The holidays are a time to look back on the year that was... and to receive presents that one doesn't want with forced smiles and faked goodwill. We at the Committee for the Prevention of Sequential Mediocrity, believing it is far better to give than receive, have decided to hand out a few gifts of our own to honour mainstream comics' worst moments in 2003: one present for each of the 12 days of Christmas.

What was that, Mr Famous Comics Creator? You would really rather have had the seven maids a-milking? Tch. Too late; you should have thought of that before turning in plot lines about a character getting a new body made out of another character's urine.

You see, the Committee for the Prevention of Sequential Mediocrity really loves mainstream comics, and it hurts us to see what some of the biggest names in comics consider "acceptable". Mediocrity should not be a mission statement for comics publishers, but too often, it seems that's exactly what it is.

That's where we come in. We feel if we shine a little light on some of the more dark and dismal things perpetrated in the name of mainstream comics this year, it may go some small way towards their not being repeated in 2004. We may be a little harsh. But someone has to tell them the emperor's standing up there buck naked.

Now on to the awards. We'll present the first six today, and the second six on Friday. The envelope please...

12. The Black Box Award for Ongoing Series That Has Taken The Biggest Nosedive

Unanimously, the Committee voted for Mack's Reign of Error on DAREDEVIL. If you're reading the series in trades, you may want to skip the next section, and just take it as read that you should also skip this particular trade paperback.

Brian Michael Bendis was writing an amazingly good comic. Gritty crime drama starring Matt Murdock, blind ninja lawyer superhero, which got ever more hardcore as the series continued. It culminated with Murdock beating the living daylights out of Kingpin, dropping his chubby corpse in a lowlife-infested bar, removing his mask, and declaring loudly that Hell's Kitchen was now TM and (C) Daredevil, Esq.

And then Bendis took off for six months, and Mack took over, and... it's like a teenage girl's diary. Watercolours, no panel layouts to speak of, little bits of poetry written down the margins, and oh yeah, no sign of Daredevil. Instead, we get the "vision quest" of Echo, a Native American, because comics needs more badly-written bullshit about Native American mysticism.

Echo wanders around trying to work out what the panel layouts are trying to imply for issue after issue, and nothing happens. Wolverine turns up for a bit, but fails to gut anyone and really doesn't make it any better. The Committee is speaking with its lawyers to see if Mack can be forcibly removed from DAREDEVIL on the "cruel and unusual punishment" amendment to the Constitution.

11. The 'Decompression? More Like A Vacuum' Award for Least Amount Of Plot In Greatest Number Of Pages

The hivemind was split on this one, or should we say, spoilt for choice. First, ULTIMATES. A few issues ago, the Ultimates were blown up, and in the next issue it was revealed that - shock! - they weren't! Since then, we've had about three issues, none of which have progressed the plot any further.

Second, ULTIMATE SIX. Five issues in and a bunch of bad guys have escaped and taken Spider-Man prisoner. Stan Lee would have done that in four panels, leaving 21 and a half pages for the final two issues of the miniseries, in which we're hoping something actually happens.

The BATMAN titles continued their reputation for being 5% genius and 95% gash, with Kia Asiyama's BATMAN: CHILD OF DREAMS getting brickbats for being 280 pages of poorly-composed splash pages and dull talking heads scenes. BATMAN: HUSH contained 12 issues of pretty Jim Lee art, but only four issues of plot, as far as we could ascertain.

Lastly, Judd Winick's BLOOD + WATER miniseries from Vertigo was five issues of tedium that didn't even succeed as a goth wish-fulfilment exercise, with only one issue's worth of plot spread thin. Dying boy gets made vampire by his friends, rocks out for a while, then has to fight evil supernatural nasty. 22 pages? Yes. 110 pages? No.

10. The Colonel's Special Recipe Award for The Biggest Chicken Of The Year

It was a tough call, but X-STATIX narrowly beat out the Epic line. Marvel cried to the heavens about how controversial it was being for months on end by adding a reincarnated Princess Diana to the X-Statix team. Then it wimped out at the last minute, because it was controversial. Um... guys?

But in a stunning act of left hand/right hand coordination, Marvel left the original covers and previews on its website even as Mike Allred was rapidly giving Diana a makeover and renaming her "Henrietta". The worst part of the whole affair is the prospect that Marvel may have alienated one of its best creative teams - Allred and writer Pete Milligan - with its act of cowardice.

And Epic? Okay, so it was a bit much to expect that there was a lot of undiscovered talent out there. But what left a sour taste was how the few projects accepted into Epic were cut or anthologised, rather than moved into mainline Marvel. A dishonourable mention also goes to WOLVERINE: THE END, where Enrique Breccia's gorgeous vision of Old Ronin Wolverine was abandoned in favour of Claudio Castellini's Mullet Wolverine. Oh well. It's all Bill Jemas' fault. Everything. Even the rain yesterday.

9. The 'Who Was That Masked Man?' Award for The Most Incomprehensible Art

Step forward Messrs Dwayne Turner, Whilce Portacio and Philip Tan!

Turner's art on AUTHORITY was described by one committee member as "physically painful to read". Readers had almost no idea what was going on in the vast majority of his AUTHORITY run.

Portacio on STORMWATCH made all his characters look alike, which was a bit of a problem on a title where most of the characters talk alike as well. The Committee to this day still has no idea which character is supposed to be depicted on the cover of the first trade. Is it a girl? But the only girl on the Stormwatch team has long blonde hair! Maybe it's some random girl? (That said, Mark Texeira on STORMWATCH #7 made Portacio look good, which is a scary concept.)

But enough about WildStorm. Philip Tan's epileptic scrawl on UNCANNY X-MEN not only make it nearly impossible to distinguish between characters, he also had the bizarre talent of being able to undermine what little drama existed in Chuck Austen's writing. A dishonourable mention goes to the new artist on FLASH, Alberto Dose. FLASH needs clear, simple, proficient superhero art. Dose provides sub-Vertigo orange and brown scribbling.

8. The Helen Keller Award for Misadventures In Colouring

Speaking of orange and brown... 2003 was the year that the whole world went autumnal, at least at Vertigo and its imitators. The main sinner was Lee Loughbridge, who provided beautiful colours for DC's FORMERLY KNOWN AS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE, but also decided that every Vertigo title should have the same ugly colour scheme. It worked really well in LOSERS, but very badly in HELLBLAZER.

Unfortunately, Loughbridge has spawned a bit of a trend, leading people like James Sinclair on FLASH to imitate him. It's wrong on HELLBLAZER, but it's even worse in FLASH. A dishonourable mention goes to Avalon Studios on UNCANNY X-MEN, for randomly inserting computer-coloured panels into their issues.

7. The Collect Call Award for Most Phoned In Performance Of The Year From An Industry Luminary

Warren Ellis, what happened? GLOBAL FREQUENCY was Ellis-lite, and even had a Power of Love ending in one issue that was cringe-worthy in the extreme; TOKYO STORM WARNING was bad pastiche, PLANETARY is coasting on its previous high accolades, SCARS was massively overrated cop-on-the-edge by-the-numbers, and RELOAD made no impression on the Committee whatsoever.

Out of his entire output in 2003, the only books worthy of redemption were RED and ORBITAL - and even then, the Committee were hardly unanimous in their enjoyment of them. With his DC exclusive contract coming to an end, we're hoping to see a return to form in the future. Still, DC may be a little disappointed with what it got out of the deal.

Stay tuned for the final six awards on Friday, including the Airsickness Award For The Most Vomit-Inducing Moment, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.

The CPSM (Committee for the Prevention of Sequential Mediocrity) are Dave Bushe, Nick Locking, John Mazzeo and Sarah Webb.

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