When Robin debuted in the pages of Detective Comics in 1940, the popular concept of teaming your favorite hero with a teenage sidekick was born. As the years went on, this concept morphed into not just a teenager, but also animals, robots, and even sometimes the elderly. Sadly, not every sidekick can be as enduring as Robin. For every Dick Grayson, there are 5 Streaky The Supercats.
Some sidekicks have horrible personalities, bad powers, or were overall just a bad idea. Not every sidekick is meant to end up as a milestone in comics history, but most of these surely were supposed to be better off than how they ended up.
10 Uncle Marvel
After creating an entire group of teenagers with superpowers, the creative team behind Captain Marvel's adventure decided they needed an older adult as part of the group. Not only does he get to join the Marvel Family, but he cons his way into it.
Feeling he is just a lovable old fraud, they decide to let him into the group only for him to come up with scenarios such as making Mary promise not to use her powers till midnight. To test this, he hires two criminals to kidnap her. Why would you keep this guy around?
9 H.E.R.B.I.E.
For the 1978 Fantastic Four cartoon, they had to come up with another character after the Human Torch had been licensed for a movie. You can't have a cartoon called The Fantastic Four with only three characters. Stan Lee tasked Jack Kirby to design a new character for the show. Not long after the show debuted Herbie also made his comics debut.
Without much to do, Herbie was turned into a babysitter robot for Franklin. He's had a couple of fun adventures but was only created to fill a specific void for the cartoon and didn't add much to the comics.
8 Fatman
A guy put on a costume to help his buddy fight crime and he chose the name Fatman. Mr. America Tex Thompson had the distinction of debuting in Action Comics #1 along some character named Superman. He decided to go fight crime and his friend Bob Daley wanted in on that too. After throwing together a homemade costume he decided to be Fatman because he was overweight.
Really not much to mention. Mr. America went on to have a few solid runs as Americommando and The Coordinator for the Hero Hotline. Fatman seems to have been left to the dustbin of history. Which is fitting since his main weapon was a broom.
7 Snapper Carr
Back in 1960, Julius Schwartz decided he wanted to bring the Justice League together but that it needed a hip teenage character readers could identify with. He had to be cool, not have superpowers, and be a part of the team. Snapper Carr was born. He likes to snap a lot. Cool.
After a while, the audience soured on Snapper. He would eventually turn on the JLA by telling someone (who later was revealed to be The Joker) about the JLA's secret hideout. He was ousted by the JLA and would roam the DCU from team to team.
6 Alpha
Andrew Maguire was at a demonstration at Horizon Labs when he was hit with Parker Particles. After he starts to exhibit powers, Spider-Man decides to take him under his wing to train him. He quickly finds out that Alpha is overconfident and way too sure of himself. Andrew starts to ignore Spidey's direction and causes all sorts of problems.
Eventually, Peter is able to depower Alpha down to only 10% of his powers so he doesn't hurt himself or anyone else. While being under the watch of Spider-Man, Alpha almost starts to come off as a villain in the making but we never get there. He was more annoying than anything else.
5 Toro
This entry seems more like it's just a bad idea. Toro was the sidekick to the original Human Torch way back in 1940. Toro was the son of two scientists who pass away in a fire. He joins the circus after he finds he is resistant to fire. After he meets the Human Torch, Jim Hammond, he finds he can be completely engulfed in flames just like Hammond.
The character seems very redundant. They both just catch on fire. The bigger issue would seem to be pushing a kid character to kids that bursts into flames. There don't seem to be any instances of kids setting themselves on fire to resemble the character, but it seems like that could have been a very real worry.
4 Hairball
When Robbie Baldwin got his powers from a lab accident and became the hero Speedball, it also gave the resident lab cat the same powers. He's a cat that bounces off the walls. For some reason after Civil War when Robbie is transformed into Penance, Hairball is also turned into P-Cat which means The Pentiant Puss.
Luckily he was later spared from such torture and would help the Pet Avengers fight off Thanos. While this is noble, his earlier life was spent mostly trying to keep away from Robbie who would chase him down at the request of Dr. Benson.
3 Etta Candy
Etta Candy was originally depicted as a confident woman who was happy with herself and loved sweets. She later would be written as a woman who was constantly ashamed of her size and even developed an eating disorder. When William Marston created her, she would lead an army of women who would storm nazi strongholds along with Wonder Woman.
After Marston, she would be portrayed as less confident and insecure. This only diminished her role in the Wonder Woman titles and rather than leading anything, she was relegated to the roles of secretary and assistant to other male characters who overshadowed her.
2 Free Spirit
The two biggest things against Free Spirit is that she was created in the 90s and that she isn't Bucky. It's hard for just about any Captain America sidekick to live up to Bucky, but Free Spirit falls pretty short. Created in 1994 as a character that gets radiated and comes out the other side at peak human condition but is brainwashed to hate all men, she eventually overcomes her brainwashing– but was just another case of trying to make someone a Captain America Lite.
She was created in 1994 and from most of the artwork at that time, she seemed to have mainly been created to appeal to young male readers as she liked to pose in anatomically impossible positions in each panel.
1 Jason Todd
As the second person to take on the Robin persona, Jason managed to become an arrogant and whiny inferior version. Batman gave him a chance after catching him stealing the tires off the Batmobile. He probably shouldn't have. Jason's Robin was brash and defiant to the end. Fans seemed to get tired of him pretty quickly and when DC pulled a publicity stunt of getting to chose to kill him by calling a certain phone number, fans asked for blood in droves.
Jason Todd has come into his own after being resurrected and adopting the Red Hood identity. Finally outside of his sidekick role, he has flourished into a better if not still brash and arrogant character. It only took him getting killed and staying dead for almost twenty years for fans to finally come around.