Reader Participation: Your Irrational Pet Nerd-Hate.
60 Comments | Posted: January 31st, 2009 | Filed under: Reader Participation
I fucking hate the android Red Tornado. (Oddly enough, I think the Vision is radder than doing a vertical backflip on a Big Wheel.)
Put yours below.
The Tom DeFalco-Paul Ryan Fantastic Four issues. Just AWFUL. And had the market implosion not happened, I think they seriously would have tried to put out more issues than Lee-Kirby (they talked about it in interviews and in the letter column).
Seriously, “One More Day” has NOTHING on Alicia the Skrull. And Paul Ryan’s a competent artist, but he’s the absolute wrong artist for the FF. I’ve enjoyed DeFalco’s work on other books, but it was like he was intentionally trying to dumb down the plots and dialogue for his run.
And we lost the Simonson run for this! ARRRRRGGGGGHHHH GODDAMN YOU KEVIN FOR MAKING ME REMEMBER THIS NERD SMASH NERD SMASH NERD SMASH
Aquaman. I don’t know why, he’s never done anything to ruin a book for me or cause me inconvenience but I just hate the character.
X-Men comics where they go out into space and do space things with space people.
Instead of doing their JOB and helping mutants on Earth.
Actually, it may not be the TOP nerd-hate of mine (I don’t have the brain-power today to really figure it out), but the first one that comes to mind is actually: Carmine Infantino.
If i really work at it now (at nearly 38 years of age), i can appreciate his work. But i really REALLY hated it as a kid. I think it was Flash 300 that pushed me over the edge. I remember it being all sketchy and stiff and awful.
dw
Penance. Oh Speedball, what have they done to you?
This one’s not as specific as yours, but;
Anime. I have so, so much American animation on DVD, and love cartoons but… Man, do I HATE anime.
Wonder Man.
Centaurs.
Wonder Man As A Centaur.
Kids on Star Trek. Meaning, pre-season three Wesley Crusher, and Naomi Wildmon, and those Borg kids. Jake and Nog get a pass for being cool.
I hate when comic writers want a character to be southern, and then have said charter use the word “ya’ll” to refer to a single person, and not a group. (i.e. Rogue)
The Cassandra Cain Batgirl. I thought she looked so stupid when she first appeared, and everything more I learn about her makes her even stupider. Batgirl sucks, I hate her, and I hope she ends up in a refrigerator with the Spoiler-Robin, who also sucked and was stupid. But just in case you think me a misogynist, I wish it to be known that I would totally take Barbara Gordon out of that fridge and put every male Titan in there instead.
The fact that there are creative and talented people spending precious time and money asking and answering such questions as “Hey! What would Spider-Man think of the USA Patriot Act? How are Skrulls similar to the Terrorists? Wouldn’t it be a great idea if, instead of just Wolverine and Hulk and Ghost Rider and Punisher and Namor, every character in the Marvel Universe was a Jack Bauer-ish morally ambiguous antihero, up to and including Iron Man?” And then insisting that all of Marvel proper ties in to these answers.
The fact that DC tried to tie Brad Metzler’s very specific tone and characterization, which worked very well in the specific story “Identity Crisis,” to all of the DC books as a whole.
The Killing Joke. The Killing Joke. The Killing Joke.
Also: continuity. Get over it already. I want good stories. Period. I don’t care if they contradict what happened 12 years ago in a crossover with the X-Men.
Wasn’t that the point of Legends of the Dark Knight? Tales of the TMNT? Or am i casting the past in a rosy glow?
I apparently have too much free time this morning (the 1 year old just took an early, unexpected nap!)
dw
Badly drawn dinosaurs. But, eh.. you get used to it.
The way superheroes and villains just hang around in their costumes on their downtime. Put on some goddamned regular street clothes!!! Especially when the costumes are so elaborate, like Hawkeye’s Ronin digs and Iron Fist’s massively collared tights. Emma gets a pass now, because she incorporates the X motif into a plausible (for her) everyday outfit, but when she and Selena used to go parading around in their Hellfire Club outfits (as I was reminded in the recent X-Men Annual)…. don’t get me started!!
Venom. I truly don’t get that character’s popularity at all. Likewise USAgent, War Machine, Thunderstrike, or any other ’90s “extreme” version of a classic Marvel character.
Thor. I have to admit he’s had some decent appearances but for me they’ve almost always been Avengers stories. His solo stuff – even the Simonson, sorry – just bores the Loki-loving hell out of me, always has.
Ed Benes’ art.
Dan Slott.
Giffen and Maguire and BWAHAHAHAHA! If ever anyone goes “BWAHAHAHAHA!” about something I’m almost guaranteed for it not to be actually funny.
When time machines also move people through space.
Little Audrey.
Covers that say “Because You Demanded It!” when I didn’t demand whatever is introduced inside.
Hush.
Final Crisis
Uatu.
Riker. Everyone always complained about Wesley (who was bad, I will agree), but I hated Riker so, so much more.
Hal Jordan.
Also, rabid fans of Hal Jordan.
Bishop. He’s an angrier, black version of Cable, so that’s stretching a thin-to-begin-with concept in the first place. I was fucking delighted when he was “revealed” to be a villain, showing his true colors.
I have a general dislike for all “variation on theme” characters, especially when they have similar names.
I also hate that android-robot along with that android-robot Vision, (who’s mind bogglingly hot to that YA girl and Scarlet Witch). I don’t get them. Like, do they have personalities that make them quite human or even interesting? Thank god there’s Machine Man who’s probably the only robot superhero with an incredible personality.
I also abhor Martian Manhunter for being a snobbish cold distant alien dude with generic superpowers and lame weakness to fire. I’m glad he’s dead and may he R.I.P. forever.
Pretty much any and all teen sidekicks, with the exception of Brat Pack and All Star Batman and Robin. ASBAR aside, this especially applies the “Bat-Family.” Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Spoiler, Jason Todd, fuck all those guys. I don’t care and I never will.
All the thugs, small town sheriffs and other incidental characters in James Robinson comics who argue about Gilbert and Sullivan operas, Preston Sturges movies, etc. Irritating as hell, and entirely unbelievable. And the random bolding of dialogue on all his comics drives me up the fucking wall. Plus, he killed off Dubbilex & the Newsboy Legion while retconnning giant chunks of Morrison’s Seven Soldiers, all in one incredibly shitty Jimmy Olsen one-shot a couple of months back that made Dan Jurgens’ Superman look good in comparison.
I have a hard time with James Robinson.
I can handle a lot of nonsense in stories, but my irrational pet nerd-hate is when other characters think or say how awesome something is, but it really isn’t, and it’s clearly the writer trying to convince us that something he or she has done IS in fact awesome and we’re just too slow to realize it. Like when Tigra first saw Wonder Man in his bright green/red/yellow costume and thought something like, “Yow, he’s scrumptious!” Or any time during “The Judas Contract” when Nightwing thought that Jericho might just be the most amazing being who ever lived. Or any early episode of “The Next Generation” where they went on and on about how terrifying the Ferengi were. It’s just lazy.
The short answer would be Quasar. I have absolutely no idea why Quasar in particular bugs me so much, given that I collected a slew of other arguably lamer ’90′s superhero books.
But since we’re on the subject of Irrational Pet Nerd-Hate – my long answer would be other nerds who absolutely insist that one particular hero or iteration of a superhero is the be-all, end-all version of said legacy character. You know, the sort of “fans” who tell me I can only like ONE Blue Beetle, that Hal Jordan’s unquestionably the greatest Green Lantern and that I have to know who Barry Allen is to be able to enjoy a Flash comic. They immediately turn me off whichever character they’re championing.
I enjoyed Impulse, Hook Hand Aquaman, both Blue Beetles and find Hal Jordan way less interesting than Kyle, Guy, John or even G’Nort. Amazingly, none of this makes me a bad person. I do my best not to knock anyone’s favorites either, even if they prefer Azrael as Batman or US Agent to Captain America. I’m not always successful, obviously, but I always try to remember that everybody’s somebody’s baby.
Cole Moore Odell, you took the words out of my mouth. I tried and I tried to see why people speak so reverently about James Robinson but I got nothin’. He’s worse than Alan Moore at his most self-indulgent.
Oh – I got another one: legacy heroes. Or, more specifically, legacy heroes that think of themselves, literally, as “legacy heroes” in that they are “trying to be a hero” when anyone who defines themselves as a hero or as an aspiring hero is actually not and never will be a hero.
And the tendency to always make everyone a legacy hero somehow. I mean, it’s fine to want to be as good a man as Uncle Ben, but retconning Superman’s backstory so that he’s the last descendent of a line of valiant and brave heroes instead of an alien from Kansas what got brung up right is BOOOOOOOORING.
People who complain about people who prefer continuity in their serial comics. Nobody paying attention to what anybody else is doing does not make for better stories.
Also, the painfully awkward dialog between characters in relationships in 70′s and 80′s era comics. It all sounds like the writers had never actually kissed a girl.
Has anyone ever called their significant other “lover” in public?
F-ing Bizarro…no character puts me to sleep faster…a tired concept that hasn’t improved any…even Eric Powell couldn’t make them interesting…enough already…
Two groups of heroes are set against each other with an obvious lie – and have a massive fight before working out that, y’know, maybe it was a lie rather than their friends having turned evil.
My hatred for this doubles if, instead of two separate teams, we’re talking about two separate bits of the X-Men.
Attempts to darken the Marvel Family. Let’s face it: The Big Red Cheese and company are kids’ characters, and there’s no shame whatsoever in letting them remain as such. Besides, Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman have already said everything that needed saying on what an “adult” take on the characters would, could, and should be like, and they had the class to do it with analogues to boot.
Also, Hal Jordan. First GL comic I ever read was the one in the 80s where he quite the Corps and is replaced full-time by John Stewart the next issue. So between the first time I read him in a comic, and all throughout his appearances in the 80s like the post-Crisis GL Corps book and his Action Comics Weekly serial, Hal was never my Green Lantern, he was just a quitter and perpetual loser who happened to be a Green Lantern. Love the concept of the Corps, hate who they insist the most important member is.
*high-fiving MGK, just because*
I got the Red Tornado miniseries years ago because Busiek wrote it. I think it peaked in the first issue, when Superman — under the influence of Construct — tore off Reddy’s arm. When Reddy pointed this out, Supes was, “Sure did! Want me to do it to the other one?!?”
Geez, I probably have a fistful, but Nightcrawler as a priest probably tops the list. Just sucks the fun out of the character.
“The way superheroes and villains just hang around in their costumes on their downtime”
Have you ever seen the care labels on those things? You’d go as long as possible between washings too, if you did.
Hint: The Negative Zone was discovered accidentally when someone used fabric softener on unstable molecules.
“Has anyone ever called their significant other “lover†in public?”
I believe I heard a hot girl use that term once, sadly not in reference to myself. That would have been about 14-15 years ago. It was probably a college girl affectation of faux-sophistication.
Animated John Stewart. It’s like they put Hal Jordan in blackface, because they needed ethnic diversity. Not just aesthetically, but his mannerisms are just, cardboard. So many other better characters they could have used.
When people follow a supposedly “irrational” statement with paragraphs attempting to rationalize it
The Sentry. The Punisher in the larger Marvel Universe (as opposed to being in his own private corner, like in Ennis’ Punisher MAX run). Batman. I like basically all of his proteges, sidekicks, and supporting cast, but not Batman himself.
Marvels, the book.
Frank Miller.
Moondragon, Franklin Motherfucking Richards and I’ll second the holy hell out of Leigh’s nomination of Uatu. I throw up a little in my mouth every time I have to read something with any of them.
Except when Thanos ripped Moondragon’s ear off and made her throw up bugs. It’s like Abnett and Lanning found the one way to make Thanos cooler.
Big second to CalvinPitt on The Sentry. Probably the most unnecessary Marvel character of the last 5 years.
Snapper Carr. He just drives me NUTS!
Hank Pym still being saddled with the wife-beater thing because Shooter thought he needed some character drama or something. And the continuing stream of huge, hilarious jokes about it from nerd would-be comedians.
Jim Starlin writing Fourth World characters.
Hal Jordan. Having him in comics now is like finding out the jerk you hated in elementary school is now your new coworker, and he hasn’t changed a bit.
Superhero spoofs, and meta-commentaries on superheroes in general. Any good superhero spoof was done by the Tick 20 years ago, and Watchmen closed the book on meta-stories. I want to see something new, not another deconstruction of something that wasn’t that deep in the first place.
James Robinson’s early Starman stuff is excellent, but after that he dropped off. He’s terribly overrated.
“Grim and gritty.” Enough already. Killing or raping secendary characters to show how “serious” and “important” a story is. Jeez, enough already.
Bill S.: there’s nothing irrational about hating Frank Miller.
My irrational pet nerd-hate is Star Trek. All of it.
HATE when marvel characters wear fucking Yankees gear.
Anything “Highlander” related. Yes, including the first movie. Burn it all.
Anything with its roots in a toy line or cartoon from the 80s. Transformers, GI Joe (that particular incarnation anyway; the kung-fu grip & fuzzy “real” hair version from MY childhood is just fine, thanks), any of that shit, and any attempts at revivals of same in any medium.
Sword & Sorcery, including Conan.
Fabian Nicieza (sp?). His scripts all read like the inside of an over-serious 15 year old’s journal.
ROB LIEFELD.
The industry’s present state of perpetual crossover.
The fact that I can’t get a f*cking issue of Queen & Country because somebody, somewhere, for whatever reason that is completely beyond me, cares about Wonder Woman.
When super-speedsters enter 100 combinations or passwords into computers at superspeed until they get the right one in, like, 2 seconds. It would take the computer longer than that to process the data.
And yet, I have no problem accepting that someone could run 1,000 miles per second in the first place.
I’m way late to this party, but The Vision is my favorite Marvel hero. Red Tornado isn’t terrible, but he does come of as kind of a dick. Vision’s wife was hot, so any robot that can score with a(n albeit crazy) babe wins “beaucoup” points with me.
/pun massively intended