Plastic Man just always struck me as too dumb for words. Stretching all the time? And those stupid goggles? Meh.
I’ll also say Superman. I have no problem with his being a goody-goody; ambiguous heroes would have had trouble staying within Comics Code rules. It’s the whole Kryptonite vulnerability thing. It’s too easy to make awful, yet boring, stories with it.
Superman, and it’s not because he’s almost all-powerful. Look at Alan Moore’s version of Miracleman.
But Superman is boring because of his supporting cast, the setting, his outdated costume and his new armored costume (why does he need armor??), his villains, personality, etc.
It’s RARE when I read a good Superman story. Strangely the Superboy live action television show was exceptionally good for it’s time.
Wonder Woman is a superhero comic I’ve always wanted to get into. Near all-powerful heroine in a sexy costume, with a mythological background, you’d think the stories would write themselves. But no, her rogues gallery sucks too, the art never captures her the right way (except for exceptions like the Dodsons, Hughes, and Bolland).
Superman, Captain America, Batman (sometimes). I’m much more a fan of the 2-tiers and as Balance says, heroes with low power. Meaning Wolverine is right out too.
Yeah, the pretty one died.
I never really liked the Green Lanterns. They should have been more powerful. Here’s a magic ring that will create ANYTHING you can imagine and will into existence and they use it to make giant green boxing gloves. (I admit I haven’t read any GL comics in a long time.
Plastic Man was pretty unique, I think. He was always written as more of a comedian than a real hero, but when he imagined himself to be a streetlight, he became a streetlight and gave off light, when he imagined himself as a hot air balloon, he floated. He was also crazy, I always figured he’d imagine himself as a fusion bomb, or even just 180 pounds of plutonium and BOOM!
Really, even after she lost all that weight?
Wonder Woman with the exception of when she was plain Diana Prince and I Ching taught her the martial arts. Now those were some awesome comics.
The Angel is the lamest super-hero ever.
Agree with those who say Superman is boring. So is the Hulk. Most of the time, The Fantastic Four sucked.
Boy, Firestorm was my man back in the day! I followed that title for a long time, almost to the very end of the 1982-1990 version. His powers never struck me as being too overwhelming to be interesting. He couldn’t do anything to organic material, and he couldn’t whip up a complex machine that he didn’t completely understand the workings of.
Actually, I think we can refine this down to “Mr Fantastic sucks”. He tops my list, closely followed by Ant-man. The whole “super-scientist” thing is just lame, and adding dorky powers on top of it just ups the lameness.
I’ve always been a Marvel person and never really liked any of the DC heroes (aside from Batman). Lots of reasons - bland personalities (Superman is perfect, Wonder Woman is uh… a woman, Green Lantern is uh…heroic); lack of good villains; and too powerful/too many powers. As noted, Batman is still very likeable because he doesn’t have any of these problems.
The Marvel characters seem more interesting from the get-go because they usually have a limited power set and a built-in personality flaw/character dilemma. Hulk is just super-strong and super-tough, he doesn’t get eye lasers or flight or a magic whip, and he’s got the whole “lose control and turn into a berserker” problem, which is more personality than I can say Superman or Wonder Woman has.
Obviously, it always boils down to the skill of the writer, and good writers can make even bland superheroes interesting (Superman, for example, may be “perfect” but works great as a foil to an imperfect world, see stories like Kingdom Come.)
The Afro-American Green Lantern; no for his color but because I grew up with the pilot Hal Jordan. Ditto with whoever made the bunggling cowardly Flash character of today. So unlike Barry Allen, or his older counterpart in Earth 2.
Superman just because they have an obsession with making him a fucking boyscout, I think other characters even joke about it on Smallville. He isn’t only invincible physically he is boring as hell.
Daredevil just because his whole premise is kind of silly, whoa he is like blind and shit. I think it is the lack of supernatural element, I mean I know blind people don’t develop bat like echolocation(if they did why do they use sensor sticks?) so it just collapses it.
All the crazy stuff in comics, and THIS is too crazy for you?
Well I mean I can’t say for sure that the really crazy scifi/fantasy stuff is false, but that is something I can say is false.
Bungling? Cowardly? I haven’t seen that. Wally can act pretty goofy, but he’s solid when things get serious–his goofball routine is at least partly an act.
Of course, if you’re not talking about Wally, all bets are off. The Flash family is pretty extensive, and I think they swap the name around a bit. Plus, I’m not following the New 52, so I have no idea what’s going on there.
I’m going to have to go with Aquaman. I’m just not that interested in crimes that happen under the sea, or hearing what a porpoise has to say on the matter.
Sometimes the porpoise commits the crime.
[sub]Then Aquaman has to defeat the porpoise[/sub]
I’m mostly a Marvel guy, and can’t really comment on characters like Plastic Man and such.
I do know that for the longest time Aquaman was a joke but didn’t they make him pretty badass now?
I never really cared about the Fantastic Four. Thing and Torch are cool but as a team I just never gave a damn.
They were boring in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe as well. A lot of the characters were redesigned there, and so were the FF. Younger, flashier, etc…but still boring to me.
Though I do like how they use Reid now.
This is pretty much me. A good writer can make a character worth reading, a mediocre writer can ruin one. Wonder Woman was one of my favorite comics because I began reading it at the Perez relaunch in the 1980s, but man, she had a lot of crappy comics before (and after) that makes me understand why she’s getting so little love in this thread. The Hulk as written by Peter David, the Simonson Thor, etc., were all worth reading even if I tended to not like the characters otherwise. And ditto on the DC b-list. I think it’s cool that they “rescued” a lot of characters from Charlton and so on, but they’ve never fit in very well. Marvel seemed to be interested in telling interesting stories using lower-end characters, but DC usually seemed content to just let them languish.
That said, characters/teams that I tend to find uninteresting:
Dr. Strange. Never have gotten into him; I hated it when he had to share Strange Tales with Cloak and Dagger (two of my favorite B-level Marvel characters).
Wolverine. Over used, overdone.
Storm. She was always written a little too “perfect” for my tastes.
Lobo. I wanted to like Lobo, as he seemed to take the piss out of hypermasculine 90s comics… but meh.
Ghost Rider. Boring.
Teen Titans. I like some of the individual Teen Titans characters, but it never seemed to gel like LoSH or X-Men.
Batman. Always reminded me of Dick Tracy – interesting only for his rogues gallery. There are some good stories with Batman, though. I love his cameo in the Black Orchid mini, the Killing Joke is great… never got into the Byrne takes on him (OTOH, Byrne’s takes on Daredevil were great).
Plus, sometimes the crime is transporting gulls across a staid lion for immoral porpoises.