When Bad Things (And Bad Writing) Happens To Good Characters.

[The Roman Candle]

The Leslie Thompkins and Gwen Stacy bits are just plain unforgivable to me. Poor, poor writing.

[RegularJoe]

i disagree about batman - i liked uber-pissed bats. some writers didn't handle it well, others did. i love dini's work on him and morrison's is okay, but i hate how quickly the change has happened. sure, 52 happened 'tween when we saw him last and when we see him now but still...such an important personality/character shift shouldn't be relegated to a book where the character affected isn't a star.

[FredC]

I agree with you on the Norman Osborn thing and the Gwen Stacy thing.

With Norman they've just turned him into almost a parody of himself, although I still love the Green Goblin as a villian.

That whole Sins Past arc turned Gwen Stacy into the Laura Palmer of Marvel Universe. But thing is, Gwen WAS innocent... at least til JMS got his hands on it.

[Taxman]

Hhmmm . . . what can I do to get another thread?

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[WinstonWolf]

Fixed that for you.

Heh. Actually, I don't think that's true. I think a lot of writers have handled him rather well since Frank Miller. Alan Grant did a lot of good stuff with him, Chuck Dixon was also pretty good. Legends of the Dark Knight had some good stuff in it as well. And Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker. Loeb wrote a good Batman in his outside continuity work.

[WinstonWolf]

To be fair, the Abomination was quite insane at that point. He lost a lot of his humanity being in the military prison all that time he was there.

Yeah, but Jones revealed that he NEVER loved his wife, and to top it off, that he used to BATTER her. That just goes against all the development that he had under previous writers.

[Powersurge_Classic]

How's about all of Alpha Flight?

I mean, these guys didn't eventually spin their own title out of the UXM because Byrne/Claremont created a crappy team.

Of them all however, Mac seems to have been done the greatest disservice, and by Byrne himself (though in an otherwsie very cool story arc)... thus opening the door to one far fetched ressurrection-loophole after another to the point of absurdity.

Likewise, Sasq.'s redifinition (as tapping the power of the Great Beast Tanaraq) and then his death, then the transfer of his soul into Box, then into Snowbird/White Sasquatche, then whatever events brought him back as the original deal, took away from the character IMO.

Of course, AF suffered from a slew of less than memorable villains, unexciting plots/stories, intentional mockery in the last volume, and the characterization of virtually all of it's male characters as bad fathers and/or husbands... like it was being written by/for the feminist right or something.

Can't wait to see where Oeming's Omega Flight leads. And I wonder if the "Omega" bit is foreshadowing the fate of a Canada based super-title if this title flops... gods forbid.

[Bearpod91]

Spider-man in The Other had a really wierd story for him. Especially the way he came back.

[WinstonWolf]

#1 - You do realize The Joker used to appear in EVERY ISSUE of Detective Comics for some 15 years, right? And they do use him sparringly now....

#2 - Blame Grant Morrison. You're talking about the version in JLA he wrote. Grant Morrison wrote Batman as a God/Man. Writers fell in love with it, and beat it to death. Hence why he's getting what he deserves right now.

#1. Maybe, but that was back in the older days. They don't really use him all that sparingly now. He was just in about 10 titles if you add all of his appearances last year and this year.

#2. I don't think so. Morrisons Batman wasn't a pompous, paranoid, unlikeable, unsympathetic jerk who mistreats everybody (sans Alfred and a few other characters.). Morrison wrote Batman specifically the way he did for the JLA. His Batman wasn't a jerk, he was just unbeatable (well, almost.). I don't have a problem with that Batman.

[WinstonWolf]

Random notes cuz I don't feel like quoting several posts.

The Joker appeared in two of the five stories in his first appearance (Batman #1.) He's always been overexposed.

Thanks to his powers Sandman has always been a great Spider-Man villain, which is probably why Raimi & co are using him for the next film.

The Magneto in Avengers #503 was not the Magneto in Planet X (as revealed in Excalibur #1) so that criticism of the story fails. I actually enjoyed "Planet X" as the complete & total downfall of a villain.

I really don't think Gwen Stacy's been hurt by Sins Past, as the character has been dead for decades.

Electro fainted when Luke Cage was getting ready to beat the shit out of him.

I don't care how many books Wolverine's in, as long as it makes sense. The Civil War tie-in in Wolverine, and the story of Wolverine: Origins are different enough to justify two books. Plus, I love what Cassandra Nova did to him in Astonishing.

I do agree that Hank Pym has suffered thanks to the wife-beating stuff, especially under writers such as Austen. It's a disappointment since Perez did great stuff with the character.

Ah, but I'll quote every one of yours.

#The Joker might have been used a lot back then, but now he shows up about 10 times a year. And now that he's the biggest Batman villian ever, he should be used sparingly.

# A lot of Spider-Man villians have cool powers. He was better written and more three-dimensional as a semi-hero, than as a villian.

# The Magneto in Planet X was an imposter. Yes, but the AVENGERS didn't know that. Only a few people did. So that means the Avengers willingly handed over Wanda to the man who was considered perhaps the most dangerous terrorist on earth. That's absurb.

# Hey, being dead doesn't mean a character can't be retro-ruined. If somebody wrote a story where Uncle Ben used to get drunk and hit Aunt May , etc.

# Yeah, but he could have at least put up a fight. Or he could have at least flew away.

# Perez wrote Hank Pym?

Thanks for the responses.