2000 AD Online Forum

I'm inspired by the "worst batman Comic" thread.

With Batman I only tend to shell out for what i know is quality (libraries are there for the rest!)
But I did buy "Superman True Brit" - in snecking hardback! Damn you John Cleese!

What's been your greatest waste of money?

the first xcalliber that came out.. lovley alan davis art but i just couldnt finish the bloody this the story was so shyte!

if it's got an X in front of it, it's designed to cash in on your loyalty in some way.

The problem with 'the worst of' lists is that anything truly bad at least engenders some kind of emotional response on the part of the consumer in order for it to be judged terrible, thus even monumentally-awful books can be justified as a purchase as they provide food for thought and rumination on the part of the consumer.  What is better is to ask about the kind of thing that engenders no emotional response whatsoever on the part of the reader to the point that he/she can simply dispose of it without complaint or a second thought, and - if asked - can muster no criticism beyond "I just couldn't be bothered so I stopped reading it and went and ate some cornflakes.  I feel no malice or disappointment towards those who created such a thing, only emptiness."

To this end, I nominate post-Mark Miller Ultimate X-Men.  Miller's stuff was juvenile, but it was at least entertaining and eventful in a way that the normal X-books weren't at the time (and the regular Marvel X-books have taken a great deal of inspiration from Miller's UXM run), but the book since has been pure drudgery that simply uses post-millenial comic storytelling (decompression, aimless plotting, no standalone issues, all stories written with the trade collection in mind instead of the monthlies) to retread the most boring elements of the kind of navel-gazing 1990s X-men stories that led directly to Marvel's bankruptcy and subsequent purchasing by a toy company.  I can't even say "these books are pure shit!" because I find myself incapable of viewing them as anything other than subsistence literature aimed at people used to buying and reading comics out of habit and making no critical judgement on their quality beyond that they feature Wolverine with a goatee.

I have absolutely no gut-response to UXM, and that to me is more damning than loving or hating it with a passion.

"even monumentally-awful books can be justified as a purchase"
I disagree! Unless you're Bruce Wayne/Tony Stark wealthy, it's impossible to own it all. We need to choose the good stuff we want on our shelves.
Sometimes we shell out £10+ and end up with something very disappointing.
If you want another example of "lured into spending cash for crap", I give you DC's "countdown to infinite crisis" - Identity Crisis & OMAC project were excellent, so I bought another forty quides worth of kak!

I have been pretty happy with my comic book purchases.

I couldn't really say. As I've been neither anticipating purchases I've made.

Though, if I was forced to choose.

It would be '13th Floor', 'DoomLord', 'MetaZoic'.

Still they are of good standard, yet not quite as manificient as they were described.

With apologies for the delay posting the results (impromptu all day pub crawl yesterday kind of disrupted any other plans), here are the winners of the April Art Competition.

Once again, congrats to everyone who entered - this was the most voted Compo, and the tightest result yet, with only a single vote between each of the top three places!

In third place:

JohnnyStress

Yeah I read True Brit as well. It was crap. I didn't even like the art and he's supposed to be a legendary artist.

What a great excuse to post up this old favourite. In truth it can't really be described as worst as it does what it says on the tin - non stop pope action!

I know its recent and all but I have to vote countdown....like many others I was sucked in by the awesomeness of 52 and then this came out...

when a story only gets going in the 26th issue you know you are in trouble....

saying that there have been times in the far distant past where our very own 2000ad has been a waste of money

In recent memory the worst comic series I got stuck buying was Dino-Wars: The Jurassic War of the Worlds from Antarctic Press.

On paper it sounds good (Intelligence Dinosaurs from before the asteroid hit 65 million years ago return to Earth to reclaim their world) unfortunatly its the worst piece of trash ever published IMO. Most of it is cribbed wholesale from Independence Day. The main character is a squarjawed cardboard cut out (who, get this, is on the Moon when the Dinosaurs return. The lunar lander he arrived in gets totaled. So how does he escape? He LEAPS from the Lunar Surface and GRABS the orbiting return capsule. Then returns to Earth in a little under 10 minutes.) the Female lead is just as bad. And packaged with the most cliche "manga" art ever (I don't blanket hate Manga/Anime mind you, but this was basically every art cliche rolled into one) The whole thing is a train wreck.

And me stuck with it because I preordered the whole thing.

I didn't really mean those comics were bad.

I just thought they could have been better.

It's all about comparison, really.

Though, my worst purchases are also one of my best.

This is why I only tend to buy compliations or collections. That and the fact I whizz through single comics so quickly and don't have any patience.

Hellboy Junior. Utter, utter shit, bar the six or so pages by Mignola.

Hey, that Pope comic is a classic!

Two words: QUADRO GANG

My first ever proper comic purchase (of a graphic novel, anyway) was Frank Miller's Dark Knight Strikes Again.

Not a good idea, considering I knew nothing of any DC characters beyond Batman himself, and hadn't even read the first Dark Knight. I found the whole thing utterly baffling as meaningless character after meaningless character was namedropped for seemingly no particular reason every few pages, and the entire story seemed built around other comics I hadn't read.

Didn't really warm to his art at first, either. And the coluring was atrocious.

Hah, my first ever proper Graphic Novel purchases were Killing Joke and DKR, back in the day...

And, though my knowledge of the DCU has expanded somewhat in the intervening 20 odd years, I still agree wholeheartedly with your review of DKSA there Jimbo...

The Robin II slipcase edition. Came with every single cover varient. So even though the limited series was only 4 issues long, I ended up with about 16+ pointless comics or thereabouts. And although I remember absolutely nothing about the story now, I'm pretty sure it was shit. Offloaded it soon after buying it. Ah, the 1990's....

ThryllSeekyr, I was pleasantly surprised by Doomlord myself.  Thought it was great fun.

Camelot 3000.  Now that was AWFUL.  Also, Knights of Pendragon vol.2 - especially when vol.1 (same creative team too!) was one of my favourites to date.

There was a Lobo box-set which contained a couple of trade paperbacks you could get separately and also the exclusive "The Wisdom of Lobo". The addition of this third title meant the set cost more than simply buying the two other books.

However, rather than the Bisleyfest I was (somewhat naively) hoping for, the 'special' "Wisdom..." title turned out to be a completely blank bunch of pages.

Thanks, DC.

M@

M@

True Brit sounded good, and if it had followed the same path that Red Son did it would have been.
But it was a piece of crap. Mad odds that the pages I flicked through weren't the crapiest ones!

Scott Pilgrim is an appalling comic - like a Simpsons parody of what a hip and happening comic book would be, or at the very least, it's what a mid-life crisis would be like if 13 year-old children could have mid-life crises:  Twentysomething rock star-wannabe Scott Pilgrim courts Amazon (Canada) courier Ramona Flowers, much to the chagrin of his 16 year-old Asian ex-girlfriend Knives Chung and Ramona's seven kung-fu master ex-boyfriends.  There's some fights and stuff, but it really is jaw-droppingly bad stuff - like someone read Strangers in Paradise with one eye on the tv as Dragonball Z was on, and thought SiP needed a bit more kung fu, less chicks, and not so much characterisation and plot.  We even get whole pages of lyrics from Scott's band over panel after panel of girls gazing in wonderment.

Ultimates Vol 3 is quite shocking, too.  I don't know where to begin with this.  You need to read it to know its knuckle-whitening badness, but I wouldn't wish it on anyone, not even the man who wrote it - who's apparantly being given the task of writing every book in the Marvel Ultimate line this summer.  Read Ultimates 3 and you may very well wonder why.

Scott Pilgrim is being turned into a film by Edgar Wright. Its set to star Michael Cera.

They're making it into a fucking film?

They'll just ruin it if they do...

The comic? Or the medium of cinema?

Hush,for reasons already mentioned. To be fair, 2000ad had done worse, but never all at the same time. There have been stories worse than Hush, but they've always shared the comic with something better

Ultimates 3 sucks :( sad to hear as the whole Ultimate line was better than the classic line IMHO so now this guys gonna ruin em all :(

still wont be able to help myself and get the Ultimates 3 TPB when it comes out

CU Radbacker

I've also heard bad things about ultimates 3, but I will also probably buy it as 1 and 2 were so good.

Nostalgia is a killer - a fondly remembered comic can turn out to be crap when bought years later - I can't believe that I actually enjoyed Marvel Secret Wars in the 80's, or that I paid £15 for it recently!
oh, the shame

 Ladies and Gentlemen, please allow me to introduce the worst comic in the world, those who are weak of stomach may wish to look away now, before my tale of woe. Now the worst wouldn't be some crap you just picked up (I'm looking at you Leifield, it'ld have o be something you looked forward to.
 A year or 2 ago I went travelling and my friendly comicbook guy agreed to keep up on my orders and anything he thought i'ld like (within reason). On that very expensive trip imagine my delight in finding a new mini-series of one of my favourite comics of all time, the mighty Top Ten. Then imagine my suprise in noticeing that none of the awesome talent from the previous run was involved. And then I read it. Never has a great comic been so horrendously trashed so quickly. Truly ABCs very own Ultimates 3.Oh and Albion sucked.
 And anyone dissing Doomlord deserves disitegrtion at Vek's mighty hand.

My worst in recent years is definitely the first issue of the new Evil Dead series from this year. I thought the combination of Evil Dead and John Bolton would be marvy. How wrong I was. An awful, AWFUL script and some very poor art from Mr Bolton.

Didn't John Bolton do the Adap of Evil Dead III back in the day?

That was pretty swish IIRC...

Aliens vs. Predator vs. Terminator.

Dreadful in ways I can't begin to describe.

I'm with Chris, Camelot 3000 is an absolutely shocking comic. How can something that looks so good be so utterly shite?!

I'm not even actually that impressed with the way some of CAMELOT 3000 looks these days.  I think some of the character and vehicle design work in it is very, very poor.

Morgan Le Fey is still sexy as hell though. Not quit eon a par with Helen Mirren but very nearly...

Oh lord, why did someone have to remind me of Top Ten v.2.  It was like finding Book 4 of Halo Jones on the shelves, only to discover it was by Fleischer and Liefield.  

oh crap, thats depressing about Top 10, one of my favorite MOore comics and just finished re-reading yeaterday then started on Smax.  V2 is that the same as Beyond the furthurest Reaches or is it actually a Season 2 of the characters we know and love?

CU Radbacker

I read Top Ten The Forty-Niners a while ago, some of it was good though I was just frankly shocked at the poorness of the time travel themed sequence in which a newspaper headline is shown through the time portal, only later be shown to be the complete opposite of what it appeared to say as some of the words of the headline were cut off at the sides. What was Alan Moore thinking??

I also was disappointed to read the original Book Of Magic GN - just a big load of waffle, then at the end of each chapter Tim meets another magic bloke and they go on about magic again for the next chapter.

I brought a copy of Yummy Fur many moons ago, in a vague attempt to expand my comic reading horizons.

I tore it up as it was just such pointless shite it offended my teenage mind!

Don't know if it would today, but don't want to put my money on the table to find out.

Glad i never bothered with Top Ten v2 as the first run is perfection IMHO.

Yummy Fur was excellent!  Thing is, it's just one big story rather than loads of little weird tales.  Takes about 13 issues to find that out though.  Amazing when it does.

I used to love Yummy Fur, but it's very much of it's time and doesn't read as well these days as other comics of the time like Hate.
Since then Chester Brown did a series called Louis Riel which is fantastic, a true story about 19th century Canadian politics as exciting as the end of Supersurf 7 :)

 Checked and the title was  "Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct (2005), a mini-series by Paul Di Filippo and Jerry Ordway, set five years after the events of Smax." or to paraphrase "Top 10:Crap on a stick"

Yummy Fur

"The Man Who Couldn't Stop"

'Hmm, can't seem to stop'

Brilliant!

Kind of comic book related the Virgin Dredd novel the Hundredfold Problem is just unreadable.  

Dennis the complete and utter sadist indeed!

Needless to say, I didn't go for issue 2.

Full, wrong, mouth, is, of, your.

rearrange those words into a sentence, Rom hating swine :)

How I wasted my pocket money.

Human Fly I'm with you on that one!
I've got issue 1. What a pile of shit.

Big deal. I've got the lot.

He really was real.

'Rom the Space Knight' toy robot. As advertised in alot of those old comic books.

 

Link: As real as it ever was.

How very badly I wanted that toy.