Dan Didio era

[Dred]

Something that goes underappreciated with Didio is that he turned himself into a heel. He purposely allowed himself to come off as the villain so that readers would blame everything on him. He took all the burden so that the other writers and editors wouldn't get the brunt of the online criticism. I remember reading from a post on these forums a while back, and how offended they felt about Didio's heel personality, but I strongly disagree with that notion. It was showmanship, he knew how to play into the crowd, and knew how to keep readers invested or interested in a line. He also protected a lot of writers and editors from scorn because he essentially became the scapegoat for all things that went bad in DC. People seem to forget that there are management teams, company owners, and many others who make all these decisions. Don't forget that normal writers and editors are also capable of bad ideas.

Also, the fact that so many people feel like all the good comic runs that came out during his tenure only came out in spite of Didio's involvement is so demeaning to everything Didio has done well for DC. He's been around for two decades, and DC wasn't burned to the ground; he was obviously doing something right during that time period. I get that fans hated the bad things he did so much that they are not willing to give him the credit for anything good that did happen, but I believe he does deserve some credit for comics like Johns' Green Lantern and Grant Morisson's Batman, as well any other good books.

Don't get me wrong, I do think Didio did a lot of wrongs. I don't take anything personally when it comes to characters I like being mistreated, like Wally West and Dick Grayson, so I was never angry with Didio specifically when it came to what happened to those characters. But based on interviews I read, Didio really, really did not understand the appeal of legacy characters or sidekicks. This is the most evident Didio influence within the comic pages, ranging from replacing Wally West with Barry Allen to "Ric" Grayson, along with many other legacy characters getting the short end of the stick. In behind the scenes sense, he also protected a lot of problematic workers, including that scummy editor whose name I forgot and I don't want to bother looking it up. Not only that, eighteen years to be editor-in-chief is too long for anyone, good or bad.

But my rant is more towards the fact that others don't want to give him the credit he deserves, just because they felt wronged by him of decisions they believed he was the sole proprietor of. However, in my opinion, if you liked any comic run between 2002 to 2020, he deserves some credit for that, and not "in spite of his influence".

They had to do an emergency reboot and mass #1 launch because DC was burning to the ground under his tenure. So that is not the best argument about how he was doing something right. It took him about 7 years of creative control before the comics wing was on life support.

Wasn't he not really involved in the first 2 years of Rebirth? Rebirth was Johns idea, and initially more successful than New 52 if I remember correctly. Not that I'm called New 52 unsuccessful, but Rebirth basically started by burning some of the biggest complains people had about New 52 to the ground.

Unfortunately no. Rebirth was back under his control within months of it launching, not years.