Your DC-Only controversial opinions (part II)...

[Agent Z]

I think DC could afford to put out a book featuring a less than popular character in their lineup.

I agree with this.

[Vordan]

No it did not. This gets repeated because of DC trying to roll back the reboot but nothing about the post-crisis status quo was harmful in the long term. At least, not so much that it needed to be undone to the extent they did. It all got brought back because of nostalgia, plain and simple.



I'm talking about stuff like Diana Prince, Egg Fu and the time they tried to make it like Clark and Lex knew each other as teens. Clark being Superboy as a kid was meaningless when we already had a Superboy and the Supergirl we got back was so unlikable that they might as well not have bothered. Krypto is more of a gag than a character. A funny one at times but not really needed. And the Legion connection was more for their benefit than his. It sure didn't solve the other issues regarding how they were handled.

All the stuff they insisted on bringing back was either outdated to a harmful degree or just not worth it because they added nothing of real value.

I mean everything you’re saying is all subjective. What objective benefit did we get from a Kandor that had no Kryptonians, or a Brainiac that was a carny instead of an alien? Was a normal human dog raised by Bibio really more interesting than classic Krypto? Did Bizarro being a misshapen clone instead of being from Bizzaroworld really add anything, especially given he was killed off almost immediately? Clark’s ties to the Legion gave him his own “team” like Batman with the Outsiders, and both groups suffered from it being severed. And hell how much of the Byrne status quo itself nowadays is as outdated as what it replaced? No seems to miss old and fat “Kingpin” Lex who was a compatriot of Perry. Or the birthing matrix for Clark. Most of the OC villains have been forgotten (even the ones I thought had potential like Conduit, miss that guy).

Brainiac’s return to his Pre-Crisis roots under Johns (and Loeb) has become far more popular than anything done with Milton Fine. Kara’s a far more popular character than Matrix or Linda. Krypto is even getting his own movie soon! Hell Zack Snyder’s Krypton is a merger of Pre and Post Crisis Krypton, Jor-El has a pet dragon! I think the merger of Pre and Post stuff has served Superman well. They’ve kept what worked for both eras and built upon them.

Oh yeah here’s my controversial opinion (not aimed at you Z, just in general since I’ve seen others say this) : most of the people who want to completely undo the last 10 years or so and go back to the Pre-FP status quo have forgotten how dogs*** the last years of the Pre-FP era was for a lot of franchises. JL, Superman, WW, Flash, Titans, they all sucked. It was not some mythical Golden Era like a lot of you remember. Batman and GL were doing great which is why they weren’t rebooted at all but the rest? Bad, bad stories.

[Agent Z]

I mean everything you’re saying is all subjective. What objective benefit did we get from a Kandor that had no Kryptonians, or a Brainiac that was a carny instead of an alien?

Alright, I'll concede this.

Was a normal human dog raised by Bibio really more interesting than classic Krypto?

They're both about the same level as interesting if you ask me. Like I said, Krypto's not much of a character.

Did Bizarro being a misshapen clone instead of being from Bizzaroworld really add anything, especially given he was killed off almost immediately?

I think Red Hood and The Outlaws and the DCU have shown Bizarroworld isn't really needed and a clone Bizarro can work just fine even if he does eventually die. One could even argue it's better he does since it means he can't be written terribly in future. The original Bizarro was a clone anyway.

Clark’s ties to the Legion gave him his own “team” like Batman with the Outsiders, and both groups suffered from it being severed.

I don't know. The Legion doesn't really feel like they can truly be a team for Superman given they are always going to be separated by time. At least the Outsiders are in the same era as Batman so it was far less difficult to severe their ties to him.

And hell how much of the Byrne status quo itself nowadays is as outdated as what it replaced? No seems to miss old and fat “Kingpin” Lex who was a compatriot of Perry.

You mean the Lex that was based on Trump? Yeah, I'd say that's pretty relevant these days. One might even say prophetic given how much in common Trump has been shown to have with Luthor.

Or the birthing matrix for Clark.

Another point to you.

Most of the OC villains have been forgotten (even the ones I thought had potential like Conduit, miss that guy).

Well, is that because they were bad or just because DC didn't want to use them?

Oh yeah here’s my controversial opinion (not aimed at you Z, just in general since I’ve seen others say this) : most of the people who want to completely undo the last 10 years or so and go back to the Pre-FP status quo have forgotten how dogs*** the last years of the Pre-FP era was for a lot of franchises. JL, Superman, WW, Flash, Titans, they all sucked. It was not some mythical Golden Era like a lot of you remember. Batman and GL were doing great which is why they weren’t rebooted at all but the rest? Bad, bad stories.

I won't claim that Pre-Flashpoint was perfect. No era is. But I don't think you can deny it was objectively better than post-Flashpoint. Just looking at Superman, it's telling that most people can only really point to Morrison's run. Wonder Woman has had only two good runs post-Flashpoint and one of those was written by one of her pre-Flashpoint writers.

[manwhohaseverything]

Are pa and ma kent much of characters? Why are they allowed to exist in present but krypto not? Krypto atleast can have adventures with superman like beating atlas and can be used to attract younger readers. What does ma and pa kent do? They even had a krypto in young justice in the form of wolf and in teen titans.I would take krypto over ma and pa any day of the week.Superboy and his superdog is very inbuilt thing if you ask me. I would want jon to have a pet. It's just how it works.
Original bizzaro used a reality ray like funnyface. Didn't he? I remember reading about the bizzaro family.

[Vordan]

Alright, I'll concede this.



They're both about the same level as interesting if you ask me. Like I said, Krypto's not much of a character.


I think Red Hood and The Outlaws and the DCU have shown Bizarroworld isn't really needed and a clone Bizarro can work just fine even if he does eventually die. One could even argue it's better he does since it means he can't be written terribly in future. The original Bizarro was a clone anyway.




I don't know. The Legion doesn't really feel like they can truly be a team for Superman given they are always going to be separated by time. At least the Outsiders are in the same era as Batman so it was far less difficult to severe their ties to him.



You mean the Lex that was based on Trump? Yeah, I'd say that's pretty relevant these days. One might even say prophetic given how much in common Trump has been shown to have with Luthor.



Another point to you.



Well, is that because they were bad or just because DC didn't want to use them?


I won't claim that Pre-Flashpoint was perfect. No era is. But I don't think you can deny it was objectively better than post-Flashpoint. Just looking at Superman, it's telling that most people can only really point to Morrison's run. Wonder Woman has had only two good runs post-Flashpoint and one of those was written by one of her pre-Flashpoint writers.

I separate “Post-Crisis” and “Pre-Flashpoint” into two different eras. Similar to how Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age Superman are all Pre-Crisis, but are not the same. For me the “Post-Crisis” era ended around the time of either Morrison’s JLA or Identity Crisis since both were about bringing back a lot of Pre-Crisis stuff and dramatically changed the way the DCU “felt” at least imo. So would you rank Pre-FP high if it covered the time period from Identity Crisis to Flashpoint given that a lot of that era brought back Pre-Crisis stuff you aren’t really a fan of?

I’d add Pak’s Action & Batman/Superman, as well as Snyder’s Superman Unchained and maybe Johns brief run with Romita alongside Morrison but otherwise yeah I agree with criticisms that the New 52 era for Supes went to s***. Even I the resident New 52 Superman defender freely admit that I dropped the books sometime during Truth because I was not enjoying them. Thank God Yang got another shot because his Superman run was terrible, I’m glad he was able to redeem himself. He’s one of my favorite writers period and New Super-Man/Smashes the Klan are all timers. Hope he gets another shot on the mainline.

But the pre-FP status quo for most of the line really was terrible. Just as a refresher:
WW got a godawful event Amazons Attack! which was obscenely bad, and then she got a terrible reboot under JMS. Least I enjoyed Azz’s reboot.

Flash Rebirth sucked, nowhere near as exciting as GL Rebirth. “Barry Allan made me the Flash” will never not be stupid as was “Barry created and generates the Speed Force” in a blatant attempt to make Barry “matter”.

Superman had New Krypton which started strong and ended with the most blatant “smash reset button” I’ve ever seen. Then we got the terrible Grounded storyline. Reign of the Doomsdays also sucked and was boring, beautiful Rocafort art aside (damn that entire event was like a preview of New 52 Superman at his worst now that I think about it). Least we got Cornell Action Comics, that was fantastic but it didn’t have Superman himself in it at all which is damning in its own way.

JLA under Robinson sucked and was boring. Real shame because the legacies all on the team is a cool idea I’m glad Future State is doing.

Titans was the typical mess iirc.

[Agent Z]

I separate “Post-Crisis” and “Pre-Flashpoint” into two different eras. Similar to how Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age Superman are all Pre-Crisis, but are not the same. For me the “Post-Crisis” era ended around the time of either Morrison’s JLA or Identity Crisis since both were about bringing back a lot of Pre-Crisis stuff and dramatically changed the way the DCU “felt” at least imo. So would you rank Pre-FP high if it covered the time period from Identity Crisis to Flashpoint given that a lot of that era brought back Pre-Crisis stuff you aren’t really a fan of?

Well the things I liked about pre-flashpoint were things that either weren't necessarily pre-crisis or at least executed them relatively well. Rucka's Wonder Woman for instance isn't about bringing back pre-crisis stuff. As bad as Amazons Attack and JMS (which was less a reboot and more a temporary status quo) were, they're a drop in the bucket compared to the pool of bad that WW had after Azzarello and even that run hasn't aged well. Hell, DC started moving away from most of his developments almost immediately after he left. At the end of the day, if you made a list of pros and cons of pre and post-flashpoint, the former would have more pros than the latter. And most of the good things that came out of post-flashpoint probably didn't need a reboot anyway.

[TheRay]

I’m not sure I want anything from the silver age back apart from the characters.

[SuperX]

I want a DCU with 4 supermen at the same time

Superman Clark
Superman jon
Superman kon
Superman bizzaro

They can attack a problem from very different directions, and fit in totally different ways.

[SiegePerilous02]

I have to put up with Trump in real life, I'd rather not have to deal with him in my superhero entertainment. Lex-as-Trump may be relevant, but it's also kind of insulting to Lex. He may be a terrible person, but he's also actually smart and has some standards. Post-COIE Lex was just sleazy in a way I don't think suits Lex.

No it did not. This gets repeated because of DC trying to roll back the reboot but nothing about the post-crisis status quo was harmful in the long term. At least, not so much that it needed to be undone to the extent they did. It all got brought back because of nostalgia, plain and simple.

Look at we're they're at vs where he's at, and they screw with him considerably less than them. It's not the only reason things are skewed towards him, but it certainly doesn't help. There weren't a lot of beneficial changes in the transitions to post-Crisis for them, and the good additions they had didn't require a reboot to happen.

I think you're viewing the pre-Crisis stuff as more outdated and damaging than it really is (at least the broad stuff) because of your own subjective nostalgia for post-Crisis stuff. You say rolling stuff back and disrupting continuity were problems, but what else do you think COIE was? Why was it ok to do that instead of just moving on and telling different stories, but putting stuff back in continuity is harmful?

I'm talking about stuff like Diana Prince, Egg Fu and the time they tried to make it like Clark and Lex knew each other as teens. Clark being Superboy as a kid was meaningless when we already had a Superboy and the Supergirl we got back was so unlikable that they might as well not have bothered. Krypto is more of a gag than a character. A funny one at times but not really needed. And the Legion connection was more for their benefit than his. It sure didn't solve the other issues regarding how they were handled.

All the stuff they insisted on bringing back was either outdated to a harmful degree or just not worth it because they added nothing of real value.

That's just restoring the continuity that didn't need to be ditched in the first place. All the harmful writing has its roots in COIE, or at least the way it was executed, because it was a short sighted and messy reboot. Just because you don't see value in a lot of stuff that was lost doesn't mean other fans and writers wouldn't have wanted the opportunity to use them if they had story ideas. COIE created the problems it was meant to solve. Yeah, Egg-Fu is awful, but just don't use him ever again. It's not worth disrupting continuity to get rid of him, because how big of a role did he actually have in the Bronze age anyway? Most of the stuff that was ditched was not Egg-Fu level toxic. Ditching the Amazons technology because of Egg-Fu hardly seems worth it, especially as we have things like MCU's Wakadna being very successful.

Clark was Superboy long before Kon ever existed. There is no reason they both can't have the mantle, though frankly I don't care enough about Kon to sacrifice Clark's time as Superboy for him. For the Legion, their problems have gone beyond that but that's definitely where it started and it snowballed from there. Can you give a beneficial reason to cut the tie beyond the fact that some writers back in the 80s decided it was a good idea while they were writing their own comics that were pretty dated even when they came out?

Krypto may be a fun/gag character, but that's the genre. if we are determining that the genre has no place for a flying dog in a cape, I think we need to get over ourselves a bit. After all, Krypto was prominently featured in Alan Moore's Superman stories, and those hold up much better than the Byrne comics. Meanwhile, Kara's return in the comics wasn't handled well, but she's the main version they use in other media adaptations because she's the easiest to adapt, including in her own show. I think this proves her classic setup is a stronger idea with a cleaner tie to Superman than subsequent ideas. This kind of proves that there wasn't anything wrong with the mythos to the point where it needed to be chucked, just that they needed better writing and at worst just put a lot of that stuff on the back burner for a bit instead of pretending none of it ever existed, which seems like using a sledgehammer to swat flies.

[lemonpeace]

I wonder which style has proven most popular in general over the years. Fantastical re-incarnation focused stories or militaristic space opera stuff.

I would say outside of the Justice League animated series, the reincarnation concept seems to be the one that people recognize the most these days.

Both seem like they can work depending on the story.

I mean, Venditti made them interconnected, so I believe not only can they both both but that they actually work best in tandem as he established it.

[Gaius]

Hawkman should be DC's Avatar, getting rid of the reincarnation angle for good would be a mistake despite Venditti's great run.

I agree, it makes him unique in my opinion and I'm not particularly strongly attached to the Egyptian or Space Cop versions to really pick one over the other. Especially since there's other DC characters who he'll play second fiddle to if he goes with one over the other.

[PCN24454]

Are pa and ma kent much of characters? Why are they allowed to exist in present but krypto not? Krypto atleast can have adventures with superman like beating atlas and can be used to attract younger readers. What does ma and pa kent do? They even had a krypto in young justice in the form of wolf and in teen titans.I would take krypto over ma and pa any day of the week.Superboy and his superdog is very inbuilt thing if you ask me. I would want jon to have a pet. It's just how it works.
Original bizzaro used a reality ray like funnyface. Didn't he? I remember reading about the bizzaro family.

Uhh, because they’re his parents, and parents don’t automatically disappear just because their child becomes an adult?

[Agent Z]

I wonder which style has proven most popular in general over the years. Fantastical re-incarnation focused stories or militaristic space opera stuff.

Generally, the reincarnation thing isn't well recieved when it crosses over into non comics media. Hawkgirl managed to be popular without it on JLU.

[Frontier]

Generally, the reincarnation thing isn't well recieved when it crosses over into non comics media. Hawkgirl managed to be popular without it on JLU.

Granted it's usually not handled all that well. Legends Hawks had a lot of problems beyond the reincarnation angle.

[lemonpeace]

Generally, the reincarnation thing isn't well recieved when it crosses over into non comics media. Hawkgirl managed to be popular without it on JLU.

is it tho? I mean the Hawks have one had like 2 really notable wider media appearances (3 if you count Smallville back in the day); one was poorly done independent of the concept they had and the other was JLU where the origin wasn't all the consequential to the story most episodes and they end up touchimg on both anyway. I don't think either is better recieved than the other but the reincarnation is the more recognizable and widely understood of the two. the Thanagar thing even on JLU wasn't all that faithful or fleshed out, so most kids who saw it didn't exactly grow up to know all that much about it beyond the planet's name. the reincarnation it's pretty simple and easily digestible, which is why every iteration of the character in wider media touches on that one and why I'd say it's probably the more recognizable and widely understood of the two.