DC Comics has been putting out the best superhero comics for a long time. A lot of work goes into making a superhero comic sing. The writer, artist, and editor work together to create a story that will compel readers, while inkers, colorists, and letterers give the images the polish they need to impress. These stories have to include great characters and they have to do something interesting with them. Every single one of these steps is fraught with peril, but it’s that last one that is honestly pretty easy to mess up. Sometimes, a book will have the great character, but it fails to do anything interesting with them, squandering all of the other work.
While DC has definitely done lots of stories that do interesting things with their characters, some of them fall short. They misuse their classic heroes and villains, leading to stories that are as much cautionary tales on how not to do a comic as anything else. These ten DC comics wasted great characters, taking icons down numerous notches.
Dick Grayson is one of DC’s greatest character and has reached the next level as Nightwing. He’s one of the most popular DC heroes and his series’ have mostly been good, if not often reaching the level of great. However, there’s one era of the character that everyone hates and it came in issues #50-74 of the otherwise excellent (and still running today) Nightwing (Vol. 4). In Batman (Vol. 3), Dick was shot by KGBeast and the brain trauma caused him to create a new personality, Ric Grayson. Ric didn’t want to be a hero, but was pulled back into it when a group of Bludhaven cops and firefighters became Nightwings, and it went on from there. Fans hated this plot line from the word go, and the book bled readers until it was over.
Barry Allen’s return didn’t work as well as DC wanted and we should have known that the moment The Flash: Rebirth finished. The six-issue series from Geoff Johns and Ethan Van Sciver was supposed to do for Barry what Green Lantern: Rebirth did for Hal, but it was never able to find its way. The book stars a who’s who of DC heavyweights and yet all of them take a backseat to a very boring Allen. He’s a tough character to get right – it’s hard to find the balance of the most white bread man ever with the hero he is in costume – and this book just didn’t find it. On top of that, it introduced the idea that Barry was the creator of the Speed Force, which just felt like a way to make him important that honestly wasn’t needed.
The New 52 has become a cautionary tale of how to ruin a successful reboot, and books like Supergirl (Vol. 6) are the reason why. The New 52 tried to push some characters in edgier directions and Supergirl was one of them. Instead of the fun teen girl hero who learned from watching her cousin, we got an altogether darker version of the heroine that never really felt like the Maid of Might. What makes Kara interesting is how she deals with all of the anger and pain; making her embrace all the negativity as some kind of dark Kryptonian ruins the whole point of the character. By the time she becomes a Red Lantern, you’ll have rolled your eyes so far you’ll actually be able to see the DC Multiverse in real life. There are ways to do a mature Supergirl, as proven by Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, but this isn’t one of them.
The New 52 did a disservice to numerous characters, but calling what Teen Titans (Vol. 4) did a disservice to the team is understating things. This book took Wonder Girl, Superboy, Red Robin, Kid Flash II, and several new heroes and proceeded to do the worst teen superhero stories you can imagine. This book killed the Teen Titans in a lot of ways, to the extent that even today DC can’t really get another book starring the team off the ground. It was partly trying to rehash better stories and partly trying to do new things with the team, with neither approach working and the book being mercy killed after two and a half years. Ruining the Teen Titans is honestly kind of impressive, in the worst way possible.
Hawkman has been a tough sell for a while now, but when he’s done right, it’s awesome. The character’s continuity was ravaged by Crisis on Infinite Earths and then again with Zero Hour in the mid ’90s. There have been exactly two popular Hawkman ongoing books in the 21st century and The Savage Hawkman wasn’t one of them. This New 52 re-imagining of the reincarnating warrior was fine at first, but then issue #9 saw Rob Liefeld take over as writer of the series. Anyone who has read his writing knows that his books are, at best, turn your brain off simplistic pablum, and that’s not at all the kind of writer that Hawkman needs. The book went down the tubes and was mercifully ended by issue #20.
Superboy was the character who was most abused by the New 52. Conner Kent had an amazing time in the ’00s, becoming a better character than ever and finally accepting his role in the world. Then the New 52 and Superboy (Vol. 6) came along. The book started by embracing the clone status of Conner, making him into a living weapon created by K.N.O.W.H.E.R.E, which wasn’t what fans of the character wanted at all. This floated as well as a lead balloon, taking a fun character and making him needlessly dark and edgy. This story was such a failure that they decided to try with an all-new alternate universe version of Superboy halfway through. This also went terribly. It took years for DC to rehab the Teen of Steel after this abortion.
All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder is one of the most legendary failures in comic history. This book by Frank Miller and Jim Lee was meant to be one of the flagships of the All-Star line, meant to compete with Marvel’s ’00s Ultimate books, but the writing was… something else. Miller basically a created a parody of Bruce Wayne, going overboard with his hard-boiled style. However, Lee draws the book with his usual excellence, making this one of the funniest books to read ever. It’s become a so bad it’s entertaining, wasting Batman, Robin, Superman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man, Joker, and Black Canary (it didn’t waste Hal Jordan; the yellow room is the best part of the book).
The New 52 strikes again with one of the worst Justice League events imaginable. There were three League books when this book was coming out – Justice League (Vol. 2), Justice League of America (Vol. 3), and Justice League Dark (Vol. 1) – and “Trinity War” brought them together for a battle against the Secret Society of Supervillains and the Crime Syndicate. This story was also meant to tell the secret of Pandora, the mysterious character who had been showing up since Flashpoint. The story was a failure in every way, wasting the best Leaguers in DC history.
“Darkseid War” was the the finale of Justice League (Vol. 2) from Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok (there’s also multiple one-shots, but you don’t have to read them), as the Anti-Monitor makes his way to the prime Earth and ends up battling against Darkseid, all because of the machinations of the mysterious Grail. The League has to fight both of them to save the planet, working with the New Gods of New Genesis as they try to stop the titans and unravel the mysteries of Grail’s plan. Darkseid is DC’s greatest villain and Anti-Monitor is a legend, but this story misuses both of them, as well as the New Gods. The Justice League is actually pretty okay in this story, so there’s that at least.
Flashpoint, by Geoff Johns and Andy Kubert, was the story that began the New 52, which should be enough to make it maligned forever. However, Johns’s five-issue story jumped all over the place too much, never giving any of the characters other than Barry, Thomas Wayne, and Cyborg any kind of attention and even then, it’s hard to say that it’s the good kind of attention. The world-building is fine, but it feels like a big cool world we never get to see. The worst part is the whole thing is Barry’s fault. The problem with this is that Allen is an experienced time traveler and he would know not to mess with the past like this. Read the story with that in mind and it makes zero sense that it exists as it does, other than a way to get the New 52 to happen.
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