The Worst character in comics

[Adventus]

This is a companion thread to the best Super in comics.

Who do you think is the worst Super in comics? In storyline, plot, back-story and ongoing story and character concept?

And I mean a regular ongoing character. Not someone who showed up for a few issues and was never seen again.

[MilkmanDan]

Cable is pretty awful. An extremely violent super-powerful telekinetic who can't really use his telekinesis because of a techno-organic virus that was engineered by his own clone and he carries around big guns and has a glowing eye for no real good reason and is the child of a major character and his dead former wife who was a clone of his first love who died then came back to life but wasn't really her and then died again and really was just in a pod under the water and came back and when the clone found out she became evil and the son was taken into the future to be raised by future selves of major character and real woman #1 and then came back to fight evil.

I think that pretty much captures it.

[Querysphinx]

I think the question ought to be, which is the worst major character in comics, other than Cable, because Cable is the obvious number one choice.

[Psybolt]

As a huge Spider-man fan, I have to say the Scarlet Spider. Still makes me want to murder something when I think about the Clone Saga garbage.

[Log-Man]

Cable is pretty awful. An extremely violent super-powerful telekinetic who can't really use his telekinesis because of a techno-organic virus that was engineered by his own clone and he carries around big guns and has a glowing eye for no real good reason and is the child of a major character and his dead former wife who was a clone of his first love who died then came back to life but wasn't really her and then died again and really was just in a pod under the water and came back and when the clone found out she became evil and the son was taken into the future to be raised by future selves of major character and real woman #1 and then came back to fight evil.

I think that pretty much captures it.

I was going to say Cable anyway, but I didn't realize just how bad it was. He's like the Platonic idea of awful.

[MilkmanDan]

I forgot to mention "and was created and 'drawn' by Rob Liefeld".

[Cygnia]

Does Joe Quesada count as a character?

[DusterBoy]

Captain Britain. Bleuch!

Once more with the "British guy created by Yanks who have never been to Britain" and the only concept they can come up with is King Arthur - 'cos that's all they've ever heard of.

Captain America works because America (ie the US) is one country. Britain is four countries - England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Britain is a "metanation".

A better concept would have been "John Bull" - the English version of Uncle Sam. Okay - he's meant to be British, but people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would see him as English. However, unlike Uncle sam, he is not a figure of authority (esp not the Authority).

[Cygnia]

Captain Britain. Bleuch!

Once more with the "British guy created by Yanks who have never been to Britain" and the only concept they can come up with is King Arthur - 'cos that's all they've ever heard of.

Captain America works because America (ie the US) is one country. Britain is four countries - England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Britain is a "metanation".

A better concept would have been "John Bull" - the English version of Uncle Sam. Okay - he's meant to be British, but people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would see him as English. However, unlike Uncle sam, he is not a figure of authority (esp not the Authority).

Can a different writer save/fix the concept though? I've read that Paul Cornell will be working on a Captain Britain series and he IS English.

[Hermit]

I think Union Jack has the cooler costume myself

And I've thought about it, and I still can't really top Cable for sheer suckiness.

[Doomed Prophet]

Good thing this isn't a poll... I think Cable would be running unopposed...

BTW: That's my pick too... Never cared for Cable, or what Liefield did to comics...

[Lawnmower Boy]

Call me crazy, but I like both the Scarlet Spider and Cable. The problem with both of them is that they got in the way of the story that comics cannot bring themselves to tell. (How Peter/Mary Jane and Scott/Jean grew up.) Don't blame the characters; blame the industry, which for some reason thinks that comics characters can't have life cycles because we wouldn't identify with them any more.
Some counter-intuitive choices:
i) Superman/Doctor Strange/Spectre: "You know who would make a great protagonist in a serial drama? Someone omnipotent!"
ii) Aquaman/The Submariner: Cool character or not, useful powers or not, they're underwater. There's no bank robberies underwater. Heck, there aren't even any refrigerators, although credit both series' writers for coming up with alternatives. (I just thank Heavens that no-one seems to notice that Susan Storm is Namor's mistress [and Reed and Ben's beard], because I like her and she's stayed out of the fridge for 40 years.)
iii) The Phantom. "Thank Heavens us nice Black people have a White hero to defend us forever!"

[godjam]

I also have to defend Cable and Scarlet Spider a little bit, after all SS is just Spider-Man without the back story weighing him down. How you can hate a character who is basically the SAME CHARACTER as Spidey puzzles me.
As for Cable, there are other X-Men who offend me even more:

BISHOP- What is this guy still doing here? Yey he saved the X-Men now kill him off already. I'm sick of him and his expert martial artist/ detective/ bounty hunter/ edgey X-Guy thing. District X tanked for a reason. And his power? 'Actually i can absorb massive amounts of raw energy- kinetic, electric or even psychic(?)'
and Havok for the simple reason that he's STILL got an inferiority complex about his big brother, oh and for treating Polaris, the woman he supposedly loves, like dirt.

Overall i'd agree that underwater people leave me kind of cold as character concepts, they're just too limited. Although hate Aquaman A LOT more than submariner. A lot more.
But for my money some of the Avengers are pretty dire- (Triathalon) and i know i might get some stick for this but here goes-Giant Man (Or Ant Man, or Yellow Jacket) the guy grows AND shrinks using something called Pym particles!! Come on, he's worth a mention.

GOJ

[Kirby]

My personal preferences, in order:

1. Wolverine (modern)
2. Iron Man (Civil War junk)
3. Hulk
4. Batman - Jetix cartoon version

[wcw43921]

Even though the character was the basis for the Dark Champions genre, with apologies to Mr. Long, I say The Punisher is the worst. Not only is he a gun-wielding vigilante killer in a genre where such characters would--should--suffer the same fate as villains, he's a blatant plaigarism of Don Pendleton's character The Executioner. All Marvel did to create him was take Mack Bolan and put him in tights with a big skullface emblem. There's nowhere near as much similarity between Superman and Captain Marvel, as between The Demon With A Glass Hand and The Terminator, as there is between The Punisher and The Executioner.

To this day it surprises me that there wasn't a lawsuit, either by Pendleton or Pinnacle Books. Because they would have won, and The Punisher would be nothing more than a distasteful, insignificant memory.