Comic books are an amazing medium because there is no limit to what can hit the page. Anything artists can concoct can be presented, and sometimes that means great, stunning, imaginative things. Other times, that makes for brain-melting What The Fuckery. Now, WTF moments aren’t always bad things – sometimes they’re just so crazy and unexpected that your mind skips a few beats as it tries to process them. Other times, they are indeed bad. But they’re all pretty damn strange.
So here are ten of the many WTF moments from the comics of 2013. Feel free to share your own!
THE YANCY STREET GANG HATES MISS THING
FF #3 (Matt Fraction, Michael Allred)
Right off the bat in 2013, we learned that the famed Yancy Street Gang, the homeboys of Aunt Petunia’s Favorite Nephew Benjamin J. Grimm aka The Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing, is almost a cult of personality around Ol’ Ben, and they all talk loudly and in that old-school slang. Their favorite insult is “dummy!” When pop star Darla Deering stumbled into the job of being the fourth member of the replacement squad when the Fantastic Four went off to other dimensions for a year, they didn’t take kindly to the woman in the big orange rocky robot suit. They began to wage a prank war against her, which included hacking her phone and invading one of her concerts to pelt her with vegetables… but they started with this exploding whipped-cream stunt, followed by what is possibly the greatest line in the history of comics.
WOMAN EXPLODES IN MID-CONVERSATION
Nowhere Men #4 (Eric Stephenson, Nate Bellegarde)
The circumstances of the people stuck aboard World Corp’s secret space station have been shifting rapidly, as they’re slowly beginning to realize that they were the unwitting and disavowed test subjects for something that’s really mutating them in crazy ways. Case in point is Susan Queen, who is panicking because her girlfriend has been shot, and that takes precedence over whatever creepy deterioration is happening to her own body – that is, until she just explodes into a pile of black goo out of nowhere. Luckily, she was wearing a space suit… but the resulting empty humanoid shell filled with bubbling sentient(?) tar is pretty creepy on its own. And two issues later, she’d explode out of that!
DOC OCK MASTURBATES TO PETER PARKER’S MEMORIES OF BANGING MARY JANE WHILE HE WATCHES
Superior Spider-Man #2 (Dan Slott, Ryan Stegman)
Right off the bat, Slott knew he had to deal with and get past the creepy potential of Otto Octavius taking over Peter Parker’s identity and life, and that meant dealing with his pseudo-relationship with Mary Jane Watson in a way that made sense for a reluctantly reformed doughboy supervillain with a new lease on life as a handsome man with hot girlfriends. Thankfully, Slott avoided the horrifying fraud-rape potential, but that led to this really disturbing WTF moment where Otto violates Peter’s memories of his intimate relationship with MJ in order to scratch the itch that is his desire to sleep with her. Unbeknownst to him, a spectral remnant of Peter remained in his mind and had to watch that all happen and feel utterly violated by it. Now it’s not outright stated that gherkin-jerkin’ occurred, but it’s heavily implied, as you can see below.
DRUNK CYCLOPS IN HIS UNDERPANTS PUKES ON A BABY
Saga #14 (Brian K. Vaughan, Fiona Staples)
It was supposed to be Marko and Alana’s meeting with their mentor, the writer whose work inspired them to throw away their lives as soldiers on opposing sides of a never-ending war and run off together with their new child, Hazel. But her future self, the narrator, told us in the previous issue that “no one makes worst first impressions than writers.” Their meeting with D. Oswald Heist is proof of that. At least Hazel seems to take it in stride as a baptism by vomit.
ULTRA MAGNUS IS ACTUALLY JUST A LITTLE DUDE WEARING A SUIT
Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #19 (James Roberts, Alex Milne)
Ultra Magnus, the Duly Appointed Enforcer of the Tyrest Accord, was a huge, imposing disciplinarian with an obsession with order and the rule of rules. He was also a ferocious fighter and one of the most feared and respected Autobots around. However, one crazy ol’ Chief Justice Tyrest called him back home, stripped him of his due appointment and threw him in the clink, he also took away the uniform – which was the entire identity of Ultra Magnus. That just leaves a little white robot with a metal mustache named Minimus Ambus. The Autobots minds, as well as ours, were blown.
THE SPLENDIFEROUS SPIDER HERO
Mighty Avengers #1 (Al Ewing, Greg Land)
What do you do when you’re a guy who can’t be seen in country when an alien invasion strikes Manhattan? Well, you put on a mask and go to town on evil space jerks. However, sometimes that mask is a cheap knock-off, and sometimes you run across the real guy that’s being knocked off, and he gets all indignant because there’s an ego-driven maniac in the driver’s seat whose reaction is beyond WTF. Nobody should ever show Doc Ock the Bombastic Bag Man costume then. Anyway, we still don’t know who the Spider Hero is, but he’s recently upgraded to Ronin. Yeah, I know, I’m sad, too.
EVERY ISSUE OF DIAL H
Dial H #12 (China Mieville, Alberto Ponticelli)
It was really hard to follow Dial H towards the end, because it was batshit insane. However, it was still fun to read, because things like this could happen in it.
JOHN CONASTANTINE GOES SHAZAM
Constantine #5 (Ray Fawkes, Renato Guedes)
In the midst of “The Trinity War,” which itself was one giant clusterfudge of WTFness, John Constantine of the Justice League Dark takes the newly-minted Shazam away from the constant battle-bickering with false pretenses, but instead steals the power of Shazam from him and actually becomes a super-guy for a while. That’s right. Hellblazer was cancelled so this could happen.
JOKER RAISES A MONKEY
Villains Month: Joker (Andy Kubert, Andy Clarke)
Forever Evil has just hit! Villains Month is the huge annual stunt for the New 52, and we’re going to get a book for almost every possible bad guy in the DC Universe! So how does The Joker, the premiere Batman enemy, deal with the conquest of Earth by the Crime Syndicate? No one will ever know, because the Clown Prince of Crime’s entry was a flashback story where he raised an ape from infancy to be an evil henchman. An entire issue of WTF.
PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING NOIR
WWE Superstars #1 (Mick Foley, Shane Riches, Alitha Martinez)
There is a comic book where professional wrestling characters are shoved into crime noir archetypes, where The Legend-Killing Apex Predator Randy “The Viper” Orton is running for district attorney against The Mexican Aristocrat Alberto Del Rio, and no one seems to be able to lay eyes on ex-con John Cena. We can only hope “Macho Man” Randy Savage shows up as a hitman… no, wait, that would have to be Bret “Hitman” Hart… so what would that make Bastion Booger?
