The Top Ten Worst DC Comics of 2013

Hey people! As every comic fan, you know what is one of the things that I enjoy the most about reading comic books?

Whining about them!

"Wait a minute, I thought you liked everything, you lying son of a..."

Sorry to interrupt your swearing but you would be wrong. As most persons I can recognize crap when is in front of me and I can assure you that there has been a looot of crap this year.

So let me start by saying that I will include in this list full series as well as one-shots individually since they count as they're own terrible story and of course, the authors that are responsible for putting them on the market (Yes, I know that the year hasn't concluded yet but I don't see anything that will make me change my opinion this last month anyway).

But first, let's talk about some dishonorary mentions:

• Duane Swierczynski/Christy Marx's Birds of Prey: Nothing really bad here is just that editorial is extracting every grain of creativity from each author that has worked on it.
• Rob Liefeld/Frank Tieri's Grifter: The only thing that saves this is that it was only one issue written by Tieri but still had to follow the awful Liefeld plot.
• Kyle Higgins' Nightwing: Again, an editorial mess but the parts where Higgins was able to do by himself were decent and makes it stay out of this list.
• Paul Levitz' Desaad: Outstandingly boring but not offensively boring at least, don't worry though we will see a lot of Levitz in this list anyway.

So without further due, we're counting down (I swear this will sound better if I ever do a video):

10. Marguerite Bennett's Lobo

I actually remember being excited about this issue from Villains Month since I enjoyed Bennet's work on Batman Annual #2 co-written by her mentor Scott Snyder so what happened to her in Lobo?

Sure, one could argue that it was going to receive hate due to the new design for the main character (Although I personally don't find it that bad) but still, Bennett commits a lot of mistakes on the script like repeating a phrase that was annoying the first time until it becomes insufferable (if you have read it, you know what I'm talking about).

However, I didn't put this higher on the list because she's genuinely not a bad writer (her most recent work on Batgirl proves it) and there are things much worse unfortunately.

9. Tony Bedard's Blue Beetle

Yes, I know that it had only one issue this year since it was cancelled in January but if I'm putting one-shots here then I'm sure as hell can put an issue from a completely disappointing series.

The last Blue Beetle series from 2006 was a quite unique book with a lighthearted tone and nice humor so I have no idea why Tony Bedard thought it was good idea to make it one of the most generic superhero titles ever. Yes, it could also have been mandated by DC but still a competent writer would have found a way to make it a least a bit interesting and distinctive, Bedard instead made a Spider-Man clone that didn't even had the best aspects from that character.

Again, I'm only talking about wasted potential here since it was just one issue and that stops its rise on this list.   

8. Rob Liefeld/Frank Tieri/Tom DeFalco's Hawkman

This however, is truly foul. Despite of only having 5 issues this year due that it was cancelled in May there's no denial that this was a failure since issue 1. 

Tony Daniel did a quite mediocre job on the first year but after it came someone even worse, Rob Liefeld was the one handling the plot while Frank Tieri was doing the scripts. I don't think it's necessary to explain why the story was a mess but I suppose I have to. Liefeld's premise consisted on making Hawkman's identity become Katar Hol from the planet Thannagar just like in the Silver Age, now that's all fine and dandy but the execution was awful, the plot was simplistic as hell as well as the narration and of course, we all know that Liefeld got fired, Tieri tried to end the ongoing story with poor results and finally DeFalco wanted to go into a more classic direction which was average at best and sadly concluded the volume on an awful way.

I honestly feel sorry for Hawkman fans since they were the ones suffering during this series but of course, they should still be thankful that it wasn't the worst thing that DC was publishing.
 
7. Ann Nocenti/Dan Didio's The Creeper

Well, now here we have something worse, I honestly don't know what was happening on the minds of editorial when they decided to go to this direction with The Creeper.

The original character created by Steve Ditko gained his powers and dual personality from a mysterious serum. In this incarnation however, he's possesed by a demonic spirit called The Creeper, in the past I've mentioned that I'm pretty okay with change but here DC apparently just wanted change for the sake of change which is a course of action that usually ends in failure.

Case in point, the current Creeper co-written by Dan Didio and Ann Nocenti (a winning duo) never manages to become compelling, innovative nor it's able to justify his new status quo. Still, this wasn't as bad as it could have been and there will be more works from one of these two authors in this list, guess who will be!
 
6. Tony Bedard's Green Lantern: New Guardians 

Another series that only had 5 issues this year although this one wasn't cancelled, the only thing that ended here was the uninspired run written by Tony Boring Bedard (I'm taking a wild guess that's his middle name).

Remember what I said about how Bedard made Blue Beetle one of the most generic series from the New 52? Well, this one was even worse on those terms. Uneventful, lifeless, lacking in any aspect that would make it different from anything whatsoever, Bedard's New Guardians was the worst Green Lantern title from Geoff  Johns' reign on the franchise.

Although I have to be thankful that it taught me something about myself, it made me realize that if there's something that I hate more than awful books are boring ones. Speaking of which:
 
5. Paul Levitz' Legion of Super-Heroes

This is a book based on the cosmic adventures of a group of superheroes from the future ("future" being the key word) so what the hell were DC thinking when they put one of their oldest writers on this series?!

Paul Levitz not only managed to make a duller book than Tony Bedard (quite an accomplishment) but he also made the franchise completely directionless with over-long plots that never achieved something truly meaningful and turned the characters into shallow typical superhero archetypes (and that was even before the New 52). This direction was so insignificant that DC decided to not only cancel the title this year with issue 23 but also retcon it to exist in Earth 2 so they could relaunch the title properly on Prime Earth (the main New 52 earth).

There have been rumours about why this title lasted so much despite being failure both critical and sales-wise and most of them consist in Levitz making a deal with DC that he would step down from his position as President and Publisher but only if he was able to handle the franchise that made him famous (which was unfortunately this one). At the end this proved to be a terrible move since it basically killed the property but I guess that this at least will serve as a lesson to try harder next time.
 
4. Scott Lobdell's Teen Titans

Speaking of trying harder, this is a book that needs it desperately. Scott Lobdell started surprisingly promising with an interesting and exciting premise but quickly dwelved into the awfulness of its current state.

It started with The Culling, a forced crossover between the titles from the now almost defuncted Young Justice line, that made the title lose its focus and made its execution decline. Stories that don't have a proper nor satisfactory conclusion, plot-points that go nowhere, characters who disappear from the story withoui reason, characters being different for the sake of being different (and making them terribly worse) and narration pulled straight from the 70's, Lobdell managed to turn the book into an ongoing mess and somehow even more dated than the most famous New Teen Titans from the 80's. This book needs a retooling urgently

So what could be worse than awful execution? Well...
 
3. Ann Nocenti's Catwoman

Say what you want about Lobdell's Teen Titans but at least that title started promising and had some interesting concepts. Ann Nocenti's Catwoman has none of those.

Starting with an awful issue 0 (Which wasn't from this year to be fair but it's still necessary to mention) that tried to recreate Catwoman's origin from the movie Batman Returns and did it atrociously, Nocenti's run has been a series of bad ideas and even worse execution with terrible characterization for Selina Kyle and any other character who appears here, bad pacing and unexciting cliffhangers, Nocenti doesn't have any clue about how to tell a story adequately.

What makes me sad about this however, is that I was truly excited at first for her run on this series due to her initial work on Green Arrow and was incredibly disappointed once that I realize that her GA was getting dull and I honestly had no idea that her Catwoman was going to be even more inferior. This is another book that needs a new creative team ASAP.

Then again, that's not the most abhorrent thing from this run, the most horrific aspect is that it gave birth to the crime against nature that is...
 
2. Ann Nocenti's Joker's Daughter

Seriously, I have never seen such a failure both in terms of premise and implementation. I don't even know how the combined forces of DC editorial and Ann Nocenti were able to create such monstrosity but here it is.

Nocenti described her as "a girl similar to the ones who suffer from bulimia except that she loves her own ugliness" and ugly is the right word for it. Using Joker's peeled face as her mask and trying to show other people her vision of beauty, Joker's Daughter start creating chaos for no other apparent reason. This is a concept that sounds bad on paper and manages to become even worse on comic paper, Nocenti's skills are pretty uneven already so who was the genius who decided to give her a rotten premise so she can make it dreadful?

I'm not even a fan of the original Joker's Daughter, Duela Dent, but I suppose she must have some and to them I give my condolences and pray for a reboot, retcon or whatever so they can forget about this disaster.

Anyway, we still have one title that is on top of this list, but which could it be? What could be worse than the most outstandingly bad title that DC has published this year?

Well, comics are my favorite hobby as well as most of you I suppose, but do you know what's the definition of hobby?

 "a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation"

In my language is also called "pasatiempo" which means that's something we do to spend our time.

Let's be honest here, a hobby is something we do to waste time and there's nothing wrong with that since we all get bored at one point.

Then I ask you, what could be worse than a book that makes me feel like I'm wasting my time on my time to waste time?!

Nothing right? I suppose you know where this is going and so I give you:

1. Paul Levitz' Worlds' Finest

And I don't accept devolutions. Since issue 1 Paul Levitz has introduced a title so devoid of life that it has become a joke between the community. It's dull, forgettable, shallow, uneventful, generic, predictable and boring! In fact this was the title that inspired me to make my first hate letter here: http://comicobsessed.blogspot.com/2013/09/is-there-dc-title-more-boring-than.html.

I have expressed most of my complaints there so I won't repeat them, instead I will say something new: All the people who are buying this series are getting robbed, the stories and characterization here are not being taken seriously by nobody outside of Paul Levitz since most of the other authors that are able to handle them portray these characters differently (and much, much better), these stories will get ignored and forgotten once that Levitz is out of this book and not even the plots that he's currently creating will come to a satisfactory end based on his work on Legion of Super-Heroes.

I don't even know why they're called "Worlds' Finest" they haven't done anything to deserve that title, in fact from now on I will be calling them "Worlds' Blandest" so if you see my thoughts with that title you will know that it's not a typo.

*sigh* That was depressing.

Anyway, I'm not sure I will do this list next year since I prefer to remain positive that the quality will improve, plus if Worlds' Blandest manages to survive past half of next year then there's a high possibility that it will be on top of next year's list again.

Well, I don't want to end this year on such a sad note so expect a new list with the best DC comics from 2013 before it ends. See you later.

UPDATE: By the way, is ready: The Top Ten Best DC Comics of 2013