Hype Hydra: scandals for the sake of scandals in comics

How about we have a little insight into what our slav colleagues think are most unneeded scandals in comics industry (mainly Marvel and DC). So, without further ado, let us begin.

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If you still haven't made a joke about Captain Hydra, then you are one damn slowpoke - too late for that now. One issue in and Marvel already backed off on this shocking twist. And what a scandal that was, with many blaming creators of the comic in disrespecting Steve Rogers, some even called them antisemites!
The thing is, this situation cam be compared to Russia's football team they are hilariously bad players, just ask /sp/ -editor's note: you wanna get mad, but every time you catch yourself thinking "I'm not even surprised". Comics creators are always ready to create scandals outta nothing, so that we get mad and spend our money and time on those comics that make us mad. Below we have listed only the most revolting examples of scandals for the sake of scandals in comics industry.

You think only Marvel likes to pull complete 180 on their heroes without any reason? DC also has their fair share of "not what he seems like".
In 2011 DC announced that Lobo, the most badass character in their roster, isn't Lobo at all. Readers' favorite apparently stole identity of another Czarnian mercenary. "The original" turned out to be cold-blooded assassin with "0% humour, 100% professionalism" mentality.
Many considered this a bluff, expecting new Lobo to be merely a Lobo from another universe or a representative of some kinda Lobo Korps… But DC handled the newcomer pretty seriously, by allowing him to behead and kill "the impostor" on the very first pages of his own comic. Imagine pseudo-Deadpool from Wolverine: Origins declaring himself the original and killing The Merc with the Mouth.
==Why:== Even taking all his charisma into account, Lobo never really was DC's frontman. Besides, they got tired of Lobo being compared to Deadpool.
==Consequences:== the fans' outrage didn't stop DC - new Lobo is still alive in comics. Some people even like him. But we all know: once the sales start to drop, everything will be back to normal.

I'll never understand this move. It's like something someone would do on a dare, and then regret immediately.

Nine years ago Captain America, spoiler, died. He was killed by Crossbones as per contract from Red Skull and Baron Zemo, and hypnotized agent Carter sealed the deal.
There will be no more superheroes' deaths in this list, because Cap's death has got everything you need to know about deaths in comics. The hero of American nation died in issue 25 of his own comic. Naturally, the comic was selling let and right. And after some upheaval Cap was reborn as awkwardly as possible. I've got no patience to recap THAT, so let Wikipedia speak for me:
Marvel, go home, you're drunk! And don't think we'll buy into another MC death again!
Oh, and a friendly reminder: looks like Tony Stark is gonna die in Civil War II.
==Why==: mass media was writing about Cap's death and you ask why? For USA Captain America is a symbol of the nation, even if drawn. Marvel piqued the interest with the help of bloody offering, devalued by pointless revival.
==Consequences==: if Marvel's further actions are any indication, literally nobody reads Captain America comics. Its authors are still throwing around shocking twist after another, which are then reverted with a snap of a finger.

Due to Captain Hydra, people often joked that Iron Man is in league with Nazis as well. However, Iron Man fans in 1995 had nothing to laugh about. Playboy and billionaire turned out to be a traitor, who all these years worked for Kang the Conqueror.
Hard to believe, but at that time Marvel were a few steps away from bankruptcy. In that dark time authors were out of ideas (like they've got a ton of them now) and readers were losing patience. That's why there were a few desperate attempts to find saviors in the face of teenager base.
And that is when the controversial decision to replace Iron Man with his younger analogue was approved. This trick is popular even today: for example, Jean Grey and Cyclops' places were taken by their past copies. The thing is, Stark was replaced in the worst possible way - by completely spoiling the original.
Needless to say, this was a very lazy and in-your-face way of replacing a character. The twist withe Iron Man, just like Captain Hydra, came outta nowhere. The fans' response was accordingly acrimonious. In the end, authors gave up, returned Iron Teenager back to his time and declared that Stark was brainwashed, therefore he dindu nuffin. To author's credit, they kept the intrigue longer than one issue. This hardly improved the comic's quality, however.
WHY: attempt to attract younger audience by making Tony younger.
CONSEQUENCES: the wave of fans' outrage (one wonders how they expressed it without memes) and hasty cancellation of macabre twist - not as quickly as Heil Hydra, but still.
I either fucked up or haven't noticed if redtext was disabled.

I remember that turncoat event.
But this just hadme remember that Marvel had a lot of moments where they nearly went bankrupt.

I'm glad I was too busy with life in the mid to late 90s to care about all this shit. I'd been following Iron Man for years as a kid, but got out a while after Layton left the book. After Image formed, and Marvel lost pretty much all their biggest names, I was far away from this trainwreck.

Green Lantern had many incarnations, but the first one that comes to mind is Hal Jordan - the most known of them. Looks like around mid-90s Hal was not what he used to be - try and explain the following chain of events in any other way.
The plot of Emerald Twilight begins with the view of atomically annihilated Coast City, Hal's hometown. Hal, on the verge of going mad, recreates his city with all its inhabitants with the help of his ring, kisses his girlfriend's projection and listens to his father's words of approval. But the ring's power is not enough and the city dissipates. And now Hal will be discharged from The Green Lanterns Corps, because as per rules you cannot use the ring's power for personal gain.
And that was a good entry! Powerful, emotional. And immediately wasted. Hal goes insane, kills off ALL OF Green Lanterns Corps and takes all their rings for himself. Yep, Hal Jordan, THE Green Lantern, killed all of his friends. Turns out, Joker was right all along: even the most staunch of heroes needs only one bad day to commit genocide.
The community was stunned by such heavy-handed approach in turning a seasoned veteran into bloodthirsty psychopath. The writers have basically destroyed Hal Jordan to introduce new Green Lantern. This is, without a doubt, one of the worst examples of "shocking twist" in the comics history.
WHY: to introduce Kyle Runner - new Green Lantern.
CONSEQUENCES: when DC realized, what they had done, it was too late. What followed was years of atonement. Hal became Parallax, then it turned out that Parallax is in fact a parasite who was mind controlling Hal. With that, that emotional moment at the beginning was devalued: the madness was explained away as mind control. Hal died and atoned for his sins as Spectre. And all of that for resurrection of Hal and The Green Lantern Corps.

Nobody suffered from Marvel as much as Spider-man. The publishing's frontman always required a steady income of new readers, and even today authors throw twist after twist at him.
There were lucky attempts, like the death of Gwen Stacy. There were interesting in retrospect, but ultimately wasted. For example, demasking of Spidey in Civil War wasn't a bad move. But, the writers have reversed it by making Parker strike a deal with Methisto: the life of dead aunt May and secret of identity for the whole history of relations with Mary Jane. Even though they had such a good relationship…
Although, when it comes to sales, Peter's love is usually the first thing to get axed. For example, in Sins Past, we find out that Peter got cucked by Gwen Stacy - she slept with Norman Osbourne and even had his children. That was unexpected and dark twist, the one which makes you want to go to shower after reading it. And the most insulting thing is that there was basically no backstory to it and it was never mentioned again.
And of course, The Clone Saga. That was a real gut punch for Spider-Man's fans. This event was going to revive already dying Amazing Spider-Man series, but they fucked it up. TWO YEARS the readers tortured themselves by trying to understand the illogical and convoluted mess of a plot. Authors shocked the readers by proclaiming that Peter Parker was a clone, and Ben Riley a.k.a. Scarlet Spider - original. This idea was on par with Traitor Stark and was quickly canned. And all this mess ended without any repercussions for the plot.
WHY: BECAUSE SPIDER-MAN FANS HAVE TO SUFFER.
CONSEQUENCES: every once in a while Marvel try to start up another scandal around Spidey. They turn him into Latino teenager or a billionaire or Doctor Octopus. And a little while ago a new Clone Saga was announced. All in all, this makes Spider-Man king cuck the king of scandals for the sake of scandals.

The more recent Frank Miller comics about Batman require their own article. Criminal article, that is. Because it's a crime to subject a character to such treatment. He created brilliant Dark Knight Returns, and then he wrote All-Star Batman, which is sometimes lauded as the worst Batman comic. In All-Star Batman Bruce kidnaps young Robin and makes him feed on raw rats. What follows is now infamous exchange.

In 2007 DC decided to attract more attention to Wonder Woman by launching a major event. Synopsis: amazons attack White House and kill a lot of Americans because the government is keeping Wonder Woman in prison.
The plot was very convoluted, it was clear that writers themselves didn't knew what to do with it. Additionally, it was incredibly stupid (amazons shooting down fighters with arrows) Fuck, I'm instantly reminded of James Cameron's Avatar -editor's note and offensive. Amazons turned from symbols of feminism into walking sexist anecdotes, on every page they threw around lines like "this country is full of MEN", "MEN'S laws are in power here", "We won't allow MEN to enslave us". This could've been a good anecdote, if it wasn't for amazons killing kids while screaming "They'll grow into similar MEN!".
In the end, this attempt at selling controversial plots involving Wonder Woman was a flop. Amazon Attack became one of the most infamous pages in DC history. Readers were sending comics straight to DC's head office with demands for refund. This stupid, full of sexism, tangled mess of a comic nearly spelled death for Wonder Woman.

Put a space before and after the =='s. Like == this ='=

GOOD THREAD

A Superior Captain America arc where Red Skull infiltrates Steve's body and tries to destroy the heroes and take over SHIELD from inside, would be a really cool storyline.

I'm sure Marvel ruined this opportunity.

...

Nowadays we've got new grand events every month. In the 90s, crossovers were much more modest, hence why Onslaught Crisis surprised a lot of readers.
The publisher has settled for a desperate move - reset of their universe during Heroes Reborn plot arc. For this authors kinda-sorta killed their main heroes, Fantastic Four and Avengers. They were actually transported into a pocket universe, created by six-year old Franklin, son of Reed Richards. There all characters received new backstories and attitudes.
For 90s readers such move was like Mjolnir hitting them on the head. Fans were badmouthing Marvel 24/7 yet still were buying comics. But after shock came realization that authors fucked up the reboot. They made new universe too dark and heroes too unlikable and straight up robbed of their charm. Soon after that, they were returned to their original universe, and events of Reborn were retconned.
The growing after reboot audience was saved by the fact that all main Marvel series started from issue №1, which was pretty handy for newcomers. The much criticized reboot saved Marvel from bankruptcy. From this day forward reboots and global events became industry's black gold.

In 2013 authors of the comic about I AM THE LAW-Man reminded everyone about one of the more hot topics: tolerance. Because nothing pisses off geeks more that change of gender, race or sexuality of their favorite characters.
On the pre-released page of the Closet comic we see Dredd kissing some punk in a gay bar. Understandably, this divided readers' fanbase into two camps. The first one praised authors for their bravery and readiness to battle homophobia utilizing one of the comic industry's manliest characters, the others… well, you get the idea.
However, authors' blabbering about "this story is a challenge", "it will move people" and "this is not your everyday superhero saga" didn't stop them from revealing that this was not The Judge himself and just some random home in a costume. Dredd himself was not amused.

I guess the part about dating his girlfriend's projection can be considered as "personal gain". Don't look at me like that, I haven't read many Green Lantern comics.

Personal gain implies some sort of material acquisition gained through illegitimate means.
What the fuck is he gaining by doing this? Emotional closure? Is that not okay in the corps or something?

Shocking turn of events in comics are nothing new. However, they were limited to an issue or two.
In older comics superheroes conducted petty offenses that were out of their characters. They used their superpowers to play pranks on mortals. When talking to women they behaved like hardcore chauvinists. They refused to save people because of small things. All in all, superheroes conducted acts of superdickery.
There are sites dedicated to this kinda stuff, like superdickery.com and superdickery.tumblr.com. There, pages from older comics with examples of superdickery are posted. With explanations and sarcastic commentaries, of course.
Superheroes' "dark past" is a real treat. Who would've thought, for example, that Superman could turn Lois Lane into a fatty? Or him making his pal Jimmy Olsen marry a giant ape?
Important note: scenario writers didn't go mad while writing this. Many of these pages were taken out of context to shock and intrigue the reader. In the comic itself it was revealed that, for example, Superman was hypnotized or was doing all of that to earn villain's trust. Or that wasn't Superman altogether, that was his evil body double.

And with that, this article is over. If you have anything to add from your experience, feel fre to.

I may have slightly fucked up the translation. The original reads:
This literally translates to:

Superman says this, why can't comics be fun again?

He's using the ring to make a fake copy of the city not for a mission but for his own private off-work use, that's what he's not supposed to do. Like as if he was using the ring to make women to fuck, but instead he's using it to make a city for his mind to not collapse.

This is prety much it.

GLs are meant to only stop criminals, not undo the damage they do if they don't stop them in time.
The Guardians are little bitches and have some ultra hardon for fucking over every GL they employ.

Lets be honest tho, if that storyline was made today, nobody would complain about it :^)

Captain America Reborn was apparently the result of Ed Brubaker trying to rework his original plans for the book when Civil War and Cap's death derailed everything. If I recall correctly, Red Skull would've tried to hijack the infant child of Cap and Sharon Carter.


Lobo's ongoing was canned a while ago actually

They were in the Batmobile for 2 or 3 FULL ISSUES. It may be the worst thing I've ever read that Jim Lee drew, and I fucking read Imagine Stan Lee Created Wonder Woman. I still have no fucking clue if Frank was just fucking with everyone or at his absolute craziest when he wrote that.

I'd read it if Steve was also in a Red Skull body, and was secretly working to turn Hydra into a force for good (but then I'd be straight up stealing ideas from Byrne's Batman/Superman Generations).

I actually really liked Heroes Reborn Fantastic Four, it was actually pretty bright and had a breakneck pace for the first few issues. Even Heroes Reborn Iron Man had a few good issues, if I recall. I didn't want to deal with the Liefeld side of things though.

But… what's wrong with using the ring to make women to fuck? If I'm a green lantern, clearly I have the willpower to, you know, not go overboard with this kind of thing. At worst, it's just a waste of lantern juice. How do they make that stuff, anyway?

Oh, personal purposes.
But still, Hal is very clearly in a bad place mentally. Did they even try and help him out after he was discharged? Couldn't they have gotten the guy some aid and given him the ring back once he got better? What's up with the GL healthcare system?

It's like these covers are their own punchlines.

I've read somewhere that they designed the crazy covers before they came up with a story for it.

the guardians may have ran OA but they had the empathy of a /r9k/ regular, they always freaked out when Lanterns showed any humanity

that's correct, cover artists worked in batches and the editor would tell the writers "i don't know, you fuckin' figure it out"

Reminder that you can't redtext in the same line as normal text on vanilla settings, at least

We all know of Jimmy's… sketchy past with apes. No need to pretend.

Turn off you autocorrect, faggot

user, you don't know what you're talking about, so PLEASE don't make threads like this a regular thing.

This is exactly like what fucking blackblade does over on /tg/, don't bring his level of autism here.

This was the final straw, I can't, too much

If you read the thread, you'd know that OP literally translated some Russian article, and did not write it himself.

I don't know why people are saying this is a good thread then, the slavs are obviously not well-informed based on some of the stuff they're saying.

The fact that they talk about bad stories "ruining" characters proves that the people who wrote these are not comic readers.

You forgot Aunt May's death and resurrection in the Clone Saga.

It was brilliantly executed, well loved, and a key part in the backstory of Marvel's most popular super heroine.

Then it was retconed for absolutely no reason with with absolute bullshit for nothing. They picked the most insane person to come back from the dead: This is a woman who lives on social security and maybe her husband's pension, with neighbors she regularly keeps in contact with. She can't just go to the social security office and say "no I'm not dead a crazy dog man kidnapped me and replaced me with an actor for months/years".

point me to a post where somebody says it's a good thread, other than the guy who demonstrated the use of redtext

all the bullshit he put Jimmy through actually had a really good reason behind it
shortly after adopting Jimmy in the comics, Superman's reality predicting bullshit supercomputer in the fortress of solitude predicted "You will destroy your son"

so Supes spent a few years doing everything he could to drive Jimmy away

and then Supes was forced to destroy his artificial sun.

homophones are a bitch

Original article

mirf.ru/comics/skandaly-v-komiksakh

No one cares what slavshits 'think'

I can't really get mad about Emerald Twilight. Green Lantern needed fresh blood and DC turned in probably one of their best stories to take care of that problem, even if it pissed off the fans. Kyle Rayner's run as the main GL was really good. Basically cleaned all of the problems the title had. More relatable hero. More focus on the powers. He even resurrected the Guardians to not be assholes.

And Hal Jordan became the best villain DC ever had, then the best Spectre they ever had.

All and all, it was miles better than the fucking garbage Geoff Johns gave us. His resurrection was another sign of the medium's death.


Clone Saga was Marvel's failed attempt to have their cake and eat it too. They wanted to get back to classic Spider-man simplicity but still keep the last 32 years of continuity so they didn't lose readers.

It didn't work, not just because it poorly handled, but also because 90's Spider-man fans were more autistic than Sonic fans.

No shit, that fucker been fucking shit up since 1999.

He fucked up the titans (Which admittedly wasn't hard), Superboy, Lanterns. Anyone he touched in the past ten, fifteenth years.

Just a few at the top of my head you missed or thought too well known
Those were very important moments with no repercussions of any kind.

And now that Twinkee snarfer is basically in charge of DC. What terrible times we live in.

Trust me, I know of Johns stuff on Superboy, I was a Superboy fag for the past ten years, I tracked down his original series and Young Justice.

Hell, between you, me and this thread I always consider Superboy superior to Superman. Tactile telekinesis is kind of useful when there is no sun.

Now, I hadn't read much Superman before but I recently as in two weeks ago started to read the 1980's and make my way up to the 90s.

In your first picture, I agree with the user in it. Damn near everything is better. Clark is more of a go-getter who is afraid that his life is affecting his job because when he rush off, it looks as if he's being rude.

I liked Luthor being so arrogant that even when he went through the trouble of fining the connection between Clark Kent and Superman Torturing Lana Lang, ransacking the Kent's home and other nasty things when it was all assembled before him with the obvious, he denied it.

It's fucking great.

Bad stories tend to hemorrhage readers however. DC and Marvels readerbase on comics has been on steady decline for decades.

Ironically most successful superhero stories have been ones which are self-contained, Batman Animated Universe for instance. Theres a clear continuity there, the focus is on general superhero adventures instead of shock-per episode kind of stuff. And thats what the audience wants. They want an adventure, not soap opera.

Wow, rude.

So what's the basic opinion here? That Johns is a Silver Age fanboy who regressed as many characters as he could to who they were when he grew up?

I get how that can piss off fans, but that honestly sounds like the type of person they need in charge of the movies. A Silver Age fanboy is about as far away as you can get from Zack "Batman should have been raped in prison" Snyder. Even if it's not a vision that grows much for the characters, he has a clear idea of what he wants, and hopefully that will be reflected by movies in the future.

Really, nobody remembers when Joe Pineapples ended up dressing in drags for the last half of Kronicles of Khaos ?

That's the thing, I want him doing the movies.

I just want him to fuck off on actual comics.

Yeah. New Lobo was canned towards the end of 2015. It lasted about a year.

Don't know about Russia, but as far as the big two go, Poland usually gets translations of trades that sold well in the U.S. 20-something page "floppies" are usually rare. Most fans follow news and read scan in English, so they are rather well informed.

For example, news about new Lobo didn't go down well with Polish fans at all. Especially since among Polish comic book readers Lobo is more popular than Green Lantern, Flash, and Wonder Woman .

That's why I never understand throwing an established character under the bus to make a new character. Because if you just MAKE A NEW character, and it fails, it just fails. But if you trade a successful character for a new character, if it fails or even doesn't do BETTER than the original, you just wasted everything.

so what marvel is currently doing in their comics.

Really? Huh. Never expected them to like the guy.