"He did WHAT?" Most flagrant cases of plot induced stupidity and ridiculous feats

Guek

There are a lot of ridiculous feats superheroes have pulled off over the years, many of which make absolutely zero sense in the overall continuity of the characters involved. I was thinking about this the other day, and I could only come up with a handful of examples myself. Being only a casual reader of comics (I pick up about one trade and a couple issues or so a month), I'm not all that incredibly well versed in the vast backhistory of comics.

So, what are the best examples of absolutely ridiculous feats that should never have ever been able to be performed? Or cases where the writer injects a plot device made of concentrated stupidity?

The most recent example I can think of is probably the red hulk vs. thor fight

aside from the fact that the entire arc was just a bunch of the greatest marvel heroes sucking red hulk's cock, the thor fight seemed especially offensive. I mean...he can lift the enchanted hammer mjolner because there's no gravity? Buh?? I wish I could find a scan of that page...


anywho, what about you guys? any particular favs?

Kyougu

You know it's going to be mentioned, so I'm just getting it out the way.

Mephisto being able to somehow alter reality to the extent of nullifying the Peter/MJ marriage to the point that no one would be able to tell it had happened.

Pinder

Obligatory:

I've even seen the entire page that this is taken from, and I still have no idea why he's beating the shit out of people who like ice cream.

Last Son

Pinder wrote: »

Obligatory:

I've even seen the entire page that this is taken from, and I still have no idea why he's beating the shit out of people who like ice cream.

IIRC it was poisoned by the Joker, though it doesn't quite explain why hes kicking people in the head instead of just yelling 'don't eat the ice cream'.

FCD

Kyougu wrote: »

You know it's going to be mentioned, so I'm just getting it out the way.

Mephisto being able to somehow alter reality to the extent of nullifying the Peter/MJ marriage to the point that no one would be able to tell it had happened.

I find it amusing that Mephisto has that level of power, and yet he uses it to screw around with a fairly ordinary street-level superhero. This, from the guy who used to go up against the Silver Surfer and suchlike.

Blackjack

Young X-Men:

I CAN ACCESS THE PHOENIX FORCE BECAUSE I GOT A TATTOO OF A PHOENIX

Sentry

Blackjack wrote: »

Young X-Men:

I CAN ACCESS THE PHOENIX FORCE BECAUSE I GOT A TATTOO OF A PHOENIX

yeah... sorry, but on the "level of complete bullshit meter," this one blows Mephisto out of the water.

psycojester

Blackjack wrote: »

Young X-Men:

I CAN ACCESS THE PHOENIX FORCE BECAUSE I GOT A TATTOO OF A PHOENIX

That was the mutant with the 'i get powers from whats tatooed on me' mutation right? How the fuck does that pop up in somebodies genetics? Did his DNA learn to recognize pictures?

Blackjack

psycojester wrote: »

Blackjack wrote: »

Young X-Men:

I CAN ACCESS THE PHOENIX FORCE BECAUSE I GOT A TATTOO OF A PHOENIX

That was the mutant with the 'i get powers from whats tatooed on me' mutation right? How the fuck does that pop up in somebodies genetics? Did his DNA learn to recognize pictures?

Hahaha it's even worse than that.

He wasn't a mutant.

HIS TATTOO ARTIST WAS.

Basically Ink is the most ridiculous character ever and everyone involved in his creation should be ashamed.

psycojester

I really liked New X-men in spite of the near constant doom and gloom, when the book was canceled and Young X-men started up i was willing to give it a go. Until i saw an interview with the writer where he talked about what a great character Ink was and how awesome his power was.

That was when i gave up.

Blackjack

psycojester wrote: »

I really liked New X-men in spite of the near constant doom and gloom, when the book was canceled and Young X-men started up i was willing to give it a go. Until i saw an interview with the writer where he talked about what a great character Ink was and how awesome his power was.

That was when i gave up.

I'll go even farther and say that I didn't think New X-Men was good until it got darker, and I was still willing to give Young X-Men a shot.

I actually dropped it after a couple issues, but then picked it back up when Anole joined the team, as he was one of my favorites. It was actually showing signs of improving for a bit, too, as Guggenheim actually wasn't too bad at the actual character-to-character stuff. It was just when it veered off into the superheroics that it became LOOK AT THESE NEW CHARACTERS I MADE THEY'RE SO SUPER AWESOME AND ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN SAVE THE DAY.

In conclusion, Ink, Greymalkin, and Cipher suck but Guggenheim isn't 100% awful.

Jacobkosh

Any time Wolverine has survived an H-bomb, decapitation, and eighteen simultaneous ass-kickings and then completely regenerated in an issue or two.

I mean, it's a healing factor. He's not a lizard or a planarian worm! Claremont understood that it was impressive enough for Wolverine to survive being shot several times, or cut up by ninjas, or whatever, and he didn't shy from showing the consequences of the character's violent life: Logan spent like half his time in X-Men bandaged or in a sling or on crutches or whatever. It made sense and created some poignant moments. But since the early 90s the corporate urge to constantly overexpose a popular character has really blown his abilities out of all reasonable proportion, to the point where I just really have a hard time taking Wolverine seriously anymore.

Blackjack

jacobkosh wrote: »

Any time Wolverine has survived an H-bomb, decapitation, and eighteen simultaneous ass-kickings and then completely regenerated in an issue or two.

I mean, it's a healing factor. He's not a lizard or a planarian worm! Claremont understood that it was impressive enough for Wolverine to survive being shot several times, or cut up by ninjas, or whatever, and he didn't shy from showing the consequences of the character's violent life: Logan spent like half his time in X-Men bandaged or in a sling or on crutches or whatever. It made sense and created some poignant moments. But since the early 90s the corporate urge to constantly overexpose a popular character has really blown his abilities out of all reasonable proportion, to the point where I just really have a hard time taking Wolverine seriously anymore.

Yeah. It's even to the point where, on the rare occasion writers do try to tone it down, it just seems really unnatural. There's really just no turning back once you've had a character regenerate from a single drop of blood.

TexiKen

The ending to Hush made no sense. That's not how a mystery works, you have to lay out the clues for the reader to gather from the story itself, not pull things from off panel and then expect everyone to just go with it, trying to act like people came for the story instead of the Jim Lee art.

The ending to Identity Crisis made no sense. Again, you can't pull things out of nowhere off panel and expect it to work. This is mainly because it didn't know if it wanted to go with a mystery or rather that forced "darkness" of the JLA messing with the villains minds.

Xorn really made no sense because Marvel couldn't just keep Magneto dead for a year after Morrison's New X-Men run. Everything about this, from the dismissal that it's easy to understand to trying to explain it in one sentence in House of M to the New Avengers just making it worse was all stupid. It was during this that I started thinking the writers and editors really have contempt for comic readers and those who would ask fair questions or criticisms about a story. It's not our fault you tied your shoes together and tried to run with it.

Avengers Disassembled really pulled some bullshit with Wanda and Chaos Magic, as well as the last pages with Magneto coming to pick up his daughter and no one doing a damn thing to stop him. "Oh hey he just killed thousands of people like 2 months ago in NYC, here's your daughter, Mr. Magneto sir." I lost more respect for Captain America there than during Civil War.

The Draco arc in Uncanny X-Men made no sense whatsoever and had a twist in the plot that completely contradicted the first few issues. Really, avoid this no matter what.

Edcrab

Blackjack wrote: »

jacobkosh wrote: »

Any time Wolverine has survived an H-bomb, decapitation, and eighteen simultaneous ass-kickings and then completely regenerated in an issue or two.

I mean, it's a healing factor. He's not a lizard or a planarian worm! Claremont understood that it was impressive enough for Wolverine to survive being shot several times, or cut up by ninjas, or whatever, and he didn't shy from showing the consequences of the character's violent life: Logan spent like half his time in X-Men bandaged or in a sling or on crutches or whatever. It made sense and created some poignant moments. But since the early 90s the corporate urge to constantly overexpose a popular character has really blown his abilities out of all reasonable proportion, to the point where I just really have a hard time taking Wolverine seriously anymore.

Yeah. It's even to the point where, on the rare occasion writers do try to tone it down, it just seems really unnatural. There's really just no turning back once you've had a character regenerate from a single drop of blood.

What struck me about it all is how DC's Lobo began life as a overblown parody, to the point that individual blood drops could, given enough time, grow into new Lobos

Yet right now if an entire storyline cropped up about harvesting a crop of Logans from a thousand blood drops, I wouldn't be too surprised.

sportzboytjw

TexiKen wrote: »

It's not our fault you tied your shoes together and tried to run with it.

I don't like when they do this either. It's like, "Hey guys, blockbuster event/big writer is going to change EVERYTHING!" but then they want to return to status quo in under a year. Give us a couple of years before reverting to the norm please.

Fencingsax

TexiKen wrote: »

The ending to Hush made no sense. That's not how a mystery works, you have to lay out the clues for the reader to gather from the story itself, not pull things from off panel and then expect everyone to just go with it, trying to act like people came for the story instead of the Jim Lee art..

Technically, if you write well enough, it doesn't matter whether the reader can figure it out (see:Sherlock Holmes)


Also, Amazons Attack.

Kyougu

You know what bothered me about the whole Xorn thing? There was a fucking issue of X-Men before the big reveal just devoted to him and had narration by him. Made absolutely no sense after what came after it.

desc

Wait, I'm not done being angry after thinking about Red Hulk holding Mjolnir in space. I haven't even gotten to rage on any of the posts after it, yet.

When I start thinking about stupid things like this in comic series I have loved, I immediately develop a rage backlog to work through.

Sars_Boy

most of DC from the past like 3 or 4 years

Desktop Hippie

TexiKen wrote: »

The ending to Identity Crisis made no sense. Again, you can't pull things out of nowhere off panel and expect it to work. This is mainly because it didn't know if it wanted to go with a mystery or rather that forced "darkness" of the JLA messing with the villains minds.

I liked Identity Crisis more than most - though less now I actually know the characters involved :P Certain things bugged me right from the start though.

Why Jean brought a flamethrower with her in the first place. Why she barbecued Sue when it looked like natural causes. And if no one knew about the note because Batman hid it, how come Merlyn and Calculator were talking about it a before the big reveal?

And yes, for a story written by a mystery writer it's pretty short on mystery.

Sars_Boy

identity crisis is the worst superhero story ever

Bogart

Mutant X. Havok and an insane Captain America fight with energy beams, and in spite of the fact that a little earlier these beams couldn't penetrate Iceman's roadblocks just over there, they end up inadvertently destroying the moon.

Yes, the moon.

Bogart

Sars_Boy wrote: »

identity crisis is the worst superhero story ever

This is ridiculously untrue.

Robos A Go Go

Turning Impulse into Kid Flash and having Wonder Girl move closer to the female superhero template were two irritating changes for me. The worst part is that you can't very well revert the characters to their more interesting selves because, even if the changes took the two in a more run of the mill direction, you just can't take a more mature character and reverse-age him or her by several years (unless he's Spider-Man). Bringing people back from the dead is easy; making a teenager act like a teenager again is hard.

Mutant X. Havok and an insane Captain America fight with energy beams, and in spite of the fact that a little earlier these beams couldn't penetrate Iceman's roadblocks just over there, they end up inadvertently destroying the moon.

Yes, the moon.

That's some Dragon Ball Z shit right there.

Bogart

By the end of the run Mutant X had become possibly the worst thing Marvel have ever published. And as you can imagine, that's up against some pretty stiff competition.

Munch

Ditto everything Sars said.

For plot-induced stupidity, I'm going to have to go with Cassandra Cain and Max Lord's sudden turn to villainy. It made zero sense based on the history of either character, and subsequent attempts to go back to the stories and rationalize the characters' actions only further aggravated the situation.

For a ridiculous feat, you know what always bugged me during OMAC Project and Infinite Crisis? The goddamn OMACs. They started off as guys who were pretty powerful, and could nullify things like Blue Beetle's strobe gun. By the time OMAC Project ended, they were de-powering Mary Marvel with magic lightning, and beating up Green Lanterns. Why the fuck hasn't anyone bothered to use this technology since then? Might have come in handy when all the world's heroes were getting their asses kicked by Black Adam.

They also suffered from the notorious too-many-ninjas effect, becoming weaker and weaker as their numbers grew. In their debut, one effortlessly beat up Blue Beetle. Later, three of them took out Guy Gardner, Rocket Red [in Apokoliptian armor], Mary Marvel, Fire, and Booster Gold, and were only stopped when Rocket Red blew himself up to take them with him. By Infinite Crisis, it took dozens of them to fail to kill Nightwing.

sportzboytjw

That is a good one Munch. I was TERRIFIED that I was about to see the "Nightwing go splattered" scene... and instead he got away pretty easily.

Sars_Boy

Bogart wrote: »

Sars_Boy wrote: »

identity crisis is the worst superhero story ever

This is ridiculously untrue.

i dare you to find a bigger piece of shit than identity crisis

Robos A Go Go

What's the Elseworlds comic where Superman is really old and has a gun for an arm?

That's the worst superhero story ever.

Sars_Boy

no it's still better than identity crisis

i would still read that a million times before i read identity crisis again

Bogart

Sars_Boy wrote: »

Bogart wrote: »

Sars_Boy wrote: »

identity crisis is the worst superhero story ever

This is ridiculously untrue.

i dare you to find a bigger piece of shit than identity crisis

There are a million comics worse than Identity Crisis (how about Ultimatum, or Ultimates 3, or the X-Force mini, or any number of terrible nineties comics), but obviously your mad hate-on for it will brook no disagreement.

Robos A Go Go

Sars_Boy wrote: »

no it's still better than identity crisis

i would still read that a million times before i read identity crisis again

I don't believe you.

Whom the Gods Destroy also sounds awful. Something about Superman turning into a centaur or some shit.

Superman is transformed into an evil centaur by Circe. Lana Lang is imbued with the power of the Oracle of Delphi, and can perform magical feats. She tames the centaur Superman and persuades him of his real identity. She also gives Superman a sex change with her magic, because his "crimes as leader of the Maenads were against women, (and therefore he) must take their part". Female Superman then has to infiltrate the Great Hall of the Reich, which is guarded by the Minotaur. Lois Wonder Woman defeats Nazi Wonder Woman and ties her up with her magic lasso.

Finally, it is revealed that Zeus and Hera were playing a chess game, using the world as their playpieces. Adonis is sent to be taken care of by Hades. Lois, Lana, and Superman live together happily ever after.

Claremont needs a therapist.

Sars_Boy

Bogart wrote: »

Sars_Boy wrote: »

Bogart wrote: »

Sars_Boy wrote: »

identity crisis is the worst superhero story ever

This is ridiculously untrue.

i dare you to find a bigger piece of shit than identity crisis

There are a million comics worse than Identity Crisis (how about Ultimatum, or Ultimates 3, or the X-Force mini, or any number of terrible nineties comics), but obviously your mad hate-on for it will brook no disagreement.

"terrible 90s comics" is such a bullshit excuse im not even going to go into it

Ultimatum seems to suffer from the exact same syndrome as Identity Crisis but IC was still the first to start it so it gets the worst title

Ultimates 3 was bad but seriously Identity Crisis is a summation of everything wrong with the superhero genre since the mid 80s

for reference

Futt Bucker

IMO, a lot of the awful in Identity Crisis comes from the book taking itself so fucking seriously. Also:

- The Flash running into Deathstroke's sword
- FOOTPRINTS ON HER BRAIN

Sentry

Yeah, I'm sorry, but BOTH of the things Robos posted are worse then Identity Crisis. By a few orders of magnitude.

Servo

Kyougu wrote: »

You know what bothered me about the whole Xorn thing? There was a fucking issue of X-Men before the big reveal just devoted to him and had narration by him. Made absolutely no sense after what came after it.

the thing about that is that when you re-read that issue, it's actually a letter which xorn has written to professor x. given that xorn will be revealed as something of an unreliable narrator, i always figured that issue was a combination of running a con job on both prof x as well as the readers. i mean, he presents himself as such a bleeding-heart goody-goody willing to forgive all his years in prison and immediately work for the bettering of all mutantkind that X would eat that shit right up. magneto knows just what buttons to push to get xavier to trust him.

some if not all of it is probably a lie, particularly the parts where he meets an old chinese dude selling rice on the streets who just happened to know xorn's dear ol' dad. yeah right.

Sentry

Servo wrote: »

Kyougu wrote: »

You know what bothered me about the whole Xorn thing? There was a fucking issue of X-Men before the big reveal just devoted to him and had narration by him. Made absolutely no sense after what came after it.

the thing about that is that when you re-read that issue, it's actually a letter which xorn has written to professor x. given that xorn will be revealed as something of an unreliable narrator, i always figured that issue was a combination of running a con job on both prof x as well as the readers. i mean, he presents himself as such a bleeding-heart goody-goody willing to forgive all his years in prison and immediately work for the bettering of all mutantkind that X would eat that shit right up. magneto knows just what buttons to push to get xavier to trust him.

some if not all of it is probably a lie, particularly the parts where he meets an old chinese dude selling rice on the streets who just happened to know xorn's dear ol' dad. yeah right.

Yeah, I think everything wrong with Xorn came AFTER the reveal.

Don't get me wrong though, that's still a metric ton of wrong.

Cade

Spidey's deal with the devil and BND pretty much sums up everything.

TexiKen

Yeah, Morrison's handle of Xorn was fine. It worked, like Servo said, in conning everyone about who he really was.

Xorn turned to shit AFTER New X-Men #150, when they brought back Magneto in New Excalibur and Marvel did absolutely nothing to rectify the situation, it was one of the biggest silences from a publisher in recent years. They really did expect people to just let it go away.

Then we had Austen trying to remedy it in his New X-Men issues (I don't really blame him for that story, he was at least trying to fix it even though it was beyond his abilities to do so).

Then we had House of M, and New Avengers tried to make it work but failed in spectacular fashion.


And Mutant X was the worst thing Marvel has published. It destroyed Howard Mackie's reputation to the point where he had to go by an anonymous title for the short-lived Brotherhood series.



Identity Crisis failed because of the last issue, making everything else seem just stupid. I can deal with Wally running into a sword, or Atom being at the exact point when a laser pointer pushes him away, even Kyle trying to punch Deathstroke, but the last issue trying to fix everything about the mystery to the point it doesn't even work was ridiculous.

Sars_Boy

wow you're a pretty lenient guy then because all of that is just the icing on the horrible cake that is Identity Crisis