Random Most Hated Marvel Comic Arcs (14 items)

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  (#1) Spider-Man: Sins Past

  Peter Parker really just cannot catch a break. "Sins Past" is a 2004 Spider-Man storyline where it was revealed that Peter's first sweetheart, Gwen Stacy, cheated on him with his archenemy Norman Osborn (you know, the Green Goblin), got pregnant, managed to hide this pregnancy from Peter, and subsequently had twins while she was in Europe on vacation. This becomes the explanation of why Osborn slayed Gwen during the legendary "Night That Gwen Stacy Died" story from 1973, with Osborn raising his kids (who age two to three times faster than average, because why not?) as their "uncle." It is an entirely unnecessary addition to the Spider-Man canon.

  If you're wondering just how hated "Sins Past" is, look no further than the Change.org petition titled "Marvel Should Have Sins Past Officially Erased from Marvel Continuity." That kind of hate doesn't occur with every bad comic book story. With the issue revealing the plot twist at a 3.3/10 critics average on Comic Book Roundup and spot on Comics Alliance's "15 Worst Comics of the Decade" for the 2000s, it seems safe to say "Sins Past" won't be reappraised anytime in the near future.
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  (#2) Avengers: The Crossing

  Nowadays, the Iron Man/Avengers 1995 crossover storyline "The Crossing" is mostly (if not completely) ignored in continuity as it certainly seems to be something Marvel would rather consider non-canon without acknowledging it at all. The plot essentially boils down to this: the Tony Stark fans had been reading for three decades had actually been acting as an undercover agent for Kang the Conquerer for years. Hijinks ensue, the Avengers go back in time, and a teenage Tony Stark is brought back to the present to take over the reigns of Iron Man which would effectively reboot the character. 

  Unsurpringly, this reboot did not stick because, well, no one was asking for a teenage Iron Man. Taking one of the original Avengers and turning him into a traitor in order to relaunch the character with a younger version failed to bring on new readers and only served to alienate those who loved the character in the first place. When an omnibus of the storyline was released in 2011, Bleeding Cool's Rich Johnston compared the arc to "the uncle that no one talks about after he featured on To Catch A Predator." Yikes.
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  (#3) The Clone Saga

  If we're talking overkill, there's no more infamous Marvel storyline than Spider-Man's "Clone Saga," which ran for well over a hundred issues in multiple Marvel titles from 1994 to 1996. It isn't even possible to succinctly summarize the twists and turns taken in this roller coaster of a tale. Imagine being a rabid comic book fan in the age before widespread internet, and you're confronted with a convoluted story that took more than two years to come to an end while it moved from title to title like it was playing a cruel game of hopscotch. Even if there were interesting ideas strewn throughout the story arc - and there are - wouldn't you feel a little hard done by?

  Meant to mimic the strong sales of DC events like "The Death of Superman" and "Batman: Knightfall," the "Clone Saga" was meant to end Peter Parker's marriage to Mary Jane and return him to a more simple version of the character, but it ended up spiraling entirely out of control. Den of Geek's CJ Wheeler put it thusly, "Instead of returning Spider-Man to his easygoing, simple beginnings the character became more muddled than ever because of the cloning fiasco."
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  (#4) Ultimatum

  When Marvel brought superstar writer Jeph Loeb together with popular artist David Finch to put together a major 2009 crossover in the fan-favorite Ultimate Marvel imprint, all signs indicated an inevitable success on the horizon. This did not come to pass. What readers did get was a mess of a series with a truly convoluted plot surrounding Magneto wanting to end the entire world after the passing of his children. If you want to see character after character after character perish, then Ultimatum is for you.

  In his review, IGN's Jesse Schedeen stated, "Ultimatum is one of the worst comics I have ever read. The industry was supposed to have moved beyond flashy, soulless material like this years ago." Comics Alliance's Chris Sims said the writing is akin to "terrible fanfiction" and that it's the "kind of story written by a teenager that wants to sound like a grownup." Ultimatum ended up being all style and no substance and signaled the nail in the coffin for the Ultimate Marvel imprint that would officially be put to bed in 2015 with Secret Wars. 
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  (#5) Marville

  Now here is a storyline Marvel wishes they could erase from the minds of the general public. This series is not on Marvel Unlimited. This series is not on any digital storefront. You could shell out the money for physical copies, but you should really save your money. Written in 2002 by then Marvel president Bill Jemas, Marville is one of the most critically derided comic books ever released. It follows the adventures of Kal-AOL Turner, and if that pun about America Online and Superman's birth name doesn't make you laugh, then the rest of the series has nothing else to offer - unless you really like the scantily clad redhead that puzzlingly appears on the cover of each issue for no reason.

  In a 2015 look back at the satire series, The A.V. Club's Nathin Rabin stated, "Marville continually changes what kind of a terrible comic book it is. It begins as a deeply misguided goof on comic books then it becomes a trippy meditation on the nature of existence." You Don't Read Comics's Brandon Masters exclaimed, "In all of Marvel’s published works, no matter how good or bad, it’s hard to find a worse book than Marville. It is petty, misguided, wrongheaded, and just plain badly written."
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  (#6) Heroes Reborn

  Years before Disney bought Marvel and the duo conquered the box office, turning former C-list heroes like Iron Man and Captain America into full-fledged icons in the process, Marvel ran into some truly dire financial straits in the 1990s. After the comics bubble burst and the company was spiraling toward bankruptcy, they reached out to popular creators who had left the company to come back and reimagine some of the House of Ideas' biggest names for a reimagining known as "Heroes Reborn" in order to drum up sales.

  Getting industry superstars Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld certainly seemed like a homerun idea at the time, but fans rejected the reboot and "Heroes Reborn" became the relaunch that Marvel wishes everyone would just forget already. The whole idea was such a disaster that Marvel quickly reversed course and launched the status quo-restoring "Heroes Return" not long after. Marvel's reticence for line-wide relaunches, an aversion that continues to this very day, stems from the complete flop of "Heroes Reborn." DC is cool with actually changing things up every now and then (hello New 52 and DC Rebirth), but Marvel can't seem to forget this disaster of a relaunch.
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  (#7) Spider-Man: One More Day

  If you utter the words "One More Day" in a public place, you'll garner one of two reactions from the people around you who don't think you're crazy: fans of the Diamond Rio song wanting to talk about Country music and Marvel fans who curse the names of J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada immediately. Widely regarded as having the dubious title of "Worst Spider-Man Story of All-Time" on lockdown, "One More Day" came out of nowhere to effectively end the lengthy marriage of Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson... fans and critics were not pleased and that is putting it lightly. 

  In order to save his Aunt May's life after she has been shot, Peter makes a deal with the demon Mephisto (read: Marvel's version of the Devil) to save her life in exchange for his marriage with MJ. On review aggregator Comic Book Roundup, the final issue of the arc - Amazing Spider-Man #545 - has a critic's average of 2.3/10 and a user rating of 2.2/10, which shows just how widely hated this particular story is. Even Marvel is cool with its own writers taking this oft-maligned moment of Spider-Man history to task, but that doesn't change the fact that the company wiped away years of character development in the snap of a finger.
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  (#8) AXIS

  Big crossover events sell extremely well, so Marvel is going to keep pumping them out as often as they can. But creating these events is no easy task and even the best ideas shepherded by the most talented artists around can go awry, leaving a bad taste in the mouths of readers who plopped down major dollars to pick up each and every issue. Rick Remender's 2014 event Avengers & X-Men: AXIS is a textbook example of this.

  Take a writer coming from critical successes like Uncanny X-Force and Uncanny Avengers, have him work with awesome pencillers like Adam Kubert and Terry Dodson, and give them a fun story where heroes and villains have their personalities inverted to make things interesting. It should've been a win-win-win. It... was not. In his review of the final issue, AIPT Comics' Jordan Richards called Avengers & X-Men: AXIS "easily the worst event comic I’ve ever read," and, "one incredible train wreck". With the much more successful Secret Wars kicking off less than half a year later, AXIS was quickly left behind to collect dust.
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  (#9) Trouble

  Trouble was a five-issue series Marvel published in 2003 that was meant to reignite the success of romance comics from the 1950s. It was not only meant to kickstart a dead genre but reimagine the lineage of Peter Parker as well. You see, Trouble follows young May, Ben, Mary, and Richard (obviously Peter's Aunt May, Uncle Ben, and parents) on a soap opera-esque tale that sees May have an affair with Richard that results in a teen pregnancy. Indeed, writer Mark Millar decided he wanted to make the elderly Aunt May into Peter's secret mother... for whatever reason.

  This bizarre choice, coupled with creepy live-action covers and little success commercially or critically, caused the series to come and go with the controversy surrounding it leading to limited benefit. After Mark Millar became a Hollywood golden boy after adaptations of Wanted and Kick-Ass were well received, Marvel decided to collect Trouble into a trade paperback in 2011, which made fans question, "Why?" No one enjoyed the story the first time around. CBR's Sean T. Collins stated, "It was one of the last Marvel books from that era I ever expected to see collected," and yet, you can still find print copies of it in addition to a collected version on Comixology.
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  (#10) Secret Empire

  It turns out when you alter the fundamental nature of one of pop culture's biggest icons, people take notice. When it came out in the lead up to 2017's Secret Empire that Captain America was an undercover Hydra agent - meaning he was pretty darn evil, you guys - the mainstream media had a field day. With major media outlets like The Washington Post and Time Magazine covering Cap's apparent heel-turn, the anticipation for Secret Empire was building but a lot of people weren't on board with turning Cap evil, even if it was for a small amount of time.

  Many felt that turning Steve Rogers into a facist was just plain wrong and Secret Empire scribe Nick Spencer turned the dial up to 11 when he repeatedly responded to critics on Twitter, stoking the flames of artist/fan conflict. The war of words got so hot, Vulture's Abraham Riesman wrote an article entitled "That Time Captain America Said ‘Hail Hydra’ and Geekdom Imploded," which laid the dispute out in fascinating detail. Combine the overblown controversy with middling review scores and a lack of changes to spur from the massive event (Captain America is a good guy again, unsurprisingly), and you get a storyline that left readers wondering just what the point of it all was.
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  (#11) X-Cutioner's Song

  The 1990s were a rough decade for Marvel Comics. From Spider-Man's "Clone Saga" to the failure of "Heroes Reborn," the various characters across the company's many titles were all given stories of questionable quality, and the X-Men were certainly no exception. The crossover story "X-Cutioner's Song" was told throughout the pages of X-Men, X-Factor, and Uncanny X-Men from late 1992 to early 1993. It is hard to overstate how popular the mutants were at the time; the highest selling comic book of all time was 1991's X-Men #1, which sold an eye-popping 8 million+ copies. 

  Putting the awful title aside, "X-Cutioner's Song" was billed as the story that would reveal the true origin of mysterious X-Force member Cable, and fans were ready to eat every issue of the arc up in order to figure out just where the metallic-armed mutant really came from. The problem was this origin wouldn't be revealed until another storyline that was published in 1994. Fans were sold a bill of goods they did not receive, and with the entire story supposed to focus around the genesis of Cable, it begs the question: What is the point?
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  (#12) Civil War II

  Civil War II is many things: sequel to one of Marvel's most successful series of all time, blatant cash grab to piggy back off 2016's Captain America: Civil War, another in a long line of Marvel crossover events. One thing Civil War II definitely is not though, is beloved. Reviewers found it mediocre at best and calamitous at worst while many fans and pop-culture writers bemoaned numerous aspects of the event, most commonly the character development of Carol Danvers' Captain Marvel.

  Articles like Gizmodo's "Civil War II Is Finally Over, and We All Lost," and SyFy's "WTF Was Going On With Carol Danvers In Civil War II?" kind of tell you everything you need to know about the reaction to the 2016 crossover. The storyline boils down to a new Inhuman, Ulysses, who can supposedly predict the future. Alongside this, Carol Danvers and her cadre of heroes wanted to use him to arrest people before crimes happened, and Tony Stark and his team of do-gooders being vehemently opposed to arresting people who have yet to commit a crime. There isn't much to write home about when it comes to Civil War II as even the shocking passings (War Machine and Hulk) didn't manage to stick as both characters are revived in the main continuity.
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  (#13) Superior Iron Man

  What would Iron Man look like if he used his immense wealth and alarming intelligence to take advantage of others instead of helping them? The 2015 series Superior Iron Man, which spun out of Avengers & X-Men: AXIS after Tony Stark's personality was inverted, looked to tackle that very question. The series, which saw Tony begin drinking again and blatantly take financial advantage of those around him, only lasted nine issues before being wiped out thanks to the line-wide crossover series Secret Wars. 

  Seeing Stark break bad, let greed be his guiding light, and go toe-to-toe with Matt Murdock's Daredevil proved to be the breaking point for some fans who were outraged that the newly hyper-popular Iron Man (thank you, Marvel Cinematic Universe) was turning to the dark side. Marvel didn't seem to mind much, going with the age-old adage that all press is good press. The character shift did prompt some media attention, from The Hollywood Reporter and Yahoo! among others, wondering what the endgame would be for Stark. Alas, Tony was reverted to his normal personality after Secret Wars, and nothing that occurred in Superior Iron Man was ever really mentioned again, meaning all the hoopla was for nothing.
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  (#14) Shadowland

  Matt Murdock's Daredevil has, generally speaking, had one of the most consistently good publication histories throughout the lengthy history of Marvel Comics. You can't go wrong with so many different writers' takes on The Man Without Fear that it's hard to list them all: Frank Miller, Kevin Smith, Mark Waid, Chip Zdarsky, Ann Nocenti, Brian Michael Bendis... the list goes on and on. This is all to say Daredevil fans are used to a certain level of quality and 2010's Shadowland wasn't really up to their high standards. 

  The street-level event sees Matt Murdock become possessed by the Beast of the Hand and become a villainous overlord of sorts, emphasized by his all-black look, who comes up against his friends like Spider-Man and Luke Cage. The series ends with Matt sacrificing himself to save everyone else from more pain under the power of the Beast of the Hand but, in classic comic book fashion, he doesn't really perish, making a silent getaway in the end to take stock on recent events. In a review of the last issue, IGN's Dan Iverson called Shadowland a "lifeless story" that would hopefully go on to be just a "bad memory relegated to a trivia question years from now." 

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