The Worst and the Best of 2002

December 19, 2002

By Avi Green

The year is ending, and so, it’s now time to dish out opinions on what some of the worst and the best stuff of the year was. So let’s cut to the chase and see what rhinestones were being published this year for starters.

The losers of the year

Iron Man. As I write this, it’s interesting to note that I’ve recently been reading Kurt Busiek’s 1998 miniseries, The Iron Age, which retells the origin of Tony Stark’s armored alter ego for the new era, and not only that, it even respects the hero and the people who rally round him, such as Pepper Potts, the former boxer from Queens who became his chauffer and later also an executive employee for his beautiful redheaded executive secretary, and Harold “Happy” Hogan,Stark Enterprises and Pepper’s husband. Tony is certainly a man with moral flaws, but one who’s still a very talented and kindly man who, deep within, has more than plenty of redeeming features that he’s able to bring out.

But under the overrated Mike Grell’s writing in the current 2002 issues, much of this goes down the drain, thanks mostly to Grell’s apparent lack of interest in focusing on either Tony or his own armor plated alter ego. The beginning issue by Grell, Iron Man #50 vol. 2, was in very questionable taste, and overall a spectacular failure. Worst part, however, was his shockingly ill treatment of Pepper Potts, by having her get assaulted by the very questionable character of Ayisha, who’d been turned into a cybernetic witch, terminating Pepper’s pregnancy, the part that really turned me off. This was really sick and degrading, and goes to show that Grell hasn’t learned much since the time when he wrote Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters for DC, in which Black Canary was brutally assaulted in an act of excessive writing.

Plus, the way that the battle between Tony and Po, son of the Mandarin, and even Tony’s revealing his secret ID to the world was done with surprising awkwardness. In the former example, Tony faces off against Po while the latter uses simply his martial arts skills and not the power rings that his father used. While I’m sure that Po is an expert martial artist, there’s just no way that he could be quick enough to dodge Iron Man’s weapons, and so, the duel was underwhelming. In the latter, Tony reveals his identity as IM while going to rescue a pet that’s in the way of a car, and we’re supposed to believe that he can fit on his armor plates as fast as the Flash can get his costume on. Not that I’ve got anything against Tony Stark unmasking his secret identity to the public, but if it’s going to be done with such alarming haste, then that, to say the least, is simply bad writing, and only serves to undermine the entire story’s credibility.

And then, just when you think it couldn’t get worse, Grell dredges up yet another story involving the boring bad guy Tyler Stone. I just couldn’t believe that IM’s writers were making yet another dreadful mistake in storytelling, using a crook who’s already proven worthless, and continues to be so. They seem to be trying to turn him into IM’s answer to Mysterio, but unfortunately, such villains don’t work for IM, because Shellhead’s sensory systems make it impossible for Mysterio’s illusionary gimmicks, or even Ty Stone’s virtual reality devices, to trick him. Please, someone take this man off the title already.

Green Lantern. It’s bad enough that DC’s editors committed some hideous errors with Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern of the era gone by. Now they’ve gone a step lower by allowing the overrated Judd Winick to use the book as a platform for his own agenda, which, in this case, was to glorify homosexuality and push it for sainthood. The story revolving around Terry Berg, the gay teenager working at current GL Kyle Rayner’s art gallery, was astonishingly one-sided and even went so far as to villify the poor boy’s parents by having them say that his lifestyle was blame for his being assaulted. Winick’s step is typical of many filmmakers in example, blaming the victims and villifying the parental figures, and is an incredible insult to the public in general.

And then, it turns out that all this was intended not just simply for conducting a one-sided agenda, but for the purpose of getting Kyle Rayner and his girlfriend to take off for outer space so that he could try to get over his guilt over having beaten up the cardboard villains who beat up Terry for no other purpose than to be violent for the sake of it, and so that then, John Stewart could be brought in to coincide with his role in the animated Justice League Adventures on TV!

As if it weren’t bad enough that Marvel made some truly awful errors by imitating the X-Men movie’s set design for their own books, now DC’s got to do it with their own books as well. Not very good artistic thinking, to say the least.

With that behind us, let’s now turn to the best of the year.

The winners of the year

Avengers. Kang came to our timeline again to conquer the earth, and the Earth's Mightiest Heroes find themselves facing serious challenges to stop Kang's menace and ensure his defeat again. It was long, I admit it. But even so, I enjoyed it. The teamwork, the character relations, and the issue with Scarlet Witch and Wonder Man really struck a chord with me, and the scenes in which they necked were fabulous. The characterization for Warbird, as usual, was very strong. Kurt Busiek’s completed his run in the past four years with a bang. Though one of the longest ever story arcs for the Earth's Mightiest Heroes, it still did quite well, and was very respectable of the cast and their characterization.

Superman. All the issues of the sans-adjective Superman written by Jeph Loeb were among the best this year.

Batman. Jeph Loeb meanwhile has been doing wonders with the Dark Knight of Gotham, and the Hush story arc is turning out to be a great story arc. His writing shows that he knows the characters and what makes them click. Don’t miss it folks!

Batgirl. This book too has been showing a lot of good potential, including young Cassandra Cain's success in fighting against Lady Shiva, and I enjoyed it very much. Recommended.

With that, the worst to best year roundup ends. And I’m sure hoping that even the next year will hold many great surprises in store for all of us! Enjoy the coming year in comics, everyone!

Avi Green, who’s hopeful that someday, the Green Lantern’s book will be fixed to the fullest, can be reached at avigreen2002@yahoo.com

Copyright 2002 Avi Green. All rights reserved.

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