The Top Ten Worst DC Comics of 2014

So, is that time again I guess.

As some of you may remember I basically started my carreer as a Blogger with my Top Ten worst DC Comics of 2013 list where I mentioned the series that frustrated me, as well as others, the most.

It wasn't easy to do and I not only had to do some research on my own but also I got some recommendations, negative recommendations, about which series should I pick and which ones should I leave alone.

To be quite honest, last year I went for the safe route. I mostly choose series that were universally panned by both critics and fans and decided that I would also ride the hate train.

That doesn't mean that I didn't hate such titles, on the contrary, I detested them. I even went the extra mile and put one of my most hated series on top despite that some people didn't consider it as bad as the ones that were put behind it (You know which series I'm talking about).

There are some good news this year though, there were less terrible books in comparison to last year. You know, there are fewer editorially mandated directions and underwhelming creative teams. So that means that there won't be dishonorary mentions on this list.

The bad news however, are that some of the bad titles from last year actually became worse during 2014 and be sure that you're going to know why.

No restrictions this time. I'm going in full force with the series that I'm picking up and I'm going to start telling you that there is probably going to be some disagreements about some of my choices but I will still stand about my statements.

This time is personal. We're counting down!

10. Ray Fawkes' Trinity of Sin: Pandora.

I understand that you might be thinking: "Hey, this wasn't terrible. Bland? Yeah, but not awful".

And I would agree with that sentiment if it wasn't for the last issue of this title.

I mean the whole series written by Ray Fawkes was a complete editorial chaos. At the beginning we were promised that Pandora was going to be, and I quote: "The most important character in the DCU" (which made sense considering how she was the one responsible for the previous reboot along with Barry Allen).

Nonetheless, constant changes of direction from the high heads at DC and the frequent crossovers made this a book completely devoid of anything that you would consider distinctive, valuable or original which is pretty disappointing for people who were initially invested in the character. Ray Fawkes is actually a good writer but not even him was able to save this series from mediocrity due to its erratic nature.

However, what truly made me hate this was the finale.

The series concluded in Futures End Month with an issue suited 5 years later from the current continuity and it was revealed there that Pandora rebooted the old DCU because she needed to learn a lesson about how there's no perfect universe.

Which is an incredible idiotic reason to do so. We're expected to believe that she's someone so stupid that she couldn't realize something so obvious and she even destroyed a whole universe to learn a lesson that logically speaking, she should already know.

That was borderline offensive and it made me care much less about the character. I don't know if this was DC or Fawkes' idea but whoever came up with that deserves to be panned.

Still, there are worse things coming up.

9. Scott Lobdell's Teen Titans.

Ah, one of the truly terrible mistakes from last year.

As you may recall, this was actually in my top 5 worst titles from last year where I commented about the awful direction and overall execution that the title received from Scott Lobdell and how it needed a new creative team urgently to fix all the mess.

So, why is this title so low on the list this time?

Two reasons. First, it was cancelled just 4 issues in this year and it actually got that necessary reboot and competent creative change it deserved.

Second, the last few issues were almost a parody of what the title became.

Since early on the book's life, it was pretty obvious that Lobdell was never able to get a break due to the constant crossovers and editorial changes that he was forced to include which never managed to make the book recover despite that it showed some promise at the beginning.

However, in the last chapters of this run I could notice a certain change. It seems like DC actually didn't care about what happened to this particular run since they were going to cancel the series anyway so that gave Lobdell enough freedom to do whatever he wanted.

And it seems like he had a lot of fun with it since he pretty much destroyed everything. From Kid Flash being declared culprit from murder to Solstice actually assassinating one of the judges to be with her lover and finally the overconvoluted villain Harvest receiving a pretty simple ending, I feel like Lobdell was just trolling us.

That surprisingly doesn't make me mad since it got so ridiculous to the point that I couldn't help but chuckle and just accept that this was a version that was going to get ignored anyway.

Don't get me wrong, this is still on this list because it was unmistakenly bad. Unnatural dialogue, bad pacing and awkward characterization were abundant and I still can't believe that they destroyed so many characters in the proccess but at the end it was so absurd that it made me realize that this was going to be ignored anyway.

Nonetheless, I think I have stated in the past how I dislike boring series the most and so let's talk about:

8. Tony Bedard's Supergirl.

Oh, Tony Bedard, it seems like I can't have a Top Ten worst list without you rearing your head. It's almost a tradition now.

As I mentioned in the past, Tony Bedard is probably one of the blandest writers out there. There's nothing particularly wrong about his skills but nothing particularly great either, his sense of mediocrity is outstanding and his lack of personality is something that always makes me wonder if the guy is actually a robot who somehow was hired as an author.

The reason why this run is over yet another boring one like Marv Wolfman's work on Superboy is because it lasted a bit longer but it still shares a lot of its faults. This was an editorially mandated story starting with the Red Daughter arc that consisted on Kara receiving the red ring of rage and becoming a Red Lantern. It was supposed to explore the ramifications of previous storyline and making Kara progress as a character by facing her own frustrations.

Nonetheless, just as predicted Bedard was unable to create anything distinctive nor progressive about this arc and at the end you felt like Kara simply went back to square one with no actual character development. Is almost like this story never happened and it certainly will appear like that once that history completely forgets about it.

Still, things could have been worse. This could have happened to a good writer on a terribly forced direction which actually reminds me of...

7. Christy Marx' Birds of Prey.

Just for the record, Christy Marx is not a bad writer. Not at all.

Some people might believe she is due to her work on the book in question but she's actually not. I would recommend you to check her Sword of Sorcery series featuring Amethyst. Is a really good story full of pretty compelling mythology and character relationships.

However, this book since the beginning had a tendency to suck all the creativity from its writers, it happened to Duane Swiercsynsky early in the volume and later to Marx.

Why would you ask? Well, the higher heads at DC never could quite get the direction they wanted to use for the title and were constantly interfering and changing plans (told you this was going to be a recurring theme) which caused the interruption of storylines pretty frequently and prompted Swiercinsky to leave the title.

Things got worse when Marx arrived though since any hint of personal vision was erased and she was obligated to follow all the stories that DC ordered like Starling (an original character from this series who became a fan favorite) leaving the team and the Birds having to deal with dropped plot-points from other books that nobody wanted to use like Kurt Lance (Black Canary's missing husband), Ra's Al Ghul and finally Black Canary becoming the leader of the League of Assassins in Futures End Month.

The title became a completely lifeless experiment that drove a lot of people away from it. Although now that I think about it, Marx deserves some of the blame for the awful portrayal of Black Canary due that she turned Dinah into a whiny and incompetent leader with no glance of a personality beyond that.

So overall, the series was a total disaster which is pretty sad considering this is the premier female superhero team and got cancelled with an underwhelming tie-in final chapter.

Although that seems to be the fate of some books with female protagonists as we're going to see.

6. Paul Levitz' Worlds' Finest

Yes, you heard it right, the worst title from last year is actually only in 6th place this time!

The obvious reason is because there were actually other titles that I disliked more but even if you don't believe it, Worlds' Finest was not that bad this year!

Starting at the beginning of 2014 we had the crossover story First Contact with the Batman/Superman book that consisted on getting all the protagonists meet for the first time. It produced some actually decent issues from this book.

However, the best part would come almost at the end of the year when it focused on the story of the original Batman and Superman from Earth 2 where Paul Levitz used his knowledge of history to bring some of the most content packed and interesting chapters that this book has seen. I would dare to say they're even pretty solid.

Then why is it still on this list? Because of everything that happened in the middle.

Especifically all the installments that focused on Power Girl and Huntress due that they starred in some of the most pointless and insignificant stories you could imagine that never managed to progress the plot in a substantial way.

Worst of all, both characters were completely unappealing. Helena was competent but bland in terms of personality and Karen was both incompetent and one of the most annoying versions of the heroine which actually makes me glad they're not appearing anymore in the book.

So I salute you Paul Levitz and Worlds' Finest for proving my predictions wrong, you were not the worst title in a consecutive year, both of you tried and despite that you still failed miserably (in fact so much that the book has been announced to be cancelled just at the moment I'm writing this), you demonstrated that you have the ability to change and surprise.

Terrible things can't apparently change though.

5. Ann Nocenti's Catwoman.

No, there won't be "next time" since nobody will ever use you because nobody ever wants to use Nocenti's creations (and with good reason).

As I've said before, I can be surprised and despite of my beliefs, sometimes a bad title can be worse than a boring one.

Nocenti's Catwoman has marveled people since the beginning (which was one of the most atrocious beginnings that an author could create I might add) due to its awful quality but in this year she proved to be particularly abysmal.

Stories that never advanced in a satisfactory way, pacing that made people wonder what they were actually reading, ideas that while they could have passed as interesting at some points, were not able to be implemented in efficient manners and thus were ignored and forgotten.

One of the biggest problems was the characterization. Selina Kyle was portrayed as pretty dumb, irrational and even borderline insane at times, I know that Nocenti's "style" is about writing stories and characters in eccentric ways but this is simply not the same elegant, eloquent and confident Catwoman.

The worst part though was the ending, the final issue of this run focused mostly on Selina's friend Tesla (a character created by Nocenti for this series) and the forgettable villain I showed in the picture above while it didn't told absolutely anything about the protagonist. It was one of the most anticlimatic finales that I've seen this year.

There was something that I hated more though and it has a lot to do with this horrible work.

4. Ann Nocenti's Klarion

What do you get when you combine both the best and the worst aspects from Nocenti's writing?

I guess you can figure that already.

Ah, but don't think I mean "the worst" in a light sense, I mean THE WORST aspects from Nocenti's writing.

Chaotic pacing that makes you question the sanity of the people involved here, awkward characterization that even though we're talking about supernatural characters is still weird as hell and finally a style that feels so contrived that it just doesn't come as natural nor true.

Let's talk a bit more about such style, is the perfect definition of pretentious. Something that tries to apparent to have more depth and substance than it actually has by covering it with a really thick tone that is being forced, and I mean forced, onto the reader.

It doesn't help to progress the story at all nor to make this world more interesting to read, is just trying too hard to be different. Any hint of creativity is buried by an absolutely terrible presentation skill.

It only took three issues to get this high into this list. Think about it, just three issues, so you can imagine how bad this must be. Fortunately, this series has also been cancelled at the time I'm writing this. Unfortunately, this might give DC the wrong idea about how they shouldn't invest in obscure characters while what they truly should do is hire competent writers for such premises.

On the other hand, is not the worst thing that I've read that only consisted of three issues this year and do you recall how I mentioned that this time was personal?

Well, nothing gets more personal for me than Green Arrow.

3. Andrew Kreisberg/Ben Sokolowski's Green Arrow.

Andrew Kreisberg and I have a history. Oh, he doesn't know that I exist but he has affected me deeply.

Of course you know what I'm talking about and if you don't, I suggest you to check this little whiny article: What was so wrong about Andrew Kreisberg's Green Arrow and Black Canary?

I guess you could say that I'm biased towards the guy, I sometimes can't escape from those classic comic fan tropes.

To be honest, I was expecting this to appear in the list but I thought since it was just going to have three issues this year, it was only going to have a dishonorary mention.

I swear to God that I didn't know it was going to appear in the proper list and much less this high.

However, since the beginning of the run you could note that something was really wrong. Kreisberg's always had a tendency to try to portray Green Arrow as Batman but here it was even more obvious with lines like "criminals need to fear me" and "this is my city!" it just makes the character lose the unique identity he has as the most human hero in the DCU.

Plus, let's not forget that classic Kreisberg trick of getting rid of most of the cast unceremoniously.

Second issue was even worse with a pretty Mary Sue-ish portrayal of the recently introduced Felicity Smoak who is a character created by Kreisberg himself for the T.V. show Arrow and was forced into the comics. This characterization got so annoying that it immediately brought back memories of that such disturbing red head that the author also created in his previous run.

The breaking point for me though, was the third issue where he introduced Merlyn to the New 52 and he was presented as a man while competent as an archer, was pretty weak in terms of presence and personality.

To be fair, this kind of direction for Merlyn was created by Judd Winick in the zero issue from this book. Nonetheless, I'm pretty sure he would have done a better job than Kreisberg due to how well Winick depicted the character in the past and there were indeed better ways to implement the importance of Merlyn without sacrificing anything.

It's pretty obvious I don't like where this is going and if this continues this way I can't see this title improving nor getting any lower on the list next year.

You know what is higher though? Something that I spent a lot of time with in 2014.

2. Daniel H. Wilson/Marguerite Bennett/Mike Johnson's Earth 2: World's End.

This was pretty obvious from the beginning.

I have been mocking this series since its creation. You might think that is because of the obvious problems about it having so much death and destruction instead of worldbuilding as it was promised with the beginning of this franchise.

Still, there were much bigger problems. The pacing is so erratic that it makes you wonder if the authors are working in different segments at the time, no different issues, different segments. The story jumps from point to point constantly without giving a break for any semblance of valuable characterization nor natural progression. The characters run constantly with no rest and that doesn't allow to appreciate any of the good points that the book could have.

The characterization is mixed. Some of the protagonists don't act like they used to do in the main series, especially in the cases of the original cast like Alan Scott, Jay Garrick and Kendra Saunders who sometimes talk with other members from the cast as if they didn't know them despite that they actually do. 

More importantly, Terry Sloan has suffered quite the downgrade from cold and calculating antihero/villain to whiny and arrogant megalomaniac. Is also necessary to mention that at this point his original motivation has been retconned since he apparently is not from this planet anymore and he doesn't have any interest in saving it. Way to go team.

The tone is outstandingly repetitive with a serious case of abundance of just two colors: Red and black. Anything else seems like something abnormal and doesn't allow the world to vibrate as it used to.

Is a disaster from an execution perspective and probably one of the best or worst examples of vision and craft gone wrong. Plus, is still going on and is a weekly to boot so that puts it above other books that could suffer from those same flaws due that I have to suffer from it every Wednesday.

The days of this series are counted of course since it has been announced that is only going to last until March next year. However, I don't see any reason to invest neither money or time into this since is probably going to get forgotten once that the war is over (which will probably mean that either the Wonders of Earth 2 will win or the planet will be destroyed) and there will be a new status quo.

I've said it before and I will say it again: The journey is even more important than the destination and the journey of World's End is not something worth traveling.

Everything bring us to this point, what could possibly be the worst title from 2014 for me?

I said it last year, nothing is worse than a title that makes me waste time in my time to waste time.

This year taught me a lot of new things though, including that there's something I actually hate more.

A disappointment.

Oh, but not any disappointment. I'm talking about the kind of disappointment in which you give your trust and then it punchs you in the face, later it seems like is going to offer you a helping hand just so it can kick you in the nuts to finally leave you in the floor full of rage and frustration.

It is connected to the title I talked about above, in fact is the reason why such title exists.

Is the title I've dedicated so much criticizing this year and would be dishonest from me to not include it. This is exactly what I meant when I said that it would probably cause some people disagreeing with me but I'm firm on my decision.

And if we're talking about a title that caused the most conflict in an entire fanbase there's no other logical choice than:

1. Tom Taylor's Earth 2.

That single image unintentionally summarizes everything that was wrong with the series and the character who says such lines.

Tom Taylor arrived with issue 17 of the Earth 2 book with a pretty promising direction and execution than seemed far superior than what the previous author of the series, James Robinson was able to do.

So, what went wrong?

Well, I have been talking about that in 2014 a lot and you can actually see the evolution of my thoughts:

1. From excitement: How can Earth 2 become DC's answer to Marvel's Ultimate imprint?
2. To doubt: What are the pros and cons of Tom Taylor's run on Earth 2 so far?
3. To finally fear: What is DC hinting about the future of Earth 2?

(For the record, that last prediction didn't came true at the time I thought but you can't sincerely tell me that they have not been thinking about it considering what's currently happening).

You can note that there's a change of mind from me over the course of this particular run.

To summarize more about it, the problem is this: Tom Taylor ignored everything that made Earth 2 great and focused on telling a story that consisted on the destruction of the planet.

This wouldn't have been so bad if only the series would have still been about the protagonists from this series, Alan Scott, Jay Garrick and Kendra Saunders. However, Taylor thought it would be much more interesting to explore more about the Superman side of the story and every character connected to him.

It wasn't Taylor's idea to include Superman as the main villain since that was pretty much confirmed to be mandated by DC editorial based on some words that James Robinson said after he left the title so I can't blame him for that.

It was his idea to make everything about his favorite character though. Resurrecting Lois Lane as Red Tornado and thus neglecting the appearance of Ma Hunkel (the original Earth 2 Red Tornado) in the mantle, making Jimmy Olsen one of the protagonists and putting him in the spotlight above the rest of the classic cast and finally creating Val-Zod to be the new Superman of Earth 2.

I need to get this out of my chest: Val-Zod is probably the most boring Superman that ever existed.

He doesn't have any sense of presence, passion or personality, he's a completely dull character. The author wants us to believe that he's such a relevant member of the cast with a bigger destiny than any other but so far he hasn't done anything to warrant such reputation and the few traits he has are superficial at best.

I mean, can you even remember anything memorable that he actually said? Because I certainly can't.

This wouldn't be so bad if at least he would have been developed along with the old protagonists but since he pretty much replaced them, one can't help but compare him to them and notice how terribly lacking he is and how much we're missing when they're not being in the series.

Some people might come with the argument that he "defeated" the evil Superman (if that actually was what happened) but even if that's true he didn't do it for his own competence but because of a certain hidden ability (Because as we all know, more powers totally compensate for a lack of personality right?).

He's not worth the time and space that was wasted on him. Plus, speaking of the evil Superman, he was actually a Bizarro version of the character which actually makes me care much less about him as a villain due that any emotional connection to him was lost. Besides, he has no place in Earth 2 since Bizarro was created in the Silver Age and the Earth 2 mythos come from the Golden Age.

Which brings me to yet another problem, Taylor threw everything in the universe even if it made sense or not. Connor Hawke, Batman using the drug Miraclo to become superstrong (and thus making Hourman irrelevant), Aquawoman being a new character instead of the Golden Age Queen Clea, etc.

Is pretty much a "mainstream" (for the lack of a better word, sorry if I sound snob-ish) version of the franchise that could only be brought by someone who doesn't have a true knowledge of its history.

This basically put Earth 2 in a direction that should have never taken and one that made the universe less compelling and intriguing by ignoring all the previous mythos.

Even worse, it made me lose interest about it as a fan.

I'm not excited anymore about its future, a series that gave me a lot of passion in the past makes me feel nothing now. I'm not looking for each issue every month with the same emotion despite that I knew that the execution was not the best at the beginning.

And I suppose that's the most terrible thing that could happen to a comic fan.

Final point, do I consider Tom Taylor a bad writer?

Not at all.

He really knows how to create good moments, he has a quite nice execution in the stories he tells and developes really solid characterization (most of the time at least).

Is just that his vision was terribly wrong here and unfortunately it became even worse when he left because now other writers need to handle such route with an inferior craft. The series has become the kind of convoluted mess that only a soft reboot and relaunch can save.

Well people that was my Top Ten List of the Worst DC Comics of 2014 and just like last year, I'm not planning to leave with such a negative perspective so expect yet another list focusing on the best DC series from this year before it ends.

See you then.