Award for messing up the most characters at one time:
–Original Sin: Because while Original Sin completely bungled everything that made original Nick Fury cool, it also managed to retroactively make everything suck after the year 1949.
–Marvel Axis: Because only Marvel could come up with a sales pitch where everything you love is taken away for nine issues and replaced with a shit stew that’s been fermenting in a prison toilet.
–Lobo: Although this one gets in on a technicality, technically DC has made three different new “Lobo”s. There’s Rob Liefield’s pitiful skid mark, “Robo”. There’s Stormwatch’s “I can’t believe it’s not Lobo”. And finally there’s the boring, vapid, but pretty Lobo I like to call “Michael Bay-bo”.
And the Winner is:
Axis! What a triumph, timing your relaunch of the new Captain America with Axis. Now when everyone thinks back to Sam Wilson as Captain America they’ll think, “Hey, wasn’t that guy an asshole?” It’s funny how the whole book hinged on the idea that everyone’s personality had flipped! How crazy… except for Jarvis… and Spider-man… and Steve Rogers… and half the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the entire New York Jets Defensive line, etcetera. This event only really accomplished two things: it made almost a dozen books unreadable and it made it so nobody can get mad at Scott Summers for the murder of Xavier. Ha, suck it dead Wolverine!
Award for WTF is even happening?
–Infinity War: A late entrant last year so missed the nomination period but let me say, from the bottom of my heart, WTF was even happening? I know it was all about Thanos but why were there aliens invading Wakanda? A magic alien possessing Doctor Strange? Terrigan mist? Thanos has a son? The whole event was so bloated it fell over and spilled inside the microwave.
–The New 52: Futures End: So the book is set five years in the future. Green Arrow is dead (Spoilers! He’s not), all the characters we didn’t care about in Earth 2 are front and center, and again we find Superman asking why he’s in Africa. Nothing makes sense but fret not because collectible 3D covers!
–Batman Eternal: An idea by DC to reinvigorate the Bat franchise by publishing a fourth book with Batman. Instead now this one is weekly. And in it, Batman faces off against his old mafia enemy Falcone… and somehow this isn’t resolved immediately after issue one.
And the Winner is:
The New 52: Futures End! And what a winner it is. The book is so confusing I don’t even understand the title. Apparently the whole of the DC universe time jumped forward to accommodate this awful and bloated cancer of an event. Any and all current arks were sidetracked in order so that everyone could participate because participation was mandatory. That’s why I still like Constantine. Out of all the books that were roped into this event, Constantine was the only one that decided to change nothing—Nothing! Not the places, the people, the events, the storyline. The only thing that it did was slap a banner on the front page that read “Five Years Later” and carry on, business as usual.
Award for Why Aren’t You Reading this Yet? Do You Not Enjoy Good Things?
–Angela: Angela? I know, who cares about some weird nineties character Neil Gaiman came up for after Todd Macfarlane offered him a truckload of that sweet nineties comic book money? Well after she thoroughly kicked ass through Guardians of the Galaxy, she’s gone on to solo in her own book as the murder angel of all the stabby assassins—and she looks so cool doing it.
–Grayson: Yeah I know, it baffled me too. Not only was this book conceived under the most disgusting circumstances, by all measures it should not have worked. Dick is not a super spy… and yet.
–Batgirl: Uh, this relaunch fixed everything. That. Never. Happens. Not only is the character much more relatable but she’s become fun once more. Now, not every corner of the Bat universe is filled with doom and gloom, finally we have a ray of sunshine once more.
And the Winner is:
Grayson! What a horrid and festering event Forever Evil was. It knocked out the trinity for practically an entire year only for them to come back without much of an explanation except a sheepish grin and a shrug. And out of that we were told that Dick Grayson was to go deep undercover and we were solicited Dick on the cover wielding an enormous handgun. It had all the check marks for being a poorly cobbled together action hero. But, that first issue came out and it was thrilling. But more than that, it put the Midnighter in the book—and somehow that was cool. Through the entire run there has been no sign of a depression in the work either. Dick Grayson is still very much himself, he just gets to be this cool, snarky secret agent now and absolutely everyone should be reading it.