When a comic book becomes incredibly popular, the only logical thing a publisher can do is create a spin-off exploring other characters. Sometimes you get a series that can carry its own weight, like the Batman spinoff Robin, but more often than not you’re left with duds like these five titles.     
 

 
Between 1958 and 1979, any character of moderate significance warranted a spin-off, and for evidence of this you need look no further than Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane. As the title would suggest, the book was a means to explore Superman’s other half in greater detail because Supe’s own book was dedicated to action, adventure, justice and other things the average adolescent male certainly didn’t really give a damn about.     
 

The problem with giving Lois Lane her own book is right there in the title: even when the sister is doing it for herself, she’s still playing second fiddle to the Man of Steel. To be fair, it wasn’t terribly likely that anyone would buy one of these things to follow the exploits of a middle-aged white woman who couldn’t deflect bullets with her chest. To be unfair, most issues broke down to Lois somehow getting into a wacky situation that her sugar-daddy would have to get her out of. 
 

The title itself was also a bit of a misnomer, since Superman spent half of Lois’ book sticking his penis into other women. Despite representing truth, justice, and the American way, Superman just couldn’t commit to one woman and Lois spent an absurd amount of time trying to trick a man with heat vision into marrying her. The only time Lois ever acted like she might be an independent woman was when she was battling Superman’s other love interests, which included Lana Lang, Wonder Woman and a mermaid he met in college.     
 

In an effort to prove that the Superman franchise was ripe with interesting characters that could carry their own weight, publisher DC comics gave Jimmy Olsen, ace photographer and b-list sidekick, his own book. Much like Lois Lane, Jimmy wasn’t profitable enough to venture out on his own without Superman’s name slapped across the top. Grandmothers everywhere brought home Jimmy’s adventures to grandchildren who learned what true disappointment was as a result. 

Now that he was a headlining act Jimmy did anything but be Superman’s friend. Seriously, look through a gallery of Jimmy Olsen comics where he isn’t trying to kill Superman:

Thrive off of Superman’s tears:

Or move in on his alleged girlfriend? 
 

When not trying to bring the world’s greatest hero to his knees, Jimmy also spends his time trying to learn Superman’s identity for the purposes of exploitation. And how does he do it? Classic death hoax. 
 

Spider-Man’s many series are known for their liberal use of retcon, or making significant changes to the plot or characters by altering past events. Retcons are usually the result of a character’s death, lingering plot holes, or writers feeling that a story won’t be able to continue in the same direction. Spider-Man has suffered from all three in his history because he’s simply that amazing.     
 

Apparently, one of the lingering plot holes was about who actually gave birth to Peter Parker. “Trouble” tries to answer this by tackling the age-old conundrum of teenage pregnancy. In this instance, the teen in question is May, otherwise known as Aunt May. Back in the seventies she was a bit of a problem child and had wild, unprotected sex with both Ben and his brother Richie. 
 

May’s reasoning for doing the deed with two different men was because a palm reader told her no one would ever call her “mom.” Once she realizes that she’s pregnant, that dear Ben is sterile and that palm readers aren’t an effective form of birth control, she runs away from home. She then gives birth to Peter, gives Peter to his father Richie and goes about her life, rapidly aging as though nothing had happened.     
 

In the nineties, America’s two big comic publishers came together. Literally. The Amalgam universe is what happens when the biggest Marvel characters drink and drive, inevitably crashing their party van through the wall of the DC universe prom. But rather than clean up the mess, the two publishers put pen to paper and made every ten year old boy’s dream an odd reality. 

Characters came about by fusing together the names and/or appearances of two similar characters. For example, Dark Claw is the combination of Batman and Wolverine, which makes perfect sense on paper: Batman is the world’s greatest detective who vows to never take a life while Wolverine is a man who kills people simply on the basis that he woke up that morning.     
 

Other character choices were so obvious as to be painful, such as Captain America and Superman (“Super Soldier”). 
 

And others still made such little difference that they needn’t have taken place at all, such as Namor and Aquaman’s “Aquamariner.”     
 
 

The Amalgam universe lasted for twenty four issues with several different books. The publishers played up their own fictional history with a fake fan mail column referring to previous issues (that didn’t exist) and animated series (that would never be made).     
 

 
Comics have always faced a dilemma: female readership. For some strange reason, the ladies simply don’t flock to comic books like they used to back in the early days.     
 

In 2005, Marvel noticed that female readership had grown due to the popularity of “manga”, or Japanese comics. To try and win back the dames, Marvel decided to mimic the visual style with actual manga artist and to go in with Mary Jane as the lead. The end result was this: 
 

Mary Jane was notable for two things: not being Spider-Man and being someone who Spider-Man loved but hadn’t inadvertently killed somehow. However, things were different with Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. Rather than see Spider-Man thwart the dastardly Rhino or see Aunt May get her skanky groove on, readers were treated to angsty teenage love triangles, homecoming dance shenanigans and eyes the size of unobtainable pectoral muscles we’d be seeing if we read a decent comic. ‘Nuff said.