The Top Ten Worst DC Comics of 2020

This year has been a mess hasn't it?

And I obviously don't mean only comics but for the world as a whole. I don't think anyone was expecting 2020 to be hit by a global pandemic that completely disrupted everyone's lives and sadly caused the death of many people. This is probably one of the biggest disasters that the planet has endured and is still not over yet at the time I'm writing this.

Speaking from a personal level, 2020 hasn't been good to me either. Let's just say I'm going through some personal problems right now. Some relatives unfortunately passed away and a person really close to me is currently fighting an illness and I'm praying every day for her.

So I hope you forgive me if I work on these lists to try to distract my mind from the terrible things that are happening right now.

Because yes, I think that's what we all want right now, to be distracted from the problems that are affecting the world. Is a shame though that this has easily been one of the worst years in comics. Not only distribution was gone for a while because of the pandemic but 2020 also saw the release of terrible titles that didn't make things any easier to endure.

I'm going to say this already, this is probably going to be another controversial list for me, unlike the previous two years, not everyone is going to agree with my picks here (although the last two years made my work pretty easy because pretty much everyone hated Heroes in Crisis). Nonetheless, I always feel firm in my choices and will do my best to explain why I disliked these books so much.

But before we go into the worse material, let's mention a few dishonorable mentions first:

• Dan Abnett's Justice League Odyssey: This pretty much demonstrated that Abnett is not really good at following editorial changes since he easily made one of the dullest books on the stands. The only reason why is not on the list is because it was already full.
• Bryan Hill's Batman & the Outsiders: Decent character work that almost made me consider it among the best last year but in one of the slowest plots ever that didn't deserve the amount of issues it got.
• Scott Snyder's Death Metal: Not necessarily a bad event per se but just an extremely shallow one that sadly has way too many derivative tie-ins.
• Greg Rucka's Lois Lane: I was planning to include this among the best last year but I knew Rucka was not going deliver a good conclusion and big surprise, he didn't. What an useless finale.

With that out of the way, let's dive into the disasters:

10. Scott Snyder's Justice League.

Yes, it only had 1 issue this year.

And yes, that is enough to earn its place here. That should tell you how bad this was.

Scott Snyder's run on Justice League was a failure basically right from the beginning due to the overwritten narration, off choices and derivative ideas (there's a reason why other writers are getting rid of concepts like the Ultraviolet Spectrum and the non-Speed Forces). However, there's something that I was fearing even more than the the lacking excution: The ending.

Yes, we all know how Snyder's endings work. Even since his Batman work (which I believe is widely considered his best DC effort) you started to notice a trend, Snyder's conclusions were mostly set-ups for new stories that he's planning because for some bizarre reason he believes is better to create a trailer for what's about to come instead of delivering an actual satisfying ending.

The last issue of Snyder's Justice League was the perfect proof of that, I mean, basically every single arc of that run was proof of that but his final issue encapsulated pretty much everything that was wrong with it. Snyder's final installment wasn't even a conclusion, it couldn't even be called that, it was just a teaser for the then upcoming Death Metal event with Snyder's Villain Sue (No, not the Batman who Laughs, the other one), Perpetua, beating the Justice League and they preparing themselves for the eventual battle that was going to take place in that crossover. Is an immensely irresponsible ending that basically makes the last two years of stories worth nothing.

Last year I compared Snyder's Justice League to Dragon Ball Z because of its focus on villains with no personality and power levels but I must admit that I was wrong. 

Scott Snyder's Justice League is not Dragon Ball Z.

Scott Snyder's Justice League is Dragon Ball Super.

Meaning that it tried to do everything that was done before but did it worse despite of having all the potential in the world to be better. There was nothing innovative during this era, just a bunch of uninspired themes that were extracted from much better ideas and stories (Okay, I might be going a bit too far with the anime comparisons admitedly but come on, Dragon Ball is pretty much pop culture).

Waste of time, paper and money. That's all this tenure earned.

And we're only beginning.

9. Robbie Thompson's Teen Titans.

Adam Glass' run on Teen Titans was easily one of the most interesting times on the franchise basically since Geoff Johns left and even implemented the strengths of Marv Wolfman/George Perez' reinvention. Glass created a group of new compelling young superheroes that played with the classic cast in a really entertaining manner and delivered some of the best team dynamics I've seen.

So, how do you ruin all of this? By not understanding at all what was made that run successful of course!

Robbie Thompson accompanied Glass during his last storyarc where he fortunately gave closure to all the plot-points he created so I was expecting Thompson to gain some familiarity with the cast and themes that were developed. I was obviously wrong.

Thompson somehow got every single character wrong right when Glass left. I don't know how that was even possible. Long gone were the days of a morally complex Damian, a Wallace who was the voice of reason, an Emiko who tried to better herself, a Crush who was fighting against her own nature, a Roundhouse who was a joy to watch. No, now we had a Damian who was a complete asshole and borderline psychotic, a Wallace who was weirdly infatuated with Emiko, an Emiko who was... there, a Crush who weirdly enough tried to be the voice of reason now and a Roundhouse who was a complete bore (the latter was especially bad for me).

Bad characterization was not the only problem though since the dialogue was just pure cringe, trying to get how teenagers talk but totally failing at it and thus creating some of the most awkward lines and scenes that I've seen recently. Whatever the writer does next, I hope it doesn't involve a young cast.

Thankfully this run didn't last long but it was such an underwhelming continuation to one of my favorite eras that I can't help but feeling a bit bitter about it.

But you know what can be even worse? A bad era that follows yet another bad era.

8. James Tynion IV's Batman.

I don't think I'm blowing any minds when I say this: Tom King's Batman run was not very good.

I mean, even King's die-hard fans admit that this one of his weakest works. "Themes over characterization" was a pretty prominent mentality during that era which lead to very off portrayals of classic heroes and villains, not to mention the trademarked pretentious King dialogue that made most of the scenes awkward to read and some of the most unsatisfying conclusions that made Scott Snyder's recent works as fulfilling experience.

So when his run ended I was ready to welcome a change, any sort of change.

Monkey Paw because what I got was James Tynion IV.

Yes, Tynion is a regular in these lists. I heavily dislike his constant bad characterization and overwrought narration, he has passion for the Batman universe but lacks the talent to actually pull-off great work so once he was announced as King's replacement I had a clear conflict of interest.

The subsequent run didn't change my mind of course. Let's say that Tynion started "fine", it clearly borrowed from his mentor's, Scott Snyder, Batman (there's an old organization in Gotham City that not even Batman knows) but it was at least decently executed. Then came Joker War which was yet another pretty predictable "big story" about Batman's archenemy that was also rather similar to Snyder's second arc plus this is where Tynion's newest Mary Sue, Punchline, is introduced who is yet another take on Harley Quinn and is exasperating how heavily she was forced onto readers. Currently he's writing about an anti-Batman no less and I guess you can start to see the problem here.

Tynion doesn't have a creative bone in his body. All of his ideas (if they can actually be called "his" ideas) are based on material that has been told at least a dozen times already. They're easily digested, easily marketable stories to try to gather some attention but unlike someone like, let's say, Geoff Johns who you could say has a similar approach, Tynion doesn't bring anything new to the table nor expands the world in any meaningful way. I really don't like calling writers "hacks" because I consider the term kinda offensive but good God, Tynion really tries to earn it.

I can't believe I'm going to say this but with all of his faults (and Lord knows there were many), at least Tom King tried to create new directions during his Batman run. Tynion either can't bother with it or just can't (I don't know which one is worse) and if there's something that I can actually say in favor of Tynion is that his execution is at least not as irritating as King's (that doesn't mean is actually good though).

The only thing I'm happy about from this is that I didn't have high expectations to begin with so this wasn't really a disappointment.

*sigh* This always leads to another point...

7. Tom Taylor's DCeased: Dead Planet. 

Yeah, I considered Taylor's DCeased last year as one of the best books because I thought that Taylor's approach of big moments and shock value was ideal for a Zombie title and he certainly delivered there. Taylor was perfect for the series.

This year I've learned that Taylor was perfect for both the right and the wrong reasons.

Because yes, Taylor did offer all the gore and violence that you can expect from a story about the undead but at the same time, he brought some of his classic flaws that started to get quite obvious in the sequel.

First of all, this particular book has gore for the sake of gore. Multiple heroes being mutilated, dying in the most horrific ways possible and what's the justification for that? There's no other reason but to create shock value. At least in the first series the violence escalated adequately and served the theme about how the world itself was slowly dying, here the violence lacks any kind of substance.

Second, another classic Taylor flaw started to get apparent, the typical out of character moments. The picture above is about Damian Frikking Wayne hugging Commissioner Gordon and saying he's not as emotionally stunted as his father and I can't help but wonder if Damian died around the way and was replaced by someone else because if there's someone who could be called "emotionally stunted", that's him (for God's sake, recent stories deal with how he has done even worse things than Bruce ever did).

Third, Taylor is not subtle, that should be obvious for anyone who reads his stories and so whenever he tackles stuff like social commentary is as blunt as predictable as you can imagine. Unfortunaly, I'm way too familiar with Taylor's distaste of rich people to figure out that in every series he writes he's going to complaint about them but at least I'm expecting more than "They're the worse kind of evil, a bunch of rich bastards": For God's sake, Garth Ennis also hates rich folks but at least he offers complex scenarios around that, Taylor can even bring half of it.

This universe unfortunately brought back the worst aspects of Taylor's writing and I'm sorry to say that this is not limited to this series.

But there are other authors that are going to be more prominent ahead.

6. Brian Bendis' Superman.

Oh, Brian Bendis, you're going to be very relevant in this list.

I think is safe to say that Bendis' arrival at DC Comics was... less than successful to say the least. Sure, most people were expecting a mixed bag, I was expecting a mixed bag at best, but even with that pessimism, Bendis still managed to drop the ball in many titles.

And I'm not even talking about critical reception, of course Bendis' books were usually bashed online for multiple justifiable reasons but Bendis was even a disappointment for DC Comics because I just bet that they were expecting his name to bring at least big sales but he couldn't even deliver in that regard since his books were dropping numbers every month (Sure, the pandemic didn't help matters but still).

Why is that you might ask? Well, because for one, Bendis brought some of the slowest stories in the industry, for someone who was already known for his decompressed writing, Bendis outdid himself at DC with plots that barely moved and clearly started to make readers lose the little patience they already had with him.

What's worse for me though is that some of Bendis' premises had potential. This is the title where Clark revealed his secret identity as Superman for God's sake! But can you honestly tell if something important happened with such an important development? No, because it didn't happen, nothing absolutely changed, I can assure you that the main direction of the line would have stayed the same without such revelation and I'm pretty sure that it will simply be erased once that the new creative team arrives. Is that worthless.

Nothing more to say that Bendis' era on Superman is going to end on a whimper instead of a bang which leads to:

5. Brian Bendis' Action Comics.

Sad part is that at one point this book was actually good. I mean, it was very, very early on, but at least it showed the potential that Bendis could bring to the Superman family.

That potential died with Event Leviathan that derailed the direction of the book and it never recovered.

The worldbuilding that was initially introduced in the title? Gone! The intriguing direction where the story was supposedly going? Gone! The seemingly compelling characters that were introduced? Gone! The last one is literal since one of the characters that were created right from the beginning of Bendis' work here was unceremoniously killed just to prove how "dangerous" Bendis' main villain was.

Speaking of which, the Red Cloud, the villain who murdered such character, the antagonist who was associated with an organization who was threatening the whole city of Metropolis and initially seemed like such a big deal ended-up being yet another complete non-entity due that she kept losing importance with each new chapter to the point that she just seemed like a villain of the week being constantly used for some reason (although in her favor, she at least wasn't that derivative overly-glorified waste known as Rogol Zaar). Even more hilarious was that her own organization simply kicked her out once that she was caught with very little fanfare because at the end, she was just nothing.

Because that's what Bendis' whole Superman work was, nothing. Nothing truly remarkable occurred during this time and most, if not all, of the developments will be quickly retconned if someone with actual skills handle the books in the future.

Bendis' Superman segment and era might be over but his failures extend to other lines sadly which of course leads to:

4. Brian Bendis' Young Justice.

"Hey, at least Bendis can write kids right?"

"... Right?!"

That was the mentality that most people had when Bendis' arrival to DC Comics was announced in consolation mostly because of famous works like his Ultimate Spider-Man run among a few others. It seemed like Bendis could have been a good choice for a Young Justice revival, especially one that followed the humorous tone that Peter David cemented back in the 90s.

Then Bendis' portrayal of kid characters like Jon Kent happened (Oh, I definitely have some things to say about that later) and people started to lose hope in Bendis.

Then Young Justice started and ended which pretty much destroyed Bendis' whole reputation.

Remember how I mentioned that Bendis is considered the king of decompression? Well, that was really, REALLY accentuated during this title. There were 12 issues of a story that didn't have any right to last as long as it actually did, even if you can call it a "story" because just like most of Bendis' books, the only thing it achieved was wasting everyone's times.

The title started cringey enough with everyone screaming "YOUNG JUSTICE IS BACK!" in a vain attempt at playing with readers' nostalgia but there were a few good moments here and there at the beginning. However, Bendis' flaws started to get apparent almost immediately because the plot-points he created didn't progress at all and even when they did, they were just an issue away to end in extremely abrupt ways.

Going to repeat my previous format here because that's the same that Bendis does. Cassie's mysterious relationship with Zeus? Let's forget about that right until the end. Conner being lost in time and space? Give a very simple explanation and extend the hell out of it to drag the story. Bart's whole return and reasoning to bring back Young Justice?... No seriously, what was up with that? I don't think that even got a proper explanation aside from a tease about what actually happened.

Not even Bendis' new characters were safe from that (Hey, at least he didn't play favorites here). Jinny Hex's backstory was promising but just like everyone else it resulted in very little and Teen Lantern was almost completely ignored during the whole run to the point that Bendis had to force a focus on her in the very last issue to poorly justify her presence on the book.

Nobody in the cast mattered, nothing in the story mattered. Speaking as a fan of this team, I feel manipulated because they tricked me into reading this book when the writer didn't even have a proper plan or direction for it. I really hope this is not the end for this group since they deserved better than Bendis.

And speaking of characters that deserved better:

3. Cecil Castellucci's Batgirl.

"Cecil Castellucci is not a bad writer".

Those were my exact same words last year. Just so you know, this is not the first time I regret my words and it most certainly won't be the last. 

In 2019 I thought Catellucci's run on Batgirl started solid enough due that she tackled the introducion of an Oracle A.I. in an appropriate manner and didn't let her Female Furies past ruin what could be an interesting time for the character.

Sadly, that didn't last for too long due that just like I was fearing, Castellucci ultimately went full Hope Larson's "progressive" towards the end.

She didn't start immediately like that of course, she earned a bit of confidence during her opening arc, confidence that started to disappear with each new story being worse than the last, handling themes in the most obtuse way possible (Barbara choose to save Jason Bard over an old lady with cancer basically because he was hot for God's sake!) and ending in anticlimactic fashions.

Castellucci's beliefs became much more prevalent when her run was coming to an end with Barbara being uncharacteristically aggressive towards any men in her life (except Jason because Babs wanted to bang him I guess), especially to her dad, Commissioner Gordon, who was also portrayed rather irrational and ignorant which made me scratch my head when it initially happened but later became pretty obvious due that, of course, Barbara's father is a cop and that means baaaaad! (Oh, and Castellucci also quickly killed James Jr. which got rid of a pretty interesting villain/character for no reason).

But okay, let's say that Castellucci's beliefs are her beliefs and I should respect them no matter the poor execution. Fine, I accept that, but do you know what I can't accept? What nobody should accept?

Castellucci made Babs complaint about her lack of a rogues gallery so to solve that Castellucci created the incredibly brilliant new villain called...

Wait for it...

Vi Ross.

Virus.

No matter what your political stance is, you just have to admit that automatically makes a work unsalvageable.

I wish Mairghread Scott wouldn't have ever left the title.

Okay, but let's stop with the bad writers, let's talk about someone who I actually think is good!

2. Tom Taylor's Suicide Squad.

Yeah, this is what I was talking about when I mentioned this list was going to be controversial because some people actually enjoyed this book and I really couldn't blame them, I also really liked it initially.

Just like with DCeased, Taylor's expertise on shock value seemed like the perfect fit for a book full of death like the Suicide Squad and Taylor most certainly delivered on that front along with his classic humour, character moments and intense action scenes. Then with all that in mind, how could this book possibly be bad?

Because people, you were deceived, I was deceived. This is not a story about the Suicide Squad.

If you're familiar with Taylor's DC work you might remember a series called Earth 2, a title about the reinvented Golden Age heroes in a new continuity, a series that Taylor inherited from the original writer James Robinson, a book that Taylor completely misunderstood since he started to disregard everything that was considered fitting for the universe and pretty much threw everything that was on his mind without any sense of cohesion or logic, dissolving the original essence of the title and putting the classic cast on the sidelines because he wanted to focus on his own characters. Due to these reasons, Taylor's Earth 2 was right at the top of my Top Ten Worst list a few years ago.

History has a tendency to repeat itself and so Taylor did it again by putting his own creations on the spotlight with them having most of the development and attention. I wouldn't have even cared about this so much if only such attention would have been divided equally bettwen new and old charcters but nope! This might as well have been the Taylor's pet cast show.

And I'm not even talking about the characterization, I know I mentioned Taylor's character moments as one of his strong points but, again, those were mostly dedicated to his own creations, the rest were mostly relegated. I especially dislike how he treated Deadshot who lost all the personality he got during either John Ostrander's or Gail Simone's works becoming one of the blandest members of the team, Taylor wrote Floyd as the stereotypical "Yeah, he made mistakes but deep inside he's a good person" by making him connect more to his daughter.

Then you later learn that this particular portrayal was made for the very specific reason of killing Deadshot and make the reader feel sorry for him. Except that this doesn't work because this wasn't really Deadshot, he was just your average mercenary with a family wearing a Deadshot costume and mustache. There are writers who earn the right to kill a character, even a classic character, by creating stories that feel appropriate for them while also nailing their voices and traits. Is safe to say that Taylor didn't earn the right to kill Floyd (Hell, even the introduction of Floyd's daughter as a young superhero feels like a lame copy/paste of Taylor's own work with Gabby, X-23's little sister at Marvel. He even repeats himself this way).

That death was so poorly handled and abrupt that I was sure that Floyd was going to be brought back at the end of the series and a character was revived actually... Jog! You know, the Speedster who was introduced in this same series and nobody cared about because of course one of Taylor's creations had priority at being resurrected.

And after that, after all that, Taylor still had the nerve to tease a future for his "Revolutionaries" who I don't feel any intent to follow their adventures or whatever because they're just yet another derivative "proactive" team except without the charm that most of those groups have and even if they weren't so lame, I would still hate them because they were pushed hard as f*ck in detriment of all of the other characters in the book.

I admitedly might be getting too personal here but I just can't help it, I'm sorry. This run ended-up being the most Tom Taylor work in a while, even more than DCeased, and for the worst reasons. Unfortunately it seems like Taylor won't ever be able to be more than a Geoff Johns-lite, hell, that description might not be even accurate because Johns has always respected continuity and characterization and he got over shock value execution years ago. Taylor is just Taylor.

Jesus, that was a lot so considering how much I hated this work, what could possibly be worse than that?

Well, as always, I can't help but taking things personal with these lists.

Again, last year was pretty easy for me since Heroes in Crisis was unanimously hated but that wasn't really the reason why I put it at the top, I did it because I genuinely hated the writing, execution and how it destroyed characters that I appreciated a lot. 

The following series has a lot in common with that but goes even beyond that. It's yet another culmination of all the bad things that have happened since a certain change happened at DC, all the problems that occurred in several different titles combined in a single one, everything has been leading up to this but unlike Heroes in Crisis, they're not handled by editorial but instead by a single man.

A man who works on way too many titles for his own good and everyone else's.

1. Brian Bendis' Legion of Super-Heroes.

Why is this different from all the other books written by Brian Bendis? What does it make it worse than all the others?

Let's start right from the beginning. As you should know, Bendis set-up his run on the new Legion of Super-Heroes once that he started his Superman work and he did it by removing Jon Kent from the line because he had the wonderful idea of quickly aging Jon just so he could star in this new title.

Fans of the little Superboy already know what was wrong with that. Aging Jon robbed him of some of his most unique and charming aspects, the idea of a little Superman, someone even younger than Clark when he started his superhero career, was pretty entertaining and that premise was exploited adequaly during the Rebirth era thanks to writers like Peter Tomasi who created a great family dynamic for him and his parents while also delivering one of the most enjoyable friendships between Jon and Damian Wayne.

Speaking personally I absolutely loved Jon right from the beginning thanks to his lovable personality and interactions so when Bendis decided to quickly making him grow-up I was less than happy but even before that, Bendis already ruined Jon for me by turning him into a whiny brat who was always complaining about how he didn't have a place in the world. The reasons why he went to the future were also poorly justified due that, if you think about it, Jon barely did anything to earn the praise of the Legion and automatically making him their leader.

And that trend continued right into the Legion of Super-Heroes ongoing because, again, once you think about it, Jon's role in the whole series is basically a waste of time.

There's absolutely nothing that Jon does in the book that any other character in the team can't provide, hell, they even have a Kryptonian in the team already (Mon-El who is know a Kryptonian instead of a Daxamite because Bendis just needs to have a poor handle on everyone). Even worse is that it seems like Bendis is overcompensating for how annoying he depicted Jon early on that now he portrays him as bland as possible to avoid offending anyone without realizing that choosing between obnoxious personality and no personality is better to not have a choice at all. Jon's place in the team is worthless and makes this whole direction both inexplicable and irritating.

Admitedly you might think that's the main reason why I decided to put this title as number 1 and yes, I'm definitely biased but that's far from the only problem here since this book fails from a writing perspective in pretty much every regard.

Bendis' tendency to "tell, don't show" is abused to immense levels with characters constantly going back and forth about how wonderful and different the future is... except that Bendis' worldbuilding is rather mundane and makes the universe immensely dull, not to mention that since we're being told what's actually happening instead of seeing what's actually happening makes everything extremely heavy-handed and the plot progresses at a snail pace, even for a Bendis book.

Plus, if you hate Bendis' dialogue let me tell you that this is not really the series for you. If you find the "Bendis talk" annoying and repetitive already, imagine reading it in every single page coming from DOZENS of characters. This was already a problem in books like Young Justice that had a (kinda) limited cast, there are just so many speech balloons jumping from one another that I can tolerate, speech balloons that barely move the story forward by the way (Oh, and the lovely opening pages with a face speaking to you in every, single, issue don't make things any less tedious).

But do you know what's the biggest crime of all this? What I absolutely detest the most from this run?

That is heavily, painfully and excruciatingly boring.

I honestly dropped this series last year at issue 2 because it put me to sleep and I just came back to it to see what would its place be in this list and the fact that I had to endure 9 more issues of nothing is enough to amplify my hate. It made me waste my time more than any other book this year.

... Oh, my God. It just hit me. Brian Bendis is the second coming of Paul Levitz in the New 52 Legion of Super-Heroes! Poor pacing, bland characterization, stories that go nowhere, it has everything except that somehow an old-school author like Levitz writes subtler dialogue than Bendis.

And those are the reasons why I believe this is the worst book of 2020 people. The combination of all of Bendis' flaws in a condensed package is too much for any person to handle. I don't even feel pationate enough to keep talking about it. Bendis' Legion of Super-Heroes left me empty.

Final point, do I consider Brian Bendis a bad writer?

To be perfectly frank, I do.

He just has so many issues, so many quirks, so many failures that I can help but think that he's really a terrible creator. I know I usually come up with something positive to say about the writers that I choose at the end of these articles but Bendis just doesn't let me to do so.

Maybe his premises have potential but he completely fails at executing them? Maybe he handles way too many books and thus the quality of his work decreases? Those are the only excuses I can come up with and at the end of the day, that's all they are, excuses because the execution and the books he writes are his choice. It just doesn't give me any hope for his future.

Because Bendis made the future boring and in the tumultuous state in which DC Comics currently is, that's the last you need to hear.

Anyway people, those were my Top Ten Worst DC Comics of 2020. As usual, I will return in a couple of weeks with my Top Ten Best DC Comics of 2020 to stay positive in what it was a pretty negative year.

See you later.