The Limp Arrow Awards For Worst Comics Of 2010

Originally I had entitled these end-of-year rant posts the "Humperdoozie ", after the inbred descendant of Christ from Preacher. However, I realized that might come across as though I equate crappy comics with developmental disabilities, and I don't want that. So I've changed the award name to something more specific and less offensive-- except to people who can't get it up because of nanite arm stump infection. Fortunately, none of them are coming forward any time soon.

Here's the best way I can express my opinion about the year's comics-- 2010 was the year when I stopped identifying myself as a superhero comic fan. I'd enjoyed a lot of the stuff from 2009, and I still enjoyed some things in 2010. But this was the year where I finally emancipated myself from specific allegiances, because I'd found other interests that filled the void. I've found franchise superhero comics largely an Ouroburos that somehow kept finding more of its tail upon which to nosh, and I don't know if it was just getting fed up with the directions of comics, or focusing my attention on other mediums that told the kinds of stories I actually wanted to see.

But let's put it this way...you know how Mark Millar wrote his own afterword for Superior #1, saying about how comics fans needed new superhero characters to replace the tired constructs of the Golden and Silver Ages? Well, I found my new hero. His name is Solid Snake. :P

Anyway, onwards with the awards...

Worst Story Resolution: X-Men: Second Coming. After dragging the DeciMation out for five years, Marvel resolves it via living deus ex machina Hope Summers, whose Phoenix powers revive the mutant race with....five new mutants. That's equal to the amount of mutants killed in the crossover, significantly less than the amount of mutants killed since the DeciMation, and not even remotely worth the moral compromises Cyclops made in the name of chasing a messiah child without any evidence to support his faith. Yet now Cyclops is the hero, and everyone loves him, even though he's treated every mutant he wasn't sleeping with (re: every mutant except Emma and maybe Wolverine ) as expendable. Seeing Scott awarded the Medal of Honor by Captain America was especially jarring, since Cap wouldn't have stood for the shit Scott did, even in a wartime situation.

Worst New Direction: JMS' Superman. Walking through small towns trying to find the real America was corny when Green Lantern and Green Arrow did it in the 70's. But at least they were open to learning from their experience. Superman's just ditching his responsibilities to the entire world so he can slum it with mere mortals and feel better about himself. At best he's a politician going on a campaign trail to win his constituents' favor, and at worst he's an anthropologist fascinated by the behavior of us chimpanzees. Neither seems like a good use of his talents, and it's an especially jarring waste of a year's worth of comics.

Worst Move For Diversity Of Representation: DC Comics killing off the Ryan Choi Atom. Was Ray Palmer such an original and compelling personality that he had to return to the role at the cost of the new guy's life? What made him so much more " iconic " in that minor role, that he would have his competition eliminated by divine intervention...oh, wait, he's a white Silver Age character. And Ryan's a Chinese-American from the current generation. That explains it, and it's hardly the only example of the classic white guys taking back roles from their more diverse counterparts. At least in this case, people who enjoyed the All-New Atom comic/don't enjoy DC's current direction got a karmic bone by seeing the villain who killed Ryan sentenced to death by Snoo-Snoo.

Worst Comic About A Junkie Ex-Sideckick Who Cradles A Dead Cat During A Heroin Hallucination After Being Unable To Get It Up With The Supervillain Babymama Of His Dead Daughter Due To A Nanobot Infection In His Arm Stump: Rise of Arsenal. Okay, it didn't have too much competiton, but still, you can't make that shit up. At least, you couldn't until a professional writer DID.

Worst Trend: Identity Sub-Franchising. The Incredible Hulk has become The Incredible Hulks, with every character of his supporting cast now being a similar gamma-powered monster. Batman has become Batman Inc., franchising his identity built through a lifetime of suffering out to anyone who passes the job interview. Wolverine's gone from a solo X-Men spin-off to his own franchise, with a team book of is own and books for his clone daughter and evil son. There are two Captain Americas, a family of Flashes, and a Lantern Corps of every color. Has everyonejust given up on the idea that being a superhero can be inherently special? Or is it just

Limp Arrow 2010 Lifetime Unachievement Award: Mark Millar. See the above comment, except that his " new " concepts are a book about comic book fanboys playing at being heroes, a book about a Batman rip-off acting like a Joker rip-off, and a book about a Shazam rip-off. If you don't want to do the same old thing as everyone else, don't do the same old thing as everyone else! Filing off the serial numbers and adding a lot of swearing and "timely" pop culture references isn't good enough.

Nemesis #2, Crowning Moment in Narrative Laziness!

For the pages in question, go here

Nemesis, the new creator-owned series by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven, is about a Batman-type vigilante who uses his unequaled skills and resources to cause crimes, rather than fight them. In the second issue, we find out the origin of Nemesis; when young Matthew Anderson's parents were arrested for hunting transients as sport, he trained himself to be the greatest criminal ever. And I quote...

" Bored shitless with his [Matt's uncle and legal guardian] endless choir practice and impeccable manners, I ran away and travelled the world, learning at the feet of its magnificent bastards. By twelve I was a gang lord. At fifteen I was Asia's largest drugs exporter. At twenty-three I headed a Zoroastrian death-cult and was finally ready to honor my mother's dying wish. "

Note how all of this is caption narration over a panel where we see a young man in a hooded sweater in a dark alley. Obviously, this is a take-off on how Bruce Wayne travelled the world to learn the ninja skills he would use as Batman. However, there are some questions raised by this, such as

1.) Why would all these " magnificent bastards " train Matt in their criminal trades? Do they take time off of stealing and murdering to mentor at-risk youth in super-villainy?

2.) How did a teenaged boy, even a precociously evil one, run a criminal empire successfully without ever getting caught?

3.) Why would he run a death cult with its name attached to an ancient religion practiced today only by hundreds of thousands ( most of whom, I'll wager, are NOT mass-murderers ).

4.) Are we going to see any of this on panel?

The answers are; not explained, not explained, not explained, and probably not. Many stories have been done about Bruce Wayne's pre-Batman life and his training in martial arts; they devoted a whole movie to it ( Batman Begins ), and it was a very good movie. Millar's logic seems to be that because we get the joke that Nemesis is Batman with the serial numbers filed off and his morals ( and color scheme ) flipped 180 degrees, we can get the joke that Nemesis would just have the same background, except trained by the wicked instead of the virtuous.

See, 70 years of Batman writers already did all the work, so Millar can just piggyback on our familiarity with Batman!

Of course, that's the way the entirety of Nemesis works. It is a story that relies on better stories to do its heavy lifting. We know that Officer Blake Morrow is supposed to be Comissioner Gordon, so we don't need to hear too much about who he is as a character, what makes him tick, how he gets along with his family ( a brief comment to his partner about Morrow's arguments with his wife is dropped in a mechanical fashion ). We know that Batman has a bunch of wonderful toys, so we don't need to see what makes Nemesis' tech any more special. We know that the Joker is the homicidal artist that Nemesis is aping, so we don't need to see any particularly unique crimes. After all, the late Heath Ledger's epic performance set the groundwork for the entire media-friendly world appreciating the Joker, so all that Nemesis needs is for us to " hear " Ledger's voice when we read the guy's word balloons!

The truth is, all I can hear from Nemesis is Christian Bale's Batman voice, trying for intimidating and ending up with ridiculous growling.

The galling part is that this comic is under Marvel's creator-owned Icon imprint, but there's very little actually CREATED here*. This is a lame joke about an iconic superhero character, stretched out in an attempt at a story. It's not entertainingly over-the-top, because it sticks so close to the source material. It's not deep, because it doesn't expand far beyond what we already know about the characters and tropes. And while there's a plot that will be going on for two more issues, thus far all we've seen is the most rudimentary duel of wits we can imagine; " I planned for you to fail like that! " " No, I planned YOU to fail like that! ". There aren't characters, there aren't conflicting ideologies, and there are barely thrills.

If you want a great story about a superhero gone bad, read Mark Waid and Peter Kruse's Irredeemable-- it's a Superman gone bad and not a Batman, but it's got much more depth and suspense. If you want a great story about a Batman analogue raised towards evil, read the Prometheus story in Grant Morrison's second JLA Deluxe hardcover. I suppose if you want a story that's an exact replica of " What if Batman was bad ", without ties to any character outside the Batman mythos, Nemesis is your book. But you should probably wait for the inevitable movie made from Millar's Nemesis script, because the cast and crew there are much less likely to phone it in.

* At least not by Millar; Dave McCaig offers excellent colors, and Steve McNiven draws in a rougher style that looks much more appealing than his hyper-rendered work on previous Millar titles. It's a shame that Millar has kept us from seeing McNiven's artwork on a decent story on three consecutive occasions.