10 Comic Book Cover Gimmicks That Cheapened Great Characters

3. Superheroes Quitting

Just like being jerks, heroes quitting is an immediately compelling situation because it's fundamentally against character. So once again, savvy artists used this gimmick a lot in the 50s and 60s to make readers do a double take at their issue - "Superman has quite being Super? What the deuce!" they'd say, before throwing money at the cover. Generally it was the most hot-headed member of the group like Wolverine or the Human Torch, and of course, just like with Superman being a jerk, this kind of diminishes the heroism of superheroes since it implies it doesn't take much for them to quit. One would assume they'd be more legit. Too legit, even. Example:HawkeyeThe Avenger with the most instances of hitting and quitting is Clint Barton aka Hawkeye - he literally has other superhero identities like Goliath and Ronin just so he can quit as much as possible. Now, I like Hawkeye - he's a pretty fun character, but with that being said; nobody on the Avengers should care about Hawkeye leaving. The dude shoots arrows, and offers little else. In addition, why did he break his most-likely-very-expensive bow? That isn't a requisite to leaving a team: do cops disassemble their pistols when they leave the force? Do basketball players deflate all their balls once they retire? Dumb decisions like that is why they don't need him anyway.