Ah, comic books! The only place where you’ll get some of my favorite characters of all time. But, unfortunately, for every Peter Parker, Wally West, Steve Rogers, or Kyle Rayner, you also have quite a few awful, terrible, garbage-soaked characters to even the stacks.
Now, quick aside: There's a reason I'm not calling these guys the WORST characters. These are just my most-hated ones. You might like one or two of them (God knows why), and that's totally cool! Good on you! But they make my eyes glaze over and send me scrambling for the next page. These are characters whose appearances in books I've NEVER enjoyed. Not even once.
Source: marvel.com
10. Gilgamesh
(The Avengers, Marvel Comics)
I'm a huuuuuuge Avengers fan, and I’ve spent years trying to buy and read every issue. However, there is one Avenger who makes my eyes glaze over and makes me bored to absolute tears.
And that puppy is Gilgamesh the Forgotten One.
I wrote about Gilgy for my first-ever Daily Superheroes list, and he bores me as much now as he did then. It's almost impossible to read anything about him without wanting to drown myself in the sink. He's one of the Eternals, an ancient race of beings who get far more respect than Gilgamesh ever could.
Seriously, it was between Gilgamesh and Doctor Druid for this spot, but at least I can remember facts about Dr. Druid. Gilgamesh is just a boring trash sack. But yeah, that's Gilgamesh. He exists. And I can't read too much about him without getting sleepy. So, yeah – yawn – there he is. NEXT!
Source: comicvine.gamespot.com
9. Wonder Man
(The Avengers, Marvel Comics)
Simon Williams is a forgettable hero who turned into a mega-jerkhole and has had a majority of really God-awful costumes.
He got arrested and thrown in jail for the crime of embezzling money from his own company. He was bailed out by Baron Zemo, who decided to use Simon for his own ends. Simon blamed Tony Stark for his own embezzlement, which Stark had nothing to do with, so he agreed to be given super powers so he could fight the Avengers. He took the name Wonder Man, which is a name so forgettable, I honestly forgot what it was immediately after typing it.
After his FIRST attempt at murdering the Avengers, he turned on Zemo, and got plunged into a deep, deathlike coma. He'd later wake up, become a hero, and join the Avengers. Eventually, Ultron used Simon's brain patterns to make The Vision, which is funny to me. Hey, Simon, how does it feel knowing that the robot someone robbed your brain to create is a better, more interesting, more likable character than you could ever be? Does it hurt?
In recent times, Simon decided that the Avengers did more harm than good, and decided to have a civil discussion with them about it. Oh, wait, I lied; he gathered a team of D-List heroes and villains, called them the Revengers, and decided to beat up all of the Avengers to"¦prove his point? I guess? Also, "The Revengers", really? That's the best name you could come up with? But I guess I shouldn't be surprised, coming from "Wonder Man".
Source: cbr.com
8. Starfox
(The Avengers, Marvel Comics)
Look, I don't really like to throw around the word "problematic" (he said, totally throwing around the word "problematic"), but Starfox's superpower is that he can mess with your brain chemistry until you want to sleep with him.
Look, I'm not gonna say I 100 percent remember ALL of those consent training classes from my freshman year of college, but I'm preeeeeeeeetty sure that counts as sexual assault. I remember that much. Plus, something about tea?
Anyway, Starfox is a Capital "C" Creep. He just tools around putting his weird roofie spell on any woman who will listen. And once, The Hulk. Although that was just to calm him down and not for – cough cough – y'know, but can I just say that maybe you DON'T want to make the Hulk super sexually attracted to you, Starfox?
Oh, and this guy was an Avenger. Not a West Coast one, either; full-tilt Avenger. For YEARS. Creepy. Oh, and do a barrel roll, yadda yadda, next entry.
Source: comicvine.gamespot.com
7. Hemo-Goblin
(New Guardians, DC Comics)
Look, I tried to leave one-off characters off this list, wanting to focus on characters that were actually used in comic books. But I'm making an exception for this guy, because his creation and usage is despicable.
He comes from the New Guardians, which was a forgettable team book spun out of a forgettable event called Millennium. The comic attempted to tell stories about "real issues" through comic book antics. This is why a previous issue gave us Snowflame, a supervillain literally powered by cocaine. And while that's fantastic and amazing and beautiful and I love it"¦this dude was their attempt to talk about HIV.
And of course, they did it in the most respectful way possible: He’s a white supremacist vampire who gives people AIDS. That's, uh"¦That's awful. That's not just disrespectful of a deeply serious situation, it’s troublingly simplistic. He gave HIV to several members of the New Guardians team. Through his vampirism. Also, his name is a pun. And not even a good pun.
He's currently rated by the War Rocket Ajax podcast as the worst character of all time, which is logical and makes sense. I, however, know some who are worse.
Source: listsurge.com
6. The Beyonder
(Secret Wars/Secret Wars II, Marvel Comics)
The Beyonder is just a weird creepy child. He's like if Mr. Mxyzptlk was a terrible character.
The Beyonder is a young member of a race of reality-warping godlings who was accidentally brought to earth by the Intel, a group of evil science jerks. He watched the earth for a time, and then decided to just grab a bunch of heroes and villains, throw them into a sandbox somewhere in the cosmos, and play with them like action figures until someone won.
Of course, The Beyonder was SO DUMB, he (a REALITY-WARPING DEITY) got his powers stolen by Dr. Doom. You're practically a god! How do you lose that to a dude who blew his face off trying to get to hell? Years later, he came to earth, made himself a human body, and started creeping on New Mutants team member Boom-Boom. When he mentioned that he could destroy the universe if he felt like it, Boom-Boom freaked and went to the Avengers.
He would later kill Death, but he brought her back when everyone else got all pissed at him. Such a weirdo.
Source: wikipedia.com
5. The Sentry
(The Sentry/New Avengers/Dark Avengers, Marvel Comics)
Aw, God, why? Why am I doing this to myself? Why am I taking time out of my day to think about The Sentry? The sun is shining, the bees are buzzing, but I'm sitting here on the couch, telling you about Bob Reynolds.
Bob was a meth addict searching for a fix when he broke into an abandoned lab and stole a prototype for a serum a thousand times more powerful than the Super Soldier Serum. He gained powers like those of a million exploding suns and became The Sentry. Bob slowly forgot his drug addict thief origins, and began to misremember himself as being a mild-mannered man who suffered an accident and gained incredible powers.
Oh, and as it turned out, The Sentry's repressed evil side manifested itself as The Void, an evil darkness creature made of crazy. After some more forgetting and re-remembering, The Sentry joined the New Avengers, fought in the Civil War, and spent six issues moping about while the Hulk wrecked New York City, until he finally got off his ass and did something about it.
The Sentry was so boring and hated that for a long time, there was a literal fan bounty on his head. There was also the long-running (but now defunct) killthesentry.com. When a character's so bad that fans are literally willing to put up money to get rid of him, that's how you know it's a bad character.
Source: geekchicelite.com
4. Nemesis
(Nemesis, Icon Comics)
I like Mark Millar. He's produced some incredibly good comic books, especially lately, but his not-so-great works do tend to have similar traits. This results in his work being pretty easy for people who dislike it to parody and deride. And if we're talking about the worst traits of Millar's work, Nemesis is a perfect example.
A cop-killing supervillainous Batman, Nemesis is just a straight-up terrorist, who is not only not fun to read about, but is also aggressively boring. The comic he hails from has no stakes, and centers around eye-rollingly gratuitous depictions of violence.
He builds his entire plan around killing the chief of the Washington, DC Metro Police Force. Why that one dude, I dunno, especially since the guy had already successfully kidnapped the President of the United States (Yes, I know that he's established as having a personal grudge, but come on, you got the President, dogg, you already won).
Also, it turns out that he's just a rich prick who paid to be a supervillain. Because, of course, he's somehow MORE unlikable than I originally thought.
Source: dccomics.com
3. Lobo
(Lobo/52/The Demon/Justice League of America, DC Comics)
There are few characters whose appearance in a comic book would make me stop buying said comic book. There are NO characters who could make me stop buying a comic book that also featured The Ray and Ryan Choi. Or so I thought, until I tried to read the newest relaunch of Justice League of America, and found myself face-to-face with The Main Man.
Lobo was intended to be used as a parody of 90s grimdark super-murderers, but fan love eventually just turned him into the ULTIMATE 90s grimdark super-murderer. Everything about Lobo sounds like it was created by the seventh-grade boy-est of all seventh-grade boys. "Aw, yeah, he's a biker, but also an alien! And he's the last of his race, but only because he KILLED THEM ALL! Aw, hell yeah! Hey, Kyle, pass me that Mountain Dew, we gotta get through this next Call of Duty round!"
And, of course, Lobo is also some sort of ladies’ man, despite the fact that ANY SANE WOMAN, if given the choice of which Lobo to date, would wind up marrying a Spanish wolf rather than the pile of hair and gross musculature you see in front of you. Lobo is a dumb, dude-power fantasy who thrives on murder and takes himself too seriously.
He is the perfect culmination of everything I hate about comic books wrapped in a leather jacket and crappy facial hair.
Source: superrobotmayhem.com
2. The Fixer
(Holy Terror, Legendary Comics)
Unpleasant amounts of Islamophobia (although ANY amount is pretty terrible already)! Gross!
Created for Frank Miller's Holy Terror, The Fixer was designed to be a replacement for Batman when the comic stopped being a Batman comic and started being a ludicrous hate screed. Imagine if Batman hated Muslims and also decided to murder people with guns. Now you can see why he’s so hated.
Frank Miller has the potential to do great work, but lately he's seemed like just an angry old man ranting at the world around him. I haven't yet tried to read Dark Knight 3, so maybe that's better, but calling it The Master Race doesn't exactly inspire me to give it a look. I'll get to it, though. Can't be worse than The Fixer, who's just ugly.
He's also a torturer, despite the fact that all studies done on the subject have proved that it doesn’t work. So he's a sadist, as well. He's literally such a piece of trash that he just refers to a terrorist as Mohammed with no evidence, because, to quote him, "You've got to admit the odds are pretty good it's Mohammed."
Eeesh.
That's atrocious.
That"¦that huuuuuurts to read, it's so bad. Welp. Poor Frank Miller's wasted talent, am I right?
Source: getmovienews.com
1. Wesley Gibson
(Wanted, Top Cow Productions)
If we're talking about the worst comic book character I've ever had the displeasure to read about, the hands-down honor goes to the impetuous s**t-weasel known as Wesley Gibson.
Wes was just a normal resentful 20-something with a cheating girlfriend and a terrible job. But then he discovered that his father was The Killer, a murderous supervillain and member of The Fraternity, a group of supervillains who'd conquered the world. Wesley learned that he had the unique superpower of being able to end life however he wanted, and went on a murder and rape spree, bragging about it the whole time.
He killed his own father, too. But after that, he had an emotional realization that everything he did was wrong…Oh, wait, he was only kidding, and he continues to be the murderous rapist we all know and hate.
And then he spends the last two pages telling you that you, the reader, are just a pawn for him to "f** in the a**". Charming.
I'm not kidding, by the way. The ending of this grossly cynical, carelessly unpleasant, murder and rape-glorifying trash is the main character saying that you're an idiot for buying his comic book. But, hey, on that front I at least have to agree with him.
And there you go, my personal list of most hated comic book characters! Have your own? Like some of the characters on this list? Well, that's totally cool! It's just my own list. I hope that if you feel the way I do about some of these dudes, this gave you some catharsis. Oh, and if you're wondering why characters like Hawkeye and Aquaman aren't on this list, it's because they're actually good characters who aren't terrible.
