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Worst comic book runs on major books?

Dinosauricon

Lieutenant
Any in particular?


A few bad runs IMO:

Tom Defalco's Fantastic Four-Tom's done some great Spider-Man work, but his FF run-which lasted for most of the 90's-was really lacking. Although it had great art by Paul Ryan, Tom started off his run by revealing that Human Torch's wife and Thing's old flame Alicia was in fact a Skrull imposter, then it went downhill from there with scarred Thing, a bimbo Susan, adult Franklin, and a rotating cast of replacements for Reed (Such as Namor and Scott Lang's Ant-Man), who was dead for a chunk of Defalco's run.


Bruce Jones's Hulk-Bruce's Hulk mainly was written as "The Incredible Banner" with the Hulk making rare appearences and the stories mainly being updates of the old TV show. When the Hulk did appear he was written largely inconsistently, as savage, smart, or mute. Peter David wisely explained the whole thing largely as a bad dream when he took over for a brief run, and the Hulk was largely redeemed by the Planet Hulk arc, thankfully.


Chuck Austen's X-men: Chuck wrote for Uncanny and the adjectiveless title starting in 2001, replacing the largely unpopular Joe Casey. At first, it was a breath of fresh air after Casey's run, but soon the title devolved into bad fan fiction. He largely ruined the characterizations of Juggernaught and Polaris, although later writers would salvage them.


Any other candidates?
 
Austen's UXM; easily the worst material ever done on the title.

The one-two punch of Devin Grayson and Bruce Jones' successive runs on Nightwing; poor Dick. They systematically demolished all the foundations previous writers had built, and their title character was laughably incompetent. Grayson's run also has some really weird sexual politics.
 
Any in particular?


A few bad runs IMO:

Tom Defalco's Fantastic Four-Tom's done some great Spider-Man work, but his FF run-which lasted for most of the 90's-was really lacking. Although it had great art by Paul Ryan, Tom started off his run by revealing that Human Torch's wife and Thing's old flame Alicia was in fact a Skrull imposter, then it went downhill from there with scarred Thing, a bimbo Susan, adult Franklin, and a rotating cast of replacements for Reed (Such as Namor and Scott Lang's Ant-Man), who was dead for a chunk of Defalco's run.


Any other candidates?

I used to consider anything Defalco did to be non canon! This is the guy who had Spider Man kick Firelord's ass for godsake.

Defalco's Thor, immediately following Walt's godlike run, would be my #1.

I could also go easy and throw Rob Liefeld's New Mutants/X-Force out there. :cool:

Bri :rommie:
 
The Spider-Man Clone Saga which ran for a good chunk of the 90s is one infamous run. It almost made me give up on Spider-Man though the recent events starting from when John Romita jr. left around 2004 is coming in pretty close to a really bad Spider-Man run of stories.
 
I just never understood all the hate for Chuck Austin. It just never made any sense to me other than it just being a fun thing for people to do...

Anyway, I vote for Grant Morrison on WildCATS. One particularly forgettable premiere issue and it's been a three years (and counting) wait for issue two. And for once, it ain't entirely Jim Lee's fault for the delay...
 
I am going with One More Day/Brand New Day. OMD effectively killed Spider-Man to me. The man that calls himself that now is a pale imitation of the character based on his adventures from the 70's and early 80's prior to the introduction of the Hobgoblin. Been there, done that, wake me when it is over and Peter redeems himself by kicking Mephisto's ass and reclaims what he took from him.
 
LOL, I was just about to start a thread about this! I got the X-Men DVD-ROM and I've been reading the 2001 to 2004 run of Uncanny and it's just horrible. I didn't care for Grant Morrison's run but at least it was exciting. This? First of all it stars the lamest team members imaginable; Angel. Nightcrawler (in a morose depressing mode). Iceman. Chamber. Husk. And a mutant hooker. Seriously. My god. Second of all, there's hardly any action or story, mainly just people hanging around and being depressed. It's never epic in scale. Third, the art is almost always crap. Ron Garney did a few issues and that's as good as it got, and he's just alright. I'm at #435 so far.
 
Dan Jurgens' on Justice League America. Ugh! After the Giffen/DeMatteis run this was a major letdown. Never made it past the second issue.
 
I always felt that most of the long haired hippie Superman period was awful; but strangely enough, I thought Electric Superman was alright as a temporary detour.

Judd Winick pretty much killed the Kyle Rayner Green Lantern for me, but Winick's successor managed to be even worse than him.

Chris Claremont destroyed Exiles.
 
The Clone Saga, Sins Pasts on Spider-Man (JMS's horrific and bizarre relevation that Gwen Stacy had children with Norman Osborn and slept with him because she felt SORRY for him). The Ezekial storyline, also during the JMS run, and One More Day. These stories did nothing positive for Spider-Man and only made me drop the title. I follow when the library gets trades in that's about it.

Chuck Austen on X-Men, the X-Men post AOA...dreadful stuff for a while there. The clone Magneto story, etc.

I'm sure that I'm forgetting a ton more...
 
The Spider-Man Clone Saga which ran for a good chunk of the 90s is one infamous run. It almost made me give up on Spider-Man though the recent events starting from when John Romita jr. left around 2004 is coming in pretty close to a really bad Spider-Man run of stories.

That's a really good one. It was definitely one of the things that lead to me dropping out of the way I used to follow my favorite books pretty religiously.

The whole Wolverine losing his Adamantium thing struck me as pretty stupid, too. I have no idea who did that, but I seem to remember it being around the same time as Clone Saga.

I could certainly be wrong about that.
 
The whole Wolverine losing his Adamantium thing struck me as pretty stupid, too. I have no idea who did that, but I seem to remember it being around the same time as Clone Saga.
"Fatal Attractions." Peter David is to blame for that. Something he said, off-hand, at the X-Men retreat as a joke -- "Why not just have Magneto pull out the Adamantium from Wolverine's skeleton" -- got taken seriously, and once it was out, the other writers wanted to run with it, and he couldn't roll it back.
 
Just about anything Marvel put out since Civil War started except Spider-Girl, but the rot started to set in as early as Avengers: Disassembled and the Morrison crap on X-Men.
 
Hands down, the Clone Saga, concluding with the revelation that Norman Osborn has been alive all these years and has been secretly living in Europe, pulling the strings against Spider-Man's life the whole time. That killed Spider-Man for me. What utter rubbish.
 
Hands down, the Clone Saga, concluding with the revelation that Norman Osborn has been alive all these years and has been secretly living in Europe, pulling the strings against Spider-Man's life the whole time. That killed Spider-Man for me. What utter rubbish.

Let me ask a silly question - What is meant by the Clone Saga?

(some spoilers for what I think people mean as the Clone Saga)

I only read individual bits and pieces in the 90s so I am not upto speed on this. I think Ben Reilly, the Scarlet Spider, the sequence where Ben takes up being Peter Parker, while Peter heads out, Kane etc constitutes the Clone Saga for me. I have never read the entire run. I didn't think it was that bad. I mean sure it gets a little overwrought at times - I don't remember the particular story but I remember an image of a double page splash with tons and tons of Spider-mans. Also I remember that the villain part turned out to be a wheel-within-a-wheel kinda thing where the villainy of the Jackal (that was the ostensible villain) runs deep with lots of tricks behind tricks behind tricks. But really - it was that bad?
 
Brian Azzarello/Jim Lee on Superman. The "For Tomorrow" arc has to be one of the most boring, confusing, and crappiest runs on any comic book. Really, it was an excuse to have Superman fight Wonder Woman and some of the JLA. Just thinking about how crappy it was makes me upset.
 
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