Worst Storyline in an Ongoing Series of 2009


Jim Doom: Mon-El in Charge!

I’ve slowly learned to respect James Robinson, but almost everything he’s done in Superman has just been downright clumsy. To start with, Superman is able to save Mon-El thanks to some mystery potion that just magically appears. But the basic premise behind leaving Mon-El in charge of Metropolis is inherently flawed.

The whole idea is that Earthlings don’t trust Kryptonians, so the Kryptonians are all banished to New Krypton. There is one exception – Earthlings trust Superman, so it’s okay for him to stay.

So what happens? Superman needs to keep an eye on General Zod, so he renounces Earth (for pretend!) to gain admission to New Krypton. And then he leaves Mon-El to take his place. As I wrote at the time,

“How would this work? The whole functional premise behind this is that Earthlings only trust Superman when it comes to Kryptonians. If I’m an Earthling, I’m not so sure that the distinction between Kryptonians and Daxamites would effectively be anything more than a semantic argument — they’re still super-powered flying people that I don’t know and I don’t trust. Superman could very easily say ‘Hey, it’s cool, Mon-El is someone you can depend on,’ except for the fact that Superman just publicly defected from Earth to join the people that the Earthlings don’t trust.”

Add to this mess that Superman #686 climaxed with “Mon-El debuts his new haircut” and I give you this year’s winner.

Here’s what dumb things we kept reading in previous years:

2008:
Fin Fang Doom: Spider-Man, “New Ways to Die”
Doom DeLuise: Robin, “Search for a Hero”
Jim Doom: New Avengers / Mighty Avengers “Secret Invasion backstory”

We started this category in 2008.