Slinger said:
"The worst ever is by far Young Avengers/Runaways Secret Invasion."
YA/Runaways Civil War was awful too.
But far and away the worst comic book I have ever read is Uncanny X-Men 424, Holy War part 2 by Chuck Austen. I'd love to explain why it was so bad but Paul O'Brien of X-Axis does a much better job than I ever could.
"Austen jettisons Casey's origin story for the Church of Humanity's Supreme Pontiff - which was about the only interesting thing in the original story - and replaces him with a disillusioned Catholic nun who's been, you guessed it, the victim of sexual abuse in the Catholic church. So she sets out to bring down the Church by - brace yourself, this is the good bit - creating an evil plan to instal Nightcrawler as the Pope under an image inducer, and then revealing him as the supposed Antichrist at the same time that she simulates the Rapture. Then Catholics the world over will turn on the Church and the Church of Humanity will step in to take over! Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Wow. That's an incredibly stupid storyline." And do you know what? It's even worse on the page.
You may also be wondering how the Church of Humanity plans to simulate the Rapture. After all, that involves good Catholics being taken up to Heaven. Well, they're going to disintegrate people using evil doctored communion wafers.
I'll just repeat that. The villains are going to usurp command of Catholicism by installing Nightcrawler as the Pope and using murderous disintegrating communion wafers. No, this is not meant to be a comedy story.
This story is so bad that it deserves to be immortalised in derision for years to come. Even as a hardcore atheist, I have little sympathy for Austen's bizarrely twisted idea of the Catholic Church, which seems to revolve exclusively around the twin concepts of sexual abuse and bigotry. Granted that those may be the Church's most prominent flaws, in Austen's stories they seem to be the Church's only features.
The idea of a plan to instal Nightcrawler as Pope - never previously mentioned prior to this issue - is comically over the top. The idea that the world's Catholics are going to react to a simulated Rapture in anything like the manner described is little short of ludicrous and suggests that Austen still thinks ordinary Catholics are little more than dogmatic slaves of their church. I rather suspect the average Catholic in the street would continue their existing policy of generally acting much like everyone else.
Oh, and let's not forget the disrespect shown to previous writers of the Church of Humanity and Nightcrawler's priest (also a pre-existing character). The original stories may not have been great, but they were better than this.
Why the hell would anyone want to wrest control of the Catholic Church, anyway? It's not like it's a significant political power any more. I suppose it's all very well if you have an evil scheme which entails interfering with the distribution of condoms in Angola, but otherwise they might as well be fighting for control of the West Godalming Yoga Centre.
Competent art from Ron Garney can't raise this issue significantly - for the most part, these days Garney sticks to telling the story as efficiently as possible. He's not the sort of artist who can make a bad story readable solely through the power of visual aesthetics.
The fact that this storyline was selected for a 25c issue is utterly baffling. Can we have Joe Casey back, please?
UPDATE: Thanks to the many readers who have now written to inform me that the Rapture, as depicted in this issue, is actually Protestant theology, and not Catholic at all. I'm not sure how you do sarcastic slow applause in print, but imagine it here."
Oh and uh....if you're going to go to all the trouble of making Nightcrawler the pope and then reveal him to be devilish by turning off his image inducer....why don't you just use an image inducer to make the current pope look like the devil and save yourself a lot of trouble?
