The 5 Worst Comics of 2007

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: 2007 was a great, great year for comics, but there were more than a few comics that frustrated me for one reason or another, and I'm going to classify those comics as THE 5 WORST COMICS OF 2007, because, frankly, they deserve it:

1. Superman Confidential
Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale kicked off this series with the "Kryptonite" storyline, and as I read it each month, or every other month, or whenever it came out, I kept thinking, "this is probably the worst thing either of these guys produced." And I have read Billi 99, by the way, so I know what I'm talking about. But I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and figured that the story would certainly flow better when read all in one sitting. But, guess what? The final issue of the story NEVER CAME OUT. Sure, it's supposed to come out soon, but I waited for the final part of the story, and instead, in the next issue of Superman Classified I get a really bad Lori Lemaris story without any sort of explanation. I thought I missed an issue, so I checked online, and found a Newsarama post about how the finale of "Kryptonite" was delayed indefinitely. No explanation there either.

Then, after the Lori-Lemaris-to-the-EXTREME story, we're hit with a New Gods inventory story which retells the events of Jack Kirby's Fourth World, with the Forever People, and Orion, and Darkseid, and all that stuff, except way less interesting than the way Jack Kirby did it. Those issues were like Spark Notes verions of Kirby's epic, except lamer.

For all I know, Batman Confidential could have been worse, but I didn't read that one after the first issue. I stuck with Superman Confidential all year and was hit with disappointment after disappointment.

2. Countdown / Countdown Spin-Offs
I guess it's my own fault that I stuck with Countdown long after everyone else dropped it. I liked the first few issues, and the potential they showed. The Monitors as continuity cops! Sounds like a cool story.

It hasn't been. It's been a disaster, so it's quite ironic that the series warns us about the upcoming Great Disaster, because you're left thinking, "what could be worse than this?"

Countdown has been so bad that the best issue was the one that was just a bunch of exposition explaining all the stuff that supposedly had been going on, even though not much has actually happened in 30 plus issues of the series and a gazillion spin-off comics.

If you had told me, when I was younger and more naive, like three years ago, that DC would produce a 52 issue gigantic crossover series, I actually would have been excited about the scope, the magnitude of the project. I would have imagined a glorious, epic tale. Instead, we get a lot of wandering. Thousands of pages of wandering. Mary Marvel being evil, while wandering. Flash's rogues, wandering, even now that one of them's dead. Donna Troy, Kyle Raynor, Jason Todd: wandering.

What a cosmic waste of talent, time, and money.

3. Wildstorm Armageddon One-Shots
Remember the advent of Image Comics. That was an exciting time. But then when the issues started coming out, they weren't as good as any of us expected.

Then, last year Wildstorm relaunched their entire line in an attempt to get things right this time. They basically conceded that they screwed up when they were part of Image--that they needed some writers back then to go along with all the fancy lines in their artwork. So they started over with some old favorites with writers like Grant Morrison (ka-zow!), Mike Carey (wicked!), Gail Simone (sassy!), Christos Gage (sweet!), and Brian Azzarello (ka-blam!) and then proceeded to run all of their titles into the ground. The issues either failed to get produced (one issue of WildCATS? Pathetic.) or failed to generate reader interest (are any of them NOT cancelled at this point).

So now the Wildstorm Universe is going to undergo some kind of event to attract readers. And they kicked off the event with a bunch of completely pointless and frankly, unoriginal (we've all read "Days of Future Past") one-shots that made me complete give up on Wildstorm altogether.

Just like the good old days, when I got seven into Wetworks and realized, I do not ever need to read this comic.

4. X-Men: Endangered Species / Messiah CompleX
"Endangered Species" featured a story in which the Beast (sometime accompanied by bosom buddy Dark Beast) walked from mad scientist to mad scientist asking if they could help with this whole No-More-Mutants problem. Nope, they said. Or, sorry. Or, I don't wanna.

That's how it went, for 900 consecutive issues.

That all led into, of course, "Messiah Complex," which can be summarized as a long, drawn out version of kill the guy with the ball. You all used to play that at recess, right? Well, in the X-Version, instead of a ball, they use a baby, and then they all run around chasing the guy with the baby. For 900 more issues.

I can't wait to see what happens next! Such intrigue.

5. Wolverine: Origins
Remember like a year or two ago when Mark Millar described how great Daniel Way was, and how he was the best thing to come along since Jesus teamed up with Ghandi? I'm paraphrasing, but Millar really championed this guy, and although I didn't think much of his Nighthawk mini-series (actually, I thought a lot about it, because I kept thinking, "what's the point of this issue?" for six months in a row), I gave him a chance to prove that he was decent. Even with Steve Dillon, who I like, especially when he does something super-heroic (since his style seems to be anti-heroic), Wolverine: Origins has been a mess. Just like Countdown it features a lot of wandering and ugliness, and, unlike Countdown it reveals SHOCKING SECRETS about Wolverine's past. He has a kid, with claws, only less interesting than even that sounds.

Even these five series, no matter how many thousands of crappy pages they produced, can't dampen my enthusiasm for comics. 2007 was a fantastic year, and I can't wait to see what greatness awaits us in 2008.