/co/ - Comics & Cartoons

>Is this the absolute worst, unredeemable event in capeshit history?

Identity Crisis.

It literally begins with rape.

>>949492

No, Identity Crisis was the worst. Instead of killing off an entire universe like Ultimatum, Identity Crisis reshaped DC's core universe into a grim and gritty nightmare. Didio took his silver age memories and smashed it together with Watchmen to create a world of costumed rape and murder that was completely oblivious to it's own ridiculousness.

Identity Crisis was the beginning of the dark times, where characters were gratuitously murdered left and right. Where every bad thing imaginable occurred. DC comics became a non-stop snuff film from 2004 until 2011.

>>949539

>Identity Crisis started the grim and gritty craze at DC

It certainly did not, you could argue it ratcheted up after Identity Crisis, but DC had already been headed in that direction since Crisis on Infinite Earths.

>Identity Crisis is the shittiest event series ever, even worse than Ultimatum because I don't like the direction the rest of the DCU took afterwards.

Why not criticize the actual book? How is Identity Crisis written worse than Ultimatum or schlock like Atlantis Attacks and Convergence. The only criticism I ever see levied at Identity Crisis is "muh fridging womyn" nonsense from the feminist crowd.

>>949246

This entire event made me drop capeshit ill never understand their need to nuke one of the best marvel universes like this. Early Ultimate Marvel still reigns king in my book anything new they try now is just plain shit.

>>949545

>but DC had already been headed in that direction since Crisis on Infinite Earths.

No. DC was edgy during the early nineties, but from 95 on, it mellowed out into "actually mature". You got shit like Cassandra Cain Batgirl, Starman, the height of Kyle Rayner Green Lantern, and a lot of other really fun stuff. After all the grim and gritty crap, DC was coming into it's own.

However, come the 2000s, especially around 2002 on as Dan DiDio took power, all that shit got chucked out the window. With Identity Crisis, it got to be nonstop violence and bleakness that made the early 90s absolutely pale in comparison.

As for the book itself, it's basically a Watchmen rip-off without any of the nuance or commentary of the original. Sue Dibney is murdered by Jean Loring, the Atom's ex-wife, in a plot to get back with the Atom. However, in the process of all of this, we learn that Zatanna had be mindwiping heroes to forget all of the rape, murder, and near constant discovery of secret identities that occurred during their Silver Age adventures, one of which was Doctor Light's rape of Sue Dibney. In the process of the whole story, Tim Drake's father is murdered, Captain Boomerang is killed, Firestorm explodes, and the entire Justice League, except Batman who's the best guy ever, look like really shady shits. The entire thing is fanboy garbage to repaint the silliness of the Silver Age as dark and gritty, paving the way for the meat-grinder that was to come.

That fanboy thing is the key difference between what happened in the early nineties, and what happened with Identity Crisis. The early nineties was edgy for the sake of being edgy. Identity Crisis was edgy because fanboys wanted to prove their cape comics were "mature".

>>949583

>That image

You left out the best part of that page.

>>949551

But wasn't Ultimatum contained to the Ultimate line? It would lose "awful points" in that regard since it didn't infect the mainline, unlike Identity Crisis, which was/is DC canon.

Though, all horrible events are just evidence of how the mainstream publishers are eager to throw away years of hard work to chase a quick buck. Ultimatum trashed the Ultimate line. Identity Crisis trashed the DCU.

>>949247

One thing to remember is that the Ultimate universe was already in freefall. It started strong as hell, but shifting writers caused multiple issues. Their first big event was going to be Apocalypse. They even did a fucking fantastic job of building it up, making strong ties between Spiderman, the X-men and the Ultimates, and each, especially Spiderman, commented about a feeling of impending doom, which was obviously hinting toward Apocalypse.

And then X-men changed writers, who threw a fucking tantrum and decided he wanted to do Dark Phoenix instead, had Jean Grey just fucking hand wave Apocalypse away the moment he showed up and then do nothing of any god damn interest. Literal years of set up, pissed away instantly.

People just stopped caring about Ultimate X-men after that. They never cared about Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimates 3 took that line from badly hurt to mortally wounded. Only Spiderman remained as something people gave a shit about, and their immediate response was to fucking kill Peter Parker and replace him with Blaxican Spiderman.

The Ultimate imprint was dying before Ultimatum, Ultimatum was just the execution.

>>949558

God damn right. The Ultimate line was so good. For awhile.

>>949715

Oh, also, Peter was killed because the original idea for Ultimate Spiderman was to turn it into a 'slice of superhero life' comic, with Peter, Johnny Storm, Kat Pryde, Mary Jane and Gwen Stacey (who is carnage in this imprint), all living with Aunt May, doing wacky teen superhero stuff together.

Marvel, for some reason, decided it wouldn't work and just killed Peter instead. So, we went from getting a fun, quirky, 'Let's throw all these Teen heroes in a house together and do fun hijinx' comic, to a dead spiderman. They literally thought killing him was the better idea. I will never forgive Marvel for that shit.

>>949733

I know. My point was that Spiderman was the only thing people still cared about when the Ultimate imprint dove off a cliff, and their response to people still caring was to murder the main character.

I have no idea what the fuck Marvel was thinking.

>>949986

Probably true, but I was actually pretty amped on the idea of a slice of life comic with that cast. And then, 'lol nm, Blaxican Spiderman'.

God Dammit Marvel.

>>950000

Well, quads confirm it.

>>949246

Ill never understand Marvels reasoning to killing their best universe they ever created literally almost every hero shined in Ultimate Marvel

>>949586

Forgive me for what I must yabba-dabba-do.

>>950119

>>950002

Thanks for reminding me about that, I finally killed my memory of that shit a couple years ago; thought the Ultimate Spiderman series would be a nice substitute.

>>950062

Weren't most everyone in Ultimate major assholes?

>>952834

>I just gave up on super heroes as a whole and stuck with cartoons

You just can't catch a break.

>>949818

I thought someone just scrapped off the bits where the sword sliced.

>It single-handedly ruined the Ultimate universe,

>Implying Ultimate's was ever good.

>>959030

>Convergence. Secret Wars ripoff with again a pointless story, a wierd focus on earth 2 characters and bringing back Parallax for nothing.

Secret Wars was at least good vs. evil. Convergence was a goddamn clusterfuck, with heroes fighting heroes FOR NO DAMN REASON. Right off the bat, DC was fucking it up, and only got worse the longer it went on. The main title was a such gigantic, frustrating mess that you can't get into it without having an aneurysm Demos becomes the big bad! FUCKING DEMOS!. The tie-in books, like the main title, were complete trash, shitting on the characters they were supposed to be celebrating. The entire event was a deadly cocktail of shit writing, terrible plots, character inconsistencies, and comic book density. Those last two need special emphasis, since Convergence somehow managed to be too obscure for casuals, yet too conflicting for the fans. Again, DEMOS!

Convergence should've been an easy slam dunk for DC. A fun event to pander to the fans while they move to Cali. Instead, it confirmed everyone's worst fears about the company: that they don't give a shit about any of their characters or the content they produce. It's why Rebirth had to happen and it's why Rebirth will fail.

>>959074

>Convergence was a goddamn clusterfuck, with heroes fighting heroes FOR NO DAMN REASON

But is it worse than Civil War?

>>959074

I want to talk more about Deimos (which I misspelled), because the inclusion of that character represents everything wrong with Convergence IMO.

For those that don't know, Deimos was the wizard nemesis of "The Warlord" Travis Morgan, star a relatively obscure 70's sword and sorcery comic of the same name. It's mostly known for being featured in the JLU episode "Chaos at the Earth's Core".

Now, if you didn't know anything about Warlord, wouldn't know who Deimos is, what he's talking about, or what the fuck we're doing in the center of the planet.

Now if you did know all of that shit, you would still be disappointed, as Deimos looks nothing like his comic book counterpart, making the knowledge of him an empty reward since it's clearly not the same Deimos. Strike one for fan pandering. He also swiftly murders Travis Morgan, robbing you of a climatic showdown between these two enemies. Strike two for fan pandering. He also starts a retarded plot involving "DEATH MAGIC"(?) that ends with him being evaporated by Parallax. Strike three, and it's out.

As I said before, this event managed to throw off everyone. Deimos and the world of Skartaris was a bizarre inclusion to this event, especially considering how importantly it's featured and how badly it was mishandled.

>>959090

Oh god yes. Civil War had a solid, if stupid, reason for the heroes to fight. In Convergence, all of the alternate earth heroes fight because Telos wants the strongest city to survive…for some reason. And the alternate earth's heroes just go along with it…for some reason. Yeah, all of those characters you loved for their heroism and righteousness just throw that shit away under threat of annihilation. It's disgusting, especially when they know that it will cost another Earth it's existence. Convergence drags everyone into a dirty sewer for NO REASON.

And then, halfway through the event, that plot ends, replaced with "DEATH MAGIC"(?), Parallax saving the day, and ultimately the off screen retcon of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. The entire event was a giant dump on DC's readership.

>>959266

Learn to barbarian, pleb.

>>959278

Real men aren't afraid to show some leg.

>>959278

In the hollow Earth, men wear no pants.

Wasn't Armageddon 2001 kind of a shit show? I know for a fact it fucked with Hawk and Dove. Something about an astral plane wizard possessing Hawk. Fake killing Dawn Dove and having her in a magic coma while pregnant by the possessed Hawk. I think it also tied in to why Don died and was replaced never to show up again outside of cartoons. It was fucking stupid and that was just for Hawk and Dove during this event.

>>960896

>>960901

Yes. I don't know Armageddon '01 very well, but did know about the fuckery going on with it. Here's the wiki on it.

>Armageddon 2001 is generally disliked by readers for what has been described as the dishonesty of its resolution. The frame story had been presented as a mystery - which superhero would go insane, kill all other heroes, and take over the world, and why? - and clues were provided. However, at some point during the crossover the future-culprit's identity was leaked. Captain Atom would be the one who became Monarch. The conclusion of the Annual for Justice League Europe, the final crossover issue before the conclusion of the story, seemed to confirm this leak. Waverider had seen the futures of various Justice League Europe members but had not scanned Captain Atom, who was away at the time. The final panel of the issue showed Waverider about to touch Captain Atom, who had just returned, and a text box stated that the story would be concluded in the second issue of Armageddon 2001.[5]

>In response to the leak, the surprise ending was changed at the last minute: Monarch was revealed to be, not Captain Atom, but rather Hawk. The problem with this reveal as many fans pointed is that Waverider had seen Hank Hall fight and die against Monarch[2] and that Dove had allowed him to see so many futures as to conclude "No matter the future they fought him but never became him,[3] making Hank Hall and Dawn Granger the two heroes Monarch could not be. Ironically, they were the only characters shown in this situation, and thus any of the other major characters could have been Monarch without creating a continuity issue.[6]

>This revelation was extremely unpopular among both fans and professionals, in part because of the logical flaw mentioned above and the disregard for the clues placed in previous issues. Additionally, it required Hawk to behave in ways that many felt to be out of character. This also made it impossible to continue using either Hawk or Dove as they had in the past and necessitated the cancellation of the Hawk & Dove series. Karl Kesel, the writer of Hawk & Dove, commented that "Hawk and Dove was always a love story. Then one day, Hawk went insane and murdered Dove".

>Many years later, the DC Comics editorial staff acknowledged that the ending as published was poorly executed and in the Battle for Blüdhaven (a spinoff miniseries from the larger Infinite Crisis event), retconned Monarch's origin and depicted Captain Atom's transformation into the villain.

>A storyline in JSA would later reveal that the ending of Armageddon 2001 had been faked by Mordru. He had created an illusion of Dove being murdered by a future Hawk/Monarch in order to drive the current Hawk insane. He then took control of Hawk and used him to impregnate Dove so she would give birth to a child that would inherit all the powers of the Lords of Chaos and Order. Mordru cast a spell on Dove that kept her in a comatose state for years. She did give birth to a child but before Mordru could possess the child's body it was instead inhabited by a reincarnated Hector Hall who aged the body to adulthood and became the new Doctor Fate. Much later while searching for his wife Lyta, Hector would discover Dove and bring her out of Mordru's spell revealing the truth of these events. She would then discover that her sister had inherited the Hawk powers after the death of Hank Hall.

I wish I could say this was the worst DC crossover, but DC events are always clusterfucks.

>>960901

Yep. Then Hawk died, Dawn woke up not pregnant with no memory. Met her half-sister or something and she became the new Hawk. Blackest Night happened and new Hawk got killed by black lantern Hawk. Later, New 52 started and Don is still dead because hoes before bros when it comes to duos.

I know Don was a complete pussy when it came to fighting but, he eventually got written to fight back to some degree. Maybe it's best this way. If he was still alive and Dove he would have been wrote as gay. Why? Because ya can't be a guy and peaceful without being gay.

>>960916

And they're gonna be in the Titans live-action show. Is it me or is the costumes a bit on the shitty side?