How do you rate Dan Didio's tenure at DC Comics?

[kingaliencracker]

Exactly as the title states. Discuss!

[Celgress]

I'll give him a B - there was good but there was also bad, that said, the good outweighed the bad (overall), IMO.

[DragonPiece]

New 52 got me into comics and DC has managed to stay my favorite publisher between them and marvel, so I gues I'd give him a B.

[Vordan]

C. There were good runs and bad runs, but towards the end it became clear he had run out of ideas for where to take the line. I’ll always appreciate him for stealing Morrison back from Marvel though.

[sifighter]

He gets a C from me, there were a lot of good and even great runs and stories while I read comics under his charge. However you lose some points when I’m reading for years I’m constantly unsure of history and continuity and things keep changing, not in a oh someone new is Batman but in I don’t know who founded the Justice league because pre-flashpoint said this, New 52 did this, and then Rebirth and all that has done some mixing.

[Restingvoice]

Technically it's the worst time for me, but my problem with DC is huge and started since at least the 80s, so it's not a Didio thing, it's a DC/WB thing.

The Didio specific problem would be doing a New 52 reboot but not reboot fully. I like that there's an easy entry point for me, but I only stayed for 2 years before noticing the things that don't make sense. In Rebirth, I stayed even shorter because I already learned, and while it started strong, it's also very messy.

I don't like how they're fixing continuity within the story instead of the meeting room, for example. It's similar to my desire for a full reboot. Fix your stories outside your story, because if you fix it in the story with godly characters, it tells me that you can use anything to fix things, and therefore you can approve anything you want without a care. You don't learn anything from your mistakes, you're not being careful with characterization, you'll allow anything because you can fix them at any time. That's what I hate the most that I see keep happening.

[Comic-Reader Lad]

Ultimately, Dan DiDio's tenure at DC wasn't very good.

I say this because when it all comes down to it, he simply didn't have the literary aspirations that Jeanette Kahn and Paul Levitz had. When they were running the show at DC (also with Dick Giordano as EIC), DC really made a commitment to changing the perception of what a comic book could be.

We got absolute classics like Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One. We got the post-Crisis relaunches that, yes caused more continuity problems than it solved and ruined the Legion, Hawkman, and Donna Troy irreparably, but it gave us the best Superman and Wonder Woman we had in my lifetime -- among many other great comics.

Then, of course, there was spinning out their more mature titles into the Vertigo line.

Plus, Watchmen.

And on, and on.

In contrast, with Dan DiDio, we didn't get groundbreaking classics that rewrote the rules of comic book storytelling. We got "let's do rehashes of the stuff that was popular before I joined the company."

So, we got Infinite Crisis, Final Crisis, this Crisis, that Crisis, Flashpoint, what's the point -- that couldn't hold a candle to the original.

We got Before Watchmen and Doomsday Clock -- that couldn't hold a candle to the original (in spite of how DClock was fairly well-received)

We got more Frank Miller Dark Knight -- that couldn't hold a candle to the original.

Several "the villains win" events.

Revisiting Bane and Doomsday over and over.

Convergence, Divergence, Regurgence.

Completely botching big-gets like JMS and others.

Basically, DiDio's tenure was overpromising and underdeilvering to the point where you just knew that when his next big bright idea was announced (5G, anyone?) that he just wouldn't be able to stick the landing.

I think the only true evergreen project created under his watch that wasn't a rehash of a previous event was Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier. This was something that could have been published during the Kahn/Levitz years.

He kept complaining of reader apathy, but then gave readers every reason to be apathetic -- and apprehensive -- of each of his radical changes of direction for the company.

In spite of this, I do wish him the best (away from DC) in the future. It's never fun to lose a job, and by all accounts, he was indeed let go from the company because it happened so suddenly, and Newarama was reporting that DiDio was at work this morning posting on DC's retailer-only Facebook page and taking meetings with DC talent. Then, by early afternoon, it was announced at various websites that he was gone.


The only thing I'm worried about now is who will take DiDio's place? Jim Lee really isn't suited to run DC. I don't think he gets DC any more than DiDio did. Lee belongs behind a drawing board, not behind a desk. Of course, I understand that Lee is too valuable an asset for DC to lose entirely.

Hopefully, Lee will just be Chief Creative Officer, a new Publisher will be announced who is actually good, and other dead weight like Bob Harras will follow DiDio out the door.