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As you read here all over the web, the DC Universe as we know it is ending. Now- I originally planned to do a "Top Ten Things I'll Miss About the DC Universe" piece but everyone and their grandmother is already doing one of those. I pride myself on breaking from the crowd every once in awhile. So, I'm covering some of the worst comics endings in general.
- Teen Titan/Legion Special #1: : While I think the Bierbaum's Legion is my favorite, the derisively nicknamed "Archie Legion" is the one I started with. Considering how good Abnett and Lanning and Gail Simone's Legion runs were I thought their universe deserved a much better send off than a team up with the Titans. Sure, it did tie up the Superboy on two team problem and helped place those stories in continuity. But why bother when the whole purpose of this special was to destroy that continuity? Especially since the whole thing was just a way to introduce and beat the crap out of the Fatal Five Thousand in a story that focused more on The Titans. I would have preferred a more Legion focused story and lot more scenes with Bart and Jenni.
- Impulse #90: This one falls into a common trap of many 1990s DC books. A writer who has a lot of plans for the characters and is told only a few months ahead of time that the book has only about three months to live. So he tries desperately to get as much of his planned story completed as possible. It seems really, really rushed even for a speedster title. Not every plot thread is tied up. There are some that waited almost six years to get explored and not by the original writer. Even then it's sort of an "Oh yeah- we forgot we have to fix that if we're going to..." Really, would DC have lost that much money letting Impulse end with issue #93. Or at least a double sized finale?
- New Mutants #100: This is Marvel commercialism of the 1990s at its worst. It is a double sized issue. It is drawn and co-plotted, women with rake like bodies and Macy's balloon sized breasts and all, by <explicative deleted> and written by Fabian Nicieza. Fabian can be a really good writer, but at the time he was juggled about 28 plates a month so you couldn't catch all of them. The story does nothing but set up new mysteries, resolving jack and $#@!. Then instead of continuing on into New Mutants #101 like a normal comic would, they decided that an issue #1 would sell better. Plus, at a hundred issues, the New Mutants were hardly new even if half the cast were just brought into the book with that issue. and Nicieza would go on to continue the story in X-Force. A title that the less we talk about, the better.
- The Incredible Hulk #474: I mean no offense to Joe Casey because his run was nowhere near as bad as people seem to think it is, but the series really should have ended with issue #467. You see, Casey's run had one particular misfortune. He had to be the guy who took over for Peter David. Marvel decided to return Hulk back to "Hulk mad! Hulk smash!" which seemed extremely dissatisfying after the level of complex and often adult story telling achieved for many years prior to that. Any run coming after it- unless given a year or to cool off - is like going into the Sistine Chapel, looking at the ceiling and then saying to the curator: "That's an incredible painting. May I see the restrooms?" No matter how clean and elegant the bathrooms of the Vatican are, it is never going to match quality of the exhibit you just saw. So why bother?
- Howard the Duck #31: I pretend this issue doesn't exist. Then again, I try really hard to convince myself that every Howard the Duck appearance between Howard the Duck Volume 1. #27 and his reappearance in She-Hulk don't exist. I even pretend the issue Steve Gerber came back and scripted to fulfill his contract doesn't exist. Come to think of it- I think any Howard the Duck story not written by Steve Gerber being allowed to be Steve Gerber is somewhat apocryphal. Even writers who have come close to mimicking Gerber's style come off as slightly off to me. Some runs in comics are almost sacred ground and Gerber's Howard the Duck is one of them.
- Excalibur #125: This is a rarity in X-Books. It ties up all the on going storylines but also doesn't do a damned thing. Captain Britain gets married, ending the "will they or won't they" plot he had going with Megan since the days when Claremont still wrote the book. Does Douglock have the cure to Legacy virus in his head? Maybe, but after getting drunk for the first time, good luck finding it. His circuits got a little scrambled because they can't put the solution to such a big plot be in the lowest selling X-Book. Will Kitty and Wisdom get back together? No. Will she go back to Piotr? No. Though Colossus, Kitty and Nightcrawler do go back to the X-Men because they are popular enough that people care about what happens to them. Unlike Wolfsbane, who stays on the Muir Island to look after the terminally ill Moira. Douglock stays too but only because he's in love with Wolfsbane. And the mystery of whether or not Rory will become Ahab? It's like they said from the beginning: No. Just because it happened in one future doesn't mean it will happen in every future. These are all things the reader knew would happen going in. None of it needed to be stated. The issue, much like the series itself for its last year, was just sort of there.
- X-Factor #149: Introducing the All Even Newer, All Even More Different X-Factor. Only here a team gets together and they build a time machine. Havok appears to die. Then the whole book just goes kaput. Why bother starting a new storyline at all if you're just going to end the book and not finish the story? Why not just end the series when the previous story came to a natural conclusion in X-Factor #148? Or maybe actually bother finishing this story in a nice round numbered double sized issue #150. Why? Because Howard Mackie really only wanted to write Hakok and Madelyne Prior. So Havok went off to an alternate universe and into another hopefully better selling X-Book #1. As a reader, I basically stopped caring about X-Factor about 48 issues before, briefly picking up copies from the cheap boxes when I spotted Madrox's return. Somehow I ended up getting the whole run though I'm not quite sure how.
- Sovereign Seven # 36: I'm a big fan of Chris Claremont and of metafiction. So one might think I'd be a fan of this book. I can't explain it but it just didn't work for me. Claremont seems extremely uncomfortable operating in the DC universe. Whenever DC characters show up being they are the wrong age, gain weaknesses they didn't have or are otherwise out of character. His solution in the end was to simple extricate the book from the DC universe by saying it was all a fairy tale. The "it was all a dream" or "we time traveled back to solve the problem" usually strikes me as a cheap way out… particularly in comics because if you buy the issues new in the comic shop, it would cost around $78, counting the annual and the issue of Sovereign Seven Plus The Legion of Super Heroes. $78 dollars for a story that even the author says amounts to nothing. Bah!
- Hawk and Dove #28: In order for the Armageddon 2001 storyline to remain a surprise, this wonderful and beautiful title by Barbara and Karl Kesel got utterly mangled. DC's philosophy was "we're canceling it anyway, so why the hell not?? So instead of getting a quiet, sentimental resolution to all of the ongoing plots that were really intended- we get to see Hawk become DC's new big villain and then murder Dove for no real reason. So he saw his future self become a mass murdering dictator and found out his love for Dove was unrequited. He was maybe angry, brash and impulsive but that seemed extremely out of character for him. The Hank Hall that the Kesels presented in the 27 other issues would have channeled that anger into fighting that future to his dying breath. Maybe it's a better story than I think, but once you know the politics of why the series ended that way it just kind of ruins the entire series for me.
- Preacher #66: Something always bothered me about the end of Preacher. The comic shop dealer I've been going to for more than 20 years helped me put it all together. First, Jesse Custer is supposed to be the most devote follower of the Code of the West you can possibly imagine. What does he do in the end? He steals a horse. In his own mind at least- he should be hung. He would rather have killed himself than do that. Secondly, as much I personally believe in forgiveness, Custer doesn't. With him, you always had to earn it. Cassidy had done nothing to prove himself worthy, and somehow, just like that, he gave it to him. Then there is Starr- the black hat of the story- is degraded and fallen from grace by that point. He's a joke. A very sick and funny joke but he isn't threatening anymore. He doesn't deserve his treatment at the end. Our hero comes off as a complete and total hypocrite. Not only that, Custer doesn't even get to be the one to kill God. The rest of the series was very good but the ending turns out to be for nothing.
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