Was War Games the one that torched not only Spoiler but also Leslie Thompkins? Cause man I remember that being the first comic I truly capital H Hated.
Same here. I'm always the first to tell people to take things in stride, have some perspective, and remember that it's just a story, but I got MAD at that comic book.
Leslie Thompkins as conceived by Denny O'Neil--and in every story after--is a candidate for sainthood. Tougher than she looks, takes no guff, doesn't sugarcoat things, honest to a fault--but the kindest, most sincere person in Gotham City.
Easily the worst character assassination I'd read in comics up to that point, and I'd seen any number of hero-turns-villain-for-no-reason stories by the time that War Games crossover hit.
I think part of it is just a lack of continuity/character guides. Had the people working on that title read every single appearance of that character? Probably not.
I wasn't reading the Bat books at the time, but have picked them up in back issues and actually just read some of War Games recently and yeah it's really bad, like "everyone involved should be fired" bad. Poor Stephanie Brown.
I was long out of the bat-books when War Games happened but hearing about Steph being tortured to death while teen pregnant made me feel deep, abiding disgust.
I really enjoy No Man's Land overall, but when I hit that last bit...yeah, I feel almost queasy knowing what's coming. Goes deliberately/exactly into Killing Joke territory--Joker crosses the line to hurt Commissioner Gordon, but Gordon's obligated to do things by the book...again.
The lesson people took from Killing Joke is that you can hurt/kill/**** the people closest to your heroes for dramatic effect, and readers will eat it up. Makes the heroes ineffective, makes you wonder why they let these same bad guys come back again and again, makes everyone sad.
This may go as far back as the Green Goblin killing Gwen Stacy, but it's really weird to go back to business as usual with these characters once that line's been crossed. Like when they remade Toyman as a child murderer in the Superman comics, then went back to his goofball mode a few years later.
Geoff Johns, right? I'm glad he fixed that, since it was the biggest misstep of that era of Superman, but it was so long afterward that I don't know how many people even remembered or cared about it. Better late than never.
Comments
Reminds of the (less bad but still awful) "Alicia Masters becomes evil because her stepfather is" arc.
Norman Osborn should never have returned.