Over their decades of existence, comic books have had so many ups and downs in their stories that saying it’s all been a roller coaster ride is just not enough. There are those times that it’s just been an incredible earth quake of garbage and sadness, destruction and disappointment. Every time a publisher promises the “epic to end all comic epics”, nine times out of ten it’s a miserable story brought unwillingly into this world like a child who knows the odds are against it. We get psyched for that story baby, and then it’s born and we realize it’s going to be a problem child.
Here are the top ten of those comic events..
10. Civil War
I have to say, this story just crushed my guts and forced Marvel and I to take a break because, quite frankly, I needed some space. They built this solid turd for a long, long time. We were guaranteed that nothing had ever come close to reaching the incredibleness that would be Civil War. And then it happened.
It began with a bang…and ended with a whimper. Captain America made the most glorious stand I’ve ever seen him make and then backed down in the end. Tony Stark became a dick, Spider-Man was a cry baby, and when it came time to throw them all into a mega-story, everybody lacked the things that made the individual characters cool and special. It was a jumbo sized, mish mash of anger and frustration. Not to mention Marvel made it impossible to fully understand and appreciate the story unless you bought every GD tie in they were pumping out.
At the end of the day, it was something near 90. I could do the math but that involves effort, and just thinking back on Civil War has taken all effort from my soul.
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31 Comments
Ultimatum might be one of the worst I’ve ever read. Ever.
I disagree with some of these civil war was amazing ,all hail megatron was not that bad but one more day was one the worst things ever it should have been number one
“Adults struggle desperately with fiction, demanding constantly that it conform to the rules of everyday life when the answer is obvious to the smallest child: because it’s not real.” – Grant Morrison
This was said by Grant himself, but now I know why.He was upset that his stories weren’t well received or praised, which I could tell that was the reason when I first read the quote.He’s angry that he got called out for being a bad writer and so he insults the adult fan base by saying it’s not real but I’m like Mr.Morrison we know it’s not real, they’re stories that we read and you happened to write a few bad ones, deal with it and get over it.
I don’t think Marvel are retconning their characters, it’s like a new beginning with the Avengers and the X-Men joining forces, a clean slate but with everything that’s happened in the history of the comics still having happened.
I agree with the writer on DC versus Marvel. I got sucked in early and knew right away this was going to be garbage from beginning to end… and it was.
Got to agree on Final Crisis. The thing was that it started off so AWESOME, with all the supermen punching holes in nothing and general weirdness and then it… just didn’t go anywhere after that. Grant Morrison has written much better comics.
What about Ultimatum and Sins Past? These are the worst stories I ever read.
Going back a ways, but anybody out there remember how bad Secret Wars 2 was?
Yeah, I agree with Morrison & DiDio ruining DC. I’ve quit buying DC books after ‘Flashpoint’, but at least I’m saving a lot of money every month.
However, the list is only about recent events. If I’d really care to remember, there were a lot of these in the 90′s – most of them pretty awful. Onslaught, Heroes Reborn, Eclipso, Underworld…
Actually, it was Barry going back in time and trying to save his mother from death hat caused the Flashpoint universe to exist.
Bless you for calling Grant Morrison out. Bless you. He coincidentally doesn’t know how to write women as anything but one-note tools for his plot, disregarding previous characterization for his vision. See Lois Lane in All-Star Superman and Talia al Ghul in Batman and Son and Batman Inc.
Hate to break it to you but Grant M. wrote/writes Batman Inc.
I’ll ignore some of the stuff on here. But the idea of Flashpoint on here is ridiculous. It is amazing and one of the greatest stories ever. You can go f*ck yourself.
Chill man. you are actually in the minority when it comes to Flashpoint. It was critically panned. (and terrible)
Fear Itself? Avengers Vs X-Men? Infinite Crisis? 52? The New 52?
While I agree with you on Infinite Crisis and 52, the “New 52″ is not really a comic book event, more of a restart for the numbering, and stories, of the different DC titles. Not really an epic cross-over event.
Finally, somebody else sticking the boot into Grant Morrison. The man pretty much gutted the X-Men as well, backing the franchise into a corner which led to the horrendous M-Day “solution” of mass mutant de-powering. And he tore out all of Emma Frost’s bad-girl-making-amends trappings in order to make her into a hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold (and turned Jean Grey into a cold and distant plot device) just so that she could be Cyclops’ bestest girlfriend ever.
I’m convinced that Batman and Superman are the only two heroes he has any idea of how to write properly.
He properly f*cked them up too.
As some one who is relatively new the the comics, please explain with detail why you dislike Morrison because the way he killed Damian set me over the edge.
“alien terrorists who all look like Thanos..”
The Skrulls do not resemble Thanos, Thanos resembles the Skrulls…
How exactly did Morrison “ruined” the DCU?, I mean, if you spent more time, um, I dunno, SHOWING ARGUMENTS instead of just bickering like a man child I could’ve seen your point and, perhaps, even though not agree with you, atleast be able to see things from a different perspective, and that’s what I usually expect from these type of list: If I come across someone arguing about something that I actually like and they’re trying to prove why they don’t like it, I look foward to reading those arguments because i’m always interested in seeing things from another person’s point of view, but here’s the thing, YOU DIDN’T GAVE ANY ARGUMENTS AT ALL. Instead, you made me waste my time reading through bad jokes and you saying over and over how something is bad without actually explaining it.
And this is not coming from a Morrison Fanboy, not at all, I am a fan of his, but there are times that I don’t like his work, being that a lot of times he makes things overly complicated when there’s no need to do it, but overall he’s still an amazing writer, and I could’ve understand if you said that your hatred towards those works of his came from them being too conveluted, because even though I liked them, I do understand why people say that when trying to explain why they don’t like them, but to flat out say that “they ruined the DCU” is simply idiodic, fact is, Infinite Crisis had more awful repercussions than Final Crisis, and Morrison was far away from ruining the Batman mythos, and again, I would’ve been fine with you putting those events up there if you actually knew how to explain exactly why they were bad, but you didn’t, so you just looked like a manchild bickering and moaning just because he didn’t liked something, and worst part is that sometimes some kids are actually able to tell you WHY THEY DON’T LIKE SOMETHING.
Honestly, I don’t even know how morons like you get their stuff published.
Well, just go through all the replies on here and you will see you’re in the minority as far as Morrison licking goes.
Not sure you read Flashpoint properly. Zoom was NOT behind it all. The Flash himself altered the time-stream attempting to save a life, (OK he was trying to save it from Zoom, but that mystery was resolved in Rebirth) in this Zoom was really a plot device to tell everyone what had happened (not saying that makes it any better, but..)
Wow, you should look at your Flashbooks again.
Zoom was not responsible for Flashpoint, Barry himself was.
Zoom was not involved in the Flash monthly untill the last arc.
I am also a huge Flash fan. I feel bringing back Barry Allen cheapened and negated any meaning of his sacrifice in Crisis on Infinite Earths. Also, i felt at the end of Flashpoint that despite being the ONLY person to realize the flashpoint world was wrong, he seemed to just settle for things the way they were. As if Home Simpson settled for the reality of rain being doughnuts, Barry didn’t say anything about how young Bruce was in the cave, or how both their “armors” have changed inexplicably? Okay.
mmm Final Crisis I do not think , Marvel vs dc, flashpoint, yes
Thank you for calling on Morrison being a hack who “writes” his comics while he’s higher than a NASA space probe.
I think that spider-man’s “clone saga” storyline has to be one of the most epic disaster of all time…
Feels like large parts of this article were just the writer voicing his distaste for morrison’s writing style. So what if he’s a weird man. He writes interesting comics. The New 52 wasn’t caused by him, it was a long time coming. The problem as Jeph Johns put it is that the numbers had hit well into the 900s on alot of people’s favourite series’ and there was so much complicated backlore for people to deal with. Now it’s fair enough if you feel a little saddened by the passing of that but comics have to be for people who want to be into them. It’s daunting for alot of new readers to get into. I totally disagree on the Batman RIP point as well. It was a poigniant storyline that went in depth and included characters that hadn’t been relevant in years in a way that MADE them relevant(see: Bat-Mite/Might). There’re some on here I totally agree with but the bottom half of this list feels very much at points like a resistance to the idea of the new 52 and anything Morrison has written. Fair enough if you don’t like the character but this fanboyish ‘dont-want-change-not-my-comics-now’ attitude is what stagnated the comic industry to the point of reboot on BOTH major labels. Change isn’t bad. It’s a fictional universe. Established canon or no. If it works why does it matter that it’s not the same.
Lol, it’s clear that none of you have heard of ‘The crossing’. An Iron Man retcon event that was so terrible, that it too was retconned within a couple of years of ending.
Flashpoint should probably be lower down this list. Civil War and Secret Invasion should be higher.
Civil War could definitely have spent more time explaining why each side felt so strongly about their respective stances. And as for Secret Invasion can anyone explain why they could detect the Skrulls to me please? I’m pretty sure they wrote themselves into a corner on that 1 if memory serves.
No marvel events lately have been solved by brain power, just brawn. Bigger enemy…fight harder.
Agree with everything you’ve said, especially the Morrison bits. I did enjoy his most recent ‘Happy’ and have previously enjoyed Doom Patrol and All – Star Superman but still believe his so called non-linear storytelling when it comes to DCU heroes in general is for easily overwhelmed teens. Jonathan Hickman is not a linear storyteller but with him you always know it all will actually make sense. Non-linear doesn’t mean you have to be incoherent as well. That’s classic, vintage Morrison for you – a highly talented hack who only has the eyes for the easy money now. Mark Miller, another hack, isn’t that subtle.
More rubbish:
AVX
AGE OF ULTRON (Started out well but now it’s your run of the mill time travelling story, watch out for Uncle Tony!)
DC:BLOODLINES