There are some characters that I l always thought looked cool but for some reason the execution falls flat.

First one is Dark Horse's Ghost.



Two other ones are from my days at Future Comics, one was Deathmask. Great look, story left me cold.



And what should have been a huge hit, Metallix, with Micheline and Layton on an armored hero book



Neal Adam had a few too such as Nighthawk, Megalith and Samuree







Anyone else have concept or character that looked great and was just ehh?

P.S. While I LOVE Earth 2, I felt the Silver Age crossovers never really showed their potential.

I'll say it:Alpha Flight.
Sure it's derivative of other Marvel teams,as even JB has admitted.But underneath all that imitation,something unique could have emerged.Still waiting.

Great one. Yes good look but never hit its potential

I liked the look of Megalith, he kinda had a Doc Savage vibe. But man, those Continuity Comics just didn't have good writing.

I have a character that's very successful and popular in mind, one whose fans would say doesn't need fixing -- Spawn. I love the concept and the costume really looked cool to my generation. Every kid my age, whether he liked comics or not, seemed to think Spawn was very cool.

But man, after the first 10-15 issues, it was clear McFarlane wasn't a real writer and the series never really went anywhere in time to retain its once massive audience. It's a shame, because McFarlane had access to Alan Moore at the time -- he should have hired him to do a nice long run and develop Spawn's universe. Oh well.

I liked Ms. Mystic from Continuity Comics. More could have been done with her.•


* at the very least, the additional subscription copies that I paid for should have been honored.

Another one that jumps to mind in a bit of thread-crossover is Steve Rude's The Moth. He looks cool as heck and I think the circus tie-in could work, but I think that not getting a legit writer cratered the potential this series had. Gary Martin is a tremendous inker, absolutely love his stuff, but I don't know why Rude thought he could write well enough to produce a hit book in this very competitive industry. If he hooked up with someone like Kurt Busiek or another fan favorite, the book might have had a shot, but even pitch-perfect art and gorgeous painted covers were enough to get people reading this one. Alas.








He even had an appearance in Madman Comics, looking very cool and interesting. Mie Allred drew him well.




And so did Paul Smith.

Yeah, it always kind of bummed me out that they couldn't take advantage of those 4 guest writer issues; not only did they have Moore, but Gaiman basically created an entire world and mythos for him in 22 pages, and ne was never really successful in taking advantage of that, either.

Yeah, I figured Moore could have just gone into Swamp Thing or Promethea mode with Spawn, doing all the magic / mythology / spiritual stuff he loves.

The Moth was the whole reason I supported Rude's Nexus newspaper strip some years back. Moth was on the schedule
to appear after the Nexus story concluded.

Spawn kept my interest for the first 26 issues or so.

I can't believe you bailed after number 15, fake fan.

Terrible writing and art that imitated Adams but had poor storytelling too. If any company needed a Jim Shooter it was them.




Agree and agree



Yes, I wanted to love it so much and the art was great but the story was ehh.

Always thought that the idea behind Mark Waid and Barry Kitson's run on the Legion of Super-Heroes (the "Threeboot" version) had lots of potential---that the Legion were agents of change in a future society gone stagnant.But,it quickly became little more than fanzine-style tweaks to the Legionnaires and endless power plays between Brainiac 5 and Cosmic Boy.
Sometimes people can get ideas so good even they can't handle them.

I was, and still am, of the opinion that in addition to GHOST, Dark Horse Comics' other "Comics Greatest World" characters TITAN and X also had great potential, but the execution fell a bit flat... almost like Dark Horse didn't want to make them great.



I have also always been kinda partial to Ultra, the Multi-Alien...



Then there's this guy... who always seemed to get done dirty and could have been way more interesting (especially without his later "ionic energy powers").

So, was that Legion reboot less of "we in the 30th Century don't really know what happened between now and Superboy's era"
and more of a "We know but don't like it, so we're changing it?" I like that idea a lot.

Agree on all of these. Though I hate the safari jacket look.

The Dark Horse stuff should have been much better than it was was how do X not become a cult classic. Great look.

Wonder Man started out strong in his first reappearances but then fizzled out

Me thinks the new Wonder Man show will peak people's interest in WM. Mainly due to Yahya Abdul-Mateen II portraying him.

How so? I just looked this guy up and if he's playing Wonder Man, it's not Wonder Man.

The entire Crossgen universe is wasted potential. There were so many good books they were putting out, and then it died in an implosion of scandal.
Sojourn
Meridian
Ruse
Scion
El Cazador

All really good to great, especially the first 4.

That was a sad story, judging from the bits and pieces of it that have come out over the years. I never really liked any of the titles myself. Their house style of storytelling didn't appeal to me, and I didn't care for the whole sigil thing. A lot of people did like them, though. I know it was frustrating to them to have all the stories cut off in the middle like that. A lot of people who worked for the company in good faith also got burned when it crashed.

Still waiting for somebody to write a serious book about the whole business. There's got to be material for something like that, if only an enterprising researcher could pull it all together.

Writer Chuck Dixon talks about Crossgen in his "Ask Chuck Dixon" series on YouTube. He never liked the sigil thing as an overall storyline.

The Sigil stuff wasn't interesting to me either, but the separate storylines were. Sojourn and Meridian especially.

I tried the CrossGen line out, but I didn't find any of the titles engaging. It was bland and seemed editorial driven.
I found that Dark Horse's Comics Greatest World line was similar, though they seemed to allow the creators a little more room to tell their own stories, or at least in their own style.