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A reader will often expect cool things to happen within the pages of a comic book. It doesn't always work out that way.
No Real Life examples including Executive Meddling and Fan Dumb. Those belong on their own pages.
If you're looking to vent about One More Day, Identity Crisis, or Archie Sonic The Hedgehog, they've been moved to their own separate pages. The sheer fail of those is too great to contain in the main comics section anymore.
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- Everything Adam Beechen has done with Batgirl Cassandra Cain since Infinite Crisis. Before then, she was a near-mute hero who didn't kill because her ability to read people was so strong that she practically saw people's death from their own eyes, causing her to be more anti-killing than pretty much anyone. He made her a villainess who ranted at length about killing and who was extremely pissed at her father for something she already knew about for a long time and was okay with - and in a weird way, they both love each other. And she's gone from being a better martial artist than Batman to no longer able to beat Robin. One hasty retcon later, and it's explained as drugs and Deathstroke's fault. Except Beechen's still doing the next Batgirl miniseries, 'Redemption Road,' in which she... is planning on going kill-vengeance on Deathstroke and her father. Despite it being the drugs that made her want to kill in the first place now, and despite Batman taking Cassandra back in. And despite her emotion-reading returning - not only should she be totally unwilling to kill like she had before, but the whole "seeing death" thing would also be a problem. And her father is apparently sending assassins after her despite his caring about Cassandra more than anything else on Earth. Most work ever to deal with three issues of character assassination? Quite possibly! And she's being handed back to the character assassin to boot.
- Nightwing, the world-class nice guy who believes in second chances so much that he recruited bleedin' Ravager for the Titans, was screaming that Cassandra couldn't be trusted and should never be allowed back in the Batcave. Batman, the DCU's most legendary paranoid misanthrope, was giving the "trust and family" speech. Did the artist draw the speech balloons on the wrong characters?
- It is pertinent to point out that changing Cass (AAAARRRRRGGH!) was DC's idea, not Beechen's. Higher-ups told the writer (new to the title) to come up with a reason for "Evil Cass" for their approval, and he did what he was told. Comic Book Resources has an article about it; scroll down some to get to the part about Batgirl. (http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=8504
 ). That being said, the execution of what was already probably a bad call was far worse than it had to be for the reasons given above.
- Superboy-Prime, an alternate version of Superman, literally bangs on a wall made of Time because he got angry, warping the reality. This is the explanation for various inconsistencies, such as Superman's multiple contradictory origin stories and Jason Todd's return from death. Yeah.
- One story arc by Devin Grayson tried to re-make Daredevil: Born Again, but with Nightwing. The idea is to isolate a character, forcing them to fight alone. For Daredevil, it was a brilliant idea; for Nightwing, not so much. Daredevil was already a relative loner. Nightwing was and still is Batman's heir apparent; as such he knows, has served with, has allied with, or has founded every superhero team in the DC Universe. He is close friends or allies with almost every hero alive. The JSA, the JLA, the Birds of Prey, the Outsiders, Young Justice, and a whole alien species all are friends with him. And the Teen Titans...he basically is BFFs with every member who has ever been on any incarnation of the team, and he led most of them personally. As a result, it's practically impossible to isolate Nightwing that completely. The only way to do it reasonably would be to send him to the far distant future (further than the 30th century even, like the DC One Million timeline) or the distant past (like Vandal Savage's time). Even if you sent him to another universe, the odds of him finding an alternate universe ally is high. The only character less capable of handling this story would be Captain America pre-Civil War, since he was basically the adopted father of 99% of the Marvel Universe heroes. Nightwing is only BFFs with about three-quarters.
- Upon further thought...even transporting Nightwing to the One Million timeline wouldn't really work, since superhumans are worshiped, basically, in that era and no doubt he'd find an army of Nightwing otaku waiting for him like rabid Twihards waiting for Robert Pattenson to step out of a shower. Really only sending Nightwing to the remote past, or to another company's universe altogether, would make this work...
- And then Tarantula rapes him after killing Blockbuster. And a few months later, Tarantula is accepted as part of the Batman Family!
- The big reason this doesn't work is because, due to the New Teen Titans characterization taking hold in the 80s, Nightwing is essentially a well-adjusted, likeable Batman.
- Green Lantern: Rebirth revealed that Hal Jordan had turned evil years earlier because he'd been possessed by an evil yellow fear bug from outer space. The yellow fear bug is now an interesting and integral part of the Green Lantern mythos, but there were a few years when this felt like a serious wallbanger.
- The writer switch on ''All-New Atom" from Gail Simone to Rick Remender led to the derailment of every single character.
- Which led to Ryan Choi being unceremoniously killed off in an issue of Titans so Ray Palmer could take up the mantle again. And in the middle of Asian Heritage Month, no less! Smooth, DC. Celebrate Asian culture by killing off one of your few non-stereotypical Asian heroes so his white male predecessor can come back.
- Teen Titans has had a few of these lately. For example, the beginning of one issue starts off with Kid Devil attacking the villain Shockwave, as any normal hero would in that situation. He's blown back by an attack, which causes a building to fall on the team and and allows Shockwave to get away. Somehow, Robin and Wonder Girl blow this accident out of proportion and blame Kid Devil for screwing up their plan that would have taken the villain down, acting as if he should have known even though they had not bothered telling him about it. The rest of the issue goes on to give Kid Devil the idiot ball and turn him into a woobie. Rose, his best friend, mocks him and calls him childish for playing video games, which is frustratingly out of character for her.
- Deathstroke created an evil Titans team and put Rose and Joey through hell in an elaborate plan to make sure that the Titans will be the family they need.
- Rose Wilson, having struggled time and time again to prove herself a good person and a good hero, is finally pushed too far by Wonder Girl and quits the team.
- Made worse because, after driving Rose off the team, Cassie welcomes Bombshell, a known (ex?)traitor who actively tried to kill half the team in an earlier storyline, onto the team. Bombshell goes on to duplicate Rose's role with less charm and firmly establish herself as The Scrappy.
- Wendy and Marvin, caretakers of Titans Tower and civilian sidekicks to the heroes proper, adopt a cute little dog who is presumed to become Wonder Dog. Then it turns into a monster and eats them. Eats them! In the base of one of the premier superhero teams in the DCU!
- As if Wonder Dog killing Marvin and mauling Wendy wasn't enough, this was an excuse to turn Wendy into a bitter cripple. Marvin...let's not go there.
- Another wall-banging moment is the Titans not giving a rat's hide about their missing teammate Kid Eternity, who was KIDNAPPED by Marvin's dad in an attempt to bring Marvin back. The Titans haven't noticed. If the Calculator's dialogue is to be believed, then Kid Eternity died and is now stuck as Marvin's decaying corpse.
- Many Beast Boy/Raven shippers, and even some readers who aren't, consider their breakup a Wall Banger.
- ...If you want to cheat, Geoff Johns's version of the matured BB/Raven are probably still a couple in one of the multitudes of Earths left behind by Infinite Crisis (since it's obvious that a lot of the Titans have somehow regressed in maturity).
- Let's not forget that many who aren't BB/Raven shippers considered them becoming a couple a wallbanger in the first place and probably breathed a sigh of relief at their break-up.
- Things have gotten worse again with the new writer Felicia Henderson. In the latest issue (#82), Bart and Connor finally rejoin the team, but it appears that the villain Holocaust has killed the rest of the team. Bart and Connor whale on him and knock him out. What do they do next? They say a few words about their supposedly dead friends, do a fist bump, and say "Titans Forever." They seemed to take the deaths of their best friends a bit too well, and the fans hated it.
- Henderson has effectively ignored and derailed the developments made by other writers to Cassie and Connor's relationship. Instead of Cassie being pleased that Connor has returned and the two reconciling, she's back to being the embittered shrew that she's become infamous for being. And Connor is coming off as a Jerk Jock.
- Raven coming back from the dead? Fans are happy. Raven coming back with Trigon's corruption? Well, less happy, but it was a part of her character, so it's at least plausible. Raven coming back as a younger teen than when she first appeared? Fans slightly confused. Raven, The Stoic, coming back and getting a TRAMP STAMP?!...
- And Judd Winick, Master of Wall Bangers that he is, takes this up one step further in Titans #1 where he has Raven wear a THONG and act like a bitchy teenager. Then gives her six demonic half brothers the same age as her when she was suppose to be Trigon's only surviving offspring.
- Also teammate Jericho after coming back to life and becoming a hero again is shipped off to limbo a few issues after his revival with hardly anything done with his character and not resurfacing until a couple years later evil again. But wait, It gets better! This leads in to a horrible, drawn-out storyline where formerly gentle Jericho becomes a homicidal psychopath and not only the Titans, but the JUSTICE FREAKIN'LEAGUE are too incompetent to stop him (EX. Their only protection against Jericho's possession-through-eye-contact powers are goggles that can be easily swatted off?!?). There's also some Double Standard remarks from the Titans concerning their old friend, such as The Flash saying Jericho can't be trusted because of "bad blood" to the guy who had a sweet little girl with an assassin and when they're already friends/teammates with a Daughter of a Demon and have Teen Titans (including Jericho's sister) with questionable lineages. And also Donna Troy having flimsy reasoning on why Jericho (Who is being evil not by choice but being controlled by evil personalities via his possession power) would be held accountable for his actions when there is Raven who at this point has gone evil via Trigon just as many times as Jericho and can be just as if not more dangerous, is not. At the end of this Jericho suffers Eye Scream...for awhile.
- The Adventures of Superman, a comic based on the DCAU, has an issue involving a man in Smallville who is ridiculed for his belief in the existence of aliens. This is well after Superman has become famous — and in this universe, he openly says he is an alien! Hey, just because he looks human doesn't mean he is human.
- Writer Judd Winick pulls Wall Bangers a lot:
- Green Lantern #154, in which we learn the important lesson that Beating People Up For Being Gay Is Wrong after Green Lantern Kyle Rayner's personal assistant Terry Berg is beaten up by a group of random thugs while leaving a club with his boyfriend. Much earlier, Kyle lost his first girlfriend to supervillain violence in the incident which defined the Stuffed In The Fridge trope. He saw numerous other violations of basic human decency on a daily basis; in fact, for a few weeks in a storyline shortly before this one, he had felt all of them on a daily basis as Ion. As Ion, he had universal empathy, but he was at least nearly omni-omnipotent. It appears one Green Lantern can't do much to protect a 15-16 year old boy who barely tips the scales past 100 pounds from getting beaten up by three punks with bricks and baseball bats, all of whom Terry knew and loved... This particular display of man's inhumanity to man (any sense of "man" you prefer) was so bad that it inspired Kyle Rayner to abandon the Earth to wander outer space and help random non-human species. It was also the start of what we Rayner fans call 'The Great Kyle Screw', wherein he just plain started getting screwed over so he could just be shoved into space, period.
- Green Arrow #44, in which we learn that Oliver Queen's adopted daughter Mia is a recovering methhead AND HIV Positive. Despite having been portrayed by Winick as being an unrepentant womanizer and having been one during a time when knowing about AIDS would be vital, Oliver is completely ignorant about what HIV is and how it is contracted, prompting a text-book recital on how HIV is contracted and treated.
- Outsiders #17-19, in which the Outsiders approach real-life hero and Very Special Guest Star John Walsh for help in tracking down the leader of a child slavery ring. It doesn't speak well of the team that when their leader, a Batman-trained detective, is unable to find any leads, his next plan of attack is, "Let's get that guy on TV to help us!"
- Walsh is featured prominently on the cover (it features his photo instead of artwork, a rarity in comics), and DC hyped the guest appearance as a way to attract new readers who don't typically read comics...but Walsh doesn't show up until THE VERY LAST PANEL OF THE ISSUE. All those new readers must have felt gypped.
- Green Arrow/Black Canary #14: Winnick's farewell issue consisted of wrapping up the 'Connor was kidnapped' arc by turning Connor Hawke, an interesting and unique character, into a generic street-level brawler with a healing factor. He threw in some amnesia so that Connor would lose all of his former personality and his fighting skills; only the healing factor kept Connor from dying of bullet wounds while trying to stop four generic drug dealers in an alley. Connor was once one of the four best martial artists in the DCU; he is now inferior to Misfit. As an added bonus, Winnick threw in a Take That from Amnesiac Connor about how 'ridiculous' the idea of a Buddhist monk who fought crime was in the first place, and capped this entire pile of crap off with Black Canary squealing about Connor's story having a 'happy ending'. Yes, because having your entire life and personality stripped away from you and being reduced to a shell of your former self is so happy. It's bad enough that Dinah's become a complete Faux Action Girl in this run; did she have to become Too Dumb to Live as well?
- Connor's skill nerfing was so savage that he was unable to hit a standard archery target. At 35 feet. At leisure, not with snap shots. After trying repeatedly for an entire afternoon.
- Trials of Shazam, in which he attempts to revitalize the Marvel Family for a new generation of comic readers. So what does he do?
- He upgrades Captain Marvel to the Wizard Marvel, now wielding the Power of Shazam as the Wizard Shazam did before him. Which sounds cool, except that it forces him to stay in the Rock of Eternity virtually 24/7, essentially writing the Captain out of the Captain Marvel series.
- Mary Marvel had her powers removed and was placed in a coma.
- Captain Marvel Junior was depowered and then went on a quest to prove himself worthy of wielding the Power of Shazam. This sounds cool, but the very first trial involves his telling the embodiment of wisdom how much he hates Captain Marvel and will never forgive him because it's Captain Marvel's fault his grandpa died. It is not, and Freddy should know that: Freddy's grandfather died because he and Freddy saw a man fall out of the sky and tried to rescue him, only for it to be Captain Nazi, who promptly killed Grandpa and crippled Freddy. Captain Nazi fell because Captain Marvel punched him real hard, so obviously it's a case of Captain Marvel being careless in battle and endangering innocent civilians, right? Nope, Cap hit Nazi with everything he had because there was a cruiser full of people that was sinking, and the only way to get time to save them all was to knock Captain Nazi away as hard as he could, to a place he was sure would be empty at that time of day. Freddy KNOWS Cap was saving other people, he knows that it wasn't Cap's fault they were at the wrong place at the wrong time, and for decades he laid the blame for what happened where it belongs — with Captain Nazi. This is the first time Freddy blamed Cap, and Winick fails to sell it.
- Combine that poor characterization with a story that has almost no internal consistency, a bland villain, and a group of bad guys clearly meant to be stand ins for the fans (who whine because everything is changing), and you have a real shitstorm of a series that fails to please anyone. The only good things about this series were the art and Mr. Tawny.
- The most telling thing was Winick's initial reason for the series, which was to make Captain Marvel/Shazam a superhero who fought only mystic threats. He said in an interview, "Why is a guy with the powers of the gods stopping bankrobbers?" He's a HERO, you moron! Heroes do things like stopping criminals and villains and saving people. It's like saying Superman shouldn't waste his time stopping powerless criminals because it's beneath him. MADE. OF. FAIL!
- There's also Winick's Titans series where there were eleven issues of poor characterization, plot holes, and recycled plot lines (Titans turned Traitor again!?) were rampant.
- The new writer of "Green Arrow/Black Canary" doesn't like Dinah, either. Her humiliations continue apace in the next issue, #15, where she's taken hostage by a lone muscleman with a knife. She needs both the intervention of Green Arrow and her Canary Cry to drop this mook, and she still takes severe injuries. Then she uses her Cry so carelessly that it deafens an innocent bystander, and she doesn't even notice. Is the writer aware that Dinah Lance is the chairman of the JLA, is supposed to be one of the greatest martial artists in the world, and has spent over half her life as a superheroine? Or that her control over her powers was precise enough that she could shatter a pool ball held in someone's hand without mussing their nail polish?
- Justice Society of America has been a consistently good series, but it's had its low points. Probably the worst was issue #11, which introduced Judomaster to the team. She was introduced in Birds of Prey a few months earlier; there, she spoke perfect English and had a snarky sense of humor. In JSA, she was Retconned into speaking solely Gratuitous Japanese and being a stereotypical stoic Samurai type obsessed with honor. Furthermore, she went up against a bunch of supervillains who are all horribly racist Japanese stereotypes, including a gigantic, literally yellow-skinned sumo wrestler called Kamikaze whose superpower is blowing himself up when he says "Banzai". Judomaster herself is now a full-time member of the team but exists solely for the male characters to make goo-goo eyes at. It's a terrible waste of what could have been an interesting character. Oh, and just to seal the deal: She never does judo, just a lot of high-kicks!
- Birds of Prey and Misfit: something went wrong with issue #113. Misfit (a sympathetic character) decides to push a blinking red button that is under a plexiglass safety cover (traditionally used for self-destruct buttons) inside an evil giant city-destroying robot despite being told not to. Unsurprisingly, it explodes, taking possibly hundreds or thousands of lives with it. But nobody blames her for it. She doesn't blame herself, either. The idea that she might be at fault is never even discussed in the text. Neither is any reason given for her doing this in the first place, since the giant city-destroying robot had been defeated!
- In an otherwise excellent story early on in Birds of Prey Black Canary claims to be Oracle and the villains buy it without question it. This could be totally logical, except that they used a conversation that Black Canary had with Oracle to try to track Oracle earlier in the story. This could have been Hand Waved by saying she was talking to another vigilante, but it never comes up, they never question it or anything.
- So many things to say about All-Star Batman and Robin. Was it Batman's constant allusions to Robin's age coupled with a pedovibe? Was it Vicki Vale trouncing around the apartment in a bra and panties like vapid eye candy quoting lines from Clueless? Was it "I'm the goddamn Batman"? This is prime material for unauthorized MSTing.
- The Mary Marvel plot in Countdown to Final Crisis. She wakes up from a coma with no powers; okay. She ends up getting powers from Black Adam (who later manifests the same powers again somehow). Okay. She wanders the entire multiverse for a while struggling to deal with this 'cursed' power rushing to her head, gets tempted by Eclipso, ultimately turns back to the side of good, and is rewarded by the gods. Okay. So far so good. Then Darkseid shows up in her living room and says, "Hey, want to help me kill innocents to get your evil powers back?" She immediately agrees. In about one page, with zero foreshadowing. It's the absolute worst turn to the dark side (no pun intended) since Anakin.
- It gets even better than that. At the end of Final Crisis, she finally snaps out of the mind control spell or whatever Darkseid had her in and then swears "never again". Less then a month later, she's hanging out with Black Adam.
- And it still gets better than that. In the newest issues of Justice Society of America, Mary Marvel helps Black Adam and Isis (yes, the one from 52) take down Billy as Guardian of the Rock of Eternity and corrupt Billy with... evil magic? It wasn't supposed to be Bad Powers, Bad People, but Billy does turn evil. Isis goes to Kahndaq, where people still praise her, and starts turning people into sand or soil or whatever and states her intent to do that to all of humanity. The wizard Shazam is revived to stop all this by Jay Garrick and the spirit of Billy and Mary's father. Shazam takes all the Marvel powers away from everyone, turns Teth Adam and Adrianna into statues, exiles Billy and Mary, and announces he's going after Freddy Freeman (who was nowhere near when all this was happening). It might make sense later, but seriously, what the hell!?
- Countdown isn't compatible with Final Crisis; the real "official" lead-ups are 52, Seven Soldiers, and the "Dark Side Club" issues of several other books. That makes Countdown more Wallbangering than should be possible, given what it claims to be. Two cases in point:
- Mary Marvel turned evil in Final Crisis because she was possessed by Desaad, not by her own volition as seen in "Countdown."
- Ray Palmer was needed for multiversal travel along with Ryan Choi, not to combat some sentient, mutative virus.
- And oh, how they screwed up the Monitors! But to ensure you have a nice dent in your wall (assuming you have a trade paperback of "Countdown" on hand), here is the kicker: Dan Didio hated 52 and demanded Countdown be more editorially mandated. He once proudly stated that "Countdown is 52 done right".
- Amazons Attack: Even though it's supposed to be a Wonder Woman comic, she's barely in it; she only appears in two pages in the first issue. The Amazons are turned into Straw Feminists under the command of Queen Hippolyta, even though she herself dissolved the monarchy and voluntarily stepped down. They invade America to rescue Diana, who they believe is being held prisoner by the government. But not only do they believe this because Circe, a long-time enemy of the Amazons, told them this; but also, when Diana turns up safe and sound, they keep invading. Continuity is shot to hell; the scale of the Amazon invasion and the amount of time it takes changes constantly. And there's the most memorable line:
- Oh, there was enough straw for everyone. The US government put random trainloads of women in concentration camps all over the nation because 'they might be Amazon sympathizers!' There were US troops so murderous that they're willing to try and gun down these unarmed unresisting women en masse, and so stupid that they try doing this when standing directly in front of Superman. Superman was standing right next to them and talking to them, but it never even occurs to any of the soldiers that he might possibly have an objection to mass murder of the unarmed.
- Supergirl and Wonder Girl get duped into siding with the villains, help take down Air Force One, and lead the President of the United States into an ambush. This act of high treason is met with... mild public displeasure after the event.
- The Amazons use bows and arrows to take down F-16s!
- Apparently the entire war started because the Amazons thought that Wonder Woman was being held prisoner by the U.S to gain access to the Amazons' advanced technology. The problem with that? Later in the series when some of the superheroes look at the attacks they note that the Amazons couldn't have been responsible for them because the attacks were using advanced technology.
- The war is stopped by the honest-to-God Deus ex Machina at the end — WITHOUT THE MACHINA.
- Let's not forget that this whole event is really a Countdown tie-in, and as Linkara pointed out they wasted four months worth of comics and destroyed Wonder Woman's mythos just to make a stupid tie-in to Countdown.
- No Man's Land, a story arc in the Batman family of books during the 1990s, in which an earthquake ruins Gotham City. The U.S. government, deciding that it's too expensive to rebuild it, chooses not only to leave it like that, but also to declare it no longer part of the United States! Anybody who chooses to stay inside is abandoned to his or her fate, and people who try to smuggle in provisions are SHOT AT by border patrols! The whole idea was to do a "Batman as Mad Max" story, which isn't bad in and of itself. In fact, the story is awesome in and of itself. But it should have been an out-of-continuity story like those of DC's (excellent) Elseworlds line. Instead, they made it part of the main DC Universe, despite these facts:
- It is impossible for a territory, once it has joined the Union, to leave it, without mutual consent. (They even fought a war about that once.)Details
Technically speaking, secession from the United States is legal "through revolution, or through consent of the States" as stated in Texas v. White. It would only be illegal for a territory to unilaterally secede (as happened in the Civil War), or for the federal government to arbitrarily declare a territory no longer part of the United States (as happened in NML).
- Not long before, the city of Metropolis had been similarly wrecked (by Lex Luthor), but it was soon repaired (literally by magic: Zatanna the Magician did it, combined with the willpower of Metropolis' citizens). It was never explained why the same could not be done for Gotham. However repairing Gotham with the willpower of Gotham's citizens might have created a Hellmouth.
- Batman wanted Gotham City to pull itself out of its own mess instead of having someone like the Justice League (who had come in to help) swoop in and fix everything. BIG help, Bats!
- There were appearances by Superman in the arc where he tried to help 'fix' Gotham. It didn't end well...
- That was an attempt at handwaving the lack of interference from other DC heroes in the Gotham disaster. It wasn't convincing. In the first appearance, Superman gets a power plant back in working order, and people line up for hand-outs. He concludes that Batman was right: Gothamites aren't "ready".
- A slightly better handwave was the JLA story explaining that the League was busy immediately outside the city stopping supervillains from breaking in to take advantage of the chaos.
- It gets worse. Declaring a part of the land no longer under the control of the states goes against everything a state is supposed to be. How can the US keep control over its territory if the people know they might get kicked out of the union in case of disaster? Why would they pay taxes?
- Hurricane Katrina resulted in mass outrage because of a government response that came across as heel-dragging and negligent. Can you imagine the outrage if the government responded to an even bigger disaster by outright abandoning an entire city?
- Shooting people who try to leave is a violation of the general human rights treaty that the US signed [along with other countries] and a violation of the US constitution. US citizens should have the ability to cross into its borders. The US laying siege to GC made no sense at all: they just needed to set up a border and put some checkpoints on it. Bombing everything that goes in and out made ZERO sense, even if the premise in general wasn't stupid.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
- The lead up to the classic Green Arrow/Green Lantern team-up, in which they dealt with various social issues across America, was kicked off by by a Black guy chewing out Green Lantern for not helping Black people. Yes, perhaps Hal needed soul-searching concerning how his work as as a super hero unwittingly propped up "The Establishment" (and, for that matter, the silliness of the comic book world in general concentrating on interstellar action while ignoring problems closer to home)... But Green Lantern saves the the friggin' world on a regular basis. Apparently, Black people don't live on the same planet as the rest of Earth's population.
- It's Hal Jordan. An argument doesn't have to make sense to send him on a guilt trip. He's a sucker for that.
- From The Dark Knight Strikes Again, a particularly egregious one is when it's revealed that the government has forced Wonder Woman, Superman and Captain Marvel to work for them. Linkara had a few things to say about it in his review.
- Lex Luthor had nukes aimed at Themiscyra, Brainiac was holding Kandor hostage, and they were also holding Mary Marvel prisoner.
- And the heroes couldn't have worked together to stop each threat because...?
- Because we saw what happened to Superman after just one Nuke, and they don't know where Kandor or Mary is being held ,so there's no way that they could have saved any of them for sure in this universe.
- Except...Batman pretty much did it all by himself. So three of the most powerful heroes in the DC universe could not save their respective targets, but Batman could do it without trying. Didn't it occur to the trio that they knew plenty of superheroes who could have easily solved the situation? They knew plenty of magic users, telepaths, shapeshifters, etc. etc.
- But they're not Batman. Like JLA: Act Of God, this whole comic consists of making other characters look bad in order to make Batman look good. If Batman is such a great superhero, how come you can't make him look competent without making everyone around him look incompetent?
- The ending, with Batman calling Dick Grayson "a failure" who "didn't have the chops" and "couldn't cut the mustard" and killing him without remorse. Sure he went Ax Crazy and evil, but just blowing him off like that, after all they went through together, is new levels of Batdickery.
- After seeing what Dick went through, which was ever so-lovingly covered ASBAR (which is technically a prequel to both of Miller's "Dark Knight" stories), it is really easy to see just why Dick went crazy. You actually feel sorry for him and understand why he went evil. With the "heroes" that Miller set up in his little Bat-verse, who WOULDN'T do what he did?!
- Batman has flat out goaded Superman to abandon his humanity and take over the world with Lara. What was he thinking?
- During A Death In The Family, the Joker makes a visit to the Middle East and Africa to wreak havoc and ends up killing Jason Todd. The worst part of the storyline is what happens later; a man with the likeness of Ayatollah Khomeini appoints the Joker as Iran's UN Ambassador, thus granting him Diplomatic Immunity. Granted, it was 1989, and this particular method of painting countries evil has been in use since World War II; but the idea of ANY world leader in their right mind making the Joker an official diplomat with official diplomatic immunity is, um, insane.
- Justice League: Cry for Justice #7 and its aftermath. To expand, the death of Lian Harper, Roy Harper's young daughter. Killed off for no reason in a particularly brutal example of Stuffed into the Fridge.
- Somehow, it's getting worse. It seems that they're using Lian's death to derail Roy Harper from a stable, well adjusted single father into a wangsty drug addict who sinks to using Black Canary's infertility as a point to lash out at her +
which in fact is a Series Continuity Error since Dinah's infertility was cured when she took a dip in a Lazarus Pit a few years back when she was dating Ra's Al Ghul, which just shows how poorly the series was researched - He blamed Mia for that?! Lian was killed by orbital artillery! What was Mia supposed to do, block it with an Anti-Kill-Sat-Arrow?
- It's getting worse. In the next issue, Cheshire shows up and blames Roy for Lian's death. They fight. Somehow, he doesn't die from the poison in her fingernails. But, just as they're about to have hatesex, he can't get it up because he's on drugs and impotent. LOL. Needing "some release," he goes to find some other druggies and beats them with a dead cat. The bit with the dead cat is crap icing on the ass shaped cake that is this series.
- And then It Got Worse. In the final issue, Roy is checked into a rehab program at a prison built specifically for supervillain prisoners. This decision is made by Dick Grayson, who you would think would have more sense than to take a superhero with a public identity and put him in a place full of people who would want to kill him, even if the didn't want to spend any of the Wayne Family fortune on a private-treatment option that would surely be a lot more effective. And Black Canary has a massive Character Derailment when she basically writes Roy off completely as a lost cause - this being the woman who was the only person who stayed with him and supported him when he was originally going through withdrawal for his heroin habit and the closest thing he's had to a mother.
- As a coda to the whole debacle, the "New 52" retcons have given Roy back his arm, and removed his drug addiction entirely. On the other hand, Lian's existence has been completely removed, and Roy has never been a father. One feels that the DC editors somewhat missed the point.
- A less-enraging, but just as stupid fridging was the death of The Three Dimwits, comic relief characters from the Golden Age Flash comics. They were brought back just to be killed off to motivate Jay Garrick to join the gang of Jack Bauer superheroes, featured in one panel, where they weren't even mentioned by name, and then never mentioned again. It was impossible to feel bad that these characters were killed off, because almost nobody knew who the hell those guys were supposed to be, and those who did simply marveled at the sheer, utter pointlessness of bringing such obscure characters back from Comic Book Limbo only to stuff them in the fridge without even giving their names, and then shove that fridge back into Comic Book Limbo.
- Green Arrow #32, wherein Oliver Queen is on trial for murdering Prometheus, manages to be so mindbendingly awful on multiple levels that we're gonna need multiple bullet points just to add up all the dumb:
- First off, Ollie is facing a jury trial for an offense that he freely admits he's committed and sincerely believes (even if maybe he doesn't) that he deserves to be punished for. There shouldn't be any jury trial if Ollie was willing to plead guilty, merely a sentencing hearing! So... he thinks he did wrong and should pay a price, but he still pled "not guilty"?
- Oliver is on trial for murder. Even though he deliberately intended to kill Prometheus and deliberately sought the man out after the murder of his granddaughter, Oliver is still a law enforcement agent (as a JLA member, he has comparable status) shooting a felon who had just nuked a city and who was on his feet, facing Ollie, armed... Given that Prometheus has taken on entire JLA lineups and won, Oliver facing him alone is most definitely "in legitimate fear for his life". It's still justifiable homicide even though Ollie would have killed Prometheus even if he had surrendered, because that's not how it happened. The worst he should have faced is being dismissed from the JLA for deliberately violating policy in pursuing the guy for vengeance, alone.
- Oliver killed Prometheus in the Ghost Zone, where Prometheus's dimensional hideout was. How on Earth does a Star City criminal court have jurisdiction? The crime didn't even occur on Earth!
- Another comics writer fails law school forever. The jury finds Oliver not guilty, and yet the judge still sentences him. And the sentence? Exile from Star City! That sentence doesn't even exist in American law! Being barred from living in a specific city, or being forced to live in a specific city, can be a condition of parole or probation, but not a stand-alone judicial sentencing!
- To further explain why the part about the jury would be a wallbanger a judge in the United States cannot discard or ignore a verdict from the jury of "not guilty".
- JLA: Act of God, an Elseworlds story about what would happen if all the superheroes on Earth lost their powers. The answer, apparently, is that they would turn into mopey idiots who just sit around whining instead of trying to figure out what caused their powers to stop working which they never do. Batman is elevated from Badass Normal to Mary Sue; other heroes constantly gush about him and make him out to be soooo much more awesome than everyone else because he never had superpowers. Aquaman loses the ability to breathe underwater — but he's a native-born Atlantean, so he should have lost the ability to breathe air. Lois Lane leaves Superman, even though it's been established that she did fall in love with Clark Kent. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
- The story is supposed to have tech-based super heroes remain functioning and magic-based heroes cease to be. (No, it is never explained what happened to them.) But the story has no idea which heroes are "tech" and which are magic. Green Lantern rings are extremely advanced tech, but they no longer work. The Atom's powers are based around a supertech belt, and yet his abilities no longer work. Wonder Woman is a Golem given life by the gods, but she is still around, just unpowered. Red Tornado is a wind elemental but still around (though he is limited to a cameo). Captain Marvel is given his powers by a wizard, transforms through magic words, but is still around (though unpowered). Supergirl, at this point in history, is an angel, but is still around). Then there is The Flash, who gets his powers from a Freak Lab Accident and the Speed Force, a god of sorts, but is still around unpowered. Then there are the countless magical heroes like Dr. Fate and Zauriel, who simply never appear.
- And Martian Manhunter kept saying this was God smiting them for hubris... even though they were constantly helping and saving people with no expectation of recompense. Even Booster Gold is past that phase. In fact, Batman was by far the biggest ass on the superhero side.
- This could be Handwaved by saying that the depowering was just God (the story is called "Act of God") arbitrarily choosing people to render mortal, what with him being God and all. This is even stupider.
- Wonder Woman herself suggests this and becomes a Christian and begins praying in church. Wonder Woman is from an ancient society of Greek Amazons who worship the Greek Pantheon, who Wonder Woman got her powers from; and she has met her own Gods! She's practically a demi-God herself. Did getting Hijacked By Jesus become so literal in that story that the Greek Gods don't exist anymore — wait, maybe it is, what with magical beings disappearing, but we are getting into thorny ontological territory here. It's as if Marvel's Thor became Jewish.
- The story involves every single super-powered being losing their powers. WHAT?! HOW is that possible?! This isn't Marvel Comics, and they aren't mutants - they got their powers from different sources, for different reasons. At least some of them should have kept their powers!
- And as Linkara rightly pointed out, alien heroes like Superman or the Martian Manhunter shouldn't have been de-powered at all because they don't have superpowers in the first place. Their "powers" are the natural abilities of their respective species. Being a Flying Brick with laser-vision and a shape-shifting telepath is normal for them. It's like if the moon had an atmosphere, was habitable, the population consisted of weakling deaf people, and a human arrived on it. The human would be six times as strong as the weakling deaf people and could hear. Then this Act Of God happened, and all of a sudden the human is now deaf and is 1/6th as strong as he used to be.
- The whole thing finally comes full circle when Superman and Wonder Woman have a son who ends up with super powers, rendering the aesop of super powers being "wrong" completely moot.
- The first issue the the new Zatanna comic begins with Zatanna tied up and threatened by Dr. Light and the Joker. She managed to escape and beat them. Then it's revealed that these are just actors, and this is all part of her act. Let's run that by you again: she incorporated two remorseless murderers into her act, one of whom is also a rapist. That's like David Copperfield hiring actors to play Richard Ramirez and John Wayne Gacy. And it's two murderers whom she has a personal grudge against.
- How is this a Wallbanger? What is more entertaining than seeing two serial killers, one of whom is a rapist, getting their asses handed to them? Plus, since she has a personal grudge against both of them, she gets the satisfaction of beating the crap out of them.
- Well considering she knows Batman (whose adopted son was killed by the Joker) as a colleague if not good friend and potential romantic interest, and considering who the hell Dr. Light rape and the how fall out. Using these guys in a show comes off as highly insensitive at the very least.
- "War of the Supermen," the end of the "New Krypton" arc. "New Krypton" took the Superman mythos in a different direction than ever before. There was now millions of Kryptonian survivors. Lex Luthor had lost his good publicity and was in federal custody. General Zod was portrayed as a complex, sympathetic Anti-Villain rather then a straight Super Villain. Superman had taken an extended leave of absence from Earth to help his people rebuild their civilization... Now cue "War of the Supermen," in which New Krypton is destroyed, leaving only a handful of survivors. Lex Luthor, who was behind it, is given a presidential pardon and control of Lexcorp for genociding a people who only became an immediate threat to Earth when the US military provoked them. Zod reverts back to his desire to conquer Earth and destroy Superman. Superman and Supergirl once again must bemoan the fact that they are the last children of Krypton. By the time it's all over, Superman regards the fiasco as a pointless war. Ironically, the point of the war seemed to be to render everything before it a Shaggy Dog Story.
- The events that serve as a prologue to the next Superman arc, "Grounded," doesn't make things any better. The idea of Superman Walking the Earth is good, but his reason for doing it is silly. To wit, when he tried to explain the events of New Krypton to the general public, Superman is verbally attacked and slapped by an unnamed woman who chews him out for not saving her husband who died of an inoperable tumor during the events of the war. Yes, a woman blamed Superman, the DC Messianic Archetype who saves the Earth on a regular basis, for not saving her husband from an inoperable brain tumor because she believes that he could have used his X-Ray Vision to pre-emptively notice the tumor and use his heat vision to remove it if he hadn't been wrapped up in the events of New Krypton. This Superman has never displayed the willingness or the skill to try such an operation, and there are other superheroes around who are recognized as skilled surgeons. Even if he did, there would be no guarantee that Superman would have noticed the specific medical problems of one human out of a planetful he spends most of his time helping. Most critically, this woman thinks that the life of one person important to her was more important than trying to prevent an all-out war between Earth and a planet of people as powerful as Superman, and she doesn't even consider how Superman is feeling after literally witnessing his people annihilated before his eyes. While this is meant to suggest to Superman that he has lost touch with humanity, it comes off to many as a woman acting incredibly selfish and entitled in the midst of a horrible tragedy.
- It's an In-Universe Wall Banger. The reporters around Superman mention that it's unreasonable to expect Superman to have known about this or done anything about it even if he had been on Earth at the time. Superman's reaction to this (the "Grounded" arc) is even seen by some people, such as Batman (Dick Grayson), as Wangst on his part.
- See Hal Jordan's illogical guilt about African-Americans above. Clark Kent works the same way. Being stupid like that is endearing 99% of the time, so his reaction wasn't all that implausible. The woman, on the other hand...
- Green Lantern v.2 #85: Hal Jordan is trying to get his life back on track. How? By becoming the Green Lantern of sector 2814 again. But that about Guy Gardner, the current Green Lantern? He'll just have to step down...whether he wants to or not. Guy, naturally, isn't willing to do this, and gives Hal a long list of reasons why he isn't worthy of being a Green Lantern anymore. But here's the thing: Guy may have been a Jerkass about it, but he raised some valid points:
"...And what happened when you started feeling down? You quit! What happened when Carol dumped you? You took off runnin'! What about when Arisia dumped you? And when the gremlins gave you the boot? Did you stand up? Did you fight? Yeah, you talk about bein' 'back,' but here you come to me, tryin' to bargain. Beggin' me. Face it, Jordan. You're just an old chicken."
- This, understandably, enrages Hal, and they come to blows. The resulting battle destroys most of the surrounding cityscape, attracting the attention of both the Justice League and the Green Lantern Corps. Do they stop the fight? Nope—in fact, The Corps actually prevents the League from interfering because supposedly Hal and Guy need to settle it by themselves. Eventually, Hal wins the fight, and forces Guy to give up his ring. And both the League and the Corps are okay with this, even cheering that Guy isn't a Green Lantern anymore, right in front of his face. First off, HOW does Hal get to be a Green Lantern again because of this?! The Corps isn't a street gang! They don't pick their members based on who would win in a fight, and the Guardians didn't have a say in it anywhere! Second, why the hate on Guy?! He may be a jerk, but he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who ultimately tries to do the right thing, and as stated above, has far more willpower than Hal. But no, Hal gets his stolen ring back, Guy gets the boot, and the readers are supposed to be okay with it. *WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM*
- The revelation of Catwoman's baby daughter Helena's father. In Ed Brubaker's run, Selina had a lot of romantic buildup with Bruce Wayne. They'd even consummated their relationship at one point...later, she has a daughter. That Bruce Wayne takes a strong interest in... Selina hints that her baby's father had an incident of violence in his past...that he used to be out during the night. And the baby's name is Helena, the same name as Bruce and Selina's daughter from the alternate continuity Earth...surely this is what we've been waiting for? No, sorry, it's Sam Bradley Jr! Let's discuss why this is stupid: All their romantic buildup happened offscreen and is totally stupid (the flashbacks basically have Selina decide she likes him and decides to sleep with him once because of events unfolding...despite this making little sense.) Selina had just come off a relationship with Sam's FATHER, Slam Bradley...Sam is an annoying little twerp of a character who never gave a reason why we should care about him at all, let alone the stupidity in throwing Selina at him after Bruce and Selina's buildup as a couple to that point. The day this is retconned out and Bruce is revealed as Helena's father will be a good one.
- If you ask someone who voted for Jason Todd to die why they voted that way, they'll usually cite his actions in Jim Starlin's "The Diplomat's Son" from Batman #424. Problem is, that story is a blatant Idiot Plot. The story opens with Jason beating down a rapist and turning him over to the police, only to discover that he's the titular diplomat's son. Yes, this is one of those stories where "diplomatic immunity" means "diplomats can commit any atrocity they like and law enforcement is powerless to stop them," so he walks. Seriously, ask any FBI agent and they could list a dozen different ways they could legally nail him. As for the rape victim, she is left alone in her apartment, with no police protection or counseling of any kind. I'm sure this won't lead to any negative outcome—oh look, the rapist just gave her a phone call threatening to come after her again and she hanged herself. This leads to Robin confronting the rapist on a balcony, where he falls to his death and it's strongly implied that Robin pushed him. That's right, Jason Todd (allegedly) broke the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule against a Complete Monster who got away with his crimes due to a legal technicality that doesn't actually exist, and that's why people wanted him to die.Additional Info
Nowadays it seems that fans who wanted Jason dead were actually a Vocal Minority, with one person having made dozens of calls for his death and many others who wanted him to live being children at the time, so they weren't allowed to make the not-so-cheap call. - Chuck Austen's Godfall: Preus Returns makes his "vaporizing Communion wafers" story look downright respectful by comparison. How bad is it? There is a scene with the titular racist Kryptonian kills women by having sex with them, and continues to do so.
Other
- The Star Wars Expanded Universe comic Requiem for a Rogue involves a truly idiotic artifact: an ancient temple that lets people control wild beasts with evil Sith music!
- There are TIE Interceptors - fast, fiddly spaceships - made out of wood and piloted by those wild beasts controlled by evil Sith music. Everything about "Requiem" was bad. It marred an otherwise fine series and killed characters who had been around for a while.
- From earlier in the series, "The Rebel Opposition" was the first arc. The general idea was Stackpole's, but it was written by Baron, who... oy. Tycho Celchu, mildly famous Rebel, goes undercover as an Imperial while using his real name and real planet of origin. The colorist can't be bothered to remember if it's night or day. A Wookiee hits a flying TIE with a stick◊, and it blows up. Reportedly, Stackpole was angry about the stuff Baron came up with.
- Oh, Wallbangery in Star Wars gets better with the "The Clone Wars" Volume comics. The FIRST issue already had gaping plotholes. The Banking-Clan was found building seperatist battle cruisers in their shipyards, so the Jedi proposed to destroy it. All fine and good, but Palpatine gives the explanation that the Banking-Clan is neutral in the war and an attack on their ships would make them side with the Confederacy. This would be the Banking Clan whose chairman San Hill verbally signed on with Dooku in "Attack of the Clones" while Obi-Wan was watching. That makes them about as neutral as the Trade Federation.
- It seems that in Star Wars: The Clone Wars cartoon series, the Trade Federation was still part of the Republic and disavowed Nute Gunray while one of the Holonet News broadcasts seemed to have a neutral/Republic supporting Techno Union guy. It may be that the Commerce Guilds had internal divisions with regard to the war (or more likely, maintain a veneer of plausible deniability to play both sides against the middle and exploit the situation for maximum profitability).
- This troper recalls a storyline in Peanuts where Charlie Brown goes up to bat, but loses the game because he got distracted by the fact that the Red-Haired Girl is watching him. What cheesed me off was the fact that, on the third pitch, Charlie was clearly looking the other way when the pitcher threw the ball. In other words, the pitcher deliberately threw the ball when Charlie had his back turned. And that somehow counts as strike three?! If you ask me, it provides proof of my theory that the reason Charlie Brown's team keeps losing is that the other teams are cheaters.
- For This troper and a number of his friends, the New Power arc from the W.I.T.C.H comic series easily qualifies. Sure, it's a simple "new, more powerful bad guy shows up, so characters get a power boost" story on the outside; but the details are enough to make your head spin and wonder what they were thinking! Probably the worst of the wall-banging points would be having Matt Olsen, the boyfriend of main character Will Vandom, go from guitar-playing normal guy to sage-like person who's from Kandrakar DESPITE having a family on Earth AND knowing the team's secret since day one, before Will told him; and he acts like a jerk and is utterly cryptic while training them. And it isn't until Yan Lin gets through to the girls near the end that they get their act together and defeat their foe. And now, most of the children of Heatherfield are magic-endowed — NOT just the girls! Ladies and gentlemen, the shark has been jumped!
- The quality of Alien vs. Predator comics varies wildly... but Alien vs. Predator vs. Terminator has a moment of brain imploding super handwaving that results in INSTANT head desk. Following the events of Alien: Resurrection, the writers clearly felt a need to reconcile the two continuities. Ready for it? The characters find a message from John Connor explaining the threat from the Terminator that's spoiling everyone's day - naturally, he exposits on Skynet, Judgement Day and the like. Someone comments they missed, oh, the whole genocide of humanity by sentient machines and reduction of most of the world to rubble. What possible explanation could there be for almost the entire human race being oblivious to this? MILITARY COVER UP!
- Who would do this? The military would be the Resistance who just spent their lives living in the dirt, eating garbage, and trying to stop the machines. A reaction akin to that in the Dune universe seems infinitely more likely than a cover up. No one alive is going to want to cover this up.
- Why would anyone do this? Given that "never forget" was etched into the minds of every single participant of World War II AND pretty much that entire generation and is still an enduring sentiment, and given that Judgement Day and the war against Skynet would be something that everyone was directly involved in, the notion that there wouldn't be acres and acres of memorials and monuments to the fallen is absurd.
- How would anyone do this? Let's assume that there is some group of crazy machine lovers who want to hide the war. Earth got nuked to dust, billions of people died - covering that up would be impossible.
- Where would you get the resources to accomplish this feat? What about the billions of corpses, what about the cities in ashes, what about the vast skull-strewn wastelands, what about the millions and millions of Skynet robots now dormant, what about the vast, sentient factories the size of cities that produced Machine warriors day and night and were mentioned in the movies, comics and novels? Where did all of this go? Into the ether?
- Youngblood: Judgement Day by Alan Moore. One of the team members, Kinghtsabre, is accused of murdering another member, Riptide, and is put on trial. It is eventually revealed that the team leader, Sentinel, killed her for trying to take a book that dictates the events of the universe by whatever is written in its pages; the book itself has a storied history of being found, used to change history, and lost or stolen by countless owners. The Wallbanger comes in upon learning how the Book of All Stories works: if one can dictate the future by writing in its pages, WHY OR HOW WOULD ANYONE EVER LOSE POSESSION OF IT AGAINST THEIR WILL??? When people wrote their life stories into the book, didn't they think to put safeguards in to make sure that no one took the book — something like "and a magic force field went up around the book whenever X wasn't using it, preventing anyone from even knowing it existed"? (Add in an immortality clause, and things could get really fun.)
- The creator of the book was a Trickster God who intended his "gift" to spread chaos and mayhem on Earth. This means it's probable that the Book is intended to change owners repeatedly... if it could be infallibly sequestered from loss or theft, it would rapidly stop being a random factor and instead just become a tool for one particular entity's total domination of the world, which is boring! For that matter, the creator is still out there, and no one save Glory and his fellow deities even know he exists, so none of the book's owners could possibly be on their guard against him. He could just show up and arrange for the book's loss or theft whenever it had stayed too long in one place.
- From a Gears of War comic: The cities on the Jacinto Plateau (the one place the Locust can't dig) still allow women in its Gears, although they are strongly encouraged to have kids everywhere else. Girls are locked up in breeding farms when they turn 14. The girls are artificially inseminated; if that doesn't work, then they are gang-raped; if they turn 18 and still have no kids, then they are sent to the front lines. This makes literally no sense — why would they ever allow them into the military short of the abovementioned conscription if they consider having them breed that high a priority... and why would they consider having them breed that high a priority right now when the entire human race at this point could be wiped out tomorrow and render the entire thing moot? The sane thing to do would be to force any able-bodied man, woman and child into the military to keep the Locust from flooding Jacinto and killing everyone. Worry about breeding later.
- This is an ill-considered compromise between the much-loathed Karen Traviss novel Aspho Fields and its breeding farms, and the games, which have outright rubbished this concept from Day One, with Anya being a communications officer and Lieutenant from the start of the first game — clumsily retconned in Aspho Fields as being due to her being infertile — Gears of War II establishing that there are female Gears in such a way that any unvoiced generic Gear throughout the series could have been female, and the upcoming Gears of War III prominently featuring new female characters in its trailer. Exactly why there was a need to compromise between these two things — roughly akin to compromising between lunch and disgusting, decaying, disease-ridden offal by making the offal into a sandwich — is unclear to anyone with half a brain.
- It's the Emperor's New Clothes thing; they can't exactly admit they screwed up by retconning it entirely, and they can't use it straight.
- The EC Comics series Piracy had a Wall Banger in its first issue — "Shanghaied" tells the story of a ship captain who was shanghaied twelve years earlier, and finds Mike, the "crimp" who'd originally kidnapped him, in a batch of unconscious men another crimp is trying to sell him. After telling the crimp how Mike had kidnapped him, his torturous life growing into the role of a sea-man, and his years-long quest to track Mike down, the ship captain approaches Mike as he awakens and... shakes his hand and THANKS HIM FOR HAVING MADE A MAN OUT OF HIM!!!
- Okay, the Captain may have grown into the roll of a sea-man, and a successful one at that, but this Mike, plus any other crimp in the business, has been basically kidnapping people and selling them into slavery, often into a job they had no training whatsoever for. On top of that, Piracy, and many other EC Comics stories concerning early life on board a ship, are filled with stories rotating around how the captain is Captain Bligh reborn, so Mike's victims may have wound up being brutally tortured and murdered.
- The Future Shark Trilogy (#42-44) in Ninja Turtles Adventures completely screwed up Shredder's story for the entire series by saying the Shredder in that trilogy had been brought to the future from all the way back in Issue Four. How Shredder returned to the past is never explained for the next two years before the series was canceled. But the real Wall Banger is: Why would Shredder spare Splinter in Issue 36 when the Turtles reminded him of saving him from Krang in Issue 25, because that was the Shredder from the future in #36, and getting possessed by Krang wouldn't have happened to him yet...Ow, time travel hurts on my brain.
- The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund once had several comic writers pen short stories for a PSA comic encouraging people to donate. One of those writers was Garth Ennis. His short story consisted of The Boys sadistically torturing and mutilating DC and Marvel heroes and telling the readers that if they donate, they can see even more of that. It's bad enough when he uses superheroes as Chew Toys in his regular comics, but this?! Not only is it stupid and sophomoric, but it's a slap in the face to the very worthy organization that asked him to deliver a message about freedom of speech. This was far more likely to discourage people from donating.
- In "The Pro", Ennis wrote his prostitute superhero (yes, that is what the story is about, a whore who is given superpowers) giving a thinly-veiled expy of Superman a blowjob and encouraged him to not be so boy-scouty all the time. That's what he writes. Also, Ennis has issues with religion too, not just with superheroes. She also bitches that superheroes should improved the world because she sucks dick to feed her kid, even if she's the one who screwed up.
- Simpsons Comics #47 took Lisa's attitude as a liberal Strawman to heights far worse than on the TV show. Bart starts a "fish log" business during school lunch that all the kids love, leading to them getting better grades (since fish is brain food!) and spending their extra money across town, skyrocketing Springfield's economy. Everyone's happy except Skinner, since it's taken away the cafeteria revenue that the school somehow can't run without, so he shuts down the school four months early to take away Bart's customers - unknowingly sending the kids rioting through the town since they have nothing to do (no summer movies or water parks open yet) and they aren't getting lunch money to spend. Thirty years later, everyone who benefitted from Bart's business is willing to give him his needed organ donation, and Lisa scolds them all, claiming he doesn't deserve it since he was just being selfish the whole time. Let's forget that Lisa basically said her own brother's life didn't deserve to be saved - Bart starts a successful enterprise that the city benefits from, Skinner responds with an abuse of city power that ruins everything, and Lisa claims the near-destruction of the town was Bart's fault?
- In Chuck Billy'n'Folks, a major source of this is Chuck's girlfriend, Rosie Lee, who went from a Shrinking Violet to Clingy Jealous Girl. Case in point, one comic, where it was photo day at Chuck's school, had Chuck meeting a new girl at school and Rosie Lee accusing Chuck of cheating on her (Her argument being that Chuck was all groomed up). Chuck says it's photo day and She doesn't believe him, saying that photo day was the next day, calls him a liar and breaks up with him on the spot. Then she starts being passive-agressive with Chuck for the remainder of the story. Then when Chuck's about to answer a question asked by his teacher, Rosie Lee says "Showing off for the new girlfriend?", prompting Chuck to make a joke. Then he has to clean up the erasers, Rosie Lee finds out that photo day was, in fact, that day, and that the girl Chuck was talking to already had a boyfriend. The Wall Banger is not really Rosie Lee's behavior, but how Easily Forgiven she was. She just came to Chuck and said "Can you forgive me for doubting you?". Chuck just accepts the apology, and no one calls out on her behaviour.
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