Post-CrisisJason Todd was hated by quite a few readers, to the point that fans eventually voted for him to be killed by the Joker. While an almost equal number of people voted to spare him (it is rumoured that at least three hundred of the votes were from the same caller), a lot of people thought that the vote was for the first Robin, Dick Grayson, who was excessively popular amongst a lot of fans, and that's not a rumour. Funnily enough, he was brought back to life due to Alas, Poor Scrappy status, where he became an anti-hero Jerk Ass Woobie who was centre stage to a very well received storyline. This was only helped by the Batman: The Dark Knight Returns where it's implied that Jason's death helped lead up to this future where Batman retires, ending with a brawl in crime alley against the Man of Steel.
Harper Row. Created when DC wouldn't let writers use Cassandra Cain or Stephanie Brown in the New 52 reboot, she immediately received backlash for being their Replacement Scrappy (especially for the latter). As she continued to appear, she somehow went from a self-taught technician to acrobatic genius at everything from weapons to software, to the point that she was established as being a better hacker than Tim Drake, the hacker in the Bat-family. What's more, Batman and Robin Eternal made her the scientifically predestined best choice in Gotham for Batman's sidekick: yes, objectively, she was destined to be the best Robin. Steph and later Cass were eventually re-introduced to the new continuity, but in a way that still kept Harper as a more prominent character than both, made her integral to both their origin stories, and had the two of them only barely interact for Harper's sake (when they had been best friends pre-New-52). However, since DC Rebirth Steph and Cass have both come much more into focus while Harper has quit being a superhero and been Demoted to Extra.
Captain Atom villain Major Force developed quite the hatedom over the 2000s. It'd be one thing for him to just be a boring villain with an ugly outfit, but Major Force took it further by being a complete Jerkass with no redeeming qualities, including being the cause of multiple character deaths. Worse, for a good chunk of the 2000s, he just kept showing up - whenever a writer wanted to have the government do something morally ambiguous, they'd bring in Major Force. From then on, the following plotline would play out: Major Force acts like an asshole to his more reasonable government buddies, Major Force loses his temper and brutalizes somebody, the hero fights Major Force and seemingly kills him, Major Force comes back in a few months to do it all over again in another book because he's an Energy Being and can't die. Fans are irritated enough by Joker Immunity when it applies to villains who they like.
Cyborg in the New 52 Justice League series is one for many fans of Martian Manhunter due to him replacing J'onn as a founding member. Ironically, this also counts for his Teen Titans fans, as Vic went from having a support network in his team to just having a business-like relationship with them.
Dark Nights: Death Metal: The fandom began to despise Robin King almost immediately after his introduction for lacking the interesting backstories and motivations that made the previous Dark Knights so popular in the first place and coming across as a poor copy of the Batman Who Laughs and his Robins. A sizeable chunk of the fandom also consider him a Replacement Scrappy for the more popular Knights like B-Rex after he ended up being the only survivor of The Darkest Knight's purge. It doesn't help that he immediately got a lot of push in press releases that hyped him up as Scott Snyder's favorite creation and really overstated how awesome he is, only for his proper debut scene to just make him come off as a try-hard. And to make things worse, he seems to have Batman and the Batman-Who-Laughs’s Plot Armor taken up to eleven, because according to his own words, he somehow managed to murder every single hero of his world despite being no older than 10 years old. And did we mention that unlike Batman, he didn’t travel around the world and didn’t train under any teachers, which means that he logically shouldn’t be able to do half of the things he does in this story, yet he does them anyway? Where Batman had to work hard and train hard to earn his skills, Robin King somehow already had them from the get-go. Basically, Robin King is a version of Batman who defeats the purpose of Batman: Batman is supposed to symbolise hard work and determination to achieve badassery, but Robin King was apparently already overpowered without requiring any kind of training or hard work from the beginning.
Holly Granger, the female Hawk. It doesn't help that the original Hawk (Hank Hall) was changed into a villain with Armageddon 2001 thanks to an Ass Pull when Captain Atom was leaked as Monarch and DC wanted to keep things a "surprise". Then come 2005, after Dawn Granger/Dove II's death was undone with a convoluted and squicky explanation: Dawn, an only child in the Hawk and Dove series, suddenly shows up to the Titans with a bratty younger (or older?) sister in tow that was living away in England all the while. Fans of Hank Hall immediately cried foul on Holly, for not only did she have an inconsistent and unlikeable personality, but her existence also retconned the fact that Hank and Dawn's powers were bound to them and could NOT be passed on to anyone else. It wasn't uncommon to see those fans wishing death on her and wanting Hank back with an Author's Saving Throw. In the end they got their wish with Blackest Night.
Before Holly and long before Dawn's comeback, DC attempted to do a completely different take on Hawk and Dove, with an army brat named Sasha Martens and a slacker musician named Wiley Wolverman gaining the power to sprout bird wings and fly, as well as telepathy. Due to them being a case of In Name Only and not being received very well by H&D fans, these two wound up vanishing with no explanation given, not even showing up as cannon fodder for big events. Would it have helped if the artist had known how to draw bird wings that don't appear to be suffering from both crippling arthritis and mange? Guess not...
Justice League of America:Vibe, a member during its "Detroit" era, was widely hated for being a "hip", slang-spouting caricature of Puerto Rican youth whose power was basically super-breakdancing. His inevitable death, though, is one of the saddest moments in the League's history. Ironically enough, in the New 52 continuity, he's been given a big push by the company and is already enjoying more popularity than his original ever did.
The character Magog was hated by a lot, partially because he's a massive Jerkass who got a lot of time on screen. A LOT of people also cite him hitting Maxine 'Cyclone' Hunkel when she was flying overhead because 'she came at him from his blindspot.' Magog has also been accused of being a mouthpiece for writer Bill Willingham's right-wing views; fans were quick to call Unfortunate Implications when Magog took center stage in an arc that also featured Obsidian (who is gay) being turned into an egg and Mister Terrific (who is black and atheist) being shanked in the back like a street thug (both eventually got better). The fact that he was originally created as a direct criticism of the "jerkass superhero" archetype in Kingdom Come (where, ironically, his perception was quite the opposite) has only made fans more pissed at what they've done to the character. Eventually, Magog's luck ran out. He got kicked off the Justice Society, and his series was canceled after less than twelve issues. The next time Magog appeared it was in order to be brainwashed by Max Lord, fatally poisoned, then made to kill himself by Max.
A minor example among queer readers is the villain Endless Winter. Originally, she was Delores Winters, the actress whose body was hijacked by the Ultra-Humanite. In a JSA Classified arc, Delores became an Ascended Extra where her life after her body was stolen was explored. The doctor who removed her brain felt pity for her and gave her a new body, but Delores thought it was hideous and began demanding organ transplants. Eventually she started kidnapping superheroes and villains to steal their empowered body parts, such as Loose Cannon's heart and Godiva's hair. What made her so hated was that she had Icemaiden, one of the few openly bisexual characters DC had (and she'd been around for over thirty years), completely skinned alive. And what's worse is Icemaiden survived, but was last seen comatose. Fans were outraged at such deplorable treatment and thus immediately hated Endless Winter. In her last appearance, she was killed off in Justice League: Cry for Justice while fighting Batwoman.
Lori Morning wasn't very liked by fans, as she was a bratty Tagalong Kid that lacked powers, only being able to use her H-dial to morph into random superheroes. The fact that the creative team intended to be a younger version of the villainess Glorith didn't help matters. Putting her on a bus was one of the first things to occur once a new creative team took over.
The 1994 reboot versions of Princess Projectra and Wildfire got this due to their radically different origins. Projectra went from being a princess to a giant talking snake, while Wildfire became the result of a Fusion Dance between two minor supporting characters. The latter never recovered though the former did garner a level of popularity.
Tyroc, the first black character to join the Legion, combined this with some Unfortunate Implications: He was an angry black man-type character whose backstory implied that the 30th century was actually that racially segregated, with him and others living on an extra-dimensional island. His superpower was to warp reality by screaming. Mike Grell had intentionally given him a ridiculous costume, as he hadn't liked the concept of the character. After the original Legion continuity became prominent once again, Tyroc was returned to the team, with his controversial origin never mentioned and a less ridiculous new costume, to the relief of many.
The SW6 version of Sun Boy, who later changed his codename to Inferno, was a ginormous asshole who embodied all of Dirk Morgna's worst traits. He was an egotistical lech and a bully whose harsh treatment of poor Cera Kesh made her quite susceptible to the influence of the Emerald Eye of Ekron, turning her into the new Emerald Empress. Beyond that, fans found him especially grating because he swore he wouldn't become as bad as he older counterpart (who betrayed Earth to become famous and paid for it when radiation turned him into a deformed, burning corpse) yet somehow became worse. It's entirely likely the reason the Reboot Legion didn't have a Sun Boy (although Dirk Morgna was a semi-reoccurring character) and the Inferno name was given to a completely separate character, was because fans hated this one so much.
Atmos, a supporting character from the third volume Legion series, has no fans. Starting off with his horrendous design (such as his giant mohawk and how his armpits turn invisible), he was a Small Name, Big Ego character who tried out for the Legion and seduced Dream Girl while her relationship with Star Boy was turning rocky. Any chance he had of being likable in the eyes of the readers vanished when it turned out he also had slight mind control abilities and forced Dream Girl into a sexual relationship, which meant he raped her. Fans cheered when Nura socked him in the jaw after she figured this out. During the Glorithverse volume, it was mentioned Atmos joined when the Legion was desperate for members, and in his last appearance before the Reboot he was killed by B.I.O.N., an android constructed by the Dominators.
Rather distressingly, the entirety of Brian Michael Bendis's take on the Legion has since become the most disliked version of the team by the fandom. While opinion was divided on the Bendisboot from the moment it was announced, many veteran Legion fans were willing to give the team a chance on the grounds they felt a fresh start with new, inclusive designs were necessary. Over the years, Legion fans began to loathe Bendis's take on the concept due to plots that went nowhere, rampant lack of thoughtful characterization (Legionnaires like Shrinking Violet and Matter-Eater Lad went for years without even saying anything between issues), racist undertones in design, a glaring lack of queerness, and multiple continuity mistakes that made it look like no one was editing Bendis's scripts before publication. It reached a point that by the crossover with the Justice League, hardcore Legion fans who're usually satisfied with the smallest crumb of Legion references in other books, had long stopped caring about the Bendisboot because Bendis's Legionnaires weren't doing anything.
Post-Crisis Dr. Light when Identity Crisis (2004) rewrote him into being a Serial Rapist. While it was meant to reverse a long trend of Villain Decay that was happening to him for decades, all it did was make him an even bigger joke, but one that creeped out everyone. Later comics that featured him didn't help by giving him a literal rape fetish.
The post-Flashpoint design of Lobo has proved incredibly unpopular, on account of missing every single aspect of Lobo his fans like and being a ridiculous "pretty-boy" look. The fact that the comic that introduces him goes on to say the Lobo fans have known for decades now is a "fake" really doesn't help. Seemingly it's been restored in DC Rebirth, with the new "real" Lobo sealed away by the Green Lantern corps.
Superboy-Prime since his Face–Heel Turn in Infinite Crisis, mainly because he became DC's Straw Fan, mouthing common fan complaints while committing villainous acts. Although most of his most infamous moments were rendered non-canon (no one got out of Countdown to Final Crisis unscathed), people still haven't forgotten them OR the stuff that is canon. It certainly didn't help that DC kept ramping up his powers and refusing to kill him off, or that he usually escaped his crimes (which included beating the Golden Age Superman to death) without significant comeuppance. There was a rather awful period in DC where writers kept coming up with progressively more extensive ways to remove him from canon, each time swearing it would be the last one, only to then have him return two or three months later. Only time will tell if his Heel–Face Turn and Redemption Equals Death moment in Dark Nights: Death Metal will pull him out of the heap.
Supergirl: Cir-El, the "daughter" of Superman and Lois Lane from the future where Brainiac 13 existed. She showed up during the time the Matrix Supergirl was phased out and was not very well liked for a number of reasons, including being a kid from the future. Thankfully for fans, she retconned herself out just in time for Kara Zor-El to return. However, if you were to look up Cir-El on tumblr, you'd be surprised to find that she has a large number of fans with emphasis put towards the less convoluted aspects of her backstory. Said fans like to view her as the daughter Superman and Lois Lane could have had, enjoying her bubbly personality, her desire to follow Superman's example, a really neat and distinctive costume and appearance, and her short-lived team with Traci 13 and Natasha Irons.
Danny Chase. Not only did he actually look like Cousin Oliver, but everyone hated him. He mocked Jason Todd's death (in front of Dick Grayson, Jason's adopted brother) and his sole Crowning Moment of Anything was his own death. Probably one of the few moments of praise he's gotten is the fact he's Linkara's favorite superhero, and even he's willing to admit he got on the fans' nerves.
Pantha and Baby Wildebeest had received hate and ridicule for being "awful '90s characters" from various fans, although many fans decried their deaths in Infinite Crisis.
Golden Eagle was initially hated for being a shoe-horned attempt to give Hawkman a sidekick and knockoff in the Pre-Crisis era, and was hated Post-Crisis for being a slacker surfer-type guy who'd only fight if it could get him women and attention. He got a little sympathy after being killed off, but after Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray retconned his death and revealed him to be a Jerkass-type villain with a grudge against Hawkman, fans had new reason to despise the guy (or the direction he was taken in).
Cassandra Sandsmark, Wonder Girl; it didn't help that Cassie was mostly pushed as nice à la Donna Troy by writers, when in truth she came off like a raging Alpha Bitch after her boyfriend's death. It’s worse when you remember that she started out as her school’s lovable geek. Once Conner returned to the series (before the reboot), you think she wouldn't have had much reason to keep lashing out at her teammates, but some writers felt differently. Under Johns' (ironically) and others' pens since Conner's return, she had been portrayed positively and having gotten over her grief. But other writers, especially in the case of Felicia Henderson, had continued to portray her as an angry shrew, who even goes as far as to treat her back-from-the-dead boyfriend like crap (eventually leading to their breakup). Her New 52 version has similar controversy, but is also hated for being a thief, being overtly sexualized and having her connection with Wonder Woman only recognizable to readers of Wondy's book (she's the daughter of Diana's half-brother, i.e. the niece of Wonder Woman, though neither of them knew about it for the majority of New 52 Cassie's use). Once the New 52 Teen Titans series ended, she and it were never mentioned again beyond Broad Strokes in regards to the titular team.
Prysm, a member of Dan Jurgens' volume 2 team, isn't very liked by some classic fans due to coming off too naive and stereotypically feminine, spoiled, and her visual appeal mostly coming from the fact that she was nude all the time.
Fringe from the above run is also hated, for lacking personality and never being as developed. Unlike Prysm, it's hard to find fans that can tolerate him.
Minion from Wolfman's New Titans is either hated or ignored by most fans due to the fact that he came in during an Audience-Alienating Era, and that he seemed to be pushed in as a cool new teenage character but lacked interesting traits.
Bombshell was widely disliked by a number of fans during her brief tenure on the team. She was criticized for having very little personality and was accused of trying to ape the characterization of the recently departed fan favorite Ravager. The fact that she was a Motor Mouth and a Jerkass didn't do much to help her standing with fans.
The DEOrphans, a group of metahuman kids from the DEO, were hated even more than the unpopular Titans. This was because they got in the way of the Titans' screentime and that they were simply useless at fighting or doing much to advance the plot. Their presence also caused the "Epsilon" arc to be heavily rewritten, and a bunch of other planned stories had been thrown out.
Terry Long, for being considerably older than Donna Troy, coming off as creepy, and his tendency to make blatant passes at her friends. (Bonus points: he looks an awful lot like Marv Wolfman.) He actually became even more of a Jerkass in the '90s, before he was killed off in John Byrne's run of Wonder Woman.
The rest of the Team Titans besides Terra II (and at the very least Metallik, a minor sub group composed of an all girl rock band who controlled a giant robot). While they've come to have some nostalgic fans in recent years, the general Titans fanbase widely loathed them and still looks down upon them, as they were a publicity stunt used to shake up the book and came along with other plot twists that ran the title into the ground. The common criticism is that the characters relied on dated '90s and 20 Minutes into the Future stereotypes. Out of the group, Mirage is most criticized for committing rape by fraud (in disguising herself as Starfire and tricking Nightwing into having sex with her). The later writer of the "Team Titans" title had even wanted to kill off Mirage due to her unpopularity, but this was averted. Killowat and Prestor Jon also became loathed, both for becoming increasingly assholish to their teammates and especially because of the ignorant racist comments that the former made about Mirage being "pretty for a dark skinned girl".
Deathstroke's Titans team qualifies for this status as well. They are even more so ignored than Fringe and Minion, who are at least mentioned in nostalgic regard when discussing the past Titans team, whereas Slade's team of mercenaries is completely ignored save for when someone is mentioning a member that was already a Titan (Roy, Osiris) or associated with the group (Cheshire, Deathstroke). Most fans wish to pretend Eric Wallace's run on the book didn't exist because of the extreme levels of gore, stilted dialog, and the book's starting point being Ryan Choi's prolonged murder. Even a gracious creator like Gail Simone couldn't defend the Villains for Hire special that started this run, and she almost never badmouths any comic.
Coming off that, the most reviled character in this team was by far Cinder, who was a brand new character created for the series. Fans viewed her as a personification of every poorly handled rape and abuse trope in comic books as her trauma and suicidal tendencies were pretty much all there was to her. Eric Wallace tried particularly hard to get fans to sympathize with her by having her admit she thinks she's a bad person and her forming a small bond with Tattooed Man, but it only felt forced. Not to mention how utterly selfish and stupid she is, killing Ryan Choi in exchange for killing higher profile rapists, being unable to talk about anything but her suffering and letting Nursery Cryme (a serial child molester) go free because she didn't think out her plan to kill him. Whereas every other member of Deathstroke's group have at least some fans by themselves, Cinder has none.
The New 52 version of the Joker's Daughter. The original Duela Dent may not have had a huge fanbase, but almost no one likes the new one and fans of the original absolutely loathe her. The complaints center around how unnecessarily "edgy" her design is, being some random girl who was into self-mutilation, found the Joker's cut off face, started wearing it as a mask before having it surgically grafted onto her face, and leading some weird underground cult. What didn't help her case was how shoehorned she was throughout the New 52, first appearing in Catwoman before getting her own one-shot comic and then becoming part of the main cast of Suicide Squad where that series fans loathed her as well, for being there solely to share the Conflict Ball with Harley Quinn. She was quickly shunted off, and next appeared in Red Hood/Arsenal, written by the much hated Scott Lobdell. Fans of the original Duela Dent are praying she's not the same person as the Joker's Daughter.
Titans (1999): Almost no one could stand the DEOrphans for a number of understandable reasons. They were basically forced into the book because editorial wanted to introduce a new team of younger kid heroes. As a result, Jay Faerber had to rewrite and cut short multiple planned arcs, such as the Epsilon story and Arsenal's relationship with Dakota Jamison. Faerber's last issue involved the Orphans being written out of the series and they were never mentioned again. It doesn't help matters that one of them had been controlling Epsilon's body the whole time and practically tricked Argent into a relationship, while Lian Harper really disliked them.
Wonder Woman: Jason, the brother of Diana introduced in James Robinson's run. Disliked from the start due to being the artifact of the New 52 era (after the past year had been spent largely erasing the N52 version of Wonder Woman from existence), his hatedom only increased when he actually debuted. Much of the hatred includes his extremely bland design that amounted to basically a male version of Diana in a shirt and pants, his only notable personality traits being that of an unlikable frat boy who trashes his own sister's house just days after finally meeting her, then complains about having to clean up, a nonsensical backstory that he keeps framing as a Dark and Troubled Past despite the only remotely bad thing being that his adopted father left him after he was old enough to take care of himself, being stupid enough to take Grail at her word, and, despite being completely uninteresting, he quickly turned into a major Spotlight-Stealing Squad who constantly applied New Powers as the Plot Demands. By the time the "Children of the Gods" arc was done, fans were clamoring for him to be killed off.
Young Justice: Slobo/Lil' Lobo was a polarizing figure among fans and writers. The final issue of the series saw him transformed, turned into a living statue, and he has not been seen or mentioned since. DC editor-in-chief Dan DiDio reportedly despised the character, and claimed that he nearly ruined the original Lobo.
Unfortunate Implications when Magog took center stage in an arc that also featured Obsidian (who is gay) being turned into an egg and Mister Terrific (who is black and atheist) being shanked in the back like a street thug (both eventually got better). The fact that he was originally created as a direct criticism of the "jerkass superhero" archetype in Kingdom Come (where, ironically, his perception was quite the opposite) has only made fans more pissed at what they've done to the character. Eventually, Magog's luck ran out. He got kicked off the Justice Society, and his series was canceled after less than twelve issues. The next time Magog appeared it was in order to be brainwashed by Max Lord, fatally poisoned, then made to kill himself by Max.