The Top Ten Worst DC Comics of 2021

2021 was the worst year of my life.

This is not exaggeration and no, this doesn't have anything to do with comics or anything as shallow as that.

This is much more personal and really, someone extremely close to me suffered much more than I ever did.

I wasn't even sure if I was going to make a list this year because of the things that happened to me. If you have been paying attention, I haven't been updating as crazily as I used to do a couple years ago and that's because of a very understandable reason.

I'm doing this mostly to get a few things out of my head and maybe distract my head a bit.

This doesn't mean that I won't get passionate here because I certainly will. In fact, many of the choices here, especially number, will be based on the experiences I had this year. They might not even be the worst books in terms of pure terrible quality but they're the worst to me because of the things I endured.

It certainly helps that in terms of comics, this year has been rather... erratic. There have been a lot of not only creative changes but also a lot of direction changes, sometimes for the better, many times for the worse and beyond.

You will forgive me then if I go a bit personal now. Here we go.

10. Scott Snyder's Death Metal. 

Some things never change.

As you might remember, I put the finale of Scott Snyder's Justice League in this damn same spot because of how much of an anticlimactic conclusion it was since it only served as a poor set-up for his then upcoming Death Metal event that supposedly was going to bring a closure to all of his ideas.

Well, guess what? The damn same thing happened in Death Metal!

I swear to God that Snyder just can't get rid of his cursed formula. Everything that failed from his Justice League run was repeated here. Heavyhanded narration to fill-up space? Check. Derivative ideas? Check! Villain Sues in the form of Perpetua and most obnoxiously The Batman who Laughs? Checkity check! (Hell, there's a very particular scene where I'm pretty sure Snyder humilliates Wally West because he had the nerve to beat The Batman who Laughs in Joshua Williamson's Death Metal tie-in and isn't that sweet?)

That being said, the craft is all that matters and this is where Death Metal ultimately becomes one of the worst things that Snyder has done at DC.

Especially speaking about the final issue (which is usually the make or break for Snyder's work). The last chapter was just an extremely tedious narration scene where The Batman who Laughs (Who we seriously needed to hear more about) tells Wonder Woman with every little detail about what's about to happen in the future.

And then, it's over, just like that.

And is not like is a conclusion per se because The Batman who Laughs is apparently not death (Because Snyder just can't make anyone happy), the characters blatantly and constantly mentioning that "everything in their history happened" (Because Snyder believes he's the first one to come up with such concept) and the whole DCU preparing themselves for a brand new direction.

A direction that fortunately Snyder didn't take part of since he hasn't written anything notorious since then and thank God for that because we certainly don't need more trailers for even more trailers.

Death Metal was supposed to be the culmination of every idea the writer has worked on since he arrived at DC, something that could make the years of investment in his Justice League run look like less of a waste and sadly, it just confirmed everyone's fears.

This year begun in a pretty bad manner and it only got downhill from there.

9. Tim Sheridan's Future State: Shazam. 

Here's someone who is bound to become very famous and not for the right reasons.

Future State was a pretty interesting time for DC. It marked the beginning of a brand new direction that could redefine the future of the company in many ways and would bring a lot of potential for new stories and characters.

Of course there was also the little, insignificant problem that it was an extremely rushed event. At one point Future State was supposed to be 5G, an event made by Geoff Johns about the future of the DCU. However, with the sudden firing of Dan Didio, who at the time was the co-publisher at DC Comics, a lot of those plans were quickly scrapped and replaced by something else. Sometimes for the better and a lot of times for the worse.

Yes, Future State was defined by being an extremely hit and miss event with extremely promising new books and characters and others simply mediocre and even downright terrible ones. Sadly, that also brought new blood to the creative roster at DC with same exact results.

Meet Tim Sheridan, one of the new writers at the company and one of my new favorite people to talk about.

What could be so interesting about him? Well, let's say that he actually has a few intriguing ideas... coupled with bad, sometimes atrocious execution.

Take for example his take on a possible future for the character of Billy Batson and Shazam. The premise for this was compelling enough, an alternate timeline where Billy decided to sacrifice himself and stay in hell while the entity of Shazam have to protect the world by itself, while the idea initially wasn't executed that well (Bad presentation and dialogue being some of the biggest offenses), I felt the dilemma of the power lacking the human connection was pretty intriguing and had a lot of potential.

Well, that potential was completely wasted at the end with every interesting idea from the beginning being dropped because for some reason Sheridan really, REALLY wanted to connect this to his then current work on the Teen Titans tie-in for Future State. Why is this bad might you ask? Because this lead to a rather abrupt ending in which barely any of the themes from this series was actually explored so what we ultimately got was a pretty pointless story.

And yes, this was the least bad series that Sheridan has worked on at DC.

And yes, this also leads to the next point:

8. Tim Sheridan's Future State: Teen Titans.

 

This is the real reason why Future State: Shazam ended-up sucking so much. It seems like Mister Tim Sheridan has a great affection for the Teen Titans franchise so he has the need to connect pretty much everything he does to it no matter if it makes sense or not.

Except he doesn't have much affection for the Teen Titans franchise as much as for the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon.

... Except he doesn't have much affection for the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon as much as for the Red X character.

You know who Red X is right? That amazing breakout character from the show from who we have seen so many stories since then... okay, I will stop now because quite frankly I feel like sarcasm is getting a bit stale.

Nobody really remembers Red X, nobody really cares for Red X, he was a wannabe cool character who appeared in a couple of episodes from a show almost two decades old. Well, nobody aside from Tim Sheridan (So, nobody who really matters). Sir Sheridan here apparently was too obsessed with Dude X to the point that it makes me suspect he wrote fanfiction about the character when he was young (and not even good fanfiction based on what we got).

This two-issue series was firmly devoted to the great mystery of who Red X is, a character so important, so powerful, so unbelievably COOL DUDE! That completely destroyed the Titans as a team and forced them to live as a pale shadow of what they used to be.

The mystery about Red X is so relevant that... we don't even got a real answer about who he actually was. No joke here. The series doesn't even give a proper revelation of the premise it was selling and the only reason for that is because DC thought it was a good idea to give a guy who can't even deliver proper conclusions his own ongoing series where he can drag such ideas even more.

The only thing that Sheridan's Future State work taught us is that all the bad stories from Future State had to be connected in some cursed way. Shazam, Teen Titans... and the next one.

7. Brandon Vietti's Future State: The Flash. 

If there's something positive about Future State is that at least some of its worst stories and creators didn't go on.

But that might be a little unfair for poor Brandon Vietti here. I quite frankly don't consider him as bad as most of the other writers in this list. I just think he came up with one of the most rotten premises that any person could come with and at the worst time possible.

Let's take for example the time in which this story was released. This launched around a year or so after Heroes in Crisis, that's not enough time to make people forget the disaster that atrocious series caused to so many characters, especially to Wally West who received one of the worst character assassinations never seen since Emerald Twilight.

So what did Vietti decided to do with the character next? Why, turn him into a psychotic mass murderer! (Again).

Seriously, who in his right mind thought this was a good idea? Couldn't anybody involved read the room and figure out that this wasn't the right time to tell this kind of story? Sure, it was an Elseworlds tale technically and none of the events here impact main continuity but still, it felt like yet another kick in the groin to Wally West and his fans.

But believe me, that's far from the only issue because this series simply refuses to treat, well, pretty much anyone involved kindly. Wally is possessed and forced to keep killing, Barry and the rest of the Flash family get murdered while the mission and series end without any sense of closure whatsoever. This is I guess because Wally story technically doesn't conclude here, it sorta continues in Sheridan's Future State: Teen Titans... in which none of the stories really conclude.

At this point the problem is not that this is bad for Wally as a character, the problem is that is a bad title as a whole. It doesn't try to please people who like Wally, it doesn't try to please people who like Barry, doesn't please people who like The Flash, nor people who like Future State, nor people who like comics or even basic writing and conclusions.

Is just this bizarre thing that exists for the sake of existing without any sort of purpose. 

*sigh* And speaking of things that exist for the sake of existing without any sort of purpose...

6. Brian Bendis' Checkmate.

Why are you still here Brian Bendis? Seriously, why? 

One of the biggest mysteries of all time is why Bendis is still working at comics at all. He clearly doesn't have what it takes to maintain an ongoing story, or even a short one like the one I'm talking about right now.

As I mentioned in the past, Bendis' ideas might, might have potential but that potential is quickly disregarded because of the extreme slow pace, lack of progress and simply because it seems like Bendis himself loses interest in his own story just as much as the audience and thus decides to create quick and unsatisfying conclusions to get the hell out.

Take for example the Checkmate miniseries. Reuniting street-level heroes like Green Arrow, the Question and even Lois Lane (who Bendis was familiar with due to his work on Superman) in some sort of secret society to combat the rising organization Leviathan was a concept with a lot of promise but of course, it wouldn't be Bendis if good ideas didn't go hand by hand with bad ones and so, he decided to destroy all the different secret organizations in the DCU (organizations that had their own specialty, history and threats by the way) just so he could condense everything in a single and utterly boring entity.

Speaking of boring, the story... what actually happened here?

No, really, because I think the whole miniseries was a pointless adventure that didn't really solve any of the issues it started with. The organizations that were destroyed and assimilated by Leviathan were not brought back, the heroes barely did anything and in fact many of them were not necessary for what Bendis tried to accomplish here (which was very little). It's like Bendis created a very early concept he thought sounded cool but never worked on the proper details and somehow that was approved and given 6 FRIKKING ISSUES IN WHICH OBVIOUSLY NOTHING WAS GOING TO HAPPEN!

Oh, and let's talk about Green Arrow here (Because, you know, me), I actually thought he was rather inoffensive and I have seen worst portrayals of him (and I kinda dug his encounter with Merlyn) but that brings me back to the character problem. Most of Bendis voices become interchangeable to the point that people who didn't need to have a proper role in this story become even more redundant, Bendis wanted to use these characters but he didn't truly know how to portray them or what to do with them.

What was even the point of reinventing Mark Shaw (The 80s Manhunter) as a powerful antagonist that was supposed to change the world if they were not going to do anything truly significant with him? He was only limited to the Event Leviathan crossover (Which of course, mostly served as a set-up to this) and then unceremoniously killed here and I'm sure we will act as he never existed in the first place (What were even his plans? I don't think they were really explored). Thanks a lot Bendis, I'm pretty sure you just ruined someone's opportunity to do something actually interesting with him.

Yeah, this was yet another waste of time in a year full of stories like that and we're far from done sadly.

5. Robbie Thompson's Suicide Squad. 

 

Yeah, this is the year where people I didn't want to see again keep appearing.

As I said last year, Robbie Thompson pretty much ruined one of my favorite Teen Titans run by basically getting wrong every single character that previous writer Adam Glass took with so much care. You will understand why I wasn't particularly exhilarated to see him keep working at DC but to be fair, what he did during his Future State work (which served as a set-up for this run) wasn't bad per se and it actually had a few ideas going on.

Unfortunately, it seems like many authors in this list have the Brian Bendis disease of interesting premises with godawful execution.

One of the trademarked problems with Thompson's characters is that they quickly become pretty insufferable. They're probably some of the most annoying people you can find, take for example a character like Ambush Bug (a 4th wall breaking creature who was Deadpool before Deadpool) who only really works in small doses, Thompson puts him up front because the guy thinks he can do comedy properly (Hint: He can't) and thus we get constant pages of obnoxious dialogue in every single issue. Add Talon with his contant "Who?", Culebra with her "Forcing to be funny" personality along many other tics and you get a cast you just don't want to keep following.

Oh, but Thompson's characters are not only obnoxious in that way but also because they keep acting in rather irrational ways. The beginning of the conflict between Amanda Waller and Rick Flag for example is forced as hell and things don't get any better after that due that everyone gets thrown into constant fights that barely progress the main plot (and there's barely any plot, in fact I can barely tell what's the purpose of the team and book aside from making a proactive team even more proactive).

Worst of all is that I actually like some of the concepts Thompson came up with. The Superboy here being actually Match, a clone of a clone, is pretty compelling by itself, so is the premise of the team going through the Multiverse but again, you have to go through a lot of exasperating stuff to maybe enjoy some of the positives and at that point, you might as well be reading better books.

Unfortunately, 2021 was were books that were already bad started to spiral into awfulness.

4. Brian Bendis' Justice League.

 

Did you think that Checkmate was bad in the worst Bendis kind of way? Let me tell you what is really bad.

What is bad is having a Justice League run even more pointless than the one created by Scott Snyder. 

Yes, that bad.

I mean, Snyder's run was a big amount of nothing that accomplished nothing and lead to even more nothing BUT in Snyder's credit he still knew how to deliver huge bombastic moments and a good sense of escalation whenever he wasn't cluttering the pages with his heavyhanded dialogue.

Bendis can't even accomplish half of that. The arcs are derivative material after derivative material, we have seen this kind of stuff several times before. A new Justice League being reunited to fight common enemies? Done. The team being transported to a different world? Done. They being forced to fight yet another superteam? Done again. And this wouldn't bother me so much if at least the execution was barely decent but this is Bendis we're talking about so we know how things go.

One of the biggest problems being, of course, the dialogue, the goddamn dialogue! As we have seen several times in the past, that's the biggest criticism about Bendis' work but for some reason he always finds a way to make it even more insufferable. Remember when I mentioned last year that Legion of Super-Heroes was one of the worst examples of Bendis' writing because of the dozens of characters that were involved with the same obnoxious voices word balloons? Well, apparently that disaster wasn't over because Bendis decided to continue it here by including just as many characters with the exact same amount of word balloons jumping from one onto another in a "plot" that doesn't really require them at all. For God's sake, at least when Snyder included characters into his run they were actually necessary for it, why did Bendis think this was a good idea in the first place?

No, let me rephrase that question, why doesn't Bendis actually improve? He should know at this point that people don't like his dialogue and that he should change it or at the very least don't work on team books were your flaws are accentuated! Just handle solo books (just a few please) to see if they're better received.

Just do something better.

However, to be fair about Bendis, at the very least I can say that there were a few books that I liked from him in the past.

3. Tim Sheridan's Teen Titans Academy. 

Something that I can't say about this guy.

Right since his arrival in Future State, Tim Sheridan has done nothing but irritating work after irritating work. While a few, just a little few of his ideas might have potential, they're ultimately buried by a ton of ill-conceived concepts and funnily enough, all of his terrible ideas are condensed in a terrible package known as Teen Titans Academy. 

For some reason DC Comics thought it was a good decision to sell a Red X fanfic from a mediocre writer to their audience but for an even more bizarre reason they thought it was justifiable to give it a complete ongoing series about the cursed character!

Yes, because the mystery about the identity of Red X that Sheridan wants to share so much to the world is so intriguing that it really requires 8 issues and counting (even more if you add the Future State issues which were quite frankly just a redundant prologue to this), and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Sheridan's fanboyism pushes him to make Red X such an unbelievable fighter that is able to single-handedly defeat both the Titans and the Suicide Squad (who recently had a crossover because, again, bad titles have to be connected in some way) and even at the times where he doesn't appear, some of the characters have to mention him somehow. Is almost like Sheridan took Homer's advise of "Whenever Poochie is not around, the other characters have to ask where's him" seriously.

But okay, distaste for a worthless Mary Sue aside, are there other problems with the book?

Unfortunately yes because the rest of the cast is not much better.

Based on the name of the book you would think that the focus is nicely balanced between both the Titans and their students right? Well, that's not really the case since most of the attention (Whenever Red X is not around) goes to the students, characters that were just created for this series and this would be fine if they at least were interesting but barely any of them actually are. They're just stereotypical and derivative portrayals of young superheroes without any depth whatsover (and the obnoxious dialogue doesn't help to make them any more likable). Not to mention that there are way more characters that Sheridan can handle and whenever there's time to actually develop some of them, Sheridan chooses to add even more superfluous characters instead.

And what about the Titans? Well, they fare even worse because they have basically become the sidekicks in what used to be their own series. Losing constantly against Gary Xtue, barely appearing or having a proper development and when they do have a few scenes, they just deliver jokes that want me to go blind.

At the time of writing this list, this series is still ongoing and I'm just waiting for a cancellation because things are simply not working here.

Fortunately, some works actually received a... not so fitting cancellation.

2. James Tynion IV's Batman.

 

This same run was way lower in this same list last year.

So why is it much higher this time? What changed?

Well, just like I mentioned previously, James Tynion IV's run on Batman borrowed a lot from the work on the character that his former mentor, Scott Snyder, did but somehow making it even more derivative by basically creating every predictable clone from each popular character under the sun and so we got such imaginative ideas like Clownhunter (Robin rip-off #53), Ghost-Maker (Batman rip-off #153) and of course, Punchline (Harley Quinn rip-off #Whatever) and the only positive thing that I can say about this scenario is that at the very least Punchline didn't appear as much as I was initially fearing and that's great because Punchline was easily the most annoying of the bunch.

Otherwise, this was basically the show of Tynion's pet cast, this was so obvious that at some points it seemed like Batman himself was a supporting character in his own book mostly reacting to the characters that Tynion created. This got so bad that I thought that Tynion was getting lessons from Tom Taylor about how to push your own creations to the point of annoying everyone in the audience.

This is really not the only problem since, while Tynion's stories started fine enough, things went off the rails very fast, even after the creatively-bankrupt "Joker War" storyline. You would think that adding the Scarecrow as a main villain and creating and exploring the higher powers at Gotham City would make things a bit more engaging but nope! Tynion simply doesn't have what it takes to make neither complex characters or compelling narrative (at least not for the long term) and so, his run concluded with very little fanfare and even focucing on Miracle Molly, another of Tynion's creations (What a shock, it doesn't help that while Punchline is the most annoying of all of them, Miracle Molly is the most boring) and Batman basically saying goodbye to all of the cast that were introduced in this run because I'm sure deep down Tynion realizes that he's only one who gives a damn about them.

But let's be fair, the abrupt ending is in part because Tynion didn't sign a long-term contract with DC and wanted to focus on his creatively owned content but to be even more fair, it's not like every other book that I've read from Tynion had a much better result. In fact most of the things I disliked from this run were pretty classic Tynion material so I can hardly blame anyone else but the author in question.

I have said so many things about Tom King's run (More than I should) but at the very least each storyline made by King tried to deal with relatively new concepts and each arc felt different from the last one, hell, the Joker only really starred in one storyarc made by King and that was shared with the Riddler. I mean, sure, King's execution was half-assed 90% of the time but I think I respect more someone who has intentions to bring something innovative than someone who creates "Joker Overdone Crossover Event" for the mere sake of pushing sales.

Ultimately though, what makes this work so high in the list this time is the lack of effort, the lack of care, from pretty much everyone involved. Tynion wasn't going to stay for the long run at first, then he was and then at the end he wasn't, for that reason his tenure on the book not only ended-up being a disaster but also an inconsistent disaster. Often promising something much bigger than what it was actually willing to (or could) deliver. At least many works I'm talking about here stuck to their guns until the end despite of how awful they actually were, Tynion's run was just worthless.

For all of those aspects I consider James Tynion IV's Batman from a fundamental point the worst written book of the year.

From a personal point though, there was something much, MUCH worse.

Technically, Bendis's books are a much bigger waste of time, Tynion's books are probably the most cringey in terms of pure execution but there's something that I wasn't expecting this year, something that really connects to what happened to me in 2021, something equally as unexpected and simply much more painful.

It might seem like I'm taking such a serious issue in such a shallow manner, especially because I'm simply talking about comic books here but I can't help but feel like I need to take this out of my chest once for all.

And so, here we go and here we end.

1. Tim Sheridan's Shazam.

 

This was the year when my mother died.

Believe me that this is still something very hard to write about and even right now it brings some of the saddest memories that I've ever experienced.

You don't know how you ever going to react to something like that and I honest to God don't wish anyone else to go through something as difficult as this, especially what my mom suffered.

She was definitely one of the strongest persons I've ever met. Someone who confronted her illness as bravely as possible and makes me admire her very much because of it. I honest to God keep hoping that I was able to make her last days as peaceful and happy as I could, I still think that I could have done things better, is something that I can't get out of my head.

I sincerely hope that I'm able to be half as strong as she was when my time comes because that's something that I rarely think about but is something that will eventually happen. Everyone passes away and the best we can do is keep the best memories of those people to help you become a better person as a whole.

Now you might be wondering what such tragedy connects it to the topic I'm going to talk about?

Well, because this book completely and purposely disregards genuine sentiments concerning death for the sake of pushing false drama and a new direction for a comic book.

It actually starts like most of the other books made by Tim Sheridan, with a mediocre premise and much poorer implementation, made it all worse because Sheridan (Once again) really, REALLY wanted to connect this to his ongoing Teen Titans Academy series by forcedly including one of the bland characters from that book that I can't even bother to remember his name and is not like is necessary since that's not really what matters about this title no matter how much the writer wanted to push him.

The story is how Billy Batson needs to go to hell to face the Seven Deadly Sins because of something that was currently happening in his life, something so painful that he had no choice but to escape from reality instead of confronting it.

And that something is the inevitable death of his brother Freddy Freeman.

Yes, apparently Freddy's known condition has deteriorated over the years (off-screen of course) and now he's suffering a terminal illness that doctors can't treat which will force Billy to come to his senses and realize he can't do anything to save his brother thus finally getting rid of his pride.

I repeat, pride.

So, with everything I mentioned about loss in mind, this will be the first time I don't censor a swear word: 

WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH PRIDE?!

Sadness? Sure, that's clear. Regret? It can happen. Guilt? Maybe even. Those are the common emotions that one suffers over the loss of a love one, there are some even more complex concerning such scenario.

Do you think that any, ANY of the Seven Deadly Sins is really connected to the passing of a love one?

Why is Pride even mentioned here really? Because Tim Sheridan needed to poorly justify the precense of one of the Seven Deadly Sins as an antagonist for Billy because of what's happening to Freddy. Is obvious that Sheridan just wanted to tell a story about the death of Freddy but didn't know how to properly integrate it into the Teen Titans Academy spinoff he wanted to promote so much and so, he decided to tie everything in the loosest way possible without realizing that tackling an idea this manner is borderline offensive (And the constant dumb jokes before that serious scene certainly didn't make me feel any better about it).

Now that I think about it, maybe Rage would have been a much more fitting choice due to the frustration one feels because of not being able to do anything about such situation but of course, Sheridan either never delivers the proper execution or simply doesn't care about the topic he's writing about and just picked one at random to fit into the "themes" (If you can even call them that) that he's exploring.

Oh, but this is not only Sheridan's fault (and there's a lot on him) but also DC Comics' fault because they pushed Freddy's death into an author that clearly didn't have the proper skills to respectfully treat such event because they wanted to push a new direction where Mary Marvel is the new Shazam. This direction could be good, great even but the fact that they had to do so by making Billy quit in the most unexplicable way possible because of the terribly handled death of Freddy is simply lacking any sense of care to classic characters with decades of history. 

As a whole is a poorly-conceived premise that forces drama about a delicate issue just to sell more books and I just can't tolerate that.

This book hit me in the worst way and at the worst time possible and for that I can't justify any other title at this spot this year.

Final question, do I consider Tim Sheridan a bad... YES! I don't even have to finish that question to give you the anwer.

Yes. Even if we ignored the personal tragedy I went through, I think I would still consider him a bad writer. I think he combines a lot of the aspects that I hate from most of the authors I usually put at the top. Ideas being wasted because of bad craft, terrible characterization, ignoring and even insulting classic characters, all of that is here.

The difference here is that most of the creators I usually talk about at least delivered good stories at one point. Brian Bendis, Tom King, all of them had works that I can genuinely say I enjoyed (Well, not James Tynion IV but you get my point). Tim Sheridan on the other hand, is the perfect definition of mediocrity in most instances and sometimes such mediocrity can be taken to dangerous levels.

Why DC decided to give him so many books is an horrendous mystery since he perfectly encapsulates everything that has gone wrong with the company this year and considering he planted the seeds for what's up to come, you can't blame for being a bit anxious about whatever happens next.

This is possibly the worst time to be a DC fan. Thanks Mr. Sheridan and thanks a lot DC.

Anyway, since I honest to God don't want to finish this year in this pessimistic way. I'm going to talk about The Top Ten Best DC Comics of 2021 soon because believe it or not, there was a lot to enjoy this year as well and I needed more than ever now.

See you next time.