As I mentioned last week, I've been trying to find a comic book that is so bad, no one can defend it. I thought I found the one last week, but I was apparently mistaken. But this week, I think I found the grail. A comic so monumentally bad, Marvel aggressively retconned it. A comic so bad, Marvel former EIC Jim Shooter publically denounced it as "heinous". A comic somehow produced by some of the best talent in comics at the time, none of whom I think are bad writers or artists. A comic that almost single-handedly ruined a character. A comic that makes me so uncomfortable I want to leave the room and take a shower every time I read it. That comic would be Avengers #200.
Note: All images are sourced directly from Avengers #200
10. The Holy Trinity
So I'll be doing this the same way I did my Grounded breakdown. We'll be going page by page and panel by panel, hitting only the worst moments. Of course, with Grounded, I had four issues to draw from. Here, I only have one. It's a good thing it's so terrible then, right?
We start with the very first panel on the very first page. It’s literally the first caption on the page. The caption claims that the three things that have driven America forever were "Mom, apple pie, and the girl next door". The comic goes on to state that "wars have been fought for these ideals; presidents have been elected over them." I"¦ um"¦ what? I must've forgotten about the great girl next door wars of the 1910s. And if motherhood really mattered all that much in presidential elections, we probably should've had a lot more women in the White House by now.
However, I do however fully buy that wars have been fought over apple pie. I'm pretty sure that's how the war of 1812 got started. Also, take note of the glamorization of motherhood. That's gonna get super gross later in the story.
