Shazam! (1974)
With one word, Billy Batson becomes the World's Mightiest Mortal... but that's about the most believable thing in this series, which creepily featured the underage Billy traveling around the country in an RV accompanied by his "mentor" and occasionally talking to the gods who gave him his powers, who all happened to be badly-animated cartoons. Add in Billy or Captain Marvel helpfully telling you the moral of the episode at the end each week, and you've got a recipe for a dull show enlivened only by the size of Billy's hair.

Electra-Woman and Dyna-Girl (1976)
I'm not really sure this one needs any explanation as to why it's on the list, once you've watched the video.

The Amazing Spider-Man (1977)
In which television revealed the truth about Marvel's favorite superhero: He looked kind of ridiculous. This short-lived series also missed the point of the comic book altogether by not using any of the character's famous supervillains, instead giving him ninjas and terrorists to fight. What was the point of that?

Legends Of The Superheroes (1978)
No expense was spared on bringing DC's biggest name superheroes to the small screen in this live action version of Super Friends - well, unless you count the money that would've been spent on a good script. Again, proving that bad writing and poor special effects can overcome even the best intentions, this two-part series (The second episode of which was a celebrity roast of the heroes led by Ed McMahon. No, really) also featured a villain more diabolical than Lex Luthor: A laugh track.

Those Terrible Captain America TV Movies (1979)
We can just imagine the pitch meeting for these two TV movies: "So, we have the rights to Captain America - You know, the guy who embodies the American Dream and fought in World War II against Hitler? I've got a great take on him: We turn him into Evel Kinivel. And let's get rid of that mask, too. Make it into a motorcycle helmet - That's much more hep." It could've been worse, we guess... We're just not sure how.

The Incredible Hulk Returns (1988)
The original Hulk series was, if you ask us, one of the few superhero shows that worked - and that's because they didn't really treat it as a superhero show at all. When they revived the series a decade later and started pairing him with guest stars from the Marvel Universe, though...? Not a good idea:

(The Daredevil appearance in the next special, Trial of The Incredible Hulk, may be even worse; especially because they seem to have gotten the character mixed up with a generic ninja who happened to be blind.)

Superboy (1988)
An attempt to spin the Superman movies into a weekly format, the Superboy series had sincerity going for it - Sincerity and the seeming inability to not try and drastically rework the series between seasons every year (Including recasting the lead role after the original Superboy asked for a raise around the same time as getting arrested for drunk driving), leading to a schizophrenic, uneven show let down by shoddy special effects.

The Flash (1990)
The Flash comic book may be populated with colorful villains, but the television show didn't have the same luck (Mark Hamill's Trickster, in the clip below, aside), presumably for budgetary reasons. Add in a leading man as stiff as his ridiculously over-sculpted costume, and it's no surprise that this show only lasted one season.

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (1993)
Secret identities, colorful outfits, super powers, fighting crime... These guys count as superheroes, right? Maybe it's our age, maybe our dedication to things like plot, dialogue and nuance, or perhaps it's just our aversion to cheap monsters in anything that doesn't actually involve Godzilla, but the long-running (and multiple-show-spanning: It's on its fifteenth different title right now) series always seemed... well, almost unwatchably bad to us.

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman (1993)
It's a judgment call as to whether this show really deserves to be here. On the one hand, the Moonlighting-esque relationship between its leads was cute, and John Shea's Lex Luthor was a lot of fun... But on the other, it was a show that struggled to come up with good ideas each week and often failed, leading to an episode where Clark married a clone of Lois, who needed to eat frogs in order to survive. Or something. And what was with essentially writing Lex out after one season, anyway?

Generation X (1996)
A pilot adapting Marvel's X-Men spin-off, Generation X made it to air but never to full-series, meaning that the world was spared the low-budget high-concept struggle of teens having to live with their mutant abilities in a world that hated and feared them... because they couldn't act.

Justice League of America (1997)
Possibly the ultimate proof that TV and superheroes don't mix, this is another unsuccessful pilot that aired nonetheless, and features bad writing, bad acting, bad special effects, and some of the most literal - and most embarrassing - superhero costumes ever seen on screen. It's like a landmark of fail.

Mutant X (2001)
Marvel's short-lived television series about mutants that isn't related to the X-Men at all oh no please don't sue us Fox (They did, nonetheless) tried to swerve away from comparisons to the publisher's successful mutant franchise by underplaying everything to the point of boredom. Even Generation X would've been better than this.

Birds of Prey (2002)
It had so much potential - Batman and Catwoman's daughter teaming up with the former Batgirl to fight crime? Hello, high concept - but the execution let it down badly with shoddy writing, lack of direction and the mistaken idea that camp was better than character development. When something makes Smallville look subtle and nuanced, you know you're in trouble.

The Ones That Didn't Suck
Batman (1966)
Almost everything about it is wrong - The cheap jokes! The ill-fitting costumes! Replacing Julie Newmar with Eartha Kitt! - but it all works nonetheless; Batman's 1960s incarnation may not be the best translation from page to screen, but as a weird totem of the era, it remains a classic.

Wonder Woman (1975)
We love Wonder Woman as a character, and this show may be a lot to do with that. While the comic version was having identity issues at the time this series was being made, the TV show took her back to her heyday, added the "let me twirl into my costume" and fittingly made Lynda Carter the star she should've been all along.

The Incredible Hulk (1978)
As we said above, the Hulk show worked despite its title character - Riffing on The Fugitive with an occasional need for a giant silent strongman, the show offered a completely different take on the character from the comics, and one that was arguably better.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1996)
When it comes to television series about people with magical powers, we don't think we're alone in thinking that Joss Whedon did everything right. Mixing just the right amounts of humor and tragedy into the supernatural and superpowered stories, Buffy is everything that superhero shows like Smallville and Heroes should be trying to emulate... if only they could drag themselves away from the superficial special effects and overcooked dialogue.

The Obvious Exceptions
Anything animated
Yes, all of the above shows were live-action, and yes, we know that superhero cartoons have a long and proud history on television as well; we're partial to some Justice League Unlimited, especially if Darkseid is the bad guy. But as much as adding animated series in here may have ruined the grade curve, let's not forget things like this:

or this:

I think you know what I'm saying.

Oolong Island
Does an island count as a city? Possibly not, but as anyone who read DC Comics' 52 knows, Oolong is no ordinary island. Populated almost entirely by mad scientists (and maybe a couple of sane ones, too), Oolong Island is a place where the old laws (of physics) no longer apply, and there's no such thing as a bad scientific breakthrough, only one that needs to be stopped from destroying the world as we know it by resident superteam, the Doom Patrol. But what else could you expect from a place where scientists are encouraged to indulge in mind-altering substances to further free their minds?

Platinum Flats
Whereas the real world has Silicon Valley, former Batgirl Barbara Gordon and her Birds of Prey have Platinum Flats, which proclaims itself as "America's High-Tech Capital" and home to all manner of upstart start-ups like YouSpace, MacroWare, NetCracker, Findster (Well, it is an alternate Earth, after all) and has eradicated problems like crime and urban decay thanks to its well-heeled and inventive inhabitants. Better living through technology indeed.

Haven
What's the quickest way to suddenly have a city full of advanced technology in your backyard? Have an alien spacecraft crash into it. That's what happened in the DC Universe's version of California (As if having Green Lantern's "Coast City" midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles wasn't enough), which suddenly found itself with an extra-terrestrial prison full of political prisoners dumped onto its coast in the early '2000s series Haven. On the plus side, the US Government granted them city status, in exchange for some of their tasty new technology. Let's just work on that whole "retro-engineering so we can use it without tentacles" thing, shall we?

Big Town
In 2000, Marvel Comics wondered what would've happened if, instead of using their genius to fight crime, Reed Richards, Tony Stark and the rest of their superheroic scientist buddies actually invented things to benefit society. According to Fantastic Four: Big Town, the result is a futuristic New York, which quickly becomes the center of civilization, expands to include nearby cities in other states, and destabilizes society as we know it. But, on the plus side, unstable molecules really cut down on your laundry costs.

Atlantis
Whether it's Marvel or DC Comics, there's an undersea city of Atlantis, and they're more technologically advanced than us. Marvel's Atlanteans prefer to travel is super-science submarines while they consider their latest plans to invade the surface world for whatever unconvincing reason they've been duped into believing this week, while DC's undersea dwellers have the distinction of having a civilization that started long before man had even crawled from the sea, and therefore having a head-start on the rest of us. Of course, if they were really that smart, they'd have worked out how to stay out of the water for more than an hour at a time, but apparently they were too busy telepathically communicating with whales to be troubled by such thoughts.

Attilan
Maybe the only people who can deal with the world of tomorrow today are scientifically-advanced themselves... like Marvel Comics' Inhumans, whose millennia-old city is so advanced that it has not only withstood being transported throughout space (literally; for awhile, it existed on the moon) but has also proven capable of physically transforming itself into a spaceship when needs be. See? Humans end up turning scientifically-advanced cultures into disasters, but Inhumans are apparently smart enough to turn change to their advantage.

Electropolis
Dean Motter's most recent take on the idea of the futuristic city (from his 1999 series of the same name) offered a different take on the idea: the retrofuturistic city, founded on decades old ideas about the future that're still ahead of their time. "Cathedral-sized Van Der Graaf generators and towering Strickfadden machines" may sound oddly outdated to us now, but this city still managed to have robot detectives, flying cars and an on-time metro service unlike the modern world we live in.

Metropolis
What better home for the Man of Tomorrow than the self-declared City of Tomorrow? Superman's adopted hometown may be best known for its major metropolitan newspaper, but consider all of the mad scientists that Superman faces on a regular basis, to say nothing of the alien technology, scientific establishments to clean up after superbattles and even the wonderfully-named Science Police, and it's pretty clear that there's more to this forward-thinking city than depending on print media. The city even has a street dedicated to scientific institutions called The Avenue of Tomorrow. What could be more perfect than that?

Simone spoke during today's DC panel here at San Diego Comic-Con about where she's planning to take Diana following the conclusion of the controversial Rise Of The Olympian storyline: She's teaming up with former Bird Of Prey Black Canary to go undercover as cagefighters for two issues, starting with this Wednesday's Wonder Woman #34. Following that, there'll be an even more extreme change in the new storyline Warkiller:

Wonder Woman is going to renounce the gods and declare that she is no longer an Amazon. We're going to see her as more of a superhero than she's been in quite some time.

Don't think this means that the series will lose its Amazonian edge with this change, however; Simone also teased that Themyscira, the home island of the Amazons, is about to find itself with a new ruler: Ares, the god of war. Not that everything will go to plan:

They're not too happy about that. They're not going to make everything easy for him.

Cagefights, out and proud superheroics and warrior women making gods' lives misery - How can you resist? Warkiller begins in September's #36.

Originally planned as a Smallville companion series by that show's creators Miles Millar and Al Gough in 2005, Mercy Reef (also known as both Tempest Keys and just plain Aquaman at various points in its development) followed the template of both Clark Kent's series and the planned Graysons pilot: Young version of DC Comics superhero faces both the forces of evil as well as the forces of growing up as he slowly changes from an annoyingly selfish/stupid/dickish character into the hero that we know and love. Like the lead in The Graysons, Aquaman's alter-ego was also given a "cooler" initialled version of his name to try and cover up his age (DJ Grayson, AC Curry).

But where The Graysons offers carnie courage and hi-jinks on the highwire, Mercy Reef had much more up its conceptual sleeve (Arguably, even more than Smallville); instead of just being destined to one day watch his parents be killed and team up with a psychopathic, violent detective with a rodent fetish, Mercy Reef's AC had a mysterious past - What had happened to his mother when she disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle when he was a child? - as well as a grander destiny as future king of Atlantis to face up to... and a cast list that was both impressive and crappy to help him do so (Ving Rhames and Lou Diamond Philips were both onboard should the show get picked up).

The pilot didn't get picked up, although it did get released - retitled as Aquaman - on iTunes (where it was the most successful TV show for awhile, surreally) and as a Best Buy-exclusive freebie for the poor deluded fans who thought that it was worth picking up the sixth season of Smallville on DVD in 2007. The actor who played AC, Justin Hartley, graduated from the pilot to become Smallville's Green Arrow (That show, of course, already had its own Aquaman), and the idea of a companion series to Smallville went away... until this week.

So, while I'm unconvinced that The Graysons is anything other than a way of trying to cash in on the success of The Dark Knight without stepping on Christopher Nolan's toes, I'm not that worried about it turning out to be another Birds of Prey, either; after all, history has shown that a pilot order means little, and that calmer heads at the CW have a way of prevailing when it comes to trying to create another Smallville.

Of course, I'm also someone who actually enjoys Smallville, so you may want to take everything I say with a pinch of salt.

Opening the panel, DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio told fans "We have nothing to talk about, so we're turning it over to you." Inviting questions from the audience, a line-up consisting of editors DiDio, Mike Carlin, Jann Jones, VP of Sales Bob Wayne and creators Sergio Aragones and James Robinson (announced as "writer of Superman and a book to be named later," with a later tease when DiDio asked him "Do you like writing Green Arrow?") were in full-on tease form when avoiding giving straight answers to straight questions. Some highlights:

* Following Steve Gerber's death, four writers will be writing the final issue of Gerber's Countdown To Mystery series, with each writer providing a four-page sketch of how they think that Gerber would have ended the story. The writers involved will be Mark Waid, Wonder Woman's Gail Simone, Countdown's Adam Beechen and Gerber's close friend, Mark Evanier (DNAgents).

* Fan-favorite book Manhunter will return, but not until there are enough finished scripts to make sure the book will ship on a monthly schedule.

* Birds of Prey, the book that stars former Batgirl Barbara Gordon, will be moving to a new fictional city in the future, just in time for Gordon to meet the villain that crippled her, the Joker, in a move in no way related to that whole Dark Knight movie coming out this summer. Not at all.

* Superstar artist George Perez may be going into the future for his next project. The artist, best known for his work on 1980s universe-ending saga Crisis On Infinite Earths provided the cover for May's DC Universe: Zero, which DiDio said "may lead into what he's doing next". The stars of that particular cover? Futuristic teen super-heroes, the Legion of Super-Heroes.

* Swamp Thing won't be returning to any DC superhero books anytime soon... officially. When asked if the character would be appearing in the DC Universe, DiDio replied that, while the executive editor of the mature-readers Vertigo imprint wasn't giving permission for them to use the character any time soon, "we would never put him in a comedic book without their knowledge. Nooooo." (My guess for that comedic book? The revival of 1980s self-referential comedy Ambush Bug, due in July).

* James Robinson will be returning to characters from his popular Starman series, writing a spin-off series starring the Shade anti-hero. But don't expect it anytime soon - He doesn't plan to finish writing it for at least a year.

* DC's much-hyped, rarely-seen new Batwoman character will be getting her own series... but we won't officially find out about that until tomorrow.

When asked about DC characters getting their own movies, the panel played coy. "We like movies," Jann Jones commented. A fan pointed out that Marvel Comics have two movies coming out this summer (Iron Man and Incredible Hulk) to DC's one (The Dark Knight), leading Bob Wayne to respond "Well, in that case, it's quantity versus quality," to an almost-Oprah audience-worthy "Ooooooooh".

Tomorrow's panels - including a 90-minute DC-centric presentation that will undoubtedly feature their big 2008 plans - will, hopefully, manage to put out something crunchier than cheap shots at the opposition, but who can tell...?

This is the MechaTabZilla, as the Huntress nicknames it during the battle over Metropolis. Tabitha wants to take over her father's crime empire now that she's killed him, but his old colleagues won't take her seriously. So she nabs this truck, which the Birds of Prey think is loaded with weapons. Instead, the truck turns out to be a robot in disguise.

I love that the truck's cab is the robot's pelvis. And McKeever gets in a nice riff on the book's usual girl-power theme. The gangsters are trying to decide whether they should smack Tabitha down "with the backhand or the forehand." And then Tabitha's giant robot fist crashes through the wall of their little gang sanctum.

After disappointing runs on Countdown and Teen Titans, this is the closest McKeever has come to Mary Jane-y goodness in a while. The giant robo-teen feels just out-of-left enough that it could have come from Gail Simone, the longtime Birds writer who left a few months ago.

If you're looking for a stocking stuffer for the little kid in your life, you could do a lot worse than the Marvel Adventures Hulk digest, Misunderstood Monster. It's the old-school Hulk, smashing stuff in his purple pants and wanting to be left alone. No planet, no world war. And it's totally kid-friendly.

There are also a couple of worthy X-men collections out this week. X-Factor: Heart of Ice hardcover collects issues 18-24 of the recent series. Post-mutant terrorists react badly to the fact that most mutants have lost their powers. And if you're feeling nostalgic for the massive mutant crossovers of the 1990s, you can pick up X-Men Vol. 1: the Complete Onslaught Epic. Charles Xavier and Magneto have mind-sex and create Onslaught, a supervillain who sends all the greatest heroes to an alternate reality. Really.

As for the floppies, you can pick up two more pieces left after World War Hulk. The Hulk himself is gone (until he comes back as a red-head). But The Incredible Hulk is renamed The Incredible Herc, and follows the adventures of Hercules and the supergenius Amadeus Cho, starting with this week's issue 112. Meanwhile, World War Hulk: Warbound #1 follows the Hulk's alien allies from the planet Sakaar as they try to flee from their puny human pursuers.

Birds of Prey finally greets its new writer, Sean McKeever (Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane.) The Birds lose control over a high-tech menace in Metropolis, and Superman warns them they may not have much future in his city.

Star Wars: Legacy wraps up its storyline about Luke Skywalker's descendant being tempted by the dark side of the force. This series takes place 100 years after Return of the Jedi and has managed to deliver some real surprises on a pretty regular basis because anything can happen to these characters.

Then there's the latest Marvel Comics "What If" special, What If: Civil War. What if all the heroes had united behind Captain America? What if Iron Man had lost? One of the three versions is written by Ed Brubaker (Daredevil, Criminal), so it should be a fun read.

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