• This guy hasn't updated since like 2001 but he has some ideas. http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/niven/142/trulyawf/tamaster.html

• Easily Alan Grant's early run of Detective Comics around 585-620 or so. Some of the WORST CHARACTERIZATION I've EVER seen of Batman. It's really hard to believe that it's the same guy who wrote "The Last Arkham". There were scenes of Batman having ridiculous eye-widening expressions of his faces. The dialogue was beyond preachy and cliche. Just terrible all throughout. Some of the things I remember happening -Estrigen kissing Batman on his cheek (yes, Estrigen the Demon)...and then laughing and bouncing around. -Batman cracking jokes while fighting crooks -An alien smuggling guns into Gotham during the Invasion crossover -Clayface transforming into Batman and robbing banks -Batman fighting an Aborigine. It almost made me want to have Mike Barr back. And yes, these stories were done AFTER Year One, Death in the Family, Ten Nights of the Beast...... Makes you wonder what the hell they were smoking

• I wish I had known about this contest earlier. Here's what I would have submitted. I owned these by the way at the time they came out...I was nine for gawds sake and mom sold them in a garage sale in the 70's I'm sure! 1966-7 Gomer Pyle USMC; 3 issue run. Gold Key produced it and nobody wanted credit for content, though it is rumored that Doug Wildey drew it, who is probably best know for creating the Johnny Quest television series characters. They used actual photos from the Gomer Pyle USMC television show as cover art front, back and inside. Michigan State Library has copies of these, but no one sane would drive there to take a look at them. If I remember right, they were not near as good as Beetle Bailey! I was amazed to find out that people still had these and were trying to sell them on Ebay.

• Anything by Frank Miller in the past 5 years is a SOLID runner up. - Dark Knight Strikes Again made me stop reading comics all together for about 4 years. - All Star Batman & Robin was a contributing factor (along with Infinite Crisis, but that's another story) to my ongoing DC boycott.

• JMS Amazing SpiderMan post JrJr - without a shadow of a doubt.

• The Giffen/Bierbaums run on Legion of Super-Heroes, hands down. It was completely awful both in story and art and it's crimes are simply too numerous to mention. Completely alienated the fanbase and damaged the franchise to such a degree that it's simply never recovered, despite several reboots over the last 20 years.

• Hulk by Loeb.

• My vote would have to be Ultimatum, which isn't even done yet. After the first issue, I considered dropping it but it is so terrible, I have to see where it goes. I guess like so many people have pointed out, Millar and Hitch set the bar too high with vol 1 and 2 of Ultimates, which makes everything that comes after it seem that much worse, I have to agree with the reader who mentioned Mark Gruenwald's run on Captain America. The storylines with Cap Wolf and the Iron man like armor were terrible...

• Chris Claremont's "X-Treme X-Men." Marvel had Claremont back for whatever inane reason and god damn but they were gonna use him. So they asked the fans, "HAY FANS, WE HAS CLAREMONT AGN WUT U WANT U DO WIT HIM" and the fans said, apparently, "Give him another X-Men title, but make it basically non-canonical, appropox of nothing, and mostly showcase how very badly Chris Claremont wants to fuck Storm." And that is exactly what we got. Marvel, acting like they were personally resurrecting Jesus, trotted Claremont out and declared that this bowl of fetid pigshit what precisely what we demanded. "X-Treme X-Men" was coming out at the same time as Morrison and Quietly's absolutely brilliant New X-Men (the whole Xorn thing was lame, but the way Morrison handled Magneto as an aging battling irrelevance was superb) and while in no way even half-decent on it's own, in comparison to the far better written and illustrated New X Men, X Treme looked like a bucket of soggy ass. It was a catastrophe. The story arch was so abysmally forgettable, all I can remember about it was that it sort of existed and revolved almost entirely around storm in softcore porn costume and poses, fapping her way through some kind of underground death match. Along the way, she bends over a lot, thrusts out her breasts, wiggles her ass, and basically acts like a fan service whore, because Claremont has never met a real woman and wants to fuck Storm. The best thing that can be said about X-Treme X-Men was its brevity.

• Peter David on She-Hulk v2. It went from intelligent whitty lawyer stories to bounty hunter between issues and wasn't explained for many months afterwards. David did some fine work on incredible Hulk, but after his first issue, sales plummeted.

• Larry Hama on Generation X. He took all that was interesting in Lobdell and Bachalo's run and threw it out the window because he was (allegedly) pissed off at being forced to write the book in the first place. So we ended up with the M/Emplate/M-Plate/twins/Penance mess (M is really her two baby sisters! Emplate bonded with the other M! Penance is M too now!) and some weird cartoon-character-alternate-reality thing that went on for FUCKING AGES. Truly horrible mess and he earned my undying enimty because of it.

• I personally really, really enjoyed All Star Batman and Robin... I loved the art, and the dialogue/(non-existent)story, while making no sense, was a fun read. It was just random "Whee, this is awesome!", filled to the brim with insane amounts of cameos and such. Great stuff. I'd compared it to The Dark Knight Strikes Again, but with better art. Isn't it odd that Miller wrote two of what people typically consider the best Batman runs (Year One and The Dark Knight Returns), but also wrote two of what people sometimes consider the worst? (Strikes Again and ASBAR)

• Shade: The Changing Man. Boy I've had shits that were a better read. At least if you try to read my shit... the main characters such as nuts, corn and Fruity Pebbles are easily identifiable! This crap from the "new wave of British writers" for DC's Vertigo line was plain... WTF every month!!! Again- my shit= nice, Shade=shit {but not as good as my shit!).

• Chuck Austen's run on X-Men gets a lot of flack, but it's not the worst run on X-Men. That distinction goes to his successor, Peter Milligan. While Austen was a novice who should've been writing Ultimate X-Men so he didn't constantly screw up continuity, Milligan is a professional who's actually written some good books like The MinX and X-Statix. He also wrote a horrible Magneto mini starring Joseph the clone. Unfortunately, Milligan does a bargain basement Grant Morrison impression for X-Men # 166- 187. His tenure was so awful it didn't even last 2 years: 1. The X-Men find out that Christ was crucified because there was a brain slug living under Calvary Hill, because nobody would ever be crucified without alien meddling. Oh, alien brain slugs, you're such kooky scapegoats! You can even buy alien brain slug memorobilia at Jerusalem! Wolverine magically appears aboard the Blackbird in Antarctica even though he wasn't on it the previous issue. Alien brain slugs make the X-Men do crazy things, like Rogue mack on Logan cause she's skanky and Gambit fight a shadow since he doesn't merit a proper Mr. Sinister hallucination. Polaris is the only one unaffected since she's already insane. The X-Men have to beg NASA to let them hitch a ride to space to kill an armada of brain slugs in ways that defie physics. Polaris sees something mysterious in space that she won't stop referencing until Milligan leaves. 2. Crossover which Reginald Hudlin's wretched Black Panther that retcons the Red Ghost's Super Apes and only serves to set up BP's bland marriage to Storm. 3. Gambit & Rogue bitch again about not being able to touch, even though they have crazy sex every time she loses her powers (which wasn't too long ago) beacuse they're ignorant of power inhibitors and full body condoms. A jailbait albino named FoXX sexually harrasses Gambit. FoXX is actually Mystique. We know this because Milligan told everyone in interviews prior to this arc starting! Mystique wants to relieve gambit's blue balls by sleeping with him as Rogue in order to break them up. She claims it's because her foster daughter desrves better (I say she just wants some Cajun spice). Mystique's definition of "better" is a power-negating thief named Pulse (whom she test drove for her daughter) whose only personality trait is cowardice. Rogue is annoyed and breaks up with Gambit. Even if you hate the Rogue & Gambit relationship, this is an overwrought and disrespectful way to do it. It's never actually revealled whether Gambit and Mystique fucked, but otherwise it's a Fan Fiction Friday arc. 3. M-Day depowers most of the world's mutants. The remaining mutants camp out at the Xavier Institute. Then O.N.E. turns the Institue into a reservation guarded by mech-suit Sentinels. All of these retarded events happen near simultaneously. An anti-mutant militia made of rednecks with shotguns and torches led by the lame Laepper Queen somehow get past the Institute's defenses and the Sentinels to acttack the muties. The X-Men actually need help from Sentinels to scare off rednecks. Polaris is the only X-Man depowered. She gets kicked out of the mansion, since peaceful coexistentence between man and mutant doesn't extend to the mentally ill. 4. Havok takes Polaris on vacation since the nurse he dumped her at the altar for left with Austen. The mysteious thing Polaris saw is space is revealled to Doop from X-Statix ... er, an original character named Daap. Daap abducts Polaris and the Lepper Queen and brings them to Apocalypse's flying sphinx. THIS DOES NOT MAKE ANY FUCKING SENSE. 5. Apocalypse comes back from the dead. Unfortunately, he's not the badass version from Age of Apocalypse or the 90s cartoon. He gives out free vials of his own blood while recruiting for horsemen to betray him at the X-Mansion. Gambit volunteers in a half-assed plan to undermine Apocalypse. Apocalypse has one of of his machines literally rape Gambit into having letahal gas powers (which are thankfully never used) and talking like Bizarro. Polaris as Pestillence makes a virus to kill all humans. Instead of becoming a credible threat again by using the virus, Apocalypse threatens to use it if the UN doesn't commit genocide for him (because that's so much more efficient). Wolverine is randomly with the New Avengers for this arc. The X-Men drive Sentinels that look like EVAs into Apocalypse's flying sphinx. The worthless Pulse prevents Apocalypse from using any of his nigh-omnipotence, so Apocalypse disappears into a dangler no one will follow up on. Polaris is cured of Apocalypse's influence by almost drowning. Sunfire tells Gambit that beating up Rogue will win her back. When this fails, the two kneel before Mr. Sinister for extra innuendo. Anything that followed Joe Casey and Austen should've been great by comparisson, but Milligan somehow managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory. The only thing Milligan achieved in this run was shitting on Gambit and Polaris at every opportunity. Luckily, Mike Carey and Ed Brubaker were able to salvage them. While Austen's X-Men was like accidentally slamming the door on your hand, Milligan's X-Men was akin to slamming your head repeatedly into the door until you sustained brain damage.

• I doubt this will even be a blip on the radar in the face of some of the much grander runs named above in comics that have lasted far longer and had more historical impact, but as a Mega Man fan and owner of The Mega Man Network, I feel that it is my duty to throw in Dreamwave's Mega Man comic book run here. The run was written by Brian Augustyn, with art by Mic Fong for issues 1-3 and Patrick "Spaz" Spaziante of Archie's Sonic the Hedgehog fame for the fourth and final issue. And while, for the first three issues, the art was serviceable, the writing was kind of bland at best, but felt like the story being told was of anything but Mega Man. With a catalog of over 70 different Robot Masters, Stardroids, and Mega Man Hunters to choose from at the time, a number of which graced the cover of the first issue, Augustyn chose to use his own. Instead of using the likes of Quick Man or Turbo Man, we got Express Man. Rather than give us, say, Gemini Man? We got the peculiar Multi Man instead. Heat Man had a brief appearance in two of the issues, but never so much as met, much less fought, Mega Man. Who uses a watch to transform into his battle armor and could now also fly, apparently, seemingly rendering the need for the Rush Jet moot. On top of all that, he decided to give Mega Man a new chip that would allow him to think, feel, make decisions, etc.-- essentially negating the significance of Mega Man's descendant, Mega Man X. And to put the chip to a test, Dr. Light put "Rocky" (fans really hate the "y" on there) into public school, where he faced off against the villainous bullies, the Boltz Bros., who are named as Dr. Wily's (who Mega Man doesn't recognize) nephews. And of course, they have to give "Rocky" a love interest in Chelsea, who my wife would describe as half a dozen anime stereotypes rolled into one, and Alan, who is basically anime Ron Weasley (sp) from Harry Potter. See more for yourself at http://themechanicalmaniacs.com/articles/MMDreamwave.php, where it is aptly described as "Mega Man flavored," rather than being a real Mega Man book. In some interviews, talk was of the different Mega Man series all happening at the same time in different places... oy. There MIGHT have been hope for the Mega Man X spinoff, which had a short back-up story in the last issue that ended on a cliffhanger that was never resolved, thanks to Dreamwave folding. And as a result of the failure of the book, it seems that publishers and retailers consider the franchise-- at least, non-manga forms of it-- to be toxic, meaning it could be some time before we see a competent attempt at it that's not from Japan. The book MIGHT have done better, except it was aimed squarely at kids, rather than those fans who have followed Mega Man for the past 20+ years, and lacked the distribution necessary to reach them well-- it was Dreamwave, after all, and they don't exactly do grocery and 7-Eleven. At least the art in issue 4 was grand, and the story got away from the less-desirable elements enough to make it stand well enough as just a fun Mega Man adventure.

• My vote goes for Grant Morrison's "New X-men" run. Someone out there must like it as it has been collected more then once in TPB form. That person is not me. I enjoyed JLA in the late 90's as Morrison had the wonderful habit of taking stupid characters and concepts from DC's history and crafting good stories with them. My hopes were high that he would do the same for the X-men (I had stopped reading them after their all-star lineup became Wolverine, Marrow, a doctor who created forcefields and a guy whose mutant power was two worms that crawled out of his body). I kept buying issue after issue waiting for it to get better and soon found myself wishing for the "good old days" of mobile slug digestive systems. My complaints, er points (in no particular order): - Emma Frost's secondary diamond mutation. To be fair, I think that the concept of secondary mutation was introduced to the X-books pre-Morrison but at least in Beast's case it had a semblance of logical progression. His primary mutation involved physical attributes as did his secondary. Emma Frost was a world-class telepath....who now turns into a living diamond. As a bonus she can be smashed into thousands of pieces and (with enough time) be put back together with no lasting repercussions. - The secret cabal of scheming mutants and decadence known as the Hellfire Club from Claremont's run is now just an average strip club but with mutants. - Being ugly is apparently a requirement for all new students at the Xavier institute. I realize that there would probably be more deformed mutants then not in the real world, but the real world does not have telepathy or adamantium skeletons. Speaking of which... - The X in the weapon X project actually stands for the roman numerial ten meaning that there were multiple "weapons" both before and after Wolverine. While not necessarily a bad idea, nothing screams secret government project like satellites in space. I'm sure Canada kept it's launch very discreet. - Magneto (Xorn, whatever) is revealed as the big villain and begins to kick ass and take names in New York. Magneto is a great villain because of his horrible past and his belief that his actions are justified for the greater good of his species. Morrison's take on him is that of a drug addict who intends to round up all the humans in New York and cremate them. Even in a kick-indused haze Magneto would have recognized the oh-so-obvious parallels. - Finally there is new X-baddie Cassandra Nova. Her origin reveals her to be the unknown twin sister of Charles Xavier who was stillborn at birth and spent the last 30 or 40 years of continuity clinging to a sewer until her body and intellect could grow to menace the X-men. I apologize if I have any of these facts wrong as I am trying to repress that issue to this day. Eventually she mind-hops a few times, dupes the Shi'ar (who probably had a few telepaths of their own who could have sensed what was up), and ends up trapped in a large slug. I want either my money back or an apology. I haven't read many comics, X-Men or otherwise, since these so I can only hope that much of this has been fixed by now through the magic of the retcon. As a whole, I thought that maybe Grant Morrison just didn't have a handle on the X-Men universe and was only capable of good DC stories. Then I read this thread and did a quick search on Final Crisis and Batman: RIP. It has become painfully clear to me that he must be stopped.

• &#64;Stephen 1. Black Canary's words in breaking up with Dr. Midnite: <b>"I have a lot of things to sort out... my life is getting complicated. I need to simplify it, Midnite. Someone has come back into my life and I'm not sure how i feel about it. I need some time off from the JSA... and from us."</b> There's nothing in there about her and Ollie becoming an exclusive item again. All she says is that she needs time to consider both relationships objectively and is breaking up with Midnite so she is free to date Ollie guilt-free while she figures things out. Johns had nothing to cover for Smith or anyone else. And Smith's last issue did end with a big group hug of Ollie, Dinah, Connor and Mia... but Dinah and Ollie did have a big fight several days earlier when Dinah and Ollie had been on one date that ended in Dinah swearing Ollie was not "getting it" for a long, long time. 2. Ollie was going to propose Dinah at the end of the Meltzer run, true. But as in the Smith run, Ollie was overstepping his boundaries too quickly. At the end of Archer's Quest, Dinah told Ollie that she knew something was up (he and Roy Harper both disappeared for a week) and cautioned him against doing anything drastic. Not exactly the words of a woman who is head-over-heels in love with an old beau. But they do seem to be the words of a woman who is still trying to figure her own feelings out. This also fits with Ollie's pushing for a fast reconciliation (calling Dinah "his girl", etc) through the Smith run.

• Stephen, I agree that I liked a lot of the Green Arrow stuff, but only before One Year Later. The issue regarding GA's secret identity cannot be laid at Winick's feet as Kevin Smith pretty much ignored it for his twelve issue run. One Year Later's stories had the same problems as Batman's No Man's Land; in a world with the likes of Green Lantern and Superman catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina and the like could be rectified in relatively short order. It just stretches my suspension of disbelief. As for All Star Batman and Robin, I get what you are saying but it still does not change the fact that the comic is crap. Sure, the art is really pretty but I find the writing to be terrible regardless of Miller's point/motivation.

• Jeph Loeb and anything he's touched, but mostly just the Red Hulk. The April 2008 to still freakin' running for some reason, Loeb handled run where the Red Hulk gets "hot" and kills the Abomination! KILLS ABOMINATION and then has a team called the Offenders dared to be featured. Or are current runs not allowed?

• Couple of points: - Ye gods, Miller is totally playing all of you for fools. ASSBAR is a *parody* of superhero stories. It's intentionally written like that; this isn't like Dark Knight 2 where Miller was just telling a bad story. It's a deliberate parody of what fanboys want a "Frank Miller Batman" story to be like. - To whomever bitched out Amalgam: the Dark Claw Adventures story is the only Wolverine-related story of any worth in the past 20 years. The Batman Adventures gang hit that one out of the freaking park. - Starman: Black Canary made it pretty clear she was back with Ollie exclusively when she dumped Dr. Mid-Nite in JSA. Sure, it may have been Johns covering Smith's ass, but the plot point was covered (and Ollie nearly PROPOSED to Dinah during Meltzer's story, so I think Winick was pretty safe in assuming that they were together and exclusive). [And Winick's GL run was actually quite good, aside from the usual anvil-to-the-head after school special issue, in this case the hate crime. But after Exiles, it's his best comics work.]

• oops. i'm a malaprop with names, my bad.

• The spiderman retacon arc. Worst story ever.

• So everyone is pretty upset at J. Micheal Strazynsky for shitting in our faces towards the end of his run on Amazing Spiderman with The Other, Original Sins, Back in Black and One More Day, but it's my understanding that MARVEL forced him to write those perticular stories. They wanted to bring back Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacy for good. But he didn't. So he wrote it to have gwen's devil twins muck about and gave us Ben for a couple of pages in issue 500. They wanted to bring back the black suit. Granted it could have been cool but it was only to cover up a bad story. and promote the movie. By the way, did anybody else feel a little joy when you saw Mae eat the lead that was intended for Peter? i did. They wanted to expand reader's collection of the other Spiderman books so they stretched "The Other" story over three books. Well suprise suprise, that didn't work because it confused the reader with three different writers and three different artists. It had the potential of expanding the entire universe for Peter Parker but it only clogged it up with a Spider-crazed peter with stingers, the return of Morlun (even though he died in JSM's first run on the book) and the uncomfortable Aunt Mae/Jarvis sidestory, which is weird now because we find out later that Jarvis was actually a skrull infultrator..........who infultrated Mae......in the butt. And then the ultimate fart in face was "One more day." They couldn't accept the fact that Aunt Mae is old news. she should be fucking 120 years old by now anyway. KILL THE BITCH OFF!!! she's given him enough advice by now. it's time for little petey to spread his wings and fly away! he shouldn't need her for that long. also, Kingpin put the hit on them so why isn't he in jail in the new daredevil series? whatever! My point is that it's not JMS's fault. he wanted for the character to grow up and change. he even wrote a futuristic what if preview with him as an older hero, with a new costume and everything. And I bet if he had another couple of years with the book then we would have seen those great character building stories but Joe Q. wouldn't have it. He ruined the character for me and ruined one of my favorite ongoing series of all time. seriously. before JMS i didn't collect any monthly books. And when i read One More Day and Brand New Day, my heart was fucking crushed. and I bet Strazynsky's was too. retarded. so don't get used to Thor. they're gonna fuck with it in a couple of years by recreating Midgard and bringing back Odin and revealing how thor is actually the son of a Frist giant and Loki truly is the son of Odin.

• Batman 350-400ish. Robin turned into a vampire. Then, while trying to save Robin Batman turned into a vampire as well. I have no idea how they fixed that. This also houses Jason Todd's first appearance where he is a member of the "Flying Todd's" and his parents are killed in a horrible circus accident exactly like Dick Grayson's. Terrible. 400 was a point of light and then Frank Miller essentially reset the Batman storyline ending one of the worst 50-some Batman Comics in existence. They were so bad Batman was reset.

• &#64;cam Thanks for the vote, but I should point out I was writing about Winick's Green ARROW. NOT Green Lantern. Though now that you mention it, his Green Lantern run was pretty bad too...

• All of the comments about Leifeld are spot on. It was his soulless work on X-Force that made me quit on comics for over 10 years...

• Going to have to disagree with you on the Ultimates 3 art, Phil. I though it was crap. Totally wrong, even for that bad of a story. The costumes were all wrong. The look was wrong. It would've helped maybe if the guy had looked at the other two series to realize that these were not the 616 Avengers.

• WOW I've seen alot of Really Shitty runs being talked about here, and everyoe is right and has a point example: -Ultimates 3-Great art, shitty story, reminds me of why I never read old shitty avengers stories, and it's sad because Jeff Loeb IS a good writer, here are 5 incredible stories (as asked for from an earlyier post): Batman Hush, Daredevil Yellow, Spider-man Blue, Superman\Batman, and Batman Long Halloween. Plus Mark is coming back to the book thank god! -Heroes Reborn was just garbage but was fixed within a year as if it never happened. So lets pretend it never did. -All Star "Goddamn" Batman, has Incredible "Goddamn" Art with a Now horrible writer, who won't let go of sin city, seriosuly wtf with this "Goddamn" book? But it's not in regular continuity so eff it! SO now here is MY choice: SPIDER-MAN Sins Past\One day More\Brandnew Day, here we go: 1.This all takes place in the regular 616 Marvel U, making it a part "real" Spider-man continunity, this an't not ultimate take! 2.Sin's past shit on Gwen Stacey's death (one of the most iconic, beloved, incredible stories in Comics!) And made that character a whore,basicly! Gwen Stacey a whore people!!I mean really? Gwen and Norman together? COME ON!!! 3.Revealing Spidey's idenity was a bold move (and the character had motivation to do it, like it or not) but then Marvel was scared to deal with such a move and recanted it. 4. Here are some things One Day More did; made Aunt May a crappy 'wheat cake' making character Again who Could of had a very powerful and poignant death. Brought back Harry, where was he Europe! WOW Stupid! Instead of making new great supporting characters you bring back people from the dead with shitty explainations.And the Worst YOU took Away MARY JANE@! Just earsed thier marriage from history! I'm not saying that people never break up or can in comics (ex. cyclops and jean grey in x-men was done fine) but not like this! Joe Q and his writers said that they can't see a supermodel with Peter and that writing a Spider-man who is married is to Hard. WELL Peter and MJ grew up together, and he is a Superhero! How could she NOT be attracted to that?! IAnd Hire new writers if it's too hard to write a married spider-man, idiots! Now that he's not married we can "Thankfully" have spider-man stories where he goes on dates at the coffe bean and has to leave ealry to fight the rhino! WOW what is this 1960's spidey!? 5. Brand NEW day is a result of ONE DAY more and is just BORING Spidey, sooo bad, just crappy spidey that will probaly one day be recanted AGAIN in a shitty manner and we have to deal with a whole year of crappy spider-man. MAIN POINT- Spider-man was Incredible and goes through good runs and bad runs like every other character, BUT SinsPast and OnedayMore are just HORRIBLE and effect the core of the character, and are stories that just won't die, and keep affecting every story since thier inception!

• I had repressed x-force, totally and thankfully forgotten it, until now; by the way, thanks, Zerocorpse. I never bot the comic, never read it. But while it's out of the closet again, I might as well ask. What's the deal with shattingplop's eye? Cable's eye was copied from Longshot, but it still had to do with his t.k. is shat's eye Kiss make-up, a scar, or something to do with a power? I used to miserably laf when I'd see him on a cover with the boxing headgear, double-bladed sword, and endless ponytails. and stupid eye. You can't be feeling all that fragile, rob, to have us dredge the past like this. My pick for winner is pancake188's vivid and relentless examples of x-men gone wrong, or "Starman" Matt Morrison's wayward Green Lantern. I had to go with the guys with the best examples, as I've safely been in the dark from most of this misery. Honorable mentions to stephen's Zoolander Nightwing, juan's capwolf, mattcable's reference to Angel's idea of a family reunion, and Rattrap007's the warrior(wrestler written and penciled) comic. Thanks, finalflight, for the image. I'm beginning to twitch. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go see if I've broken out again with hives.

• Frank Millers "The Dark Knight Returns". I never liked it. Ever. I own it and I dislike it. If not for people having been somehow fooled into thinking TDKR was just so completely awesome, there would be NO awful sequel to it and (most likely) NO "All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder". Poop + poop = poop any way you look at things.

• While I think Adam37 might take this one with his rendition of "Countdown," I'm going to throw one in that hasn't been mentioned yet. First, "honorable" mentions to "Final Crisis/Batman RIP" (I still have no idea what the hell happened in either book), "All-Star Batman & Robin" (I agree, it's only saved by Jim Lee, but what an agonizing read), "Spider-Man: Chapter One" and "The Punisher: Purgatory" (remember, when he died and was resurrected as some demon hunter with magic guns?). But I'm going to commit fanboy sacrilege here and give my worst run award to "Origin." Yep, the long sought answers to the mysteries of Wolverine's past. I admit, I'm not a big X-fan, never have been, but I do respect Wolverine as a character, if grossly overused. I was excited to learn about his past. So I grabbed the first issue of Paul Jenkins' and Andy Kuberts' sepia-toned series like thousands of others and eagerly sat down to read.....about a sickly boy named James Howlett in the late 1800s who gets riled up after some family intrigue with the farmhands (red herrings named Logan) and questionable parentage and finally pops his claws to reveal himself as the mutant we know and love today. This might have been fine on it's own if we didn't spend five more issues with James/Logan on the run with playmate Rose through some serio-tragic tale meant to draw parallels with modern-day Wolvie (beautiful redhead he can't have, misunderstood mutant filled with anger, possible-brother turned enemy a la Sabertooth). My favorite idea might have been that James "forgets" all the violent, traumatic things he does because his healing factor "heals" those wounds in his mind. Other than the attempted symbolism, there were virtually no ties to the rest of the Marvel universe. Am I the only one that found this backstory to one of the most enigmatic and badass characters in comics to be disappointing and maybe even a little emasculating? Not to mention that I had to relive the trauma of it all over again in the early minutes of the 107 I'll never get back..."X-Men Origins: Wolverine."

• I don't even know how this is a context. Clearly, Frank Miller and Jim Lee were the worst run EVER for All-Star Batman and Robin. Why?: 1. "I'm the Goddamn Batman!" 2. The comic was plagued with late releases, irregular schedules, and recalls. 3. Both Miller and Lee have been cornerstones to seminal Bat-projects, and the combination would seem like a great idea. The disappointment, both in sales (through plummeting sales figures since inception) and critical acclaim was astounding. 4. Comics publishing is not an exact science, but there is a certain logic with it. If comics do well financially and or are well liked, they make more in the same vein. When comics don't do well, they stop making that kind of comic. Even with the sales and praise of All-Star Superman, All-Star Batman and Robin, brought into question the ENTIRE IMPRINT. A total of 3 more additional All-Star books were planned (GL, Wonder Woman, and Batgirl), all in development limbo at best, Batgirl cancelled. Similarly, where is Holy Terror Batman? 5. The series continued to tank despite very popular and successful runs in EVERY OTHER BATBOOK! 6. The series continued to tank despite a very popular and successful BILLION DOLLAR MOVIE! 7. There were allegations that Miller was depicting child abuse, and that Batman was a psychopath. 8. "I'm the Goddamn Batman." Thank you Frank Miller for making me doubt comics. Thank you Jim Lee for the extra money (you screwed up Superman and now Batman), I'll never buy another book of yours again. You're the Goddamn travesty.

• Can't we just give the reward to Jeph Loeb: "Worst Comic Run."

• Not sure if this will count, but Warrior was a short lived comic series. It was horribly drawn and was written by The Ultimate Warrior. Remember his WWF speeches that made no sense and used made up words? Now picture that with paragraph after paragraph of mindless rambling on EVERY PAGE! Check out Spoony's review of it on http://www.spoonyexperiment.com/

• oh and I meant to say BLOB was never a cannibal. Blog was ALWAYS a cannibal. And June 1 is my birthday so maybe you could see your way clear to throw a brother some love?

• For me it begins and ends with Ulimatum. Of course Loeb had to be involved and that man's comic sins will follow him into that special room in hell reserved for him. They create the Ultimate Universe to remove decades of continuity and pull in new readers and in one crushing blow he totally abandons everything about the characters that made the beloved and special in the first place. You could always kinda see Magneto's side of things and that is what made him a great villian UNTIL Loeb turned him into a batshit crazy serial killer who kills his closest friend to in a what amounts to a little kid's temper tantrum. Not to mention all the other crap tied to anything ULTIMATE that Loeb touched. Sure Blog is a fat guy but he was never a cannibal. Fuck you Jeff Loeb.

• I know its not strictly within the guide parameters, but I feel the need to mention it... Amalgam Comics... Amalgam comics is the retarded bastard child of the forced mating of Marvel And DC. With such horrible character mashups as Wolverine and Batman to create the god awful "Darkclaw" whose villain was another horrible mashup of Sabertooth and the Joker called "The Hyena"...Oh lest I forget his sidekick was half jubilee and half robin I shit you not. This...this...abomination...forced Me to watch as it systematically raped and murdered My childhood. They...I can't even describe what they did and anyone who saw it or read it can attest to this shit I still have an issue of bullets and bracelets where Wonderwoman and The Punisher have a child together that is kidnapped by Thanoseid who is Thanos and Darkseid combined... *takes a long drink with a shaking hand* Fuck...Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. GODDAMN YOU GENCOM.... *Shakes fist at sky*

• I know its not strictly within the guide parameters, but I feel the need to mention it... Amalgam Comics... Amalgam comics is the retarded bastard child of the forced mating of Marvel And DC. With such horrible character mashups as Wolverine and Batman to create the god awful "Darkclaw" whose villain was another horrible mashup of Sabertooth and the Joker called "The Hyena"...Oh lest I forget his sidekick was half jubilee and half robin I shit you not. This...this...abomination...forced Me to watch as it systematically raped and murdered My childhood. They...I can't even describe what they did and anyone who saw it or read it can attest to this shit I still have an issue of bullets and bracelets where Wonderwoman and The Punisher have a child together that is kidnapped by Thanoseid who is Thanos and Darkseid combined... *takes a long drink with a shaking hand* Fuck...Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. GODDAMN YOU GENCOM.... *Shakes fist at sky*

• To those who keep saying All Star Batman and Robin I only have two words for you...Jim Motherfucking Lee. Even when hes working with a crap script,Jim Lees artwok is beyond awesome. Does Vicki Vale walking around in her underwear for 6 pages in a 10 page comic make any sense? Nope...but when Jim Lee draws it I dont care. His artwok is the ONLY good thing about this series,but its so good it knocks the book out of the running for Worst Run Ever...at least imho.

• I nominate Jodi Picoult's Wonder Woman run. It was just plain bad. She made Diana an idiot who couldn't even figure out how to pump and pay for gas. I don't know a single collector, casual reader, or reviewer that had anything nice to say about the run. It's not fair to mention the high priests of bad comics: Rob Liefeld, Jeff Loeb, JMS, and Frank Miller. The rest of us have no shot with those hacks in the running.

• So many, many good choices. It really has to be Frank Miller's run on All Star Batman and Robin. Why? No other comic I can think of has been so bad an entire meme formed around it: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/im-the-goddamn-batman

• You are all forgetting the wasteland times where comics did not die, but were murdered. It took 10 years to recover from the damage done in the early 90s. What made me stop reading comics? THE WORST RUN IN COMICS WAS THE SHARED STORY OF THE XBOOKS THE 2YEARS OR SO AFTER FALL OF THE MUTANTS. 1- Is there a worse set of stories than when the xmen lived in australia? YES! That whole genosha story afterwards was worse! Remember how they had cool new powers like "o technology can see you, except your own equipment!" WOW! Then a few months later somehow they explained that parts of thier computer had been put into every single recording device ever made and that will be made! Then they got rid of the mulletheaded but entertaining Longshot, and replaces him with fucking gambit! FUCK YOU! Then someone who shall remain nameless came up with Cable!!! Remember his awesome intro in the xmen where he and wolverine fight brutally to what seems like the death, but really they were just saying hi because they knew each other for 19321079 years and maybe were BFF! (butt fuckers forever). 2- Then said cable came over and raped the New Mutants. And not the fun kind of rape that just leaves you scarred for life. The tie you to a radiator and sodomize you for weeks with a log in front of your parents and then sacrifice you to the devil where the rape continues in hell! Not satisfied atisfied cable left your corpse and created 3- X FORCE!!! There is nothing positive to say about this book. 3- Xfactor completely fell apart. The whole Beast is dumb, bobby is super ice man, and Jean and Cyclops have to HUNT DOWN A GIANT EGG THAT STOLE THEIR BABY! Then they go to a planet where people only do drugs and don't have sex, and fight celestials. And at some point THEY FIND OUT THAT FUCKING BABY IS CABLE!!! KILL IT!!! 4- Xcalibur came out and I have to say, the first few issues I thought I had something better. Something funny, well written, interesting art, BUT then they did that stupid thousand issue long universe jumpt hing with the robot head and the train. Like if Doctor who had super heroes and was written as an event at the special olympics. 5- Wolverine's own comic. Hey, let put a patch on one eye and call him "Patch"!!!! Story? Bah, Patch is too cool for stories!!! 6- All the break offs, Uncanny Xmen then Xmen, then XXXmen, then XXXmen 2:anal adventures, etc each with collectors covers. And don't get me started on the spider man comics when he was universeman or whatever and fought paste pot pete. The worst comic run ever was the 90s. Give me 1960s batman jokes before 90s comics.

• &#64; davidh: you beat me to it! i was hoping nobody else would have mentioned that bizarre story. trying to follow up jim lee's super successful hush run, they teamed him with azzarello hoping it would do the same for supes. instead we get this brooding, nonsensical, bogged down weird dump of a story that nobody understood and wasted a bunch of issues. it was the anti-hush, in that it tried to be deep and moody and profound instead of hush's big dumb "throw batman's villains in a pile and let em have a go". the only similarity is that they were both stupid. at least hush was entertaining though.

• I was going to say Grant Morrison and whatever the hell it is hes done to Batman lately because thats what actually made me stop reading comics after 20 years,BUT....my actual number one choice for worst run on a comic has to be Frank Miller on art and writing for THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES BACK AGAIN....or whatever the hell they called that horrible sequel to the greatest Batman story ever told. You've all read the awesomeness that is THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS right? Now read the sequel...Batman flying the batmobile into a building...Superman and Wonder Woman rage fucking each other and destroying half the planet...Dick Grayson is now a shape-changing villain who may or may not be written as Batman's spurned gay lover...Hal Jordan as some kind of cosmic flying dinosaur/badly rendered blob of CGI art...this entire comic makes NO GODDAMN SENSE!!! NONE!!! AND ITS A SEQUEL TO THE BEST BATMAN STORY EVER TOLD!!!! I've only ever looked fwd. to two fanboy events in my life...the Star Wars prequels and the Dark Knight sequel. Those two massive letdowns are what killed my inner child and turned me into the bitter cynical drunk I am today....

• ok.. someone said 52. I disagree. 52 was handled very well for what it was and I THOUGHT it was a step in a great direction for DC... for whatever that might be worth... I will try to be brief here with my writing. Let me preface this by saying I'm a huge Batman fan... HUGE... favorite super hero of all time, hands down. That being said... I don't like Frank Miller writing Batman titles... never have, probably never will... I might be the only person to say this but I don't really like The Dark Knight Returns all that much... that's not my entry for this contest though... My entry is Frank Miller's All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder... This SHOULD be a godly title with Frank Miller & Jim Lee doing pencils... but is severely underwhelming and quite frankly, shit. I anticipated the hell out of this title but in the back of my mind I had a feeling it was going to disappoint... I was correct... here's why it sucks... The dialogue in this title is an embarrassment... Miller writes Batman as a lunatic with a psychopathic attitude instead of just a dark and disturbed individual... Most famous piece of shit dialogue: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/49/109633231_3c478c15e1.jpg Batman treating Robin like a sack of shit and using the word retard... Miller is trying way too hard. On the flip side... Lee is great in this series BUT the beautiful artwork is simply wasted on this misleading drivel... And surely you can make the argument that this is non-canon, but I really don't give a fuck. It's terrible... it's not Sin City Frank, It's Batman... no reason to re-invent the wheel, just write us a good, readable story and it will be enjoyed by Batman fans everywhere. I will exit this by saying you can't write shit and expect people to like it based on your name.... unless of course your name is Grant Morrison ZING!

• I've got to go with the Judd Winick run of Green Arrow. And I'm going to have to limit this to 6 bullet points because otherwise this will become a rant. 1. Green Arrow slept with the niece of a fellow hero (Black Lightning) and was revealed to have been cheating on Black Canary when he slept with said niece... despite the fact that there had been nothing to indicate GA and BC were exclusively dating again in the Smith or Meltzer runs of GA before Winick took over! 2. Green Arrow suddenly had a secret identity again, despite having operated with a public identity for years and having both his names printed in his front-page obituary in The Daily Planet after he died saving Metropolis. 3. The "Very Special" HIV Issue in which Ollie's adopted daughter Mia is diagnosed with HIV for no apparent reason other than to allow Winick to beg for publicity because he's writing about BIG ISSUES in this little comic. What's worse is that he used her disease as the justification for her becoming a superhero and then only referred to her disease a handful of times afterwards. 4. Winick's "original" creations for new nemeses for Green Arrow - Brick and Drakkon - were fairly obvious rip-offs of Kingpin and Bullseye from <b>Daredevil</b>. Big strong thug turned high class crime boss who wears nothing but white suits and his head assassin who can make anything into a weapon? Doesn't seem familiar at all? 5. The entire <b>"Countdown To Infinite Crisis"</b> story which broke so many points of continuity and common sense that DC had to retcon it into taking place AFTER <b>Infinite Crisis</b> in the TP edition, even though the story ends with Oliver Queen having flashback of parallel Earth versions of himself after being shot in the chest. 6.. The Entire <b>One Year Later</b> storyline where Oliver Queen becomes Mayor of Star City. He gets into office after the previous mayor bankrupts the city putting a giant wall around the ghetto formed by the supervillain attacks on the city from about a year earlier. The ghetto is filled with zombies created by an evil corporation's donated medicine. Ollie lets the wall stand while Brick builds his powerbase in the ghetto rather than getting his JLA buddies to come and tear it down safely in minutes. He apparently financed his campaign by defrauding numerous defensive companies and putting hundreds if not thousands of people out of work (Ollie Queen: Man of the People, everyone!) And Ollie's entire plan for saving the city budget is to use a legal loophole to encourage gay couples to get married after taking up residence in the Star City - a plan that does seem to hinge upon most gay couples wanting to be married so badly that they are willing to live in a demilitarized zone.

• Morgenstern: Not a dumb question at all. To clarify: That image was drawn by a professional comic book artist, one Rob Liefeld. Professional in the sense he was paid to do it. If you want more on his work ethic and talent, well, just look at how often his name came up in this thread. The character is Captain America. If you don't know who that is, A) You really don't know comics B)feel free to look into his 60+ year history. Final question is tough. The image is in keeping with Liefeld's... style. It has not been modified as far as I can tell. So, yes, it is suppose to look like that. "That" being crap. Hope I've helped.

• One More Day. A deal with the devil? Was the Cosmic Cube, a genie lamp, and the Dragon Balls all unavailable that day?

• John: Right on brotha!

• Liefeld draw like shit The Captain look like porn star What a waste of ink

• I've got to go with the Judd Winick run of Green Arrow. Quick background. Before Winick took over, Kevin Smith revived Green Arrow with a story where Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) - older, wiser and calmer - was reborn into a younger body after walking out of Heaven to save his son's life. He began rebuilding his life, his reputation as a hero, his relationships with all his children and seemed to be on the road to patching things up with Dinah Lance (aka Black Canary), who he was going out with, but not exclusively dating. And then Winick took over. And I'm going to have to limit this to 10 bullet points because otherwise this will become a rant. 1. Green Arrow slept with the niece of a fellow hero (Black Lightning) and was revealed to have been cheating on Black Canary when he slept with said niece... despite the fact that there had been nothing to indicate GA and BC were exclusively dating again in the Smith or Meltzer runs of GA before Winick took over! 2. In the same storyline, Black Lightning's response to said niece being killed by a corrupt company was to give The Zeus Treatment to the corrupt executive who gave the death order. Black Lightning, of course, being the hero so moral that he retired from superheroing after he accidentally killed a civilian and decided that he had no business playing hero if he couldn't control his powers. 3. <a href="http://www.comicsbulletin.com/features/107042750449064.htm">Tony Isabella, the creator of Black Lightning, spoke with Judd Winick about the above story and his concerns that maybe Winick needed some help understanding the character better. Winick's reaction was basically "That's nice. But this is MY book."</a> 4. Green Arrow suddenly had a secret identity again, despite having operated with a public identity for years and having both his names printed in his front-page obituary in The Daily Planet after he died saving Metropolis. 5. The "Very Special" HIV Issue in which Ollie's adopted daughter Mia is diagnosed with HIV for no apparent reason other than to allow Winick to beg for publicity because he's writing about BIG ISSUES. 6. Mia's condition was very rarely referred to after said Special issue. What is worse, her condition was used as a justification for her becoming the new Speedy because "How long might I have to help the world?" This decision cost Winick most of the good will he had with the HIV Activism community since Mia's physical fitness was not representative of the average HIV-positive person in good condition. 7. Winick's original creations for new nemeses for Green Arrow - Brick and Drakkon - were fairly obvious rip-offs of Kingpin and Bullseye from <b>Daredevil</b>. Big strong thug turned high class crime boss who wears nothing but white suits and his head assassin who can make anything into a weapon? Doesn't seem familiar at all? 8. The entire <b>"Countdown To Infinite Crisis"</b> story which broke so many points of continuity and common sense that DC had to retcon it into taking place AFTER <b>Infinite Crisis</b> in the TP edition, even though the story ends with Oliver Queen having flashback of parallel Earth versions of himself after being shot in the chest. 9. The above storyline depowered the Asian heroine Dr. Light at the hands of her much weaker evil counterpart. This is particularly shocking since Winick (the creator of <b>Juniper Lee</b>) <a href="http://marionetteblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/incandescent-losing-light.html">has often called for the creation of more positive Asian females in the comic industry</a>. 10. The Entire <b>One Year Later</b> storyline where Oliver Queen becomes Mayor of Star City. He gets into office after the previous mayor bankrupts the city putting a giant wall around the ghetto formed by the supervillain attacks on the city from about a year earlier. The ghetto is filled with zombies created by an evil corporation's donated medicine. Ollie lets the wall stand while Brick builds his powerbase in the ghetto rather than getting his JLA buddies to come and tear it down safely in minutes. He apparently financed his campaign by defrauding numerous defensive companies and putting hundreds if not thousands of people out of work (Ollie Queen: Man of the People, everyone!) And Ollie's entire plan for saving the city budget is to use a legal loophole to encourage gay couples to get married after taking up residence in the Star City - a plan that does seem to hinge upon most gay couples wanting to be married so badly that they are willing to live in a demilitarized zone.

• I am not saying Ultimates 3 was any good, but I really think people are over-hyping the supposed quality of Ultimates 1 & 2. Setting aside the ridiculous delays, I found Millar's re-interpretation of iconic characters to be ridiculous. Millar is an over rated hack. Oh, but my vote goes for One More Day.

• The hallmark of a truly awful series run is a change in tone that makes you stop buying a long-running comic that you had previously endured several ups and downs with. That is, the run has made you lose faith in a title and thereby made your life just a little more cynical and sad. For me that has happened a few times but the most heartbreaking was very first. I was the most devoted Harvey Comics reader of all time. I pretty much learned HOW to read and to LOVE reading by poring over issues of Spooky, Hot Stuff, and Richie Rich. Then in 1980 Harvey had one of its periodic "DC EXplosions" and released a bunch of new titles that turned out to be very much akin to the "100 Page Spectaculars" that DC put out years earlier - one new story and a buttload of reprints. A very profitable strategy, really, because who on earth would recognize old Richie stories from the Sixties? Well I did, and that's when it dawned on me "maybe I'm getting too old for comic books if I've been reading them long enough to notice stuff like that." It was a long time before I bought another comic, and by then harvey was defunct. Still got all the old ones though...and they are actually hilarious to re-read as an adult.

• JMS and Joe "Cheesy" Quesadilla's "One More Slap To The Nuts"...I mean "One More Day" made me want to build a time machine, find JQ's mom, and fuck her Back To The Future-style so she has my child instead of him. I mean, out of the HUNDREDS of healers in the Marvel Universe, not one could handle a simple bullet wound? Elixir was able regrow a whole human heart in seconds! Or what about going back in time and stop Peter from unmasking (And tell Captain America to duck)? If his ID wasn't blown, Aunt May wouldn't have been shot. And even if there was NO WAY to save her, do you think May would've been ok with Peter selling his marriage to the devil when she's close to dying of natural causes anyway? Fuck you, Joe Q, you stupid fuck, for making The Clone Saga look like Kingdom Come. And fuck JMS for being a pussy and agreeing to write "One More Dick In The Ass Of Spiderman Fans".

• i'm on the ultimates vol. 3 bandwagon. and i think this guy goes a pretty summary of why liefeld should never ever be allowed to touch a pencil http://progressiveboink.com/archive/robliefeld.html

• Definitely Peter Porker, The Amazing Spider-Ham. That comic was fucking awful. And yet I kept buying it. Because I was 10. Luckily Groo the Wanderer kept me sane.

• &#64;whatsmyhouse: Blasphemy sir.

• TRANSMETROPOLITAN!!! A media figure who cares about the truth. What in the merciful fuck is that? Mister Ellis you stretch the imagination too far.

• My vote is for DC's ever-diminishing Crisis series. The original "Crisis on Infinite Earths", was by far the best and it actually had an impact on the DC Universe. Infinite Crisis brought back Golden-Age Superman and Superboy? Huh? They were gone and retired for over 20 years, why bring them back? And then they killed off Golden-Age Superman and made Superboy basically insane? Thanks for ruining my memories of these characters. I'll admit that I stopped reading comics a number of years ago, so I'm "out of the loop". I picked up "Final Crisis" because I believed the hype that it was going to change the DC Universe yet again. Almost immediately, I was confused. Jason Todd is back? Since when? And which Flash is that? Why is Frankenstein riding a motorcycle in Gotham? When did DC get the rights to use Frankenstein? Aren't the New Gods supposed to be dead? Is Barry Allen really supposed to be returning? Can't the people at DC leave dead characters as dead? And DC really needs to make up its mind: is there 1 universe or a multi-verse or does it change according to what kind of "crisis" story they need to tell? The first problem (which I should have expected) was the "continued in..." narration. I paid over $30 for the 7-issue series ($3.99 per issue + tax) and I don't want to be forced to pick up 10 other titles (at $3.99 each) to see how Superman got a key item and then traveled to Earth and spoke a key line of dialog which ties the entire series together. At least with the original "Crisis", everything major happened within the mini-series. Supergirl didn't die in the Titans title and Flash didn't die in "Crisis Add-On Extra Tie-In Limited Edition Special #1 (only $7.50)". Then there was the writing. Every so often, it seemed like there were words missing from the dialog. Characters would say things like "We need to go to city". Shouldn't there be a "the" before the word "city"? Aren't comics written, lettered, and editted by professionals? These glitches took me out of the story, especially since real people and comic-book characters don't talk like this. Then there were the "missing scenes", which relates to the "continued in..." problem. In one issue, Superman is talking to Brainiac about a wish-machine. In the next issue, Superman is on Earth, defeating Darkseid. Um, what happened in-between? Oh, right, I had to pick up the Superman Crisis cross-over super-mini-maxi-limited series to find out these key plot points. :( And how did Batman escape from Darkseid's scientists? Was this shown in the RIP storyline in the Batman titles? Or was the entire RIP storyline nothing but a dream brought on by the scientists' mind-control machine? Right, read the Batman Crisis RIP 5 issue miniseries (again, at $3.99 per issue) and find out the answer. And was the caveman at the end supposed to be Batman? Sorry for the possible spoiler, but doesn't a scene like this completely take away the impact of the entire RIP storyline? Bruce Wayne is dead! Batman is dead! Oh, wait, no he's not. Just like the "death" of Superman in 1993, DC fooled us again.

• He seems to be compensating for something.

• Anyone that wants to see just how badly Rob Liefeld botched Cap's physique in his ode to Picasso need only click on the following link to observe the same image first without the shield and then sans clothing! NSFW! http://pic.leech.it/i/8df5a/32e576aamericaboo.jpg The horror, the horror...

• The Freshmen "by" Seth Green, Hugh Sterbakov and Leonard Kirk. Its the worst comic I've ever read. I would have rather watched daredevil again, which I swore I would never do. I was so pissed after reading this that I kept it around, WAITING for a moment to dispose of it justly. As luck would have it, my cat shit horribly on my carpet. I ripped off the cover and most of the pages to clean it up, feeling oddly satisfied as I did it.

• Sorry for the dumb question, but I don't know anything about comics. The guy in the picture of the article...is he suppossed to look like that? I mean..is that an actual comic picture? From a "professional" artis? It just looks so..so..wrong.

• Man, this thread made me realize how much crap I've been reading over the years.

• given the hatred for rob liefield it will be hard to pick a winner. my choice to go with something different John Byrne's run on doom patrol sadly the legend should never have touched that book or any dc character for one he totaly obliterates their history including with changeling and two the poor artist who had to work with him. to do so.

• Regarding that Harkness FF issues... AS far as I know, he was so angry at Tom DeFalco, the current editor, for his order to return the FF to their roots that he written those ''dream'' parts as sort of a ''You want rehashes of Lee and Kirby? I'll give you rehashes of Lee and Kirby!'' Haven't read them, personally, though...

• Well, consider this a non-entry entry, because it's so obvious that you started with it: Rob Liefeld. More specific? How about the run in which Rob Liefeld turned my beloved New Mutants comic into a joke by introducing Cable, Domino, Shatterstar, and the rest of his pouch-and-gun squad, and then pushing the actual New Mutants to the back burner, giving them awful costumes (with lots of pouches!), making them all act out of character, and finally getting rid of them completely to focus on his creations. This, of course, led to the cancellation of New Mutants (and so soon after their fantastic run in Asgard, and the fantastic, surreal Bill Seinkewicz run) and the beginning of the major abortion of the X-book... X-Force. Oh, how I hated X-Force. Nonsensical, badly drawn, stupid books that it was, how could you NOT hate it? Sure, it's good now that they've made X-Force into Wolverine's "no holds barred" black ops team, but in Liefeld's day it was a mess of pouches, giant guns, disproportionate torsos, tip-toe walking, missing feet, bad exposition, manly women, and pony tails. I fucking hate Rob Liefeld's work. In fact, here's a hint as to how much I hate what Rob Liefeld did to comics: I'd rather read something by the team of Joss Whedon (in full-on, self-indulgent mode), John Byrne (doing writing, pencils AND inks), and Stephanie Myer. Rob Liefeld turned my second-favorite comic of all time into his personal wank-rag, then was REWARDED for it by getting his own fucking monthly comic. Seriously, Marvel? You asstards.

• All Star Batman... jesus where to start... Other then the entire thing comes off as some crackheads bastard child Batman because of the dailog between characters and thier actions. Batman cant go one page with out yelling "god damn" at someone or something. He also kidnaps freakin Robin. There are a bunch of other really horrible things in the whole line but im trying to suppress my nerd rage. Its almost like Millar just decided... hmmm lets run this into the ground till its dead and beat it with a stick for fun.

• &#64; Adam37 yes. i remember.i refuse to put the countdown issues in bags b/c they suck so bad. i think the fact that jimmy olsen had super powers is what let everyone down. @Big Bad Booty Daddy whats wrong with planet hulk?

• My pick would have to be the "John Harkness" run on Fantastic Four from 1989. Writer Steve Engelhart had written some great stuff in the '70s, like the Avengers, and an extra-tippy Doctor Strange. When he was given the reigns of the Fantastic Four, he shook up the status quo, sending Reed and Sue off to take care of their son Franklin, and leaving Ben in charge of the team. Crystal the Inhuman and Sharon "Ms. Marvel II" Ventura filled out the remaining 2 slots, making for a different dynamic, such as the soap-operatics between a now-married Human Torch and his ex, or when Sharon gets turned into a Thing as well and eventually decides she likes it. However, when the editorial powers that be (who had already clashed with Englehart before) ruled that Reed and Sue had to come back, Englehart made it so, but under protest. He wrote the rest of his run under the pseudonym "John Harkness", creating what amounted to a 7-issue tantrum. And it was <i>awful</i>. Reed and Sue came back, along with Franklin (who now insisted he be called "Frank"). Ben is depowered and Sharon replaces him as the resident Thing. And, to top it all off, for most of this run, the "real" FF don't appear at all, thanks to a rogue Watcher replacing them with clones who all speak in an odd, stilted, Stan-Lee-circa-1961 style, while the originals have crazy, crazy dreams. (Doctor Doom and an army of supervillains fighting against Kristoff and another army of supervillains? Sounds like a collision course to wackiness!) The book turned from cosmic adventure/family drama into some bizarro parody of itself, and it didn't work. What's the main thing that separates this from the rest? Fortunately, most bad comic runs are just bad because of inept execution. Englehart's a fairly talented writer, but his "Harkness" FF was deliberately bad, which somehow makes it <i>worse</i>.

• I haven't bought/collected comics in years due to their expense, but I follow along, buy and borrow TPBs, read Wizard, love this site, etc. Many of these arcs I haven't read. Based on the submissions so far, pancakes188 FTW. I've never read that run, but based solely on the description of a number of the events that happened, YIKES.

• Okay. Jesus. Tap Dancing. Christ. Does ANYONE remember Countdown? If you don't, go hug your mom, buy a cake, and live, for God's sake, live a happy happy life. For those who do...I'm sorry to make us go through this once again. You wouldn't make a Holocaust survivor take a weekend vaca in Auschwitz, but I want a prize. Okay, deep breath, here we go: Countdown (eventually becoming Countdown to Final Crisis) was the follow-up weekly series to the exquisitely plotted, deliciously mysterious, pathos-laden, infuckingcredible weekly series 52. 52 achieved what had never been done,and few (myself certainly included) believed would. A great brand new comic every week for a whole year. When that symphony of fantastic four-colored follies concluded we were all eagerly ready for what was next... Well, we thought we were ready. The first issue of Countdown, issue #51 (of course...), started innocuously enough. A decent murder mystery, some fairly rocking space adventure, and the grand warning of an impending "Great Disaster". Just enough intrigue and bright shiny to keep us loyal for the next fifty-one weeks. And then everything...changed. Slowly but surely the series progressed, adding multiple unnecessarily complex storylines which at first we were game with, expecting that great reveal, that wonderful confluence that 52 had. But instead we were just left with a conflicting, confusing clump of crap. Take, for instance, everyone's favorite villains the Pied Piper (an openly gay Flautist...fascinating) and the Trickster (a flamboyantly dressed tinkerer with exploding yo-yos...awesome) who somehow (who cares, really?) became chained together through a set of super-duper handcuffs that'll explode if they part or some dumb shit trying to run away from some other dumb shit. Now we had ourselves a buddy comedy, sexual identity exploration, AND road trip adventure, a trio we've all been wanting in comics for some time now. Most of their adventures could be predicated with "They then found themselves in the middle of...". Eventually they met up with Double Down, a villain who...rips his skin off and throws them as playing cards (Lee/Kirby eat your heart out)...and then get on a train and Trickster is killed.Then a boom tube shows up and Piper is on Apokolips where he is told he can channel the Anti-Life equation through his instrument. Of course. Spending a lifetime summoning rats to steal jewelry must make for some solid practice. Every storyline in the book (and heavens to Betsy were there a few) eventually all took bizarre, square-peg through a concrete dam forced turns to get all the protagonists to Apokolips for the big bad showdown between planet-ruling, galactic despot Darkseid...and Jimmy Mother Fucking Olsen with big green monster powers. The conclusion was so shitty, so poorly set-up, that it was essentially erased...maybe a month later. The ending was contrary to what DC hoped to achieve in Final Crisis so Countdown became one of those "yeah it happened, but don't worry about it". But how could we not? This was an entire year of story-telling and book collecting that we, the poor huddled readers, labored through in hopes of a satisfying conclusion that for the love of mike did SOMETHING. ANYTHING. Instead it got brushed away for something that will probably eventually get brushed away too. I'm sorry if my facts are a bit skewed, I've tried to move on with my life since the events of the Countdown, but sometimes the healing process must begin at the very beginning, as painful as it may be. I offer my condolences to all fellow readers who suffered along for those 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months, and shitty goddamnfuckcock shitty comics. We are strong. PS. Darkseid on a couch? *face-palm*

• "Try to be brief, please. I'm very fragile right now." wow you guys are a bunch of blow hards :D cant any of you read? :P

• I having a hard time coming up with anything worse than Ultimates 3 (Especially in context of how good 1 and 2 were), but Punisher:Purgatory with a resurrected Punisher with angel weapons was pretty bad.

• &#64;Aaron: Thank god, someone else mentioned it. I was staring at Captain America for the longest time, thinking, wtf IS this monstrosity? He's not even human! He looks so bizarre with his chest out to here, and his back... I don't even want to know what happened to his back.

• The worst run was Brian Azzarello's & Jim Lee's Superman "For Tomorrow" run. This wasn't a Jeph Loeb or Rob Liefield comic, this was a book that had talent behind it. And, it made no sense and it was just awful. But, it had Azzarello and Lee, so you just kept buying the book hoping at some point it'll all make sense somehow. And, it never did. And, it still makes me sad. A million people disappear and Superman sulks about it. He hangs around and gets advice from a priest (which is strange, considering the Kryptonian religion is similar to Judaism and he was probably raised a Baptist, so a Rabbi or Minister would make more sense), he creates an alternate reality where he creates robot versions of his Kryptonian parents. And, he goes to the Phantom Zone to fight General Zod, only that Zod looked nothing like Zod (though the armor was cool).

• Well people you have already grabbed my old soapbox and stabbed at JMS, Liefeld, AND Todd McFar. I like several of your other comments too people. Like Devin Grayson. I mean wow she sucks as a writer. But I have you all beat with the man known as Tony Isabella. You know why? Because think about all the shit from the 70s and 80s that sucked and good ole Tony wrote em! He created Black Lightning and made him a jive talkin' fool. Oh yeah before that he wrote Power Man. Sweet Christmas! Oh and he made Johnny Blaze a born-again Christian and he was no longer Ghost Rider. Oh that and originally he wanted JESUS to appear in the comic. From wikipedia- "CCM Sightings" said on the subject, "According to Isabella's account, the story arc took two years to unfold, and was approved by several editors. But when the story reached the big twist — and a certain mysterious drifter was going to be revealed as Jesus Christ — an assistant editor 'took offense' and intercepted the issue right as it was about to go to the printer and completely rewrote the story." Isabella says, "To this day, I consider what he did to my story one of the three most arrogant and wrong-headed actions I've ever seen from an editor." Yeah if ANY run from Isabella is consider good just fucking kill me now. Oh yeah I am here waiting for my shirt.

• Ultimatum is not finished yet but it sure is as -or maybe even more- shitty as Ultimates 3.

• Am I the only one who is mesmerized by that Liefeld Captain America? It's such a strange picture to look at. I mean, at first glance it just looks like a crappy picture of Captain America, but let's delve deeper. The chest juts out eerily far away from the shoulders, head and back. While this is odd enough, it also points towards the viewer at a strange angle. The functionality of having to show the star on Cap's chest overshadowed the viewers need for a familiar human form. It's as if the anatomy of the rest of the body were irrelevant. The lower body further magnifies the eerie nature of the upper body, but raises strange questions due to the shield. Is Captain America's waist-line go all the way back to where his back should be, or does his back curve inwards? If you direct your gaze at his chest, it seems like his waist is absurdly large. Should you direct it towards his shoulders, it seems as if his back curves disturbingly inwards. As if he were pushing his waist forward to meet with his distorted chest. His head is obviously too small for the body. The facial expression on Cap's face. The beady eyes. The grimace. The overly large fore-head. Again the functionality of showing the symbol overshadows the viewers need for normalcy. The arm is obviously too short, but it's hidden by the shield, so this isn't readily apparent. An arm that thick couldn't possibly be that short, yet with the shield riding so high and the picture being cut off, it's still possible that the arm goes longer. This leaves the viewer with yet another puzzle. Is the arm disturbingly thick and short, or is it disturbingly thick and long? All of this added to the strong American imagery, which is the obvious focal point of the piece. There is a need for patriotic symbols to overshadow anything approaching reality. A distortion and representation of a warped America. This is Liefeld's Mona Lisa. This is his unappreciated and wholly unintentional masterpiece. My God.

• The Classic Star Wars - The Early Adventure series by Russ Manning. Apart from being as dull as The Phantom Menace, apparently Luke, Leia & Han only have one set of clothes each, which is the outfit they wore in A New Hope. One can only hope that they have intergalactic strength deodorant.

• I am going to have to go with the Marvel Max series US War Machine 2. The story was terrible and the art was done with CG which made the characters look like bad extra's from Max Steel.

• First of all I love comics. I have comic tattoos. However, most of you are experts who possess encyclopedic knowledge & I cannot hope to impress anyone on any particular comic run I've read. But I can tell you this. The run that popped into my head right off the bat was FEEDBACK. Feedback was of course the bullshit "next big thing" hyped up by Stan "the senile man" lee back in 2006 on his reality show "who wants to be a superhero?". Now, I've been cynical and negative toward ANY reality show since I was 15 years old. Most of these shows are directed toward an audience with an IQ of about 75. Despite the fact that they are literally destroying western civilization with the lobotomy radiation given off during the program, they are also really fucking boring. But lo and behold, what's this? A SUPERHERO themed one? With REAL people shouting, "virginity be damned, I'm going to New York and trying out for the show FULL COSTUME!" SOLD!...until of course I realized that this show was a huge gimmick & the cast were NOT real nerds, but hired actors. What gave it away Stephan? How about Cell phone girl? Back to the topic. I bit my tongue. I watched mainly for Major Victory, the dude was funny. Then after the shit fire works finally fizzled out, FEEDBACK won. And his prize? A CHANCE FOR IMMORTALITY! TO BE INKED! I don't care who wrote it. I don't care who drew it. Feedback is the worst run in comics because he is the bastard love child of commercialism and horrible ideas. Technology hindering/ "the last video game I played" powers? who the fuck is this guy appealing to? Plus he looks like Jeffrey Dahmer.

• I am surprised people have not mentioned One More Day, yet. granted it is easy to name that one as a terrible comic, written by J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada with art by the latter and only done as a story because only Quesada didn't like the idea of Spidey moving on and evolving and prefer to keep him stuck in troubled times. The fact that every single person in the Marvel Universe was written as unable to help fix a simple bullet wound and also that Spidey could easily have gotten the X-Men's Elixir to have healed her anyway really just is a kick in the nuts when it could so easily have been a great Spider-Man story. It felt forced down our throats and painful to boot. Granted as well Straczynski didn't like the direction it was heading in and tried to remove his name from the credits although didn't as a favour to Marvel so I would say it's unfair to blame him as it was only Quesada who wanted to retconn away the marriage and also taking away the fact Spidey had revealed his identity with this magic retconn despite promising that would not be the case. It's stuff like that which is why i only read X-Men comics from Marvel now, since they keep them removed from most of the warmongering and politics of the rest of the Marvel Universe; and also why I enjoy reading more DC comics like Batman, Green Lantern and Green Arrow.

• pancakes188 nailed it but I might add to that well elucidated list the romance between Husk and Angel. It culminated in a moment that defies the boundaries of taste; Angel flies Paige into the air, sheds her clothes and makes love to her in full sight of her mother. Classy. Thanks Chuck- you really added something special to the canon. Austen made me hate characters I had been fascinated by as a kid.

• I've gotta go with the current run of Teen Titans, ever since Superboy and Kid Flash died the book has been nothing but whining and brooding. Apparently Wonder Girl turned into a huge bitch incapable of rational thought when Superboy died. Great characters crappy execution.

• Not going for a win or anything here; I'm just going to agree with "anyone who isn't Chuck Dixon" writing "Nightwing." To be fair, Devin Grayson did write one good Nightwing story (a tender conversation between Dick and Barbara about his first crush), but it didn't even appear in a Nightwing book; I think it was in a Batman 80-page giant. Seriously, just about everything she did to the character, beginning in the ridiculous "Nightwing/Huntress" mini-series from a few years before she even wrote the ongoing, was completely unforgivable. I'm not even going to touch Bruce Jones' run, but I have to ask: why, instead of drawing from the 70 or so year history of Dick Grayson to find what makes him a good character, do writers make him into a lecherous man-slut? Granted, he was with a few ladies back in the Titans, but come on, the amount of sleeping around he does these days is insulting.

• I can't believe no one has mentioned the epic that is Chuck Austen's run on Uncanny X-Men/X-Men. It almost made you long for the days when Joe Casey was writing the book. Among the genius ideas in Chuck's run included: -The Draco storyline, in which Nightcrawler's father revealed to be one of the 47 versions of the devil in the Marvel Universe. Along with that revelation came the fact that he has about 20 half-brothers and sisters who have similar blue fur. None of whom were ever seen again. -Annie, the new nurse of Xavier's school, who just happens to have a mutantphobia. Not only did she pick a heck of a place to find a job, but her son is a mutant and she has an affair with Havok. -Having General Hospital-type moments like Annie revealing her love for Havok during Havok and Polaris' wedding. -The Juggernaut becoming a team member and having a big brother/little brother like relationship with student Sammy the Squid Boy, who is a character so useless that I cheered when he was killed of by Black Tom at the end of his run. -Giving Angel the secondary mutation of being able to heal himself. Because it's not like there is another member of the X-Men team that has that power. -Beating to death the fact that Northstar is gay every chance he had. -Bringing back the evil Church of Humanity from Joe Casey's prior run, which was one of the laughable things from Joe's aborted run. On top of that, he made them worse by having them use communion wafers that would make them basically disintegrate. -Having an incredibly useless Brotherhood of Evil Mutants that included Mammomax (who's power is that he looks like an elephant) Black Tom (who looked like a giant tree), and Nocturne (who isn't evil or misguided). -Randomly giving powers to Rogue, who had just been depowered months before. -Bringing back Zorn a few issues after Grant Morrison's run ended and basically neglecting to explain how Magneto impersonated him. Then killing Zorn off in the next story line for no particular reason. -Having a sex scene between the Juggernaut and She-Hulk that gets interrupted by them getting attacked by an evil Juggernaut armor. This all leads to the two of them fighting the armor in the streets of a city while naked. So bad a scene that other writers would mock it in issues of other books. Just that last fact alone should give him the title for worst comic run.

• Okay first off I have to say how the hell did someone miss this, I mean it's so obvious, now not to say that some of the runs already on the list aren't bad but let me put it this way how could the Reinald Huldin run of Black Panther not make it on the list already? He established that the Black Panther is keeping the cure to cancer to himself, retconed the entire history of Wakanda into Mary Suetopia to be more advanced then any other nation, forced Storm into a marriage with barley any build up and making her role in saving the Black Panther being him saving her and be true lovers even though they were barley in any stories before he came on board. The problem extends from just the stupid writing( Doctor Doom being a believer in eugenics?) it's also the fact that is retcons many heart warming scenes just to make the Panther seemingly more badass and change characters like the Klaw into an assassin, or the Black Knight into a villain who work for the Vatican. This not only ignores continuity but at the same time comes off as very insensitive to Catholics. The whole problem with this run is how later runs are going to have to either retcon it or run with it. Retcon because frankly because of all the changes or run with it, witch may not be the best idea. Also the writer can't seem to get it in his head that Africans are not African-Americans!

• MARVEL CIVIL WAR - MILLAR, MCNIVEN This piece of shit story is the center piece of the Marvel Universe Shit storm that is their current reality. A clone Thor - stupid as shit Captain America gives up to Iron man and is eventually shot in the neck - Fucking dumb. What a disgraceful end to an iconic character. Peter Parker reveals his identity - which eventiually led to the shit stain that is One more day. They knew The Hulk wouldn't fit into this mess at all, so they shot him into space for the extremely limp wristed Planet Hulk story which ended in a wimper. Then led to Skaar and Red Hulk story debacles. The biggest tragedy of this story line is that Joe Quesada still keeps his job. That cock whap should have been fired years ago for his inept handling of every Marvel property. CIVIL WAR SUCKED!

• I'd have to say Ultimates 3. not only was it horrible in its own right, it destroyed the potential that was built up through Ultimates 1 and 2. that nose dive in quality makes it a necessity for any list.

• I know most of you probably haven't heard of this, but I vote the worst to be JOHN JAKES'MULKONN EMPIRE by the shortlived Tekno Comics comicbook line. Worst art I've ever seen in my life. If you ever see it, you will agree with me that there never was and never will be a worse comic run than this.

• Even though it's not out yet, I'm clinching my teeth and hoping that Greg Rucka's run on Detective Comics isn't a catastrophic failure. He's basically taking the fact that Batman is dead as an excuse to turn it into "Batwoman." What exactly prevented DC from giving her her own book? Detective Comics has been a Batman book since like 1940 and suddenly shifting the focus to another character seems to defeat the purpose entirely. With Dick Grayson as the new Batman, he needs more exposure, and not being the focus of one of the two major Batman books is going to hurt him in the long run. I just hope G. Morrison's "Batman and Robin" does him justice, though.

• Capwolf Captain America turns into a werewolf and teams up with all of the other marvel wolf like charcters to form a wolf pack. Nuff said

• For me the worst run on a comic has to be Rob Leifeld's own work on his own invention, Youngblood. Picture this, it was the early 90's and the comic scene was changing to match the 'grim and gritty' atmosphere being heralded in by Starbucks philosophers and grunge music. Rob Leifeld, who had an incredible run on Marvel's 'New Mutants' left 6 with other artist/writers such as Jim Lee and Todd McFarlane to start 'Image Comics'. The offerings by his peers were regarded as cutting edge reading. And then there's ol' Rob. Drawing flat-faced homosexual looking muscle men with metal tubes on their heads (what the fuck were those things, anyway?) and big titted skanks wearing ballerina leotards... with tiaras. He had few interesting characters which he never experienced character growth, never engaged us as readers, and more importantly, were just plain ass boring to read about. As I've heard it, Rob recently surrendered his comic book writing certificate willingly and has been enjoying his true passion in comic art; drawing homosexual looking men (though sans metal tubes).

• I'm going with Batman R.I.P. First I read through this thing like 4 times and I still don't understand it. I had to look the damn thing up on wikipedia just to have someone explain it to me. Is Batman dead or what? Who was Dr. Hurt? I don't think that comic fans should have to have their comics explained to them by a third party

• Archie.

• I would have to say the Death of Superman arc. It spawned spinoffs a marketeer's dream, and loads of publicity by slaughtering America's Boy Scout. Just didn't care for it. Years later it spawned an animated movie aping elements of it's story with hideous animation stylings, and WRONG voices. Death the the Death of Superman, Kal-El

• Ultimates 3. Two of my least favorite people in comics. Jeph Loeb, weaving an utterly insipid story and the over the top muscle structure of Joe Madureira's characters. Jeph Loeb took a decent comic book that has some decent commentary on current events and then completely shit all over it with Ultimates 3. Equally Joe Madureira took some pretty damn good character concepts and did the same damn thing. Wasp, originally asian in appearance, becomes Caucasian and looks more like her 616 counter part. It was a totally uninspired story, with equal art.

• Valiant Comics take on Turok. Bionisaurs? Come on. Just plain bad.

• Devin Grayson's run on Nightwing was like a nightmare t5hat refused to end. She took what had been one of the best superhero comics on the stands, featuring one of comics' most beloved characters, and tore it all down and pissed all over with with terrible sub-fanfic quality "stories" that got progressively worse and worse. She quickly killed off the entire supporting cast that previous wqriter Chuck Dikxon had spent several years building up; she created the new female Tarantula, an obvious Mary Sue character(even though I hate that phrase), who basically raped the title character; she had Dick allow murder to occur, when he was fully capable of stopping it; she turned Dick into a criminal who worked with the Mafia! The worst part? DC let this go on for FOUR FUCKING YEARS, despite massive outcry from readers and many within the industry who cared about the character. Sure, DC's "solution" of putting expert hack Bruce Jones on the book was awful too, but at least it was brief. Devin Graysons run was a vicious kick to the nuts, followed by a spirited skullfucking, delivered on a monthly basis for four long years.

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