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Sometimes I wonder how the comic book industry has been able to survive.  From bad editorial choices to gimmick covers, at times the industry feels like it’s trying to sabotage itself.  While we’ve seen tremendous growth over the past few years, we’ve also seen a return of the variant cover and ill-conceived storylines.  DC has Infinite Crisis, which takes place over so man books it’s almost impossible to collect them all without going into bankruptcy.  While Marvel has tried to released Civil Bore...um...War.  How are you going to reshape your comic universe and then miss every deadline sometimes twice?  Sigh...I love comics.  I just wish they would treat their fans with a little more respect. 

10 Superman Red/Blue – After the death of Superman didn’t revive the character DC almost really killed him by splitting him into two different Supermen.  For one year, Superman had electrical powers and new blue uniform.  At the end of 1997, he was split into two different versions and for the next few months, we had a red and blue Superman.  This single year long story almost destroyed the last Kryptonian and his books suffered for years after he was returned to his traditional uniform.

9.  Batman: War Games – Batman has had plenty of horrible crossovers (Knightfall anyone), none of them as bad and forgettable as Gang Wars.  After Robin quit and we get a female Robin, Stephanie Brown, aka Spoiler, she’s not quite on the level that the previous Robin.  To prove herself, she discovers one of Batman’s master plans.  If the Gotham Gangs ever got out of control, Batman would unite them all under his mob cover Matches Malone.  Once she sets things in place and Matches doesn’t show, it creates a huge war where Stephanie is eventually killed.  The aftermath left the Black Mask in charge of the Gotham Mob and all vigilantes are considered criminals.  The next year would have Batman coming out of the shadows and everyone in Gotham discovering he wasn’t an urban legend.  Sounds pretty good doesn’t it? And it would have been if DC didn’t immediately drop the idea and run a year long story that takes place before War Games and then gets fixated on the return of Jason Todd, which is all retconned thanks to Infinite Crisis.  That’s two years worth of stories down the drain.

8.  Killing of Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman – Comic book companies are notorious for screwing up even the best of intentions.  Never mind that you had to collect around 40 books leading into Infinite Crisis and once it began you had almost every book in the DC universe caught up in it. If you wanted to just collect the core mini-series you would be screwed because one of the biggest events in the series doesn’t happen in it.  After the Blue Beetle found out that Maxwell Lord was behind the OMAC’s and taking control of Batman’s satellite Brother Eye, Maxwell kills him.  Eventually Wonder Woman finds out and instead of killing him in the book where it’s revealed that he’s the mastermind behind it all, you find out in a three-issue Superman/Wonder Woman crossover.  Talk about taking the momentum out of a story. 

7.  Crisis on Infinite Earths – Sure it looks good on paper, let’s take all of DC’s different universes (basically all the characters that DC has purchased over the years) and combine in them into one big universe.  What resulted is one of the biggest crossovers in the comics universe and one of the biggest messes.  Twenty years later, three massive crossovers, several character reboots and DC is still trying to sort out what happened.  After their latest attempt to reconcile the event, Infinite Crisis, I’m sure we’ll see further retconned events taking place.

6.  Valiant Comics outs Jim Shooter – After leaving Marvel comics with Bob Layton and Barry Windsor-Smith, Jim Shooter founded Valiant Comics, which quickly became a hit and one of the fastest growing comic book companies.  Unlike early Image characters, the Valiant universe wasn’t a rip-off of Marvel and DC characters.  Launching in 1990, Valiant shot to the #3 place behind DC and Marvel.  When the private partners’ wanted to put the company up for sale, Shooter balked and he was canned.  Bob Layton took over and while the company sold huge amounts of books (Turok Dinosaur Hunter sold 1.75 million copies), it was put up for sale.  Eventually Acclaim Entertainment bought them in 1994 and renamed Valiant to Acclaim Comics to better sell video games based on the comics.  When the market fell out of the comic book market, Acclaim didn’t know how to run a publishing firm and sales slumped.  It folded in 2004 but it died long before that.

5.  Clone Saga – Another high concept story that almost killed a hugely popular character beyond repair.  When a clone of Spider-Man known as the Scarlet Spider shows up, everyone wonders what’s going on.  Tests are done and the Scarlet Spider aka Ben Reilly turns out to have been the Spider-Man for the past 30 years and the Scarlet Spider is really Peter Parker.  It’s later found out that Norman Osborn tampered with the results.  Silly Goblin.  Eventually, Ben is killed saving Peter’s life against the Green Goblin.  During that battle, the very pregnant Mary Jane is poisoned by one of Osborn’s henchmen and the baby appears to be dead upon delivery.  Turns out the baby is alive and stolen by someone.  What happened to the baby?  Who knows, but Marvel wants you to forget that ever happened.  I’m sure the little bastard will turn up eventually to ruin the books once again. 

4.  Civil War – An answer to DC Comics huge universe wide crossover Infinity Crisis, Marvel released the highly anticipated Civil War in May of 2006.  What began as a seven issue limited series has taken ten months to complete and created several unnecessary filler books to keep fans interested while waiting two or three months for the next issue of Civil War.  Marvel shows almost no control over the entire series with some books coming out with conflicting versions of the same story.  What could have been a great mini-series turned into a classic comic blunder.  Here is an idea for Marvel and DC; when you’re doing a huge mini-series that redefines your entire universe, get the books out on time.  To get the entire event you would need to collect 123 individual comics.

3.  CrossGen – Speaking of comic blunders, CrossGen seemed like the new business model for comics but quickly turned into a horrible memory.  Launching in January 2000, CrossGen seemed fresh and new by launching a whole universe not focused on spandex comics.  By June 2004, CrossGen shuttered their doors and sold off everything to Disney for a million dollars.  What happened?  Apparently it’s expensive to run a comic book company and founder Mark Alessi quit paying people, which created a vortex of failure dragging the company down further and further into the abyss.  Where is Mark Alessi now?  No one knows…some says he’s a ghost that walks among us; other say he’s just a myth.

2.  Marvel Self Distribution – As the bottom was falling out of the comic book market in 1994 and the different publishers made exclusive distribution deals with different companies, Marvel thought it would be best to distribute their own books and purchased Heroes World.  Marvel found out the hard way that maybe someone else should deal with distributing their comics because two years later, they filed for bankruptcy.  At one point there was even rumor of Marvel selling off some of their biggest characters to help pay for their legal troubles.  Eventually, Marvel was able to dig out of the hole they created and now they are standing strong again.

1.  Catering to the Collectors Market – The early 90’s created one of the most successful times for comic books.  Books were selling million plus issues and things looks bright for the industry.  What could be better?  Well how about the same issue you just purchased but with this time it’s got 5-13 different covers, a collectible trading card and a polychrome finish.  Who could resist?  Few did.  By the summer of 1993, the high ended and like a junkie overdosing on cheap smack, it wasn’t pretty.  Between 1993 and 1997, two-thirds of all comic book stores closed and several publishers.  Marvel declared bankruptcy and almost had to quit publishing as well.  DC was able to stay afloat due to the fact it was sold to Warner Brothers in the mid-90’s.

Too early to tell the effects Honorable Mentions:  The Illuminati – Marvel re-cons the entire universe in six issues.  How bad will this screw things up?  Only time will tell.