Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Characters you hate

Keith Giffen:
"If I go on it again, he's dead. Two words: super karate. Hey, everybody in the field has a character they hate. I just have the bad taste to say it out loud."

heh- bad taste and LW go together like Pepsi and Pluberry pie.

SO

Got a character you hate? Really just can't stand it when he/she shows up? C'mon, this is Legion World, we won't tell anybody. It'll be our secret.



Mine?
The Demon.

..and Merlin (comic book versions of big Merle are always so stupid the story's all but indigestable)
Hey, I can only suspend my disbelief just SO far and that's all you get.

I did like "Gone gone the form of man.." but I think "Jekyl and Hyde" been rewritten and over done to death...(enough with the magic-word-change alter egoes please) and since most writers can't rhyme worth fart in a thunderstorm (all sound and fury) his dialouge always comes out lame (at best) or doggeral most often.

If he'd learn to speak in limericks he might be
salvageable.

I was gonna say Moondragon, but then I found out she's dead. YAY! YIPEE! HOORAY!

Back on topic, I'll think of someone else soon.

Please George Lucus, can I write the JarJar Binks C-3PO team-up book?

I can guarantee the golden one will be creatively splintered into metal that will somehow get kill of the other one as well.

Once upon a time it was Cable and Bishop but that's changed. I generally dislike characters I'm supposed to love and feel like are being rammed down my throat, and usually make them 'earn it' before I like them.

Hm. None I neccessarily hate that I can think of.

Maybe Wildebeast from Titans. Oh, and Monstress from Legion. Both of them were no loss to me...hate may be a strong word, though I definitely would say I 'hated' seeing them on screen. One's death made for a great death scene (Monstress) and the other for all kinds of great jokes on Legion World (Wildebeast, and Pantha too for that matter).

Lobo. I wouldn't even have read the sections in 52 with him in it if it hadn't been for the other characters. At least he's not in every DC comic anymore. For me, Lobo is like the band KISS, just an embarrassing moment in our lives.

Wolverine...a Timber Wolf knock off with all the bad character traits possible and none of the good. To make matters worse he seems to have become the one, absolute, must have character in the Marvel Universe and pollutes every book over there with his presence.

Lobo, definitely (good commentary, Cramer. I fully agree).

It's hard to think of anyone else as annoying, but I'm sure there are some just slipping my mind.

Paralleling YK, most versions of Morgaine Le Fey turn my stomach. Claremont/Bolton's Morgaine in The Black Dragon was a rare exception. Kirby's was gawdawful.

Anytime Morgaine Le Fey turns up in a comic its usually cringe-worthy. I can't think of one single time where she's worked. Marvel seems to periodically use her too, which is annoying.

When I first was old enough to pick up comics off the newstands, the industry was filled with 1,000 appearances a month for each of this: Punisher, Wolverine, Ghost Rider, Lobo and Guy Gardner. It was a terrible, terrible time for comics.

good list, Cobie, for that era. If I hadn't already been off of Universe-based comics, I would have bolted then and there. As it was, I did suffer from the initial burst of Guy Gardner, as GL was an old favorite, and JLI was fun (and largely but not completely Lobo-free).

And if you'll forgive the reiteration, as a fellow Morrgaine connoisuer, if you do stumble upon The Black Dragon (a 6-issue Epic mini from the early-mid 80s, possibly a TPB in more recent years), it is worth it for the art alone (Morgaine plays a small but pivotal role, and not a villainous one).

"I was gonna say Moondragon, but then I found out she's dead. YAY! YIPEE! HOORAY!"

Really? Hmm.

But... FOR HOW LONG???

I liked her way back when... but, honestly, ONLY 2 writers EVER wrote her properly-- Steve Gerber, and her creator, Jim Starlin. Even Steve Englehart treated her badly-- and he usually doesn't do that. After him, the ball started rolling, each writer making things worse than the one before... I mean, it's no wonder so many people hate her.


"Wolverine...a Timber Wolf knock off with all the bad character traits possible and none of the good. To make matters worse he seems to have become the one, absolute, must have character in the Marvel Universe and pollutes every book over there with his presence."

I never really liked him much. And after Cockrum & Byrne-- forget it. Every other version since-- UNREADABLE. So imagine my surprise when Hugh Jackman-- who almost got fired from the 1st X-MEN movie over it-- managed to "smooth out" the character's rough edges-- NOT MUCH-- but just barely enough-- to make me LIKE him! It sure wasn't the writing-- it was his performance. (Ditto Patrick Stewart as Prof. X-- who'se been writen in the comics an an unlikeable A**H*** for the vast majority of his existence as a character.)


"Anytime Morgaine Le Fey turns up in a comic its usually cringe-worthy. I can't think of one single time where she's worked. Marvel seems to periodically use her too, which is annoying."

I kept wondering why Marv Wolfman used her as like the "main" villain in his run of SPIDER-WOMAN. Not long after, she turned up in the DR. STRANGE tv-movie-- and "The Ancient One", rather than being an old Chinese guy, was an old ENGLISH guy-- just like in Marv's SPIDER-WOMAN comics. You think the tv people were reading the wrong comics for reference? She was played by Jessica Walter (the psycho-bitch from hell of PLAY MISTY FOR ME) in the DS movie. I much better liked the Morgan played by Jenny Agutter in a color early-80's TWILIGHT ZONE episode.


I bet I could come up with a lonnnnnnnnng list of my own characters to hate. But off the top of my head (maybe 'cause I'm re-reading my 60's Marvels right now), I'd say... J.Jonah Jameson. You know, on the 1967 SPIDER-MAN cartoons, he was "comic relief". In the comics-- HE'S NOT FUNNY. He was bad enough in the Steve Ditko issues. In the John Romita issues? The guy NEEDS A PSYCHIATRIST. Badly. He's clearly insane-- and far more nuts than most of the super-villains running around. In the real world, he'd have been put out of business long ago from all the lawsuits...


Oh yeah-- ans MAN-THING. Not much of a "character" at all, it he-- er, it. In the early-mid 70's, that damned thing turned up EVERYWHERE-- even in MASTER OF KUNG FU!

Phantom Girl
Lobo
Katanna
Guy Gardner
Blue Beetle (Ted)
Booster Gold
Wonder Girl (cassie)
Empress
Secret
Lagoon Boy
Big Barda
Arrowette
Fire
Ice
MAxwell Lord
Oberon
Zauriel
MAtter Eater Lad
Batgirl (Cassandra)
Plastic Man & Son

And if I had more time I'm sure I could list about 20 more

The Zero Hour Legion & The 3Boot Legion

Okay, there's been a lot of talk about Morgaine LeFay, so I take it that we can post about villains.

I...

HATE...

THANOS!

And not in a "love-to-hate" way, just plain hate.

Even though I love Starlin's Captain Marvel vs. Thanos and Warlock vs. Thanos sagas from the 70s, the villain was IMO the least interesting thing about those stories. It was the inner journeys of the troubled heroes that gave those stories their spark. Starlin has even admitted that Thanos is a Marvel analog of Darkseid, who himself has tended not to work as often as he should.

When Thanos was resurrected (by Starlin himself, which cost Starlin a lot of my respect) and hyped as the biggest baddest villain in the MU and given not one but TWO awful mini-series (three if you count the Silver Surfer arc where Grape-Face first reappeared) the hollowness of this character was revealed for all to see, as a sad little death-fixated nihilist with an inferiority complex. Poor baby.

Needless to say, when I read spoilers for the first Annihilation mini-series and found out that Drax had at last fulfilled his destiny by killing Thanos, I was infinitely happy.

I think I saw part of that one (although I assumed it was late 80s, not that I ever knew for certain]. I recall a bit where Morgaine and a knight (Lancelot, I believe) had to deal with an off-his-rocker Merlin in a modern-day setting. I liked what I saw of that ep.

Wow. I'm surprised by the Morgana comments, completely unexpected but right on the money..and YES!! The meeting between Eleanor of Aquitaine and Morgana leFey in Black Dragon was a magnificent comic book moment, well worth the price of admission.

It's hard for me to hate a comic book character, since most of them have wildly disparate presentations.

I strongly dislike what Wolverine has become and Batgod (who is not the same character as Batman, who is an awesome character).

I don't like Quislet, and feel he detracted from the feel of the book at the time of his introduction.

I hate Garth-as-Proty and the Jan Arrah who went insane and killed half of the universe, but that doesn't make me dislike the 'real' Garth or Jan at all, in fact it just makes me kind of angrily defensive of them, because they deserve better.

I hate the Clark of Smallville, because he's a pretentious ass who is always judging his friends, lying to everyone and making passive-agressive statements like, 'You mean you don't trust me?' after lying his ass off for the 10,000th time, putting all the guilt on his so-called friends for asking, 'Dude, you just totally contradicted yourself?'

I agonizingly, over much time, came to loathe Duncan MacLeod, for also becoming a judgemental ass who seemed to be looking for excuses to whack people's heads off. 'Oh, you slapped your girlfriend! That's a beheading! No, no, don't protest that we've been friends for centuries and that I killed your best friend, that's no excuse...'

As always, Stealth and I either violently agree or violently disagree. Moondragon was always a favorite. She was Psylocke, Jean Grey and Illia (Persis Khambatta's character in the first Star Trek movie) all rolled into one. Plus she's got Monet-level attitude, which is always fun.

I seriously dislike Superboy-Prime since his return in Infinite Crisis. The fact that they took one of the more poignant (if not nearly developed enough) side stories of the original Crisis and basically pissed all over it to create a villain irks me beyond all belief.

You beat me to it, I tried to like them and have every issue to prove it, I guess in hope that the magic would return one day, but it never came because the magic to me was the originals history and characters,And the more I read these two the more it made me miss my Legion.

As you said, we either agree or disagree to extremes. If you're referring to the Batgod of the past 12 years, who first appeared in Grant Morrison's JLA, then we're definitely in agreement here. Batgod is such a #@%$%^% smug know-it-all*. One of my favorite scenes in Green Lantern: Rebirth is when Hal Jordan punches Batgod in the face.


*Come to think of it, Batgod is not a million miles away from Morrison's public persona. No surprise there.

Jason Todd - The ultimate example of dead should mean dead.

Guy Gardner - The least likable of the Green Lanterns.

Nubia - She didn't work the first time. She didn't work the second time.

X-23. She's been shoved down our throats and she's just a young Wolverine, like there aren't enough wolvie-type knock-offs already.

For a long time I hated Matter Eater Lad and Bouncing Boy. Other LWers have shown me the light. I don't hate the characters...I just hate their powers and codenames.

Oh the Winter Soldier. Hate the entire idea. Nomad was twice the character he is.

While certainly not a character I "hate", the fact that Green Arrow or any other archer character is actually taken seriously puzzles me tremendously. I mean... he dresses like Robin Hood and fights crime with a freakin' bow and arrow! If there was ever a comic book concept that should be played primarily for laughs... that's it!

Noman of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents
Brilliant concept but so badly executed..and the Invisibility Cloak just added insult to injury. He should have been the mad brilliant scientist behind their exploits but instead he came off as inept either as hero OR a scientist.

I'm not really sure I can explain it but he really really annoys (annoyed) me.

(le sigh)