The Top 10 Worst Comic Book Moments Of 2025, From ‘Absolute Flash’ To ‘Supergirl’ (Part 1)
Ever since Jonathan Hickman kicked off Marvel’s Ultimate relaunch with Ultimate Invasion, many readers, even those who swore off the entire medium following either Marvel NOW! or Dark Crisis, have come to admit that while things are still far from the heydays of decades past, the general quality of the wider Western comic book industry has been on a consistent rise these past few years, as exemplified in such books as Uncanny X-Men, Witchblade, and almost anything from the Absolute or Ultimate lines (Flash and Black Panther being the respective exceptions).
But for all of its forward progress, the comic book industry still saw its fair-share of missteps, misfires, and just outright disasters across 2025 – and while one could bleat on and on forever about just how good the latest Ultimate Spider-Man volume is, it wouldn’t be very intellectually honest if we didn’t call out the industry when they completely drop the ball.
With that said, join me, your friendly neighborhood Editor-in-Chief, for a run-down of my Top 10 Worst Comic Book Moments of 2025! Starting with…
10) Marvel – ‘From The Ashes’ Proves Yet Another Bust For The X-Men
As someone who has been keeping apprised of Marvel’s Merry Band of Mutants since the late 90s, I’ve lived through my fair share of X-Men initiatives and relaunches, from the Age of Apocalypse, to House of M, to Schism, so I would hope my words carry some weight when I tell you, dear reader, that their latest effort will go down in history as one of the line’s absolute busts.
Rolling right out of the Krakoa era (which I still hold was super interesting under Hickman, but went to absolute sh*t after he got pushed out), the From The Ashes relaunch promised a return to the mutants’ more team-based dynamics, abandoning a collective ‘hub’ location in favor of independent bases operated in near-isolation by a single team, with the core X-Men making a new home in Alaska, Rogue leading her new Uncanny splinter cell to Louisiana, a new X-Factor being conscripted by the US Government, and the newly-guided-by-Kitty-Pryde-and-Emma-Frost Exceptional X-Men making a name for themselves in Chicago.
Unfortunately, this shift came at the expense of readers’ patience, as instead of introducing a new collective mutant threat to fight against or putting individual team members up against their own personal bogeymen, the core threat to the X-Men is, for the umpteenth time, the fact that people don’t like mutants.
Fresh! Exciting! Never been done before, I know! Add in directionless showings for X-Factor and X-Force, an inability to let Jean Grey take her rightful seat amongst the Cosmic pantheon (and actually stay away from Earth!), and a complete waste of Emma Frost, and at the end of the day, you’ve got the least exciting mutant movement since the MCU retconned Kamala Khan’s origins.
9) Marvel – ‘Venom #250’ Was A Waste Of An Anniversary Issue
After the events of Venom War led to a general shake-up in the Symbiote Status Quo, with Mary-Jane now playing host to Venom, Eddie Brock bonded to Carnage, and both Rick Jones and Flash Thompson temporarily partnering up with Toxin, half-way through the year saw Marvel bringing out the big Klyntar guns and announce that their then-upcoming Venom #250 would not only serve as a massive anniversary issue for the Lethal Protector, but in service of the celebration also feature the return of none other than Knull himself.
Unfortunately, when the issue finally hit stands, readers soon discovered that while Marvel did technically keep their promises regarding its content, they did so in the barest senses possible, with the larger issue’s story featuring a ‘rushed lead-up’ to Knull’s return that eventually gives way to the reveal that while the God of the Symbiotes is back among the living, he is currently being held prisoner by Hela, who has since dubbed herself the Queen In Black.
To be clear, the big issue here is not that Hela is currently ‘one-upping’ Knull, especially given that she’s long been established as one of the Marvel mythos’ more powerful Gods of Death and that a conflict between her and Knull for the full title could actually present some interesting story possibilities (not to mention that, more than anything, this move was likely made to force some Marvel Rivals synergy).
Rather, the issue is that for all the hype Marvel tried to build around Venom #250, it ultimately reads like a slapped-together storyboard for what they want to do with him (and to make matters even more glaring, the book’s next issue actually reads like a satisfactory anniversary tale).
8) DC – ‘Supergirl’ Relaunch Fails To Deliver For The Girl Of Steel
For all the world rightfully loves Krypton’s second Earth-bound survivor, Supergirl has unfortunately had a rough run of things when it comers to her comic book adventures, with DC’s ongoing desire to distinguish her from her similarly-powered and far-more-famous cousin having subjected her to years of awkward experimentation, with particularly unfortunate results including her being retconned into a pure-energy being with a case of mistaken identity (Hello, Matrix!), fused with a dying Linda Danvers and starting a new life as a shared being, and a stint as a hard-edged space swashbuckler in Woman of Tomorrow.
As a result of DC’s inability to give her some proper footing (and likely some residual collar-tugging over just how bad The CW’s Supergirl had gotten by the time of its finale), the last time Kara got a chance to headline a solo title was in 2018, and as such fans were particularly excited for the Girl of Steel to finally start getting her due respect.
Unfortunately, while writer Sophie Campbell clearly loves Supergirl and boasts an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the heroine’s obscure lore – She’s probably one of about four people, including myself, who actually remembers the existence of Kara’s color-changing hair brush – she was unable to actually use this knowledge in any meaningful way.
Thus, instead of a new lease on sequential life for Krypton’s last daughter, Campbell delivers a sort of Where’s Waldo of Supergirl trivia, each page filled with callbacks and genuine love for the character but featuring little in the way of an actual, coherent narrative (For example, though the book presents Kara as more on the younger, naive side of life, she at one point has on-screen flashback to her time as Red Lantern and as the aforementioned swashbuckler, suggesting that she should be far more mature and unfortunately ‘battle hardened’ than she is).
Alas, while Campbell might not make a good Supergirl writer, one could absolutely see her excelling as the book’s editor, her various pieces of trivia being used to spice up the entire meal rather than replace it.
(And to be honest, I can never stay TOO mad at Campbell, because she did provide us with perhaps the greatest character design of 2025 in her revamped Lesla-Lar – or as I like to call her, the Thicctonian).
7) Marvel – Another Year, Another Miss For ‘Amazing Spider-Man’
I know, I know, I should’ve known better than to get my hopes up for the core Amazing Spider-Man title, especially at this point in the post-One More Day timeline we currently occupy – but after just how bad Zeb Wells’ run got, can you blame someone who considers the wallcrawler to be his favorite superhero for wanting to hope?
Seriously, after the ‘Goblin Who Laughs’, Paul-and-MJ, Chasm-filled mess that was the book’s last volume, I was genuinely hoping that veteran Marvel writer Joe Kelly, whose lengthy list of credits include giving the Merc With A Mouth an actual personality in Deadpool Vol. 2 and penning perhaps one of the greatest single-issue Superman stories in What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?, could once again work his magic and at the very least provide starving Spider-fans with a book that was at least fun to read.
To his credit, Kelly has, in his thus far 18-issue run, played with some actually interesting ideas (and dear God, can series artist Pepe Larraz f–king draw), such as a genuinely remorseful Norman Osborn trying and failing to stand-in for the wall-crawler, Ben Reilly abandoning his goal of ruining Peter’s life in favor of just living in his shoes, and Peter being forced to interact with a new gang of not-quite-Guardians of the Galaxy (Janitors of the Galaxy, if you will) that allow him to be a genuine ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ without being bogged down by the status quo.
But for the most part, Kelly’s Amazing Spider-Man is just more of the same, with Peter Parker once again broke, jobless, on the outs with Mary-Jane, having secret identity issues with Aunt May, and struggling to find a way to ‘keep it together’ – Hell, the run’s first issue nearly one-to-one duplicates a similar scene from the book’s first Brand New Day-era outing!
As someone who considers Spider-Man to be his favorite superhero of all-time, believe you me when I say that we’ve been here before. None of this is new, none of this is ‘updating’ the mythos à la the original Ultimate Spider-Man, and worst of all, each issue where Peter and MJ stay broken-up stands as yet another reminder of Marvel Editorial’s bizarre obsession with keeping the web-slinger as a ‘relatable everyman’.
And don’t even get me started on Hellgate, Peter’s latest ‘greatest’ big bad who is essentially just a lazy fusion of series artist John Romita Jr.’s previous Spider-villain creations, bearing Morlun’s prophecy-driven desire to hurt the hero, the stern personality and bald-head of Radioactive Man, and Gladiator Hulk’s general aesthetic, all wrapped in a package that’s best described as ‘We’ve got DC’s Ares at Home’
I wish I could say “Once you’re at the bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up”, but as history has proven, things can always go lower with Amazing Spider-Man (And if my suspicions are correct and the host of the upcoming Amazing Spider-Man/Venom: Death Spiral event’s new Torment symbiote is Ben Reilly, as based on Kelly himself describing the villain as someone “who targets Peter Parker and all those connected to him”, then I am personally about to get a whole lot madder in the coming year.)
6) Marvel – ‘Ultimate Wolverine’ Is Really Just Wolverine, Isn’t He?
When it comes to such ‘reimagining’-centric projects like DC’s Absolute line or either of Marvel’s Ultimate universes, one of their core appeals is the fact that while they may feature familiar faces, locations, and events, they usually play out in ways that are drastically different than their standard canon counterparts, such as Peter Parker being married to Mary-Jane or Wonder Woman being raised by Circe rather than Hippolyta.
Alas, this is where the ball was dropped with Ultimate Wolverine, as while one of the most gorgeous books currently being published and featuring some damn good Logan moments, the overall book was intended, as admitted by writer Chris Condon, to tell the ultimate Wolverine Story rather than an Ultimate Wolverine story.
As such, the Logan currently tearing across Earth-6160 bears far more of a resemblance to his Earth-616 counterpart than practically any other hero in that universe, right down to his life-long friendship with Creed, ownership of his world’s Muramasa blade, and a protective soft-spot for Kitty Pryde.
While not a bad story to tell in and of itself, that the book was promised as an Ultimate book but ends up as an Earth-616 miniseries presents a significant ‘misunderstood the unassignment’ flag that unfortunately is just too hard to ignore while reading.
In the interest of faster loading times and saving our readers on their data plan, we’ve divided this article into two parts.
So, for those interested in reading the final entrants of this Top 10, head on over to Part 2!
