"My Comic
Book Hit List: Part 1"
6/20/07
by:
Protoclown
Many comic book readers
dream of breaking into the comic industry as a writer or artist so they
can play in the richly detailed sandboxes of the Marvel or DC universes
and tell stories about their favorite characters. I dream of breaking
into the comic industry and writing for Marvel or DC so I can convince
the editorial staff to let me kill off certain characters, selfishly
disregarding decades of history just because I think they're seriously
lame. There have been lots of timeless, awesome concepts introduced in
comics over the years, but there have been far more embarrassingly
absurd ones that probably make potential new readers cringe in horror
and flee the comic shop upon seeing them.
So I'm going to take you on a tour of my own personal hit list of
characters I'd like to see brutally removed from this four-color coil,
in what will no doubt be the first of a multi-part series (there's no
way I could cover them all in one article).
The Mad Hatter
Anyone who reads comics
knows that Batman has by far the best rogue's gallery of any
hero—there's really no contest at all. However, even Batman isn't immune
from having a few embarrassing incompetents weaseling their way onto his
"enemies" list. But how a B-list, buck-toothed goober like Mad Hatter
got into such a prominent, recurring role is a mystery to me. The guy's
name is Jervis, for fuck's sake. Jervis Tetch. And I have a
pathological hatred of him. Apart from being creepily obsessed with
little girls named Alice, he won't eat any food unless it has a
miniature hat on it. I can't think of anything that's ever made me want
to beat the crap out of a fictional character more. He's like four feet
tall, has a gigantic head, and that baby Ewok from Return of the Jedi
could probably kick his ass in a knock-down drag-out fight. And yet,
somehow, this retarded leprechaun keeps showing back up again and again
as a thorn in Batman's side with his lame mind control powers he never
manages to do anything useful with.
MODOK
Originally created by
technological terrorists Advanced Idea Mechanics, MODOC (Mental Organism
Designed Only for Computing) was an average technician mutated into a
being of supreme intelligence, whose original purpose was to analyze the
cosmic cube (one of Marvel's most prominent super-powerful artifacts
that everyone is always trying to get their hands on) and improve
efficiency within the AIM organization. Well, wouldn't you know it,
being so much smarter than the people he worked for (and probably just a
wee bit pissed off about being mutated into a ridiculous freak and the
fact there was no way in God's green hell he was ever getting laid
again), he rebelled, took on the acronym MODOK (Mental Organism Designed
Only for Killing, oh snap!), took over AIM, and crossed swords
with the Avengers on numerous occasions. While Stan Lee and Jack Kirby
came up with many great concepts in their heyday, this giant head in a
chair with little baby arms and legs was not one of them. Though he is
currently suffering from a debilitating disease known as "Holy fuck,
where have all my organs gone!", I sincerely doubt that Marvel will have
the stones to kill him off permanently. After all, the current MODOK is
either the second or third incarnation, meaning that those assholes at
AIM have managed to mutate some poor sucker into this joke of a
character at least twice.
Dum Dum Dugan
Aside from being named
after both people who are imbeciles and lollipops, Dum Dum Dugan annoys
me with his omnipresent derby hat, cigar, and bushy red "creepy uncle"
moustache. With a real name like Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan, he
could only be another Stan Lee/Jack Kirby creation. Once serving along
with Nick Fury and his Howling Commandos after helping him out once
during World War II, he later became Nick Fury's right hand man in the
S.H.I.E.L.D. organization, and any time S.H.I.E.L.D. took part in a
story I was reading, I could count on good ol' Dum Dum to be there to
annoy the shit out of me. To my eyes, he looks a lot more like a fast
food icon who should be trying to sell hamburgers than he does any kind
of soldier.
Gorilla Grodd
Gorilla Grodd is a
super-intelligent, psychic, talking gorilla with the power to read and
control other peoples' minds. He received his powers when an alien
spaceship crashed somewhere in Africa, and the aliens arbitrarily
decided "Hey, it's a gorilla, let's give him superpowers!" The aliens
and gorillas founded Gorilla City, where everyone lived happily ever
after until some human explorers found the city, and Grodd used his
powers to make one of the humans kill the aliens, and then he took over
the city for himself. Now he uses his super powers and undying hatred of
the human race to attempt to eradicate all human life on Earth time and
time again. If you ask me, it's about time someone eradicated this
fucking lameass character.
Mister Sinister
Mister Sinister is a big
gay albino named Nathaniel Essex with a pink diamond on his forehead,
who, unlike everyone actually reading the X-Men books, is
fascinated with Scott Summers (Cyclops). He believed that Cyclops and
Jean Grey's child would be powerful enough to destroy Apocalypse, the
mutant who gave him his immortality back in 19th Century Victorian
England, where he was a scientist obsessed with the unpopular theory of
evolution. Unfortunately, looking at his cape with an appearance of
ruffled bird feathers, his sense of fashion appears to be the one thing
completely safe from his ideas about evolution. Mister Sinister is one
of those annoying wanker villains you expect to have a long, thin
moustache to twirl between his fingers as he reveals his evil scheme and
says "Nyah!" He's been laying low in recent years, but he's about to
take prominence again in the big mutant event affecting all of the
X-books throughout the rest of 2007, so I'm hoping he gets killed and
dies a lot during that.
Captain Cold
As far as Flash villains
go, you can take your pick—they're all pretty damn lame. But for some
reason, Leonard Snart AKA Captain Cold offends me more than the others.
Perhaps it's simply because his name rhymes with "fart". Maybe it's
because I prefer Mr. Freeze (who, ironically, was little more than a
two-dimensional rip-off of Captain Cold until Batman: The Animated
Series gave him some depth that was actually retconned into the
comics), and I feel that we really don't need more than one cold-themed
villain in the DC universe. Or maybe it's because he looks too much like
the robot master Iceman from the NES game Mega Man, which isn't
really fair because Captain Cold was around nearly 30 years before him.
Or it could be the cheesy
ice gun he wields or the ridiculous visor that would look more at home
in a 1980s New Wave music video. In the end, it really doesn't matter; I
just want to kill him off.
The Leader
Hulk's arch-nemesis the
Leader is one of those villains who I have a hard time looking at
without laughing out loud. I mean just look at that ridiculously
oversized head. At least you have to give him credit for one thing: with
a noggin like that, he could bring the 10-gallon cowboy hat, or the
stovepipe hat back into style. After a horrible accident at a chemical
research facility, Samuel Sterns was bombarded with gamma radiation
while moving some radioactive materials around. The radiation made
Sterns super-smart and gifted him with the power of mind control in
exchange for his ability to ever touch or even see in person a woman's
breasts again (a malady shared by many comic readers). This of course
makes him the perfectly obvious foil for the Hulk, being all-brains to
the Hulk's all-brawn, which isn't nearly as clever as somebody thought
it was. But really Hulk could just punch his head clean off his body,
and here's hoping he finally does just that.
Apocalypse
Like your redneck cousin
you're too embarrassed to talk about, Apocalypse has the first initial
of his name proudly represented on his giant belt buckle. And although
one of the most awesome events Marvel Comics ever did (Age of
Apocalypse) couldn't have happened without him, it was largely in spite
of him rather than because him that it was so cool. Born En Sabah Nur
sometime around 3000 BC, Apocalypse is the second known mutant to have
existed, and he's super strong and is nearly invulnerable thanks to his
overly powerful ability to control every molecule of his body.
Apocalypse is obsessed with the notion of survival of the fittest, and
constantly captures and brainwashes other mutants, turning them into his
Four Horsemen of Himself, who inevitably break free of his control and
turn against him, so he's not a quick learner in terms of gathering
recruits. Apocalypse is just one of those guys who's too annoyingly
powerful, to the point that writers can get lazy whenever he shows up in
a story. Also, his lips are big and blue, which, when you can control
your body's appearance down to the last molecule, is kinda stupid.
Carnage
Okay, Marvel zombies, I
know what you're about to say. You're going to point out that the Sentry
recently tore Carnage a new one and launched him into space, apparently
killing his sorry ass. And you'd be right, except that's not good enough
for me, because I know it's only a matter of time before some
jackass editorial team brings him back. Which is exactly why I'd want to
resurrect him just long enough to kill him all over again. Okay, so it
wouldn't accomplish much, but it sure would be satisfying. See, at one
point Venom pooped out a symbiote baby, which bonded to insane serial
killer Cletus Kasady (whose name even pisses me off). This asshole was
just the start of a whole group of boring symbiotes created by Venom,
Carnage, Venom's left testicle, and others. I'm sick of all these damned
symbiotes that look and act pretty much exactly the same, but Carnage is
perhaps the one I hate most of all.
Mister Mxyzptlk
This guy's annoying enough
just because his name is nearly impossible to pronounce, but on top of
that he's a little space pixie with Bozo the Clown hair who wears a
derby hat that looks like a teeny little hamburger on top of his head.
He uses magic (one of the few things Superman is vulnerable to) to do
pretty much anything he damn well wants, but he's a trickster rather
than a malevolent killer, so he normally just plays silly pranks on
people. The only way he can be sent back to his home plane is if he is
tricked into saying or spelling his name backwards, leading to some of
the most ridiculously contrived moments in all of comics. I hate this
guy because he just gives an excuse for Superman writers to be lazy by
pitting our supremely powerful protagonist against a god-like character
who can pull any deus ex machine he wants out of his ass.
The Vulture
Adrian Toomes was already
elderly when he was introduced back in 1963, so how he's still kicking
around now is anybody's guess. He's old enough to have had a stroke,
paralyzing the left side of his body, and yet, rather than allow him to
die with dignity (well, as much dignity as an old man in a bird costume
can muster, anyway), the Marvel editors chose to keep him alive in this
condition rather than kill him off (I'm sure a miraculous full recovery
is forthcoming). Basically, he's an old man wearing a wing harness that
could never possibly work, and that's really all there is to the
character. He really should be flying around holding a walker in front
of him at his advanced age, so I think it's high time that Marvel
finally let this guy go.
Lobo
Lobo was a character
intended by DC to be a parody of those over-the-top "tough guy" Marvel
characters like Wolverine and the Punisher. Unfortunately, these days
Lobo has become more of a parody of himself than anything else. Having
killed his entire planet one day because he was simply bored, Lobo
thrives on ultra violence, cigars, riding around the cosmos on his space
bike, and looking like a reject from the band KISS. He likes to call
himself "The Main Man" or "The Ultimate Bastich" (he's a hardened killer
but he's not allowed to curse), but I like to call him "a waste of my
time". Unfortunately, he's pretty much immortal since Heaven and Hell
have both kicked him out. That is a terrible situation that I would love
to remedy.
So there you have a dozen characters that I would love to kill, should I
ever have the opportunity to strike them down with my pen. One theme I
can't help but notice is that The Mad Hatter, MODOK, Gorilla Grodd, The
Leader, and to an extent Apocalypse with his brainwashing all possess
mind control powers, which just goes to show that once you have the
ability to control people's minds, you become completely and irrevocably
lame. Best to stay away from that power. As this doesn't even begin to
scratch the surface of lame comic characters deserving of death (I have
an ever-growing list, I assure you), I will certainly do follow-up
pieces to this one down the road. But for now, I leave you with these
twelve assholes and bumblefucks. It's a good start, anyway.
Found any weird, bizarre, stupid or funny comics that
should appear in a future "Tales From the Longbox" column?
Email Protoclown and let him know!
