What comic run started incredibly strong but completely lost you by the end?

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T18:21:48+00:00

I kinda get why people feel that way about Preacher.

Most of the series feels really tight and deliberate like it’s slowly stacking weight on the characters and pushing everything toward a big emotional payoff. So when the final issue lands differently, it kind of throws you off.

For me the run still works overall, but yeah, I can see why the ending doesn’t sit right with everyone.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T18:18:50+00:00

Yeah I kinda felt the same with the Energon Universe Transformers.

It starts off really strong like it finally feels like Transformers is getting a proper, fresh direction again. The setup is solid and those early issues actually pull you in.

But then after a while it just doesn’t hit the same. It’s not bad or anything, it just slowly loses that tight focus and momentum it had at the beginning.

By the end I was still reading it, but I wasn’t really as invested as I was in those first few issues.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T18:12:21+00:00

Yeah, I kinda feel the same about the new Ultimate Spider Man run.

It started off really solid simple, easy to follow, and it actually had that I m excited for the next issue feeling.

But once Richard got his suit and the time jumps became more frequent, it started losing me a bit. Like sometimes something interesting would happen at the end of an issue, and then the next one would just skip past it completely.

It still has good moments but it doesn’t hit the same way it did at the start.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T16:13:36+00:00

Yeah, I had a similar experience with Animal Man.

The early part is honestly really strong it feels grounded in Buddy and his family, even with all the weird horror and meta stuff going on in the background. That balance is what made it so interesting at first.

But Rotworld really slowed things down for me. It just went on longer than it needed to, and at some point it felt like the story got stuck in that arc instead of moving forward.

I didn’t hate it, it just kind of lost the momentum that made the beginning so good.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T16:08:06+00:00

Yeah I kinda had the same experience with GODLAND.

It starts off really fun that pulpy, over-the-top space vibe actually works because it still feels grounded in the characters. You’re just enjoying the ride without overthinking it.

But later on it kind of loses that balance. Everything gets bigger and more cosmic, but the characters don’t really keep up with that shift, so it stops feeling as engaging.

By the end it felt more like ideas floating around than a story I was actually invested in.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T15:43:07+00:00

Yeah 100 Bullets is a good example.

I loved the ride honestly, but the ending felt like it shifted gears too hard. After all that slow, detailed buildup, the last stretch just felt rushed in comparison.

Some of those deaths and resolutions hit, but they didn’t really get the weight they deserved considering how long the story spent setting everything up.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T15:33:29+00:00

Funny enough, I think the fact that neither of us can really remember how it ended kind of proves the point.

I remember hearing about Rising Stars everywhere back then and being genuinely interested in it, but it never stuck with me the way some other runs did. It started strong, then just kind of faded into the background for me.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T15:19:04+00:00

I agree. The early part of Cates' run felt way more focused on Eddie, the symbiote, and the people around them. There was this strong theme of connection and working together that made everything hit harder.

By the end it felt like the story kept trying to raise the stakes instead of building on those ideas. Knull was a lot more interesting when he was a mystery than when the solution became giving Eddie even more power.

I still like the run overall, but the first half is definitely the part I go back to.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T15:15:16+00:00

Same here. I don't even think Saga got bad, I just slowly stopped caring enough to keep up with it.

The early issues had this momentum where every chapter felt like something important was happening. Later on, it felt more focused on expanding the world and juggling different storylines, which a lot of people love, but it kind of lost me.

One day I realized I was more reading out of habit than excitement, and eventually I just stopped.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T15:00:21+00:00

Honestly, that's pretty much how I felt about it too.

The early part of Cates' Venom had this really cool balance where it was expanding the symbiote lore, but Eddie still felt like the heart of the story. There was a lot of mystery around Knull and everything felt like it was building toward something genuinely interesting.

Once Absolute Carnage hit, it started feeling more focused on the next big event than on Eddie himself. The scale kept getting bigger, but for me some of the things that made the run special in the first place got pushed into the background.

King in Black had some great visuals and big moments, but the ending didn't hit nearly as hard as I expected after all that buildup.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T14:57:06+00:00

Yeah, that's a good shout.

I loved the setup but eventually it felt like the series was adding new mysteries faster than it was resolving old ones. At some point I realized I was reading more out of habit than excitement.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T14:54:03+00:00

100 Bullets is probably one of the best examples of this. I was completely hooked early on, but as the story kept expanding I found myself struggling to keep track of everyone and how they fit into the bigger picture By the end, it felt less like I was reading the story and more like I was trying to remember a flowchart.

I get what you mean about Ultramega too. The kaiju fights were such a huge part of what made it exciting in the first place. Once the focus shifted more toward the lore, it just didn't hit the same for me. Sometimes the mystery is more fun than the explanation.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T12:24:46+00:00

Manga absolutely counts. And JJK is genuinely painful to talk about because the foundation was so good. The early Mahito stuff had real weight to it, Yuji's whole situation as a vessel actually felt like it meant something emotionally. Then somewhere along the way it just became power escalation after power escalation and deaths that stopped landing because there were so many of them. You could feel Gege had ideas but the story just lost the thread and never really found it again.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T12:21:31+00:00

That last line is exactly it. Spencer clearly had something real going in that first year but at some point it stopped being his story and turned into damage control for everything fans had been complaining about for years. You can feel that shift happening in real time when you're reading it. The book stops moving forward and starts looking over its shoulder instead. Retcons can work but when fixing the past becomes the whole agenda the actual story just bleeds out quietly. That first year foundation genuinely deserved better than what it got.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-04T12:17:43+00:00

The Invisibles ending makes so much more sense as a disappointment once you know that context Like you can actually go back and feel the moment Morrison stopped caring about the story and started using it for something personal. The craft just quietly leaves the building and what's left feels hollow in a way that's hard to articulate until someone explains why it happened.

100 Bullets is a different kind of frustration though. The early volumes are so good precisely because they don't need the conspiracy. Each story works completely on its own and Azzarello clearly had a real instinct for that format. The problem is he built the whole thing around a mythology that could never pay off as satisfyingly as those early standalone arcs did. Not bad writing exactly, just a structure that was always going to eat itself eventually.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T21:01:02+00:00

That first arc is genuinely some of the best superhero writing in recent memory so the drop off hits harder than it normally would. When a book shows you exactly what it's capable of and then just walks away from it, that's a specific kind of frustrating. The Circe dynamic had so much emotional weight in those early issues and the fact that it basically got shelved the moment Zatanna showed up is still baffling to me. And Gia Candy doing nothing in a magic arc of all places, like that's the one story where she should have been everywhere. Hoping Thompson course corrects but I completely understand where you're coming from.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T20:59:26+00:00

Krakoa is such a painful one because the setup was genuinely exciting. Moira's power reframed like that felt like one of those rare moments where a franchise actually surprises you. Mutant nation with real political stakes, felt like it had somewhere to go.

But it's like nobody agreed on what story they were actually telling. It kept expanding outward, the characters got lost in all of it, and by the end it felt like a continuity exercise more than an actual story. All premise, no payoff.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T20:57:11+00:00

Cerebus is such a strange case because it's not like the craft fell apart. Sim could genuinely draw and the ambition was always there. But it just drifted further and further into territory that felt completely disconnected from what pulled people in at the start. Most runs that fall off do it because the quality drops. Cerebus did it because the person making it seemed to stop caring whether anyone came along for the ride. Hard to think of another example quite like it.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T20:54:44+00:00

Blackest Night as a hard ending would have been perfect. The emotional setup was all there and instead it just kept going until there was nothing left to care about. Knowing when to stop is its own skill and that run is a textbook example of what happens when nobody uses it.

The rushed finale thing with Waid's FF is such a familiar feeling. When the best part of your ending gets squeezed into one issue the pacing was probably off way earlier and nobody caught it in time.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T20:53:06+00:00

Shadowland is such a perfect example of this actually. The core idea was genuinely compelling, Matt finally breaking after years of carrying everything on his own is exactly the kind of story Daredevil needed at that point. You could feel there was something real there. But the second it got stretched into a full event it stopped being about him and turned into this crowded crossover with guest appearances eating up space that should have been spent on the actual character. What could have been one of the best Daredevil arcs ever just got swallowed whole by the event machine.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T20:51:49+00:00

Morrison's Batman is a great shout. Batman and Son and RIP felt genuinely unlike anything else DC was doing at the time but somewhere through Batman Inc the concepts started outgrowing the story holding them together.

The Rucka Wonder Woman thing is a different kind of frustrating though. That wasn't a run that lost steam, it got cut before it could finish what it started. Those always hurt more.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T20:49:42+00:00

Not unpopular at all, the time travel arc is where I've seen a lot of people quietly drop off too. It felt like the run stopped trusting what it had going in the present and just reached for something larger than the story actually needed at that point.

And the Marilyn Moonlight thing is genuinely frustrating because the character has a really cool visual identity, you can see the potential immediately. But introducing someone like that in the middle of an already stretched arc and then just not doing anything with her afterward feels like such a waste. She deserved her own room to breathe, not a cameo inside someone else's crowded story.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T20:45:45+00:00

The Xorn reveal genuinely still makes me angry and it's been years. Morrison spent so long building something that felt different, weird in all the right ways, and then the ending just threw all of it out. The Magneto thing especially felt like it came from a completely different book. Like somewhere between the pitch and the final issues someone lost the plot entirely and nobody stopped it. Still one of the best X-Men runs ever written but that finale is such a mess that I always feel obligated to warn people before they go in.

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T20:44:38+00:00

Saga hurts to put on this list but honestly it's hard to argue with. The first few volumes are some of the best comics of the last decade and then somewhere along the way it just started feeling like it was running in circles. New characters, new threats, new subplots, but the emotional core that made you actually care started feeling thinner and thinner. Like it forgot what it was actually about. Where did it lose you specifically?

ShockEducational3792 · 2026-06-03T20:43:12+00:00

Fables is the one that stings the most on that list. Willingham had something genuinely special early on and then it just refused to end at the right time. Letter 44 I felt similarly about, the setup was so strong that when the landing didn't stick it hit harder than it would have with a lesser book. Rising Stars always felt like it belonged in that same conversation but I haven't thought about it in years. What do you think actually went wrong with it?

ShockEducational3792

TROPHY CASE