Comic Books / Overshadowed By Controversy

"For years now, former Archie Sonic writer Ken Penders has been most well known for his legal battles with Archie and Sega in which he acquired the rights to his characters and stories. Among dedicated Sonic fans, he’s also known for his bad tweets and strange art style.

You know what doesn't come up as often? The actual content of his stories."

— Bobby Schroeder, I read every Sonic comic by Ken Penders, and they’re wilder than you could ever imagine

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Works

A-C

American Dreams (2021) is a love letter to Golden-Age comics, featuring the story of a Jewish immigrant in the early 20th century who becomes The Cape in order to protect his fellow immigrants from a xenophobic conspiracy. Unfortunately, it has become hard to talk about the series without talking about creator Daniel Kalban and his vigorous pro-Israel views, which grew more adamant after Israel's invasion of Gaza, to the point that he repeatedly insisted that casualty reports from Gaza were being inflated by the Gaza Health Ministry, a claim which is as yet unsubstantiated and which many consider to be tantamount to genocide denial.
Angela from Image and Marvel Comics is primarily known in the industry for the nasty legal battle surrounding ownership of the character. Created by Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane in Spawn #9 alongside characters Cogliostro and Medieval Spawn, McFarlane claimed full ownership of the characters, stating that Gaiman's work was done as work-for-hire and thus he did not have any of the rights to the characters he introduced. As a result, Gaiman did not receive any royalties when it came to reprints featuring the characters' appearances, the animated adaptation that featured Cog prominently or any merchandising involving the characters. This was contrary to Image's entire mantra and reason for being (the company was formed because the founders wanted to own their work at Marvel Comics) and Gaiman made no secret about his disdain for this and stated that his contract with McFarlane stipulated he would have some ownership of the characters. A case over ownership occurred over the course of a decade, first resulting in both creators owning half of each character, before it was later settled out of court, with ownership of Cog and Medieval Spawn going to McFarlane, while Angela went to Gaiman, who later sold the character to Marvel. Given the character's very few appearances in Marvel Comics, many of those who know about her will often know more about the legal issues around her, as well as McFarlane's hypocritical actions involving the character.
The Ant-Man comics have long lived under the specter of the time where the first Ant-Man, Hank Pym, hit his wife, Janet van Dyne (aka the Wasp). The entire thing came from the artist drawing an exaggerated motion, with the intent being that Hank hit Janet by accident during a fit of madness. Not helping matters is the fact that the Ultimate Marvel version of Pym was depicted, in the typically Darker and Edgier style of the Ultimate Marvel universe, as a full-blown domestic abuser. Marvel editor Tom Brevoort would later explain that "Part of that is because that was the most interesting thing that had ever happened to that character, and so that really cemented it. Any number of creative teams since then have struggled mightily trying to get that moment to be overcome, including myself, and nobody’s been able to outperform the gravity of it". The Marvel Cinematic Universe depiction of Ant-Man prevented the controversy by demoting him to mentor character and starring Scott Lang instead.^note This Adaptation Displacement allowed the films to move past the baggage that came with him. On the other hand, the mainstream comics decided to just kill him off by having Ultron assimilate his body.
Armageddon 2001 is best remembered for the debacle when a spoiler leak revealed the solution to the story's big mystery, that the superhero who would turn evil in the future and conquer the world as the crossover's Big Bad, the Monarch, was Captain Atom, which caused DC to give the story a hasty mid-plot rewrite (making the character in question the original Hank Hall Hawk) that infamously made absolutely no sense (as Hawk and Dove had earlier been explicitly stated to have fought against the Monarch in every possible timeline) in the interest of "preserving the surprise". DC then kept making things worse by trying to also work the intended ending into canon, completely ignoring that absolutely no one cared anymore and just wanted to move on. It didn’t help that every attempt to bring Captain Atom into being Monarch was done in works that were already poorly regarded for bad writing, character assassination, bad reimaginings of Silver Age characters and other attempts to resurrect other ideas nobody cared about bringing back.
Batman:
- Batgirl (2011) has developed a reputation for getting caught up in a controversy of some sort every other month, greatly overshadowing the actual content of the book itself.
  - First there was controversy over the very premise of Barbara Gordon, a well-known disabled character, no longer being disabled, which was seen as offensive. Gail Simone - behind most of Barbara's iconic stories in Birds of Prey - took over in that other writers would provide an even worse take.
  - Simone chose to theme her run around trauma and survivor's guilt, with one of the first villains being The Mirror, a guy who kills people that experienced miraculous recoveries. Fans who disliked the idea of Barbara as Batgirl saw this as an insult to them.
  - Toward the end of her run, writer Gail Simone was abruptly fired, only to quickly be re-hired, with little to no explanation in either case.
  - Simone was replaced by a new creative team who provided a lighter tone. However, they caused outrage a few weeks into their run, as a story where a campy male performance artist commits crimes disguised as Batgirl was interpreted by some as transphobic (With Barbara's shock at the Unsettling Gender-Reveal attracting particular criticism). This was edited to tone down the Unfortunate Implications when the story was published as a Trade Paperback.
  - Finally, it's been at the center of a massive debate about the role of social justice and feminism in fiction after a cover for the comic, which was confirmed by Word of God to have been a homage to The Killing Joke, was pulled by DC.
- The miniseries Batman: Damned, intended to launch a "Black Label" sub-brand of DC for non-continuity, mature-reader, creator-driven works featuring their prominent characters, seems doomed to always be remembered simply for a single panel in its first issue of a depressed Bruce Wayne brooding in the dark Batcave while stark naked, with the outline of his batawang clearly visible. The penis was censored in its digital release, and DC quickly announced first that any future physical copies would be censored as well, and then that there would be no second printing, very much closing the barn door after the horse was out, and causing mayhem in comic shops and on auction sites as speculators tried to grab up every copy they could find of the instant "collectible". It didn't help that they explained the move as worry that the panel seemed designed solely to create controversy to no story purpose, which just got a lot of fans asking why they allowed it to be published at all. Moreover, there were reports that the furore would lead to increased corporate control over the content of all future works under the Black Label banner, which had been hyped specifically as "we'll let big-name creators do anything they want with no restrictions on content". There were further arguments over the announcement at much the same time that the collected edition of Batman: White Knight, to be published under the "Black Label" brand, would add in a previously-censored graphic sex scene between Jack Napier and Harleen Quinzel, with Harleen's bosom on clear display, which led to accusations of a sexist double standard between unsexualised male nudity and highly-sexualised female nudity.
- While each issue of All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder has its own infamous quirk, the final issue (issue 10) had a scene where Batgirl confronts some punks and the punks' yelling was supposed to be censored — except, thanks to a printing error, the censor bars were see-through and so the readers could clearly see the punks were dropping the "f"- and "c"-words. Thus the issue was recalled.
Before Watchmen: The metaseries is more known for the debates surrounding creator rights than it is as a story. This is because original Watchmen writer Alan Moore famously signed a contract that would see him gain the rights to the characters after Watchmen left publication... which, being one of the most influential comics of all time, it never has. Producing follow-up works to one of the most influential and acclaimed comic books of all time was already inviting debate, but doing it without Moore's blessing only added fuel to the fire, though Dave Gibbons (artist on Watchmen) gave his apathetic approval.
Bikini Cowboy, while never a mainstream hit was always something of a cult-favorite on certain message boards. That changed when, in October 2018, during the height of Comicsgate, a video interview claiming to be with someone "blacklisted by the animation industry" was regularly spammed on /co/. Internet sleuths quickly determined that the interviewee (and likely spammer) was comic creator Luke Weber, and were also able to determine that he had previously worked on Steven Universe. As it turns out, Weber had actually been fired from the show for his inappropriate and disgusting behavior — not least of which was his borderline obsession with and sexual harassment of Dana Terrace, culminating in him attacking her then-partner and co-creator Alex Hirsch with a pair of scissors. To add insult to injury, the "PC-snowflakes" that Weber claims had ruined his career had actually never named him directly exactly so as not to ruin his career. The whole video-and-subsequent-revelations fiasco is the only thing anyone talks about when discussing the comic, and has made Luke Weber a laughingstock in the comics world (even amongst the Comicsgate crowd).
The underground comic Boiled Angel is best known for the fact that creator Mike Diana was convicted of obscenity for publishing it.
Vertigo's Border Town by Eric M. Esquivel and Ramon Villalobos was met with acclaim from critics and readers, but then Esquivel began facing sexual assault allegations from toy creator Cynthia Naugle and several other women. Villalobos and colorist Tamra Bonvillain quit the book in support of those who were coming forward against Esquivel. Almost immediately Vertigo cancelled the book when the fourth issue had just come out, cancelling issues five and six which had already been solicited, and made all issues returnable.
Captain America:
- During World War II, Cap's book acquired a spinoff called Young Allies, which focused on Bucky Barnes leading a group of fellow teenagers to assist Cap and that war effort. The actual plots of these stories are largely long forgotten, but everyone sufficiently learned in comics history has heard of the character "Whitewash Jones," a member of the group who was a ridiculous amalgamation of practically every possible racist stereotype of black people - huge eyes, huge lips, really stupid, loves watermelon, hates ghosts, and so on and on. When the Young Allies were revisited in the 2000s for a Milestone Celebration comic, this character was deemed so unsalvageable that the Golden Age comics were retconned in their entirety into in-universe propaganda cartoons Very Loosely Based on a True Story, and while "Whitewash" did exist, his real name was Washington Jones, he was a competent and intelligent member of the Air Force, and he hated how the character based on him was portrayed.
- Rick Remender's run on Captain America is known primarily for the loads and loads of retcons to the accepted canon it had. First, there was Steve Rogers suddenly displaying some somewhat sexist behavior regarding Sharon Carter. Then there was Remender retconning his father, an Irish immigrant, into a stereotypically abusive drunk. Then, there was Sharon Carter being killed off in an Senseless Sacrifice and remembered only for her relationship with Steve. And finally, there was the relationship between Sam Wilson and Jet Black, Arnim Zola's daughter, who, despite having the body of a grown woman and running around in what can best be described as black electrical tape, is chronologically around five. The relationship was filled with Squick, and has never been mentioned again. Steve's father being abusive was also quietly retconned in a later run where Steve and his mother only speak highly of him.
- Nick Spencer's run on Captain America, immediately following Remender's, rapidly became infamous for the frequency with which it was caught up in controversy. It began when the first issue of the run ended with the out-of-nowhere reveal that Captain America had been a sleeper agent for the Neo-Nazi terrorist group HYDRA his entire career, which garnered an overwhelmingly negative reception, due to the fact that Captain America was a character created by two Jewish men to oppose fascism and Nazism. Spencer insisted that the revelation was true and not a Cosmic Retcon, only to reveal in the next issue that yes, it was very much the result of a Cosmic Retcon,^note leading to Spencer being attacked once again for lying about it. Subsequent issues also built up a reputation for Spencer unsubtly inserting his views on politics and/or swipes at critics, the latter of which he also did on Twitter. Also, on Twitter, Spencer condemned the viral video of a bystander punching a Neo-Nazi in the face during an interview on the basis that all violence is wrong, which was retweeted by the Neo-Nazi in question. Later on, Marvel would try to distance HYDRA from Nazis, which fell flat on its face due to not only the organization's origins in the comics, but also due to said origin being followed to the letter in the very popular Marvel Cinematic Universe. This led to mockery from all sides. And then the Secret Empire event happened, wherein Steve is found worthy of wielding Thor's hammer, which many found to be insulting, especially given that the original Thor, who has displayed much more heroic traits than HYDRA Cap, was still unable to wield it.^note This wasn't helped by also managing to tie into the Nazism controversy due to the heavy overlap between modern Norse pagans and Neo-Nazis.

D-I

The one-shot Diesel by Joe Weltjens became overshadowed by controversy in 2016 when it was discovered to be plagiarized from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Both works feature supernatural abilities called Stands, and the plot of the issue is a beat for beat recreation of the introduction of Iggy and the fight against N'Doul.
The 2001 iteration of Doom Patrol is remembered mainly for the controversial decision to kill off Coagula, one of the few transgender superheroines in comics at the time, in an incredibly mean-spirited way (blown up by one of her own teammates, Dorothy Spinner, who herself was shown to become comatose after the incident and at the end of the run is Taken Off Life Support per Robotman's instructions.)
While Doomsday Clock is known for its story and the effect it had on DC's continuity, for many it's more known for two big issues. The first is its publishing schedule, with the issues being so late so frequently that barely any of the issues actually came out on time, to the point that DC stories that seemed to be building off of its ending were published before its completion. The second problem is the issues surrounding creator rights, as with Before Watchmen this time with even less support from Dave Gibbons, with an extra round of controversy regarding whether it was right to have Watchmen characters interacting with DC characters.
Gender Queer: A Memoir gained attention due to outcry over its (brief, though graphic) sexual content between two queer characters, as it's held in some states' public school libraries. On Amazon, the top reviews are just very heated complaints denouncing it for this as "pornography". In 2021, South Carolina governor Henry McMaster sent a letter to his state Department of Education urging them to remove it from all their public school libraries.
Green Lantern: A New Dawn, aside from being the debut arc of Green Lantern Kyle Rayner, is practically impossible to discuss without mentioning the infamous murder of Kyle's girlfriend Alexandra DeWitt; killed by Major Force and left in a fridge for Kyle to find. Not helping matters is the fact that this single incident led Gail Simone to launch the Women in Refrigerators website to document similar instances, and led to massive debates about the treatment of women in comics that continues to this day.
Heroes in Crisis is perhaps better known for the revelation that fan-favorite hero Wally West was the one who killed everyone at Sanctuary and how it seemed to handle the very delicate topic of mental health in a tone-deaf manner than it is for its central murder-mystery plot. Writer Tom King ended up getting death threats over the book. The revelation was so controversial, especially when it was later revealed to be mandated by Dan DiDio (a notorious Wally hater), that few other stories even tried to bring up anything about Sanctuary, with characters awkwardly dancing around the subject for awhile. Later stories dealt with the topic instead by establishing various retcons to absolve the character of culpability for what happened; first, Eobard Thawne was mentally manipulating Wally into covering everything up, then the crime itself turned out to be really caused by Savitar, and finally, Gold Beetle used Tricked Out Time to save the would-be victims, meaning there were effectively no casualties from Sanctuary at all.
The underground comic Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist was created by lesbian cartoonist Diane DiMassa as a form of protest against the homophobic and misogynist culture that was normalized in society back then, but nowadays is infamous for its content bordering on misandry and DiMassa being an open transphobe.
Identity Crisis (2004) is probably best known for the fact that it included an extremely disturbing rape scene between super-villain Dr. Light and Sue Dibny, the wife of Ralph Dibny a.k.a. Elongated Man (while no nudity was shown, every image that could imply a rape was) and a general sense that it caused The DCU to slip into a needlessly dark Audience-Alienating Era for a while. The actual plot is a fairly mundane murder mystery, and the rape is a Red Herring.^note This wasn’t helped by the rape being an editorial mandate by Dan DiDio, with his exact words being “we need a rape”.
The fantasy-horror comic Incarnate is mainly known due to the many accusations of plagiarism that author Nick Simmons faced rather than the actual comic itself.
Isom has been largely overshadowed by the social-media antics of its creator, Eric D. July, who has been accused of using the comic to recruit teenagers to his right-wing libertarian views while simultaneously complaining that the mainstream comic-book industry is trying to indocrinate kids into leftism.

J-N

Metaphase was a thoroughly inoffensive independent comic book about the adventures of a Superman expy as he tries to raise a son with Down syndrome who develops powers of his own. And then its publisher, Alterna Comics, tried to declare a stance of neutrality in the ComicsGate movement. Creator Chip Reece does not agree with the ComicsGate movement and publicly announced that he would remove Metaphase from Alterna's lineup. Consequently, a lot of supporters of the movement have accused him of betraying the publisher and have vowed not to buy any of his future works or recommend Metaphase to their friends. Reece has mostly taken this in stride, instead choosing to throw his support behind Superb, another series featuring a protagonist with Down syndrome.
Volume 94 of the manga-esque version of Monica's Gang received a lot of attention in Brazil due to the main character, Monica, saying, "My body, my rules" during a discussion concerning dental braces. Some alt-right groups only spread the panel where Monica said "My body, my rules" on social media, which caused them to accuse the comic of spreading feminist ideas. As a result, the writer of the story, Petra Leão, was harassed on her personal Facebook page. In the end, the official Monica's Gang Facebook page made a statement explaining the situation which dissolved the controversy.
My Little Pony Annual 2014 was dead on arrival the instant someone noticed a cameo appearance by an Original Character created by a very contentious fan. The entire story and plot was instantly forgotten in favor of intense arguing, debates, Flame Wars, and calling for the writer to be fired. The owner of Derpibooru (the largest MLP fansite on the internet) made his distaste very well known by uploading this and adding all IDW content to the default filter, lumping it in with controversial, low quality, and pornographic uploads and meaning you wouldn't see it unless you consciously unfiltered it (though this has since been rescinded). It's the reason why IDW forbade any fan-created cameos, and the majority of the fanbase only knows that issue as "the one that caused all the arguing".
The underground BDSM comic Nights of Horror is known for two things - one, the fact that it was deemed legally obscene by the state of New York, and two, the fact that it was drawn by Joe Shuster, the legendary co-creator of Superman.
Devin Grayson's run on Nightwing infamously had the eponymous character get raped by a female Anti-Hero named Tarantula. It was somewhat awkward, and became infinitely more so after Grayson asserted that what she wrote was not rape, but rather just "non-consensual sex". The scene and the bizarre statement explaining it are now what the run and, to some extent, Grayson herself are predominantly known for, and usually the zenith of any discussion regarding either of them.

P-Z

Psylocke of the X-Men gets this quite a bit, to the point that it has almost overshadowed her character. First appearing as a Caucasian woman, Betsy Braddock's mind would eventually be transferred into the body of a female Japanese assassin named Kwannon, who then died inside Betsy's original Caucasian body. In this new body, Betsy as Psylocke became well-known as an assassin with a penchant for katanas, being a Ms. Fanservice and for being one of the few prominent Asian superheroines from Marvel... except that she wasn't born Asian. The loads of implications concerning her Race Lift and the sheer squick of it to some has followed the character ever since and frequently comes up when she is discussed; not helping matters is that Psylocke herself has accepted it, so it barely came up within the comics themselves to the point that some newer readers wouldn't even know it was a thing. For this reason, Marvel briefly promoted her as a British-Japanese heroine while ignoring her convoluted backstory, before finally undoing the bodyswap after almost thirty years with Betsy becoming the new Captain Britain and Kwannon returning to life and becoming the new Psylocke.
In the 2010s, The Punisher gained a severe case of Misaimed Fandom, thanks to controversial Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. Kyle was a noted fan of the character, and his unit adopted the character's name and logo. Soon after, it spread throughout the military and police force. The latter half of the decade saw many high-profile cases of Police Brutality, specifically towards black Americans. As the Black Lives Matter movement gained popularity, the Punisher logo was used by the "Blue Lives Matter" counter movement, as well as several far-right hate groups. This led some to consider the logo a hate symbol. Even the comics acknowledged this and criticized it, as one issue has Frank Castle chastising some police officers for using his image (saying Captain America would be a better example for them to emulate), and Frank would adopt a new logo altogether in the early 2020s. Apparently, this wasn't enough, and Marvel eventually quietly retired Frank Castle in the comics, creating a new character with an altered take on the logo to take his place as the Punisher.
Rampaging Hulk #23 is best known for a scene in "A Very Personal Hell" where Bruce Banner narrowly avoids being raped by two gay men in a YMCA shower. Not only was this a very controversial scene at the time, it also reportedly had long-term effects on how Marvel handled LGBT themes. The story goes that after this scene drew a lot of ire, Jim Shooter decided that any depiction of LGBT characters would be too controversial and forbade their portrayal in Marvel Comics, a veto that lasted throughout the 1980s. Even after this ban was lifted in the 90s, Marvel required that any and all series emphasizing solo gay characters must carry an "Adults Only" label.
Rat Queens saw its popularity evaporate almost overnight after artist and co-creator Roc Upchurch was arrested for domestic violence. While Upchurch was fired and replaced very soon afterwards, he still receives royalties for sales of any issue or trade in which his art appears, which has made many of the series' fans hesitant about continuing to buy them. Further controversy arose after Tess Fowler, the third artist to handle the book, and the only woman involved with it, was fired. Kurtis Wiebe insists that she was let go so that he could put the book on hiatus and figure out what he wants to do with it, but Fowler has claimed that Wiebe fired her because he was planning to bring back Upchurch, which doesn't seem to have been the case.
Sabra, a Captain Patriotic character from Marvel Comics, might have joined the legion of other lesser-known non-American patriotic heroes like Ireland's Shamrock or China's Collective Man, except that she happens to serve Israel, and whereas her counterparts are usually affiliated with some fictional agency, she is explicitly an agent of Mossad, Israel's extremely controversial intelligence agency. Not helping things is the fact that she is almost always portrayed as a My Country, Right or Wrong type, even when Israel is engaged in controversial wars, or that she frequently picks fights with other superheroes but seldom faces serious consequences for her behavior, or that she has over time morphed from being portrayed as a Troubled Sympathetic Bigot to a straight example of a Badass Israeli. When she was announced to be making her live-action debut in Captain America Brave New World, the concerns about the film trying to take a side and portray her in a positive light gained a lot of traction.
Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
- Issue #134 is better known for its feature story: "Home: Epilogue - Say You Will", derisively known online as "The Slap". This refers to the scene in which Sally slaps Sonic and breaks up with him after he states his intentions to continue the fight with Eggman rather than sidelining himself to help her rule her kingdom (the King having decided to go on a world tour to gather support for the fight). While better understanding of its context makes it a little easier to handle, it infuriated the fandom at the time and is still a sore spot, to the point where it remains one of the first things people bring up when discussing the comic's Audience-Alienating Era. Penders followed up on this (ignoring Bollers's plans for what came after) by derailing Sally into being almost entirely passive and having Sonic immediately start playing the field again and use Fiona as a rebound girl, which did not help the initial impression of "The Slap" as coming out of nowhere and being wildly out-of-character for both of them.
- The Flynn penned storyline Mobius 25 Years Later, a follow up to the Penders storyline of the same name, contains a scene in which the protagonists find Rotor, who has been tortured by the Dark Legion. This wouldn't have been too infamous if the Word of Gay hadn't happened around that time, and had it not been implied that the Legion murdered Cobar, who Penders intended to be Rotor's boyfriend. Rotor being Demoted to Extra in the main series for a while after a back injury didn't help. In Flynn's defense, he's been on record stating that he wasn't aware of the intended relationship and, had he known, he wouldn't have offed Cobar. (In fact, this couple was so poorly hinted at in the original story that no one picked up on it, and the fandom was not amused when Penders claimed that this anemic attempt at a queer couple single-handedly paved the way for Archie's first openly gay character, Kevin Keller.)
- One of the most remembered aspects of the Knuckles the Echidna spin-off comic is when Ken Penders appropriated "First They Came…", a poem about The Holocaust, in issue #22. Not only was it seen is tasteless by fans, it also got him a good deal of ire during his lawsuit against Sega for supposed plagiarism in Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, with many accusing him of hypocrisy.
- While the main plot of the Endgame story arc is about Sonic and Robotnik's final confrontation and the ultimate defeat of the Freedom Fighters' nemesis, people remember the arc not for its conclusion, but for the much-maligned plotline that came before involving Princess Sally's (supposed) death, Sonic being framed for it, and how badly it was all written.
The short-lived Spider-Man spin-off Slingers is probably best remembered for having "internal variants" in its first issue, where, in order to drive up sales, Marvel expected people to buy four copies, with each copy showing the events of the first issue from a different character's perspective. Needless to say, this did not result in increased sales, and the series was cancelled after a year.
Dan Slott's run on Spider-Man, once considered the best run in years, has been overshadowed by the antics of Slott himself, who has become known for teasing, debating, and quite occasionally even outright insulting fans online.
Spider-Man/Black Cat: The Evil That Men Do by Kevin Smith has become one of the most infamous Spider-Man stories of the 21st Century. The 6-issue mini-series started in 2002, the series went on an unplanned hiatus after issue #3, and issues #4-6 were only published in 2006. Worst of all, the story has received harsh criticism for retconning Felicia Hardy's motivation for becoming the Black Cat. Originally, Felicia became the Black Cat to follow in the footsteps of her cat burglar father. But The Evil That Men Do retconned it that Felicia was date raped by her college boyfriend and Took a Level in Badass to get revenge only for him to die in a car accident before she could kill him herself, leaving her without a sense of closure. The retcon was universally rejected by fans and critics alike and the story is considered right up there with DC's Identity Crisis as one of the worst ever attempts to discuss sexual violence in superhero comics. That Felicia is subjected heavily to the Male Gaze throughout the story only makes the rape retcon seem even more tasteless.
The non-canon Bad Future miniseries Spider-Man: Reign is remembered chiefly for the disgust and mockery with which fans reacted to the plot element of Mary Jane dying from cancer due to exposure to radiation in Peter's... bodily fluids.
The original Supergirl's first Post-Crisis solo book suffered from this at the beginning, when DC's attempts to turn the Girl of Steel into a Darker and Edgier character and the overly sexualized artwork were more talked about than the stories themselves, and writer Joe Kelly's reaction to fan criticism was writing the infamous issue #18, a blatant Take That, Critics! to Supergirl long-time fans and readers unhappy with the book's direction. Joe Kelly and editor Eddie Berganza were out of the book shortly afterwards, and the next writers corrected course, but the damage was already done and Supergirl wasn't a best-selling book anymore in spite of the vastly improved storytelling, characterization and art.
In yet another long line of examples of why rape is so controversial and heated of a topic in comic books, one story from Superman: Red and Blue featured a scene where it was heavily implied Superman himself was raped by soldiers of an Eastern European dictator for months before his rescue. Needless to say, a lot of fans were livid over how DC treated their flagship character, with the general sentiment being that you just don't do something like this to one of your most iconic heroes and the The Superhero who inspired the creation of countless generations of superheroes from multiple companies.
The graphic novel Syndrome is only remembered for its co-writer, Blake Leibel, who committed the rather grisly murder of his fiancée Iana Kasian. Especially notorious is that the novel is about treating serial killers, and a murdered woman is depicted in the novel as having her blood drained, exactly how Kasian was murdered.
Thor (2014), which featured Jane Foster taking up the mantle of Thor, received strongly positive reviews throughout its run for its artwork and emotional story. However, most people only remember the initial controversy when Marvel announced "female Thor", which provoked outrage among many fans.
The only thing writer/editor Andrew Helfer is remembered for is his time as editor on Titans (1999) in the early 2000s, which proved to be a very poor decision as Helfer had no prior experience or interest in the characters. Writer Jay Farber was forced under Helfer's direction to use Titans to introduce a brand-new team of kid heroes called the DEOrphans, a Spotlight-Stealing Squad of Cousin Oliver characters that effectively derailed Faerber's strong writing and led to him leaving the book.
The Titans tie-in to Brightest Day was considered a pretty bad comic to begin with, but the only thing anyone remembers about it is that it contained the gruesome death of Ryan Choi, The Atom and one of DC's few non-Captain Ethnic Asian heroes. The firestorm the death ignited was so big mainstream news sources covered it, and while Ryan has since returned (indeed, it was revealed he never completely died at all) it's still remembered as a crowning example of how not to kill a character.
Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day is remembered more for how it infamously killed off two characters (Titans members Lilith Clay and Donna Troy) during its short run, how characters showered praises onto Donna during her funeral^note, how it unceremoniously broke up the Titans and Young Justice, and how it was just an excuse for the author to rant about how much he hates the idea of teenage superheroes than it is for the actual plot (which involved a robot from the future named Indigo fighting the two teams).
Due to its Long Runner status, some of the older Tintin stories are infamous for their Values Dissonance:
- Tintin in the Land of the Soviets is an Anvilicious anti-Soviet, anti-Communist propaganda piece that even Hergé saw as an Old Shame and refused to have updated, colorized or even reprinted.
- Tintin in the Congo has been updated (notably by removing scenes where Tintin makes huge inroads into Congolese wildlife), colorized and reprinted, but has gained more controversy since the 1960s because of the outdated colonial imagery and offensive depictions of native Africans, who are portrayed as childlike.
- The Shooting Star was made during the Nazi occupation and features an American banker with a big bulbous nose as the villain, who not only looks a lot like a stereotypical Jew, but also has the Jewish name Blumenstein. Later reprints changed his name to Bohlwinkel, which unfortunately also had Jewish connotations (Hergé denied that this was intentional and claimed the name was just a Marollian ^note word for "candy store") and his nationality the fictional state of Sao Rico. There was also a minor scene poking fun at two rabbis, gloating over the fact that the world will end because then they wouldn't have to pay their debts off, which was also removed.
The Transformers (IDW) has a character who revolves around this — Arcee. Simon Furman, a well-respected writer known for his extensive Transformers work, has... interesting ideas regarding the gender of Cybertronians and has twice in his career attempted to "justify" female Transformers. The first attempt was bad enough and a blatant Take That! at anyone wanting female Transformers, but in the then newly malleable IDW continuity which he had full control over for a few years, he felt the need to justify Arcee being female. Furman views Cybertronians as an asexually-reproducing race without gender who use masculine pronouns for convenience's sake when interacting with species with genders — something that doesn't fly right with many to begin with — and that Arcee used to be just like that, but was experimented on and given a forced gender reassignment, and this experiment turned her into a bloodthirsty psychopath. Needless to say, many were concerned what this story was saying about gender and transgender issues, as well as why it was so... weird. Eventually this was retconned away by later writers, and it was established that female Transformers do exist — and all new Transformers universes after said story have made female Cybertronians commonplace — but the damage was done and followed the comic version of Arcee until the continuity's end.
Uncanny Avengers and its writer, the until-then-highly-regarded Rick Remender, fell victim to this. The book was intended to be an anti-racism story showing mutants and humans working together for tolerance, but unfortunately, a very badly worded Character Filibuster in the fifth issue lent the impression that the message was "Minorities need to give up their culture and assimilate to be accepted." When criticized on Twitter for this scene, Remender responded with a strange, angry outburst that infamously included a Suicide Dare. He apologized the following day, but the damage was done, and Marvel proceeded to greatly de-emphasize the book in its marketing and Remender would leave the title and superhero comics as a whole afterwards to work mostly at Image Comics, not even finishing the story he had planned. Reflective reviews generally see it as a So Okay, It's Average series at best, with extremely confused politics.
X-Men: Gold has been consumed by controversy since its very first issue when Indonesian comic artist Ardian Syaf was found to have inserted Indonesian memes used to express sympathy with Islamic fundamentalism. Particularly, a scene where Kitty Pryde (who is Jewish) appeals to a crowd of people for tolerance featured easter eggs referencing the November 2016 Jakarta protests that was widely condemned as anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. Because of this, Marvel terminated his contract. Everything else about the comic such as the plot seems secondary, since the controversy is the only thing most people discuss about it. What made it worse is that Marvel had earlier announced that they would tone down the political elements in their comics with X-Men: Gold and Blue being used as an example of a superhero title that would avoid this.

People

Chuck Austen's career in comics has long been overshadowed by his tendency to abuse Derailing Love Interests in order to break up relationships he doesn't like. Most famously, his run on Superman actually tried to sink Superman and Lois Lane's relationship in order to pair Superman off with Lana Lang, which got him blacklisted from DC, and his run on X-Men saw him attempt to break up Havok and Polaris in order to pair off Havok with Annie Ghazikhanian, an original character based on his wife.
For most of the 70s and 80s, John Byrne was considered one of the top writers at both DC and Marvel. His reputation fell somewhat in the 90s due to a perception that his skills were declining, and he had a reputation within the industry for being an acerbic personality, but this was kept thoroughly in inside-baseball territory. However, in the 2000s, Byrne obtained a web forum for himself... and abruptly, he instead became primarily known for attacking people for holding any kind of different opinion, feuding with other writers, insulting recently-deceased and widely-beloved celebrities, and offering viewpoints on subjects like pedophilia that were, to say the least, contentious. That last one became a particular point, as readers began to notice the overwhelming prevalence of Age-Gap Romance in Byrne's work. Byrne's Wikiquote page is basically a solid wall of some of the bizarre statements he made in that period, several of which seem to be arguing with themselves. Because of this, quite a few readers have ended up rejecting Byrne-made books almost on principle, and even his more acclaimed stories have become far more widely criticized.
C. B. Cebulski's ascent to the position of Editor in Chief at Marvel Comics has been overshadowed by the revelation that a whole string of comics written by "Akira Yoshida", a supposed Japanese writer whom he had supposedly recruited in the early 2000s, were in fact written by him.
Robert Crumb has drawn a lot of stories that really pushed the boundaries of social taboos. Some of them frequently turn up in analysis about the freedom of speech because they are widely considered extremely offensive to women and African-Americans.
Gerard Jones' long and varied career in comics, which includes creating Ultra Force, writing stints at Marvel, DC, Malibu, and Dark Horse, translating numerous manga including Dragon Ball, Ranma ½, and Rurouni Kenshin and a number of non-fiction books about pop culture, has been overshadowed by his arrest in 2016 for possession and distribution of child pornography.
Bob Kane is the officially credited co-creator of Batman, but his work is almost impossible to discuss without bringing up the legal chicanery he used to swindle his partner, Bill Finger, out of all credits and royalties for the character, something that was only remedied in 2015, long after Finger's death. Kane was also deprecated for his derivative artistic style, which comics scholars note came from tracings and splicings of other comics and then changing the outline to match Batman, and in other cases paying ghost artists to work uncredited on his behalf, while he would pass their work off as his own. About the only thing comic historians are certain of is that he came up with the name "Bat-Man", but practically everything else that defined that character, his world, his supporting characters, and his Rogues Gallery came from his collaborators, namely Finger, Jerry Robinson (the co-creator of The Joker), Gardner Fox, Dick Sprang and others. To his credit, he did start feeling guilty in his later years, and openly spoke about Finger's contributions after his death, but that didn't stop him from choosing a rather tacky gravestone◊ all about how Batman was his creation.
Greg Land is known almost exclusively for accusations that he traces images from photography and other comic books. Not helping matters is the fact that he's admitted to using hardcore porn as a source for his drawings.
Scott Lobdell's career at DC has long been overshadowed by accusations of racism and sexual misconduct, to the point that senior staffers were forced to keep him away from young female employees during company meetings. He has also long been accused of enjoying protection from the consequences of his actions thanks to his friendship with Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras, who is already controversial for protecting several other sexual harassers at DC.
Jeph Loeb's decades-long career, which included Eisner Award-winning works like The Long Halloween and Dark Victory, was overshadowed by a highly visible Creator Breakdown he underwent in the late 2000's following the sudden death of his son. Not only did the overall quality of his writing take a hit during this period, but his stories would frequently deal with disturbing topics such as incest and display a level of violence unusual for the superhero genre. In particular, he wrote The Ultimates 3, which was not up to the quality of the first two miniseries written by Mark Millar. It was followed by Ultimatum, a Crisis Crossover that killed half the cast of the Ultimate Marvel universe, mostly in gruesome ways. He also went on a spree of creating - and heavily promoting - divisive new characters like X-Man, Red Hulk, Jimmy Hudson, and Sam Alexander (incidentally named after Loeb's deceased son) often to the detriment of already-popular characters like Richard Rider and the original Hulk. While all of the above would eventually develop their own fanbases, this came after Loeb stopped writing them and someone else had taken them in hand. For many fans, he's known for ruining the Ultimate Marvel line with Ultimatum, and nothing else. Eventually, he decided to work in TV full-time.
Frank Miller's contributions to comic book history tend to be overshadowed by the accusations of right-wing bigotry in his writings (most notably Holy Terror), deteriorating quality of his later works and his political beliefs like his angry tirades on the Occupy Movement and holding xenophobic views. Miller won back some sympathy in 2017, when he issued a formal apology for his past behavior and explained that his dabbling in the extreme right was due to severe emotional trauma brought on by the 9/11 attacks that took him fifteen years to fully move on from, but his work remains a thorny subject in many circles.
Ken Penders, responsible for most of the characters and worldbuilding in Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) (for better or worse), became overshadowed by various incidents over the years. These include Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) head writer Ben Hurst’s claims that Penders tried to swindle him out of a potential movie adaptation and lied about being his apprentice, disagreements with head-writer Karl Bollers over the direction of the comic, criticizing his successor Ian Flynn in an interview while admitting that he never read a single issue by him, gaining copyright over most of the characters he created for the series,^note advertising his Lara-Su Chronicles project before the trial was even over, trying, unsuccessfully, to use his position to make the comic be more in line with his ideas, and telling about his plan to have character Geoffery St. John (who was 20) take the virginity of Princess Sally (who was 15).
Joe Quesada, Marvel's Editor-in-Chief for the entirety of the 2000s, is rarely remembered for anything other than his mandating the creation of the infamous 2007 Spider-Man story arc One More Day, which saw Peter Parker make a deal with Mephisto to save Aunt May's life, in exchange for removing his marriage to Mary Jane Watson that, in real life, lasted 20 years. His more positive traits, such as his role in getting the company out of its late-'90s bankruptcy and his legitimate talent at art, for which he has won awards, are either forgotten or considered overridden by his reputation as a stuck-in-the-past Obstructive Bureaucrat thanks to that story. It wasn’t helped by the point of it being to make Peter “more relatable” while not “aging” the character with divorce being followed up by introducing a new love interest for Peter based on Quesada’s own daughter.
Artist Ethan Van Sciver, perhaps best known for illustrating much of Geoff Johns' famous Green Lantern run including the acclaimed Sinestro Corps War story arc, was already known, to some degree, for acting hostile and unprofessional online when he saw much of his industry goodwill evaporate after he made a series of tweets expressing conservative opinions and asserting that diversity in superhero comics is unnecessary and forced, which turned him into a ComicsGate icon, which he embraced. After some ComicsGaters began harassing Darwyn Cooke's widow over her assertion that he would not have supported their movement, contrary to what some in the movement suggested, she called Van Sciver out for not discouraging the behaviour as the figurehead of the movement after he suggested that she just block them. He later claimed to have been blacklisted from the industry because of his political views, and these days is largely known for being the leader of the ComicsGate movement and for getting into arguments with other creators.
- Van Sciver drew additional controvery when he proudly announced a collaboration with controversial cartoonist Dave Sim. When critics pointed out that Sim had publicly boasted about grooming a 14-year-old child for a sexual relationship, Van Sciver defended Sim by arguing that child grooming was okay because Elvis Presley also did it. It got even worse when another one of Van Sciver's associates was arrested for possession of child porn.

Other

Dreamwave, publisher of the Transformers: Generation One comics of the mid-2000s, is remembered far more for its shady business practices (not paying numerous employees being one of the most known claims) and controversial bankruptcy than for any of the stories it told. The stories themselves fell into disdain with many future series, IDW in particular, outshining them easily and much more attention is paid to the infamous art flaws than any of the positives. Notably, though IDW actually had access to the various unpublished scripts and comics that Dreamwave put in the oven before its collapse, it wouldn't actually publish them because there's about a 50-50 shot that no one was paid for them.

Overshadowed By Controversy / Comic Books

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