I try very hard to remain open-minded about developments in comics, but… I am just not feeling Punchline. Her debut, where DC hyped her as the next big thing, causing speculators to snap up her appearances, leading DC to hype how much of a success she is, leading to more speculation just reminds me too much of the early ’90s comics boom. There’s a clear intent to replicate Harley Quinn’s accidental success, with a little bit of palette swapping, and the overall presentation feels like DC is just trying too hard to make fetch happen. Of course, you may not have read her solo number one, which might change your mind, leading us to today’s artificially inflated query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) remembers how incredibly hyped and expensive the comic work of Steve Platt was for a minute in the mid 90s, and wonders if any of you have ever even heard of him, asking: What moments or characters in your favorite pop culture feel like the creators are trying too hard?
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The 2014 “Joker’s Daughter” #1 comes to mind. The head honchos at DC resurrected a 40 year old character to catch lighting in a bottle again.
Oh my god… I forgot about her! Punchline is almost the same character, too.
The Star Wars “Special Editions” are like the poster child for a creator trying too hard.
Pretty much every “Bloodkill Deathstike” from the 90’s. Looks like they are trying to do those again, now with Hot Topic makeup. I guess the creators who grew with those are coming to age.
Yeah, i was going to mention anyone created by Rob Liefeld (the Cable/Deadpool/X-Force stuff, the Image stuff, all of it), or that ludicrously over-designed Azrael Batman, but i realized all that stuff happened in the 90s.
So I’ll just second your general “anything from the 90s” comment