Hangover: Rob’s Biggest Comic Disappointments of 2012

It is New Year’s Day, and thanks to about fifteen glasses alternating between Milwaukee’s and Lynchburg, Tennessee’s finest products last night, it feels like my brain has been taken over and occupied by Doctor Octopus. Or at least part of Doctor Octopus. Part of Doctor Octopus after a meal of bad sushi and piss-warm Chango. And to add insult to injury, I flipped on the TV this morning to be subjected to Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which, as comic book movies go, certainly is one (man, Stringer Bell and Sailor Ripley sure have let themselves go).

Chuck on top of that steaming mess that there are no new comics until tomorrow, and nothing whatsoever apparently going on in the world of comics, and what we have is a new year that, so far, is… disappointing. And with that feeling in mind, and 2012 at our backs, it seems like as good an opportunity as any to revisit the biggest disappointments in comics and geek culture that occurred in 2012.

And given that the memory is so fresh, we might as well start with (although this list is in no particular order):

• Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance – the initial trailers for this movie looked pretty sweet, although we all knew deep down that, given the general crapulance of the original Ghost Rider movie, we were probably looking at something that aspired to be watchable on a good day. Well, having finally just sat through the thing, “watchable” is about what we got. So… it turns out that Ghost Rider is actually possessed by an angel, huh? Right when it’s most convenient for plot and story purposes? And yes, I get it, Moreau fucking likes wine, so you can stop fucking telling me! The biggest sign that even the filmmakers knew that this movie wasn’t up to snuff? It was a Marvel flick, and yet if you stayed through the closing credits, all you learned was who worked on the movie. I’m guessing they knew that there was no point in post-credit teasing a third movie; even Nic Cage probably understands that there’s no point in leaving his schedule open for Ghost Rider 3, leaving him free to say yes to The Wicker Man 2.
• Avengers: X-Sanction – Sure, it started in 2011, but most of it dropped in 2012, and like yesterday’s Best Of list: my Web site, my rules. Teased as the crucial introduction series for the Avengers Vs. X-Men event, instead it was a standard, Terminator-style, kill-the-cause-in-the-past story, requiring Cable to know things that were impossible for him to know (because they were things that, you know, weren’t true), implementing a plan that didn’t make sense, that required each Avenger to be suffering from a partial lobotomy, or perhaps brain fluke, in order to fall for it. Cable carried giant guns that could become wimpy stun weapons when writer Jeph Loeb cliffhangered himself into a corner, and just about the whole thing took place on a single ship, making this “vital” story that “changed everything” feel like a small-scale deathtrap that King Tut from the Batman TV show feel embarrassed. It was a good intro for Avengers Vs. X-Men, if only by making it look better by comparison.
• The Amazing Spider-Man #700 – I get that Dan Slott and Marvel Editorial wanted to explore the idea of a supervillain trying to become a hero by finding himself in the body of one, and I get that, for that to happen, that hero would need to die and get out of the way for the villain. And it’s not a bad idea, and putting Doctor Octopus into Spider-Man’s body is as good a match for that kind of story as any. And, if the potential storytelling opportunities shown by, say, Daredevil #21, are any indication, there might be some intriguing tales to be told from the conceit. But it’s the way they put Peter Parker out of the way that was just a stone bummer; left in a dying body, unable to transfer his brain back into his own body because Doc Ock protected his brain with a layer of carbonadium. Stop and think on that for a second: The Amazing Spider-Man was killed by a kid in a helmet. It’s no way to close the books on a major hero (although I think we all know Peter Parker will be back sometime before the next Spider-Man movie opens), and while it opens the way for some (hopefully) interesting stories in The Superior Spider-Man, it was a disappointing way to get there… and hopefully not a harbinger of seeing The Superior Spider-Man on this list next year.
• The Walking Dead #101 – #105 – Seeing Negan kill Glenn in The Walking Dead #100 was sickening and heartbreaking (and that issue was on my top ten for 2012 until just about my final cut). And I have a great deal of faith that writer Robert Kirkman will make Negan’s comeuppance thrilling and satisfying. But that hasn’t happened yet. In fact, since that 100th issue in July, it feels like almost nothing has happened. It’s been a long five months of slow, painful setup of watching Negan act like a cock while Rick and company just shut up and take it… and it goes on. And on. And on. While I’m sure the story will work in a long couple of trades with the ending included, it’s been the first time the story just hasn’t worked on a monthly basis. Somebody just fucking shoot Negan already!
• Superman, Earth One, Volume Two – While loaded with great Shane Davis art, this second volume of J. Michael Straczynski’s original Superman graphic novels was packed with inconsistent secondary character who only exist to put Superman in weird situations, including the old, “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex” deal. Straczynski gets Superman dead on, but everyone around him exists to put Superman into Supermanny scenarios, without too much apparent thought as to whether these non-Superman people are acting like actual people. Further, the “young Superman in the real modern world” story conceit that was so compelling in the first volume has lost some of its impact since Grant Morrison has been doing something similar in Action Comics since late 2011. It looks great, and it’s not terrible, but it doesn’t live up to the first volume, and frankly? I sincerely wish that, if a writer is going to do the “does he super-ejaculate” gag? Just finally fucking show it already so we can give it all a rest? Otherwise, get your mind out of the gutter and quit fucking around; we have better things to contemplate.
• Ultimate Universe: United We Stand – Captain America is President now. That should about cover it. Look, this whole year and a half of the Ultimate Universe being at civil war just feels like writers using the alternate universe conceit to fuck around with “big” stories to make things seem more important than they really are. Worst of all, it has started stepping on Brian Michael Bendis’s Ultimate Spider-Man, which has been pretty good. Time to wrap it up, guys.
• Before Watchmen – Granted, I wasn’t expecting much out of this series of prequels, but with the exception of Silk Spectre and Rorschach, I didn’t even get that much. Nite Owl was misnamed, as writer J. Michael Straczynski seemed like he’d rather be writing about Rorschach, Ozymandias was an good-looking but exposition-heavy retelling of stuff from Alan Moore’s original, and Comedian was a Godawful mangling of the character, his history and general Watchmen continuity for fans. DC says that they have no current plans to do more Before Watchmen when the current run is done. Thank God; the end is nigh.
• The Secret Service – If there’s one thing Mark Millar produces better than almost anyone else, it’s hype. So when he started whipping up interest for his miniseries Secret Service, drawn by Dave Gibbons, he got a lot of attention while not releasing a lot of details about the project. Which was probably a good thing, since the entire project seemed to be “What if James Bond was real?” It stars a lead character who is taken almost whole-cloth from Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles (down to the stolen car as entry into a secret society), when he doesn’t seem to be taken from Millar’s own Wanted (regular guy unknowingly related to secret badass who introduces him to the lifestyle). And he wraps the whole thing up in a storyline custom-made to get Mark Hamill and some other geek-friendly actors to star in the inevitable movie version. Less a comic book than a storyboard for a Hollywood pitch meeting, Secret Service has been a shallow waste of two A-List creators. If Millar wants to sell a movie, good for him… but he shouldn’t expect me to pay 24 bucks over six issues for the privilege.
• Image United 4 – It’s been two and a half years! When’s it gonna be finished? Just kidding; I really don’t give a fuck.

That covers most of the big disappointments of 2012 (although there were a few more, like the Buffy The Vampire Slayer abortion plot copout, and the general Rising Stars-ishness of America’s Got Powers)… and frankly, that ain’t all that bad, considering 2012 had 52 weeks and almost five grand worth of comics, movies and TV shows. And considering what a large percentage of that media was consumed while I was intoxicated and surly, that’s not a bad average.

So enough with the negative; let’s put it behind us, drink away last night’s hangover, and throw in our Avengers Blu-Ray one last time before we have to go back to work tomorrow. Besides: I hear that whiskey washes away the taste of Nic Cage.

…wait, that last one came out wrong.

…and so did that one.