BSP Round Table: Best And Worst Of Comics And Super Heroes In 2014
By Nick Tylwalk
Question: What comic or super hero-related thing disappointed you the most in 2014, and why?
Steve:
Funny, I have to give you the same answer: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. My disappointment is most likely my own doing. After reading rumors upon rumors that a longer, more fleshed out Dawn of Justice teaser was attached to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, I got my hopes up thinking that we were going to see something. In the end, nothing.
I know it’s still one year, three months, and 25 days away (who’s counting?), but us fans need something! Pronto! Well, with the new year comes new possibilities, and that means 2015 will most definitely be WB/DC marketing the hell out of Dawn of Justice at full throttle. And no, there can never be too much Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman — especially if they’re going to be in the same shot!
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Frankie:
My biggest disappointment this year was without a doubt The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Very, very poor film, and I would just like for Marvel to get the rights back so we can have a new actor and have the story done the absolute right way.
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Roger:
In a general sense (and true since 2011), it’s the general muddle that is DC’s New 52.
But besides that, on the Marvel side (which is more of a passion for me), I must say I was not too thrilled with the AXIS crossover event. I think Marvel tried to cram too many characters, too many plot-lines, and too many stupid wisecracks (see Nick’s reviews of the first couple AXIS issues to see what I mean) by non-wisecracking characters. Plus — and this is an ongoing pet peeve that I have addressed in several of my reviews — Marvel has SO much trouble maintaining the continuity of their characters and plots. Aarggghhhhh …(as a now pacified Sabretooth might say).
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Matt:
I wanted to love Original Sin. The cast was good at the onset, and the promise of an old-fashioned murder mystery was great. But within a few issues, it became clear that the tie-ins were rarely even related to the main book, and the story became a Nick Fury story. I am trying to remember the last time I liked a Nick Fury story. I very possibly have never liked a Nick Fury story. AXIS was a bad crossover with offensive misunderstandings of the characters and a lousy villain cast, but I think Original Sin hurt me more because of how different the package was from the content.
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Aaron:
My worst thing is all the news about Batman vs Superman. I am a HUGE Batman fan,but all the rumours of heroes being in the film worries me a little. I fear that hero overload could ruin the film I’ve longed for for years.
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John:
Surprisingly enough, the series I have been most disappointed with is Batman Eternal. As a huge Bat-fan, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the first part of the series but have recently found it rather boring. For some reason, I still pick up every copy, knowing that I will most likely be disappointed after reading it.
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Nick:
It had a writer whose work I almost always enjoy, along with an all-star cast of artists. It had a can’t-miss premise bringing the Avengers and X-Men together. It even had the promise of an intriguing concept, with some familiar heroes and villains supposedly inverted in ways that went beyond just good guys turning bad and vice versa.
Somehow, AXIS still turned into a mess. Strangely paced and muddled because of the constant baton passing between pencillers, it also managed to fall exactly into the stereotypical tropes it said it was going to avoid. On top of that, parts of the story simply made no sense, and Marvel cut it off at the ankles early on by letting Jonathan Hickman plot ahead of it, launching Superior Iron Man early enough to spoil part of the ending, and promoting the crap out of Secret Wars so we knew that AXIS would be of little real consequence in the end.
And it was, which made me sad. I like event comics when they’re done right, but this one wasn’t.
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