Originally Posted by
Dark Falz
Yeah, I think so. Aside from Green Lantern: Mosaic, DC never put out stuff specifically geared toward John Stewart and his fans before with a clear objective of it being that, which is pretty stupid. Even if he was a PoV character, he'd often just be a part of stories and you'd have to find him wherever it was you happened to find him. Even during the Van Jensen days, he was often a part of bigger stories that weren't especially, clearly, and totally his, like Lights Out, Uprising, and Godhead.
DC also seemed ashamed or miffed that John Stewart was on JL/JLU, which, again, was stupid. Instead of using that to your advantage--regardless of how you may personally feel about it--they tried to undermine it. That whole thing resulted in it being difficult to find characters you might like, doing things that seem cool to you.
I think this sort of thing influenced DiDio and other parts of editorial getting fired. Sure, a lot of that was just cost cutting while DC is having an implosion, but they were just ass at marketing and catering to people outside of their typical demographic, and they weren't going to grow that way.
Unfortunately, this current editorial is trying to play catch up while also dealing with an implosion. You know DC won't be publishing as many books as they were before, and you also know they can't afford to not focus on their time tested characters, like Batman, Superman, et al. So, while it's cool they're doing this type of thing, what seems concerning to me is that, even though there might be more of a focus on diversity, it could be limited to specials (Future State), shovel ware (like this), one-shots, and so on. That's better than nothing, but it still seems to me that DC/AT&T are wanting to take short cuts with these types of characters. It's like they want to desperately adapt some diverse characters, but they aren't willing to REALLY put in the effort, talent, and patience to develop diverse characters that are every bit as strong, or even stronger, than their most popular characters and mythologies.