Worst Ongoing Series of 2007


Doominator says: Justice League of America!

You know when there’s supposed to be this awesome thing that happened awesomely and it was awesome? Brad Meltzer’s plodding JLA missed the mark by lengths that are staggering. Was it the worst thing to happen to comics this year? Well, probably not. But to determine worst, you have to temper the hype surrounding everything. Weighing hype with delivery, JLA was like that semester when you told your parents you were going to make honor roll and instead spent “homework time” beating off to Christina Aguilera videos. Not that I would know.

Fin Fang Doom says: Exiles!

Exiles 100Exiles used to be one of my favorite series in comics. It was one of those rare circumstances where I picked up the first issue on a whim and was immediately hooked. I’d say that throughout the years, it had it’s up and downs, but that’s not really true. It’s pretty much always been up. Judd Winick’s run was great, Tony Bedard’s run was great…hell, even Chuck Austen’s run was great. That’s right, Chuck freaking Austen. Exiles seemed like it would join Amazing Spider-Man, Uncanny and adjective-less X-Men as one of the titles where if they’re still publishing it, I’d still be buying it.

Then along came 2007, and along came the worst villain to ever plague the Exiles. Worse than the Phalanx, worse than Hyperion, even worse than Proteus. That dastardly villain was none other then fabled X-scribe extraordinaire, Chris Claremont. Claremont jumped on the book in January band proceeded to clean house. Power Princess left with to make room for Claremont’s pet project Psylocke. Heather Hudson was taken out and replaced by Ultimate-esque Shadowcat. The Timebreaker bugs were taken out so the new higher power could be Roma or whoever from the Captain Britain Corps. Spider-Man 2099 and Longshot left to bring in a non-blue, non-female Mystique and a Rogue. By late 2007, Exiles was looking less and less like the book I’d loved for six years and more and more lie Chris Claremont’s personal playground. Then Claremont did the unthinkable…he replaced Blink with Sage.

Way back when, Blink was the reason Exiles was created. For some reason that escapes me, she became incredibly popular when she debuted and was killed in the Phalanx Covenant, and that popularity escalated when Blink reappeared in the Age of Apocalypse. So Marvel created Exiles, a book about a team of characters from different dimensions trying to save the multiverse one universe at a time, to cash in on that popularity. Team members have come and gone through the years, some as the result of a heroic death, some as the result of treachery, but there was always a good reason why they weren’t on the team. “I don’t want to anymore” was never used as an excuse, because these characters never stopped wanting to do good. They’re heroes, after all. They just weren’t the heroes Chris Claremont preferred to play with, I guess.

Like I said, Exiles used to be one of my favorite titles. Claremont came on in January 2007, and 12 months later, I dropped the book out of disgust. That’s pretty much as bad as you can get.

Doom DeLuise says: Justice League of America!

JLA 16Justice League of America went from bad, at the beginning of the year, to much worse by the end. Not even a change in creative worked for it, since Dwayne McDuffie (SURPRISE!!) actually took the SHIT that Brad Meltzer was working on and made it, like, twice as bad. Maybe thrice as bad. And it was already really, really bad, so that’s saying something. I mean, we had to endure that dreadful Lightning Saga this year, along with several lame duck issues before we were given the rise of the Injustice League, which did nothing more than make the Justice League’s villains look like pathetic little wimps. They amassed a giant Legion of Doom, and it was rendered completely ineffectual within four or so issues. And the grand conclusion to that whole mess? The villains have been shipped off to a remote planet, and another character with a red costume has joined the League. Oh, but, wait, Firestorm is being used to power Brother Eye over in the pages of Countdown, so how could he possibly have joined the Justice League in their series? DC makes me so mad sometimes.

Honorable mention: Both Superman titles.

Jim Doom says: Justice League of America!

I’d like to say Countdown, but I think since it’s finite, it really just counts as an extended mini-series. As far as regular series with no predetermined conclusion, I’m probably unfortunately going to have to choose Justice League of America.

Brad Meltzer did nothing in 13 issues, so I naively assumed that Dwayne McDuffie couldn’t get any worse. Boy was I wrong. He took something that was intelligent yet irrelevant and made it idiotic and repulsive. I just don’t understand how it can be so hard to write the Justice League.

A message to all you comic writers: If comic writers from the 1960s can figure out something, you should be able to as well!

I mean for crying out loud, this series got so bad, I dropped it! Nobody should ever have a reason to drop Justice League of America! Fin Fang Doom even dropped it, and he has a McDuffie for Dwayne!

Hey! Check out what we had to say about this category in 2006 and 2005!