The Didio thing...

[Buried Alien]

We already got Heroes in Crisis with Hal. It was Parallax, and it resulted in a group of fans who organized death threats and harassment campaigns at DC creators.

Fans nowadays aren't a tenth as toxic as HEAT was. But maybe DC will go full Parallax with Wally and things will go further south. The irony is HEAT got exactly what they wanted.

It took a decade, though, and despite one notorious incident, HEAT itself proved pretty reasonable overall. They had only one goal, and when a member went beyond the pale, they quickly disavowed and disowned that individual. When their objective was met, they graciously folded.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[BohemiaDrinker]

When their objective was met, the graciously folded.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

They're living the dream.

[SiegePerilous02]

Wonder Woman's history more or less remained in tact from 1986 up to the New 52. I think the most significant change was that she was reestablished as a JLA founder post-Infinits Crisis but that was pretty much it.

Superman has had Birthright, Secret Origin, New 52, and Rebirth, all of which made significant changes to his history.

I really enjoyed Morrison's run, but it was too short and not followed up very well. Even if you didn't like Byrne's revamp, what followed it was Exile, Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite, Time and Time Again, Panic in the Sky, Death of Superman, Funeral for a Friend, Reign of the Supermen, and The Return of Superman. So yeah, that era definitely stands out to be as the best, at least consistently and in my lifetime.

It's true that Wonder Woman doesn't have a solid origin story arc between Gods and Mortals and Year One, but she's had inconsistent changes along the way. The time traveling Wonder-Hippolyta stuff, Odyssey, and odd pre-Crisis things like certain villains and maybe Etta's time with the Holliday Girls put back in OYL. Not to mention the constant shift in supporting casts and locations in between runs. It all adds up to something as radical/annoying as Superman's various shifts. Either way, whichever character "wins" in this comparison, they (and us) still lose.

I refrain from commenting on the other stories of the Triangle era as I've never read them. It's not my era. But I've heard good things, but a lot of it sounds like it's because they succeeded in spite of Byrne's foundation, less so because of it (like moving away from the "I don't care about dead, sterile Krypton/Russia stand in" stance). But I've read the first three trades of Byrne's run before giving up, and it's a fundamentally flawed foundation that the character cannot entirely escape from. It's a middle ground between the relatively street level Golden age and the OTT cosmic Super God stuff and isn't as interesting as either, the "Clark is who I am, Superman is what I do" nonsense, the flag waving conformist "I'm an American!" stuff, and Big Barda porn. Maggie Sawyer is the only thing to come out of it I like, and too much (Supergirl, the Legion, Krypto, Kandor, the Phantom Zone criminals, etc.) were lost and could never really be brought back in in a non-convoluted manner.

So, Silver/Bronze and like minded takes (like All-Star and New 52 Action) for me. But what's weird is apparently Didio (to get this somewhat back on topic) doesn't like this era for Superman, despite being a Silver age fanboy. That combined with his dislike of the NTT makes me wonder how valid this Bronze age favoritism stance people have of him is.

[Dred]

It took a decade, though, and despite one notorious incident, HEAT itself proved pretty reasonable overall. They had only one goal, and when a member went beyond the pale, they quickly disavowed and disowned that individual. When their objective was met, they graciously folded.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

Wally hasn't had a comic in a decade, either. His last comic was February of 2009. And they're just now Parallaxing him.

It's fucking crazy when you look at it. When Barry is sent off it is the greatest send off in comics history. Wally gets this. Erased and ignored, and when they don't ignore him it's intentional character assassination.

[DrNewGod]

Frankly, I don't think DiDio has done a great job overall. It's not simply that I don't agree with his creative choices - which I often don't, but those are his decisions to make - it's that I don't think he always carries them out very well. But that's just my two cents.

Anyway, here's more insight from a comic writer about DiDio's rise to power (quoting Patrick Gerard from another thread):

"- Underpinning a lot of this stuff is, from what I gather, Paul Levitz was trying to choose a successor to run DC. Except what a variety of folks did or did not know was that Dan DiDio had been handpicked by somebody at Warner Bros. to take over DC before he wrote his first comic. The only reason DiDio showed up in the first place was to run the company the way WB wanted. Levitz didn't know or didn't get the full memo and was trying to find alternative candidates to weigh against DiDio. Levitz interviewed Waid. I think he talked to Loeb. Loeb and Waid always got along FAIRLY well.

- But everybody who interviewed for Levitz's job had issues with DiDio. It's hard and probably unfair to assign blame on a message board post without all the facts but DiDio was trying to move into a job he'd been promised maybe 5 years before. Meanwhile, you had competing offers made to other people that upset DiDio, who spent five-plus years of his life turning down other work, planning to take that job. It became hard for some of these people to work together for awhile. So you had a big exodus from DC to Marvel of people who, I think, had awkward relationships with DiDio largely because of conflict between Levitz and Kevin Tsujihara and some other folks. Diane Nelson was brought in, in part, I think, because of how frayed the WB/DC relationships were so she could be a neutral party -- and because she was seen as being able to expand the young girls and Young Adult markets based on her background with Harry Potter and other stuff.

- On top of all of this is that I think there's a lot of folks who misread DiDio in part because, well... He's a troll. A bonafied troll. Yes, he wanted Nightwing dead for years and planned it various ways. But all the stuff about hating Nightwing was playacting. He did it because he thought it would upset the most people. He has a very soap opera/pro-wrestling view and he's more of a Silver-Age/Bronze-Age Marvel guy than DC. So he's always trying to inject that 70s Marvel "Hank Pym becomes a wifebeater" type stuff in. Because he has a view that the more comics upset or provoke people, the more they sell. Honestly, if he wants a character dead, he probably likes that character and is picking on them because he wants to stir up pitchforks and torches. He's backed off that SOME largely because outrage works differently online now. But he operates very much from kind of a Bill Jemas worldview: "If you're happy with what we're doing, our sales will suffer." That's... a difficult thing for some folks IN COMICS to mesh with. Some folks just want a clean and fairly neutral status quo so they can tell clever one off stories kind of like Batman: The Animated Series.

In some ways, Loeb and DiDio got along super-well. DiDio greenlit stuff Levitz probably wouldn't have. He hired Loeb for All-Star Batman. (Frank Miller was a replacement hire. There's a first issue in a drawer somewhere of a Loeb/Art Adams All-Star Batman #1.) But he also made Loeb's job harder and kept wanting to tinker with some things in the opposite direction.

Loeb was always trying to fuse the Byrne continuity with the Silver-Age so that you'd just have one 75 year Superman continuity like what Morrison later did with Batman. DiDio wasn't keen on that and neither was Waid, exactly. Waid loves the Silver Age as a fan but he's the first guy to throw it into the woodchipper if he thinks something is silly, unrealistic, or embarrassing. (Johns shared an office with Loeb.)

The tug of war gave us Superman origin reboots about every 18 months. And Loeb more or less walked from the monthly Superman book at the start of that because he wanted a stable run."

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...ghts-on-hs-run

(Patrick Gerard has some interesting insights to that era of Superman if you read his other posts.)

I find this view very interesting.

[Buried Alien]

Wally hasn't had a comic in a decade, either. His last comic was February of 2009. And they're just now Parallaxing him.

It's fucking crazy when you look at it. When Barry is sent off it is the greatest send off in comics history. Wally gets this. Erased and ignored, and when they don't ignore him it's intentional character assassination.

Well, we do need to remember that the final six years of Barry's Pre-COIE life weren't exactly a walk in the park. 1979-1986 was a pretty horrid period for the character before DC dropped the axe.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[kingaliencracker]

Well, we do need to remember that the final six years of Barry's Pre-COIE life weren't exactly a walk in the park. 1979-1986 was a pretty horrid period for the character before DC dropped the axe.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

To be fair most of DC was floundering during that period except Teen Titans, Legion, and MAYBE Batman.

[scary harpy]

Frankly, I don't think DiDio has done a great job overall. It's not simply that I don't agree with his creative choices - which I often don't, but those are his decisions to make - it's that I don't think he always carries them out very well. But that's just my two cents.

Anyway, here's more insight from a comic writer about DiDio's rise to power (quoting Patrick Gerard from another thread):

"- On top of all of this is that I think there's a lot of folks who misread DiDio in part because, well... He's a troll. A bonafied troll. Yes, he wanted Nightwing dead for years and planned it various ways. But all the stuff about hating Nightwing was playacting. He did it because he thought it would upset the most people. He has a very soap opera/pro-wrestling view and he's more of a Silver-Age/Bronze-Age Marvel guy than DC. So he's always trying to inject that 70s Marvel "Hank Pym becomes a wifebeater" type stuff in. Because he has a view that the more comics upset or provoke people, the more they sell. Honestly, if he wants a character dead, he probably likes that character and is picking on them because he wants to stir up pitchforks and torches. He's backed off that SOME largely because outrage works differently online now. But he operates very much from kind of a Bill Jemas worldview: "If you're happy with what we're doing, our sales will suffer." That's... a difficult thing for some folks IN COMICS to mesh with. Some folks just want a clean and fairly neutral status quo so they can tell clever one off stories kind of like Batman: The Animated Series."

Thank you for posting this.

I just realized that I am one of those folks.

[kingaliencracker]

Thank you for posting this.

I just realized that I am one of those folks.

If DC and the DCEU were written and executed like the DC Animated Universe was, both would be significantly better off than they currently are.

[Dred]

Well, we do need to remember that the final six years of Barry's Pre-COIE life weren't exactly a walk in the park. 1979-1986 was a pretty horrid period for the character before DC dropped the axe.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

I'll take having a comic over being erased from history like a bad memory so I do not know why you are trying to draw this comparison.

[uchihafanboy]

Frankly, I don't think DiDio has done a great job overall. It's not simply that I don't agree with his creative choices - which I often don't, but those are his decisions to make - it's that I don't think he always carries them out very well. But that's just my two cents.

Anyway, here's more insight from a comic writer about DiDio's rise to power (quoting Patrick Gerard from another thread):

"- Underpinning a lot of this stuff is, from what I gather, Paul Levitz was trying to choose a successor to run DC. Except what a variety of folks did or did not know was that Dan DiDio had been handpicked by somebody at Warner Bros. to take over DC before he wrote his first comic. The only reason DiDio showed up in the first place was to run the company the way WB wanted. Levitz didn't know or didn't get the full memo and was trying to find alternative candidates to weigh against DiDio. Levitz interviewed Waid. I think he talked to Loeb. Loeb and Waid always got along FAIRLY well.

- But everybody who interviewed for Levitz's job had issues with DiDio. It's hard and probably unfair to assign blame on a message board post without all the facts but DiDio was trying to move into a job he'd been promised maybe 5 years before. Meanwhile, you had competing offers made to other people that upset DiDio, who spent five-plus years of his life turning down other work, planning to take that job. It became hard for some of these people to work together for awhile. So you had a big exodus from DC to Marvel of people who, I think, had awkward relationships with DiDio largely because of conflict between Levitz and Kevin Tsujihara and some other folks. Diane Nelson was brought in, in part, I think, because of how frayed the WB/DC relationships were so she could be a neutral party -- and because she was seen as being able to expand the young girls and Young Adult markets based on her background with Harry Potter and other stuff.

- On top of all of this is that I think there's a lot of folks who misread DiDio in part because, well... He's a troll. A bonafied troll. Yes, he wanted Nightwing dead for years and planned it various ways. But all the stuff about hating Nightwing was playacting. He did it because he thought it would upset the most people. He has a very soap opera/pro-wrestling view and he's more of a Silver-Age/Bronze-Age Marvel guy than DC. So he's always trying to inject that 70s Marvel "Hank Pym becomes a wifebeater" type stuff in. Because he has a view that the more comics upset or provoke people, the more they sell. Honestly, if he wants a character dead, he probably likes that character and is picking on them because he wants to stir up pitchforks and torches. He's backed off that SOME largely because outrage works differently online now. But he operates very much from kind of a Bill Jemas worldview: "If you're happy with what we're doing, our sales will suffer." That's... a difficult thing for some folks IN COMICS to mesh with. Some folks just want a clean and fairly neutral status quo so they can tell clever one off stories kind of like Batman: The Animated Series.

In some ways, Loeb and DiDio got along super-well. DiDio greenlit stuff Levitz probably wouldn't have. He hired Loeb for All-Star Batman. (Frank Miller was a replacement hire. There's a first issue in a drawer somewhere of a Loeb/Art Adams All-Star Batman #1.) But he also made Loeb's job harder and kept wanting to tinker with some things in the opposite direction.

Loeb was always trying to fuse the Byrne continuity with the Silver-Age so that you'd just have one 75 year Superman continuity like what Morrison later did with Batman. DiDio wasn't keen on that and neither was Waid, exactly. Waid loves the Silver Age as a fan but he's the first guy to throw it into the woodchipper if he thinks something is silly, unrealistic, or embarrassing. (Johns shared an office with Loeb.)

The tug of war gave us Superman origin reboots about every 18 months. And Loeb more or less walked from the monthly Superman book at the start of that because he wanted a stable run."

https://community.cbr.com/showthread...ghts-on-hs-run

(Patrick Gerard has some interesting insights to that era of Superman if you read his other posts.)

Stuff like this is never good, the blind leading the blind yet again.

[Buried Alien]

I'll take having a comic over being erased from history like a bad memory so I do not know why you are trying to draw this comparison.

If I may be so bold, I submit that it's because Barry's fans, after having endured two decades of their favorite Flash being sidelined after six years of his languishing in his own book, are in a good position to sympathize with the predicament Wally's fans are enduring. Sympathy, however, does not equate to tolerance for constantly having our experience during Barry's absence misrepresented and minimized. Mind you, it tends to be Wally's fans who, in their "woe is me" complaints, tend to initiate these comparisons that we Barry fans somehow "had it easy." It was NOT easy, and it's a bit demeaning to have others characterize it as such.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Lee Stone]

If DC and the DCEU were written and executed like the DC Animated Universe was, both would be significantly better off than they currently are.

I agree...

[Robanker]

If I may be so bold, I submit that it's because Barry's fans, after having endured two decades of their favorite Flash being sidelined after six years of his languishing in his own book, are in a good position to sympathize with the predicament Wally's fans are enduring. Sympathy, however, does not equate to tolerance for constantly having our experience during Barry's absence misrepresented and minimized. Mind you, it tends to be Wally's fans who, in their "woe is me" complaints, tend to initiate these comparisons that we Barry fans somehow "had it easy." It was NOT easy, and it's a bit demeaning to have others characterize it as such.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

I sympathize with you, and I hope I don't come across as one of those Wally fans who speaks down to Barry fans. I really like Barry! I just don't care for the weird amalgam Flash they've built him into where they grafted some of Wally's traits onto him to make him more like what people seem to expect of the Flash (quips or humor, for the most part) and changing his origin from being simply a good person doing what's right with his power to yet another orphan on the Justice League. If anything, it feels like they homogenized the poor guy and took away what made his death pretty much the biggest one in comics.

Of all characters, it's the one who was only there because he was a decent person and he could, who gave it all alongside Supergirl. No dead parents or planet to motivate him. He was a comic reader (LIKE YOU, DEAR READER) who had the chance to make a difference and he did. You can say whatever you like about the reason DC wanted to send him off, but they at least gave the guy the biggest exit imaginable. Wally then held him to the gold standard for, well, pretty much ever and there was clear reverence for Barry Allen. It really bums me out that he lost a lot of that post Flashpoint to try and make him more of an All-Flash.

In a perfect world, Wally would have came back and been the Flash of Keystone to Barry's Central city and Barry could be head Flash. Being a fan of his since childhood, I think Wally more than anyone else would love for Barry to lead the race (even if Wally was faster).

I dislike how DC pushes Barry a bit obnoxiously, but I have a lot of love for the Barry (and Jay, for that matter)! DC, especially Didio, simply cannot juggle characters and as a result shill one at the expense of another. It's 100% execution and it sucks.

[Denirac]

If You want to see the Latest in DiDio shows, check the Wally appreciation thread for the Last Page of HiC #8.... Its Bad..... Its SO bad