There's been plenty of posts about the 2002-2020 era of Didio being trash, like killing off Roy, removing Wally, putting the brakes on Rebirth...but was it all bad?
I gotta believe there were some highlights
There's been plenty of posts about the 2002-2020 era of Didio being trash, like killing off Roy, removing Wally, putting the brakes on Rebirth...but was it all bad?
I gotta believe there were some highlights
Bad decisions, forced events, lack of plannification, lots of unnecessary misery because "that's what sells", etc.
However, I was never able to really hate the guy. He was always kind in the interactions I had with him, it seemed like he really liked the industry and in many occasions saved books with poor sales because they were fan-favorites. Sure, he made a lot of mistakes but there was still good stuff under him.
Highlight: Blackest Night...and just allowing Johns to do everything he did with GL from Rebirth through Blackest Night. GL was never as good as during that period imo with the World Building it did for that franchise.
Lowlight that he definitely had control over: Everything that happened with the Flash Franchise.
If you are going to refute, you need to do your own research.
His tenure was an absolute failure. Marvel under Quesada pretty much ran circles around him. He bled DC of their best talent, fired people for disagreeing with him and filled DC with his sycophants. His handling of Countdown to Final Crisis and Convergence showed that he was terrible at his job and that he only got so far by taking credit from the successes of other people. He fostered a workplace where sexism and racism was rampant. And his decisions such as with 52, New 52, Flash and Rebirth was defined by arbitrariness and pettiness where he tried to kneecap projects that he felt threatened his position and fired people so that he could give jobs to his friends. DC under him was run like a fan club instead of a business and characters like Superman and Wonder Woman was chronically mismanaged. He is pretty much the Carly Fiorina of DC in that his 15 year reign pretty much has left DC's publishing unit a husk of its former self and barely holding on. The only positive of his reign is that Marvel pretty much cemented themselves as the top comic book company because of his incompetence.
The good comics that were produced by DC under him were usually stories that he had no hand in creating. For example 52 that was edited by Wacker, Sinestro Corp Wars, Johns run on Aquaman, Seven Soldiers or Morrison's Bat Trilogy (Batman/Batman&Robin/Batman Inc). The constant shuffling of writers under him with random arbitrary departures meant that creators simply didn't have the freedom (compared to their Marvel counterparts) to create lasting creative runs on book. Creativity under him at DC suffered and it shows with DC just wrapping up its 10th Crisis with another one around the corner with most of DC's top writers having stepped away from the company.
His legacy is pretty much the utter ruination of DC Comics.
Last edited by Bruce Wayne; 03-02-2021 at 06:25 PM.
New 52 was a good idea that was poorly executed largely due to Didio's stupid "nothing can ever change" rules. DC needed a hard reboot. But saying nobody can ever get married or age or mature in any way held it back. He also had a personal vendetta against any sidekick over the age of 12. Which means even when he had a good idea, he sabotaged it himself. Comics are a business. They shouldn't be run by fanboys. Jeannette Kahn understood this. Didio didn't.
Assassinate Putin!
In the 80s and 90s, DC put out a lot of comics that redefined storytelling. Even though Marvel always sold better, you knew if you wanted to get someone to take comics seriously, you'd give them Swamp Thing, Sandman, Starman, Watchmen, Dark Knight, etc. You wouldn't hand them "Maximum Clonage."
With DiDio, the era of evergreen DC classics was over. Besides perhaps DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke, there really wasn't anything at DC that could sit comfortably on the shelf with those 80s-90s classics.
Under DiDio, we got bad sequels and prequels to the good stuff from the pre-DiDio era.
Under DiDio, Vertigo was driven into the ground and Karen Berger was forced out. That alone would tarnish his reputation in comics forever.
While he seems like a lovely enough bloke, I HATED what he did to Wally West.
The mandate of Barry Allen or nothing ticked me off, when all of Wally's lore was then grafted onto Barry while the rest of the Flash Family were shunted off into limbo, I quietly lost my sh*t.
"My name is Wally West. I'm the fastest man alive!"
I'll try being nicer if you try being smarter.
Of course not, but I don't know specifically which was his decision and which was not. Though I guess if he's chief who has to approve everything that means he's responsible for approving everything.
So the goods that he approved are
- Bringing back Multiverse
- Dick Batman and Damian Robin
- Red Hood and The Outlaws general concept
- Batgirl Barbara Gordon despite possible ableism and other characters erasure because she is the most popular Batgirl to mainstream audience that they say New 52 want to reach, so marketing wise that decision is sound
- Geoff Johns Green Lantern and Aquaman
- Barry Allen's alive again because his death was apparently a previous editorial mandate and you know how much I hate if it's not the writer's idea
- Kate Kane Batwoman
- Gail Simone on twitter said he's a supporter for LGBT characters
- The New 52 bringing back titles and characters I never heard of such as The Movement, Dial-H, I, Vampire, I Zombie, Demon Knights, the war stories, even though not all of them lands, but I like that they try to expand to different genres.
- Justice League Dark
- Getting Harley beyond Gotham
Last edited by Restingvoice; 03-02-2021 at 10:49 PM.
This is the thing isn't it? Some people say Didio was responsible for every bad thing and had nothing to do with the good stuff.
Here a random quote from Wikipedia:
I mean, he personally contacted Morrison to return to DC and do All-Star Superman and that lead to future Morrison's projects at DC. But hey, Didio was not responsible for anything good.In an interview with Matt Brady from Newsarama, Grant Morrison said that they were contacted by DC Vice President Dan DiDio and asked "if I'd like to come back to DC to work on a Superman project with an artist of my choice". They mentioned it worked out well since they were also planning to return to DC "to do the Seven Soldiers project and the Vertigo books".
Definitely more bad than good. But one man's trash is another man's treasure; IMO, bringing back Barry Allen, Babs as Batgirl, no Elseworlds, multiple reboots, Zeus as Wonder Woman's father, turning Wally into a murderer were all mistakes. That's just scratching the surface. I also don't think 'Identity Crisis' was groundbreaking nor do I think Coutndown to Final Crisis was in anyway '52 done right'. The good thing is that frustration with the main universe is what forced to dive back further into DC's rich back catalog.
In the early '00's, both DC and Marvel became a playground for middle aged writers who believed that generating the most outrage would spike sales in the short term. Marvel largely seems to have grown out of it, due to a combination of Queseda being promoted out of his position and the rise of the cinematic universe meant that stuff that happens in a comics or whatever a creator posts online was no longer being picked up by just some comic book sites but major news orgs like the Guardian and Hollywood Reporter.
The good thing about Didio is that he was cool with people who didn't like his decisions. I remember him posing with a group of Roy Harper fans pretending to stab him at a con shortly after Cry for Justice killed off Lian. Though I do remember listening to an audio of him blowing up at a fan for asking a question he didn't like but for most part he seemed to have been cool with fans at Cons.
His era did give us (whether he had a deep involvement or not): Johns GL trilogy, Morrison's Batman Inc, Cooke's New Frontier, 52, Morrisons' Seven Soldiers, All Star Superman, Jaimie Reye's Blue Beetle, Static on Titans, Sterling Gates/Igle's Supergirl, ongoing series for Zatanna and Power Girl, Dini's 'Tec run, Kate Kane Batwoman, Simone on BoP and later Wonder Woman (he asked her to put Barda on the team and she became a fan favorite) and Johns Booster Gold.
Last edited by John Venus; 03-04-2021 at 04:26 PM.