Please don’t bring these guys back.

There are some great comic characters. There also are some questionable ones. If we’re talking reboots, maybe these guys just keep the boot.

Let me start out by telling you all that you’re welcome for this one (before I do, let me preface that just because your name is Grant Morrison, doesn’t mean you get an automatic pass on whatever runs through your head). This gem is Codpiece, a villain from the Doom Patrol for Vertigo Comics. When Codpiece was in high school, the most popular girl in school told him she couldn’t date him because he was too small. She meant that he wasn’t tall enough, but, being a male, Codpiece took it to mean that she was talking about his mini-Codpiece. Thus began his obsession with his member size.

Codpiece goes through life thrusting himself at women and when they consistently turn away, he believes it’s due to the size of his manhood, instead of the raging size of his creepiness. Codpiece goes to a plastic surgeon to see if it can be fixed, but the surgeon suggests therapy, which only angers Codpiece more. He even tries to pay for a woman’s companionship, but he fails to perform due to his obsession with it – causing him to go completely ballistic. So, Codpiece decides that the best idea is to build a robotic suit with a “cod-piece” right over his groin that serves as a sort of army-knife grab bag of weapons. His “cod-piece” shoots a spring-loaded boxing glove, an intimidating drill, giant scissors, an ultra sound emitter and a rocket-firing canon. After robbing a bank, Codpiece’s wiener weapon is destroyed by Coagula, a transsexual superhero who has special dissolving powers.

I couldn’t make this up if I tried, folks. Enjoy!

Next is Sugar Man from Marvel Comics. Sugar Man is a refugee from the Age of Apocalypse reality. We here at ComicBloc have debates about this being among the best of the X-Men series’ (and Generation Next being the best of that), but really Sugar Man is something that they should have left in the word processor. The rest of the AoA teams got to deal with Apocalypse himself, Holocaust and a dark version of Hank McCoy.

Holocaust was a nuclear inferno and looked like a flaming skeleton encased in glass. Sugar Man operated a slave camp and later escaped to create the mutant slave system in Genosha. He is basically a wart with arms and legs. I hope your dinner is well digested.

Naturally when the Age of Apocalypse reality collapsed, Sugar Man managed to escape and continue terrorizing readers for far longer.

I don’t even feel the need to explain why I chose this next one. This is Leather Boy. Leather Boy misunderstood an ad for costumed adventurers, the Great Lakes Initiative, and immediately quit. He later returned in a leather Dr. Doom-esque costume and became a villain of the Great Lakes Initiative. He snapped Mr. Immortal’s neck (certainly not killing him though, right?) and killed Squirrel Girl’s sidekick Monkey Joe. OH THE HORROR! WHAT WILL WE DO WITHOUT MONKEY JOE?!

Vertigo comics created a character named Shasta the Living Mountain from Doom Force. He can turn into a human mountain – complete with trees, ski-lifts, and snobby skiers. On his head. Yeah. That’s it. No, really, that’s all there is on him.

Just when I think we’ve hit the lowest point, along comes Extraño from DC, who makes the creators of the Codpiece storyline sound like Shakespeare himself. Gregorio De La Vega was the eighth person chosen to be one of the ten bearers of humanity by Guardian Herupa Hando Hu and the Zamaron Nadia Safir. Gregorio refused the position, opting to try and kill himself before Flash intervenes and saves him. At this point Gregorio accepts his destiny and names himself “Extraño,” meaning “strange” in Spanish.

Though it was never directly said, the writers gave Extraño every homosexual stereotype you could fathom. He wore bright colors, had long, flowing hair, and referred to himself as “Auntie.” Slang terms and sexual innuendos were also used to not-so-subtly remind the reader that Extraño was gay. And, in case you were especially dim-witted, they even had him get attacked by an “AIDS Vampire” called Hemo-Goblin. *Facepalm, DC.* And just in case you weren’t offended enough, they then make Extraño HIV positive, but not without mentioning that it could’ve been the AIDS Vampire’s doing, but maybe he’d already had it. He also used ping pong balls to confuse villains as part of his powers, but after the AIDS Dracula, that hardly seems worth mentioning.

If these guys get a fair shake as legitimate comic characters, it’s hard to come up with a reason why writers insist on rebooting the same old heroes and villains that we already know and love just as they are. I mean, if Extraño’s offensive presence can reappear in 27 issues before DC finally throws their hands up and says ‘maybe he’ll never be Batman,’ then we don’t need to rewrite Superman for the thousandth time *This time with body armor! Oooo…*.

I’m certainly not suggesting we continue to see half-assed characters like the ones mentioned above, but if they can get a shot, why not something great? The next Captain America might be right around the corner.

Hopefully not these guys instead.