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Dethroning Moment / Marvel Comics

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If there are any moments in Marvel Comics that deserve to be wiped from existence by The One Above All, these moments would qualify BIG time.

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.

    open/close all folders 

    Spider-Man 
Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider can... but he can't do anything about these moments.
  • LLSmoothJ: Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse! Enter One Moment in Time, in which the reason why Spider-Man missed his wedding was revealed. A fat thug fell on him. Seriously, Quesada? You couldn't think of a better reason why? Talk about anti-climatic!
    • A Black Raptor: While that does suck, my DMOS for OMIT comes from what happens with Eddie the fat thug so Quesada can make MJ break up with Peter: He beats the shit out of her. Ok, to a lot of people, that's not that bad and it would excuse someone to break up, but it's the fact that it happened to Mary Jane. MJ is probably my favorite character in Spider-Man besides Peter himself, and one of the things I love about her is that she doesn't just sit around or run away, she's a fighter. So much so, it's canon that she owns, and knows how to use, a gun, that she has been able to fight off thugs much tougher than this 'Eddie' (she beat the shit out of Chameleon for god's sake, and he's a much more competent villain than the villainous Fixer Sue Quesada made), and that she has received combat training from Captain America himself. MJ is, for all intents and purposes, a Badass Normal; Eddie is, for all intents and purposes, a fat guy. MJ not only got beat up by him, but was so traumatized by it she blamed Peter. While OMIT is a character assassination for MJ as a whole, this is for me the moment the bullet hit.
  • Kira Blaize: Another one for Spider-Man came around 1999. Venom had been suffering from Villain Decay for a while now, but the absolutely lowest moment came when Spider-Man fought him off with a cigarette lighter. Peter flicked the lighter in his face and the symbiote was so desperate to get away that it was leaving Brock behind.
  • A Black Raptor: While Spider-Island is otherwise an awesome book, one aspect still stings: Carlie Cooper's still ever present Sueness. But, it doesn't get to a suckish level until she breaks up with Peter because he didn't tell her he was Spider-Man. I've said this elsewhere, I've mentioned it on other pages, but Carlie Cooper gets angry at Peter because she was left out of his secret. I'm actually happy they broke up, but it's her reasoning that makes the moment suck. Apparently, she (and as the narrative shows, the writer also) thinks that she had a right to know. Why? They've only known each other for barely a year if that In-Universe (and only a handful of years out of universe), only been dating for a month at most in Universe (again, only a handful out of universe), not only has he had no chance to tell her, he's had no reason to do so. She hasn't been kidnapped or put in danger by the secret, she hasn't suffered at all because of him being Spider-Man, he had no obligation to tell her. Did she expect him to explain he's Spider-Man the first time they met, or on a date? If she reacted like this after finding out by herself, she'd probably react the same way if he told her after they started dating. She goes on to make a deal about him covering up his secret identity, and accuse him of using his identity as Peter as nothing more than a mask, but in the end the fact that she seems to have expected such knowledge since day 1 makes her look like an self-entitled bitch. I didn't like her before, in fact I quite despised her, but this is the moment that made me consider her the worst character ever written into the books.
  • Dr.XXX: Since no one has said it yet, I bring you the prequel to OMIT, One More Day itself. Peter Parker and Mary Jane make a deal with Mephisto to erase their marriage from history just to bring Aunt May back to life. Let's put aside the Out of Character moments for both of them. This story was not some great tragedy worthy of Shakespeare; it is about Peter not wanting to take responsibly for Aunt May's death when he revealed his secret identity on live television. He pretty much has Mephisto hit the reset button and clean up his mess It's also mind-boggling how making a Deal with the Devil was the only solution when mutants like Elixir, the most powerful healer on Earth, and Doctor Strange, a character once derided for being a walking Deus ex machina, can't heal a simple bullet wound.

    X-Men 
  • Crazyrabbits: Ultimate Requiem: X-Men: After the events of the Ultimatum series, the surviving X-Men bury their fallen comrades and destroy the X-Mansion using Iceman's power. So... how do you think Marvel memorialized the deaths of half the X-Men? Did they do it respectfully? Did they have the mutants' families show up to grieve with them? Did they openly cry and console each other after the weight of what happened finally hit them? (If you thought so, you're not Jeph Loeb.) Simple: have Sabretooth, Mystique and a minor mutant named Assemble show up, claiming to pay their respects, then have Jean Grey go crazy and start a fight right next to the corpses, then have Captain America show up and decapitate Assemble while explaining that he also came to pay his respects - all on the very next page. That's how Ultimate X-Men ends: not with a bang (or anything resembling closure), but with a whimper. It doesn't even read like a finale, but as another issue of the series.
  • ABlackRaptor: I'll never understand the praise Jason Aaron gets or why his Wolverine and the X-Men (Marvel Comics) book is on so many recommendations lists, but the moment that sold me that this is simply the worst title being published is one of the earlier stories, about Kitty being impregnated. At the time, I assumed it was going to be some angsty story about her being pregnant with Colossus' kid now that the two were broken up, and expected to have a miscarriage for angst, but when I later actually got around to reading it, it was far, far worse than I imagined. Instead, Kitty has been impregnated against her will by the Brood, who planted eggs in her uterus so they can hatch and kill her. OK, the Brood are usually really squicky villains, but for fuck sake, this was beyond revolting. As well as being beyond disgusting, the idea they seem to miss is that intentionally impregnating a woman against her will is essentially rape, and this is the "fun" book that gets all the praise for how light-hearted it is! Now, I usually hate the phrase "raped my childhood", but given how Kitty was one of my all-time favorite X-Men from when I first began following the franchise years ago, this time the phrase actually has some credence, because he literally had a childhood favorite character raped. The rest of the run is very questionable with how it handles the female characters, but this was the first moment that made me realize that Jason Aaron really should not ever write any female characters, or anything for that matter.
  • Ambaryerno: Overall, Wolverines was a great series. Sharp, Junk, and Fantomelle were all interesting and well-realized characters, Deadpool's appearance in issue 13 was hilariously meta, and we get to see X-23 begin to step up as a true hero; helping Fantomelle because it was the right thing to do, taking charge when Daken and Blade just wanted to kill Siphon, and best of all calling Mystique out on her shit and setting up what should have been an epic cat-and-mouse game between Marvel's most notorious Chronic Backstabber, and one of its top assassins. But then comes the final issue, and not only does everyone (including X, who just three or so issues earlier established she knew better) job to Mystique in the exactly stupidest way possible ("We can't see the shapeshifter! Everyone split up!"), but the entire thing turns into a colossal "Shaggy Dog" Story when it turns out that Mystique herself was being manipulated by Destiny all along into trying to resurrect Logan, because Irene foresaw the universe would be destroyed without him. And Mystique decides "Fuck you, universe," and storms off because she hates Logan. Ultimately, it's a series in which absolutely nothing that happens mattered: None of the characters created for it by Soule have appeared outside of it, the fact that X, Daken, Sabretooth, and Deathstrike all lost their Healing Factors in the final issue hasn't been so much as mentioned in any other book, and not one of its plot points has had an effect on anything in the wider Marvel universe.
  • DevNameless: I had to debate whether this specific example or Gwen Stacy sleeping with Norman Osborn was the DMOS I wanted to submit but this one really pisses me off more than anything else in Marvel's long history. Three words: "Cyclops is Hitler". Everything about the push to have the Inhumans replace the X-Men was iffy as is, due to the reality subtext of Ike Perlmutter dooming a very popular series for the sake of movie rights, but this assertion was the absolute nadir of how stupid this era of the X-Men could get. Because calling my favorite X-Men hero the epitome of evil because he didn't want all mutants to die to the Terrigen Mists and changed a cloud of it to not kill Mutants (not to mention it was just Emma's projection of Scott, so he wasn't involved anyways) really sells to me that the Inhumans are worthy of taking the reigns from the X-Men.
  • Freezer: X-Men Green took many of the flaws of the overall Krakoa arc (The mutant's seeming apathy over what's happening to the rest of the planet, only caring about what crimes mutants commit when it makes them look bad, looking the other way when said criminals escape justice), combines them with the character assassination of fan fave minor character Nature Girl (basically turning her into Mutant Poison Ivy) and wrapping it all in some horrible pacing and questionable story choices (Why should the reader care about these unrepentant eco-terrorists when the X-Men themselves clearly don't). Linkara gives his take on the first arc here.

    Runaways 
  • Animeking 1108: My annoyance was that volume 2 ended on a Cliffhanger where Iron Man finds their lair. And yet in the next issue, they're having dinner with the Kingpin. What the hell happened? Did Vaughan and Alphona forget to tell Joss Whedon in their cliff notes about the encounter?

    Inter-Company Crossovers 
  • Mike W: At first, Original Sin sounded interesting, even when we found out Nick Fury is now looking as old as he should. But then they lost it by revealing that Dum Dum Dugan has been dead since 1966 and Fury has been using LMD's to keep his friend around. Leaving out how advanced they'd have to be back in the '60's, we've seen numerous times of Dugan badly hurt, checked out and more yet no hint of him being a robot. Not to mention surely the Skrulls would have found out when they abducted Dugan for their invasion. Just a stupid retcon that doesn't hold up and ruins the character totally, even as Marvel tries to play with "robot as a man" bit now.
  • Freezer: Avengers vs. X-Men #1 sets up the crossover's Let's You and Him Fight Excuse Plot thusly: Tony Stark detects the Phoenix Force on its way to Earth. He and Captain America brief a gathering of Avengers heavy hitters and assorted others as to what kind of threat the Phoenix poses. Stark gets this utterly wrong, describing the Phoenix as a parasite who will latch on to a biological host and immediately lay waste to the planet it's on. Hank McCoy (The Beast: Former X-Man and teammate of Jean Grey's, who would know about the Phoenix far better than Tony) and Brian Braddock (Captain Britain: as leader of Excalibur was a teammate of Rachel Grey [nee Summers], the last known human Phoenix host, who did none of the things Stark described during her years as host) are present. Neither of them correct Tony's gross error. Nor does Wolverine, who is the only X-Man they talk to before flying out to Utopia and demanding they turn over Hope Summers - whom everyone is convinced the Phoenix is homing in on. None of the other X-Men - several of whom were teammates of Jean's, Rachel's or both - try and tell the Avengers they've got it wrong. Scads of characters ignoring canon and their own personal histories just to make the plot happen.

    Other 
  • SteleResolve: I really love Garth Ennis' Punisher comics, particularly the MAX ones. But in the MAX volume Barracuda, Ennis crossed the uncrossable line. The Punisher knowingly, willingly and indisputably killed innocent people who were in the way. The gist of the comic was that a group of CEOs were going to stage a massive power outage across an entire state and somehow use it to make a hell of a lot of money (I don't recall the exact explanation). The Punisher heard about it and decided to get involved—as he said, white collar crime wasn't really his thing, but if it went down people would die, so he was going to put a stop to it. It was a pretty good story until the very end. After a vicious beating from a massive brute of a contract killer, being left in shark infested water and swallowing a hefty amount of seawater while clinging to the boat, Castle was in no position to storm the executives' boat and take them down the hard way. So he blows it up, in shark filled waters, killing everyone: the executives, their friends, girlfriends and wives, investors, even the boats' crew. There is no way that the entire boat crew were part of the plan! It's not much different from gunning down hostages because the criminals are standing behind them, and it was a terrible moment for The Punisher.
  • Zeloran: The Transformers comic published by Marvel was not particularly good, but for me the lowest and most stupid moment of the whole run was this: The Decepticons (Megatron and the Combaticons) and the Autobots (Optimus Prime and the Protectobots) engaged in a battle inside a videogame for the possession of some sort of "super fuel". The catch is that if Prime or Megatron were destroyed in the game, they would be also destroyed in real life. The Protectobots managed to beat the Combaticons and in the end also Megatron. But Megatron, by using a cheat code, managed to resurrect inside the game, shot Prime from behind, was about to finish him, only for Prime to react and send Megatron to his virtual death again. However, Prime declared himself to be the loser of the game. Why? Because in beating Megatron he unwillingly let some of the residents of the virtual game world die. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Prime committed suicide, leaving the Autobots without a leader and allowing the Decepticons to get their hands on a very rare and powerful fuel source thus endangering the Autobots and humanity as well, basically because he killed some video game characters.
  • Salkafar: I wasn't exactly a cheering fan of Matt Fraction's run on Iron Man, but only when I read #503, I called my dealer and cancelled my subscription (A big deal for me, a dyed-in-the-wool Iron Fan). The story involved Tony Stark - Iron Man - who, a few issues before, had been 'rebooted' and equipped with a 'repulsor generator' embedded in his chest; the generator provided his - especially engineered - neurobiology with far more power than before, which meant his brainpower received a significant boost - being held to ransom by Doctor Octopus. Octavius had an old grudge against Tony Stark - ever since a flashback two issues before - and now wanted to humiliate him by making him admit he could not fix his, Octopus', failing biology. Octavius used a nuclear bomb as a threat. Now... considering everything - Octavius' diminished state and Tony's improved mental status, as well as an armor which is now a part of him and emerges upon mental command - almost any outcome was feasible rather than the one that occurred: Tony admitting he was a failure and begging Octopus not to detonate the bomb. But even that was not the nadir. That consisted of... Tony Stark... kneeling and kissing doctor Octopus' tentacle and calling him 'master'... After that, I grabbed the phone and cut my losses.
  • InTheGallbladder Loki: Agent of Asgard, issue 12, versus Thor from Thor2014. Ignore for a moment the title and premise, and focus instead on the eighth deadly sin: All-caps, white Impact font with a black border in a printed publication. It looks like an intern's last-minute prank on the company. All parties behind it, from the concept on down, should have been sacked for unprofessionality.
    • DaltimusPrime: Not to mention that the whole "Ethics in X" meme is a reference to a certain internet movement/debate that is best left unnamed. Not only do I, and many others, hate overt politics in my comics, but it also dates the comic horribly, like any meme. Even worse, with how volatile the whole situation is, it almost seems that the writers were simply begging for controversy by including the line. Ditto for the more recent "[unsolicited opinons about Israel?]" fiasco from the same comic.
  • SAMAS: Captain America: Steve Rogers begins on a pretty bad note, with the revelation that Captain America, the Badass Normal Big Good of the Marvel Universe, the Sentinel of Liberty, the man whose very first appearance was him socking Adolf Hitler in the jaw, has been a Deep Cover Agent of Hydra all along. Yes, they turned one of the universe's most stalwart heroes into the very thing that he was literally created to fight against (in or out of universe). While it will be schadenfreudingly fun to see how this inevitably gets rolled back (personally, I'm hoping this bullshit goes straight to Canon Discontinuity), the idea that someone (hell, some people) in Marvel let this idea go all the way to print is sickening.
    • IlyaRysenkov: I support this. Sickening is not even beging to describe this. It's just like to tell a Christian that Jesus Christ worked for the devil all the time! To turn such idealistic though flawed paragon of heroism and the staunchest foe of Nazi and HYDRA in that HYDRA's willing servant (which was retconned (willling, that is), but see behind), is abominable! Especially if you learn that he was creted at the beginning of the World War II!
    • Godzillawolf: Marvel would later reveal that Captain America had his mind altered by Red Skull using the Cosmic Cube... which goes against everything Marvel claimed about the arc, namely that Cap was Not Brainwashed. This also didn't go over well with many (myself included), as it comes off as Marvel lying through their teeth to fans for an entire month just to get the audience angry in a shameless, cruel publicity stunt. Some are furious simply because in and of itself, the twist could have worked, but Marvel's shameless publicity stunt and stroking the flames to the point their writers got death threats was what ruined it.
  • Rebu: Mark Millar infamously had Ultimate Captain America make a mid-battle crack about France being Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys. That's bad enough, but that's just prejudice. Later on, he's captured by French SHIELD agents and manacled. The two soldiers escorting him take issue with his opinion of their nation and their stereotypical reputation. Turns out the whole thing is part of his plan; he slips the cuffs, disarms the two armed soldiers, subdues their boss, and after one of the soldiers tries to surrender, tosses two of them through a door. A door with glass windows which mysteriously vanish. Of course, surrendering is a perfectly sensible course of action when you're a normal guy who is facing the greatest soldier in human history, no matter what country you're from.
  • Kodasboy: I'm honestly gobsmacked that not a single entry has discussed the Marville. Now I must admit, most of it to me falls into So Bad, It's Good, especially the fact that Spike Lee is the freakin' Kingpin, and how a time machine made out of PlayStation consoles is part of the central plot line . Hell, the entire scene where a man stops a protest just to be a snob and gets beaned by a meteorite would've been gold. Sadly, in a world full of Narm and being based around a rather obvious Author Tract, there's not that much to be really...proud of for Marvel Comics. Though the moment Iron Man literally smashes two street thieves heads together, and murders another comes off as really odd. And after killing them, he almost outright says the "N" Word in reference to all the people he forces into labor in Mexico, only to be corrected by Black Panther. E-Excuse me? Sooo, Tony Stark just went on a minor killing spree for a small crime, was about to go on to insult an entire race of people who've been both forced into slave labor and segregated from society when they got their freedom, and it was ALL PLAYED FOR LAUGHS?! How did this even get past the editing process?! This would've shot the age rating up higher than it already was and it was...PG?! Not only is this Canon Defilement, but a straight up smack to my face. Iron Man is one of my favorite Marvel Superheroes of all time, and many people who I know and love are racial minorities. This isn't even funny anymore. How did this even get off the shelves? Hell, how did it even GET ON THE SHELVES.
  • Sam Max: Let it be known that I saw the Guardians of the Galaxy film, and loved it so much, I actually decided to read the comics. They're not bad so far, but there's one scene that convinced me that they probably wouldn't match up to the film. In the 2008 series, as it turns out, most of the team was brought together via Brainwashing for the Greater Good by Mantis. It already didn't sit well with me. The team had every right to break up afterwards, but I felt the team breaking up should have at least been saved for a few more issues. I never read many other Marvel Comics, so I suppose it would make more sense if I did, and the scene wasn't bad enough to keep me from being interested in reading more, but there's a reason I prefer the movie's version.
  • Chip Goff Of ROR: Since returning to Marvel in 2015, the Star Wars comics have featured many fantastic stories told in comics. Unfortunately, Si Spurrier almost killed my interest in the Star Wars: Doctor Aphra right off the bat with his abysmal Remastered arc. The level of quirky, Buffy Speak-riddled dialogue skyrocketed and the likeability of the titular Doctor Aphra plummeted, but the point that actually disgusted me was the treatment of the two gay characters Tam Posla and Caysin Bog. The two are introduced as a pair of likeable cyborg mercenaries who plan to settle down together happily in the near future. In Doctor Aphra #18, Aphra hacks into Caysin’s cybernetics and forces him to run straight into enemy fire as a decoy, right in front of Tam. Now Aphra has always been on the dark end of the grey morality scale and has been shown to go to extremes, but this pushed her so far into the black that it nearly made the character irredeemable in my eyes. Not only did Spurrier toss aside an interesting character (not to mention killing off Tam Posla in the following arc, leading to an unfortunate case of Bury Your Gays), but using said act to prop up his morality play regarding Aphra’s actions felt gross and needlessly cruel. Aphra's ruthless behaviour is addressed in the following arcs of Spurrier's run, but even having the unrepentant Torture Technician droid Triple-Zero call her out was not enough to fix how soured I was on the series.

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