The 1990s, I think we can all agree, were the worst thing to happen to comics. And there were plenty of terrible things that came out of them. But some things were worse than others. Here, we present the first part of our list of those things.
Night Man
Created in: 1993
Why he's an abomination: It's right there in the name. "Night Man." Take one generic thing, stick "man" on the end of it and give the guy a goofy-looking mask thing with one red goggle. Voila! Superhero. Add to that an extraordinarily stupid origin story (from Wikipedia):
Saving grace?: It's not even about him, but the "Night Man" song from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is the best thing.
Shatterstar
Created in: 1991
Why he's an abomination: This wouldn't be a list of crappy things from the 1990s without a Rob Liefeld creation. And Shatterstar's a real piece of work. A genetically-engineered alien from the future, Shatterstar was bred to be a slave and also a gladiator. Then, he became part of a rebel group! Basically, somebody put a bunch of cliches in a blender with some dumb headgear, pouches and swords and out came Shatterstar like so much bad characterization smoothie.
Saving grace?: Drawings like this (from this hilarious list) are pretty amazingly funny.
Marrow
Created in: 1994
Why she's an abomination: Marrow is a mutant who has bones growing out of her skin because she's so mean and tough RARRRRRGH! She was also a tough fighter who killed to get her way! She was a terrorist! But secretly she just wanted to be loved. Oh, and for a while there were two of her. GRRRARRRRRR!
Saving grace?: She makes some of the other stupid X-Men seem downright inspired.
Azrael
Created in: 1992
Why he's an abomination: "Hey, is there some way we can take Batman and give him like, a boss armored suit and make him all badass, like, where he kills people and shit? Can we do that?"
"Probably not if it's Bruce Wayne. We've really painted ourselves into a corner on that one."
"What if we just, like made him another guy or something? Like, a cool badass guy who's secretly a member of an assassin's guild or something?"
"Yeah, sure, why not?"
Saving grace?: His short-lived run as Batman made readers all the more thankful for the Batman they'd been getting for the past 60 years.
Agent America
Created in: 1997
Why he's an abomination: When Marvel decided that professional hack Jeph Loeb and Rob Liefeld's take on Captain America wasn't the direction they wanted to go anymore, they let those guys go. But they had so many stories left to tell! So Liefeld and Loeb created an ever-so-slightly different character with whom they could use the stories. But Marvel, damn them, picked up on their elaborate ruse and brought down holy legal hell on them. So, class acts that they are, Liefeld and Loeb dug up an old Jack Kirby character, redesigned him to basically still be Captain America, and went with it anyway. Class!
Saving grace?: He existed for one issue. (Then they used Fighting American, natch.)
Witchblade
Created in: 1995
Why she's an abomination: A tough-as-nails New York detective comes into contact with an ancient artifact...blah blah blah...the character's a big excuse to have page after page of a virtually nude, huge-breasted woman beat guys up. And I don't know what kind of guy is into leafy-looking junk being all up on girls' naughty bits, but it's clearly somebody's fetish.
Saving grace?: Remember that terrible, short-lived TNT Witchblade TV series? One time, I got out of seeing a terrible movie using the excuse by saying, "But Witchblade's on."
Gambit
Created in: 1990
Why he's an abomination: The lavender armor. The trench coat. The card powers. The bo staff. The completely unnecessary headgear. The horrible accent. The muddled, mysterious-for-its-own-sake thief backstory. His stupid different-color-for-no-reason eyes. Gambit is terrible.
Saving grace?: On the mid-90s X-Men cartoon, he made all the other characters seem tolerable, even though they weren't.
Comments
Ooooo... please tell me Jubilee makes the bottom 7... please please please!
If not, at least an honorable mention...
Posted by: TheCatastropheSyndrome | May 29, 2009 3:11 PM
I cannot WAIT until the next installment.
Posted by: Pj | May 29, 2009 5:31 PM
...jubilee's first appearance was in may of 1989, so she doesn't qualify for this list. (otherwise, i agree. she's the worst.)
Posted by: donuteyes | May 30, 2009 1:44 PM
Sharper people than me have pointed out that Gambit is wearing that hideous armor and trench coat in New Orleans, a hot, humid, low-lying city. (Gambit and his clothes reek of sweat and Drakkar Noir, is what I'm saying.)
Posted by: Brian Smith | May 31, 2009 1:30 AM
Oh, Lordy, Rob Liefeld. *twitches*
Posted by: Darth Obvius | June 2, 2009 4:04 AM