"And That's Terrible" doesn't even begin to describe these moments. Nor does the amount of Ret Conning, Canon Discontinuity, or Running the Asylum it will take to dilute the bad memories.
Keep in mind:
- Sign your entries.
- One moment per work to a troper, if multiple entries are signed to the same troper the more recent one will be cut.
- Moments only, no "just everything he said," or "This entire comic," or "This entire series" entries.
- No contesting entries. This is subjective, the entry is their opinion.
- No natter. As above, anything contesting an entry will be cut, and anything that's just contributing more can be made its own entry.
- Explain why it's a Dethroning Moment of Suck.
- No Real Life examples, including Executive Meddling. That is just asking for trouble.
- No ALLCAPS, no bold, and no italics unless it's the title of a work. We are not yelling the DMoSs out loud.
Works with their own pages:
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Disney Ducks Comic Universe
- NTroper: The Donald Duck Italian comic story "Paperino e il rigore decisivo", which roughly translates itself to "Donald and the decisive penalty", AKA The Boys of Bummer taken to the most ridiculous extreme possible. To elaborate, a soccer team sponsored by Scrooge is facing a team sponsored by Rockerduck. Winner earns the respective sponsors the rights to business during the next World Cup in Germany and the transmission rights. Donald is playing for Scrooge's team and has to shoot a penalty as everyone else is injured in one way or another, no matter how ridiculous the injury is (headache and calluses, for one). Donald has to shoot, despite telling he's a terrible shooter. The Drill Sergeant Nasty coach tells Donald to stop wussing out and score, and that if they lose, it's Donald's fault. Then, Donald trips and loses the penalty, and what follows is one of the most disgusting Kick the Dog moments Duckburg could offer. Everyone in the team starts blaming Donald and insulting him, telling he should have let someone else shoot, despite everyone cowardly backing out earlier in the game, not letting Donald ride the Team Bus back home, Scrooge calling Donald ingrate and telling him he'll work to repay all the money he'd have earned in Germany, taxists refusing to let Donald in, passerbys saying they want Donald's head. Then, when Donald tries seeking Daisy for comfort, Daisy cusses him out for having the nerve to visit her after his defeat ruined her party and then ditches him for Gladstone again, and for extra measure, Gladstone tells Donald "You're here too? Why don't you go home?". And finally, when Donald makes it home, the Beagle Boys empty Donald's house as compensation for them losing a bet they made on his team. Not even the reveal it was just Donald's daydream and the following daydream of how nice things would go for him if he scores, ending with Donald not being afraid of anything and just going for the shoot is enough to make up for this utterly ridiculous first act.
- Melancholy Utopia: I'm glad I'm not the only one who hates this abomination. When I was little, I always skipped this part in the book it featured in. It's beyond comprehension how everyone can shun somebody for making an honest mistake like that. The fact that it was his daydream says a lot about the poor duck's confidence, too. That aside, I find it unbelievable how everyone blames Donald for losing their bets on him. Whomever you bet on is not his fault and shouldn't be a scapegoat for you throwing your money carelessly away. Especially Scrooge, since he's, y'know, the richest guy in the world. And Donald gets zero sympathy from anyone, not even his nephews. It's so needlessly cruel to my favorite Disney character. I can't stress this enough.
- Big Jimbo: There have been several comics that left a bad taste in my mouth due to Donald and other characters being unfairly tormented, but the one I dislike the most has a different problem. To elaborate, Huey, Dewey and Louie are flying a kite, when a girl duck (actually a disguised Donald Duck) waltzes by with her own kite, and that makes the boys so envious that they start imagining retribution in the form of a stockade, poison, and something else I don't remember. And the ending is Donald donning a different girl disguise and getting the reward for a kite competition, after which the nephews are shown angrily warning their uncle about what will happen if they reveal the truth about "Donna Duck" to everyone. While other stories featuring the Duck characters above suffer from mean-spiritedness, at least they're remotely interesting, but this story was just too boring that it's actually hard to remember outside of the scenes I mentioned. Not helping matters is that the first time Donald Duck pretends to be a girl... just happens, we're not given any reasons for this.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
- CJ Croen 1393: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen isn't even a comic I'm that interested in, but I became aware of the fact that its author, Alan Moore, really doesn't like the Harry Potter franchise and likes to mock it mercilessly. As a fan, I find that understandable, we've done our share of that ourselves, especially with JK Rowling's antics in recent years. But then you find out the way he mocks it. His version of Harry Potter (left unnamed, along with his fellow cast members and school for copyright issues) commits the magical equivalent of a school shooting. And no, it's not a "Does This Remind You of Anything?" type deal, the way it's discussed makes it blatantly obvious that this is what it is. But believe it or not, as tasteless as this is, it isn't the dethroner for me. The dethroner is the brief but still horrifying shot of a character very clearly meant to be Professor McGonagall being tortured in a...disturbingly sexualized manner (complete with one of her breasts being exposed). What the absolute heck, Alan Moore!? A Bloodbath Villain Origin for a villainous version of Harry Potter is one thing (and given the series' many Fandom Specific Plots, honestly nothing new), but are you really so desperate to shock that you're willing to imply that Harry sexually assaulted his elderly teacher!?
- Emperor Oshron: it unfortunately doesn't get much better after that. The comic as a whole is fine (though there's too much sex and nudity for my liking, personally) except for a few moments, the above-mentioned bastardization of the Harry Potter franchise included. The subsequent volume, The Tempest, is also pretty good with a few bad points. What I'll qualify as a Dethroning Moment for the comic is how it ends. About halfway through Tempest, it turns out that Prospero, who founded the very first established League back in the Elizabethan era has been The Man Behind the Man the whole time and sets out unleashing all sorts of fantastical monsters to destroy humanity. When the ostensible heroes of the story realize this, do they try to fight back against in a desperate if possibly in vain attempt to prevent human extinction? Do they try to reason with the now-revealed villain? Do they try to get as many people off of Earth as possible? No. None of the above. They don't even try. And clearly Moore wasn't even trying, either. The "heroes" evacuate Earth and leave billions of innocent people to die for the sake of Moore's "moral" that modern pop culture sucks, bringing allies with them which include such dumbass criminals as the Beagle Boys, for some reason—clearly, these are the kind of people who should survive the apocalypse, rather than even a fraction of ordinary humanity. It's established in an epilogue that Earth subsequently becomes a huge target of virtually every nasty force and power in the universe, including the Daleks and the Romulans. Good. I hope those alien invaders kill Prospero and every single one of his followers in the most excruciatingly painful way possible. Alan, you're a good writer. I've liked virtually everything of yours that I've read, and—though you might not appreciate that as much—all the film adaptations, too, even the infamously bad League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie. But the finale to this comic, and apparently to your entire career in the comics industry, may have been the absolute worst possible direction you could've taken. Maybe not enough to ruin the entire comic, but damn near close. There's also a couple of other rather clear "I don't care anymore" moments where part of this apocalypse has the orangutan from Murders in the Rue Morgue appear with a bunch of other Poe-inspired monsters—obviously, they forgot that the orangutan was already in the story and that it was Mr. Hyde, so its inclusion here makes no goddamn sense—and the entire world seems to have arbitrarily forgotten about all the stuff from our real-world fiction for the sake of the asinine moral that was shoehorned in practically at the last minute. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to try my own hand at this kind of Massive Multiplayer Crossover of public domain fiction with as much else as I could possibly get away with, originally just because I love the concept but now practically as a Fix Fic almost entirely because of this awful ending.
Sonic the Hedgehog comics
- Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics)
- taylorkerekes: Issue 172. Not so much for what Fiona did to Tails, but actually for Sonic being a Kick the Dog target. First, Fiona sets Sonic as her prime example of "not counting on anybody" and when Sonic tries to protest, Scourge takes Sonic into another physical spat along with Fiona telling Sonic to simply "shut up already". Worse: Scourge says that the only thing separating him and Sonic is a bad day. Sonic responds by telling Scourge that "a little bit of selflessness" and "a little bit of decency" were all that separated Sonic from him. Scourge is at a loss for words for a bit, until Fiona abruptly cuts in and kicks Sonic aside claiming that he "had his chance"; she then puts him down by calling him a weakling for "holding back" and that "it's all about survival of the best", and Scourge goes right back to his Jerkassery. What could have been Sonic's chance for giving his enemies a new state of mind abruptly, and epically, ended in a Kick the Dog scenario at its worst for no explainable reason!
- NVPOWER: It gets worse. Later on, it turns out that Sonic did give Scourge a new state of mind...a horrific one. When Scourge went back to his home dimension, he thought a long time about what Sonic told him and came to the conclusion that if he can do everything Sonic can do, than this must mean that he can also do things that Sonic could do if he wanted to but doesn't because he's a hero...like taking over the world, for example. Which Scourge did. This is a form of Fridge Horror that shows what would happen if Sonic went evil and it makes Sonic indirectly responsible for the suffering of millions. The ultimate Kick the Dog moment.
- bludemon: Sonic the Hedgehog issue 223&224 bothers me more than anything. The entire Freedom Fighters vs Geoffrey fight in which the good guys can't even hold a candle to Geoffrey. I know he is a highly skilled spy but we seen people like Sally, Tails, and Bunny land several hits on Sonic the Hedgehog and he is the supposed toughest guy on Mobius. The entire fight was like one big Curb-Stomp Battle where one guy can take on five people who have been fighting since they were kids.
- Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW)
- Awesomekid 42: I really enjoy the IDW Sonic comics, but I think that the majority of readers can agree that Shadow's actions in #19 was one of the lowpoints of the series. Basically, during this part of the story, Eggman unleashed a virus that turns any organic creature into a mindless "Zombot". Sonic, Shadow, and Omega are fighting off the Zombots in a city, Sonic telling Shadow that if he gets infected, he should run off the virus with his speed. Somehow, Shadow takes that as Sonic saying he should run away from fighting entirely, and refuses to listen, insisting that he's immune because he's the Ultimate Life Form...with no real explanation for WHY that would protect him from being infected. (Apparently other Sonic media reveals that Shadow can produce genes to cure diseases, but that sure isn't explained in the IDW comics.) Not only was it a really anti climactic way to take Shadow out of the action for the majority of the arc, but it came as a result of mangling his character, turning the character who was most cautious about the threat of Eggman to the most idiotic character in the series. Thankfully in #31, Shadow realizes how stupid he was acting, or I would have lost all faith in how well the series portrays him in the future.
- Tomodachi: I vastly enjoyed the Metal Virus arc, and the above moment didn't bother me as much. That being said, the ending of the arc did manage to strike a nerve with me. We have seen Eggman is not a bumbling clown from Sonic X, but an actual supervillain who put the world through war for six months, is indirectly responsible for the Diamond Cutters being killed, and caused the Metal Virus disaster that almost took everyone down with it. And what does Sonic does when he returns from his amnesiac journey? He beats Eggman and just lets him go. Just that, he lets him go dissapointed their fight will never end. I felt this was a slap in the face to everything the characters went through the arc, and makes Eggman a huge Karma Houdini. At least Zavok was sent to jail, why not just have an Eggbot taking Eggman's place during this fight? It happened in Heroes, and could have justified Eggman running away from the fight like he has done in the past.
- BlurryDawgo: So, I'd like to make it clear first and foremost that I strongly dislike how Sonic himself is portrayed in the IDW comics. Rather than being the laid-back Nice Guy with a simple philosophy of just doing what he feels is right in the heat of the moment, he's a judgmental hypocrite who tries to push his ideas of morality onto other people, while still insisting that he's freedom-loving and compassionate (I doubt most people who truly are those things would even feel a need to describe themselves that way). His response to Shadow's concerns about Eggman's amnesiac state is to smugly threaten to "take [him] out with Eggman" rather than appeal to Shadow's humanity or "heart" like he did in Sonic Battle, he coldly accuses a visibly traumatized Espio of wanting to "assume the worst about everyone" even though the concern about Eggman regaining his memories and ruining their lives already came true, and he lets Metal Sonic go scot-free despite Tails' concerns and the robot's prior claim to "sift through the world's ashes" to find Eggman, and later chastises Metal for going back to serving Eggman despite his apparent intent to "honor his decision" earlier. It all culminates in his interactions with Surge in issue #50: despite his supposed "compassion" and the fact that his first fight with Blaze still had him try to get through to her, he brushes aside and never tries to clear up Surge's claims that his actions led to her suffering, reduces her explicitly trauma-induced desire to lash out at the world to a "schtick", and arrogantly rubs in to her that he's exulting in how "fun" their battle is. He even proceeds to give a patronizing Character Filibuster to Surge (underneath a light shining from above, no less) on how his principles of mercy come from a desire for everyone to experience freedom in the same way that he does, and when Surge expresses legitimate reasons as to why she wouldn't want his specific brand of freedom, he still continues to brush her aside, showing that he doesn't really care about her, again, despite his alleged "compassion" to everyone. After Surge seemingly falls to her death, Sonic— who, remember, is a freedom-loving hero with a theme song that highlights how he doesn't give much thought to the idea of morality as an objective concept— comments that the "real problem with giving people a choice" is that "you can't stop them from making the wrong ones", a line so antithetical to his core character that I swear it would better fit Eggman's thought process. Rather than reaffirming Sonic's moral principles as just, all the comic does is portray him as a self-conceited jerk who refuses to listen to others or take any responsibility for his decisions, with Surge's antagonist role being used to make her a strawman to make Sonic look better. It was this moment that killed any remaining hope I had of the problems with this Sonic being properly addressed (outside of glorified Lampshade Hanging, which doesn't count), and given that I'm not the only one who's had these issues with his portrayal (or to a lesser extent, concerns about younger readers possibly emulating the wrong lessons about personal responsibility or respect from it), Sonic's line about people making the "wrong" choices even comes off to me as the staff behind the comic lamenting that there are people allowed to criticize it, which I find especially insecure and disdainful.
- DeMac: I never much liked the IDW Sonic comics, but what finally sealed it for me was issue #54. After dozens of issues of crying OCs, unimpressive villains, and Shadow being a moron, we finally get a menacing new villain in Surge. Sonic has sprained his ankle, and Surge is coming after him with the Dynamo Cage, which gives her a huge power boost. So what happens? Surge slips on some of Tails' discarded junk and gets a bucket slammed on her head like something out of Looney Tunes. So now that Starline's dead and Surge is an embarrassing joke, the only halfway-menacing comic-original villain is Mimic, who has no powers other than shapeshifting and owning a knife. How is this comic supposed to be interesting if none of the villains are even remotely a threat?
Others
- Triassicranger: A The Bash Street Kids annual from the late 90s features 'Erbert in a strip on his own getting a conker from his dad (which he mistakes to be a puppet. He is very short sighted, you see). He goes out to play with the conker/puppet until a bully challenges him and smashes 'Erbert's conker. That's not the worst bit however, enraged at this, 'Erbert picks a fight with the bully and the final panel has him covered in rubbish and says "And that teaches you". The bully, who has got away scot-free says "What a weirdo". And that was meant to be funny?
- Daddy Mulk: from the Italian comic book Rat-Man, the moment that Chuck Norris shows up and kills Rat-Man's enemy. No, it's not bad because it's another example of lame Chuck Norris Facts, it's bad because it killed any seriousness and credibility of not only the story, but the entire narrative arc had up to that point. You see, the robot Rat-Man was going to face was presented as a credible threat, and Rat-Man was so terrified of it that, to avoid confrontation (the robot was programmed to kill any superhero he'd meet) he dropped for the first time in the series his costume and decided he no longer was a hero. Sure, it was another example of the Brick Joke (ab)used by author Leo Ortolani (in an earlier story it shows as a gag that, every time Rat-Man picks up a book, he can't read it because Chuck Norris asks him to fight bad guys), but you can't ruin the mood of three issues just for the sake of a lame sight gag. Way to go, Leo.
- Snail Fish: I generally like Invader Zim, but the first two issues soured my opinion on the comics and get worse the more I think about it. Basically Zim comes out of hiding after years, and Dib has gained weight and fused to his chair from the wait. After rigourously getting into shape, and then chasing Zim across space to stop his plans, it's revealed Zim's real plan was to broadcast footage of Dib's gross workout montage to the universe, thoroughly humiliating him. Meaning this entire set-up was just to pile even more pain and humiliation on Dib. Seriously, what the hell? It just baffles me how people hyped this as a brilliant comeback, when it's really just "Lol, let's give Dib a sliver of hope just to torment and mock him even more."
- Stele Resolve: Pretty much the Spawn universe became a jumbled pile of messy retcons and conflicting canon not far into the series, but the absolute worst, most unforgivable retcon was when Todd McFarlane tried to change the identity of Al Simmons' killer. Chapel, the original killer, was not McFarlane's creation, and due to some legal issues or something he was unable to use him in the film adaptation of Spawn; instead, he was replaced by a woman named Jessica Priest. That's no big deal, it's understandable. What isn't is when he decided, for some reason, to retcon it so that Priest was the killer in the comics as well. So in one of the most half-assed retcons of all time, he tried to make it appear that Spawn's memories had been tampered with to make him seek revenge on the wrong person. First off, why? It didn't suit the Malebolgia's purposes to do so, it would have been utterly pointless. Second, and the biggest issue, Chapel admitted to the murder when Spawn confronted him! You can't say that the revenge seeker was mistaken when the killer confesses to his face about the crime!
- biznizz: Garth Ennis' The Pro. Already a horrible book, the absolute moment that made the book irredemable is when the titular character (Read: a single unwed mother who is a hooker with superpowers) blames thinly veiled expies of the Justice League for not helping make life better. As in "Why do I have to suck cocks to feed my son. You should have done something!" In that moment of stupidity (the reader is supposed to side with the stupid hooker here) that says "Personal responsibility? What's that?!", it implies that superheroes are supposed to improve civilization, even if other, more better stories show that that can lead to a slippery slope of power hungry tyranny. I put that book down, walked away and never read anything written by Garth Ennis again. It also has made me dislike Amanda Conner's work... somehow, and ain't that an achievement.
- Murdock 129: This is a recurring problem in Garth Ennis works, not just The Pro, where he'll completely derail whatever story he's building up to create some kind of obnoxious Author Filibuster about how traditional Superheroes are bad, often marching squarely into Insane Troll Logic territory like this. There's plenty of ways to do a non-traditional superhero work, or even a deconstruction without having to resort to lazy Take That! moments. This is made worse by his penchant for making lazy strawmen versions of traditional heroes without real nuance or legitimate criticism beyond effectively shouting that 'Superheroes are bad', this especially comes up in comics like The Pro or The Boys, which act like they're revolutionary when in reality their entire gimmick of having evil and/or immoral superheroes has been a staple of mainstream comics for decades before either came out, and has been done infinitely better and with more nuance and thought by both DC and Marvel dozens of times.
- Baeraad 555: The Boys is frequently almost So Bad, It's Good in its mindnumbing laziness and hypocrisy, but the moment that stands out is when Starlight is told that her backstory is being changed to include being raped and becoming "darker and more sexual" because of it. Starlight snaps that she did in fact get extorted into sex once and it didn't make her darker or more sexual, it just sucked. A fair enough Take That! against a stupid and self-indulgent trope... eeeeeexcept Starlight's sexual exploitation did lead to her becoming an atheist because clearly the world was so dark and vile that no God who'd created it would be worth worshiping, which led to her getting over her religious hangups and starting to have mildly kinky sex with her boyfriend. So guess what, being raped made her darker and more sexual! The fact that Garth Ennis somehow managed to write all that and apparently never once spot the problem with it is the perfect example of just how little effort he put into the story and characters of this comic.
- Coda Fett: I decided to put The Boys down when Super Duper was introduced. I soldiered on through 6 volumes of really outdated stereotypes, bafflingly Anvilicious deconstruction of superheroics, off color jokes, needless gore and the insufferably smug attitude of Butcher and his goons. But I draw the line at the blatant emotional manipulation of using characters with special needs as punchlines or making them suffer to show how bad the bad guy is. There's also a very mean joke in there that only dimwits and special needs people actually want to help people with their powers. Other examples are with Vic the Veep and MM's disabled brother, I get that 2007 or whatever was a different time but that doesn't make it okay to treat the handicapped as props.
- Largo Quagmire: I heard Kick Ass 2 was being made into a movie, and it made me happy to hear Mintz-Plasse wouldn't touch what Mark Millar did to Red Mist with a sterilized lightning rod. Red Mist was kind of off the deep end by the end of the first series anyways, but there is absolutely no reason or way to justify him murdering a host of young children, and then raping Kick-Ass' love interest and murdering her father. It was the moment where Mark Millar basically decided to piss away any chance of salvaging that good nugget of an idea he had in Kick-Ass, all for the sake of stupendously stupid shock value. Millar has absolutely no understanding of Darker and Edgier, how it works, or how it affects an audience, judging from that scene alone.
- 2heartgirl: Oh boy, here's the worst part about the gang rape. It's not Kick-Ass' two panel reaction at the hospital or that no one mentions what happened. No, what truly pisses me off is when Kick-Ass confronted Red Mist over what he did it turns into a petty squabble and is never mentioned again. Even worse after Kick-Ass defeats Red Mist all he mentions is how Red Mist killed his dad. Not how he murdered an entire neighborhood, not how he killed god knows how many children, and especially not how he raped a teenage girl. No, just the You Killed My Father line. No. Mark Millar. No. You cannot have a scene like that happen in your book and disrespect the gravity of the consequences and tragedy of it like that. You could have simply written that they threaten to do it later so that they could make Kick-Ass watch and nothing would have changed. No one should ever write a scene like that in anything without fully understanding the subject matter. I'm done with your work if this is how you think you make a successful Darker and Edgier take on superheroes.
- Animeking 1108: The revelation that Big Daddy's tragic backstory was all a lie, and that he was some nutcase who kidnapped his daughter. There was a reason people preferred his characterization in the movie.
- Crazyrabbits: The Walking Dead, issue #100. The extended assault and death of Glenn at the hands of the arc's Big Bad, Negan, is mindlessly over-the-top, even for a series that has made its name on gore and the shockingly brief deaths of several main characters. The majority of the issue is devoted to a single confrontation where Rick and the rest of the survivors are captured by Negan, a villain who reads like an more sadistic version of The Governor. Negan subsequently beats Glenn's head in over the course of several pages, with Glenn calling out for Maggie and Sophia before his jaw gets smashed off. It feels more like an over-the-top snuff film than a legitimate advancement of the story, and unlike the Governor arc (where the character was built up before he started wantonly killing), Glenn's death serves as nothing more than a cheap stunt to immediately validate the Big Bad (who is prone to spouting off quotes about how he'll rape survivors like Carl).
- Potato Potato: Speaking of Carl, issue 137 is a massive
Dethroning Moment of Suck for him. Specifically, how he falls for Lydia despite only knowing her for the past few issues and agrees to have sex with her after she licks his eye wound. This one action threw away years upon years of build up in regards to his relationship with Sophia and made him come off as a completely callous asshole. Personally, this troper has always been fine with Carl not getting romantically attached to Sophia, but having him do something like this is just inexcusable as it makes it look like he doesn't care about hurting her feelings in the slightest. The fact that all of this happens right after Carl had saved Sophia's life from a couple of bullies just makes it all the more glaring. It's like Kirkman wanted to get people's hopes up for the sole purpose of dashing them right in front of their faces. I can only guess how poorly Carl/Sophia shippers will react upon seeing this.
- Potato Potato: Speaking of Carl, issue 137 is a massive
- Sam Max: Time for a really horrifying and a really sad moment in an already awful and horrifying Comic-Book Adaptation of Mega Man (Classic), which is the Brazilian comic, Novas Aventuras De Megaman. In this version, Roll is a homeless girl that gets kidnapped along with a few others. Oh dear, there's some Unfortunate Implications already... but that's not all! Not too long afterward, we see her mutilated body, with her brain exposed and her head cut off. Roll is my favorite character from the franchise, so for this to be witnessed (the fact that she's a robot from the beginning in most versions notwithstanding), I'm almost speechless, and not in a good way! It would have been worse if not for Dr. Light choosing to save her brain and putting it in a new body. I don't care about the precise details, because I want to forget about them, and while I'm all for a Darker and Edgier adaptation of the Classic Series characters, fine folks like Hitoshi Ariga and Ian Flynn have proven that you can do so without resorting to Gorn and such. How this got approved by Capcom, I'll never know, but I'm glad it never left Brazil.
- Mockery: Oh, Jack of Fables. I can't say I ever loved you. Your title character danced back and forth across the Eight Deadly Words, but I lament that your DMoS happened on the last pages of your series. In the midst of a Killer Finale, even Jack dies. Then the devil comes to claim his soul. As does another, and another, and another. And while they argue, Jack's soul slips away unnoticed. This might be an ending befitting a Lovable Rogue, but given that by this point Jack had become a dragon because of his overwhelming greed, among dozens of other acts of sheer dickishness I think that it would be laughable to call him anything resembling a good person. One might even be inclined to give this a pass owing to its Continuity Nod status. I, for one, condemn it for ignoring that each devil figure had bought out Jack's previous contract. Each one—except the last—had had its share of Jack's soul paid for, and thus had no ground to stand on. Only one had a legal claim to him. But this is never brought up at all. Most infuriating of all is the author's willingness to pat himself on the back and consider it clever.
- yunatwilight: Not to mention ... didn't John Constantine do the exact same thing years earlier, except that when John did it there was an actual point and it really was clever?
- Austin DR: I for one love Chick Tracts but not for the reasons that you're most likely thinking. I love reading them because they're so unbelievably bad. They get their facts wrong, they have a Narm charm, and they're very hard to take seriously. However, the one Chick Tract that I absolutely loath is simply titled "Lisa." "Lisa" is about a married couple that were falling behind in hard times. The father of the titular character, Henry, couldn't find a job anywhere, and he was also an alcoholic. What Henry does next is simply unforgivable. He molests his daughter, who looks about five years old by the way, and then he pimps her out and lets his neighbor have his way with her. Pretty much he's making his daughter into a prostitute so that he could get the money from her customers. Later on, Lisa develops herpes complex, and the doctor tells Henry about it. He says that she told him what her father had done to her, and instead of calling the police to arrest him, he instead tells him that Jesus could forgive him for essentially molesting his daughter if he repents. Henry does so, and his family is back in order. So, let me get this straight. We have a father who raped his own daughter, and shared her with the neighbors getting away with said raping and prostitution by just telling God that he was sorry for it without having to face the consequences. I'm sorry, that's not how real-life works! Sure, you can feel remorse for committing a crime in life, but you still have to pay up for it even if you're remorseful for it. And what are we supposed to learn from this tract? Is it "Hey kids, it's okay for your parents to molest you, as long as they apologize for said sexual abuse." There's also the fact that Lisa still has that STD at the end of the tract, and if she ever marries anyone, she'll just transmit that to her partner, and she may even pass it to her children. Jack Chick, if you want to teach a religious lesson to your audience, please leave pedophilia and sexual abuse out of it! Christ!
- Samadhir: Due to the rather polarizing nature of Garth Ennis' magnum opus Preacher, most readers seem to have at least one moment or issue in it that they consider the dethroning one. For me, its the spin-off story Tall in the Saddle, about Custer and Tulip's early days as carjackers, and their attempt to stop a ring of horse thieves from kidnapping young horses and selling their meat to restaurants in Europe. The story isn't interesting, tells us nothing new or meaningful about the characters, and towards the end simply feels like an excuse for Ennis to indulge in his taste for shock value, with 2 consecutive pages devoted to images of horses being graphically slaughtered and cut up, a guy's eyeball popping out of his head after a kick to the jaw and someone's head bursting apart when being kicked by a horse. It ends with Custer taking the leader of the ring, a ridiculously over-the-top stereotypical Frenchman named Napoleon Vichy, out into the desert and hanging him from a tree, where we get a loving close-up of him pissing and shitting himself after having asphyxiated.
- The Chain Man: Mortadelo y Filemón’s Crossover special “¡Bajo el bramido del trueno!" is basically this for pretty much the entire fandom. Aside from the usual current issues like the jokes being forced, predictable, and repetitive beyond the Running Gag status, there's the whole "crossover" part, with El Capitán Trueno if the title didn't make it obvious, for two reasons: The first is the Nonstandard Character Design of the Trueno characters caused because, instead of being drawn in Ibañez's own style, they were randomly copy-pasted from Trueno albums. The results are not pretty and often look bizarre, with characters that are dancing being passed as pursuiters and others "wonders" like that. Furthermore, there are instances where Ibañez does keep the original images aside but he draws the hands or the face, which looks somewhere between Off-Model and terrifying, depending of the image. The second reason is that, for all this is "passed" as a homage to Trueno for its 50 anniversary, it's not much of an homage as an Humiliation Conga for Trueno himself, as he gets repeatedly hit, transmutated, and put in various ridiculous situations, the worst part perhaps being Mortadelo himself NTRing him by hooking with his girlfriend Sigurd for no reason. All in all, the whole thing goes from merely boring to outright painful to read.
- Animeking 1108: The final issue to Y: The Last Man was a good finale, but there was one annoyance that kept it from being perfect. When Yorick went to visit Dr. Mann and Rose, he learns that Dr. Mann died off-page. What? We got to see 355 and Ampersand's deaths, and they were massive Tear Jerker moments. Why? Because they were helping Yorick on his journey since practically the beginning. It's really insulting that Dr. Mann's death scene wasn't even shown because she was one of the main characters too.
- Why Not Now: Seriously? No one's even bothered to mention the brief Wizard comic issue from 2002 that actually depicts Goku beating Superman? Not that this troper is against the idea of Superman losing to Goku, he probably would, but that he didn't even have to go Super Saiyan or use some of his best techniques solely for the purpose of handing Superman his ass on a silver platter is just the ultimate crowning moment of Epic Fail and an insult worthy of the DEATH BATTLE! Goku vs. Superman DMOS to the respective fans for both the DC and Dragon Ball Z franchises.
- hydrix: Suske en Wiske album #318 De Suikerslaven. I do like Peter Van Gucht and Luc Morjeau their run on the series. The album before this one (Het Bizarre Blok) is one of the best in the series and the one after it (Suske De Rat) is pretty good, but this particular album is one of the worst in the series. Ignoring the fact that it is trying to teach an aesop which is overused beyond belief, nothing about it is family friendly whatsoever. It concerns Suske, who is not addicted to candy at all, and Wiske, who is the very opposite, eating a lollipop from an anthropomorphic candy automate and turning into candy themselves. They are then flying on a zeppelin to a world of candy where they are forced to work in a candy factory for the rest of their lives in slavery under the rule of a king. To enforce the idea that they are forced to work there they show what will happen if you will not obey by picking up one kid that turned into candy, putting him in a hot bowl and dissolving him to death. Then later on they talk to a guy and he says that once the country was fantastic until a sugar spider came in, invaded the land and demanded so much candy that the inhabitants were forced to work day and night to pay the toll. The king had to rely on a wizard that told them how to produce more candy and one of the idea was to turn real world children into that race so that there would be a bigger production. Then later on the king turns against his own wizard to help the children after it was revealed that the wizard sold candy to the Christmas man after which the wizard reveals that he was the reason for the whole problem the whole time. The king then fights against him, wins and after the enslaved ones were turned back into real children by a tooth fairy and brought back in their homes they live happy ever after.
I have a few problems with this. First, why in hell would you want to show a child getting killed in a comic book primarily aimed at children? Secondly, how in the fucking world am I supposed to relate to a king that not only accepts that children get enslaved, but even killed to preserve that form of slavery? Lastly, was it really necessary to bring out the corruption of the wizard in order for the king to rebel against him when, you know, the wizard who put children into slavery?! That being said though, it is not irredeemably awful, since it at least cracked up a few decent jokes and is definitely better than the actual worst of the series.- Madison14: Mine is De Snorrende Snor (The Whirring Mustache). At first it was shaping up to be a classic. The Dingesen are wonderfully creepy, the desert setting is one of my favorites for comic books, and it ends with the nations of the world united against the Dingesen. But the final plot twist utterly ruins everything that came before. It turns out Professor Barabas orchestrated the whole thing! The Dingesen's final plan isn't taking over the world, but forming the message "LOVE EACH OTHER" in the sky to teach the countries a lesson about world peace! And not only does Barabas suffer no consequences for wasting vast amounts of time, money, and resources and likely causing a global panic, he wins the Nobel Prize for sharing this platitude with the world! Gah! Suske en Wiske's preachiness never bothered me in general, but I draw the line when a major character, a potentially great villain, and let's not forget the entire plot are destroyed for the sake of an oversimplified moral.
- tsstevens One for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series in the Anywhere But Here storyline. We get a flashback to where Kennedy is upset with how Willow is acting and realizes what's eating her girlfriend is not her, but Tara's murder. In the motion comics this line is added.You known when I said I was open to a threesome I had something more fun in mind.
- Fucksake Kennedy, this shit is why everyone hates you.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW):
- Koopa Kid 17: The My Little Pony comics are somewhat faithful to the cartoons, even if both tend to ruin heartwarming endings with Mood Whiplash. "Don't You Forget About Us" (Issue 38 to 39) has the worst of such moments, focusing on Snips and Snails who become lost in the woods with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. The two colts save Sweetie Belle from being mauled by a bear and they help pull Apple Bloom and Diamond Tiara to safety when they're about to fall off a cliff. Later on, they bemoan their roles as the dunces of Ponyville and confess that they have feelings, too. I'm not afraid to admit that Snips and Snails deserve more respect in the fandom and the comic did a great job addressing it. But what happens in the end after the foals are rescued? Snails tells the Cutie Mark Crusaders that he and Snips won't hang out with them and the Crusaders think they deserve their cutie marks just for surviving with the two colts. Character development down the drain. If they can make Diamond Tiara be friends with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, why not Snips and Snails? The colts proved to the fillies that they were not so different but Status Quo Is God stepped in, and the ending felt like a punch in the gut. What a waste.
- DoctorWTF: In issue 40, Celestia has Twilight take care of baby Spike "just when I'm too busy". Cut to Twilight desperately trying to juggle school and child care like so many teenage mothers, except that she wasn't even a teenager at the time (this began during her first year at magic school). And when Twilight inevitably reaches her breaking point, it's revealed that baby Spike was meant to be her first friend. Evidently, not only does Celestia fail to see why pushing that level of responsibility on someone Twilight's age is not okay, she also thinks that taking care of a baby is an acceptable substitute for socializing with others one's own age. The fandom has often criticized Celestia's Trickster Mentor shenanigans over the course of the show, but this is downright painfully stupid. If this is Celestia's idea of a friendship lesson, it's no wonder Twilight's social skills are still almost nonexistent at the start of the show.
- Godzillawolf: In "Chaos Theory" (#48-50), the fact that the worfing of the Elements is done in such a way as to render the Arc's entire moral a Broken Aesop. The story talks so much about how Accord's absolute order is just as bad as Discord's absolute chaos was, and how harmony isn't absolute order, but rather a mix of chaos and order. In fact, it's this very poin' that makes Accord willingly transform back into Discord. And yet the justification for the Elements not working on Accord is he's "absolute order", implying that absolute order is harmony as far as the Elements are concerned.
- Big Jimbo: While I once adored Mickey Mouse comics, I've lost interest because of the Sadist Show humor often present in them. One of the aspects I dislike the most is Minnie being a Jerkass in some stories, and the worst offender is the one where Mickey wants to play chess, but gets constantly interrupted. Well, in one part of the comic, Mickey calls Minnie on the phone. Minnie just yells at him for calling her and insults him, just because Mickey had gone to a bear's cave and Minnie heard the bear growling and thought it was him. And when he attempts to explain himself, she doesn't believe him and shouts "FIND A BETTER EXCUSE NEXT TIME!" and hangs up on him, ending the conversation right then and there. Did Minnie really have to be so much of a Jerkass, let alone have her entire role in this particular story amount to that? To make matters worse, the story seems to imply that Minnie was right to cuss Mickey out like that. I've never looked at this part since I first read that story, and jokes like these are part of the reason I don't enjoy Disney comics as much as I did in my childhood.
- Izzy Uneasy: X Dragoon, fifteen episode. Lance, the weakest dragon, finally awakens his power and gets promoted. He's so happy, he kisses his master's cheek... and gets punched for it. "Want me to demote you again?" What the hell was that? It wasn't funny in any way, it just portrays Master Fei as a cranky Jerkass.
- Homor: Image Comics' Supreme started out as a goofy but fun and engaging '90s Anti-Hero book about a violent and egotistical Superman-expy who had good intentions but often went too far and acted like a Knight Templar. When Alan Moore took over the book, he retooled it into a loving and fun tribute to the history and mythos Superman and classic comics in general. Moore's version was a great read and considered by many to be the definitive version of the character. Moore never got to write the ending he wanted to, but the ending we got was good enough and ended with Supreme and his love interest, Diana, finally hooking up. When people heard Image was producing Moore's last finished script and continuing the character, people were excited. Unfortunately, the trouble started when Erik Larson announced he wanted to mix Liefeld's original Supreme with Moore's version. A concept most of the fandom was ambivalent to at best, but a talented writer could make work. What followed was a four-issue "Fuck You" to fans of Moore's version as everything about it was defiled, destroyed, ruined and all the characters were completely derailed. The plot is that a horribly Flanderized version of Liefeld's Supreme escaped and started brutally murdering and beating people for no good reason other than to be a jerk as everyone else meanders around with nothing meaningful to do. Fans were initially cautiously optimistic, but as Larson's run continued on people started to realize what was happening and sales tanked immediately, leading the book to end abruptly without any resolution — not that anyone even cared. Not only did it actively destroy everything the fans loved about Moore's vision, but it even ruined the original Supreme too but trying him into a massively OOC racist idiot and completely missing the point of his Knight Templar personality, as well as ignoring all the character development he went through by the end of the original run. The backlash was so bad that Larson had the entire creative team taken off the book (including himself) and replaced with a new team that discarded everything Larson did expect for the Supremacy being destroyed (as a plot point to explain why reality was so fractured, but also acknowledging that this was only one version of the Supremacy) and told a totally different story that didn't bother continuing on any of the plot arcs of Larson's run. It was so horribly disappointing considering how excited fans were for it versus how much everyone ended up hating it.
- Freezer: Mantra (vol. 1) #18-19: It looked like the series was setting up a new status quo, with Lukaz regaining his own body and Eden repossessing hers and becoming Mantra herself, and the two becoming lovers/partners. But then came maybe the most blatant chain-yanking Reset Button I've ever seen, before or since: Lukaz and Eden conceive a child, pregnancy proceeds at ludicrous speed, child turns out to be possessed by Necromantra, Eden is mortally wounded in the fight and Lukaz has to re-merge to save her life. The comic only lasted five more issues after that, which made hitting the Reset Button, rather than a new direction, even stranger. But no one ever accused the Ultraverse of good storytelling choices.
- Mighty Mewtron: I enjoy the Futurama comics, though generally not as much as the show, partially due to characterization issues. However, one comic made me angrier than almost anything else in the show: Issue #41, "Soldier Boys." The main plot, with Dwight and Cubert becoming cadets under Zapp with a B-plot of Bender going on a pranking spree with his robot fraternity, is just okay. It's the characterization of Leela that infuriates me. Zapp doesn't remember who she is, which causes Leela to obsess over it, with the added detail that she's been counting down the days since their sole sexual encounter. She spends the night ranting to Fry about it (never mind how Fry and Leela had a ton of Ship Tease by this point in the show, and even earlier issues in the comics), and goes off to rescue him, only to get captured and tied up by Nixon. Zapp arrives and saves her, and the true dethroning moment happens when Leela kisses him to snap him out of his brainwashing. When it was revealed Nixon had brainwashed Zapp and the boys to join his ranks, I was hoping they'd also reveal Leela had been brainwashed too, because this is all completely antithetical to her usual feelings toward Zapp. Unfortunately no such thing happens. They just decided to write her as obsessed with Zapp instead of finding him annoying, and added more fuel to the fire by having the usually incompetent Zapp save the usually hypercompetent Leela. The issue also seems to downplay Zapp's buffoonery a bit, possibly so it'll be less glaring that Leela is suddenly into him. This unfortunately seems to be a trend for this writer (who also wrote an episode that wrote Leela as uncomfortably fixated on Zapp, complete with shoehorned fanservice), but nowhere is it as glaring and gratuitous as this comic.
