Worst Moment of 2009

Jim Doom: Batman’s death!

As I wrote at the time, “The Flashes (I can’t tell Wally and Barry apart) are discussing what they need to do to stop Darkseid. Ok, so Darkseid needs to be stopped. He is ‘…sitting at the center of a personal singularity beyond the reach of light,’ this Flash says. ‘To get to him we’ll have to run faster than we ever have before.’ Gosh, it sounds virtually impossible to find Darkseid … and if you found him, you wouldn’t even be able to see him!

Then on the next page, Batman wanders into Darkseid’s room from a hallway. Not only did he find Darkseid … not only is he looking right at Darkseid … but he clearly states that he’s discovered Darkseid is ‘wounded … beyond repair.’ So Darkseid is already dying. He doesn’t need to be stopped. So what does Batman do? He decides he needs to shoot Darkseid with a god bullet to kill him. So he does that, but as he fires the bullet, Darkseid also shoots some zig-zaggy eye beams, a.k.a. ‘The Omega Sanction,’ which he thinks is fast enough that Batman might not be able to outrace it, yet it’s so slow that Batman can say ‘Hh’ and ‘Gotcha’ before it kills him.”

I fully submit that there may one day come a time where this scene is revealed to be much cooler and more logical than it appears. But I will stand by the assertion that when I see one of the coolest characters ever getting killed, I don’t want to have to say “Good Lord, that whole thing was moronic. Maybe he’ll seem like less of a buffoon after I read a miniseries two years in the future.”

The biggest insult in all of this was that Final Crisis had its happy ending because Superman used the God machine to wish for everything to go back to how it was. Except for, you know, Batman. Superman made sure to salvage his day job by fixing up the Daily Planet offices with his happy thoughts, but he was apparently totally cool with Batman staying dead.

Here’s what made our jaws drop in a bad way from previous years:

2008:
Jim Doom: The Wasp is dead
Doom DeLuise: “I’ll kill you to death!”
Fin Fang Doom: Morgan Le Fey casts her spell

2007:
Fin Fang Doom: Spider-Man’s Deal with Mephisto
Doom DeLuise: Black Adam Giving his Powers to Mary Marvel
Jim Doom: The Decapitation of Sabretooth

2006:
Doominator: Fill-in Issues of Detective Comics
Fin Fang Doom: Dick (Grayson) Sucking
Doom DeLuise: Dick Sucking

2005:
Fin Fang Doom: A flying horse poops on a lady’s head
Jim Doom: The somewhat arbitrary and very convenient wrap-ups to Marvel’s big events – Jim Doom
Jean-Claude Van Doom: Anything from The Other