Top Five Worst Comic Book Events of All Time
Summer is upon us and for any self respecting comic book reader that means one thing: crossovers! Almost every year Marvel and DC bring out the big guns and unleash their line wide events which promise “lasting change” and “nothing will ever be the same again.”
Yeah, right.
Now, sometimes they do manage to get it right and the readers get a great story, outstanding art and a truly changed universe. The bar I measure any comic book event to is Crisis On Infinite Earths
This summer DC Comics has Flashpoint and Marvel has Fear Itself both vying for your attention and dollars. It’s too early to tell if either of these will be worth reading, but I thought this would be the perfect time to look back and revisit five of the all time worst comic book events ever.
5. Anything from Rob Liefeld’s Extreme Studios
Extreme Prejudice. Supreme Madness. Extreme Destroyer. And last but certainly not least, Babewatch. The names alone are cringe worthy and the stories were just as bad as they sound. At least once a year Liefeld would announce a new crossover for all the books under his Extreme Studios imprint, at the time was published by Image, and without fail, they would somehow be released out of order. Either a book would ship late, or not at all and the reader was left to figure out what was going on as they went along. Not that there was much of a plot to begin with…
4. Secret Wars II
After the huge success of the original Secret Wars (which, to be honest, was pretty good) Jim Shooter decided on an ambition plan for the sequel. The 9 issue miniseries would cross over with each and every book Marvel was publishing at the time. And to boot, Shooter’s tale of The Beyonder come to earth would deal with the meaning of life and what it means to be human. Unfortunately, neither idea worked out that well. The crossovers ran the gamut from good to terrible and the main series is pretty much the definition of epic fail.
3. Infinite Crisis
This was supposed to be the grand sequel to the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. And it started out well enough with the Countdown one shot and the four miniseries that spun out of it. But that was as good as it got. The miniseries itself served more as a bookend to events happening in other titles, the deaths of Superboy and the original Superman lacked any sense of real drama and, worst of all, Phil Jimenez couldn’t meet the deadlines so a small army of pencillers and inkers had to help finish the series, giving the art a real lack of cohesion and disjointed look. A sad excuse for an event comic and an embarrassment as a sequel to the original classic.
2. Siege
This was supposed to be the culmination of everything that had happened in the Marvel Universe since Avengers Disassembled. A story “years in the making” the ads said. Instead what we read was an incredibly bad Sentry tale wrapped inside dreadful characterization and storytelling. Norman Osborn decides to invade Asgard, a city full of people with powers like Thor. Uh-huh.
But that wasn’t the worst part; Marvel used the series to hit the reset button on the entire Marvel Universe. No more super hero registration, no more dead Captain America, everything back to like it was before Disassembled. Was it coincidence this all happened just as Disney bought Marvel lock, stock and barrel? A colossal slap in the face to Marvel’s fans.
1. Acts of Vengeance
In 1989, John Byrne was the principle writer of the Avengers family of books. In an effort to compete with Chris Claremont and the X-Men books, Byrne created the Acts of Vengeance. The villains would go after heroes they had not fought before to create confusion or… something. That was part of the problem; I was never really sure what this event was about.
The main story ran through the Avengers titles and a handful of the solo characters books while the rest of the Marvel universe got in the action too with various side stories. I don’t think I could tell you the plot of the main storyline if I tried. It just made no sense. I think it involved Loki and a Sentinel with three heads and something else. I’m just not sure. It was shortly after this fiasco that Byrne’s star began to fall and the result was he never achieved the same level of success and popularity that he had before this. A terrible comic book event on every conceivable level.
What’s the lesson here kids? Just because you can do an event, that doesn’t mean you always should.
I liked Acts of Vengeance. It was a cool little idea, and the premise wasn’t that complicated. Like you said, the villains of Marvel Universe decided to try the old “switch opponents” tactic and fight different heroes, who wouldn’t be familiar with them. Loki turned out to be behind it all. In a neat added twist, Loki disguised himself as a humble facilitator who let each of the villains believe that they were in charge, when in fact Loki was behind the whole thing. It was delightful to watch the likes of Magneto, the Red Skull, and the Kingpin thump their chests and vie for dominance while Loki smirked in the shadows.
Also, Acts of Vengeance made a cameo in every Marvel title, but did not affect your ability to read that title, nor did it require that you buy that title to follow Acts of Vengeance. For example, my first encounter with Acts of Vengeance was in Quasar, where Loki enchanted the Absorbing Man’s ball and chain so he could use them to fly like Thor, then suggested the Absorbing Man fight someone new before going up against the Hulk. None of this interrupted the flow of Quasar, nor did you have to buy Quasar to follow another title.
By contrast, the Infinity Gauntlet a few years later made it impossible to follow the story of Quasar by just reading Quasar. Now there’s an event that truly deserves to be on this list.
To be honest, Infinity Gauntlet/War/Crusade was on my initial list. The problem was that as I narrowed it down, there were a lot of Marvel events on the list. I mean, a lot. Seriously. So I had to try to balance it out as best I could. IMO, Acts of Vengence just had no direction, no purpose. At least Infinity Gauntlet had a plot. Infinity War was way worse than Gauntlet anyway.
I would’ve easily bumped Acts of Vengeance for Millennium. Just awful, and the worst offense an event can pull, is to be B-O-R-I-N-G. The problem with AoV was they tried to go the non-numbering route, and it became a hot mess. The first couple of years of Marvel’s Annual Events were cool; most notable was The Evolutionary War.
Also, Civil War and Secret Invasion was some of the most nonsensical writing I’ve seen in a long time. Both started with great 1st issues, then it felt like “well, we have your money dude, screw off”. CW was a string of “yo know what would be a cool shot?” with nothing tethering it to a plot, and SI was “I really want to do something radical and shaking, but I just can’t commit to it”.
Secret Invasion easily had the worst ending of any event ever, worse even than “Cap cries” in Civil War. At least with Millennium DC tries something new (a weekly event) but AoV still gets my vote for worst ever.
AoV is the worst in story telling. The concept was simple(Unite the head villains as they switch opponents they never met before). The concept is cool but the story is bad because it left us with holes(Example is how the Red Skull bot is activated while the original was locked by Magneto).
Infinite Crisis and 52 was the last time the DCU had any value. The Universe was restored, all was characterized properly again and then Grant ” I destroy franchises like X-Men for a living” Morrison destroyed the DCU Final Crisis the worst ever