Dan Didio vs. The Titans

[superduperman]

And if they mishandle those characters, then they fail financially. And no one gains from that. Especially not whoever owns the properties. I'm surprised that Didio stayed as long as he did. Maybe it was because nobody up top was paying much attention, IDK. I don't think the guy was evil or anything but it's obvious he wanted things no one else wanted. The more logical solution would have been to give him his own Ultimates style line to do with what he wants. Instead of using the mainstream universe. Not sure why they didn't just do that. Don't like the Titans? Don't have them in your universe. Same thing with legacy characters. There were solutions to this. They just didn't implement them. New 52 should have been an Ultimates type line to begin with instead of taking over the main books.

[The no face guy]

Yes, it is exactly like that. AT&T/WB/DC own all the toys in the DC Universe, and can do whatever they want with them.

A fictional character being around 50 years, 100 years or even 1000 years - or being beloved by "fans" - doesn't change any of that.

This is true, but it is also true that as a paying customer, CTTT can give DC comics the middle finger salute and stop buying their product. DC does have a worthy competitor, and last time I looked both Logan and Clint Barton have resumed their roles as Wolverine and Hawkeye...so CTTT, if your a fan check them out.

Ok, so, thank God this guy is gone as publisher. It is amazing he really lasted so long at DC. He deserved all the vitriol he got. But I read an a recent article where Didio said that you have to have shakeups/events to basically keep readers from being bored. Ok, so like Marvel basically. Then he goes on to say that he wanted and I'm paraphrasing here, that he wanted to keep the characters lives progressing forward.

So, lets see:

Wally West- character assassination and burial from 2011-2016 replaced by Wallace West aka "black Wally". Then portrayed as a murderer fleeing the crime in Heroes in Crisis. At the same time attempting to split the Barry and Wally fanbase.

Garth- Drowned Earth in Aquaman. Not seen or heard from since. I guess he drowned? Jackson has been in the Aquaman books recently.

Roy Harper- killed in Heroes in Crisis.

Nightwing- Shot in the head, comes back with amnesia and shaved head and really ugly costume or street costume and calls himself "Ric" Grayson distancing himself from Bruce and family. And has his own team of inferior Nightwings.

Titans rebirth book with grown up sidekicks mentioned above- cancelled after I think 40 issues?

To be fair Wallace and Jackson were able to rebound from their awkward intros and become their own character and voice. But...as mentioned above how do these things with Wally Garth, etc progress their characters forward, as Didio says exactly?

Bottom line. Never thought these characters made Arthur Bruce and Barry look "old". It made me have further admiration for the characters as mentors and enhanced their coolness factor with me. Hope the Titans come back strong.

Didio wasn’t all bad, but he definitely had things out for the Titans. My theory is that he was trying to get the comics more in line with DC television shows and media, but more importantly, get things ready for 5G.
Take the Flash for instance. They have replaced the Flash and his sidekicks so many times that you now have generally speaking:

The Flash (Barry Allen)
The Flash (Wally West)
Impulse (Bart) sidekick
Kid Flash (Wallace West) sidekick.

If your a young new reader picking up the Flash, because of the television show, you’ll want the comic in line with the heroes (thus simplified down to Barry and his sidekick & eventual replacement Wallace.) Same goes for Oliver Queen and Mia, both young diverse sidekicks as opposed to the old ones that are white males. Now why is this important for 5G.

(Allegedly) the plan for 5G was to age the current heroes so they would be replaced by the young new diverse heroes that would modernize DC’s roster for film & television....and lets be realistic, modern day demographics. This leaves no room for Wally West or Roy Harper, but fans can’t complain if their killed off. (Or placed in some sort of limbo if there fanbase is too popular)

This great leap forward, while well intentioned, however is a bad idea, because it means that everyone in the DC universe ages including the villains. Are you going to replace the entire Batman and Flash rogues gallery with younger versions...that would indeed be cheesy.

Furthermore, everytime DC kills off a hero they just end up bringing them back. Green Lantern is the classic example, because now you have, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner all running around in limbo without their own title, as well as Wally West, Connor Hawk, STEEL, ect, ect. It simply doesn’t work unless you refuse to cave in to fan demands, otherwise you just keep duplicating more and more of the same type of hero in the DC universe.

[kcekada]

Titans suffered more than any other property under DiDio. There was a lot of editorial interference in the last Titans series -- the entire team was practically given the boot with a lot of WTF characters brought in to take their places. That's when I dropped the book. It was cancelled shortly thereafter.

[BohemiaDrinker]

The thing with Didio and the Titans, and he spoke about it multiple times, is that he felt they aged the silver agers, and his ideal versions of the characters were probably forever 25 years old.

However, Didio liked to play the jerk: Wally West fans will remember being trolled ad nauseaum, to a point where it ceased looking like playful behavior or good natured fun and started looking like plain out douchebaggery. But Wally was not the first: he played the same game wit Steph, Cass, Nightwing, Roy Harper, etc.

Add to that, the man seemed really unwilling or just incapable of realizing that his particular vision just did not gel with neither the majority nor the most hardcore buyers. Part of his demise probably had to do with this: never admiting he was wrong about the DCU, about continuity and unwilling to course correct o these things, he painted himself into a corner.

Regardless, fictional character or not, it's quite ironic that Didio got fired about a day after Wally West gained omnipotence and went "okay, let's fix ****".

[The no face guy]

However, Didio liked to play the jerk: Wally West fans will remember being trolled ad nauseaum, to a point where it ceased looking like playful behavior or good natured fun and started looking like plain out douchebaggery. But Wally was not the first: he played the same game wit Steph, Cass, Nightwing, Roy Harper, etc.

Add to that, the man seemed really unwilling or just incapable of realizing that his particular vision just did not gel with neither the majority nor the most hardcore buyers.

Not a very nice way to treat your customers if I may add. I sometimes think that DC would be better off if Warner Bros, released them. It would force the executives and writers at DC to cater to what their fanbase wants. For all the money Warner Brothers has made off DC, they have done very little to put it back into the comics that got them the blockbuster hits.

Titans suffered more than any other property under DiDio. There was a lot of editorial interference in the last Titans series -- the entire team was practically given the boot with a lot of WTF characters brought in to take their places. That's when I dropped the book. It was cancelled shortly thereafter.

Ditto, totally agree. I was so happy when they brought Wally back, and was thrilled to be reading a title with Wally, Roy and Donna. Not just a title, but a really well written one, that was selling fairly well and then out of nowhere they disbanded the team, brought in the late 80's (Marv Wolfman) characters, most likely to coincide with the Netflix show...and I was like sorry, I'm done, obviously I wasn't the only one, because as you state. The Title began to slump in sales afterwards and was swiflty cancelled.

[married guy]

There is no doubt who the victor was in the DiDio VS Titans bout.
The Titans never stood a chance.

But they certainly aren't alone either. Dan rightly or wrongly, believed the DC characters should be their most 'iconic' versions. Who and how that was determined was never made public, but Dan made it clear his iconic version of the characters were based on the Silver Age.
So in came Barry, Hal, Bruce, Clark. Fair enough right??
What pissed a number of fans off was his public disdain for the legacy characters that followed and his belief they would somehow dillute the brand. This meant all the sidekicks or replacements from the 80's and 90's were either shunted backstage, killed or given a dose of character assassination. With the Titans and Flash family copping it hardest ( I believe)
While I would NEVER wish the bloke harm in ANY way, he made decisions that I flat out hated pretty often.

[Green Goblin of Sector 2814]

The thing with Didio and the Titans, and he spoke about it multiple times, is that he felt they aged the silver agers, and his ideal versions of the characters were probably forever 25 years old.

However, Didio liked to play the jerk: Wally West fans will remember being trolled ad nauseaum, to a point where it ceased looking like playful behavior or good natured fun and started looking like plain out douchebaggery. But Wally was not the first: he played the same game wit Steph, Cass, Nightwing, Roy Harper, etc.

Add to that, the man seemed really unwilling or just incapable of realizing that his particular vision just did not gel with neither the majority nor the most hardcore buyers. Part of his demise probably had to do with this: never admiting he was wrong about the DCU, about continuity and unwilling to course correct o these things, he painted himself into a corner.

Regardless, fictional character or not, it's quite ironic that Didio got fired about a day after Wally West gained omnipotence and went "okay, let's fix ****".

Yeah, I'd say this is more or less right on the nose. Didio's major fault was that he refused to acknowledge that his vision for the DC Universe didn't gel with how the majority of the fandom saw the DC Universe and furthermore, wasn't even reflective of how the DC Universe had been for over 40 years before his arrival to the company.

Yes, it is exactly like that. AT&T/WB/DC own all the toys in the DC Universe, and can do whatever they want with them.

A fictional character being around 50 years, 100 years or even 1000 years - or being beloved by "fans" - doesn't change any of that.

But here's the thing: people buy these books because they want to read stories with their favorite characters. So, when you have a Publisher whose main goal is to erase and/or severely downgrade the roles of several fan-favorite characters, well that's not very good business is it? I mean, these weren't exactly obscure characters that Dan Didio was singling out here. Dick Grayson and Wally West are two of DC's most iconic and beloved characters. So, while DC has the right to do what it wants with its characters, someone somewhere in the decision-making process had to realize that making them irrelevant was not going to go over well.

[Godlike13]

No one is gonna buy the toys, or watch the movies, etc, ect if they don’t protect those properties. It’s quality control, its not in their best interest to let creators present their proprieties as **** cause that creates an audience who thinks their properties are ****.

[Dataweaver]

Johns gets a free pass for all of the questionable decisions he made with the Titans franchise for some reason.

Not a free pass; an earned pass. For all the bad things he's responsible for, he's also responsible for restoring many characters who had been trashed over the years back to at least some semblance of greatness. And even when he got things wrong, there was a sense that he was at least trying.

For instance, his treatment of the Marvel Family near the end of his JSA run. Pretty bad, right? Except that if you take a look at the bigger picture, the Marvel Family had just been through a series of rather atrocious stories that had thoroughly trashed them; and the end of their story in JSA, while it stripped them of their powers, was clearly setting them up for a return to greatness. It's just that the New 52 came along and cut the return short. I suspect that many of Johns' intended plans for the return of the Marvel family found their way into the N52 version of Shazam.

Johns' “earned pass” can be summed up in something he said once, explaining his approach to writing: paraphrased, “every character is someone's favorite, and should be treated accordingly.”

[Steel Inquisitor]

Well, no. By most accounts Dan Didio is a decent guy - for an executive type anyway.

There's a few thousand people with their noses bent out of shape because his storytelling strategies hurt their favorite fictional characters. Online fandom called him names, called for him to be fired, and generally acted like the rear end of a horse for over a decade.

I stopped reading comics 10 years ago, in part because his basic publishing philosophy was modeled on 1970s Marvel, amped up with constant events and deaths. That doesn't appeal to me. But obviously it worked - WB kept him running the joint through multiple changes in executive leadership, for 17 years. In executive/corporate roles few people last more than 7 years, so the length of his tenure is actually really impressive.

Not liking what he did to fictional characters is a legitimate critique. I share it. But I didn't (don't) register hate or vitriol over fictional characters. I recognize this is just entertainment we're talking about. So that sort of behavior is not warranted. Like - at all.

Maybe Didio's a decent guy in real life but he didn't endear himself to fans by deliberately pushing their buttons and assassinating the characters of beloved figures like Cassandra Cain. He knew what the response would be and did it anyway. Beechan was untouchable at that stage, and ruined Cassandra for years. Never would have occurred without Didio's support. When pressed about this by Cass fans they practically laughed at them.

Wasn't Shooter Marvel's publisher in the 70s? Someone who had the exact same reception, except he went the extra mile angering the talent behind the scenes.

I agree it shouldn't be taken personally what he did, however, that didn't absolve him of the heat he willingly drew onto himself for sales or whatever. He could have done this without drawing so much tension or destroying characters for the lolz. Didn't the dude personally hate Nightwing? I recall he had to be talked out killing Nightwing at the last second by someone like Loeb after multiple attempts to get rid of the character which failed. It's not just fans who get emotionally invested in fictional characters.

[married guy]

Maybe Didio's a decent guy in real life but he didn't endear himself to fans by deliberately pushing their buttons and assassinating the characters of beloved figures like Cassandra Cain. He knew what the response would be and did it anyway. Beechan was untouchable at that stage, and ruined Cassandra for years. Never would have occurred without Didio's support. When pressed about this by Cass fans they practically laughed at them.

Wasn't Shooter Marvel's publisher in the 70s? Someone who had the exact same reception, except he went the extra mile angering the talent behind the scenes.

I agree it shouldn't be taken personally what he did, however, that didn't absolve him of the heat he willingly drew onto himself for sales or whatever. He could have done this without drawing so much tension or destroying characters for the lolz. Didn't the dude personally hate Nightwing? I recall he had to be talked out killing Nightwing at the last second by someone like Loeb after multiple attempts to get rid of the character which failed. It's not just fans who get emotionally invested in fictional characters.

I actually think Jim Shooter did a bloody brilliant job running Marvel. From all accounts the company was a dog's breakfast when he took the reins. Marvel was certainly in an infinitely better position when he left.
He also made a point of paying the writers and artists more PLUS gave them their art pages back. I'm sure he stepped on a lot of toes, but I think he unfairly cops the rough end of the pineapple.

[Rise]

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What I find ironic is that fans throw all kind of insults at publishers, writers, artists...etc on the internet (and sometimes even to their faces), but can't handle it when they get trolled back because "we pay you!!!". Just because you buy their products doesn't mean that they are your slaves who their concern should be only about pleasing you and they have no right to feel or say anything that might offend you.

These products are made for entertainment, not medical products that concerns your health. Don't like them? Move on and find something else.

[Steel Inquisitor]

I actually think Jim Shooter did a bloody brilliant job running Marvel. From all accounts the company was a dog's breakfast when he took the reins. Marvel was certainly in an infinitely better position when he left.
He also made a point of paying the writers and artists more PLUS gave them their art pages back. I'm sure he stepped on a lot of toes, but I think he unfairly cops the rough end of the pineapple.

Shooter had his strong points, I liked Secret Wars, and I think that was when Claremont was on X-men - except you don't get that without the bad parts. The horror stories I've heard about his reign from industry mags. Shooter didn't help himself when it came to giving Kirby his art back.

http://www.tcj.com/jim-shooter-groun...-apocryphiars/

I may not like how Didio ran things but I don't think he's as reviled by his industry peers like Shooter is. Shooter's supposed to be a very hard man to work with.

Calling what Shooter did "stepping on toes" is an understatement, he didn't get his reputation for minor misunderstandings.

[manwhohaseverything]

What I find ironic is that fans throw all kind of insults at publishers, writers, artists...etc on the internet (and sometimes even to their faces), but can't handle it when they get trolled back because "we pay you!!!". Just because you buy their products doesn't mean that they are your slaves who their concern should be only about pleasing you and they have no right to feel or say anything that might offend you.

These products are made for entertainment, not medical products that concerns your health. Don't like them? Move on and find something else.

That depends on who starts and keeps doing it. And by all accounts, didio wasn't insulted as far as i know. He decided to keep trolling fans with wally situation. The character wasn't created by him. The character is owned by the company. As a paying reader, anyone can voice displeasure in the mismanagement as long it's civil. Untill, and unless i am proven wrong with evidence. I don't think anyone can blame one side.

[Sutekh]

There is no doubt who the victor was in the DiDio VS Titans bout.
The Titans never stood a chance.

And yet, he's mortal. And they are *ideas.*

They'll be around (and making money for DC, or whoever owns their IP and is making cartoons, TV shows, movies, comics, t-shirts, lunchboxes, action figures, posters, statuettes, etc. with them) decades from now. Possibly centuries. He won't.