Remember at one point he was mad that the reprints were selling better than a lot of the current books.
So while Batman and for the most part Flash, Hal, WW and Superman were doing fine-everyone else was a mess (mainly by HIS doing).
Or you do it on purpose.If they intended to have the 5G stuff go on for 6 months to a year, minimum, DC would have easily been in turmoil over it because that's a years worth of potential sales lost to a company already on shaky legs. 5G was never going to be the status quo.
If you want ammo to justify burying someone make them the lead and hope it crashes and burns.
If you want to get hirer sales or a surge-you take away someone for a time and hope huge sales happen in a return.
Luke Fox as Batman-yeah the usual suspects , gators and store owners will throw a FIT. At the end of the say you get what 2 trades worth of Luke Fox.
Dc will take that gamble. Because Bruce returning as Batman after a year away should get you 100-300K orders. It could get you more readers. Need proof? See what is going on with Hulk at Marvel.
Bruce and Amadeus have decent selling trades. Hulk has not be a must read in how many years? Shelfing him for what 1-2 years worked at Marvel.
At WORST those G5 books would have done decent as trades despite the pushback.
Yeah I could see Dan doing that.