12 Controversial Moments That DC Comics Would Probably Like You To Forget

In the mid-2000s, Nightwing was going up against a villain named Blockbuster, who had partnered up with a vigilante called Tarantula. It seemed like a pretty standard Nightwing story until things got just a bit controversial near the end of the arc. 

After turning against Blockbuster, Tarantula slays him while Nightwing is unable to stop her. An exhausted Nightwing can’t bring himself to move and tells Tarantula not to touch him. Ignoring him, Tarantula instead sexually assaults Nightwing while he is vulnerable. The issue has since become infamous, and a reference to it even had to be scrubbed from the Harley Quinn series on HBO.

At first glance, readers might not notice anything wrong with Hal Jordan and Arisia Rrab’s relationship. After all, Arisia is often drawn to look like a fully-grown woman… so what's the problem?

Well, when it was revealed that Arisia was only 14 years old in Earth time, it essentially made her a child dating the adult Hal Jordan. Apart from their uncomfortable age gap, Hal has also been depicted physically hitting Arisia in the past, continuing an uncomfortable trend in comics of male characters striking their romantic interests.

A backup story in a recent issue of Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing accidentally caused some controversy when the Joker “gave birth” to a magical mud monster as a result of one of Zatanna’s spells. Some media outlets began running stories about the issue, claiming it was some sort of statement about LGBTQ+ rights. 

Matthew Rosenberg, the book’s writer, clarified that the issue was meant as a joke and something one might expect to see in a goofy Silver Age comic. While Rosenberg had some fun clowning on the pundits that tried to manufacture controversy over his book, DC probably isn’t too happy to get dragged into a hot-button culture war issue.

Comics fans might be familiar with the term “fridging,” which refers to a controversial trope in which a female character is terminated or injured to motivate a male character. In the process, the female character is typically sidelined, becoming nothing more than a plot device. 

This trope gets its name from a 1994 issue of Green Lantern in which Alex DeWitt is slain by the villain Major Force and shoved into Kyle Rayner’s refrigerator. While it didn’t start the harmful trope, this issue was so egregious it remains the most infamous version of it.

Writers J.H. Williams and W. Haden Blackman were responsible for a critically acclaimed and fan-beloved run on Batwoman, even earning the comic a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Comic. However, the team surprised readers by quitting the book after only one year. 

This was due to DC Comics’ higher-ups forbidding them from allowing Batwoman and her fiancee Maggie to get married. This happening the same year that DC hired an anti-LGBTQ+ writer for a Superman book definitely wasn’t a good look for the publisher.

Art contests are already a somewhat controversial practice in the entertainment world, as they essentially commission hundreds of artists without the guarantee of the artists being paid for their hard work. DC - seemingly never content with merely one controversy - made things even more controversial with one of their Open Talent Search contests. 

The contest in question caused a stir when they asked artists to depict Harley Quinn disrobed in a bathtub about to take her own life. The concept for the panel was criticized for joking about self-harm while also inappropriately sexualizing Harley.