leap for the characters. Even if he secretly desired to be Roy Harper. The fact Harper has spent more panel time with Vixen and nearly died with her...shows that is where things should have went.

I also think DC spit on their fans of the Hawkman series. You sold a series to fans telling them that Hawkgirl and Hawkman were a couple who defied death and were reincarnated for their love. You spend years making them slowly grow past the uneasyness they had...

The scene in JSA where Hawkman is back and wants his girl ...and Kendra is like "HELL NO..."

Carter is suprised and hurt. He's used to his woman falling into his arms since its their destiny . And what does Jay Garrick say "Carter , you ever court a woman ? Well...your gonna have to learn how to."

And Carter does. He slowly gets Kendra . Then DC ups and spits on their readers. They totally pissed on them. They removed the love and revamped the solo book killing the title essentially. Then they did this story which shows you a lack of fucking sense.

The smartest thing DC can do is claim Roy dreamed the sex scene , Re-unite Carter and Kendra ....and develope the love the 2 have . And never mention this shitty plot again.

[PatrickG]

1. COIE -- Everything in the 12 issue run.

2. The aging of Bart Allen

3. Onslaught. I enjoyed the Heroes Reborn books but the Onslaught crossover was the last time the Marvel Universe felt continous to me.

[Buzz Dixon]

1 - Give Kirby control of the Marvel characters he created
2 - Give Gerber the Duck
3 - Give both of 'em another half century of productive life

[Hybrid2]

One more day.

end of Civil War

Sentry.all of him.

[NickThompson]

I was originally going to come in and say I'd undo nothing, good stuff comes from even the worst things :)


However, I'd agree with the Bart Allen stuff. They aged him which changed the character, they start an unpopular run, they then kill him off, bring Wally back and never speak of it again. You could undo that and not lose anything, you'd just remove something that even they seem to acknowledge as a mistake.

[clfarmer]

1) All of the X-Men characters, stories, and spin-offs of the 1990s, especially Bishop, Cable, Gambit, Apocalypse, and Rob Liefeld. He is a mutant, right?

2) Killing Stephanie Brown to set up a "new status quo" for Batman that basically only lasted a few months until Infinite Crisis (and was ignored by most writers anyway), and adding insult to injury, altering the ending of the story to have her murdered by Leslie Thompkins rather than her death being indirectly Batman's fault. Then adding even greater insult to the insulted injury by having it all be a faked death to begin with. (A similar rant related to Cassandra Cain can be inserted here.)

3) One Year Later/Countdown to Final Crisis/Salvation Run/Death of the New Gods/Amazons Invade/Countdown: Arena/Lord Havok and the Extremists/Countdown to Adventure/The Search for Ray Palmer

[scout1279]

3- Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborn... no, please, God, no....
Do you mean Gwen and Norman? 'Cause Gwen and Harry would have made some sense.


Honestly, as much as I have read a lot of stuff that I hate, I can't really think of anything I care enough about to undo. "One More Day" was so offensively awful it may have forever changed my opinion of my all time favorite character. On the other hand, it has saved me a lot of money on not having to buy ASM three times a month. And the "Clone Saga" was awful as a whole, but there were parts of it that were really good. I still love Ben Reilly, and it gave us Spider-Girl and the whole MC2 line. There's a bright side to everything, really. Even "Sins Past" gave us Mary Jane Watson slapping Norman Osborn (proving that she is possibly the awesomest non-superhero in all of superhero comics), but it also marked the first time I ever saw Gwen Stacy as a person rather than just a plaster saint.

I guess, if I were to really undo anything, it would be the end of the "Dark Phoenix Saga." I'd let Claremont go with his original plan of keeping letting Jean live. I think her sacrificing herself is the much stronger ending, but in the end, her living would have been better for both her character and Cyclops. Plus, I read what Claremont's plans for Jean after the "Dark Phoenix Saga," and they sounded really good.

Jubilee and Chamber getting depowered on M-Day never should have happened either.

I don't know a whole lot about the Flashes, but the whole thing with Bart seemed pointless, so I'd probably agree on that too.

[Cayman]

The death of Hawkwoman

Aquaman turned into a squid and killed then replaced by some bland himbo.

The attempt to make Xorn someone other than Magneto.

[Kyuubi]

One more day

Amazons Attack

Those two issues of Teen Titans you did.
Just kidding(maybe)

[Eliseu Gouveia]

Do you mean Gwen and Norman? 'Cause Gwen and Harry would have made some sense.

.

Yeah, sorry about the typo, my mind boils when I remember that one.

[KevinTBrown]

What would they be?

It can be anything--a creator on a run you dislike, a creator LEAVING one you do, a story you feel ruined a character, whatever.
Crisis on Infinite Earths.

The last 4 years of Marvel.

Death of Ted Kord.

[Corrina]

3) Black Canary leaving the Birds of Prey just so she could go back to playing second fiddle to Green Arrow.

My other two:

1. In X-Men, retconning the Jean Gray who committed suicide to 'not really Jean, just an avatar of the universe..."

2. You know, I was going to say killing Spoiler & making it Leslie's fault but......and then I was going to say DC letting Ed Brubaker get away to Marvel but then I wouldn't have my Captain America run....so I'll go with the mess that is the Legion of Super-Heroes. I'm not sure how to fix it now, there are fans of a whole bunch of versions. But the original LSH, the ones right before the five-year gap. (Though I liked that version, too, which had the advantage of being the same characters and came with its own reset button.)

[Brack360]

1. Jason Todd coming back from the dead.

2. Ed Brubaker leaving DC and the Batman books, particularly Catwoman.

3. The character assassination of Cassandra Cain and the cancellation of Batgirl.

[JohnPopa]

1. Jesse Chambers having an affair with her mom's boyfriend.

2. Making Wolverine invulnerable/immortal/like Wile E. Coyote putting himself back together after getting hurt.

3.Making Psylocke a ninja/fetish model. She should've stayed, I don't know, BRITISH.

[Nick Soapdish]

1) One More Day.

After that it gets tricky. It's mostly a lot of little things that happened at the same time which had the cumulative effect of making me want to drop all comics.


The crossover messes and seeming over-editorial influence in the Bat-books.

Identity Crisis, especially the death of Tim's father and the tarnishing of the heroes.

The death of Blue Beetle.

I would've said Stephanie's death (and that would've been before OMD), but it's been mostly corrected. It's not a perfect solution, but it's something.

PAD's Supergirl getting canceled also ranks up there, but remembering PAD makes me remember Young Justice. So ...


2) Canceling Young Justice and replacing it with Teen Titans. To me, Geoff never got the voice right for Tim or Bart and those were two pretty important characters in my book. Also, I'm disappointed at the cancellation of a light-hearted title and replacing it with more standard fare.

3)Sean McKeever leaving Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. I haven't been that impressed with his work since then and I really miss his work on that title. I know that we're finally getting a new miniseries starting in August, but it's been too long IMO.

I was also tempted to mention the cancellation of Vext which only got 6 issues.

[Johnny_Luck]

1.The Scene with Supergirl and Kara in AA, in which lead to the horrible Horrible Drusilla gimmick secret ID Cassie has now/and or Kara and Cassie breaking up as friends just so Sean could have her off the book.

2. Indigo dying just because they wanted to for some reason bring Donna Troy back, when both Cassie and Diana where proving why they were so much better and she wasn't needed anymore.

There are plenty of others to consider

Megan's death in Gen13

Geoff leaving Teen Titans after having 2 bad issues in 44 he wrote and making superboy, bart and Cassie some of the top characters in the dc verse

Churchill leaving Supergirl, as well as the future leaving of Kelly from supergirl and the dreck her character turned into starting with issue 20

Heroes for Hire getting canceled after being great, just cause, its sales were fine and they had room to go outside of Hulk and civil war crossovers

Deathstroke's too many appearances in the last 3 years

JSA too many team members, and PG getting the chair spot, rather than having Ted, GL, and Flash being the trainers to all and give focus to people like stargirl whose been getting treated horrible since the book started

But for Number 3.

I will have go with Lightning Saga, brining back Wally when the team didn't need him in a crossover with not so great issues on either side. The only good thing to come out of that was the return of Dawnstar, who rocks, but she wasn't able to save it on her own.

[Red Jack]

"Days of Future Past" would be forever removed from continuity and all subsequent characters and plots that were/are even remotely connected to it would revert to their original forms or be expunged.

Jean Grey would stay dead.

Sue Dibny would never have been raped and murdered and all of the events relating to her rape and murder, even tangentially, would be removed.

[Pink Bat Maxine]

I will have go with Lightning Saga, brining back Wally when the team didn't need him in a crossover with not so great issues on either side. The only good thing to come out of that was the return of Dawnstar, who rocks, but she wasn't able to save it on her own.

I'd totally undo the scene where Vixen marvels at the architectural advances in Gorilla City, when all she's seeing on-panel is a staircase. A staircase.

[The Beast Of Yucca Flats]

The Infinite Crisis saga-- pretty much the whole kit 'n kaboodle-- with the major exception of Villains United & related material (exactly how, I don't know; but somehow).

Identity Crisis (or at least hand over the assignment to Ed Brubaker, if it has to exist in some form).

Linda Danvers's retirement. Yeah, I know we've still got PG now, but-- as the last 5 or so years have proven-- just one actually readable Super-babe just might not be enough.

[Shisho]

Letting Chris Claremont touch Nocturne. In fact, letting Chris Claremont do anything after his first Excalibur run.

[Chiroptera]

#1. COIE -- And everything that spawned from it, IC, FC, and all the other major events. This thing really gave a kick in the pants to the big "universe wide" comic events, and I wish it had never happened.

#2. Grant Morrison becoming a main stream comic book writer.

#3. Change it so that Gail was on from the beginning of the Wondy relaunch rather than having to follow the set up made by Heinberg and Piccoult.

[Chris Hansbrough]

Supergirl needs a headband....she looks fucking awesome with a headband

[RachelEvil]

1 - Give Kirby control of the Marvel characters he created
2 - Give Gerber the Duck
3 - Give both of 'em another half century of productive life

I was going to try to come up with something on my own, but your list is preemptively better.

[Johnny_Luck]

Supergirl needs a headband....she looks fucking awesome with a headband

Wow, Just wow, I honestly felt like a 12 year old looking cartoon supergirl wearing a furry and silly headband while having a 2 year old baby facial expression was one of the most ridculous drawings of supergirl I have seen in years.

I am glad that Garza didn't stick to supergirl or TT, as I was afraid with his style and wanting to put them in some really outdated(the headband) or silly looking clothes like his pre-titans drawings would affect both books poorly. I mean overall his titans where still better than his supergirl, but Barrows is awesome on the levels of Mckone and even more so Daniels and he is making that book just awesome.

[Tommy]

1. Jim Shooter's executive mandate on Jean Grey.

2. Avengers Disassembled

3. COIE, or rather making it so some titles reboot while some don't.

[Chris Hansbrough]

ok now outsde of my first which was an honest answer another honest answer....

Bruce Jones never happened.

Green Arrow and Black Canary fought till the end to keep the mindwies from happening rather than giving up after one punch from hawkman.

Jesus would battle vampires....because jesus should always fight fucking vampires....right Norton?

[Chris Hansbrough]

Wow, Just wow, I honestly felt like a 12 year old looking cartoon supergirl wearing a furry and silly headband while having a 2 year old baby facial expression was one of the most ridculous drawings of supergirl I have seen in years.

I am glad that Garza didn't stick to supergirl or TT, as I was afraid with his style and wanting to put them in some really outdated(the headband) or silly looking clothes like his pre-titans drawings would affect both books poorly. I mean overall his titans where still better than his supergirl, but Barrows is awesome on the levels of Mckone and even more so Daniels and he is making that book just awesome.

and my job here is done.

[Flâneur]

Oh gosh. So many:


The Byrne retcon of Jean/Phoenix.
Decimation.
Grant Morrison leaving the X books.
Chuck Austen doing a single thing after Northstar joined.
Joe Casey leaving the X books.
Loeb and Kirkman touching the Ultimate U/
Loeb touching anything.
Wolverine Origins.
Liefeld.
Claremont's involvement in anything but X-treme after his first runs on Uncanny and Excalibur.
Grant's hissy fit over the Authority.
DC backpedalling over the Authority, censoring Millar and throwing in Robbie Morrison rather than Ennis and Azarello.
End of Wildcats 3.0
Ellis not continuing Nextwave.
Hudlin's run on BP.


Of those, I'd pick Byrne's Jean/Phoenix retcon, Decimation and the CC brain farts as the three biggies.

[Chris Hansbrough]

Gail would write GA/BC. she could do it and do it well. I don't trust many writers with Ollie and right now there are only 3 people I know who could do it. Gail, Christos Gage, and Greg Rucka. and Joey Cavalieri should be the editor.....why? Because he had Gage add a scene where Ollie ate some fucking chili. and damnit....Ollie eats chili......always....you ignore the chili you ignore his character.

[ShaunN]

1) The Brand New Day thing. Destroying Peter's marriage to MJ took a character who was showing growth and maturity and turning him back into an adolescent. Moreover, for me, the best things JMS's run on AS were his moving characterizations - Peter's relationships with MJ and Aunt May, specifically. I don't know how JMS reacted to the editorial fiat to destroy the marriage, but I'm sure he could not have been happy.

2) Bringing back Jean Grey and retconning it so that Jean never died. Some good things have been done with the Phoenix since then, but Jean should have stayed dead. The Phoenix power could have come back (as it has since, in different guises) but Marvel destroyed one of its most powerful and moving stories by rendering it essentially meaningless. Alternatively, as someone noted earlier, Jim Shooter should have let Claremont keep his original ending.

3) I'll second the person who noted the transformation of Wolverine into some invincible, unkillable superman. When Wolverine first appeared, he was just a guy with an impressive healing factor and some decent fighting skills and an artificial, unbreakable skeleton. But he was vulnerable - indeed, I remember in the first Hellfire Club storyline, he is afraid of getting cut in half by machine gun fire. And Spiderman dealt with him with the back of his hand - which kind of makes sense. But somewhere along the way, making Logan "cool" also meant making him ridiculous. I mean, the notion that Logan could last ten seconds against the Hulk is just preposterous.

4) I'll just throw this in - I also dislike the way that Batman has been made into an almost supernaturally competent and effective character. Like Wolverine, he has been exaggerated to almost ludicrous degrees. Good example: the recent "Four Horseman" series, where Batman was possessed by Famine but had no difficulty in controlling the creature - even as Diana and Superman were almost controlled by their respective attackers. I would re-do the character, focusing more on his evident psychological problems and human limitations.

Just to throw in my two cents - I note that a number of people have put "Crisis on Infinite Earths" on their list. I certainly don't criticize this choice, but I want to speak up for COIE. In my view, it was the one mega-storyline of the past two decades that was actually handled very well and really did work. It certainly drew me into the DC universe in a way that nothing else had and it really did provide an opportunity to give old characters new and interesting beginnings. But I appreciate that people who were more invested than I in the pre-Crisis universe might not see it this way.

Sincerely,

Shaun

[mgs]

um there's two ways to go with this, I'll pick 3 that went bad:

1. The Spider Clone storyline from Marvel: retconning fandom from the beginning was awful, just awful.

Me: the story never leaves the idea phase.

2. The End of Crossgen Publishing: whoever and whatever caused so many muckups within the company to it's nasty end certainly caused more pain and heartbreak than an upbeat future.

Me: The company gets run right, people get paid, artists don't badmouth the company and actually draw their own art and everything works out. Another comic book company is still with us using a unique business model.

3. Diamond Distribution: whatever devil these people sold their souls to has apparently worked out. Practically a monopoly, for as long as I've been collecting comics, there is yet to be even one contender able to get in the game and the future looks the same. The rich only get richer...

Me: Free market decisions maintain a balance between comic book companies and their methods of distribution, from the Big 2 to all the little people. All get a chance to have their comics distributed equally with the abundance of choices.

[shrike]

1. Rape of Sue Dibny.

2. Marriage of Canary to Green Arrow.

3. Allowing writers such as Winnick, Meltzer and Heinberg the opportunity to write comic books when (imo) they obviously have no place to be doing them.

[section 8]

Marvel's Heroes Reborn

Spidermans Clone saga

X-men's Bi-curious Beast (not that there is anything wrong with that)

[d newton]

1. Lilith's Death.

2 & 3 - see 1.

[K-DoG7p7]

1.The Scene with Supergirl and Kara in AA, in which lead to the horrible Horrible Drusilla gimmick secret ID Cassie has now/and or Kara and Cassie breaking up as friends just so Sean could have her off the book.
Kara and Cassies friendship was a retcon you know.. Pre OYL Kara said she knew who Cassie was .. but they didn't hang out or talk onThemyscira... Suddenly OYL happened and they suddenly became BFF and had been around each other like since day one! (which by the way was before Kon died..)
Sean actually removed another piece of OYL nonesense..

Geoff leaving Teen Titans after having 2 bad issues in 44 he wrote and making superboy, bart and Cassie some of the top characters in the dc verse
Geoff said somwhere that he would still be writing Teen Titans if Superboy was still alive..

Deathstroke's too many appearances in the last 3 years
Also.. what happened to the Slade that would actually help out from time to time..
Now he is just another supervillian

[K-DoG7p7]

Gail would write GA/BC. she could do it and do it well. I don't trust many writers with Ollie and right now there are only 3 people I know who could do it. Gail, Christos Gage, and Greg Rucka. and Joey Cavalieri should be the editor.....why? Because he had Gage add a scene where Ollie ate some fucking chili. and damnit....Ollie eats chili......always....you ignore the chili you ignore his character.


The Chili Must rule over all!

http://www.blackvelvetrose.com/public/immy/chili.jpg

[juggling man]

#1: Me signing on to RIP.

#2: Me buying Kingdom Come

#3: Me buying Marvels

That money is flushed forever.

[d newton]

Kara and Cassie's friendship was a retcon you know.. Pre OYL Kara said she knew who Cassie was .. but they didn't hang out or talk onThemyscira... Suddenly OYL happened and they suddenly became BFF and had been around each other like since day one! (which by the way was before Kon died..) Sean actually removed another piece of OYL nonsense..

Oh? Then explain why we see them on Themyscira together wearing Amazon costumes in issue 9.

[K-DoG7p7]

Oh? Then explain why we see them on Themyscira together wearing Amazon costumes in issue 9.

because Issue 9 was post OYL.. have a look in issue 2 when Teen Titans Attack her.. ohh yes.. pre OYL issue

[Monkey Boy]

getting rid of Batgirl to make room for Batwoman.(the reason i stopped reading comics the first time)

the creation of Wolverine.

Wally's kids. (the reason i stopped reading comics....again)

[Corrina]

Sue Dibny would never have been raped and murdered and all of the events relating to her rape and murder, even tangentially, would be removed.

Yes.

Get rid of that and all that mess with the mindwipes, and Batman mind-wiped, and Tim's father's stupid death, etc.

[JKCarrier]

1. Crisis on Infinite Earths: Destroyed everything fun and unique about DC in a desperate attempt to emulate Marvel. Screwed up continuity so horribly that they're still trying to sort it out 20 years later.

2. Identity Crisis: "You know what would make the Satellite-Era JLA even better? If every single member was a complete scumbag. Genius!"

3. The revelation in Strangers in Paradise that sweet, shy, normal David Qin was secretly a super-ninja crimelord. I could actually feel brain cells dying as I read that one.

[DungeonmasterJim]

#1 - Rachel Summers's return to the Marvel Universe by Chris Claremont. A really cool kick ass character turned into a novice and then jetisoned into space where she hooks up with some dumb alien that assassinates Phoenixes or something and all that crap.

#2 - Jim Lee getting control of the X-Men after Claremont's boot. I've found the X-Men mostly uninventive since except for Morrison's run.

#3 - Big name writers on X-Men. Brubaker's and Whedon's runs have left me less than overwhelmed. Actually, they've left me rather bored and I don't even bother with Brubaker's Uncanny anymore.

DM Jim

[KevinTBrown]

Yes.

Get rid of that and all that mess with the mindwipes, and Batman mind-wiped, and Tim's father's stupid death, etc.
Doing away with CoIE effectively does away with all that's been bad with the DCU the past 20-ish years.

Only good stuff remains. :biggrin:

[OzBat!]

Killing Young Justice AND Titans to create one new title "Teen Titans", and totally screwing the pooch to boot by throwing out Impulse and renaming him Kid Flash. And then ageing Bart and then killing Bart. Seriously, it's been one lonnnng slide down ever since the "Graduation Day" debacle. Lets kill that and set the timeline right, shall we? Bring back Impulse!!

Removing Black Canary from Birds of Prey.

Me not getting a Green Lantern ring when they doubled the size of the corps. That's just WRONG right there!

[Infra-Man]

Big dittos on COIE. I liked the original Crisis, but it seems like it has created more problems than it solved.

Let me dwell on recent events...

1) The last few pages of The Flash #200 (aka, the point where things started to go down hill, imo)

I liked the ballsiness of changing things up so much, but it seems like the tie ins and story elements related to Identity Crisis and Infinite Crisis hampered a lot of things that could have been done with the drastic changes in Wally's life. You go from a wipe of his secret identity to the reversal of the rogues to his kids being okay to Wally going away during IC to Bart coming back aged and then dying and then the JLA/JSA teaming with the Legion of Supe-- okay, see, already this is retarded and sounds poorly planned.

2) Identity Crisis

I'll say this in defense of the story per se: If this was a book featuring original characters that represented well-known superheroes (a la Squadron Supreme, which is where Identity Crisis seemed to have lifted a few ideas), it would have been a pretty good story. The problem, though, is using established characters and mucking them about. Guilt by association, this also means nixing Infinite Crisis, the only good part of that series being the Villain United series and the special.

3) Infinite Crisis

A big, earth-shattering crossover that harkens the return of the multiverse.. Okay, cool. I really liked the first issue. Hmmm... these subsequent issues aren't as good. So everything wonky was caused by Superboy Prime punching things? There are five people doing the art for the book, and their art (while good) doesn't necessarily make for a cohesive feel? There's a battle on three fronts and the space people are only really there to shoot lasers at some hands? The Battle of Metropolis takes place mostly off panel and for only a few pages in the last issue? Hold on, a battle pitting all the major supervillains in the DCU against a gauntlet of proud heroes gets shoehorned into the first third of a comic?

Dude, screw that. But at least the Villains United series was fun, and the VU Special was better than 90% of Infinite Crisis. Oooh... and don't get me started on One Year Later.

[mcolford]

What would they be?

It can be anything--a creator on a run you dislike, a creator LEAVING one you do, a story you feel ruined a character, whatever.

But here's three:

1 - Bendis getting his hands on the Avengers

2 - Byrne's first tampering with Scarlet Witch's sanity/powers, and the subsequent trainwreck that was Avengers Disassembled (I know, I already took care of that with #1)

3 - The return of Jean Grey in X-Factor

[mcolford]

Removing Black Canary from Birds of Prey.



Oh yeah, tjhat's another good one... and while mine not be Removing Black Canary from Birds of Prey, I would say, Having her marry Green Arrow and letting Winick write her.

[TCJohnson]

1. Dan Didio getting his hands on the DCU. That would clean up a lot!

2. One more day the way it happened. I am digging Brand New Day, but take Mistopholies out of One More Day. Make it Loki.

3. Everything Chuck Austin did with Nightcrawler.

[bringthenoise]

I've not been reading for long, but here's my three:

1. One More Fucking Retarded Retcon... err, Day
2. Claremont writing Exiles.
3. Cable & Deadpool getting cancelled. I would have bought a Deadpool Team-Up book written by Fabian for the rest of time.

[Chiroptera]

#1: Me signing on to RIP.

#2: Me buying Kingdom Come

#3: Me buying Marvels

That money is flushed forever.

Juggly! You, sir, earn the Bat's gold star of hilarity. Your post synced up with my own thoughts so well that I was laughing out loud as I read it. :biggrin:

[Phil Hunn]

1) One More Day. 616 Spider-Man is dead to me because of this.
2) Jean Grey becoming Phoenix the first time. That way, we wouldn't have to suffer the cosmic parrot coming home to roost every five minutes.
3) The creation of Emma Frost. Had to say it.

[GrifterWC]

1. Dan Didio getting his hands on the DCU. That would clean up a lot!


Agreed.


Besides the above, my 3.

1. I'd erase everything that's happened in the DCU since "Graduation Day". (That gets rid of Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, Year One, Final Crisis, Amazons Attack, Trials of Shazam and every other garbage mini/maxi tied into this dreck).

2. Jason Todd would still be worm food.

3. Kept Black Canary single.

[escapegoat]

1. Take away the destruction of Alpha Flight by Bendis. What a way to alienate the Canadian fans, eh?

2. Not allowing Longshot to join the X-Men. He was totally out of place in there and never properly or fully utilized throughout his tenure there. It pretty much destroyed the interesting character that he was from his original mini-series.

3. Nightcrawler's origin, as told by Chuck Austin. Craptacular, cliched, and just plain stupid.

Bonus round:

1. One More Day

2. Jean Grey's return in X-Factor

3. The return of Jason Todd.

[Bob Violence]

1. I have to say 'One More Day'. If anyone knows a shittier way of retconning the Spider-Marriage, please speak up. Condition: No elves, leprechauns or magic flying unicorns.
2. Civl War, Or 'Let's take characters who have been friends for years and make them fight'. Because they'll do whatever the writer tells them to.
3. The crappy way Marvel handled the aftermath of Morrison X-run. If they didn't want Magneto decapitated, the shouldn't have let Morrison do it.

[Pink Bat Maxine]

Actually, I'd undo Canary's sonic scream.

I prefer her as an ass-kickin' Judo champion and all around martial artist than a metahuman.

2. Civl War, Or 'Let's take characters who have been friends for years and make them fight'. Because they'll do whatever the writer tells them to.

I'd undo Sue returning to Reed after Civil War. I can never, ever, respect her again.

[4PointOh]

1. As BnL stated, everything that took place after Greg Rucka's run on WONDER WOMAN and before Gail Simone's tenure began--especially AMAZONS ATTACK, INFINITE CRISIS and the handling of the after-effects of Diana's killing of Maxwell Lord.

2. IDENTITY CRISIS. I know most people love this series, but I saw it as a perpetual and brutal attack on the female psyche and physiology.

3. ONE YEAR LATER. So many titles that were doing just fine before OYL were forcefully interrupted and turned into unrecognizable crap.

[Pink Bat Maxine]

2. IDENTITY CRISIS. I know most people love this series, but I saw it as a perpetual and brutal attack on the female psyche and physiology.

"I'm a successful female professional, but I'm gonna go crazy 'cause I don't have my man!"

Yeah, I'd say that's a reasonable interpretation.

[LtMarvel]

1. Trails of Shazam! So unneeded change. It'll be undone soon enough, just like the deaths of Hal and Ollie...

2. Countdown Why turn Mary evil?

3. L.A.W. (It still hurts!)

[Pink Bat Maxine]

1. Trails of Shazam! So unneeded change. It'll be undone soon enough, just like the deaths of Hal and Ollie...

2. Countdown Why turn Mary evil?)

OH! Yes, I so agree with both of these!

[Johnny_Luck]

Kara and Cassies friendship was a retcon you know.. Pre OYL Kara said she knew who Cassie was .. but they didn't hang out or talk onThemyscira... Suddenly OYL happened and they suddenly became BFF and had been around each other like since day one! (which by the way was before Kon died..)
Sean actually removed another piece of OYL nonesense..


So even if it was a retcon it was definately not nonsense. If you ignore AA, every single page they were on together showed how much chemistry they had together, how awesome they could be as a team title, the dialog was brilliant and quite frankly when those two were together it was usually the best thing dc saw that week as far as characterization went.

[Yue]

1. Gert's death in Runaways. She was awesome, dammit!

2. The Grifter/Midnighter mini. Something that could've been awesome, but ended up being nothing but pages of anti-climatic, gay-baiting, cliched shit.

3. Damian Wayne.

[Shades0077]

I've mostly read Marvel stuff, so that's where my three are going to lie.

1. Getting rid of Generation X. It started off with killing Synch for that Counter X storyline when Ellis took over. Fix all that, keep Lobdell and Bachalo on it like the start.

2. Taking Winnick off of Exiles. Yeah, Bedard had some good stuff, but I find Claremont's writing to be absolutely atrocious. He tries to hard to make the characters sound hip and cool. And I think he has way too much of a hardon for Sage. Keep Winnink on the book. I never read his DC stuff, but it seems like it was a step down from the great work he was doing on Exiles.

3. Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men. So many completely out of left field ideas. Havok and Nurse Annie, Nightcrawler's son of a random demon retcon, death of Skin (ties back in with #1), the list goes on. I really was not a fan of the artwork at the time as well.

[stealthwise]

Identity Crisis
One More Day
Countdown

[MacQuarrie]

I'd undo "Flash of Two Worlds". That's it.

[MacQuarrie]

I'd also undo the low sales that forced "Leave it to Chance" to cease.

And the medical problems that forced Kurt Busiek to take time off from Astro City.

Now I'm done.

[Pink Bat Maxine]

I'd undo "Flash of Two Worlds". That's it.

Well. That's a pretty far-reaching 'undoing', as they go. Elegant, almost; destroying the multiverse concept in a single stroke.

[d newton]

Killing Young Justice AND Titans to create one new title "Teen Titans", and totally screwing the pooch to boot by throwing out Impulse and renaming him Kid Flash.
Which was a good move. I mean, Bart can't stay as Impulse forever, can he?

[s33r]

1. Everything that has happened to Young Justice since the series ended. Just... all of it. We can keep Kid Devil, though.

2. I am ashamed to admit that the Chuck Austen run on X-Men was the first comic I ever bought. And I still thought it sucked. I am incredibly lucky I decided to give comics another go after that... four years later.

3. Taking Batman - one of the greatest family men in comics, I'll take on anyone who wants to argue that point - and "going back to his roots" by getting rid of his awesome and unique supporting cast, starting with anyone in posession of a uterus. I'd like all the minor Bat characters back and used properly, instead of dead or in Limbo. So much potential wasted.

[Indigo Al]

5. Louise Simonson's New Mutants run
4. Nightcrawler/Draco nonsense (have not read it, never will)
3. Infinite Crisis
2. Gwen Stacy/Green Goblin ugliness
1. Jean Gray's 1985 resurrection

[Spiffy]

There are so damn many (especially in recent history), I doubt I could limit it to 3. I mean I'm all for creator driven comic books, so most of those missteps I can stomach, but its the editorial mandated ones I loathe.

In order:


1.) Evil Batgirl - And none of the attempts to fix this have really justified it happening in the first place. It was SO contrary to her character, and SO arbitrary, it was just ludicrous. The character, at her core, was about someone who had all the cards stacked against her--evil parents, evil dehumanizing upbringing, and the point was that it was neither nature nor nurture which defined her, but an inner sense of right and wrong that defied both of those. Her going insta-evil, at the behest of DC editorial, was a real slap in the face to people who read her regularly for around 5 years before that. Lame justifications after the fact almost made it worse.

2.) As has been said by many, in many ways, "One More Day" - I can buy the idea that the franchise needed a kick in the ass, but the way it was done was SO insulting to the intelligence of fans that it crossed too many lines. Comics don't have to be slaves to fans, but they DO have to respect their intelligence. And OMD didn't. Even if you preserved the controvertial marriage killing, there were a hundred, no a thousand, ways to do this better. The details, the whole insulting "because its magic" explanation, sucked @ss. Especially when a simple time travel explanation might have worked 1000 times better.

3.) A three way tie for 3rd: Evil Mary Marvel / Gwen & Norman Osborne: Lovebirds / Amazons Attack - None of these really require an explanation and all offended my sensibilities about equally. So any of them could really be ranked third, and I guess the others would fall into place as 4th and 5th.

[Tad Sivana]

1. Pissing off Alan Moore.
2. Imitating Image-style comics at Marvel and the DCU.
3. Dropping older artists for the latest faux Jim Lee models.
4. Bad digital coloring and inking so that everything is overworked and hashed.
5. Killing off and 're-imagining' classic characters

[Stanlos]

Hmmm.

Scrapping the original AMAZON'S ATTACK

Ending WONDER WOMAN Volume two

Having Geof Johns helm INFINITE CRISIS

[d newton]

1.) Evil Batgirl - And none of the attempts to fix this have really justified it happening in the first place. It was SO contrary to her character, and SO arbitrary, it was just ludicrous. The character, at her core, was about someone who had all the cards stacked against her--evil parents, evil dehumanizing upbringing, and the point was that it was neither nature nor nurture which defined her, but an inner sense of right and wrong that defied both of those. Her going insta-evil, at the behest of DC editorial, was a real slap in the face to people who read her regularly for around 5 years before that. Lame justifications after the fact almost made it worse.
Turning Batgirl evil was ludicrous? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. :rolleyes:

[BnL]

Turning Batgirl evil was ludicrous? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight. :rolleyes:

As usual, thank you for elevating the level of discussion.

[Nick Soapdish]

Which was a good move. I mean, Bart can't stay as Impulse forever, can he?

That's as crazy as keeping Tim Drake as Robin! Or keeping Dick Grayson as Nightwing.

I'm skipping over Dick Grayson's progression to Nightwing because it happened long before Tim Drake or Bart Allen or even Jason Todd were introduced. Also, it shows that characters can develop without stepping taking legacy names.

[Spiffy]

As usual, thank you for elevating the level of discussion.
With no argument to back it up either...

People who actually READ Batgirl's book instead of just picking up on the facts after the fact probably know what I'm talking about. If all someone knows of her are her current occasional appearances in Robin, Teen Titans, and the Outsiders, then this won't track, because she's STILL not back to the character that had six years of monthly issues. The core of the character in that six years was clearly an individual who, while she could be excessive and damaged, was more defined by the choice she made to run away from being an assassin. The key to her character was that she found it inherently repugnant, even though she had what, for someone bred and raised to do it, was no rational basis to do so.

Yes, her insta-evil was later "explained" as her being slipped some kind of insta-eviling drug, but it was LAME.

[shrike]

With no argument to back it up either...

People who actually READ Batgirl's book instead of just picking up on the facts after the fact probably know what I'm talking about. If all someone knows of her are her current occasional appearances in Robin, Teen Titans, and the Outsiders, then this won't track, because she's STILL not back to the character that had six years of monthly issues. The core of the character in that six years was clearly an individual who, while she could be excessive and damaged, was more defined by the choice she made to run away from being an assassin. The key to her character was that she found it inherently repugnant, even though she had what, for someone bred and raised to do it, was no rational basis to do so.

Yes, her insta-evil was later "explained" as her being slipped some kind of insta-eviling drug, but it was LAME.

...
though not by much, it's better than 'it's magic'.

[Briareos]

1. Gail leaving Deadpool
2. Turning Cassandra Batgirl into a villian (They already are undoing that)
3. Putting J.J. Kirby as the artist on Backlash

[Linkara]

3) Infinite Crisis

A big, earth-shattering crossover that harkens the return of the multiverse.. Okay, cool. I really liked the first issue. Hmmm... these subsequent issues aren't as good. So everything wonky was caused by Superboy Prime punching things? There are five people doing the art for the book, and their art (while good) doesn't necessarily make for a cohesive feel? There's a battle on three fronts and the space people are only really there to shoot lasers at some hands? The Battle of Metropolis takes place mostly off panel and for only a few pages in the last issue? Hold on, a battle pitting all the major supervillains in the DCU against a gauntlet of proud heroes gets shoehorned into the first third of a comic?

Dude, screw that. But at least the Villains United series was fun, and the VU Special was better than 90% of Infinite Crisis. Oooh... and don't get me started on One Year Later.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's be clear on something - NOTHING in the original Infinite Crisis stuff did we have Superboy-Prime punching the wall and making Donna Troy and Hawkman make no sense. In fact, they go out of their way in the special hardcover edition to point out that at no point was that EVER their idea. That was Judd Winick's thing (though I'm sure it was an editorial decision, especially since reading the aforementioned Infinite Crisis hardcover, it says the original plan was that this Jason Todd was the Jason Todd of Earth-2).

On that note, the three things I would change:

1. Reverting Cyborg back to his Cyborg-ness.
-Since "The Titans" was the series that got me into comics proper, I was glad to see that Cyborg got some happiness at last in Devin Grayson's final issue, leaving him with a body that could be human, but turn cyborg should he need to go on superheroing.

2. Civil War
-If I knew my heroes could be trusted to act as good guys, and considering the history of any governmental force deciding it knew what was better for people and subsequently forcing them to elect special status for a group of their citizens, I sure as hell wouldn't want them to be registered in the real world. Take that piece of logic and shove it, Millar.

3. One More Day
-Let me ask you something, Joe: which deserves to be scorned: the story that the writer penned, or the writer who penned the story? The truth is that you dislike the writer, because the story has no will over itself - it's simply written. The writer controls things. The writer is what makes something uninteresting or bland. So the problem with the marriage is not the story, but the writer who couldn't make a good story out of it.

[d newton]

As usual, thank you for elevating the level of discussion.

With no argument to back it up either...

People who actually READ Batgirl's book instead of just picking up on the facts after the fact probably know what I'm talking about. If all someone knows of her are her current occasional appearances in Robin, Teen Titans, and the Outsiders, then this won't track, because she's STILL not back to the character that had six years of monthly issues. The core of the character in that six years was clearly an individual who, while she could be excessive and damaged, was more defined by the choice she made to run away from being an assassin. The key to her character was that she found it inherently repugnant, even though she had what, for someone bred and raised to do it, was no rational basis to do so.

Yes, her insta-evil was later "explained" as her being slipped some kind of insta-eviling drug, but it was LAME.
You have read Destruction's Daughter? Yes? No?

[Alan Lynch]

One More Day, for all the reasons already given and more. Spider-Man was the character which first got me reading comics, and now I don't care what happens in those books. It's a real shame.

Honestly, I couldn't pick another 2 that annoyed me like that. There are plenty of shitty stories out there I could've done without reading, and a bunch of decisions I haven't agreed with - if I had my way Joe Casey would still be writing Uncanny X-Men now - but the whole manner Marvel went about that debacle eclipses all of it. The lack of respect shown for the property, fans and creators was unbelievable. And I sort of can't believe people are still buying Spider-Man comics after it.

[Agent Helix]

The speculator's boom, the emphasis on deconstruction, and Venom.

[Timberoo]

M Day
The aging and death of Bart Allen
Dazzler in Excalibur

[thehod]

1. René Goscinny dying.
Asterix just hasn't been the same since.

2. The Killing of Johnny Alpha
By a big flying birdy thing. Real lousy way to kill of a great character

3. The Dark Knight Strikes Again & The Kingdom mini-series
Both great ways to utterly misread the endings to your own stories.

[Alan Lynch]

1. René Goscinny dying.
Asterix just hasn't been the same since.
Asterix is still going? No way! I just assumed it stopped when Goscinny died.

[thehod]

Asterix is still going? No way! I just assumed it stopped when Goscinny died.

There have been 9 Asterix albums released since Goscinny's death, all written by the artist Albert Underzo, starting with Asterix and the Great Divide.

They're still good, but not a patch on the Goscinny / Underzo collaberation.

[Alan Lynch]

There have been 9 Asterix albums released since Goscinny's death, all written by the artist Albert Underzo, starting with Asterix and the Great Divide.

They're still good, but not a patch on the Goscinny / Underzo collaberation.
Huh. I'll need to check those out, even if they aren't quite as good.

[Major Comma]

I always thought it would have been interesting if Cap ran for president and WON!
Now I am thinking that might be in the future for Tony Stark.
We shall see.

[thehod]

Huh. I'll need to check those out, even if they aren't quite as good.

From wikipedia...

1980 – Asterix and the Great Divide (Le Grand fossé) A fictional Gaulish village
Asterix and Obelix visit a village divided in half by its rival chiefs. However, one chief's son and the other's daughter are in love, and together with Asterix and Obelix, they reunite the village. The dividing chasm itself resembles the Berlin Wall. There is also an obvious reference here to Romeo and Juliet.

1981 – Asterix and the Black Gold (L'Odyssée d'Astérix) The Middle East, Jerusalem.
Getafix has run out of rock oil and sends Asterix and Obelix to Mesopotamia in search of it. They are accompanied by a Gaulish-Roman druid called Dubbelosix, who is really a double agent seeking to foul their mission. Includes a tribute to Goscinny, who was Jewish.

1983 – Asterix and Son (Le Fils d'Astérix) no travels
A baby boy mysteriously turns up at Asterix's doorstep. No one in the village knows who he is, so Asterix is forced to be his adoptive father. Meanwhile, the Roman legions led by Brutus are after the baby, because in reality, he is Caesar's full-blooded son, Caesarion.

1987 – Asterix and the Magic Carpet (Astérix chez Rahazade) India
A fakir from far-away India travels to Asterix's village and asks Cacofonix to save his land from drought since his horrible voice can make it rain. Cacofonix, accompanied by Asterix and Obelix, must travel to India aboard a magic carpet to save the life of the princess Orinjade, who is to be sacrificed to stop the drought.

1991 – Asterix and the Secret Weapon (La Rose et le glaive) No travels
A feminist satire in which a female bard called Bravura replaces Cacofonix as school teacher and "liberates" the village women, causing the men to leave and live in the forest. Caesar secretly sends a battalion of female legionaries to conquer the village, having heard that the Gauls will not strike a woman. The men and woman have to settle their differences in order to overcome this threat.

1996 – Asterix and Obelix All at Sea (La Galère d'Obélix) Atlantis
Left alone in Getafix's hut, Obelix drinks a whole cauldron of magic potion. He first turns to stone, then into a small boy. Meanwhile, a group of men have escaped from Roman slavery on board a ship. Together, they travel to Atlantis to make Obelix a grown man again.

2001 – Asterix and the Actress (Astérix et Latraviata) no travels
A Roman actress pretends to be Panacea in order to steal back a fancy sword/scabbard and helmet belonging to Pompey which Asterix and Obelix got for their birthday before Caesar learns Pompey is in Armorica.

2003 – Asterix and the Class Act (Astérix et la rentrée gauloise) Most stories take place in the village, though one story is set in Lutetia (modern day Paris)
A collection of several short stories, including an experiment at different drawing and storytelling styles. Some stories are written by Goscinny.

2005 – Asterix and the Falling Sky (Le ciel lui tombe sur la tête) no travels
Two rival outer space alien ships appear above the Gaulish village. The aliens want to know the secret of the great weapon the Gauls have, which is "known throughout the universe". The aliens are styled on the happy-faced Walt Disney and Marvel Comics superheroes of the American comic book style on one side, and futuristic robot and insect-like Japanese manga style on the other. The album is explained by Uderzo as a tribute to Walt Disney, who inspired him to be an artist. Reception of the album was mixed, with many fans criticizing the sci-fi setting, and thinly veiled references to the Bush regime. Despite this criticism, the album was not disliked by everyone, and reportedly sold well.

[Major Comma]

i still owe two more
The "death" of Aunt May that later turned out to be a double.
The ressurection of Jean Grey .
It destroyed my favorite Marvel storyline .

[Alan Lynch]

From wikipedia...
Wow, shows what I know. I thought there hadn't been any new ones since I was born; I couldv'e read some of those growing up now I think about it.
i still owe two more
The "death" of Aunt May that later turned out to be a double.
The ressurection of Jean Grey .
It destroyed my favorite Marvel storyline .
That Aunt May thing was a total crock. I hate that they brought her back for no particular reason. ASM 400 is one of the finest Spider-Man stories ever told.

[scout1279]

That Aunt May thing was a total crock. I hate that they brought her back for no particular reason. ASM 400 is one of the finest Spider-Man stories ever told.

Yeah, people are always quick to bash the Clone Saga, and there's a lot to bash there, but there's some really great stuff in there too.

[Alan Lynch]

Yeah, people are always quick to bash the Clone Saga, and there's a lot to bash there, but there's some really great stuff in there too.
Absolutely; I'm another who really liked Ben Reilly as a character, and his brief run as Spider-Man was a nice effort at regaining the same fun tone which Brand New Day was apprently set up for. There's some heartbreaking stuff in there between the crap though, I agree totally.

[Red Jack]

Absolutely; I'm another who really liked Ben Reilly as a character, and his brief run as Spider-Man was a nice effort at regaining the same fun tone which Brand New Day was apprently set up for. There's some heartbreaking stuff in there between the crap though, I agree totally.

Loved the Scarlet Spider. Much more interesting take on the character.

[scout1279]

Not only did I like Ben Reilly, but I liked the Scarlet Spider costume. I liked the re-design of the Spider-Man costume he used too. I'm glad that they repurposed it for Spider-Girl.

[Sgt. Fuzzy]

1. Gail leaving BoP.

2. Identity Crisis.

3. ... Black Canary leaving the BoP. Yay for my limited comic repertoire! Makes decisions so much easier.

[cedardryad]

1. Ollie becoming a man skank
2. Dinah becoming a door mat
3. Batgirl III being ruined

[JKCarrier]

I'm skipping over Dick Grayson's progression to Nightwing because it happened long before Tim Drake or Bart Allen or even Jason Todd were introduced.

Jason was around. When Dick made the switch to Nightwing, he made a point of going to Gotham and handing off the Robin suit to Jason. It was a nice "passing of the torch" moment.

[Major Comma]

If I could change one thing in comics I would make all character deaths PERMANENT!

[K26dp]

What would they be?

It can be anything--a creator on a run you dislike, a creator LEAVING one you do, a story you feel ruined a character, whatever.

1. Hank Pym's domestic abuse of Janet. It was an ugly storyline, and has essentially and unfortunately been the defining event for both characters.

2. I'd wipe Dark Knight Returns from the face of the planet. Even though it was "Elseworlds", the impact of that story ruined Batman (and to some extent, Superman) in the DCU for a long, long time.

3. Avengers Disassembled, and its stepchildren House Of M and Civil War.

[Monty_Cristo]

1. Bendis being hired

2. Chuck Austen writing the Avengers

3. Irredeemable Ant-Man being canceled

[Spiffy]

1. Bendis being hired
Amen. People kiss his ass SO much, and most of it is totally undeserved.

In my opinion the last truly good thing he did was Alias. Since then? Not so much.

[Phil Hunn]

Absolutely; I'm another who really liked Ben Reilly as a character, and his brief run as Spider-Man was a nice effort at regaining the same fun tone which Brand New Day was apprently set up for. There's some heartbreaking stuff in there between the crap though, I agree totally.

Yeah, the Clone Saga had a lot to like, and Spider-Ben was one of them. He was a good character, and he didn't deserve to be thrown out the way he was.

In fact, my first non-reprint Spider-comic was one that starred Ben, and I liked him a lot (after my initial confusion had passed). It was a real shame to see him disposed of so quickly and carelessly.

[MacQuarrie]

Well. That's a pretty far-reaching 'undoing', as they go. Elegant, almost; destroying the multiverse concept in a single stroke.

Yup.

Panel one of Showcase #4 was perfect. The new Flash reading a comic book about the old Flash. Without a word being said, they clearly established "That was then, this is now, deal with it, fanboy." They could still have done "untold tales of the Golden Age heroes", without pandering to obsessive nitpickery.

[GrifterWC]

If I could change one thing in comics I would make all character deaths PERMANENT!

I'll second that.

[Reptisaurus!]

1 - Give Kirby control of the Marvel characters he created
2 - Give Gerber the Duck
3 - Give both of 'em another half century of productive life

Yeah, good one. Agreed on all three.

[d newton]

So my comment on page 6 of this thread got skipped?

[K-DoG7p7]

So my comment on page 6 of this thread got skipped?

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~burrows3/AttentionWhore2.jpg

[PatrickG]

I'll second that.

Hm. See, my approach for a long time is that I've just wanted a single comic to resurrect EVERYBODY (including people who died of old age).

I hate characters not being available and I always figured if nobody was dead and killing characters was banned for, like, 5 years or so then we could get back to fun stories.

[d newton]

From page 6 in response to my Evil Batgirl comment:
With no argument to back it up either...

People who actually READ Batgirl's book instead of just picking up on the facts after the fact probably know what I'm talking about. If all someone knows of her are her current occasional appearances in Robin, Teen Titans, and the Outsiders, then this won't track, because she's STILL not back to the character that had six years of monthly issues. The core of the character in that six years was clearly an individual who, while she could be excessive and damaged, was more defined by the choice she made to run away from being an assassin. The key to her character was that she found it inherently repugnant, even though she had what, for someone bred and raised to do it, was no rational basis to do so.

Yes, her insta-evil was later "explained" as her being slipped some kind of insta-eviling drug, but it was LAME.

[TROUBLEZ]

1. Undoing Spider-man's marriage to Mary Jane

The appeal, for me, of Spiderman was how he had this history, and he actually grew a little. I don't like how his marriage to Mary Jane was erased, just because the editor in chief wants Spider-man to be the same swinging bachelor now, as he was when Joe Quesada was a kid. And also, bringing back Harry Osborn from the dead, especially considering Harry had a great swan song.

2. Sue Dibny and Earth-Anal Rape

Ever since this storyline DC just got more mature in the pornographic sense and not the sophisticated sense. From what I read at another board Dr. Light is scoring extra strength Viagra for his date with Giganta. I'll check the comic shop tomorrow to see if it's true. Oh yeah, Big Barda got shot in the chest. DC must have a big fridge.

3. DC buying the rights to Captain Marvel

He's a cool superhero, but DC doesn't want another Superman archetype in their stable, so they don't really make any attempts to realize the characters potential. I wish an independent publisher would have bought the rights to him. Plus they put him out of business only to get the character themselves?

I wish this was atleast 5 things we could mention.

[RachelEvil]

Amen. People kiss his ass SO much, and most of it is totally undeserved.

In my opinion the last truly good thing he did was Alias. Since then? Not so much.

Jinx was great, and Powers has been great at times.

I think the problem with Bendis is that he keeps writing things that aren't crime fiction. Crime fiction seems to be what he's good at.

[Alan Lynch]

Jinx was great, and Powers has been great at times.

I think the problem with Bendis is that he keeps writing things that aren't crime fiction. Crime fiction seems to be what he's good at.
I don't think it's so much that he writes things which aren't crime fiction - because I've read some tremendous superhero comics from him - but it bugs me when he forgets that he's writing something like Daredevil and has everyone speak like they're in Jinx. It's all so forced.

[Cam63]

1. Stupid, meaningless deaths of characters and their subsequent revival
2. Batman being a dick 24/7
3. Mullets and '80s-'90s costumes

[Pink Bat Maxine]

1. Stupid, meaningless deaths of characters and their subsequent revival
2. Batman being a dick 24/7
3. Mullets and '80s-'90s costumes


This displeases Jericho.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cb/Jericho_Teen_Titians.jpg

[Eliseu Gouveia]

1. Bendis being hired



I disagree.

I give him props for Alias and retrieving Luke Cage back from oblivion.

I´d love to see him pen a Cloak and Dagger mini.

[Flying Saucers Over Oz]

1) The repeated attempts to rewrite POWER PACK so the parents know about the kids' powers. Oh, and the subsequent attempt to make them 'grown up' in the mainstream Marvel universe.

2) A second for everything between Rucka's run and Gail's run on WONDER WOMAN.

3) The 'Hey, let's fuck up ALL the characters at once!' events like CIVIL WAR and the mindwipe saga.

[Evan Waters]

I'll second that.

The problem is, you'd be putting good writers who find new uses for neglected characters at the mercy of bad ones who just kill off characters for shock value.

As for me:

1) Max Lord going evil and shooting Ted, with a workaround that still allows Jaime to become the new Blue Beetle.

2) The rape and murder of Sue Dibny. The ghost detectives thing is cool, but it's not worth it.

3) Reaching back- Hank Pym striking Janet. A halfhearted attempt at invoking the relevant topic of spousal abuse has become a permanent black mark against the character, and it's impossible to get writers to shut up about it.

[bringthenoise]

I´d love to see him pen a Cloak and Dagger mini.

He's said he's interested doing that. You never know...

[Reptisaurus!]

Jinx was great, and Powers has been great at times.

I think the problem with Bendis is that he keeps writing things that aren't crime fiction. Crime fiction seems to be what he's good at.

Honestly, my favorite Bendis books were the ones he drew himself - FORTUNE AND GLORY and JINX, especially. Bits of Daredevil and Powers were pretty spectacular, too.

But, yeah, all of those have a more down-to-earth, personal tone. He never worked for me as an Avengers writer.

[Alexx1]

1. Huntress sleeping with Nightwing to get in "the boys club". I can buy them sleeping together because they were lonely. The other, I call BS.

2. Insinuating Huntress actually had stronger feelings for Nightwing than she did and thus became nothing more than a cheap one night stand/Huntress sleeping with Josh. Neither made any sense within the context of Huntress's character and the Josh thing didn't make any sense within the flow of the events that led up to it. Both simply didn't fix anything for the character or correct past writer's mistakes. It just made Huntress look worse as a character and she's still not been able to fully recover from these character misrepresentations.

3. Black Canary leaving BoP. Why she can't be in the title when so many other characters, who are over exposed are in three and four titles regularly, makes little sense to me.

[herozer0]

1. The Infinite Crisis mini-series. It killed Superboy, ruined Bart Allen and gave us Superboy-Headpuncher. The pre-IC build-up was good. Secret Six and the death of Ted Kord was good. As was the stuff with Wonder Woman. But the mini-series itself was a mess.

2. Jeph Loeb taking over the Ultimates.

3. Countdown.

[Joshua Pantalleresco]

1) One More Day - IWhile there was a case to be made for Marvel to undo the marriage, I wouldn't have done it by undoing everything readers of Amazing Spiderman for the last five years have experienced. It also tells me that as a reader that my loyalty may be dropped at a moment's notice without any pay off to me. So why would I read any book by Marvel again?

2) Erik Larsen's run on Aquaman - Aquaman at one time was an amazing book. Peter David, Howard Eglund, Martin Shum and Jim Caliafiore did amazing work on the book and really developed Arthur as a character and expanded his universe. I have to hand it to Peter David; he made a character considered unwritable by a lot of people and made him and his universe very three dimensional. He gave Arthur history, depth of character and a humanity that hadn't existed in Aquaman before or since. It's a great run worth reading.

David left the book over editorial differences (He wanted to make Arthur a water avatar, which ironically happened in JLA years later)and Larsen replaced him shortly thereafter. With the exception of two issues, it was the worst run of the character I've ever read. Larsen turned an epic book with fascinating people and made it into a comedy of errors. It sucked. I don't think the character has ever recovered.

3) Supergirl - honestly, they should kill her off. She started out as very intriguing character, except for the fact that there has been no consistancy with her since Jeph Loeb. She has so many convolutions in so little time that I wonder if killing her and starting over wouldn't be a bad idea. The Peter David Supergirl was much more developed character.

Honorable Mention: Emerald Twilight - I suppose I can't bitch about this one as much as I would have in the past, (Thank you Geoff and Ethan) but I still think this was a rushed story that once again screwed over the fans. I actually agreed with editorial as to why Hal had to leave the series. Green Lantern at the time needed a change of pace, and I'm a big Kyle fan, so I guess if Emerald Twilight hadn't happened, I wouldn't have Kyle as a character.

That said, I hated the way Hal was written in issues 49 and 50. I actually think 48 was a decent issue, but I thought the whole direction felt a little far fetched; they took Hal out of character. And I think personally DC chickened out. If they were going to go through the wholesale changes, they should have had Hal Jordan die in battle saving the universe. Because that's what Hal would do.

I guess I'm glad it didn't happen that way considering how things are now, but I still think the story was a bad idea. Still, I love GL now and love that all of them are being used, so I guess I win now. So I guess I wouldn't change it. It still was a bad idea though.

[Typo Lad]

Only three?

1) Prevent IC. Maybe cause Metlzer to never come work for DC. Just so much wrong with that series.
2) Convince Judd Winnick he should stick with indie books.
3) Create a ban on editorially mandated story-points.

[Cam63]

3. Black Canary leaving BoP. Why she can't be in the title when so many other characters, who are over exposed are in three and four titles regularly, makes little sense to me.

Fix it, DC.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Brand New Day : The more Joe Quesada and Tom Brevoort do press conferances and discuss the series...the more you realize the 2 men have no clue whats going on. Their now throwing out a 1 year gap to try and give themselves an out from the ITS MAGIC excuse that made Quesada look like a fool.

All that did was throw everything off the rails that happened post Civil War in New Avengers and all. Then theres the retread to create villains that already existed and that new creators are doing. We already saw the new "Tombstone" as he's now called Mr. Nobody. And not the cool Doom Patrol villain either.

Then we saw Menace and he's basically Green Goblin 2k8 . Which is more depressing since these people are supposed to be doing a whole new exciting era of Spiderman and are instead throwing old , depressed villains out.

Now theres talk of Anti-Venom ...as Slott calls him. So at this stage what the fuck do you care about Brand New Day ? Its same ole shit , different package as they say. And sales are still tanking as all those fabled new readers have said FUCK YA.


Devin Grayson being kicked off Nightwing : Back a few years ago Grayson had a Nightwing in the mob storyline that likely would have ran another 10 issues. Instead DC pushed her to conclude it fast so they could either kill or revamp the series later. They went ahead and made Bruce Jones the writer and the series went straight to hell for awhile .

Grayson was doing some good work on the series and it was a shame to see her go. And its a shame OYL nearly killed Nightwing.

[Typo Lad]

Devin Grayson being kicked off Nightwing : Back a few years ago Grayson had a Nightwing in the mob storyline that likely would have ran another 10 issues. Instead DC pushed her to conclude it fast so they could either kill or revamp the series later. They went ahead and made Bruce Jones the writer and the series went straight to hell for awhile .

To be fair, until the mob story Grayson's Nightwing was a muddled mess. Poor art, odd storylines, and a lot of editorial interference. I agree that it's a shame the mob story never got finished, as it was a good, unique take, but let's not pretend the rest of her run was popular with everyone.

Have to agree with Bruce Jones being a horrid run though.

Grayson was doing some good work on the series and it was a shame to see her go.

Again, despite the mob story, many people were cheering her leaving. On this very board, as I recall. She just seems better because Jones was so utterly craptastic.

And its a shame OYL nearly killed Nightwing.

As a long term Nightwing fan I say "Yes. Same about the "nearly."

At that point it would have been a mercy killing.

[scout1279]

As a long term Nightwing fan I say "Yes. Same about the "nearly."

At that point it would have been a mercy killing.

Nightwing's good now though. I mean, I never read it before, and only picked it up because of the art (Morales draws an impressive NYC), but I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

[Your Imaginary Pal]

There would be
ONE LESS DAY
What was the end result of One More Day? A few new villains. They could have been introduced without sacrificing the marriage to save Aunt May.

HOUSE OF M
Wanda Maximoff Vision Williams Hammond Pym wouldn't have lost her mind.
so there would still be Mutants.
although it did lead to interesting stories and had actual in universe consequences.

RED HULK
haven't read any of it, but...I don't really see a reason to.

[Alan Lynch]

Nightwing's good now though. I mean, I never read it before, and only picked it up because of the art (Morales draws an impressive NYC), but I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
Yup, Nightwing looks to be going places lately. A lot of effort is going into building Dick a place in New York, which Jones never seemed concerned with. I'm enjoying the book a lot now for the first time in forever.

[Usernamessd]

1.World War Hulk (What was the point? honestly? apart from a crappily written 'Red Hulk' by Jeph Loeb which will be undone by #4 anyway)*

2. Planet Hulk - See 'World War Hulk' Marvel's heroes send hulk off in a rocket into space? reallly? oh and on top of that he land on an uninhabited planet!!! (Yawn)

3.Countdown - God what a mess it was practically editorial trying to Milk FC and use Morrison's ideas without his permission.

* Oh and i forgot 'Sakaar Son of Hulk' UGH.

[Typo Lad]

Nightwing's good now though. I mean, I never read it before, and only picked it up because of the art (Morales draws an impressive NYC), but I'm enjoying the hell out of it.
That's why I said "at that point". Now I'm glad, but if you'd asked me at the time if I was upset, I'd have been pleased. Especially if they'd let him go out like a hero.

[Tad Sivana]

"There would be
ONE LESS DAY"
LOL!

Other titles I'd like to see?

"Crisis Averted On Infinite Earths"

[Phil Hunn]

Now theres talk of Anti-Venom ...as Slott calls him. So at this stage what the fuck do you care about Brand New Day ? Its same ole shit , different package as they say. And sales are still tanking as all those fabled new readers have said FUCK YA.

Wait, sales are tanking? Do you have an official source for that (if so, I shall feel obliged to do the happy dance, and then point and laugh at Quesada)?

1.World War Hulk (What was the point? honestly? apart from a crappily written 'Red Hulk' by Jeph Loeb which will be undone by #4 anyway)*

The point was to have Iron Man yell out "OH THE HUMANITY!" as the Helicarrier went down in flames. Duh :wink:

[RachelEvil]

1.World War Hulk (What was the point? honestly? apart from a crappily written 'Red Hulk' by Jeph Loeb which will be undone by #4 anyway)*

The point was Hulk smash. Hulk smash puny Iron Man. Hulk smash puny X-Men. Hulk smash etc.etc.

If you only pay attention to the smashing, and nothing else, it wasn't half bad.

(The problem was that there was far too much not-smashing going on. Something about a "plot.")

[ninjapeps]

2. Planet Hulk - See 'World War Hulk' Marvel's heroes send hulk off in a rocket into space? reallly? oh and on top of that he land on an uninhabited planet!!! (Yawn)

Huh? Uninhabited? Maybe you read some other book because the one I read had gladiator fights, killer robots, evil emperors and monsters.

[d newton]

Some of these arguments are a little silly:
Evil Batgirl, Identity Crisis, Red Arrow + Hawkgirl, War Games, Amazons Attack, Current Supergirl.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Wait, sales are tanking? Do you have an official source for that (if so, I shall feel obliged to do the happy dance, and then point and laugh at Quesada)?


At last check the April figures had sales in the 70,000 range for each issue. This coming from a revamp , various varient covers and creator changes ect ect. The entire thing started at 120,000 ...and has trickled down fast.

At this rate the June sales could have ASM at 60,000.

[Spiffy]

Some of these arguments are a little silly:
Evil Batgirl, Identity Crisis, Red Arrow + Hawkgirl, War Games, Amazons Attack, Current Supergirl.
Yes, once more you've provided ample evidence to back up your blanket statement!

Congrats on your great debating skills!

[stamen]

1. Ollie cheating on Dinah with BL's niece... LAME
2. Ollie sleeping with another man's wife.... LAME
3. Jason Todd's return... LAME

[tangentman]

1. The de-aging of Illyana Rasputin at the end of the "Inferno" cross-over--Here's a brilliant idea! Build a cross-over around the (arguably) most popular character from The New Mutants[/b]. We'll bring her years-long story arc to a definite conclusion and let her help bring about Hell on Earth. Of course, you'll need a grand finale, so what's a writer to do? I know! Let's revert our heroine to the age she was the first time we ever saw her--six years old!! Powerful storytelling in the Mighty Marvel Tradition! Maybe that'll make it easier to send a beloved character to limbo (heh-heh) and allow a future hack to kill her off? Marvel Comics--FUCK YEAH!! :rolleyes:

2. Wonder Woman and Donna Troy's histories mangled by COIE--several members already covered the mess that came for Wonder Woman as a result of the Crisis. Key moments in DC history were clumsily rewritten as a result: no Golden Age Wonder Woman, lesser heroines retconned into the JSA in her place, no Wonder Woman as founding JLAer, Fury becomes the daughter of a reboot heroine, [i]aaand Donna Troy eventually gets the most confusing origin in comic book history.

3. Jim Shooter's heavy-handed micro-management of Northstar's homosexuality. Originally, John Byrne planned on outing Northstar in 1983 or '84. We saw plenty of clues dropped along the way--pretty boys hanging by the pool at Jean-Claude's house, a near absence of women in his life (other than sister Jeanne-Marie), veiled references to struggles with coming out. Unfortunately, homophobic Shooter wasn't down with the gays in HIS Marvel comics--unless, of course, they were shown trying to rape innocent transients and getting Hulk-smashed in the process. :rolleyes:

[Grazzt]

3. Jim Shooter's heavy-handed micro-management of Northstar's homosexuality. Originally, John Byrne planned on outing Northstar in 1983 or '84. We saw plenty of clues dropped along the way--pretty boys hanging by the pool at Jean-Claude's house, a near absence of women in his life (other than sister Jeanne-Marie), veiled references to struggles with coming out. Unfortunately, homophobic Shooter wasn't down with the gays in HIS Marvel comics--unless, of course, they were shown trying to rape innocent transients and getting Hulk-smashed in the process. :rolleyes:

And if you can somehow manage to out-homophobe Byrne, that's saying something.

[jesse_custer]

Not three specific events but rather two themes that relate to numerous reprehensible events:

1. Clones - From the Spiderman Clone Saga to the Thor clone in Civil War to Joseph in X-Men. A cheap, stupid way to make plots twist and turn.

2. Situations Over Storytelling - Most big events fall into this category, where the editors and writers and artists seem more interested in showing us a crazy situation rather than telling us a solid story.

[Chris Lang]

You want me to limit to just three?

Well, let's see...

I'd undo ...

1. Everything that happened in the X-Men/mutant books after 'Inferno'. Though I also think the original 'X-Factor' concept was a bad idea, I DO like the early Excalibur issues.

2. Every DC event called 'Crisis' after 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' (the only remotely good one).

3. Impulse's being (for all practical purposes) killed and replaced with the new Kid Flash, then aged several years, and then killed off. Made the character completely unrecognizable and unsalvagable (but at least they didn't make him wear a suit of armor with spikes as a form of self-punishment).

I was tempted to put in 'Everything that's happened in 616 Spider-Man in the past 10 years', but we have Spider-Girl and the MC-2 for that. (Keep buying that book, by the way! I want the current series to make it to 100 issues, too!) :smile:

[Chris Lang]

1. The de-aging of Illyana Rasputin at the end of the "Inferno" cross-over--Here's a brilliant idea! Build a cross-over around the (arguably) most popular character from [i]The New Mutants[/b]. We'll bring her years-long story arc to a definite conclusion and let her help bring about Hell on Earth. Of course, you'll need a grand finale, so what's a writer to do? I know! Let's revert our heroine to the age she was the first time we ever saw her--six years old!! Powerful storytelling in the Mighty Marvel Tradition! Maybe that'll make it easier to send a beloved character to limbo (heh-heh) and allow a future hack to kill her off? Marvel Comics--FUCK YEAH!! :rolleyes:


Don't get me started on that. I think you probably figured out (from certain other posts I've done) that I'm not thrilled with how Illyana's ambiguous fate ended up setting the younger version up to be helpless cannon fodder for (as you said) future hacks.

I think Louise Simonson said in an interview that she intended for there to be two Illyanas at the end of that story -- one the Illyana we'd been following and rooting for for the past few years (gone into self-exile), and the other the younger version found at the end. It'd be like the alternate X-Men found in Limbo (the older Storm, the darker 'Cat', and the 'servant of Belasco' Nightcrawler), sort of. Other writers, however, didn't see it that way.

I guess Louise should have put in an epilogue showing the 'still Magik' Illyana on her new quest to other worlds or something, just to make it clear, instead of leaving it open to interpretation.

As for the 'rebooted heroines', I agree with you there, too. But what's happened with Donna, and just about every character who's been made more complex than absolutely necessary, is the result of a whole bunch of writers and editors making things up as they go along, and making a lot of creative mistakes they would have avoided if they'd known what they were doing.

[Chris Lang]

3. Jim Shooter's heavy-handed micro-management of Northstar's homosexuality.

Ah, yes. It was also blatantly obvious that Mystique and Destiny were lovers, but never outright stated back then. And the true secret of Nightcrawler's parentage would have involved a certain being being able to change sexes at will, and that was vetoed. (And last I heard, yes, the 'Comic Book Urban Legends' said that it was true). Personally, I think that unused explanation made more sense than the various different revelations involving the Creed family and so on. (And don't even mention Chuck Austen's 'Azazel' thing -- that deserves to go the way of the Flash's 'Mopee' and the Simpsons' 'Principal Skinner/Tanzarian').

Getting back to the main subject. I already said that most post-Inferno X-Men is stuff I could do without. But I DID like some of what occured in Morrison's run prior to the whole 'Magneto/Xorn' thing. And Joss Whedon started off good ... but then 'House of M' made the 'mutant cure' storyline irrelevant. (I'd like to think X-Men 3: The Last Stand is where that storyline could have gone had not Quesada effectively halted it before it had a chance).

And don't get me started on how Yost and company just ran over all of Nunzio and Christina's toys with a lawn mower in the post M-Day 'New X-Men Academy X'. Now THAT's something I'd gladly undo!

[Spiffy]

Not three specific events but rather two themes that relate to numerous reprehensible events:

1. Clones - From the Spiderman Clone Saga to the Thor clone in Civil War to Joseph in X-Men. A cheap, stupid way to make plots twist and turn.

I won't get into the Spider-man clone saga here, except to say that even still, this many years later, I think its a bit unfairly maligned. And, I think, wouldn't have come out nearly as badly in the end if there hadn't apparently been a number of different factors pulling the storyline in different directions (editorial disagreements, multiple writers, too many Spidey mags going at once, etc.).

As for Clones in general? I think it depends. If they are used as a magic escape clause, as Marvel is wont to do, then they suck. But that doesn't mean a good clone story isn't POSSIBLE. I mean use X-23 as an example. Technically she's a clone, and I think she actually works. She kind of fills the eternal somewhat sick demand for More Wolverine, but in a way that's comparatively refreshing, at least compared to how HE'S overused (bearing in mind that in some ways, she's also sort of like DC's Cassandra Cain--the whole "waif-like teenaged female ex-assassin, raised in the craft, goes good" thing).

[d newton]

Yes, once more you've provided ample evidence to back up your blanket statement!

Congrats on your great debating skills!
Wow, you've mastered the art of posting useless comments - that's good. :rolleyes:

[SUPERECWFAN1]

And don't get me started on how Yost and company just ran over all of Nunzio and Christina's toys with a lawn mower in the post M-Day 'New X-Men Academy X'. Now THAT's something I'd gladly undo!

And it was the most interesting X-Men book in years. With a cast that you questioned..."who is safe?" . And villains coming out and really pushing the X-Men good. Shame on you Marvel for cancelling your best X-Book . For a sucky revamp called X-FORCE.

[Chris Lang]

I won't get into the Spider-man clone saga here, except to say that even still, this many years later, I think its a bit unfairly maligned. And, I think, wouldn't have come out nearly as badly in the end if there hadn't apparently been a number of different factors pulling the storyline in different directions (editorial disagreements, multiple writers, too many Spidey mags going at once, etc.)

Indeed. I think the Clone Saga was definately a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth. It was also a case of people thinking only in the short-term, and not really seeing how certain twists might affect the Spider-books and people's perceptions of them.

But some good things came out of it anyway, such as Spider-Girl. However, I quit the 616 Spider-books when they brought Aunt May back to life. That was MY 'One More Day' moment -- the moment that just wrecked my ability to suspend disbelief because editorial interference (in addition to bad writing) was just so painfully obvious.

And it was the most interesting X-Men book in years. With a cast that you questioned..."who is safe?" . And villains coming out and really pushing the X-Men good. Shame on you Marvel for cancelling your best X-Book . For a sucky revamp called X-FORCE.

Personally, I liked the title the way it was before M-Day, as a new generation of New Mutants being taught at something more closely resembling an actual school. But then M-Day came along, Nunzio and Christina were unceremoniously dismissed -- and to add insult to injury, over half the characters they created were killed off in undignified ways.

Even worse, the 'current attractions' describing the X-books at the time were written in the style of radio shock jocks, making sick and tasteless jokes about it, as if we're not SUPPOSED to care about Laurie being shot -- we're SUPPOSED to think she was a sucky character who's better off dead.

Really, all they had to do with most of the cast was just have them go off into Comic Book Limbo. There was no need to massacre everyone. But it was clear. The focus of the book was changing from a school to just another action book like 90 percent of the books on the market. And that meant everyone who wasn't considered cool enough by the new creative team didn't just have to go -- they had to die. Just so Nunzio and Christina -- or any OTHER writer who actually liked those characters -- could never use those characters again.

Basically, Nunzio and Christina left their toys in the sandbox. And then the neighborhood mean kids came along and broke those toys just to amuse themselves.

So, if the list of things in comics I'd like to undo wasn't just limited to three, M-Day never would have happened either (but I think it goes under my 'post-Inferno X-Men' anyway). Academy X, under Nunzio Defillipis and Christina Weir, was one of the few mutant books I really enjoyed in the past six years. Sigh.

[a. non]

the 3 i can think of would be bringing back Jean after the Dark Phoenix Saga, the return of Bucky (a Soviet assassin? really?), and Civil War.

There was a What If recently about Civil War, in which Cap and the Avengers were charged with teaching the new heroes, much like the Justice Society. They should have gone that route.

[tangentman]

And if you can somehow manage to out-homophobe Byrne, that's saying something.

Are you kidding? Byrne was the guy who introduced the world to one of the first gay superheroes. He also played a major role in setting up Maggie Sawyer's ground-breaking story in the Superman titles. Unless he's had a major change of heart since the 90's, I've never seen Byrne as a homophobe.

[tangentman]

Chris: I agree about the lack of professionalism--and competent story-crafting--shown by Yost & crew. There was no need to piss on Nunzio & Christina's work. They'd created interesting teens with believable problems in an adolescent mutant world. The shameless murders of their characters seemed gratuitous, and, frankly, mean-spirited. I boycott Yost's work for that reason.'

[d newton]

Personally, I liked the title the way it was before M-Day, as a new generation of New Mutants being taught at something more closely resembling an actual school. But then M-Day came along.

Even worse, the 'current attractions' describing the X-books at the time were written in the style of radio shock jocks, making sick and tasteless jokes about it, as if we're not SUPPOSED to care about Laurie being shot -- we're SUPPOSED to think she was a sucky character who's better off dead.

Really, all they had to do with most of the cast was just have them go off into Comic Book Limbo. There was no need to massacre everyone. But it was clear. The focus of the book was changing from a school to just another action book like 90 percent of the books on the market. And that meant everyone who wasn't considered cool enough by the new creative team didn't just have to go -- they had to die.

I agree about the lack of professionalism--and competent story-crafting.
I'm hoping the writers in question don't see this considering they post on these boards.

[tangentman]

I'm hoping the writers in question don't see this considering they post on these boards.

I'm hoping nobody goes into mass-media writing with a total lack of ability to face criticism. :wink:

I don't owe an apology for voicing what I feel is a legitimate criticism. Nor should Chris, whom I am well aware loves the character's he's mentioned in his posts.

[Chris Lang]

I'm hoping the writers in question don't see this considering they post on these boards.

I'm hoping nobody goes into mass-media writing with a total lack of ability to face criticism. :wink:

I don't owe an apology for voicing what I feel is a legitimate criticism. Nor should Chris, whom I am well aware loves the character's he's mentioned in his posts.

Thank you. There's an old saying that if you can't stand the heat, you should stay out of the kitchen. I think that applies here.

Anyway, I don't feel I owe an apology either. I stated my honest opinions. Whether or not Kyle and Yost meant to come across as mean-spirited kids breaking other kids' toys isn't my point. My point is that that's how it felt to me. And I said that I felt it didn't have to be done the way it was done.

The problem I had for the most part is that it seemed disrespectful to the work Nunzio and Christina had done on the book, and disrespectful to those who liked their work on the book. The tasteless 'shock jock' style comments in the 'current X-books' column didn't help matters any.

Anyway, threads like this one, in a sense, are about criticism. The whole point is for people like us to mention what we think were mistakes that harmed the books (or at least our enjoyment of the books). And I don't think we should hold back on legitimate criticism just because the people we criticize might see our words. And, for what it's worth, I think we expressed our honest opinions, and didn't just say 'it sucks' without explaining why it sucks.

I'd be surprised if comic writers came to this thread, anyway. It's probably the sort most would avoid (aside from Gail, who started it in the first place).

[Nunzio DeFilippis]

I'd be surprised if comic writers came to this thread, anyway. It's probably the sort most would avoid (aside from Gail, who started it in the first place).

Don't kid yourselves. Many comic writers (including, obviously, me) will stick their head in any thread that mentions their name. They won't always post, but if they frequent a board, it's safe to assume they read the posts that refer to them or their books.

That's not to say you can't criticize us. We are fair game. We write it, you read it... you're entitled to voice your opinion on a fan forum.

But try to be polite about it. Criticize people's work the way you would if you were talking to them. A good basic rule is, if you wouldn't say it to their face because it's too mean or impolite, it probably should be rephrased, even on the so-called internets.

Just my 2 cents.

[Phil Hunn]

Ah, yes. It was also blatantly obvious that Mystique and Destiny were lovers, but never outright stated back then.

Well, it was, technically stated outright, but since it was done in archaic language that got past the editors (Destiny was described as being Mystique's "leman", or lover), I guess you're right.

And it was the most interesting X-Men book in years. With a cast that you questioned..."who is safe?" . And villains coming out and really pushing the X-Men good. Shame on you Marvel for cancelling your best X-Book . For a sucky revamp called X-FORCE.

Oh, don't get me started on that childish excuse for an X-Book...

Are you kidding? Byrne was the guy who introduced the world to one of the first gay superheroes. He also played a major role in setting up Maggie Sawyer's ground-breaking story in the Superman titles. Unless he's had a major change of heart since the 90's, I've never seen Byrne as a homophobe.

Homophobic, no. A tactless curmudgeonly old git, yes (see his "all Latino women with blonde hair look like whores" comment regarding Jessica Alba as Sue Richards for a demonstration of how he should hold his tongue on certain matters...).

[MartinRedmond]

-Jean's first death
-Jean's second death and third deaths (both at the end of Morrison haha but no one criticises him for anything ever)
-Wolverine not being kicked out of the X-Men~

Ahaha I have no attachment to any other franchise at all!!!

[berk]

I'd like to undo the editorial interference and early cancellation of a a few innovative series that readers and management just didn't (and don't) seem to get:

Jack Kirby's Eternals and New Gods series.
Steve Gerber's and Mary Skrenes's Omega the Unknown.

Shoot, that's three already.

Naturally I'd also want to get rid of most of the stuff that's been done to those three concepts since they were taken out of the original creators' hands.

[RachelEvil]

That reminds me:

The cancellation of Void Indigo.

[prismablue]

The changes I chose would have come in the early to mid 90's.

1. Marvel buying captial distributers. After this comicshops became very hard to find in my area.

2. The Image guys taking sabbaticals or retiring. Unlike alot of people I think Image was a great thing for comics. Instead of starting studios and publishing alot of titles it would have been better if they just focused on drawing their books and getting them out on time. Hiring some good dialoguers wouldn't have hurt either.

3. The death of the marvel style of creating a comicbook. While I love alot of full script written comics I think comics could use some more input from artist storytellers and nopt have everything worked out so tightly. I wonder how many legendary storylines were inspired by a writer getting back pages to script and seeing something intresting in them they'd never thought of and decided to take the story in a new direction or expand a subplot into a full on storyline.

None of these are really comicbook events per se but I think they pretty much took the steam out of comics as I grew up on the leaving us with something completely different. For better and worse.

[Nick Soapdish]

I think I have a new one now - Chuck Dixon being kicked off Robin. While I'm taking a bit of a leap not even knowing who the new writer is (maybe Fabian based on the newest previews), he's been a great Robin writer for a long time and I've really missed Robin without him.

At least we got Steph back now.

[berk]

That reminds me:

The cancellation of Void Indigo.Yeah, I really wish Gerber'd been able to continue with that one.

[MartinRedmond]

Jack Kirby's Eternals and New Gods series.


Those should be left to reprints~ The Eternals stuff done after Kirby is all extra crappy. Especially the 2-3 awful revivals since 2000.

[J. Morgan (Bat) Neal]

The Chili Must rule over all!

http://www.blackvelvetrose.com/public/immy/chili.jpg

What about the guy who wrote the page you posted? Scott McCullar is MY choice to write GA.

[AlistairCrane]

*I'd undo Green Lantern: Rebirth so Hal Jordan would STAY DEAD.

*I'd bring back Jean Grey.

*2 words: Helena Bradley.

[Neal R]

Number 1: Age of Apocalypse. I wish they had CONTINUED that instead of wrapping it up back to status quo at the end of that summer. It might have been a perfect opportunity to bring in new readers--get everyone in on the ground floor of something awesome. There was enough there to please the old fans if you looked hard enough.

Number 2: Onslaught. The first time they did this. Marvel doesn't like to r