Here is The Comic Whisperer’s list of comics that Marvel Would LOVE To Forget and, frankly, Would Love If You Would Forget Them Too.
These are in on particular order:
1.) U.S. #1 I’m not embarrassed to say that I have this one and have read it. It truly does deserve to be on this list. I remember it vividly, this came out around the time of the smash hit movie Smokey and the Bandit. If you haven’t seen it, rent it. It’s funny, has car chases, car wrecks, cursing, women, the whole nine yards (my apologies to my female readers, to be fair it also has the very handsome Burt Reynolds in it). The idea for the comic, however, was nothing like Smokey and the Bandit. It involved a “super-powered” truck driver with a metal head who could pick up C.B. Radio waves (C.B. stands for Citizens Band for those who weren’t born then). His brother was MUCH more realistic (insert dripping sarcasm here) as he was evil, called Highwayman, was given powers by aliens and crashed his truck into the moon. All of these ideas should have spelled disaster, but no one hearing the pitch must have known how to spell. I’ve looked at character bio pages that Marvel puts out and Highwayman doesn’t even rate a bio page.
2.) Superpro Special Edition Again, I admit, I have this one. I did not, however, read it. Even I couldn’t bring myself to do that. Let’s just take one fact and I am sure it will convince you that this series was heading for disaster. The writer, who for their sake I will not reveal, admitted that they only pushed the series to get free football tickets. ‘Nuff Said? Not quite. Let’s look at the demographic for this comic...football fans. Sure, scoring a partnership with the NFL looks good on paper, but football fans aren’t typically your comic book fans (myself excluded). This one was a disaster before it even got out of the planning stages. Now, ’Nuff Said.
3.) Ultimate Adventures I also have this one (do you see a recurring theme here?) This is a clear cut case of overdoing a good thing. It’s no secret that the “Ultimate” series did very well. Ultimate Avengers, Ultimate Evil, etc, etc. But, this fiasco, was taking it too far. This comic was slated to be a combination of an even more brooding, psychotic Batman and a Robin (it was a parody) who you wanted nothing more than to have his mouth duct taped. His dialogue was unbearable. It took a year to release these six issues of misery. In that year you would think that they would cook up some great comedy, but you would be wrong. There were many reasons this failed other than the main idea behind it. Those reasons are no more worth reading than the series itself.
4.) Billy Ray Cyrus With no apologies to the country music fans, Billy Ray Cyrus is known for two things; Achey Breaky Heart (or however you spell it) and Miley Cyrus. Both turned out to be big hits and both turned out to be forgettable. Anyway, this was part of Marvel’s big idea to put out a series of comics revolving around musicians. The problem was it wasn’t about the musicians themselves. It was about them in irrelevant adventures. If you read this comic you see Billy Ray fighting dragons, ghosts and other evildoers while traveling through time. 48 pages of sheer trash. The upside? Mullet fans will be happy with the illustrations.
5.) Marvel Swimsuit Issues Oh, yes, you read it correctly. I would have loved to been in on the pitch when this one was brought up. “Yes, sir, the idea is to put all of the characters in swimsuits. Yes, sir, the men and the women. Yes, sir, even the non-human ones. No, sir, it won’t be tastefully done.” Interestingly enough, some of these are worth decent money if they are in good shape and, yes, I have a couple of these as well. I imagine the thought behind this was a singular one, put all of the sexy characters in impossibly small swimsuits and watch the dough roll in. It didn’t quite work that way. This one picture may be a clue as to why.
6.) Marville Originville One would think with the hilarious play on words in the title that this would be an immediate success (insert your own sarcastic tones here). Not knowing how to describe this comic I am going to quote io9.com’s description "it starred Kal-AOL Turner, son of media mogul Ted, Rush Limbaugh, some odd thoughts on religion, Greg Horn's preposterously terrible cheesecake covers...and, most inexplicably, the submissions guide to Marvel's former creator-owned label, Epic. It is also about 500% less interesting than I'm making it sound. They said it far better than I could. And, no, I don’t have this one, nor will I.
7.) Daydreamers First off the title markets this comic to the demographic that can’t afford comics, nor can they read them, and that is 3 - 4 year old girls. No boy would be caught dead with this title. This comic was a team-up of Franklin Richards, Howard the Duck, Artie the mutant, and Man-Thing. Huh? What drug trip made someone think of this team? The time frame is sometime after Onslaught killed most of marvel’s heroes. Franklin went to Xavier’s school for gifted children, met with this bunch of misfits, created his own universe with his mind, and brought everyone there. Psychologists will tell you that this was Franklin’s way of dealing with the death of his parents. I will tell you it was a way for Marvel to insert a crappy project in the middle of all of its successes to show the company is still human. This title didn’t make it past #3.
8.) Trouble Coincidentally, the title of this comic is also what it wound up causing Marvel...Trouble. This comic had two purposes; bring back Marvel’s romantic comics and to, for whatever reason, try to re-re-re-re-re-address Spiderman’s origins. How many ways can you spin “bitten by a radioactive spider”? Well, the way they did it was to dedicate this comic to the romance between Uncle Ben and Aunt May. We have been speaking of demographics all throughout the reviews and one can only guess the demographic being addressed in this one. My guess is the “people who like to watch two old bags having sex as teenagers” market. I hear it’s pretty big. That being said, they didn’t pick up on this comic and it was cancelled promptly.
9.) Avataars: Covenant of the Shield First, this title is way too long. Second, misspelling “Avatars” doesn’t make it look cool it makes it look misspelled. Consider this the alternate universe that no one wanted to see. It takes place on “Eurth” (something my spellcheck wouldn’t even allow me to type without considerable retypes) where Captain Avalon (a.k.a Captain America) and the Champions of the Realm (a.k.a. The Avengers) took on all of the Black Knights of the realm. To tell you how popular it was, this was a 12 issue series but it was cancelled at 3. The creators should get a good hearty slap in the mouth for this idea. To top it all off, this was done in 2000 when Marvel didn’t have two nickels to rub together (now, though, they do have two nickels to rub together) and this didn’t put any more nickels in the bank.
10.) Onyx: Fight The first question you should be asking yourself is “who?” Onyx of course! You would know them as an extremely popular band in the 90’s who toured the planet to many sold out crowds. If, of course, they were extremely popular and toured to sold out crowds. I lived vicariously through the 90’s and couldn’t tell you a single song of theirs nor would I have even recognized the group name had you said it to me. Yet, Marvel, in it’s infinite wisdom, chose to base a comic on them fighting the good fight. To add salt to the wound let’s discuss the band member’s names; Sticky Fingaz, Fredro Star and Sonsee. You might even be further drawn by the “Gurlz” they hang out with in New York City. It’s all very exciting for the “I like people with nonsensical names that misspell everything in an attempt to sound cool” demographic. My advice? Don’t waste your time looking for the single issue that was put out.
Please understand, I am not criticizing Marvel for their mistakes. I also made a mistake initially when I marketed myself as “Thu Komik Whizzpurrer” hoping to catch the “very quick cat” market.
As a collector, file these comics under Mistakes That Had Extremely Limited Distribution along with the DC Comics of the same genre. I will be addressing those in another blog.
These get The Comic Whisperer’s rating of a “Slap in the Mouth” for the creative teams.
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