Top 20 DC Moments That Made Fans Rage Quit

If you were reading “Armageddon 2001”, an event featuring the devious Monarch, his identity seemed to be a given. Monarch was originally a character who snapped, seemingly killed all the Earth’s heroes, and took over the world. All in the year 2001. The signs were all pointing to Monarch being Captain Atom, and in fact that was exactly the case. At least originally. When word of the reveal got spoiled beforehand, DC scrambled and changed it. Now, Monarch was Hank Hall. Sure, DC was in a tough spot, but it would’ve been far better if they had stuck to their guns. The change created a giant headache that contradicted continuity. Monarch’s reveal also fell flat with fans and knocked Hank’s stock down a bit.

Guy Gardner may be loud-mouthed, abrasive, hot-headed, sometimes a jerk, you get the picture. But despite that, deep down he’s a courageous hero who’s deserving of his Green Lantern ring. So when Guy ditched it and started calling himself the Warrior, fans were a little more than ticked off. In a surprising but ultimately disappointing story, Guy Gardner was revealed to be half human and half Vuldarian, making him now part-alien. This also revealed that Guy could now morph parts of his body into weapons. Guy’s Warrior identity was pretty definitively met with a lackluster response from fans. You could just tell the whole thing reeked of 90s edge. Stick to a Lantern ring, Guy!

Robin’s got a crush on Batgirl, but it might not be the Robin you’d expect! During Geoff Johns’ “Three Jokers” comic, the Jokers (yep, there’s multiple) torment Batman, Batgirl, and Red Hood. After a particularly harrowing experience with the Jokers, Jason later recovers and recollects with Barbara. In a surprising moment, the two share a kiss. Barbara quickly admitted she considered it a mistake though. Just the mere kiss was enough to incite major uproar from the fandom. The page near the end of the book where Jason wrote a letter confessing his love to her (which comedically failed to be delivered) didn’t exactly ease things either. This romantic pairing was bound to fail.

When Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend Alexandra Dewitt was unceremoniously murdered by the villain Major Force, her death sent shockwaves through the entire comic book industry. The trend of women being killed to give the hero extra emotional baggage wasn’t anything new. But when Alexandra was stuffed into a fridge, her death finally brought real awareness to the issue. The problem would become fittingly known as fridging. DC was criticized by readers and critics alike for their treatment of their female characters, and rightfully so! There are plenty of ways to advance a character’s story without having to kill off their love interests for shock value.

Nobody was safe from getting a terrible 90s revamp, not even one of the most famous superheroines ever. After George Perez’s character-defining “Wonder Woman” run drew to a close, the character was eventually taken into a new direction. We never said it was a very well-received direction though. William Messner-Loebs’ take on Wonder Woman saw her go by just ‘Diana’ after she lost the Wonder Woman title to the warrior Artemis. To complete the change, she adopted a whole new biker look. The change was clearly forced by DC in an attempt to make their heroes all reflect the gritty 90s. Fans weren’t having any of it though and Diana was thankfully restored to Wonder Woman by the end of the run.

When Nightwing squared off against the powerful Blockbuster, he surprisingly gained help in the form of the new femme-fatale Tarantula. All things considered, this was a pretty standard “Nightwing” story, right up until the disgusting ending. After Tarantula saved Nightwing by killing Blockbuster, she took advantage of the physically drained superhero. Nightwing very clearly told Tarantula to stop but she instead ignored his pleas and assaulted him anyways. Fans were horrified by this reckless creative decision. Writer Devin Grayson eventually apologized, but the moment has gone down in history as one of bleakest times in Nightwing’s storied tenure. A reference to Tarantula even had to be altered from the animated “Harley Quinn” show.

Dan Didio’s disdain for Dick Grayson led to a very interesting (and by interesting we mean critically panned) time for Nightwing. When Nightwing is shot in the head by KGBeast, he loses his memory. He then is no longer Nightwing, becomes a taxi driver, and starts calling himself ‘Ric’. This major change to a fan favorite character went about as well as anyone would expect, with Ric Grayson ultimately becoming a shell of his former self. Eventually Nightwing regained his memories and everything went back to normal. But the damage was already done. This bizarre stunt went on for an uncomfortably long time! Sure everything might be normal now, but Ric Grayson unfortunately will always have been a thing that happened.

Make no mistake: Tom King is an amazing Eisner-award winning writer. And while divisive, “Heroes in Crisis” still offered an intricate look into the mental health of superheroes. But yeah with all that being said, this was still undeniably a complete character assassination of Wally West. Sorry, Tom! In a disappointing ending, Wally was revealed to be the cause of the Sanctuary murders after suffering a severe mental breakdown. This villainous turn for the character who was supposed to be the hope for the DC universe didn’t bode well at all. Wally West’s fans rose up to express their hatred for this choice. Wally’s actions during the controversial comic have since been retconned multiple times in order to restore his reputation.

Tom King’s “Batman” run divided the fanbase, with many loving it and many not. And there’s probably no greater example of why people don’t like it than the infamous wedding issue. In “Batman” #50, Batman and Catwoman were finally going to get married. Except that didn’t actually happen. Catwoman called the wedding off and the whole thing ended up being a mess. To say fans hated the decision is really putting it lightly. The reveal that the wedding was all a sham had made serious headlines. For many fans, they stopped reading DC altogether because of this. It was so controversial that Tom King got death threats over it. You can dislike the comic all you want, but threatening the writer’s life is never ok.

The very idea of taking something with an established lore and passionate fanbase and saying “hey we’re going to scrap all of that” is admittedly going to ruffle feathers. While the New 52 ultimately was a success in many regards, it also had its fair share of baggage. It did pretty well in sales and served as the launching pads for an entire new generation of readers. But it also made many unpopular creative decisions. Many of the most iconic heroes were aged down and turned into jerks. Long-time fan-favorite relationships were scrapped. Unappealing origin stories were told, and many characters were just left out of the shuffle entirely. Even if you were pro-New 52, you couldn’t deny that this reboot’s execution was a mess!

When DC comics decided to go full relaunch, it was a bold move. Unfortunately, there were many missteps, and it was not the successful revitalization of the brand that the company had hoped for. Fans had no shortage of complaints, from Pandora’s role in the universe to the multitude of disappointing crossovers. But one of the biggest gripes was the character redesigns. Some redesigns were divisive, others were universally panned. Lobo fit squarely into the latter category, a poster boy for everything wrong with the company’s new aesthetic choices. Lobo the giant space biker might not have been for everybody, but nobody wanted slim, surly teenage emo “Twilight” Lobo. Rebirth thankfully brought the old Lobo back and added this guy to Brainiac’s collection.

When well-executed and given appropriate weight and consideration, death can be a painful but effective tool that helps characters grow and highlights the themes of loss, sacrifice, and suffering. Unfortunately, the industry has identified it as a shortcut to selling issues, and so it tends to get used for shock and awe. Such is the case with “Justice League: Cry for Justice. In it, Star City is partially destroyed by a bomb and one of the victims is Red Arrow’s young daughter, Lian Harper. It feels cheap, manipulative, cruel, and out-of-nowhere. But then again, this is a comic in which heroes torture villains for information, so maybe rage-quit worthy moments is what they were going for?

Roy Harper really can’t catch a break, can he? Back in the ‘70s, when he was still Green Arrow’s sidekick, he ended up misusing heroin. Retrospectively the story might feel cheesy and melodramatic, but it won awards and made a huge impact. Important and influential though it may have been, Roy Harper has paid dearly; he’s a tragic figure, doomed to relapse time and time again. After the death of his daughter, and struggling with impotency issues, the now one-armed hero gets high on heroin and then beats up goons to protect a rotting cat corpse he’s mistaken for his daughter. Fans didn’t think DC could stoop lower than “Cry for Justice”, but this sequel proved them wrong.

It’s shocking just how drastically an iconic character’s personality, demeanor, and values can change depending on the writer. More shocking still is the fact that the editors would even publish content that shows heroes like Wonder Woman and Superman acting so ridiculously out of character. But… here you have it. In “The Dark Knight Returns”, Frank Miller took some liberties in depicting the Trinity, and it worked. In his sequel, “The Dark Knight Strikes Again” he again takes liberties but with much worse and sillier results. Superman and Wonder Woman get it on - engaging in sex that takes them into the sky before crashing back to earth so hard they trigger a volcanic eruption and cause tsunamis, surely killing many people. It’s absurd and embarrassing.

Final Crisis could be called one big rage quit moment. Though some people love it, the overly convoluted storytelling of Grant Morrison turned off a sizable portion of readers. However, the worst of it had arguably already come and gone with the 51 issue Countdown to Final Crisis. Critically panned at the time of its release, Countdown was lambasted by industry experts and readers alike for both its ridiculous scope and the arguably cheap use of the multiverse as an opportunity to kill tons of characters. Perhaps most damning, however, was that its lack of clear editorial vision made it so that Countdown didn’t even do its job of leading into Final Crisis. Unsurprisingly, much of it has since been retconned.

This moment is a controversial one. Even its inclusion on our list is likely to stir up controversy in the comments, given that there are many readers who loved the moment. So… what’s the big deal with this political statement? Well, just that. It’s a strong political statement from the world’s most iconic hero, a hero that has always been tied intimately with America. Heck, his catchphrase has literally often been “Truth, Justice, and the American Way”. So when a story in Action Comics #900 saw Superman renounce his American citizenship, some American readers were outraged by what they felt was a personal attack on American identity.

This is one of those storylines that really makes you stop and ask yourself…. what were they thinking? A 2007 limited series, Amazons Attack promised to be an epic Wonder Woman event. Unfortunately, it was neither epic nor much of a Wonder Woman story. From the first issue, it became almost immediately clear that this plot made no sense and could only hurt Wonder Woman’s reputation, along with that of her people. It begins with the Amazons attacking Washington, killing an unarmed father and son. There’s your first rage quit. Soon, they’re taking down fighter jets with arrows. Violent, illogical and lacking anything worthwhile to say, Amazons Attack inspired vocal criticism.

Frank Miller’s work on “The Dark Knight Strikes Again” may have left much to be desired, but it looks far more passable when compared to his contributions to the Batman mythos in “All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder.” We get that All-Star comics are stories that take place out of continuity, but who in the hell did DC think would want to read this take on Batman? Like in The Dark Knight Strikes Again, Miller fumbles with a sex scene by having Black Canary and Batman have sex as henchmen burn to death in the background. But the real kicker is when he basically kidnaps Dick Grayson, calls him all manner of slurs, and then introduces himself as “the goddamn Batman”.

Heroes become villains, villains become heroes. It’s a tired trope and one that feels like it’s been done to death. Rarely does it stick, however, and never before had a hero been so savagely taken down the path of villainy. In the ‘90s, the powers that be at DC decided that it was time to pass along the torch to a new Green Lantern. Rather than have Hal Jordan retire or become a mentor figure, however, they destroyed his home city and many people he loved, had him dragged to the depths of despair and then made him go mad and proceed to kill his fellow Lanterns, completing his transformation into the villainous Parallax. Understandably many fans were NOT pleased.

Sexual assault is a very difficult topic, but that’s not to say that it has no place in works of fiction. There are numerous stories across various media that have handled the incredibly difficult subject with sensitivity. DC’s 2004 event, “Identity Crisis,” was unfortunately not one of them. When supporting character Sue Dibny (the wife of the Elongated Man) was revealed to have been attacked by Dr. Light, many felt that it was a cheap plot device - another female character from comics victimized to advance the story. Worse, the Justice League covered it up. The whole thing showed terrible judgment on the part of the creative team, and many readers refused to accept that the heroes of the Justice League would act in such a way.

What’s a comic book moment from DC that made you rage quit? Vent your frustrations out in the comments!