Best:
5) Justice Society of America (DC)When you've read comics for a long time, it becomes hard to be impressed with an individual story-arc. But I loved "Fatherland," where a group of Nazi supervillains manage to conquer the world. Several years in the future, the surviving heroes must figure out a way to go back in time and stop them. Granted, this storyline owes a lot to "Days of Future Past," but there's enough great stuff--superhero concentration camps! Batman and the Joker executed together! Old, de-powered heroes forced to dress up in their costumes for the entertainment of the Nazi regime!--that I can overlook it.
4) Zatanna (DC)
Any time a writer gets a crack at a character that he or she seems to have a...let's say, infatuation with...the results can be hard to predict. Remember Devin Grayson's run on Nightwing? Or how Marv Wolfman essentially wrote himself in as Donna Troy's husband? Fortunately, unlike those instances, Dini is able to write a compelling female character without his own issues getting in the way.
3) Ex Machina (Wildstorm)When it first came out, this series was one of the best feel-good comics out there. A cross between Superman and The West Wing, the story of Mitchell Hundred, a former superhero (and closet comic book geek) who becomes the mayor of New York City was an interesting treatise on both super powers and political powers, and how both can be used to help society. Gradually, this year especially, things took a darker turn, culminating in a fairly shocking ending that polarized readers. It took a while, but I decided I really liked it. It's not necessarily the ending I wanted, but it's certainly not the ending Hundred wanted either, which makes it all the more powerful.
2) Batman and Robin (DC)
I didn't always understand Grant Morrison's Batman stuff over the past year, but for the most part, I really enjoyed it. Batman and Robin was the best of the bunch, as former Robin Dick Grayson is forced to not only fill in for his presumed dead mentor, but figure out how to train his very own sidekick. Great moments like Dick panicking as he learns the Joker is trapped with Damien--and being worried about the Joker's health, not Damien's--made what could have been simply a lot of padding as everyone waited for Bruce Wayne to come back, into one of the best Batman runs in years.
1) Irredeemable (Boom!)
Traditionally, Mark Waid has been at his best when he examines the fun, aspiration aspects of superheroes, like in Flash and Kingdom Come. So it's an absolute blast to see something like this, which takes the traditional Waid superhero story and turns it on its head.
An ongoing series about a superhero gone bad seems like it should have started to run out of gas by now. And honestly, I'm still not sure it needed a companion series in Incorruptible. Instead, Irredeemable gets better and better, as the Plutonian continues his rampage and his former teammates and adversaries continue to try and figure out how to stop him. It's actually kind of hard not to root for the Plutonian.
Worst:
5) Marvel Zombies 5 (Marvel)For the love of God, let it end. What began as a fun concept that wasn't afraid to slaughter Marvel's sacred cows in the name of a great story, becomes more like a zombie itself with each new installment: Mindless and apparently un-killable, the franchise gets further and further away from Mark Millar's and Robert Kirkman's original idea. Maybe killing off the original zombies like Spider-Man and Iron Man, wasn't such a hot idea. In the very least, the franchise wouldn't have a Z-list character like Machine Man headlining it.
4) Nemesis (Icon)Speaking of Mark Millar, his follow-up to Kick-Ass burst onto the scene with the tag line, "What if Batman was the Joker?" before DC quickly put a stop to that. And to be honest, it wasn't a terrible idea, although it's not like we haven't seen numerous variations of this done before. But the execution. Good God.
The problem with Nemesis is that he isn't "Batman as the Joker." He's the Joker if the Joker were an unimaginative idiot. And while I'm not going to say I didn't get a chuckle at the tasteless gag of Nemesis forcing his adversary's son to impregnate his own sister and "rigging her womb to collapse" if the pregnancy was aborted, I did feel somewhat dirty afterwards.
The problem with Nemesis is that he isn't "Batman as the Joker." He's the Joker if the Joker were an unimaginative idiot. And while I'm not going to say I didn't get a chuckle at the tasteless gag of Nemesis forcing his adversary's son to impregnate his own sister and "rigging her womb to collapse" if the pregnancy was aborted, I did feel somewhat dirty afterwards.
3) Batman: The Widening Gyre (DC)
"No." It's a word that DC should learn to say to Kevin Smith no matter how many comics he sells. From bringing back--and apparently killing off--Silver St. Cloud, despite his unwillingness to let other writers use his characters, to making Batman look like a chump by revealing his identity to a supervillain, this whole thing was a mess from start to finish.
Of course, the series' shining moment was the unneeded and badly-received revelation that Batman peed his pants during one of the best parts in Batman: Year One. Whether you think it's a harmless gag or in profoundly bad taste, it demonstrates a disturbing lack of respect for other writers' work. I really liked Smith's Clerks comics. I wish he'd go back to writing them and leave characters that aren't his alone.
2) Batman: Odyssey (DC)Neil Adams is a fantastic artist, responsible for countless classic Batman, Green Lantern and Green Arrow stories back in the '70s. And I really enjoyed getting his signature on a couple of comics, even if it cost me $10. But finally given the opportunity to write as well as draw, he's produced a Batman story that's practically unreadable.
It's hard to imagine that someone so closely associated with Batman could get the characterization so wrong. In a way, this is on the other end of the spectrum from Frank Miller's mercifully unfinished All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. Where Miller gave us a borderline psychotic Batman in All-Star, in Odyssey, Adams gives us a trapped-in-the-'70s Batman who calls Aquaman "dude." I'm actually not sure I don't like Miller's take more.
1) Justice League: Cry For Justice/Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal (DC)
Even though they have different creative teams, these books are linked by both their common plot elements and general god-awfulness, so they get to share the top spot.
It's hard to believe Cry For Justice comes from James Robinson, the same writer who all but revolutionized modern superhero stories a decade ago with Starman. This is awful, cynical drek, which maybe could have been excused if DC had marketed these series as parodies of '90s superhero comics. And even then, readers would have been left wondering "Why?" I mean, Cry For Justice had virtually the same general idea as Extreme Justice, the poster child for stupid '90s DC books, yet somehow manages to be worse.
What was the lowest point between the two books? Hal Jordan admitting having a superheroine threeway? Hal asking Supergirl--with a straight face--if she's "hero or villain," (Just because you're in a comic book doesn't mean you have to talk like it) making her cry? Killing off Lian, who never really did anything to anyone except be adorable, and using her death as an excuse to go all grim and gritty? No, it would have to be Arsenal mistaking a dead cat for his dead daughter during a drug binge.
I don't entirely blame Rise of Arsenal writer J.T. Krul, since I'm not sure any writer could have spun shit into gold with the plot he was handed. But the end result still speaks for itself. A dead cat. I mean...really.
Look, bad comics happen. Due to the sheer number that are produced each year, every writer, no matter how great, occasionally turns out something so godawful that you start to question why you ever liked said writer in the first place. But when someone seemingly goes out of his way to make bad comics, it's much, much worse. Cry For Justice was horrendous, and Rise of Arsenal didn't need to be made in the first place. There's obviously a place for dark superhero stories, but that doesn't mean you can just shoehorn them everywhere.
Honorable Mention: Neonomicon (Avatar)
It's hard to imagine that someone so closely associated with Batman could get the characterization so wrong. In a way, this is on the other end of the spectrum from Frank Miller's mercifully unfinished All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. Where Miller gave us a borderline psychotic Batman in All-Star, in Odyssey, Adams gives us a trapped-in-the-'70s Batman who calls Aquaman "dude." I'm actually not sure I don't like Miller's take more.
1) Justice League: Cry For Justice/Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal (DC)Even though they have different creative teams, these books are linked by both their common plot elements and general god-awfulness, so they get to share the top spot.
It's hard to believe Cry For Justice comes from James Robinson, the same writer who all but revolutionized modern superhero stories a decade ago with Starman. This is awful, cynical drek, which maybe could have been excused if DC had marketed these series as parodies of '90s superhero comics. And even then, readers would have been left wondering "Why?" I mean, Cry For Justice had virtually the same general idea as Extreme Justice, the poster child for stupid '90s DC books, yet somehow manages to be worse.
What was the lowest point between the two books? Hal Jordan admitting having a superheroine threeway? Hal asking Supergirl--with a straight face--if she's "hero or villain," (Just because you're in a comic book doesn't mean you have to talk like it) making her cry? Killing off Lian, who never really did anything to anyone except be adorable, and using her death as an excuse to go all grim and gritty? No, it would have to be Arsenal mistaking a dead cat for his dead daughter during a drug binge.
I don't entirely blame Rise of Arsenal writer J.T. Krul, since I'm not sure any writer could have spun shit into gold with the plot he was handed. But the end result still speaks for itself. A dead cat. I mean...really.
Look, bad comics happen. Due to the sheer number that are produced each year, every writer, no matter how great, occasionally turns out something so godawful that you start to question why you ever liked said writer in the first place. But when someone seemingly goes out of his way to make bad comics, it's much, much worse. Cry For Justice was horrendous, and Rise of Arsenal didn't need to be made in the first place. There's obviously a place for dark superhero stories, but that doesn't mean you can just shoehorn them everywhere.
Honorable Mention: Neonomicon (Avatar)Okay, I'm breaking my superheroes-only rule, but Jesus Christ, this sucked. Which I might be willing to overlook, if it hadn't been written by Alan Moore.
The first issue is just boring, which isn't something you expect or want from a Moore-written horror comic. The second issue, though, is where the train completely comes off the tracks. There's an extended and highly graphic rape scene that's clearly meant to be unsettling. Instead, it just comes off as badly written porn.
With The Lost Girls and now this, Moore seems to have entered his "pervy period" as an artist. I can certainly understand how a writer of his talent can get tired of superheroes, but I hope he moves past crap like this and on to something better.
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