» Fri Oct 09, 2015 1:20 am I love comics. Who doesn't like comics? They're like books, but with pictures! Let's talk about comics. (I am king of the well thought out post.)
Specifically, what are some of the biggest disappointments you've found as comic books go? I don't mean specific plot points, but the whole thing, books/series that you feel failed in some spectacular way, failed in a specific way, or so on. It can even be something you overall liked, but felt didn't live up to its promise.
I'm going to do it like this. I'll compare concept (or rather my concept of what it would be) to reality. Then follow up with comments. Yeah.
Runaways
Concept: A bunch of kids find out their parents are supervillains. They now have to cope with the emotional trauma that patricide and teenage homelessness can inflict.
Reality: A bunch of kids find out their parents are supervillains. They defeat said parents, travel through time, and other superhero-ish things, all while being perfectly clean, satiated, relatively trauma-free, and so on, despite their homelessness. On a positive note, a toddler punches the Punisher in the nuts. If I'm remembering that correctly. That part was awesome.
Honestly, I had high hopes for this one. It was a chance to examine the superhero genre from an entirely new perspective, and have characters who deal with real issues. However, they kill of the only character with much depth or internal conflict early, so that her boyfriend, the Big Dumb Hero, can now be turned into the Emo Avenger, and every other character acts as if they wandered into the Marvel Universe off the set of Dawson's Creek. On the plus side, Brian K. Vaughan did some good work early on (As per the usual), but he was replaced by Joss Whedon. Look, I like Firefly as much as the next guy, but do we really need him writing everything? Also, he's responsible for some of the least believable dialogue in the industry.
World of Warcraft
Concept: Three heroes travel through the more active and interesting Azeroth of the novels. Along the way, the Druid learns to contain his rage, the Rogue her addiction to fel magic, and the Warrior learns to be less boring. They serve as stand-ins for the player as the lore and world gets fleshed out beyond what the games can do.
Reality: That Warrior turns out to be the King of Stormwind and killsteals Onyxia. The Druid and Rogue, who are way more interesting, turn into the warriors cheerleaders. Then, the writers forget about that entire arc and decide that genetically combining half the races into an Azerothian Goku supermage is a good idea and inadvertantly invalidate several major characters and the whole of Warcraft III. Then Blizzard spends the rest of eternity pretending that didn't happen. Good job, guys.
This one was just an absolute mess. I actually liked it at first, tropy as it was. After all, it was pretty much a couple of WoW characters doing WoW-character-y things in Azeroth, which is still a pretty damn interesting place. It also did a Bernard Cornwell thing early on, where major lore characters were explored (sort-of) by the comic characters' interaction with them. Or at least, they tried to do that with Hamuul Runetotem and Magatha Grimtotem. But then it just descended into the most infuriating bunch of half-baked, insulting, and mary-sue ideas I've ever read. But hey, for a Wildstorm comic, there was a surprising lack of absurd female proportions. I'll give it that.
Lost Girls
Concept: Oh, hey, Alan Moore's exploring female tropes in fiction! It'll be something like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, except without the action and more character-driven. Cool.
Reality: Oh, hey, Alan Moore's drawing lisbian slash fiction. Enough said.
So yeah, what comics pissed you off?
