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Useless Sidekicks
by Doom
Well, by definition pretty much all sidekicks are useless. Their purpose is to provide a character for young children to imagine themselves as. The problem with that is the sidekicks are always, always lamer than their hero, so kids are more apt to wish they were Batman than Robin. Anyone who identifies with a kid who wears red and yellow and no pants is a fucking sociopath or future Alexis Arquette anyway. However, despite all sidekicks sucking, you can make some distinctions, or levels of suckage, to classify sidekicks. Some gain relevance later in life (Bucky, Dick Grayson). Some die horrible, horrible deaths (Aqualad...I think). Some actually receive unique personalities or outlooks (404 error: file not found). Then there's the dregs. The bottom of the barrel. I'm here to show you this barrel and examine it for comedy and informative purposes. I'll do this by listing the 5 most useless sidekicks of all time. But first...
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
-Supergirl. I intended to put her on the list but then got bogged down in the ambiguity of whether or not she is a sidekick to Superman. I mean, clearly she bases her look after him, but they do not often engage in team-up adventures. Even the Paris Hilton Supergirl did her own thing after a couple of arcs, whereas people like Robin still tag along with their mentor. Further still the distinction confuses when you factor in Supergirls wholly unrelated to Superman or even Krypton, such as Peter David's Matrix Supergirl.
-Rick Jones. Rick Jones would certainly be on the list if this only covered up until the 80s or something, before Peter David made him into a decent character. Before that, he fucking had his own Teen Brigade of ham radio enthusiasts. 'Nuff goddamn said.
-Snapper Carr. Rick Jones, only replace his Bucky ripoff mannerisms with an insane amount of snapping his fingers going on.
-Aqualad. The name alone is enough.
-Bucky (the black one). Again, the name sells it. I love that Marvel didn't know the racial connotations and changed it only when a fucking letter writer pointed it out. Now he's called Battlestar. I think this is also racist because there are no black people on the Battlestar Galactica.
As opposed to all the other Robins who were not red. Next: Red Flash, Green Green Lantern, Green Green Arrow and Blue Blue Beetle.
5. JASON TODD AKA ROBIN II AKA RED HOOD II AKA NIGHTWING II AKA LOVESICK BUM I
For the longest while, Jason Todd provided the perfect example of what not to do with a sidekick. Pre-Crisis, Jason was an overt Dick Grayson clone, right down to his hair color (originally blonde, he dyes it black...for Batman. Sick!) and his origin (son of circus performers killed by a villain). Post-Crisis, the writers made him into an arrogant little prick which soon drew the ire of fans. As a result, Todd lost the infamous phone in poll which decided his whether he survived or died in a Joker attack. The lesson? Don't make your sidekick an unlikable prick or else you're going to have to off him in a controversial event comic. This short and pathetic career of Robin II would not earn him a spot on this list. But then Jeph Loeb and Judd Winick decided to bring him back because, hey, why the fuck not. They had no better ideas lying around. Sure, Winick said he did it to unleash all the story potential of Jason returning, and then, uh, nothing fucking happened.
Just like Jason Todd typified 80s Reagan "we need to take care of those Russians/criminals" whininess, new Jason Todd was the epitome of emo "I hate you dad!!!" bullshit which came into vogue in this decade. The new Red Hood hates Batman for not avenging his death and so kills criminals in direct contravening of Batman's code on dispatching criminals. Doesn't he remind you of the hardcore replacements for heroes who cropped up in the 90s, usually with ridiculously extreme code names? Hilariously, even in this role Jason Todd fails. Though he acts the foil for Batman for an arc or two, soon enough DC makes him a shapeshifting worm man or something. Then he's a main character in Countdown, in which he argues with Kyle Rayner and tries to fuck Donna Troy (unsuccessfully, I might add). In this series, he briefly becomes Red Robin under the auspices of an alternate Batman who did kill Joker to avenge Jason. Jason realizes avenging deaths is, like, bad. When back on his regular Earth, he quits being Red Robin and apparently starts rooming with two lesbians. Or something. I don't know. He stands head and shoulders above all the other mismanaged DC characters, which says a fucking lot. Oh yeah, and did I mention his return was explained to be a byproduct of Superboy-Prime punching reality?
If realistic, he would respond by saying "fuck no, asshole".
4. PIEFACE
Pieface is proof positive that Hal Jordan is a raging racist (as well as several DC writers). Okay, so Hal Jordan has an Eskimo/Inuit/whatever term is politically correct now (I prefer pulling a Sarah Palin and calling them Arctic Arabs) friend. What does he call this friend? Does Hal refer to him by his name? No. A nickname based on something about his personality? Nah. He calls his friend Pieface. Pieface. What the fuck?! I don't go around calling my black friend Nigger or my Hispanic friend Frito Bandito! Okay, well, maybe I do, but I'm not a superhero and I think we ought to have higher fucking standards for protectors of the planet. DC tried to remedy this blatant racism in future decades by making Pieface pissed off about Hal calling him Pieface, but the damage was already done.
As for his personality, he didn't have much of one. He fucking sucked. Pieface served in a capacity analogous to Superman's Special Pal Jimmy Olsen; that is to say, GL was one of the Silver Age few to go without a child/teen sidekick. (Apparently Broome and Schwartz found a child Green Lantern ridiculous...yet found Hal Jordan fine.) He assisted on some of Green Lantern's missions and on one occasion even wielded the ring. Of course, true to DC's minorities in the 60s (and now), he fucked up and Hector Hammond got a hold of it and turned ol' Pieface into a chimpanzee. Keep in mind, this was the fifth issue of the Hal Jordan series. Five issues in and John Broome already needed to resort to the tired cliché of someone becoming a chimp (or some other kind of primate). I think that says everything you need to know about the character and why Geoff Johns sucks for bringing him back.
To be fair, Pieface did not reach the peak of DC's racism.
I don't know who this exchange denigrates more.
3. ALL THOSE FUCKING ANIMALS
This one refers to superpets introduced by DC during the Silver Age, which started with Krypto but then grew to even more ridiculous proportions. Batman got a dog, Supergirl got a horse for the wrong, non-bestiality reasons, then there was a cat, some other fucking shit, and eventually everybody in the DC stable had some sort of animal helping them fight crime. Why? Why the fuck would you? Child sidekicks were created to give the superheroes an audience-identifiable pal and a cardboard cutout to explain the plot to. Superpets fulfill none of those functions. In fact, it makes a convincing argument that DC approved of cruelty to animals because realistically, animals would get hurt sometimes if helping in solving crimes with their masters. Then again, the very same company created Gorilla City so I doubt they gave a shit. The animals represented an evil outside of comics even more so than in the fiction. The advent of cute animals associated with heroes presaged the age of characters born within merchandise spin-offs. They were the Muppet Babies before the Muppet Babies. In and of themselves they have no story potential, but as merchandise dominos they must produce significant profits for Warner Brothers compared to the amount of time and effort put into creating them. We all remember that shitawful Krypto the Superdog cartoon. Thus, the superpets ushered in the era of creating spinoffs for no other reason than to make money without even an attempt to make it appear to the readers to be the logical extension of a narrative.
Also, I suppose this one could include that dog Punisher gained in the 90s. Man, that was fucking stupid bullshit. "Fucking stupid bullshit" is the perfect encapsulation of adding animal sidekicks to superheroes. Even Daredevil's seeing eye dog sidekick from the aborted cartoon sucked. What makes a seeing eye dog qualified to become a superhero? All you need to do to be a seeing eye dog is to fucking have vision. Maybe if he had like 8 eyes or something, but that'd be fucking creepy.
Arsenal gets sex by appealing to mothers who lost their child with his child dressed up in his old clothes. Fucked up.
2. ROY HARPER AKA SPEEDY I AKA ARSENAL I AKA RED ARROW I AKA FUCKING IDIOTIC HEROIN ADDICTED MORON I
Speedy started out as the lame answer to Robin for lame Batman ripoff Green Arrow. When Denny O'Neil decided to give Green Arrow a personality, along with that Roy Harper received a massive change. Instead of looking like a moron, he looked like a moron while also doing heroin. Heroin! Horse, Elaine. Smack. White palace. The Chinaman's nightcap. This became his personality for a couple of decades, "that guy who did heroin but now doesn't". Now, if DC left it at that, everything would be copacetic. But then they kept on using him and tried playing him as a competent hero able to do normal tasks. They didn't succeed, but the very fact that they tried to make him anything but a pathetic junkie angers me. These changes included giving Roy a kid, having him join the Titans, the Outsiders, the Titans again, the Justice League of America, etc. Yet for all the changes, Arsenal's incompetence remained, like the time he didn't notice someone put a bomb in his little girl's head, or the time he dressed up his little girl in his Speedy outfit, or the time...I could go on and on.
Roy tries to emulate his adoptive father by being a habitual womanizer, but since he's not Ollie he's not especially successful at it. This is because the idea of Roy Harper having regular sex stretches the suspension of disbelief past the breaking point. Yeah, maybe he could bed a couple of floozies, but the conquest list becomes incomprehensible upon seeing so many otherwise sensible women end up as notches on Arsenal's bedpost. Donna Troy. Grace. Huntress. Cheshire. Hawkgirl. Come on. Even Batman's not gotten Huntress to blow him yet; no way could Arsenal fucking outdo Batman in that regard. The character also has some shit about Navajo heritage though he never seems to mention it or display any characteristics associated with that culture. Instead, the guy emulates his adoptive dad to the point of wearing basically the same costume, only red. Jesus, why the fuck do shitty sidekicks keep on affixing 'Red' to an old name? Is red really that popular a color?
I admire DC's restraint. I would've said homosexuality.
Words fail.
1. JIMMY OLSEN AKA MEPHISTO
Jimmy Olsen surpasses all other shitty sidekicks. ALL. With Jimmy Olsen, they come out smelling like roses. Robin is useful when compared to Jimmy. Everyone else on the list do better jobs helping their heroes/mentors than Jimmy Olsen. I have yet to see one valid argument championing the character's right to exist and the right to be used as an important facet of the Superman mythos. I'm not a huge fan of Superman, but much of the premise appeals to me, from the Howard Hawks rapid-fire exchanges between Clark and Lois to the mad scientist/businessman combination of Lex Luthor. Jimmy Olsen doesn't work, though. Never has, never will. Why? Because he's an idiot Superman needs to save when the writer elects not to endanger Lois for the 80 billionth time. In all the aspects which matter, Jimmy is a retarded boy whom Superman pities. He gives the boy a special Superman watch and even lets him go around calling himself 'Superman's Pal' or 'Superman's Best Friend'. Sure, it shows Superman being nice to people less fortunate than him. Though you could do the exact same thing with a dog or a beachball or an orphan. If we've got to have either Krypto or Jimmy, I'd pick Krypto. Krypto doesn't talk.
When in nominal solo adventures, writers continually tried to get out of writing Jimmy Olsen by transforming him into women or monsters or some shit. Or they had him deal with monkeys of sorts which I noted was cliché in the Pieface write-up. In the Silver Age, Jimmy's heyday, covers would often show Superman expressing a lot of anger or malice towards poor Jimmy, and their popularity only makes me think the audience liked seeing Jimmy mocked, demeaned and tormented. Even when Jack Kirby took over the Jimmy Olsen comic, it was because he didn't want anyone to lose their job due to him (the title was then DC's lowest selling comic). Jack Kirby on Jimmy Olsen resulted in Kirby trying to write and draw a Jimmy comic with as little Jimmy as necessary. That's why he introduced all the precursors to his Fourth World New Gods shit; he needed to find a way to distract from the fact that it was Jimmy Olsen. If the fucking King of Comics can't do anything with the character, it's time to give up.
Yet other creators struggle on to give Jimmy Olsen an important role in the Superman mythos. The best they could do, Grant Morrison's All-Star Superman, brought back the retarded Silver Age approach of crazy happenings and unwelcome transformations. Media adaptations use him to expound plot points to, for he, like the audience, must hear the plot because otherwise he never knows what the fuck goes on around him. Jimmy Olsen in Smallville was introduced for no apparent reason and likewise in Superman Returns (perhaps Singer thought that since the Donner movies had Olsen, Olsen must be represented in his). Again, replacing him with a dog would change the stories he's in very little. And at least then there'd be reason for why he lacked common sense. Dogs are not expected to meet such a requirement, whereas humans are. And Krypto would've insulted my intelligence far less had he been the lead in Countdown.
See, even on TV he turns into things.
In conclusion, Sidekicks suck. They don't work as audience identification, nor do they add anything to their mentor character. Batman rarely has crime fighting situations requiring a 12 year old in a costume that'd make a gay man explode in anger. If he did need a partner, he'd pick someone older and more competent. Batgirl, Catwoman, Huntress, somebody whose brains he could fuck out. Teenage heroes can work, but notice how the really successful ones are those who strike out on their own. Spider-Man, obviously. The Teen Titans only became really popular once a) the original Titans started doing more Teen Titan work than sidekick work and b) non-sidekick teen heroes were introduced onto the team. The X-Men, more teen heroes, lacked mentor heroes besides the solitary father figure character of Professor X. The new Teen Titans share little link to their mentor figures, as do the Young Avengers (Hulkling and Wiccan certainly cannot be called successors to Hulk and Thor). There is no reason for sidekicks to exist when they could just become independent kid heroes. Though that would require DC/Marvel to think of new concepts for them. New ideas aren't their strongest suits. So I suppose the superhero genre will never rid itself of this stupid little relic from the late 30s. Damn.