The WORST Bat-Comics of All Time

[wrly_bird]

   Okay, so I'm doing a feature for the Meg on the best and worst Batman stories since the Adams and O'Neil era.
   Please help by shouting out your candidates for the WORST Batman comics of all time...
   Here's what I got so far: Digital Justice, Frank Miller's Dark Knight Strikes Again and Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder ('Are you retarded? I'm the goddamn Batman!')...

[Mike Carroll]

The Long Halloween - man, that was boring!

And pretty much anything from the 1950s and 1960s - not a lot of classics from that era!

[Buddy]

I don't think The Dark Knight Strikes Again was bad as such, just people maybe expected more from it.

I quite like it but I just can't get over the terrible colouring on the book.

[El Spurioso]

"According to studio New Line, the first will be an adaptation of The Hobbit, the novel Tolkien published before his Lord of the Rings cycle.

The second will be an original story focusing on the 60 years between the book and the beginning of the Rings trilogy."

Uh-oh...  Brace-brace-brace for the waves of Fanger.

Link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7366375.stm" target="_blank">Del Toro to direct Hobbit Movies...

[Floyd-the-k]

I really haven't read enough Batman to comment fairly, but can't resist adding Hush.  If that wasn't the worst, Batman is pretty bloody ordinary

here's a link to a column I wrote about it...

Link: http://comicsnexus.insidepulse.com/2005/03/02/32818/" target="_blank">what I wrote about Hush

[worldshown]

Can't say I've ever read much Batman, but in a second hand store in Cardiff city centre there is a reproduction of an old Batman cover.

It shows Batman completely submerged in a tank of water with Robin looking on and has a speech bubble coming from Batman saying "That's right Robin, I've become a human fish!"

How bad/contrived must that story have been.

Prepared to wipe the egg of my face if it turns out to be one of the classics though.

[Gavin_Leahy_Block]

just adding Batman vampire trilogy.

[Richmond Clements]

Vampire trilogy??

There's three of them?? I'd read the first (I uess) Red Rain or something. I love Batman, but that was shite.

[DavidXBrunt]

Post Adams and O'Neill? So that's post 1970s? Hmmm. For me it would have to be something by A.j. Liberman. Batman books are basically bulletproof sales wise but Lieberman managed to drive Gotham Knights into cancellation.

Hush Returns is a collection written by Lieberman in which...well the title says it all. What really shocked me about it was that two of the six issues are spent retelling widely read and available origin stories without adding anything extra to the mix. So The Joker sits by a fireside with The Penguin and The Riddler and shares the Red Hood story and another 22 pages are spent telling the history of Prometheus as written by Grant Morrison in a JLA special.

Pointless retreadings that don't embellish or tell the story from an interesting new perspective. Nothing is added or developed or reimagined. Whatever you may think about Moore and Morrison they are two of the most creative writers out there and to hear their stories rehashed in such a prosaic is baffling in the extreme. Anybody who wanted to read them could have read the originals. Nothing is added to story by these lengthy digressions and, considering the books called Hush Returns they don't even have much to do about Hush.

Much to do about Hush? Shakespeare versus Kane.

[Wils]

Year 2.

Remove the part about it being Batman's second year and it's actually not a bad story. Probably more of a marketing fuck up than writing. Some gorgeous art at the start from Alan Davis only then to switch into the awfulness of McFarlane. ISTR hearing that a Year 3 was in existence as well...

[Satanist]

All-Star Batman is currently get a bit of a pating but it makes me laugh as I really dont think its meant to be serious.

In the last year I've read some of Grant Morrisons new lot and they were just plain bad.

[wrly_bird]

Cool column there, Floyd!

[Gavin_Leahy_Block]

the Vampire trilogy

Batman & Dracula Red Rain
Batman: Bloodstorm
Batman Crimson Mist

[Tiplodocus]

I really like ALL STAR BATMAN.  

I like the fact that it can exist in the same universe as the sixties Batman movies.

Do elseworlds titles count?  I recall reading a couple; one where he was in the Wild West and one where he gets mixed up in the Arthurian legend (he was a dark KNIGHT, geddit).  The Arthurian one was abso-fucking-lutely appalling.
(GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT is great however).

BATMAN Vs. PREDATOR was pretty poor though (it was basically the same plot as PREDATOR 2) but bizarely, I still found myself buying another BATMAN vs. PREDATOR title (can't recall) as I was sucked in by some fantastic art.

I've read a few Grant Morrisons in the last couple of year and quite enjoyed them myself.

 

[TordelBack]

I really like ALL STAR BATMAN.

I was pretty critical of the first few issues of The All Star Goddamn Batman, but I've really warmed to it lately.  Pulling one thread out of the whole Batman mess and running with it to bizarre lengths  is one of Miller's cleverer ideas, and the Green Lantern sequence was priceless.