10 Times DC Comics Lost Their Damn Minds

DC comics are weird. Now, that might seem like a fairly obvious comment about a world where every billionaire's favourite pastime is dressing up in spandex and punching the mentally ill. However, even by that standard, DC comics are weird.

DC have a long and proud history of publishing stories that sit firmly on the fictional side of science fiction. At their best, they can be tales packed full of wonder and imagination, set on an almost unimaginably huge scale. At their worst, they make absolutely no god damn sense at all.

These are the kind of stories that make Superman turning into a sentient Duracell seem perfectly reasonable. That was just a misguided attempt to revitalise a stale brand. No, these are stories so bizarre it's a struggle to comprehend how an actual fellow human being ever looked at the plot outline and thought it was OK.

Looking back at their history, there were times when DC just flat out didn't care about making sense. There were plots that don't adhere to any sort of logic, superhumans forced to work menial jobs and a lot of weird superhero kinkiness, so very much superhero kinkiness.

Strap yourselves in, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

A common complaint of some of DC's comics is the over the top levels of darkness they'll go to in an attempt to appear mature. The absolute pinnacle of that was Justice League: Cry For Justice and its sequel The Rise of Arsenal.

Roy Harper had been on a long hard road to get from Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy to his identity at the time of Red Arrow. However, that all came crashing down during the deeply unpleasant Cry For Justice after his daughter was killed by a bomb.

While Cry For Justice was a puerile attempt at proving "comics aren't just for kids", Rise of Arsenal was so dark it came across as a parody of itself. Roy went returned to his old codename Arsenal and fell back into heroin addiction.

After taking time out to let us all know that the stress of everything has made Roy impotent, we get the one of the most unintentionally hilarious comic panels ever made, Arsenal, high as a kite, beats up a group of drug dealers to protect a dead cat that he thinks is his daughter.

There are some comics that people use as an example that the medium is capable of telling deep and meaningful stories. This is not one of them.