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Underground > Comic Books >

What's the worst comic you ever read?

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23:06 / 07.12.05

I'm sure Amazing Spider-Man Vol.2 #19 ranks very, very high. Just... awful.

23:51 / 07.12.05

So what happens in that then?

Cowboy Scientist

05:15 / 09.12.05

The Worst comic I've read is Marvel Mangaverse: Ghost Riders, Writen and Drawn -yes, DRAWN- by Chuck Austen.
It's so bad that its good.

09:48 / 09.12.05

Great, two contentless posts in a row.

Guys, please don't bother posting if you can't be bothered to expand. No one's going to seek out Amazing Spiderman Vol.2 #19, or Ghost Riders - the entertainment value of this thread depends on the their dreadfulness being described. As it is, both your posts serve no real purpose other than to inform the rest of us of your existence.

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

19:26 / 09.12.05

I tried to re-read X-Men Inferno in TPB form recently. I thought it was GREAT as a kid. I could barely get through it. Jean Grey's clone (who married Scott during the post Dark Phoenix time while Jean was still dead) gains demonic powers and turns NYC into an annex of hell, and some of the X-Men become demonic, like Wolvie with 3 foot long claws.

I think almost ANY of the huge summer crossovers marvel used to do fall into this category. Infinity Gauntlet, Xcutioner's Song, that Phalanx thing...

Cowboy Scientist

12:52 / 10.12.05

Okay, okay, I'll expand. Mangaverse: Ghost Riders is about Damion Hellstorm and Johnny Blaze (they´re brothers in this version) vs. their gigantic, big-boobed, demon sister. Also, there's a giant monster called Hulk (but not THE Hulk) destroying the city, and nobody seems to wonder why or even care. Well, the script for this is nonexistent, but what makes your eyes bleed and your brain self-destruct is the "art", if we can call it that. It's drawn by the writer, that says it all. It's drawn in a crappy faux anime stile, inked with a crayon, coloring done with MSpaint, and the backgrounds are done in horrible 3D. Luckily, Chuck drew about two panels in the whole comic and copied-and-pasted them to death. It's so awful that you gotta have it.
So there.

13:43 / 10.12.05

Sorry, I've been away. Amazing Spider-Man Vol.2 #19 features some very throw-away art by Erik Larsen, making Peter Parker look like a deformed and anoretic 10-year old, and Venom like an out of proportion lizard with a tongue that you could use for bungie jumping.
The story, courtesy by the not so brilliant Howard Mackie, responsible for bringing the Spider-Man franchise into the ground with the ill-fated relaunch, concerns a vapid return of the aformentioned symbiote, when Eddie Brock pays a visit to his wife. During the visit, Eddie spots Spider-Man swinging by the window of her appartment, minding his own business, and wearing the black costume. For no reason whatsoever, Eddie decides that if Spidey is passing by, he needs revenge. He jumps out of the window to confront him, some boring battle scene ensues, and when Eddie returns to her wife's appartement, he discovers that se threw herself out of the window, and helds Spidey responsible for the matter, because it's his fault that Eddie had to leave his wife to fight him. Oh, the humanity.

Spider-Man doesn't get any worse than this, and Mackie should never be allowed to write a single word in his life ever again.

15:03 / 10.12.05

I read a Beno annual from a couple of years ago (probably 2000 or 2001 actually) and was pained by how bad it was. I remember loving the Beano as a kid - yeah it wasn't the most anti-establishment book around, but there was a cetain subversive fun to be had by it. This read as though someone's aunt had handed the book to Mary Whitehouse and let her rewrite it before giving it as a present.

But I still think the Youngblood is the worst comic I have ever read. From the fact that it was totally unoriginal and lacking in any imagination to the art that was as though drawn by a four year old with ADD and a really bad desire to trace really badly. Oh, and it was always late. Always. It just made me hate comics in a way that I still feel sometimes. It made me feel like I'd wasted my life reading them, and wanting to create them.

Mister Six, whom all the girls

17:08 / 10.12.05

Sorry for the bit of thread-rot but I saw the posts about Darth Vader drinking and had to mention:

I was watching Star Wars A New Hope the other night (the strange Malaysian box calls it THE New Hope) and when it got the the Tie-Fighters hunting down the X-Wings bit in the trench my wife floored me. She was convinced every time they cut to Darth Vader that he was trying to unscrew the cap on his flask. Next time you watch you'll see what she means.

Anyhow... worst comic? I'll have to work on that one. I own a lot of bad ones, after all.

Yotsuba & Benjamin!

02:11 / 11.12.05

Don't know if it's the worst, but its awfulness is so fresh in my mind, Decimation: The Day After. Shitty art, craptacular writing, and the flimsiest conceptual reboot in the history of mutants. Yes, in the Siege Perilous Included history of mutants.

"To me, X-Men! Everyone but us has lost their powers!"

Honestly, the lower tier of Marvel these days is congealing into a distateful mess that I'd collectively consider The Worst Comics Ever Made. The new issue of Wolverine was just excerable, Pat Lee's issues of The Other crossover especially (A bad concept made worse by sheer artistic incompetence. How is this person a "Hot" "Artist"?)

I kind of think of Worst Comics in chunks. Scott McDaniel drawing Robin. Marat Michaels drawing Brigade. Frank Tieri writing.

Oh, and have I mentioned Ghost Rider #1? The new one by Ennis? OH that was awful.

00:19 / 08.08.07

I just tried to read some Bruce Jones' Legends of the Dark Knight comics. It hurt and I've learned my lesson good.

Opening narration about how Gotham is lovely and exciting because it's big and bad and traumatic blah blah... and nobody writes songs about it, nobody writes songs in it, because nobody writes songs about real suffering, about hopelessness and the inevitable and miserable death of the soul.

Uh huh. Now, not even going so far into the present as Manson, or various emo bands, goth, punk, et al... Tom fucking Waits? Maybe? Um, the blues? Not all the blues, no, not every blues song, but really...

It got worse from there.

07:38 / 08.08.07

So many to choose from . Ill have to go for .
Punisher kills the Marvel Universe.

Its bad .. its so so bad they've reprinted it in the back of the latest collected Punisher MAX .
It makes Archie vs Punisher look good. Hell its makes Marvel zombies look good

Rachel Evil McCall

15:51 / 08.08.07

I'm a little loathe to mention it, as it's really not so much a comic book as it is a crime against humanity, but Marville, written by Bill Jemas, was one big, huge pile of shit.

For those who didn't have the misfortune of reading it, it followed a young man sent back in time from the far, far future where everyone is named after corporations. He's sent back because the worl in this far future is dying. His name is Kal AOL-Turner. Get it? GET IT?! It tried so very hard to be funny, and failed at every turn. There were some ideas that could have been interesting, if written by someone with more writing skill than a two-year-old with a traumatic brain injury. Instead, it was writtin by Jemas.

Here's what Wikipedia says about this travesty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marville_%28comics%29

16:06 / 08.08.07

Yes, I picked up two issues of Marville at the "four-for-a-dollar" sale my local Shoppe sometimes has. I read issue one, and then threw the issues away.

I never throw comics away. But I did this time.

My personal contribution is a manga. DEARs (sic) is about an alien race that comes to Earth. They're all beautiful boys and girls, and they've been socially and genetically engineered to be slaves, and nothing but. And it's a romantic comedy! Except there's no romance, just disturbing misogyny, and no comedy, just disturbing misogyny. I'm not even sure what I was thinking when I bought it -- I should have realized it'd be a cut-rate Chobits from the get-go, and that's not a very high mark to aim for.

16:13 / 08.08.07

i have recently started throwing really bad/disposable comics in the recycle bin. Something I never did before, but I am looking at my 28 longboxes and saying 'do I really need to put this in a plastic bag and put it away' if it really sucks? *lol*

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

16:28 / 08.08.07

Gotta be Flash: The Fastest Man alive. All of them except the one with Kerschl art were dreadful, put I think I'd go for issue 1 as the worst. It's not so much that it was so badly written, or that it was written in a way that made no sense by people who clearly hadn't even bothered to read most of Bart's prior appearances. It's not so much that not only did I think I could have written it better, but looking at the art I even could have drawn it better. Oh no the thing that really, really made me despise it was that as well as a complete lack of any talent the book featured a maniacal, evil union rep as the first villain, and cast Bart as a heroic scab worker. That series just wasn't for me.

Shiny: Well Over Thirty

18:22 / 08.08.07

Oh and this is several years out of date - but Rom was brilliant. Not only for the reasons Boboss said lo those many years ago - but also because it was a 75 issues series, with a plot that genuinely moved forward, and a story with a beginning, a middle and an end, and all written by one writer, all years before Sandman made such a structure fashionable.

08:49 / 09.08.07

For me the worst comic has got to be 2000 A.D. in the early nineties, pre David Bishops time as Tharg.

What makes it so bad is that, of course, it was so good once upon a time. Writers who either didn't care enough or cared too much were writing Dredd into the ground. Pat Mills, Alan Grant, and John Wagner were off doing better work elsewhere and once great dependable strips like Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog were re-imagined along the lines of "let's ruin it!".

The art seemed to be primarily painted. When it worked it was wonderful. When it didn't it was...brown. The scripts were unforgettable for all the wrong reasons (though I liked Dead Meat) and...well...it was just shit. Really. Looking at the back issues I paid 30p a pop for I think I overpaid. If Im lucky there's one strip a prog that's worth reading.

Fortunatley things turned around and 2k is going through a second golden age. Long may it last but dear god in heaven when it stank it stank to the heights.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:57 / 09.08.07

I actually read, in the shop, Wolverine #55, so believe me when I say it is every bit as bad as Paul O'Brien describes.

Loeb's collection of people with wolf-like powers descended from wolves includes Feral (cat), Thornn (cat) and Sasquatch (magical creature). Hey, they've got fur, right? That's close enough. That's good enough for Jeph Loeb and Axel Alonso, and it'll damn well be good enough for you, oh paying customer. Dog, cat, sasquatch, whatever. They're close enough if you screw up your eyes and squint real hard.

...This - and I can hardly believe I'm writing such a thing - isn't even in Chuck Austen's league. He wrote some godawful stories during his time on the X-Men, stories where the central premise was irredeemable and the plot was riddled with holes. But at least they had the basic shape of a story. "Evolution" doesn't even have that. "The Draco" was better than this.

Jeph Loeb ought never to work as anything other than the man who cleans the elephant house after the elephant has been particularly upset, ever again.

Janean Patience

10:36 / 09.08.07

For me the worst comic has got to be 2000 A.D. in the early nineties, pre David Bishops time as Tharg.

I went through, a few years ago, 2000AD from Prog 600 to Prog 1050, approximately, because I needed to get rid of most of them to save on space. I wanted to pull out the issues with decent stories in and by God they were few and far between. I'd guess I kept maybe 50 issues out of 450. The rest went to a charity shop, where I indulgently thought they'd be discovered by a young child and arouse a lifelong love of comics. It's only now I've realised that my efforts were exactly counterproductive: that anyone who discovers that pile of shit will never ever read another comic as long as they live.

Haus of Mystery

11:02 / 09.08.07

I jacked in the galaxy's greatest about then I seem to recall. All the sub-Bisley painted muck lacked even the basics of sequential storytelling, thus rendering what were already sub-par stories totally unreadable. Dark times. It's a miracle it survived.

11:29 / 09.08.07

Just recently I got my hands on the Superman story co-written by John Cleese "True Brit". I'd read about it ages ago and was vaguely looking forward to it, imagining a UK-slanted Red Son with decent jokes. Turns out it's utter, utter, utter shit from start to finish. None of it's funny in the slightest, it's a black hole of amusement which actually sucks laughter from nearby sources with it's bludgeoning repetition of jokes that weren't even approaching funny to start with (Superman's civvy name here is Colin Clark, that's about the level of funny we're talking here). And with that gone there's nothing else left, there's no attempt to write a decent story that's also funny so the laughable narrative ends up as simply a structure to hang the woeful attempts at humour on. The kind of structure that would fall over in a fucking stiff breeze. To top it all off they seem to forget at one point what super hero they're taking the piss out of as Colin's editor at the paper he works for quickly turns into a carbon copy of J. Jonah Jamieson. It basically screams of someone who's written a script on the assumption that it's a comic and comic fans are stupid so why bother putting any effort in? Ideally it should have been canned as soon as the script saw daylight.

11:47 / 09.08.07

i'd just like to agree that true brit is very very poor from start to finish.

but who the hell said that beano wasn't the most anti-establishment comic ever back there? leon baxendale almost single handedly brought down western civilisation by the power of the bash street kids and peril the peril.

Glenn Close But No Cigar

12:17 / 09.08.07

2000AD really, really, really blew during that period. Chronos Carnival. Dry Run. Medivac 318. Junker. Fucking Junker, the entirely humorless adventures of an intergalactic bin man, written by Michael Fleisher, author of such other thrill-suckers as the new Harlem Heroes and post-Gibbons 'Friday' Rogue Trooper. Ugh.

Professor Silly

18:14 / 09.08.07

My vote, and I didn't see it mentioned yet, for worst comic ever was the entire run of U.S. War Machine. ick ick ick. Chuck Austin managed to make both the art and story utter crap.

On a sidenote, and I'm not really sticking up for it here, Wild Dog was set in my hometown of Davenport, Iowa. Most of the buildings were 100% accurate, and as a kid I thought it was really exciting to have a superhero in my neck of the woods. I still have copies, just for memory's sake, though the storyline does seem pretty trite in retrospect. As these were the first comics I had ever bought, I remember seeing advertisements for "Who Watches the Watchmen?" on the back, and wondering--now Watchmen is easily my favorite of all time...coincidence? synchronicity?

But yeah, U.S. War Machine: yuck yuck yucky

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:33 / 09.08.07

Of all the above, Marville clocks in as the worst-written book I've ever read, but I can't qualify it as worst ever, as the art was grimly workmanlike and neither appealed nor repelled.

But:

Wild Dog triggered a memory of the single most disappointing comic I ever read, if not the worst, and this will tap the very borders of ultimate obscurity:

Evan Dorkin's Mad Dog.

I was a huge Evan Dorkin fan. I had a Milk and Cheese Zippo lighter, could quote every issue of M&C and Dork! from memory, gave people copies of Fight Man, and lurved me some Dorkin.

Then Marvel put out a comic book based on -- no kidding -- a cartoon character that Bob Newhart drew in a failed post-Bob Newhart, post-Newhart sitcom.

It was a flip book. Half of it was an inoffensive Ty Templeton comedy book, which was... well, inoffensive. Not funny, but not awful.

The other half was Evan Dorkin writing a "gritty" superhero comic in the Miller tradition. Not a pastiche, not a satire or parody. Straight-up gritted-teeth big-gun superheroics. I can't even remember who was on art, but it was sub-Image drivel.

Edit: and I found the cover art for a few issues somewhere --

The whole experience shattered my faith in Dorkin (the anti-establishment iconoclast writing complete shit and selling out at the same time and, well, the world in general.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:02 / 10.08.07

Bamba, I think the reason for 'True Brit's shitness was that I doubt Cleese was genuinely involved but it was written by Ultra-Monty Python fan Kim 'Howard' Johnson, who is the sort of person who knows all the forms used in the 'Gas Cooker sketch' and other trivial minutae that crowds life experiences out of the human mind. I believe he's American, because the first half of it I read before throwing it away in disgust reads very much like the 70s American view of the British through the prism of Monty Python episodes.

11:02 / 10.08.07

Bamba, I think the reason for 'True Brit's shitness was that I doubt Cleese was genuinely involved but it was written by Ultra-Monty Python fan Kim 'Howard' Johnson, who is the sort of person who knows all the forms used in the 'Gas Cooker sketch' and other trivial minutae that crowds life experiences out of the human mind. I believe he's American, because the first half of it I read before throwing it away in disgust reads very much like the 70s American view of the British through the prism of Monty Python episodes.

If that's true then it's even fucking worse! You're writing a story about what Superman would be like if he grew up in Britain and you get someone who's not fucking British in to write it?! The entire project should've been smothered with a fucking pillow before it even made it near an actual printer. And if Cleese really wasn't involved but let them sell such sub-standard fucking twaddle using his name then fuck him as well.

16:51 / 10.08.07

Horrible confession time - I genuinely believe that pre Bishop 2k is the worst comic of all time. I genuinely believe that Junker is one of the worst offenders of that time but...

I own Junker art. It's the ever dependable John Ridgeway on art duties and he's tipping the hat to Frank Hampson. Stripped of Fleischer, of speech, in isolation from the script it's a lovely piece of work. Quite lovely.

But the script? Oh dear.

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