Comics Marvel Would LOVE To Forget (And If You Would Forget Them Too)

It has to be hard to pitch a comic idea.  You really put your neck on the line.  If it works out great you are the hero (pardon the wordplay) if it doesn’t work out your career may be on the line.  It’s a calculated risk, one which the following creators should not have taken.

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.

Remember to follow us on:

FB:  The Comic Whisperer

Instagram:   The Comic Whisperer

Twitter:  @comic_whisperer

Charity:  gofundme.com/comicshelpkids read

The 10 Comic Book Movie Adaptations I’ve Tried To Push Out Of My Head

I’m not even sure I can tell you how much an “average” hollywood movie costs to make.  I suppose it depends on the actors, the topic, and the amount of special effects.  No matter how you look at it they cost more money to make than you and I make in...well...our lives.  On top of that we then spend our hard earned dollars to go see these money holes and hope they are worth it.

Here is The Comic Whisperer’s Top 10 Comic Book Movie Adaptations I’ve Tried To Push Out Of My Head:

10.)  R.I.P.D. - Which stands for Really Is a Pathetic aDaptation.  Arguably the love child of Men in Black and Ghostbusters, this film was terrible.  It’s no mystery that Ryan Reynolds was involved.  His acting is pathetic and you will see his earmark throughout this list.  Looking through the internet it looks as though this bomb cost $130 million to make.   This buddy cop meet supernatural thriller couldn’t even be resuscitated by The Big Lebowski himself Jeff Bridges.

9.)  Batman Forever (1995) - Just saying the title makes my stomach churn.  Those who saw the casting play out were somewhat hopeful when the Riddler was to be played by Jim Carry but were not thrilled at the casting of Val Kilmer as Batman and Tommy Lee Jones as Two-Face.  Then it was made even messier by the addition of the Boy Wonder.  At the time it was a hit at the Box Office, but at the time it was all you had.  The addition of the new Batman films has made Batman Forever a distant, but ugly, memory.

8.)  Jonah Hex - I think many would put it closer to the top but I gave it top marks for makeup.  The whole “skin across the mouth” thing was well done (although I confess that I still have no clue as to how one could end up like that and not take a scissors and just clip the darn thing).  That being said, whoever decided to make this a film should get a hearty slap in the mouth.  This old west bounty hunter deserves more than being made a joke of on film.  Remember, this was fresh off the heels of Blade and Ghost Rider, so the studio was only too glad to give it the thumbs up.  But with Josh Brolin not able to enunciate properly and the Director Jimmy Heyward seeing that doing this film was MUCH different than doing his Pixar films, it was terrible.

7.)  Ghost Rider - I know, I know, I just said that the studios approved Jonah Hex on the heels of Ghost Rider BUT, even though a small box office bounty, Ghost Rider’s campy script and ridiculous villains places it on this list.  I will admit that although I am a Nicholas Cage fan (for such hits as FACE OFF and LORD OF WAR) even he couldn’t salvage this film.  This should be shown in a film class on how to have world class special effects and good actors and STILL be a bomb people want to forget.

6.)  Trinity - Wait, isn’t that another Ryan Reynolds movie?  Why, yes it is!  I don’t think it’s a secret that Blade was an incredible film.  I even give Blade II props for putting together a stellar cast, strong special effects, and a great storyline.  But Trinity just made no sense from the beginning.  It also has the distinction of being the first movie to prominently feature the made-up Esperanto language.  All this on top of bringing in new people, killing off old ones, and Ryan Reynolds’ tired sarcastic monologues (yet, in all of Hollywood’s brilliance this chowderhead is cast as Green Lantern, which stank, and now Deadpool where his mouth may prove valuable).  Although I haven’t seen it I understand that the DVD’s “extras” include a scene where Goyer the writer interviews Goyer the Director.  It’s kind of like ramming your head into a wall but with less opportunity for reward.

5.)  Green Lantern - By this point you must think that I have it out for Ryan Reynolds and, frankly, I do in a way.  I’m not a big fan since his only acting consists of remarks that aren’t funny that he tries to make funny.  There’s not much range to his acting.  But, I’m not the only one who feels this way about the movie.  Rotten Tomatoes gave it a 26% green splotchy thing and it got a staggering 1.5 stars.  (See?  It’s not just me.)  What with Ryan’s usual lines of sarcasm and the incredibly dull writing, this film took an awesome comic character and smashed it to pieces.  I know Hal Jordan and you, sir, are no Hal Jordan.  Add this to the list of garage sale fodder.

4.)  Barb Wire - Many would like you to forget this movie based on a short lived comic series, especially Pamela Anderson who played the lead character.  Being a huge Pamela Anderson fan, and not for her acting, I could see why she shouldn’t be counted on to pull this movie above it’s poor premise and “Casablanca-esque” writing.  That being said, Pamela does have the “attributes” needed for the tight fit latex costumes that grace the super-heroines.  This film however did not have the “attributes” needed to make it a good film.  If you have a choice between watching this movie and jumping on broken glass weigh your options.

3.)  Catwoman  Watch how two terrible films effect one another...it’s kind of neat.  Tim Burton and Michelle Pfeiffer (remember her?  me neither) were given the thumbs up to make this film while the Batman franchise was all the rage.  Unfortunately, the script for this movie was delivered the same day that Batman Forever premiered and it was mothballed (this is a classic case of cause and effect.  you didn’t think you’d be learning physics today did you?)   After years of bickering Halle Berry was cast as Catwoman and French visual effects supervisor Pitof was selected to make the film work.  It didn’t.  It earned Halle a Razzie and Pitof an early retirement.

2.)  The Spirit (2008) - This was an epic failure on more than one front.  First, the effects in this movie were nothing short of horrific.  You could make better effects in your kitchen with a couple of eggs, some yarn, a paper clip and a pinch of oregano.  Second, they took a huge success in Will Eisner’s character The Spirit and reduced it to burning rubble.  If the name sounds familiar, yes, we are talking about THE Will Eisner who the prestigious Eisner Award is named after.  They took his baby, not just anyone’s baby, HIS baby, and trashed it.    It had unforgettably bizarre and disturbing acting from Scarlett Johansson and Samuel Jackson (who played the character “Octopus”).  The height of the movie is when The Spirit is bound in a contraption resembling a dentist chair while Jackson in an SS type uniform drones on about death.  That, in itself, pegs the gag-meter.

1.)  Howard the Duck - How could this possibly be the worst comic adaptation?  Easily.  This was George Lucas’ baby after he stepped down as president of LucasFilm to focus on producing.  He should have stayed as President and rested on his Star Wars fame.  It’s a shame, really, as Howard the Duck is a great character that has come a long way since his introduction in Adventure into Fear in 1973.  He has a certain style with his direct and cruel wit accompanied by his love of cigars.  The problem is that the character in the film was nothing like that.  He was amiable and lovable....NOT very Howard the Duck.  There was also a sexual side, which was never in the comics, that became evident in the female duck whose nipples were evident on her rather large breasts throughout her scenes.  I’m not lying, watch the film and you tell me.  It was a brilliant idea gone astray and, if a movie is ever made again, I will deliberate between laying out the money for a ticket and laying the money on the floor and burning it.

Well, there you have it.  The Comic Whisperer’s list of The Top 10 Comic Book Movie Adaptations I’ve Tried To Push Out Of My Head.  Let me know if you have any additions or subtractions.  No matter how you slice it Ryan Reynolds has to go.