Dick has about 350 solo issues including Dickbats and Grayson. Yet all but Blockbuster end up forgotten, taken by Batman or other batfamily members, or dead, and Blockbuster sucks.
What other heroes (or teams) have shitty to no rogue galleries despite clear attempts at revamping some or creating some?
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I genuinely cannot name one of his, not even one that I immediately think about Dick Grayson.
Orca
Deathstroke is basically his archenemy, only DC insists he's a big enough deal to be everyone's villain (he isn't)
anyone who's good basically gets taken by Batman
Deathstroke makes the most sense as his arch-nemesis, a guy who has been fricking with him since he was a Titan
but once Deathstroke started getting the spotlight, he incredibly gets paired more up against Bruce
>tfw people think Gentleman Ghost and Clock King are Batman villains
Nah that storyline is still going on despite it having started 13 fricking issues ago due to Taylor making 90% of the book mindless fluff for twitter posts
It is impressive. Has Taylor actually completed any story arc so far? He just keeps faffing about most of the time.
Technically, yes. I think we're in the third major arc of his Nightwing book. First arc was the set-up before Fear State, then we got Fear State, and now we're in Act 3.
It does all feel like one large story, though. I'm hoping it'll flow well once the full thing is complete. I've enjoyed just about every individual issue, but it does feel like things move slower than they have to.
>It does all feel like one large story, though.
It really doesn't have to be a one large story. The story he wants to tell can be told within 5 issues max. Taylor just keeps interrupting it for some cheap feel-good fanservice.
Also, we were promised Nightwing and Batgirl. There is still no Batgirl outside of fakeout covers.
>Taylor making 90% of the book mindless fluff for twitter posts
wonder if that will change now that Twitter hates him
He will double down on it. He knows Twitter won't stay mad at him for long. He knows exactly how Twitter works and how to manipulate them to his advantage. He's been cynically doing that since day 1.
Deathstroke doesn't actually go up against Bruce that often. He doesn't really go up against Dick that often either if it's not in Titans.
Even the most recent event had Deathstroke going up against Batman and Damian.
>bad rogue galleries
Her nemesis is Killer Fricking Moth. Talk about a z-lister.
And Seer. Don't forget about the Seer!
I already have.
DC has sacrificed a perfectly fine Mairghread Scott run for this utter horseshit.
Now apologize to the lady and give Babs her mantle back.
8 good issues don’t make up for 100+ Issues of Le quirky Babsgirl horseshit, Barbara it’s Red Hood tier when it comes to runs.
Funny you should say that because Batgirls is currently selling way worse than current Red Hood ongoing. It's on the brink of cancellation.
Was it worth it?
They chased Scott off long before this.
Cecil's shit run was before Batgirls and after Scott's
Cinemaphile takes the moth way too seriously. There's no way he's Batgirl's "nemesis".
He sorta falls into it. First villain she faced, went on to face her multiple times pre-Crisis, post-Crisis retained his first villain status in Year One which was a good seller. It's more about his long-term use by multiple writers than anything. In terms of how stories treat villains, she doesn't really have much in the way of a nemesis. Calculator for the back part of Simone's BoP run, then James Jr. for Simone's Batgirl, the Oracle AI for Stewart, nothing for Larson or Scott, then it was seemingly the Oracle AI again for Castellucci but not really. Much like Wonder Woman, her true nemesis is editorial.
>Where's MY Rogues Gallery?
>...you mean you actually WANT a colorful array of psychopaths to consistently gun for YOU personally?
>...well, when you put it like THAT...
>Much like Wonder Woman, her true nemesis is editorial
And a powerful nemesis that is.
>then James Jr. for Simone's Batgirl
I really appreciated this. For the many, many faults of Simone's run I was happy to see her at least attempt to connect James Jr to his sister even if it wasn't perfect. But it's upsetting it came at the expense of him being a strong villain for Dickbats, which was clearly what he was created for. Which reminds me Batman has basically taken all of Dick's Batman rogues as his own at this point. Which is rather sad because Morrison created some good ones tailor made for Dick's personality and tone.
Also I'd hardly count Stewart's Oracle AI as a nemesis. It was more of a meta way to shit on how increasingly bitter Barbara had become under other writers. Which I felt like was something Stephanie's Batgirl run addressed with a lot more subtlety and tact.
Wasn't Scott attempting to bring back Jimbo Jr as Babs' archnemesis, but it was torpedoed by DC editorial, because we can't have Batgirl be too good and cerebral?
And I didn't really mind Stewart's Evil Babs AI. Babs being pissed off at the universe is understandable, because universe loves to frick her over, and having Babs go against herself was a good hook. It just needed more meat.
I honestly don't know. I just know Black Mirror sets Jr up to be a major antagonist for Dickbats but Scott never really got to run with his set up for Dickbats since the New 52 happened.
And I don't know it just always rubbed me the wrong way. Stewart and co were just too smug about their vision for Batgirl in general for my taste. The run itself had some fun moments but it had this bitter aftertaste every issue due to interviews and outside comments. It felt like, to me, the creative team thought lesser of her time as Oracle. I think Miller had already handled a lot of those themes they wanted to tackle better too. Barbara dealt with her anger in that run in a way that really wrapped it into her full character arc a lot better. Built on the past instead of just shitting on it.
>It felt like, to me, the creative team thought lesser of her time as Oracle.
And previous Simone-led team was extra condescending about Babs being Batgirl and no longer being Oracle, so it evens out in the end. There is no convincing me that Babs getting her legs back and wanting to be an active superhero again is the worst thing that happened to her, the way Simone was trying to spin it. Stewart's run and a lot of decisions there was just a reaction to Simone's run. A bit overblown, but not entirely unwarranted.
The whole Burnside era just reeks of some “ auteur “ creator who considers themselves too good for monthly cape comics coming in, not caring about anything in recent comics, and making some big to-do about simplifying or getting back to basics; I. e. reworking the character based on their interpretation from movies and animation. They never get the new readers they plan for and it just makes a tumor in the characters history since it often regresses them.
Funny you should say that, given that Burnside was actually quite successful and exactly what the fans wanted after a grimdark misteryfest that was Simone's run.
On that same note, Miller's Stephgirl run left a sour taste in my mouth because it constantly shit on her time as Spoiler and treated it as something she need to atone for.
Scott did great work with him especially by treating James Jr. as the "there but for the grace of God go I" version of Babs.
The really weird thing is that despite 75% of the books being written by the same guy, the Batline of that era didn't really interact all that much.
>Scott did great work with him especially by treating James Jr. as the "there but for the grace of God go I" version of Babs.
Scott flat out stating that Babs may in fact be batshit insane was the most interesting thing a DC writer has done with her in the last 30 years.
shes basically a stalker
why the tiny detailed lines on the gun, was it an after thought, looks like shit
Once again, Cass proves her superiority.
What a bunch of literal-whos.
Shiva isn't a "literal-who". But if you're a Martial artist im the DCU and you haven't fought her are you really a marital artist?
She was just dragged from book to book from Oneil for years from Richard Dragon to question till making a home with batman.
Anon Lady Shiva is the only person on there that anybody knows
Even David Cain was gone since her book was canceled and only showed up for a bit in BRE for Cass’ new shitty origin and hasn’t been seen that
Did they actually frick? I don't follow Batman and co, just know that she got wet or something with his voice.
No, they didn't. For all the memes about Babs beung a Batcycle, she's actually quite a choir girl. I don't think she had sex in last 20 years.
I remember this guy cause he was somewhat recent and has a cool design, I don't read nightwing that much anymore so maybe he too is forgotten forever, just another baddie of the week
Wonder Woman, Iron Man... honestly every hero or team who's not Flash, Spider-Man, the X-Men or the Legion. Even Batman's is shit because it's entirely top heavy.
I can think of a couple heroes with underrated villains. Green Arrow, Green lantern, Captain America.
Green Arrow's got Count Vertigo, Merlin, Brick, clock king, Constantine Drakon.
Green lantern has Hector Hammond, Sinestro, Grundy, vandal, Doctor Polaris.
Captain America has a pretty good one with Baron Zemo, Batroc the Leaper, Madame Hydra, Serpent Society, Duke, Crossbones.
I've never read Captain America but all of those just sound like nazi adjacents
Only Zemo, Madame Hydra, and Crossbones out of that list are. Crossbones isn't even a Nazi, he's just a hired thug by Redskull.
No, Crossbones is the Nazi, Zemo is the one who isn't actually a Nazi. Though if you want to be strict about it both Red Skull and von Strucker have rejected Nazism for different reasons.
I forgot about Cap. His is definitely pretty good thanks to Gru.
People think his archenemies is a batman villain. Nobody cares about shadow thief and I.Q.
They should bring back Hath Set and let newer readers know Hath became a woman once and fricked Carter's son
Every single Spider person not named Peter Parker. Miguel might be the only exception, but even Mayday just had "the son/daughter/grandchild of my dad's old enemy". Shitters like Miles or Gwen have nothing going for them and just leech off Peter.
Mayday's best villains were the Angel Face/Funny Face/Crazy Eight trio and Aftershock.
How would you anons rank various team's rogue galleries?
>X-Men
>Fantastic Four
>Avengers
>Justice Society
>Justice League
>Teen Titans
You can add others like LOSH, GOTG, BOP, etc but those seem like the main teams at either publisher.
X Men > JSA = FF > JL > Avengers > TT for me
X-men
Fantastic four
Justice league
Avengers
Justice society
Teen Titans
The Titans have no villains outside the ones introduced in the new teen titans run.
What about all the cool villains from the TT TV show?
Most of those are from the 60s and 70s of TT and the revamps from the show never really took off. Only villians from that show that really got use in comics again or made a jump to comics were mad mod and Rex X 16 years later.
How many solo DC characters have a better rogues gallery than Nightwing though? Batman, Superman, Flash, Green Lantern, and maybe Aquaman? Is that it? Maybe Wonder Woman but her gallery is pretty awful too. So Nightwing's rogues are about on the level you'd expect for his character given how awful the galleries are for the vast majority of heroes in comics.
To do better than Dick, you need the bare minimum of two villains attached to your name that either got to play in other areas of the DCU (ie villain team ups, events, etc) but came back to fight you or is used throughout your title under more than two writers.
Batman, Superman, Flash, and Green Lantern obviously pass this.
Wonder Woman also passes because she has Circe, Dr Psycho, Cheetah, and Ares.
Shazam has Black Adam, Mr Mind, and Sivana.
Aquaman has Black Manta and Orm.
Green Arrow has Merlyn, Count Vertigo, and Brick.
I say two villains because all Dick seems to have is Blockbuster. Everybody else died or got ignored, and I say "has to come back to fight you" because the ones that DO stick around like James Jr and Slade seem to go to other heroes.
If Taylor brought back the grandpa Talon for his run I guess Dick would have two though.
No one knows who those Green Arrow villains are and Shazam only has Black Adam. So they can't be better than Nightwing.
Read a book someday anon
I have. Nightwing even beat up Count Vertigo in Seeley's Nightwing run in an issue. Those villains are just as worthless as any Nightwing ones. No one is going around talking about Merlyn or Brick. The only villains people mostly associate with Green Arrow are the Batman ones the character uses.
Normies know who Merlyn is anon because of Arrow. He's very much associated with the character.
Didn't Arrow have to use Deathstroke as its big bad because no Green Arrow villains were big enough to sell the show?
Deathstroke is only the villain of season 2. Merlyn is a recurring major villain and anti-hero across the entire series.
Arrow also used Ra's Al Ghul and Prometheus. Like half the big season villains are Batman rogues
What about Clock king? He's arrows villain that batman uses.
So the only DC heroes better than Dick are basically all mainstream JL characters that have been around since the 40s and 50s? Wow, what a shocker.
Dick has a lot of great villain concepts that no one fricking touches after the next writer takes over. Everyone goes back to Blockbuster and Deathstroke at some point, and maybe Orca and that's it. That's all we get. I haven't read Williamson's Robin run but it's outright sad that Nightwing villains like Raptor, Nite-Wing, Brutale, and Tarantula have to return in a Damian story instead of being fleshed out by writers currently working with Dick. Though I'm not sure how fleshed out they are n that book since I haven't read it. They have potential, even Tarantula, but when every writer jumps onboard a book with the hopes of making the next flavor of the month arc villain that may make it into a TV show so they can get royalties what chance do they have? I hate modern comics so fricking much. I hate TV and movies.
>maybe Orca
Disregard this I got confused I forgot Orca didn't debut in a Nightwing story she just popped up a few times in Seeley's run and they just kind of pretended she was his villain all along.
Does Swamp Thing even have any recurring villains besides Arcane?
Swamp Thing doesn't need recurring villains because it's not a superhero, but there's also Woodrue. He's easy to forget since he got sidelined in favor of Woodrue + breasts + Batman villain, who then got character assassinated and is now a Harley Quinn accessory.
Pretty much all of Daredevil's villains besides the Kingpin, Bullseye, the Hand, and maybe Typhoid Mary and the Owl are either jokes, have been poached by someone else, or have just became generic Marvel Universe at large villains.
>became generic Marvel Universe at large villains.
This seems to happen to a lot of Marvel villains that aren't connected to the X-Men or Spider-Man. They eventually just become villains for any hero to fight.
Daredevil's most famous foe, Kingpin, is a hand-me-down from Spider-Man, he is worse in the rogue's department than you describe.
Does Hawkman have a good rogues gallery?
It's alright
>Hath Seth and all his incarnations
>Byth
>Kanjar Ro
>Gentleman Ghost
>Shadow Thief
>Krotan-altered people
>that ancient hawk god I can't remember the name of
>Rannians
>Continuity
And you can essilty pit them against History-related villains like Vandal Savage
It's okay. Gentleman Ghost and Hath Set are both good. They both have personal reasons and are fitting for Hawkman's themes/history. Shadow Thief is okay I guess. His modern books always seem more concerned with explaining reincarnation shit than doing standard superhero fare tho.
Dick's case is mostly just really sad because most characters with an established solo have at least 1-3 main villains that show up in at least every other run, if not every run. Dick having just one (that was gone for like ~10 years!) is less solo hero behavior and more team member behavior.. as team members who aren't established solo heroes usually have one villain from an arc or from their backstory to serve as their token villain. Kinda fits with DC not really treating him more like one of Batman's lackeys instead of a solo hero.
Yea James Jr got shunted to Babs' book... pretty sure Simone, Scott, and Cecil used him. It's kinda lame because evil siblings is so played out, and Snyder made James to be Dick's foil, not Babs. So with Babs it's just James doing something horrid and Babs going "he's so evil but he's my brother :/"
I think Dick really suffers from the Wonder Woman problem. Writers keep trying to find ways to "make him interesting" and they lose the plot because they never do anything interesting with their hook. Just to name a few Dick has been a cop, he managed a circus, he was a spy, he was a youth counselor (Which was, IMO, the best status quo imaginable for him but they mucked it up because he only ever hung around C-list reformed villains who never got a chance to develop before they were all tossed aside.). Every writer has to find something new for him to be. New supporting cast, new villains. It gets tiring and it hurts his character. He's had a consistent run for nearly 30 years now but after Dixon it's just constant reinvention of the wheel.
Yeah, and then editorial has had their head up Dick's ass since Didio, so even if the writer wanted stability their shit would just get destroyed by a crossover or event.
>DC forcing Grayson to tie into War Games
>DC interrupting her run for 6 issues for Nightwing Year One
>DC blowing Bludhaven up and wanting to kill him
>Morrison saving him by making him Batman
>DC rebooting and worrying two Batmans would be confusing
>making Higgins crossover like three times in 29 issues, literally destroying Dick's shit for their Joker crossover
>Higgins having to cancel his Chicago ideas because Forever Evil cancelled his book (I wish I could find one of his old forum posts explaining his long term plans that included Prankster being more a lackey for somebody else and there being a hero hunter?? I can't remember)
>Grayson being cancelled and the ending being written by shittier writers because rebirth
>just. everything about Ric could be a greentext on its own wow
And now Dick is stuck with a shitty writer with no new ideas and complete lack of creative spark, but at least you have cheap fanservice!
Yeah Taylor is killing me because he's arguably the most stable Dick's book has been in a long time but he's stretched three issues worth of stuff into 13. Imagine what a good writer could do with 13 issues.
And I have a feeling he's going to stay on this book for a veeeeeeery long time. Maybe around 2035 he'll finish a story arc.
Nah Taylor said something about Nightwing #100 and Dark Crisis #7 being connected
And I don't fricking care at this point. Nothing ever happens in a Nightwing book.
>they use the 2005 proposal or their Convergence mini to well acksually Dick and Babs being married this whole time
Fot frick's sake, stop trying to marry Dick and Babs. Nothing good will come out of it.
The hero hunter, if I recall, appears during Higgins Chicago storyline but it's never resolved. Dick just kind of leaves Chicago and nothing afterwards ever ties up a single one of those storylines. I think Death of the Family destroying the Haley Circus cast was fricking criminal though. Higgins run wasn't even that good up to that point but Dick just started status quo number 2 of the run. The circus stuff had ended and he had just worked hard on opening up the boardwalk amusement park with his Haley's Circus family having jobs but then here comes Joker to frick with it all so all that build up can be tossed aside so Dick can move to Chicago for status quo number 3.
The only good thing Higgins did was burn the circus to the ground so Nightwing wouldn't be stuck there anymore.
I dunno I think a better writer, or a writer that was under less mandates, could have done fun things with the circus and the amusement park was looking to be a good place for Dick because it'd give him freedom while also allowing him to have a life outside of the batfamily and Titans.
He'd be burdened with having to own and run the circus. It's a full time job that limits his ability to go off and do other things. Plus I don't think any reader cared about a single person in that circus.
I always felt bad for Higgins because he seemed like one of the Nightwing writers who actually liked Dick more than Bruce, but in his interviews he basically says half the shit he wrote on that book wasn't even his original ideas. They were either editorial's or shit he had compromise on or change to appease editorial's demands. #19-#29 was like the longest he went without a crossover, but he still changed tons of stuff from his original plan and wasn't able to finish the some of the storylines, like you said. Nightwing: New Order wasn't BAD but I wish he was able to have a more normal Black Label book for Dick.
He's had 350 continuous issues across almost 30 years to get on par with them but he can't even catch up to Green Arrow or Aquaman.
I haven't really read many of his interviews but I always got the sense that Higgins had planned to really lean on the traveling circus shit to provide some fun episodic adventures for Dick across America but Talon eventually over took it and Dick never really got to do anything that made his location matter. Those on the road stories felt almost purposefully bland.
I have a feeling that editorial doesn't want Dick (or any other Batfam member) to be too far away from the Batfamily. And they've been doubling down on it during the last year or so. Which IMO is a mistake, because this idea of "the Batfamily has to stick together, preferably in Gotham" really kills the creative potential of all the Batcharacters.
I've been stepping back so I can't speak about recent materials but I think DC wants to recapture that era in the 90s where Dixon had most of the books and the Batfam all hung around one another in a kind of organic way but they don't understand that they can't actually recapture that feeling unless larger crossovers are very sparse and arcs/stories are short so that the characters can still be their own heroes in their own stories. So instead of organic moments where Tim and Dick bond or whatever you have these massive forced events that don't make them feel like a family. Or a long story that shoves the character in at some point as a shock twist. It gets old fast.
Yeah, DC currently is pretty much mindlessly copypasting the late 90's and early 2000's Batfamily status quo and relationships with no context and it fails spectacularly, because none of it feels organic, just editorially mandated. Dick and Babs are together now, but there is no chemistry between them whatsoever, Babs, Cass and Steph are piled on top of each other, pretending there is some larger connection between the three, while there isn't any, Dick interacts with Damian and Tim mostly for fanservice, because the writers have nothing to work with and it all feels fake as frick. But twitter loves that cheap feelgood shit, do it keeps going. And the characters are creatively dead.
DARK CRISIS WILL SAVE DC
DARK CRISIS WILL BE KINO
The Ant-Men. Pym at least got Ultron.
They should give Punchline to Nightwing, she already humiliated him by walking free from jail and they're not really doing anything with her anyway.
She's Harper Row's villain now.
Everyone who isn't Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Flash or the X-Men. The rest of them are lucky to get two villains that are any good never mind a gallery
What rogues does Venom actually have?
In thr 90s it was I guess the life foundation five, with a couple one offs here and there.
2000s were a mess I'd rather not remember.
When flash took over they tried really hard, transplanting a new jack o lantern over from spidey, more creatively than a wholesale steal. (Dead now)
Then they added a scuffed evil team that I cannot remember outside of a big cyber guy and the leader was some gangster in a mask.
Then Eddie returned, and they tried to keep Lee "Sasuke Uchiha" Price relevant as a villain (also dead)
Then the Donny "drugs and daddy issues" Cates with his Knull nonsense happened.
And now with Ewing we have The Jailer from World of Warcraft and Red Venom.
What a fricking mess, with recent additions being so high stakes using them again would be embarrassingly cheap
>What rogues does Venom actually have?
Carnage and that's it
Are you guys thoughts on Justice League's rogue gallery?
I feel like the JL villains mostly suck and it's one reason why that book hasn't been good for a loooong ass time.
You don't like Darkseid for the 45743rd time?
The problem with JL is that they are in a constant state of escalation. At this point they are fighting some metaverse horseshit adversaries that just make my brain hurt. Like' I don't care about The Great Nothing That Consumes Everything, The Creator of the Universe before the Universe Who Laughs, at this point it's stupid.
And then there is Bendis.
That's why I wish they could do something like JLI again or at least something more character oriented with B and C listers, even if it was just a 12 issue maxi of them sucking. I'm just so fricking tired the same group of characters hogging 4-6 spots on every single team.
I don't like pretty much anything about the Justice League, and the Legion of Doom is no exception. It makes sense that the heroes team up (except for Batman who simply doesn't fit in and never will) but it's stupid that almost any of the villains that make up the Legion would want to work together at all, and much less forming a proper team.
Martian Manhunter, honestly, who does he even fight?
The white Martians
Don't forget Despero
Pretty much all of the 90's legacy characters had bad rogues galleries. Kyle's villains were awful, I honestly cannot remember a single original villain that Connor fought when he was Green Arrow, and Wally's villains sucked ass until Johns brought back the Rogues. Cass fights her dad and mom and that's it while Steph goes against her dad and that's it. We all love Starman but Jack has basically a single villain and that's Nash.
>Kyle's villains were awful
I thought that fire guy was pretty good.
Effigy was shit too, I think the only semi-interesting villain that Kyle had was Fatale.
Starman wasn't really the kind of comic that went for a rogues gallery in the first place. Connor inherited Ollie's lack of a rogues gallery.
Nero was a great idea, a violent, delusional, paranoia schizophrenic given a ring that can make anything he thinks of real. Too bad he got like 2 stories and that was it.
He had Deathstroke during his Titans days and Professor Pyg from his tenure as Batman but both were snatched up by Bruce. James Gordon Jr and whoever the frick the auction dude was in Black Mirror had the potential to be interesting if DC didnt reboot a few months later.
I can't even recall a single Pyg story since his Morrison run. Honestly I don't know why people just transplant his Batman and Robin villains onto him permanently along with some that Bruce isn't using
>Pyg
>Flamingo
>Jackanapes
>White Rabbit/Magpie/some other Catwoman expat
Honestly moving dick to bludhaven was a mistake, its one thing to make him nightwing but you couldnt have left him in frickin gotham? Its an entire city i think there is enough villains for them both to share and it would make it alot easier to bring nightwing in and out of batman stories (which tbh is the only time anyone cares about him anyways)