Record: Scott Lobdell

One of the most pretentious writers Marvel employed in the 1990s to script the X-Men, Scott Lobdell most unfortunately has some bad moments in his record that served to sully what was once an effective series. I'll try to list here some of his bad efforts here.

• As one of the writers in charge of stories spotlighting Rogue and Gambit, he did a poor, tiresome job depicting their ostensible relationship with the lady's siphoning power posing such an obstacle, it only led under his unimpressive writing to a lot of agonizing and frustration. Not to mention that in at least a few scenes where the "Ragin' Cajun" would try to come on to Rogue with physical contact, she'd jump away in fear of causing injury. The irritating long term effect of such scenes would be that it'd look like he was a sex predator, however unintentional. And at the same time, it made Rogue look absurdly scared.
• In Uncanny X-Men #328, he scripted a tale where Sabretooth gutted Psylocke after she tried warding off his threats to Boomer/Tabitha Smith (not shown in graphic detail, thankfully). All for the sake of conceiving a tale where the formula to heal her injury would result in a dagger-shaped tattoo across her left eye.
• In his last story for X-Men prior to Grant Morrison taking over for 3 years in the early 2000s, Lobdell's "Eve of Destruction" made Jean Grey look like a mindless robot, who wouldn't even demand Northstar stop assaulting a cardboard panel of a character named Paulie Provenzano over a pointless quarrel for the sake of filling panels. It was utterly awful.
• When Lobdell was writing Red Hood and the Outlaws during DC's New 52 era in the early 2010s, there was trivial criticism vented over Starfire's skimpy costume. This almost obscured a much more valid complaint - she was made to sound like a brainless vagrant who was willing to have sex for the sake of almost any man she came upon, and told Roy Harper "love has nothing to do with it." This had the effect of making her come off as a subservient tool for men instead of working as her own agency and thinking for herself. It also made Tamaranians (the alien race she came from) look bad, if that matters.

In addition to the above, Lobdell even admitted he once sexually harassed a lady cartoonist at a convention, which makes it look like his mindless positions got the better of him. None of this reflects well on his resume, though he may have learned his lesson about his misdeed at the convention since. I certainly hope he did, because he still shows signs here and there he probably didn't.