Jab's Builds: He-Man, Teela, Man-at-Arms, Horde Troops

[Horsenhero]

[Jabroniville]

19) DR. DRUID
Whose Fault Is it: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 1 (had a big run in the '90s, despite his suck)
Angsty: 1 (obsessive anti-evil crusader)
Boring: 2 (a secondary magical hero, and those guys always have trouble making exciting stories)
Over-Powered (x2): 0
Xeroxed (x2): 2 (OK, he predates Dr. Strange, but they only brought him back after Strange hit big, and he takes up the same role)
Mysterious/Confusing: 0
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 1 (looks very plain and '60s)
Goofy (x2): 3 (a hero with a paunch. Really)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 0
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 16 (a low score for this level, but there are times when Suck Factor utterly fails to properly gauge someone's suck. Perhaps he should get 4s or 5s for all his scores?)

-Yeah, when there's contests to see who the worst Avenger ever is, there's only one name you'll see on EVERYONE'S list, since people like Silverclaw and Miss Shi'Ar 90s Stereotype tend to be forgotten by all but the most intensive fanboys. And that name is Doctor Druid. Why? It could be his lame generic red tights and cape. The fact that he's an obvious Doctor Strange rip-off (despite actually being created first, by the Lee/Kirby duo, as a generic adventurer in a monster story). His betrayal of the Avengers. Being twice taken over by evil villains. Being randomly killed off. Being the only fat male hero in the Marvel Universe. Any of these reasons are good enough. Hell, in one side-story, She-Hulk & Wasp agreed upon Druid as the "Worst Avenger Ever" and made fun of him for a full panel of mockery. Even his successor/son (sure, why not? Everyone else has mystery kids pop up out of nowhere) is just some forgotten loser named "Druid". Currenly in "Chaos War", he's been temporarily-resurrected, and even THERE they knock on him for being an ass.



"Oh crap! It's Todd MacFarlane's lawyers! RUN!"

18) NIGHTWATCH
Whose Fault Is it: Terry Kavanah & Derek Yaniger
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 1 (kept showing up in Spidey books)
Angsty: 2 (striving to prevent his own death and all that)
Boring: 2 (despite his crazy costume he's just... dull)
Over-Powered (x2): 0
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (Arguably the single worst and most blatant of all time. It was like a gift to Image, proving they were a success because somebody was ripping them off SO BAD)
Mysterious/Confusing: 2 (his origin is ridiculously confusing, and involves time travelling and meeting himself)
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 3 (as bad as Spawn himself)
Goofy (x2): 3 (so blatant is it's Xeroxing)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 25 (This may actually be THE SINGLE BIGGEST rip-off in the history of comics)

-Hahahahah WOW. Marvel wasn't even REMOTELY subtle about this one, were they? Possibly the most embarassing rip-off in comics history (aside from MAYBE members of Cyberforce or a few Liefeld characters), Nightwatch came into the Spider-Man group of books/friends in the mid-90s right after the Image Exodus, and brought with him some creepy characteristics, a familiar flowing red cape, and some nihilistic tendencies. Turns out, he was a scientist who was victimized, but saved by a future version of himself, who then died. Spending the rest of his time trying to escape his fate, he got his own limited series and did some junk, as Marvel desperately tried to make something of this Spawn rip-off as a Take That to Todd MacFarlane, but it wasn't to be. Just too stupid, and with too lame a power-set, he was killed by two E-League villains (I mean, Polestar & El Toro Negro? What in the hell have THEY ever done?) in the most easy way possible (one nullified his suit with magnetism, the other shot him), in possibly the most hilarious example of casually offing somebody in history. It's almost like Marvel TRIED to fail here.



Oh, come the **** on, Silvestri. Were you even trying?

17) CYBERFORCE (Heatwave, Velocity, Cyblade, Impact, Ripclaw, Striker)
Whose Fault Is it: Marc Silvestri
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 1 (got a pretty good push from Image books, but this one makes perfect sense, since it was a whole team and they wanted the book to sell)
Angsty: 3 (stole Marvel's "mutants as minority" concept- a couple were runaways, and all were cyborgs. A miserable bunch)
Boring: 0
Over-Powered (x2): 1 (general super-competent X-team)
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (One of THE worst examples in the history of comic books)
Mysterious/Confusing: 1
Fanservice: 1 (Cyblade was a standard 1990s arch-backed sexy chick, but her costume was extremely reasonable and didn't show any skin. There was some cleavage about the book, but it was actually on the low end of the '90s)
Dated: 3 (cyborgs, claw guys, killing heroes, heroes-as-military, etc.)
Goofy (x2): 2 (SUCH blatant rip-offs of the X-Men that it's almost a little sad. Also, one guy has three cybernetic arms on one side)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 (killer cyborg super-heroes with every X-trend imaginable on them)
Stereotypical: 1 (Ripclaw was your standard "Native American with thoughtful wisdom")
SUCK FACTOR: 25 (Image at it's worst. Absolute worst)

-Cyberforce... MAN. I just had to include the whole team, since they all suck in nearly the exact same ways. See, THIS is what I mean when I talk about Xeroxing being the worst thing in history. I actually think Cyberforce may be THE most shameless example of stealing an idea in the history of comic books, and keep in mind this is a genre that produced Nightwatch, The Sentry and Drax-as-Kratos. Silvestri didn't even PRETEND to hide what he was doing here- Heatwave was a generic Blaster Hero with good morals (Cyclops). Ripclaw couldn't have been more of a Wolverine rip-off if he tried (the claws were made of metal, he had a link to Native Americans, he was a wildnerness-living honorable warrior, etc.), as is arguably the most shameless of THOSE clones ever created. Cyblade is just Psylocke with a different name, and even THAT wasn't changed. Impact was a generic Strong Guy character (but wasn't exactly a Colossus rip, so they almost get a pass there). Striker was just Cable. Velocity and that other chick were reasonably unique, so that's OK, but the rest? Silvestri just basically was sad because he couldn't write The X-Men anymore, so he xeroxed their personalities and went from there. Marvel should've just been dicks and sued over this nonsense.



Who knew Image was producing comics in the 1940s?



You couldn't make a suckier bunch of costumes if you TRIED. A pink shirt and red mask?

16) THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS (Uncle Sam, Miss America, Black Condor, Phantom Lady, Firebrand, The Red Bee, Human Bomb, The Ray)
Whose Fault Is it: Various writers
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 1 (for some reason, DC keeps re-launching the modern version)
Angsty: 2 (lots of dead people)
Boring: 3 (the worst thing about them- they're a bunch of bland non-personalities)
Over-Powered (x2): 0
Xeroxed (x2): 2 (various updates & Legacies are really just re-treads that change very little)
Mysterious/Confusing: 1 (a few too many Legacies by now)
Fanservice: 3 (Phantom Lady is among comics' most embarassing examples of how lurid and trashy comics used to be, and sometimes still is)
Dated: 3 (Seriously- UNCLE SAM. The costumes are so dull and generic they could only be from the '40s)
Goofy (x2): 3 (Their names alone are bad enough, but Human Bomb is just a guy in a lead suit, and one guy is named the Red Bee. 'Nuff said)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 2 (their modern incarnation)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 26 (a lot of Golden Age characters are dumb, but at least they had the decency to leave in the '40s)

-Sorry, but these guys are just too dumb to get by:

-Uncle Sam is probably the living embodiment of why some adults look down on comics. OK, that's mean, but I don't think I've ever seen a 'comics newbie' flip through a book and see Uncle Sam in it without laughing or making some kind of derogatory comment. He's like Aquaman, but not as famous. Maybe it's just because I'm Canadian, I dunno. But in any case, he's one of the more successful 'non-JSA' All-Stars, getting revivals every ten years or so, and becoming the key representative of Earth-X (although The Ray II gets the occasional push) whenever that issue comes up.

-Unfortunately, DC had basically reserved the Freedom Fighters to "Jobber" status, using them solely to get their asses kicked or show up in an 'all the reserves are called up' JSA story, in the 1990s, leading to their eventual arse-reaming at the hands to the elite super-villains in Infinite Crisis. But Sam came back for ANOTHER revival of the team, which gets rid of some of the chaff (ie. uninteresting characters) with new, super-flawed newbies, though the jury's still out on that one. I've heard good stuff, but everyone seems to have ignored it by now, so the team's likely to just dissolve into the back ranks of the DCU, since everyone knows the Freedom Fighters aren't really marketable.

-The Human Bomb debuted in the same book as Plastic Man and Phantom Lady, and he actually lasted a CONSIDERABLE length of time, considering that nobody today really remembers him. He, of course, got later added to the Freedom Fighters, and became one of the first big casualties of Infinite Crisis, though he managed to take out Doctor Polaris with him. Roy's one of those guys who's just TOO silly-looking for his own good these days; you'd think that he'd wear something other than a 1940s-style lead suit after all those years, but I guess no writer ever cared much about him enough to call for a redesign. That actually probably answers just why the Freedom Fighters kicked around DC limbo for so many years, and why they were so easy to casually off in the opening salvo of the latest big cross-over: they were DC's most old-fashioned, meaningless team, and look by far the silliest of the heroes.

-Ah, Phantom Lady. Living embodiment of the nature of "Good Girl Art" in super-heroics (though she is far, FAR from being a good girl, as you can see). But seriously, she's got a pretty messed-up history. After Quality Comics gave up on her series, it was picked up by TWO different companies, one of which turned her into such a sexpot that Wertham's "Seduction of the Innocent" specifically called her out as proof that comics were lurid trash. All of this essentially left her legal publishing rights what the law profession would call "F*&@# up", but nonetheless, DC revived her for their Freedom Fighters reunion, and Post-Crisis continuity saw her joining Ted "Starman" Knight's family thanks to the coincidental names (see Air Wave/Hal Jordan and someone else I'm forgetting), and training her own replacement.

-The second Phantom Lady is so similar to the first that I'm amazed DC even bothered in not just de-aging Sandra Knight. Seriously, ANOTHER stealthy chick with black hair, cleavage-baring yellow swimsuit, and invisibility powers? She was one of the few 'new' heroes on the reformed Freedom Fighters, one of DC's least-appearing teams, which of course made them perfect victims to the Society in Infinite Crisis' first issue. She sucked and got her guts ripped open by The Cheetah (when your superpower is insivibility and that's IT, you kind of suck).And now there's a NEW Phantom Lady out there, who guess what? Has black hair, a yellow swimsuit, and light-bending powers (though hers apparently warp reality). But honestly, this whole new Freedom Fighters series almost seems like a parody of 90s comics, with all the killing and drama.

-Black Condor I was initially a take on the old Tarzan theme (at that time, the recent Tarzan theme), a boy raised by sentient Condor people (no, really), from which he learned how to fly. Retconned into a generic 'radioactive meteor' origin, he can fly under his own power, use a "Black Light Pistol" (whatever the hell that is), and is actually a senator in disguise, taking the identity of a man whom he failed to save. Well how's that for a unique storyline? Not that it saved him; he died with the rest of the Quality Comics characters, with a whimper, only showing up decades later in the JSA/JLA cross-overs under "Earth-X". Despite his super-cool name (which should rightfully belong to awesome characters), he was portrayed as a boring, generic hero and didn't really do anything, and it's been stated that he died, but we never found out how (you gotta suck pretty hard to not even get a heroic death story- hell, even WING got one, and he was just a sidekick!). He eventually got a legacy in Ryan Kendall, who again has like no fans. Currently, there's even a third Black Condor.

-Firebrand is one of the worst heroes ever. A guy in a pink see-through shirt, he produces one of the gayest designs ever, even for the 40s (it even resulted in a gag in the All-Stars series). He's so lame, he basically got casually offed via the Silver Ghost, and replaced by his sister, who actually had super-powers. She remains his biggest legacy, as he was retired during the "Pearl Harbor" Freedom Fighters storyline, and killed sometime later. Surprisingly though, there's been FOUR Firebrands in total, though the third isn't really a linked/legacy hero, and he was casually offed in a JSA Secret Files story.



Never before has EPIC looked SO SILLY.

15) THE NEW GODS EXCEPT FOR DARKSEID (and maybe Barda)
Whose Fault Is it: Jack Kirby
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 3 (All over the DCU, always getting new concepts)
Angsty: 2 (all kinds of stuff about Darkseid and sad pasts and being abused or on the run and stuff)
Boring: 3 (so many generic stories)
Over-Powered (x2): 3 (a whole race of super-powered entities, several of whom are Superman-powerful)
Xeroxed (x2): 1 (looks a lot like Kirby's Asgardian designs)
Mysterious/Confusing: 2 (a whole bunch of changed backstories)
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 3 (looks REALLY '60s, despite being a '70s book)
Goofy (x2): 3 (among the hugest examples of goofy-ass designs in comic book history. Even the epic god of evil Darkseid is wearing hip-boots and a mini-skirt. Orion looks like a COMPLETE idiot. Black Racer is on SPACE SKIS. Forager is goofy. The Forever People are silly-looking. Everyone in the series looks malformed and bizarre. There is someone named WUNDABARR, and another named GLORIOUS GODFREY.)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 0
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 30

-Okay, confession time. I hate the New Gods. As much as Jack Kirby created them and we should all respect and love the man's work, I just can't get past these goofily-named, idiotic-looking super-powered types and their silly stories. Hell, even Kirby's own BIOGRAPHER (in "Tales to Astonish") basically admits that at the time, everyone thought the books needed tons of work & editors, and that Kirby needed someone else writing his fairly good ideas. But guys like "Glorious Godfrey" & "Wundabarr" and stuff? Just not working. Take Orion. A solid concept of the heroic son of a master villain, given issues with daddy & anger, and all good stuff. But then they give him blue undies, a plain red outfit, a stupid mask, and what looks like a sex-play-armature to fly around in. He just looks ridiculous. The character was used pretty well, if VERY sparingly, on JLU, being the grumpy, constantly-annoyed guy who can't stand The Flash's amateurish antics when he fights his Rogues. And he gets his butt kicked by Darkseid to Superman can save the day. So I guess he wasn't bad in JLU, but man, I can never get into the New Gods stories. Everyone looks like an idiot, their names stand out as bad even compared to the Image Era of names, and most of them are ridiculously bland. Darkseid's OK as a mega-villain, but even HE wears a mini-skirt and hip-boots.

14) MANTIS
Whose Fault Is it: Steve Englehart & Don Heck
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 3 (one of the worst examples in the history of comic books. If this category had a "4", this would score it. Englehart used her CONSTANTLY, and loved her so much that he placed her in books he did at OTHER COMPANIES, just under different names)
Angsty: 2 (outcast orphan)
Boring: 2 (all "this one" and being unbeatable and junk. The whole "Celestial Madonna" storyline concept has failed to be interesting to me every time I've heard about it)
Over-Powered (x2): 3 (she has used standard martial arts to KNOCK OUT F***ING THOR!! She once demolished the entire West Coast Avengers- including Wonder Man- casually. Englehart was PAINFULLY in love with his character)
Xeroxed (x2): 0
Mysterious/Confusing: 3 (her whole "is the daughter of a low-rent super-villain and also the Messiah's mom who boinked a plant and gave birth to a plant-baby god who later disappeared and now she just does normal stuff)
Fanservice: 1 (obviously supposed to be super-hot, but didn't really take as a sex symbol)
Dated: 1
Goofy (x2): 2 (a barefoot asiatic with antennae)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 0
Stereotypical: 1 (the Inscrutable Oriental type)
SUCK FACTOR: 26 (it's a little tough to read a story where the writer so clearly wants to have sex with his own main character so damn badly. Imagine reading a Cyclone fanfic written by ME. You would HATE IT)

-Mantis is Steve Englehart's Pet Character, a character designed around Eastern mysticism, with a wierd origin as the "Celestial Madonna", devoted to giving birth to the new messiah or somesuch thing. He loves the character so much, he's brought her with him to DC & Eclipse comics (under different names) once he left Marvel, AND brought her back on his return to Marvel (in addition to shoehorning her in to the FF and Silver Surfer when he wrote them). The man was OBSESSED- he whines about Marvel rejecting his ideas and being lame, but honestly, have you EVER met a huge Mantis fan? I'm not denying the man had talent (I've enjoyed a few of his works, and his runs are usually well-regarded, and he DID do storylines that were the inspirations for the first Batman movie & "The Dark Knight"), but when a guy uses the word "Epic" over and over again to describe his stuff, you gotta think.

-As a character, she's kind of a loser concept, as nobody really cares much for barefoot chicks speaking in the third person (calling herself "This one") who can knock out Thor in hand to hand (no, really). It's just... SO OBVIOUS that Englehart loved this character and only wanted to write stories featuring her doing awesome stuff and being the chosen one and all that, and even the other Marvel writers hated her at the time she was an Avenger. She's so much like Claremont's Sage character that it's not even funny. Currently she's much more entertaining as a weird background character in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" book, and seems to be MUCH less powerful, as she's usually stuck on the base instead of doing Goonsweeping.

13) X-MAN (NATE GREY)
Whose Fault Is it: Jeph Loeb & Steve Skroce
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 2 (all over '90s Marvel)
Angsty: 3 (an outcast kid with tons of enemies and few friends)
Boring: 2 (his powers left most of his stories rather dull)
Over-Powered (x2): 3 (basically a step above OMEGA LEVEL mutants- one of the more ridiculously overpowered characters in comic book history)
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (they ALREADY HAD Cable and Jean Grey and Rachel Summers... so they added ANOTHER Telepathic/telekinetic character? this is what officially 'broke' that character power set-up for me. I haven't been able to be interested in it since)
Mysterious/Confusing: 0
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 2 (a very '90s design)
Goofy (x2): 0
EXTREEEEEEME!: 2
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 25 (a big part of why I lost interest in comics in the mid-90s)

-Nate Grey really stands out as a piece of crap to me. Bad enough Cable had this power-set (and it would start increasing by this point), but his Age of Apocalypse version, a ridiculously "extreme"-looking cool kid with punker hair and jacket for a costume (very 90s), was even worse. He wasn't just powerful, he was INSANELY powerful, too- to the point where almost nobody could really threaten him (they'd boost up Electro temporarily just to do it), and it was basically pandering to the Power-Geeks. I don't think such a group of people (ie. Feat-hungry fans obsessed with greater and greater showings of power) even existed before this time period in comics, but HOO BOY was Nate Grey made for them. An Omega-Level Telekinetic & Telepathic, he was stated to be equivalent in power to the PHOENIX FORCE-bestowed Jean Grey, and he resurrected Madelyne Pryor BY ACCIDENT because he was so tough. Who's responsible for this Power Geek Abortion: Jeph Loeb, the man who would create another one, The Red Hulk, over a decade later, doing much the same stuff.



It's like every non-gun & claw trope in Terrible Iron Age Character Design threw up on him.

12) EXODUS
Whose Fault Is it: Scott Lobdell & Joe Quesada
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 2 (was everywhere in the late-90s)
Angsty: 0
Boring: 2 (bland character with generic powers)
Over-Powered (x2): 3 (one of the worst 1990s examples ever- they just kept ADDING STUFF to him!)
Xeroxed (x2): 1 (the Telekinetic/Telepathic power-set was generic by then)
Mysterious/Confusing: 0
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 3 (Among the most generic & iconic 1990s designs ever)
Goofy (x2): 2 (what're those big fake wings on his back for?)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 2 (religious extremist)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 23 (what happens when you make a villain with no personality all-powerful)

-Oh. My. God. I HATE THIS CHARACTER! I hate characters LIKE this! This is just... he's unbelievably awful. He's one of those super-powerful uber-types that were invented solely to be all "OMG this guy is so POWWWWWERFULLLL!!!" and he sucks because there's nothing else to him other than a sycophantic follower. I can't stand guys who just have limitless power, able to wipe out entire super-team with ease... actually, y'know I can. Magneto can do stuff like that (sorta), Graviton can and he's cool, etc. It's theoretically possible for a villain to be that tough and still be cool, sicne villains are supposed to be more powerful than the heroes (part of why I like Marvel more than DC). But those guys have CHARACTER. ORIGINALITY. Something that sets them apart. They didn't just whip powers out of their asses. Exodus is just another modification of the Phoenix Power-Set that we were inundated with during the '90s. So much of this went down with guys like Exodus, X-Man, every fan-character and more, to the point where I just got sick of all of them. Exodus' silly '90s look didn't help matters- a big flowing cap, glowing eyes, etc.- he looks like the kind of thing Liefeld would have created (minus the lack of pockets).

-Exodus was just a Magneto follower, having been trapped for centuries in a mountain after the Crusades (during which he was a knight). He followed Mags religiously, did stuff, and was a mega-villain during "Fatal Attractions", where he had the ludicrous power-feat of threatening all Genosha with a Force Field Blast, while trapping three powerful mutants, and fending off the attacks of the ENTIRE Avengers & X-Men line-ups. The stuff of legend for some guys, but the general disinteresting nature of Exodus ruined it (plus the fact that the crossover sucked anyways). Maybe he could've been something, but the writing on him has always sucked.
-He was basically a big mishmash of crap on one character, given a hundred powers, weird quasi-intellectual scripture to spout, and amped at a power level beyond most of the X-Men. With all that, you'd figure they'd use him more, but for the most part, he's just been Magneto's stock 'second in command' who would come up with all the lame plans that never quite worked out. Much like Mr. Sinister, the writers did so little actual planning or caring about things that they'd simply toss in a new power every once in a while- he actually casually pulled out "oh yah I can also resurrect people" effect). He should normally be able to become a dominant character, but lack of personality or care in writing him stagnated Exodus into being an also-ran who's too powerful to use in a more regular context. As such, he never really got the chance.



"Coming soon... in every ****ing DC book you'll read this year!"

11) MAGOG
Whose Fault Is it: Geoff Johns & Alex Ross (also part Mark Waid & Keith Giffen)
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 3 (JSA was a team book, and yet Magog was front & centre of every single cover imaginable, and was given a MONSTER push over ever single other member of the team. Moreover, he got HIS OWN SERIES, a ridiculous push for such a "new" character)
Angsty: 1 (turned into an engine of a God)
Boring: 0
Over-Powered (x2): 1 (he didn't have a whole lot of feats to his name, but he was easily in the Supes-class without a push about it)
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (Magog himself was a parody of Cable and "extreme" '90s heroes- this wouldn't count, but they started playing it STRAIGHT when the new character came out)
Mysterious/Confusing: 3 (what was his origin again? He's a New God? And also, why was their ANOTHER Magog, who then died & got replaced with this one?)
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 3 (A parody of '90s heroes only works as long as it was still a parody... now he just looks like Cable. His whole "Extreme Hero who kills" thing is also taken right from that decade)
Goofy (x2): 1 (Looks kinda cool, but obviously a Cable rip, and is thus embarassing to even see treated as a major character)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 ("I kill villains! I bitch out other heroes who don't! AAAARRRRGGGGH!")
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 23 (Geoff Johns created Cyclone. He's also responsible for Magog. How do I feel about him as a writer?.... *head explodes*)

-Lance stuck out like a sore thumb on the JSA revival. The great-grandson of FDR (the man who asked the JSA to band together), Lance Corporal David Reid was a soldier in Afghanistan, who came across a mystical element, and boom, he's a Blaster-type hero. Pretty generic, right? Especially with his t-shirt & jeans 'costume', and just this little metal thing on his hand. Adding numbers to an already huge group, I had no idea where they were going with him. Then he got killed by an explosive missile from an African soldier, and Gog (the god-like entity the JSA was in contact with) took pity on him and gifted him with a new form, that of Magog, the false idol of Kingdom Come fame, replacing the older, crappier version that had briefly scuffled with Superman. So now we had our decent character out of what seemed lame.

-Of course, the run by the new writers has started out with David IMMEDIATELY acting like a gigantic tool instead of the somewhat polite soldier-boy he was before, in one of the most rapid cases of Character Derailment I've ever seen. Originally, he was mindful of the others and acting nice enough, but now he's a raging dick who openly bitches about the elder JSAers, calls them old farts TO THEIR FACES, and desperately avoids the entire team. Weird stuff. It got worse- Magog got perhaps the most extreme case of a Wesley Crusher push in comic book history, suddenly becoming front & centre of absolutely every JSA storyline, disrespecting everyone while ALSO getting top billing and even HIS OWN SERIES. He was so unpleasant and so uncaring that his series bombed in a way that very few series EVER have (selling about 6,000 copies a month- which is RIDICULOUSLY low, even for this era of comics), and it STILL took over a year to cancel the damn thing! Such was Magog's overwhelming eventual case of suck that they offed him recently, in a non-JSA book.

[Jabroniville]

Oh, and since someone asked me what I thought of modern Superboy... I think he's OK. I'm not into his power set (HOW many Supes clones do we need out there, again?), and his personality irks me a lot of the time, but I don't mind him now that he's not the living embodiment of why everyone hates teenagers.

The Top Ten will be up tomorrow morning-ish.

[saint_matthew]

The Freedom Fighters (the newest version), is just not marketable, becuase no one outside of the states gives a shit about jingoistic patriotic American flag-waving that that comic does. an people inside the states, seem to be sick of how often the media tells them that they are the most awesome, perfect, pretty country ever... especially since a simple look around will show that that is just not the case.

This is essentially why Captain America works and The Freedom Fighters doesn't. One is about America as it is & the other is the idealistic propoganda version from the 1950's. An the 1950's version just doesn't play to the better informed geek culture of the present.

As for Superboy, i'm actually enjoying the new series. I like that this series is focusing on the character, rather then the powers & i hope it continues to.

-M

[cassius335]

59) MR. SINISTER
<snip>
Over-Powered (x2): [b]3 (waaaayyyy too invincible)
Xeroxed (x2): 0
Mysterious/Confusing: 3 (I still don't know what his exact power-set is)
[/b]

-Ah, Mr. Sinister. The bastard child of the X-Men "Master Villain" trifecta. Magneto's the personable, agreeable savior of mutantkind, Apocalypse is the super-powerful god, and Sinister... just kinda is there. He's the wheeler-dealer/secret plotter of the three, which makes for some bizarre retcons and even weirder definition of his powers. I always hated stories with him as a kid, because you never got a good fight- he was so invincible (Cyclops & Rogues' best shots do NOTHING, and he just heals right back from any actual damage) that nothing could hurt him, and he was that type of cryptic "I'm not gonna give you any answers" villain that I HATE.

Next time they reboot the X-Verse they should just set him up as Mutant Super Dracula and have done with it.

he was killed by two E-League villains (I mean, Polestar & El Toro Negro? What in the hell have THEY ever done?) in the most easy way possible (one nullified his suit with magnetism, the other shot him), in possibly the most hilarious example of casually offing somebody in history.

It makes sense if you've played Heroclix. Outwit can be effing lethal...

Goofy (x2): 3 (among the hugest examples of goofy-ass designs in comic book history. Even the epic god of evil Darkseid is wearing hip-boots and a mini-skirt. Orion looks like a COMPLETE idiot.

I dare you to tell them that to their faces.

Over-Pushed (x2): 3 (one of the worst examples in the history of comic books. If this category had a "4", this would score it. Englehart used her CONSTANTLY, and loved her so much that he placed her in books he did at OTHER COMPANIES, just under different names)

And it doesn't... because?

Such was Magog's overwhelming eventual case of suck that they offed him recently, in a non-JSA book.

Killed, ironically enough, by modern day Max Lord, the other guy who might rate a 4 (for "Overpowered"; He's somehow mind-screwed nearly the whole DCU into forgetting he exists, except what's left of the JLI because he likes f***ing with them).

[Horsenhero]

Well, I like the Freedom Fighters as a concept, if not the way they're written...and the art on the current book is kind of muddy and sloppy too. However, as a member of a family with a proud military tradition, Saint_Matthew offended the heck out of me with his last post. Rarely do I feel the desire to be able to reach through a computer and break my foot off in someone's ass...but that post did it.

On other subjects...I never bought Cyber Force, so I don't know much about them except like every team of the decade (it seems), they had a Wolverine clone. And they were shiny, so very, very shiny.

And technically, Darkseid wears a dress, not a skirt. Hercules wears a skirt.

[vitruvian]

The Freedom Fighters (the newest version), is just not marketable, becuase no one outside of the states gives a shit about jingoistic patriotic American flag-waving that that comic does. an people inside the states, seem to be sick of how often the media tells them that they are the most awesome, perfect, pretty country ever... especially since a simple look around will show that that is just not the case.

This is essentially why Captain America works and The Freedom Fighters doesn't. One is about America as it is & the other is the idealistic propoganda version from the 1950's. An the 1950's version just doesn't play to the better informed geek culture of the present.

As for Superboy, i'm actually enjoying the new series. I like that this series is focusing on the character, rather then the powers & i hope it continues to.

-M

What jingoistic patriotic American flag-waving? I must confess, I've only looked at the latest volume on the shelves because the art and story seem somewhat generic, but I didn't notice any major nods to jingoism and superpatriotism, on the contrary, weren't they dealing with American neo-nazis to begin with? And the earlier volumes with this version of the team, which I do own, were anything but establishment boosterism, given that major plots revolved around evil government conspiracies...

[vitruvian]

31) NOH-VARR
Whose Fault Is it: Grant Morrison & J.G. Jones
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 1 (disappeared, but is now all over the place)
Angsty: 2 (lost Kree warrior)
Boring: 2 (there is almost no personality to this guy. He just runs around and does stuff)
Over-Powered (x2): 3 (can't stress this one enough. They've pulled various powers out of their asses, had him beat a dozen super-heroes at once, and generally deliberately tried to make him Over-Powered)
Xeroxed (x2): 0
Mysterious/Confusing: 2
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 2 (comes across as very '90s, despite not really being from that decade)
Goofy (x2): 0
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 (a psychotic killer)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 19 (so many powers I want to die just reading his bios)

-... I really, really know very about this character, to be honest. He sorta just came & went quietly in some Morrison-written limited series a decade ago, and didn't show up again until Bendis' modern era, where he became a Dark Avenger and did some more stuff. He's kind of an insane Kree spy/soldier guy who hated people, but is now kind of a hero or something. Bios of him online basically showcase a guy that seems like he was designed by a commitee of imbecilic 9-year-olds who added every power they could do him. Seriously, he has fingernails that EXPLODE, a portable base thing that he can control and screw people up in, spit that mind-controls people. Etc. I've read that Morrison invented him solely to make a character who was unstoppable WITHOUT the Superman Flying Brick power-set. I just can't get behind somebody with THIS much power backing him up, especially if he's boring and useless to most stories, which is what I saw in Dark Reign.

Noh-varr in the original mini was absolutely brilliant. Noh-varr as he's been brought into the mainstream MU has generally sucked eggs.

Have you read the original mini? If not, you have no argument for saying he was a bad character there.

[Horsenhero]

Well, I won't really go into whether or not I like Noh-Varr or not, because that really isn't the point of what I'm going to say. Noh-Varr didn't have to start as a bad character to become a bad character. Magog, as seen in Kingdom Come is a good character and necessary to the story, but, what has been done with the character since seriously devalued him, and that's pretty much what has happened to Noh-Varr I imagine. Now can he be salvaged? Sure. Almost every good villain has been devalued at some point and made a comeback. Dr. Doom, Magneto, Lex Luthor, Brainiac, even Galactus have on occasion been written so badly it was cringe worthy. The question is WILL he ever be written well again and reach his true potential. Maybe, but, to be taken seriously he's gonna have to ditch the bike shorts and shortsleeves for something more menacing.

[Jabroniville]

10) JUDAS TRAVELLER
Whose Fault Is it: Terry Kavanah & Steven Butler
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 2 (he was ALL OVER the Spidey books for a few years)
Angsty: 1
Boring: 3 (too powerful and too mysterious)
Over-Powered (x2): 3 (basically had Variable Power, with any ability at-hand)
Xeroxed (x2): 0
Mysterious/Confusing: 3 (being purposefully-vague was his whole concept- they eventually revealed that all he knew of himself was a lie)
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 0
Goofy (x2): 3 (a super-magic omnipotent philosopher... in a Spidey book?)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 0
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 23 (Terry Kavanah has two characters in the Top Twenty. Apparently he sucks at writing)

-Judas Traveller is a shining beacon of the suckiness of Spider-Man in the late-90s. Coming about during the Clone Saga, he was a nigh-cosmic being who flew around spying on Peter, trying to figure out the nature of good vs. evil or some garbage. To say this guy didn't fit into the Spideyverse is a DRASTIC understatement. He was so bad, they just wrote him out of the books with a nonsensical explanation that he was a fraud, and all his powers came from some place else. THAT is a sucky character. This is one of the characters I hated MOST when I was a teenager- he looked stupid, had a dumb concept, and was way too powerful. Screw Judas Traveller.

9) AQUAMAN
Whose Fault Is it: Mort Weisinger & Paul Norris
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 2 (gets to show up in nearly every JLA re-enactment. They're ALWAYS trying to find some way to make him cool)
Angsty: 3 (lonely king, his baby was killed, his kingdom blows up all the time, etc.)
Boring: 3 (Atlantis-based books have always failed for this very reason- Atlantean culture is kind of dull)
Over-Powered (x2): 0
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (a shameless rip-off of Namor the Sub-Mariner)
Mysterious/Confusing: 1 (several retcons and junk. Various writers have no idea what his personality really is, because he's a comparative blank slate compared to any other hero who's been around as long)
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 3 (the big gold shirt is a dead-giveaway)
Goofy (x2): 3 (HE IS AQUAMAN. "SuperFriends" didn't even HAVE to do all the damage it did- he's goofy enough without it.)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 1 (his '90s self with the Hook)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 27

-Aquaman's always been a tough sell in the comic book industry. His books nearly always end up low-sellers, no matter WHO'S writing them, his prior appearances in the media of television have rendered him a joke, and most damning of all- in the official world of Pop Culture (itself far more powerful than any single medium inside of it), he's viewed as a symbol of ridicule, an example of the worst of super-hero books. Literally decades of DC comics have gone into trying to UNDO that damage, but trust me- it's impossible. There is literally NO WAY you can reverse the sheer force of Pop Culture Opinion in such a manner- it'd be like re-doing The Godfather Part III into an awesome movie, or turning NBC's "Joey" into a successful spin-off. The mere idea is so laughable to SO many people that you're basically asking for it to even try. Hell, just walk up to a random passerby and mention "Aquaman" to them. They will undoubtedly laugh, same as they would if you mention "Baywatch". Sorry, Aquaman fans, but he'll never be legimate outside our silly little world.

-It wouldn't be such a problem if they'd stop making him so important in so many stories. They can't keep his powers consistent, and Atlantis storylines are ALWAYS boring (there's a TV Trope for it- "Atlantis is Boring"!), and nothing about him ever stays constant for more than one writer's run. I don't care HOW much they try to push him, he will ALWAYS be a joke, and they'll be happier the sooner they accept that.

8) JUBILEE
Whose Fault Is it: Chris Claremont & Jim Lee
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 1 (she was EVERYWHERE in the '90s X-books, trying desperastely to get kids to like her. The X-Men cartoon in the '90s was awesome except for the HUGE amount of screen-time Jubilee got. Kitty Pryde would have been WAY better in the same role as "teen buddy")
Angsty: 3 (lonely orphan with no friends)
Boring: 2 (her powers suck)
Over-Powered (x2): 0
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (I have no idea why Claremont just ripped off Boom-Boom, considering Tabitha was ALSO an X-Character. It's particularly shameless. She also takes up the EXACT same role Kitty Pryde used to have- both Teen Sidekick and Audience Surrogate, as well as Wolverine's Underage Girl Partner)
Mysterious/Confusing: 0
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 3 (One of the shining examples of why you don't attempt contemporary fashion as part of someone's uniform. What's more is that I don't think any of what she wears was ever cool- the huge puffy jacket and green goggles are particularly bad)
Goofy (x2): 3 (the aforementioned outfit)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 (even *I* could tell I was being pandered to!)
Stereotypical: 3 (fits every stereotype of what adults think teenagers are like)
SUCK FACTOR: 28 (a suck double rip-off)

-Oh dear god, don't even get me started on Jubilee. OK, I just have to: Desperate for another 'lighter touch' to Wolverine stories that Kitty Pryde used to produce, and with Jim Lee desperate to make more people wearing trenchcoats in books he drew, Marvel popped in another character to the Claremont/Lee X-Men. Enter Jubilee, who quickly went to the 1980s-inspired "reader insert" character; ie. the plucky, sarcastic teenage character who got to hang around all the big, tough and cool X-Men, while remaining flippant and comedic throughout. The only problem is, Marvel did the EXACT SAME THING years earlier with Kitty Pryde (rubbing old fans the wrong way with a new replicant of the old concept), and Jim Lee basically copied almost the exact design of Boom-Boom, who'd appeared years earlier in the Secret Wars II storyline, and was now a regular in X-Factor. So the character was a double rip-off, wandering around, being 'comedically whacky' and making sarcastic jokes and calling people "Dweebs" and stuff (it was the early '90s). But hey, Marvel was busy giving Jim Lee whatever he wanted to keep him happy, so that forgives THEM a little bit. But then Jim & the other Image boytoys leave Marvel high and dry, recreating all their characters in Image, so Marvel's stuck with Kitty/Boomer Lite, and they have to give her something to do. So the "whacky sidekick" thing goes on until Generation X starts up, and they pawn her off on the new generation. And since Generation X eventually became the worst X-Men book ever (seriously, try to understand Penance & M's origins, I dare you), it basically led to the destruction of her character, and the characters of everyone in that book, and we only see her now as a slightly-aged hot asian chick who got a failed mini-series a while back.

-Jubilee was pretty much only around for a single decade. Brought in during the LATE late 80s, Jubes had fairly weak powers, a lot of attitude, and was pretty much the embodiment of what supremely uncool adults thought 'hip' teenagers of that era were like. Yeah, we all apparently liked giant hoop earrings, giant canary yellow trenchcoats, and green wrap-around sunglasses. So this little brat (at least they didn't make her ultra-hot at first- comics needs a FEW gawky teens to remind you that not EVERY woman is built the same way) became Wolverine's sidekick, effectively replacing Kitty Pryde as the team's "Audience Insert" cast member, and that went on for a few years. But then Generation-X happened, and Jubilee was "demoted" to the big new X-book. This push to a major role in a series (versus a minor sidekick in X-Men Blue & Wolverine's) could have been her big break, but then Gen-X kinda crapped out and the whole team went their different ways, and so Jubilee never really got used on any great level again. Even Wolverine seems to not give a crap anymore! Oh, and now she's a vampire. I read it, don't look at me like that.

-There's been the occasional blurb about her since then, but nothing big. Emma Frost declared her "potentially the most powerful mutant ever", like half the kids in that freakin' book (one of my big pet peeves about it), because she could blow up matter subatomically or some crap, she lost her powers in M-Day after her solo series TANKED (written by Robert Kirkman and it still sucked & got no play), and became "Wondra", a character in the (also tanked) New Warriors relaunch series. So yeah, she's pretty much done as a character by now, I think. She's just SUCH an icon of the weird '90s Jim Lee era, and nobody really wants to touch her anymore.






7) ALL THE BLOODLINES CHARACTERS (Argus, Anima, Gunfire, Ballistic, Myriad, Sparx, Loose Cannon)
Whose Fault Is it: Dan Raspler, Doug Moench, Jeph Loeb, Len Wein and others
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 2 (a MASSIVE event)
Angsty: 2
Boring: 0
Over-Powered (x2): 0
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (an embarassing type of stealing of ideas- it was basically "DC Does '90s Marvel and ****s It All Up)
Mysterious/Confusing: 1
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 3 (Guns, funky skin colours, etc. This is a 1990s concept alright)
Goofy (x2): 3 (really overdone)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 (guns, blood, Dark Age names, it's got it all)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 25 (seriously, DC? It's bad enough IMAGE and MARVEL pulled this crap, but at least they had youth & energy on their side. This is like watching your dad dress up like he's a twenty-something bad-ass)

-These guys... I mean, my god. You want proof that DC was the worst company EVER when it wanted to be? Look at THIS crap. Basically, "Bloodlines" was a big multi-issue crossover meant to push a new group of heroes in the DC Universe, and was the biggest rip-off of Image-type heroes EVER. I mean, those character-types debuted in Marvel, shifted to Image, and then DC ripped off the idea and somehow made it WORSE- nearly all of these guys are ridiculously EXTREEEEEEME, with ponytails, guns (Ballistic- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_(DC_Comics), is super-strong and red, but ALSO has guns), funky skin colours, etc. So lame are these guys that nearly every book was cancelled within a year, and other characters in DC basically mock and make fun of these losers. Even Wikipedia, bastion of neutrality, has a hilarious article featuring the many examples of other heroes mocking them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodlines_(comics).

-These guys are every '90s excess brought to life, but without any of the artistic skill or exciting nature of Marvel or Image's losers. One of their big charcters, Anima, a weird psychological-type character, completely vanished when her book was cancelled (16 issues in), and she got casually murdered when they used her again. Gunfire (a retardedly-90s character who could turn stuff into bullets) did the same. Geist was an invisible night stalker who ripped off Batman, and badly. There was even a bi-racial Black/Vietnamese guy named MONGREL. Hilariously, an ENTIRE GROUP of them, "The Blood Pack", was casually Heat-Visioned to death by Superboy-Prime during "Infinite Crisis", IN TWO PANELS. FOUR CHARACTERS were killed and all they gave them was two panels with no dialogue! That is AWESOME, and a pure sign of how much they sucked (wanna know why Superboy-Prime isn't on this list? Because he killed like eight ****ing people who were already on it, that's why). The only concept from this entire event that succeeded was Hitman, which branched quickly into a hero-mocking comedy series.

6) THE SENTRY
Whose Fault Is it: Paul Jenkins & Brian Michael Bendis
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 3 (Just a non-stop presence in the books for the past several years)
Angsty: 3 (do I even need to get into this? A crazy drug addict with a sad, crazy wife who is always being crazy)
Boring: 2 (a standard Supermanalogue who barely even gets to say anything because he's so dumb)
Over-Powered (x2): 3 (Beaten almost everybody, and constantly talked up as the most powerful character EVER)
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (needs no explanation- a Supermanalogue at it's core)
Mysterious/Confusing: 3 (I think he stole Wolverine's crown of "Most confusing origin story EVER"- what the HELL is his character supposed to be again? He's the Void, now he's an addict, now his powers come from being Molecule Man... wtf?)
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 1 (deliberately archaic uniform, but minor)
Goofy (x2): 0
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 (drug addiction plus rips people in half)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 27 (ruins every comic he takes part in)

-The Sentry's most interesting point is the 'hoax' creation, where he was supposed to be Stan Lee's "Lost" Marvel hero of the early 60s, who he just never got around to using because of his power levels. It turned out to be Marvel & Wizard hyping the crap out of his Limited Series run, and it seemed to work for the most part. Now, plenty of comics fans know who Sentry is. Trouble is, very few like him. If it was a limited series or two, it'd have been fine, but now Marvel basically has a GIANT Superman rip-off appearing in books on a regular basis, overpowering every team, and generally just being a lame character who's main job is to throw tantrums and whine about how much his life sucks, while showing off how powerful he is. Unfortunately, the writers just LOVE having a full-time Supermanalogue. For some reason, writers are FASCINATED with Supes, so even while his books tend not to sell that great, he inundates all the other books. I hate The Sentry- he's ruined so many books to me it's not even funny, and he's arguably the worst cast of Over-Powering someone in comic book history.



h


Isn't that the most punchable face you've ever seen?

5) ALL ROB LIEFELD CHARACTERS EXCEPT FOR DEADPOOL AND OCCASIONALLY CABLE & SHATTERSTAR (Youngblood, Brigade, Garrison Kane, Weapon: P.R.I.M.E., etc.)
Whose Fault Is it: Rob Liefeld, natch (a bit of Fabian Nicieza & Louise Simonson thrown in)
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 2 (Rob put his guys ALL OVER the place. Cable was explicitly thrown in and had everyone talking about how big of a legend he was)
Angsty: 1
Boring: 2 (very kooky designs, but very bland personalities. Rob did VERY little work on this front)
Over-Powered (x2): 1 (many over-done super-fighters who were supposed to be ultra-tough, but he kept away from the super-powered guys)
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (he just re-did his own designs over and over again in new companies and books. Some were REALLY obvious)
Mysterious/Confusing: 2 (almost everyone had mysterious origins)
Fanservice: 3 (among the most ludicrous artists ever for this kind of crap)
Dated: 3 (Nobody draws stuff that looks more '90s- NOBODY. Giant shoulder-pads, swords, braids everywhere, enormous guns, etc.)
Goofy (x2): 2 (his art is notorious for sucking in retrospect, with funny pursed lips on everybody, and his '90s-ness overdone to the point of hilarity)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 (see above- huge guns, anti-social tendencies, cyborgs, swords, etc.)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 30 (I just had to include all of them under one category, lest they over-run the countdown)

-OK, so Cable turned out okay under different writers (though I'm still no major fan), Shatterstar became a fun "fish out of water", and Deadpool became a hilarious goofball. All the rest suck. When Rob left Marvel in 1992, he spat out some horrifyingly bad crap for Image. Unfettered by Marvel editorial (who STILL let him create a horde of lame, one-note designs for the Mutant Liberation Front AND Weapon: P.R.I.M.E. without an attempt to reign him in), Rob started spamming out guys just as badly as he did at Marvel. Shaft was a Liefeld self-insert based off of Speedy (Youngblood was going to be a New Titans series for DC, but there was a falling-out, so Liefeld created his own idea. Bedrock was just a punk kid with The Thing's concept (permanent rock body), Cougar is among the more brazen rip-offs of Wolverine in comic book history (and this guy created FERAL). Riptide & Vogue are standard broken-backed sexist designs from a royal perv. Even Masada, a giantess- which is normally fetish fodder for perverts (ie. me, oh so very much)- was wearing the equivalent of armoured bikini bottoms, and had no personality beyong "inspired by the thoughts of dead Jews". Supreme was a blatant Supermanalogue who was terrible until Alan Moore came along and decided to just make it a straight-up homage series that was a commentary on the history of comics. Hilariously, Liefeld ALSO created "Brigade", who was ANOTHER team of super-powered soldier-types, nearly at the same time as Youngblood, though they eventually failed.

-So bad was Youngblood that it's basically a microcosm of all of Image, and comics in the '90s. Full of sexist art that didn't even properly reflect actual female anatomy (big boobs is one thing, but inch-thick waists?), guys with guns (Chapel), rip-offs disguised as "homages" (Cougar, most of the background art- Liefeld became a NOTORIOUS panel-tracer), stupid characters, an aimless plot, and late, LATE issues, Youngblood's traits extended to almost all of Image, as sexist art, lateness and copied-characters thrived. Totally a piece of scum through-and-through.

-Cable is on this list under certain writers, but some (like Fabian Nicieza) actually made him pretty cool as a "Father to his men" type that regretted trying to make soldiers out of the New Mutants, and was envious of ordinary people, but half the time he's just a gun-toting, gruff loser. Or worse, his "Psionic Staff" era where he looked dumb and had vague powers. He also maxes out the Mysterious portion of Liefeld's problems as a writer, though part of that isn't all his fault. I mean, just TRY telling a non-comic fan about Cable's origins.

-Garrison Kane stands out as well- he's a terrible design and a terrible character. He was thrown in to give Cable some backstory, as part of the failing of the Six-Pack (he lost his arms when Cable bailed on them), but ended up in his horrible red turtleneck thing with dark grey tights. Just a mess overall. His weird powers didn't help matters, and his link to the Weapon X program just served to make him seem MORE lame by comparison. He's farted around the outskirts of X-characters for a long time, recently surfacing as a crazy guy who could copy the powers of other Weapon-Xs, meaning that casual link is likely the only reason the character survived to the recent era. He's finally dead, having been blown up when he went nuts and absorbed a ton of Weapon-X powers.

FERAL
Whose Fault Is it: Rob Liefeld & Fabian Nicieza
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 0
Angsty: 2 (ugly freak and outcast)
Boring: 1 (lacked much of a personality beyond "angry")
Over-Powered (x2): 0
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (just another Wolverine rip-off- a grouchy animalistic type)
Mysterious/Confusing: 0
Fanservice: 1 (apparently an attempt with all her cleavage & boob shots, but she's a REALLY squicky-gross animal)
Dated: 3 (this type of character really comes across as a 1990s thing, especially with the claws)
Goofy (x2): 1 (she has claws... AND gloves?)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 (catgirl who KILLS)
Stereotypical: 1 (kind of an angry Latina thing)
SUCK FACTOR: 19 (a hanging anchor on the otherwise-very-decent X-Force run of Fabian Nicieza)

-(Linking Feral with the other Liefeld characters. Just makes sense)
-God, Feral was an awful character- a Morlock on the run from Masque's boys, she used gloves despite having CLAWS AS HER MAIN POWER, and teamed with Cable for protection and mutual aid. While all the ex-New Mutants and other newbies were undergoing all this character growth on X-Force (Cable & Shatterstar became more than 90s stereotypes, for example), Feral was basically undiluted, raw aggression, doing all sorts of horrible things, and trying to kill nearly every enemy the team made. She sliced open Cannonball during a TRAINING EXCERCISE, nearly killing him, and threatened to do so to other teammates as well. Finally, she joined Reignfire's Mutant Liberation Front by attacking Peter Gyrich (well, she's hardly the first super-hero to try THAT), then got a murder-filled past discovered, and then she joined the new Hellions, ripping Siryn's throat out in the process.

-Finally, she was written out of the books for years (popping up in X-Corporation, likely because some writer forgot/didn't read her history) before getting de-powered on M-Day. She & her sister were given mutant forms by some bad guy and formed a kind of "Team Claws" with Wolverine and others, but she ended up having to fight an enraged Sabretooth, who effortlessly killed her (it was implied her powers weren't there- just her appearance).





4) THE SYMBIOTES (Riot, Phage, Toxin, Hybrid, etc.)
Whose Fault Is it: David Michelinie, Ron Lim & others
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 3 (they were EVERYWHERE in the 1990s)
Angsty: 1 (symbiotes would take them over and make them do evil stuff)
Boring: 3 (once the fifth one came out....)
Over-Powered (x2): 2 ("all Spidey's powers... PLUS MORE!" Each one seemed to get a new ability)
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (seriously needs no explanation)
Mysterious/Confusing: 0
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 3 (this look is iconic '90s in retrospect)
Goofy (x2): 2 (the whole concept just became laughable)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 (pretty much codified the whole "kill EVERYONE" character type that dominated the '90s. Even the heroes were violent psychopaths)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 30 (pretty much what made Spider-Man SUCK in the 1990s)

-The Symbiotes are the culmination of all that was wrong with the '90s, and why David Michelinie really failed as a Spidey writer (the '90s were a BAD time for the guy)- Venom's over-done nature was bad enough, and Carnage made him even worse. But a Venom LIMITED SERIES, with him fighting a frickin' ARMY of Sybmiotes with powers equal to him? That was just retarded, and was the cap-off to the mass dilution of the Symbiote concept, and helped ruin all the characters involved. Of these five losers, only Scream got any kind of a solid push, and was the only one left alive after she went nuts and killed all the others with a "Sonic Knife". The rest of them got merged into Hybrid (*sigh*...), and did some other stuff.

-Toxin is a very recent creation (2004, to be precise), a New York City cop who got attached to Carnage's offspring. He did some stuff, but was mostly lame, and hasn't been seen in a very long time. He's a generic PL 9 Symbiote, a challenge, but not enough to beat Spidey, Venom or Carnage.

-Yaaaaayyy ANOTHER Symbiote. Hybrid's the result of Phage, Riot, Lasher & Agony being killed, and their respective Symbiotes forged together into repairing a crippled Guardsman's back and turning him into a new vigilante. I've never seen him outside of Wikipedia, so I can only guess that he combined all the various Symbiote powers of the others into a more-powerful variant.

3) SAGE (Tessa)
Whose Fault Is it: Chris Claremont
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 3 (Words cannot describe how much this trait applies here... she's probably the single biggest example of being pushed beyond her level in all of comics. I have NEVER met a Sage fan. EVER. Yet she appears in EVERY SINGLE BOOK CLAREMONT WRITES. He is IN LOVE WITH HER.)
Angsty: 1 (lived her life as a spy)
Boring: 2 (despite her spy background, she's just not very interesting. This is why her Over-Pushing is so bad)
Over-Powered (x2): 1 (rarely shown as losing or looking bad)
Xeroxed (x2): 0
Mysterious/Confusing: 2 (big whacky past)
Fanservice: 1 (no more than most comic book women, but Claremont lets his leather fetish out when telling artist how to draw her, I bet)
Dated: 1 (looks like a '90s character, despite coming into her own at the tail end of the decade)
Goofy (x2): 1 (dumb power)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 1 (not a killer, but a nasty spy-chick)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 18 (possibly the most over-pushed character in comic book history. More powerful characters I could understand, but why the frick was SAGE necessary in X-Treme X-Men, Excalibur AND Exiles? Did Claremont really love her THAT MUCH?)

-I'm gonna go right out and say it: Sage is the worst character in all of comic books (this was written before I REALLY thought about it and realized that two groups of characters are worse)

-Okay, so TECHNICALLY, a failed, dated character like Maggot or a rip-off like Marrow is worse. You could theorize that one of the nobody Mutant Liberation Front or Acolytes members are worse characters, since they're such worthless jobbers with dumb powers. The Dark Riders? Sure, Barrage The Guy With No Hands on that team probably sucks more than Sage. But the difference all those characters have from her? NOBODY IS PUSHING THEM. Yet ever since Chris Claremont returned to the X-Books, he has SHOVED this loser character down our throats, taking her from a "more than she seems" Hellfire Club assistant character into a HUGE part of the X-Men, giving her a monster 'secret past' as one of Xavier's first charges, a spy against the Hellfire Club (who of course he didn't warn his actual students about), and a super-competent, ultra-savvy character that's ruled virtually every X-Book the Dominatrix Fetishist has touched since the year 2000.

-What's worst is that nobody ELSE likes her. Much like Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation (who was created by Gene Roddenberry as a self-insert, super-competent wunderkind who proved everyone else wrong while smirking), this character is REALLY disliked by the majority of the fandom, yet the creator loves her SO much that he's willing to bring her to every single book he touches. X-Treme X-Men, Excalibur and finally Exiles; with each cancelled book, there she is, because NO OTHER WRITER WANTS HER. THIS is what makes her stand out over the Dark Rider who can't wipe his own butt, or the Acolyte who can phase through stuff. THEY don't get cases of "In This Issue: BARRAGE!" or "Cover Shot: An angry-looking FOREARM!", but SAGE is everywhere! First thing I do if I ever become a Marvel writer, is have her utterly fail at something, and then explode. And probably lose to Maggot & Marrow. The fact that she's currently in an "And I Must Scream"-type situation in Exiles isn't ENOUGH- she must be devalued entirely before suffering the worst death in comic book history.

2) MARVEL U.K. (Death's Head II, Death Metal, Dark Angel, Death Wreck, Die-Cut, Genetix, Wild Thing, Black Axe, Killpower)
Whose Fault Is it: Various Hacks
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 1 (got a pretty big push at first)
Angsty: 2 (many '90s-type lost souls)
Boring: 0
Over-Powered (x2): 3 (almost all of them were HUGELY powerful, with nearly every available skill- like Black Axe, or unbelievable amounts of power like Dark Angel & Death's Head)
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (some are dime-a-dozen rip-offs of Image characters. A few are rip-offs of Death's Head)
Mysterious/Confusing: 2 (many unexplained origins- it was the '90s)
Fanservice: 2 (lots of cleavage and bikinis)
Dated: 3 (they actually manage to out-Image IMAGE. Everyone's got huge guns, blades, etc. The names are even more iconically "Dark Age" than anyone else has ever pulled off. Names include Death Metal, Die-Cut, Death's Head, Dark Angel and KILLPOWER.)
Goofy (x2): 2 (the goofiness of the names alone...)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 3 (just look at the names I listed above. I swear nearly everyone was a paid assassin or merc)
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 30 (how do you take Image's stuff and somehow make WORSE COPIES OF EVERYTHING??)

-These guys are all from the mostly-unsuccessful Marvel UK imprint, back when comic companies were just throwing EVERYTHING out there to see what would stick. Centred around Death's Head II & someone named "Dark Angel", it was mostly uninspired, derivative 90s-Dork Age drek. Every character was dark as hell, everyone had spiked weapons and/or guns, had some combo of Blood, Death, Kill or Murder in their name (my personal favourite series title in comics history was "Death's Head II & Killpower: BATTLETIDE", which only needed a subtitle of "BLOODSPASM MURDERRAPE" to be the ultimate 90s book of all time).

-OK, so yeah... I had this guy's card, and was fascinated by him. He's a dude in black armour carrying around a giant axe, that is apparently immortal, has been alive for thousands of years, and has a questionable origin. All in all, brutally 90s. I'm not sure what his job or motivation was- he just kind of kicked around, fought some guys, and killed some people. He had his own book, but it didn't last too long. All in all, it went for seven issues, which is even worse than Slapstick got.

-Death's Head II: So with the first Death's Head killed off and replaced with this upgraded, even MORE violent and horrific character, we had Marvel UK off to a "good" start. This skull-faced guy became an honest-to-god hero (though of course still killed people) after assimilating too many personalities, and did a bunch of stuff (most of which I've never read, but it involved teaming up with every single other Marvel UK character, and a bunch of X-Men). He makes the occasional reappearance nowadays, but is just SO absolutely 90s (Skull face! Made of metal! Gun that turns into bladed weaponry! Regeneration! Willing to kill!), that we're unlikely to see him in a major resurgence.

-And yes, Marvel UK is actually MORE 90s than the entire rest of Marvel Comics in the 90s. Death's Head II is only ONE of the horrifically-Iron Age names that was come up with in this time period. Also awful are Death Metal, Die-Cut (what the hell does that even MEAN?), and of course Killpower. It was like someone took Image's worst stuff (Ripclaw, that guy with FOUR cyborg arms on one side of his body, all of Brigade), and then upgraded it to be even MORE extreme and kill-y.

-Death Metal: Death's Head was bad enough, but Death Metal is virtually perverse. The guy made his debut by killing a parallel universe's Dr. Doom, Dr. Octopus AND Kingpin, just to prove how bad-ass and uncontrollable he was. A split-personality robot/cyborg thing like the other Death's Heads, he was from the same generation of 'borgs, but was completely evil and crazy, seeking just to destroy things. Even more '90s than Death's Head II (if such a think was possible). He lasted a much shorter period of time than his fellow Death-bots, and eventually just disappeared after a handful of appearances. He's just... so over-the-top. Look at him. A T-1000 rip-off AND a Death's Head rip-off, he's got split personalities, sharp teeth, and the ability to form any weapon he wants.

-Die-Cut: Ohmygod, ohmygod, just read this guy's origin story: "Years later, Death's Head II is infected with a type of a computer virus known as a purging program, which forces some of his assimilated personalities to emerge. Czorn Yson is one of those personalities. Death's Head II is eventually forced to allow Yson's personality to temporarily take over, whereupon Yson manages to create a new, enhanced body and download his personality into it. Now calling himself Die-Cut, the insane mutant cuts Death's Head into two. He eventually regains his sanity, and sets off on a quest to destroy all cyborgs." READ IT!! I just... I don't even... it's so beautifully, amazingly '90s in the way it forms a microcosm of everything that was wrong with both comics in general and Marvel UK in specific... just brilliant.



Kaine is a top-level foe of both Spider-Man, and fans of good comic book stories.



In Memoriam: Jabroniville, who took his own life after being made to read the bios of so many goddamned clones.

1) THE SPIDER-CLONES (Kaine, Ben Reilly, Spidercide, Countless Others)
Whose Fault Is it: Terry Kavanah (his idea), Bob Harras, Tom DeFalco, J.M. DeMatteis, Joey Cavalieri, Todd Dezago
Categories of Suck:
Over-Pushed (x2): 3 (you COULD NOT READ SPIDEY in the late-90s without hearing about this garbage. Kaine even got the "killed Dr. Octopus" push)
Angsty: 3 ("Cloning Blues" personified. Everyone who was a clone was upset)
Boring: 2 (after the fiftieth one, who cared?)
Over-Powered (x2): 2 (several were "Spidey plus a HUNDRED" and shown with tons of feats to make them look more bad-ass)
Xeroxed (x2): 3 (THEY'RE CLONES. This applies LITERALLY)
Mysterious/Confusing: 2 (so many random guys going around with questionable origins and sources)
Fanservice: 0
Dated: 2 (Kaine & Spidercide are so '90s it hurts, and Ben Reilly's Scarlet Spider outfit is horrifying)
Goofy (x2): 2 (Scarlet Spider outfit, plus the endless Clones got way too silly)
EXTREEEEEEME!: 2
Stereotypical: 0
SUCK FACTOR: 31 (without question, the absolute worst crap that comic books ever churned out)

-Kaine: Kaine is ANOTHER Peter Parker clone, this one a decaying husk that's long-since gone insane, and he obsessively seeks out both Peter & Ben Reilly, killing their enemies and marking them with "The Mark of Kaine". Of course, like most "I KILL super-villains!" guys, he made one big kill (Dr. Octopus), and then rested on his laurels (see Upstarts, The in the X-books). He stuck around during the Clone Saga, but became untouchable when that nearly sank all of Marvel, but showed up during the recent Kraven resurrection arc because now it's OK to at least REFERENCE all the Clones. Kaine's stats are basically modern Peter's with upgrades in strength and toughness, making him a PL 11.5 defensive, PL 11 melee fighter, and slightly more powerful than Peter himself.

-Regarding Spidercide: Yes, they really thought it would be a cool idea to add ANOTHER clone to the mix- at one point we had FOUR SPIDER-MEN running around! And Marvel wonders why this nearly sank the franchise. Spidercide was basically entirely controlled by The Jackal, but then betrayed him, and is currently a frozen goo in some place somewhere, where the writers will probably never want to use him again. He's basically Spidey plus internalized webbing and Shapeshifting, allowing him to grow, shrink, form weapons, be tougher, and Regenerate. He's a much more expensive version of '90s Spider-Man in that regard.

-Ben Reilly by contrast was a good character, but handled in completely the wrong way (who replaces PETER PARKER as lead? Honestly). If handled on a separate level, he's alright and wouldn't belong on that list, but the horrific black hole pull of Suck by these other guys just has to include him, just for the general idiocy that was the Clone Saga.

[Jabroniville]

And that's the Countdown! Coming later today: the list of reasoning why certain hateable types aren't on here.

[BARON]

look how much spider-man made it into the top 10.

[Horsenhero]

This was great! By the time I got to marvel U.K., I was laughing so hard, it actually hurt. Even if I don't agree with some of it....simply comic genius.

[Narsil]

I kind of disagree with the Spider-Clones because of one simple reason;



Spider-Girl. Vindicating an entire saga of suck since 1998.

[Grayson]

Pretty interesting. Like I said before, I give you mad props on undertaking this endeavor. It made for an entertaining read, regardless of my opinion of whether or not the individuals belong on the list. I could never make a list like this. The best I could do is "The characters I hate the most in comic book history" or something like that on pure emotion-based opinion. I have to say that I actually do like Aquaman a lot from what I have read of him in the JLA; whereas, I absolutely loathe Plastic Man. As for Jubilee, I did kinda like seeing her on the list. I hated the character in comics and I hated her in the television program even more, which was pretty awesome otherwise. Of course, I never liked Kitty Pryde or Psylocke and people seemed to go gaga over both of them. I don't think she (Kitty Pryde) was a bad character per se but I really didn't like her very much. The whole Sentry thing just put the finishing touches on why I no longer even read Marvel. It's kinda funny, when I started collecting comics, I only had one DC title, "The Legion of Super Heroes" and several Marvel titles. Now, everything that I read is DC. Anyway, good work!