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.

[Bruce Wayne]

Didio burnt DC to the ground twice with Countdown and Convergence and still had the gall to try and undo Rebirth once it became popular.

But my rant is more towards the fact that others don't want to give him the credit he deserves.

Because with the internet and sites likes CBR/Newsarama, we know a lot if what's happening bts. We have former editors from DC telling how he/Levitz fostered a racist and sexist workplace at DC where people were let go because of creative disagreements. We have interviews from writers like Rucka/Waid of how he screwed them over. We know about the bts changes in personnel at DC to verify that he probably did get fired for fostering a hostile work environment. The industry isn't as opaque as it use to be. The stuff we have learned bts about what happened at DC in the past 15 years under him paints him in a very negative picture. The titles that succeeded at DC succeeded in spite of him and the toxic workplace that tptb fostered.

[John Venus]

Ask Sean McKeever sometime how much of a heel Didio was or even Mark Waid. I'm sure if Dwayne McDuffie was still alive, he would have stories. And while Didio himself may not have been the direct cause of their plight, his continued employment of people like Eddie Berganza was a detriment for a lot of talent at DC.

The amount of attention is 90% thanks to Feige. That will happen when you Produce 31 films that Gross over $22.5 Billion Internationally. Feige is almost $10 Billion ahead of #2 (a Producer from the Harry Potter Franchise)...sorry, but the amount of money Marvel Films has made is always staggering to me. https://www.the-numbers.com/box-offi...-role/producer

I don't disagree. Modern Marvel is absolutely influenced and shaped by the cinematic universe. Despite all the 'Disney gives us all the freedom to do whatever we want', they are savvy enough to not do anything that might affect Disney's bottom line.

Look at Nick Spencer, he unleashed hell when he did the Cap-Hydra storyline and his twitter posts added fuel to the fire, now he is quietly writing Spider-man with barely a peep online.

Didn't that series end with pretty much everyone Dead having accomplished literally nothing? Nevermind, nobody cares.

It was supposed to lead to Final Crisis. Morrison was the architect and they specifically requested DC not to use the New Gods until they were done with FC only for DC to launch Countdown and Death of the New Gods. A lot of readers bought them because it was lead up to an important event but Morrisons declared that those tie ins were unnecessary and you just needed to follow what they were writing at the time. This infuriated everybody who spent a year subjecting themselves to the event. Also Final Crisis never meant to be a part of the Crisis Saga, it was really just a sequel to Morrison's Seven Soldiers, marketing it as the end to the 'Crisis Trilogy' (ha ha ha ha ha) actually hurt the story Morrison was trying to tell.

[failo.legendkiller]

As a Titans fan my opinion of him is very low. His editorial guidelines was bad, sometimes stupid, and affected and ruined the DC Universe for good.
Obviuosly some good works during his reign happened too.

[Bruce Wayne]

This infuriated everybody who spent a year subjecting themselves to the event. Also Final Crisis never meant to be a part of the Crisis Saga, it was really just a sequel to Morrison's Seven Soldiers, marketing it as the end to the 'Crisis Trilogy' (ha ha ha ha ha) actually hurt the story Morrison was trying to tell.

FC is pretty much an example of Didio hijacking a writer's ideas and story and using it to push his own agenda. In the case of Final Crisis, he used it to undo the ending of COIE and bring back Barry Allen, something he had wanted to do since he came to DC. It's pretty clear I think that Barry in FC was intended by Morrison to be a Barry Allen/Flash from another Earth much like the Aquaman and Sonny Sumo that appeared in FC. Also Final Crisis along with a bunch of other standalone storyline was used to tie into Countdown aka 52 done right to outdo DC's a-list on 52 and to show everyone how an editorially guided weekly ongoing super-crossover should be done. Of course that didn't happen since Countdown was a total debacle.

[scary harpy]

...
Because with the internet and sites likes CBR/Newsarama, we know a lot if what's happening bts. We have former editors from DC telling how he/Levitz fostered a racist and sexist workplace at DC where people were let go because of creative disagreements. We have interviews from writers like Rucka/Waid of how he screwed them over. We know about the bts changes in personnel at DC to verify that he probably did get fired for fostering a hostile work environment. The industry isn't as opaque as it use to be. The stuff we have learned bts about what happened at DC in the past 15 years under him paints him in a very negative picture. The titles that succeeded at DC succeeded in spite of him and the toxic workplace that tptb fostered.

This is more important that any good that occurred during the Didio era.

The racism, sexism and prejudice against DC's own characters (Richard Grayson, Wally West, etcetera) resulted tremendous loss.

We lost characters, ideas, stories and revenue! (Money that DC wishes it had now, I bet.)

I've seen a number DC stories turned into animations...that's more difficult to accomplish with the story that wasn't written because the writer left a hostile work environment.

[HsssH]

It's pretty clear I think that Barry in FC was intended by Morrison to be a Barry Allen/Flash from another Earth much like the Aquaman and Sonny Sumo that appeared in FC.

What exactly are you basing that on? So did Morrison lie to us all when he talked about why he wanted to bring Barry back?

[Bruce Wayne]

I am basing that on the actual story where you have multiversal counterparts of dead heroes who were running away on Earth-0. And Morrison has already done variants of this story where he created an otherworld analogue to Barry and used him as a guest character most notably in his WW3 story in JLA with the Glimmer. And we know he has said that the story was changed with input from Didio. And we know that Didio's plans always included bringing the Flash in some sort of crisis story.

[Agent Z]

The solo ongoings were good for the most part.

It's the team books that were underwhelming. Justice League, Titans, Trinity, Countdown, which took down the entire DC brand.

Very debatable.

[Hol]

What exactly are you basing that on? So did Morrison lie to us all when he talked about why he wanted to bring Barry back?

Someone correct me if I am wrong but I believe both Morrison and Geoff Johns said in interviews at the time that Grant wanted to use an alternate universe Barry Allen and since Johns/Didio/Van Sciver were already planning the real Barry's return they told him he could/should use the original.

[skyvolt2000]

Didio burnt DC to the ground twice with Countdown and Convergence and still had the gall to try and undo Rebirth once it became popular.

Because with the internet and sites likes CBR/Newsarama, we know a lot if what's happening bts. We have former editors from DC telling how he/Levitz fostered a racist and sexist workplace at DC where people were let go because of creative disagreements. We have interviews from writers like Rucka/Waid of how he screwed them over. We know about the bts changes in personnel at DC to verify that he probably did get fired for fostering a hostile work environment. The industry isn't as opaque as it use to be. The stuff we have learned bts about what happened at DC in the past 15 years under him paints him in a very negative picture. The titles that succeeded at DC succeeded in spite of him and the toxic workplace that tptb fostered.

LA Williams was hired to work on Impulse to help sales. He did that (along with giving Ethan Van Sciever work)-he got fired.

McDuffie had editorial inference galore. His JLA still sold despite him being UNHAPPY and even admitting to it. Lets not forget how Milestone got screwed-DC only wanted Static but wasted time and money getting the rest only to NOT allow anyone to use them as Gail Simon pointed out.

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".

How many of those books that made it later got SCREWED over? Like Jaime Reyes? Cassandra Cain? Steel? SUperboy, Impulse and others who bit buried or dumped into bad books once their solo runs ended.

How do you tell McKeever that he was NOT writing Static black enough? When the man went to Static's Co-CREATOR (we won't talk about how Dc did Mike Davis) for advice.

Where was Dan when Igle and Stuart were catching all sorts of heck for Jason Rusch?

[Kingdom X]

As a Titans fan my opinion of him is very low. His editorial guidelines was bad, sometimes stupid, and affected and ruined the DC Universe for good.
Obviuosly some good works during his reign happened too.

^This. It will never cease to amaze me how this company managed to consistently degrade and diminish one of it’s most popular franchises.

[sunofdarkchild]

Didio has skills, but they are in marketing, not in storytelling or 'editing.' Whenever he tried to tell a story it was clear he was truly horrible at it, and many of his editorial decisions were based on getting short-term sales without taking into account the quality of the stories or the long-term effects on the franchises. Under his tenure DC became a place that was all about 'writing through death' instead of writing through characters. Killing Sue Dibny, killing Stephanie Brown, killing Tim Drake's dad, Barry Allen's mom. None of these were necessary or natural progressions of any stories. The same goes for wanting to kill Dick Grayson in Infinite Crisis, or things like Amazons Attack. These were done mostly for cheap shock value even when the writers were against it. It wasn't about 'what stories are there to tell with this character,' it was 'what gimmick can boost sales for a couple of months.' This made the exceptions like Grant Morrison's Batman run or BQM's Batgirl stand out all the more, because they actually had stories to tell.

[godisawesome]

I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m curious for some feedback.

While there are plenty of New 52 haters who blame Didio for it, are there any New 52 fans who, even if they liked the intial launch, feel Didio should bear some blame for its eventual collapse?

I’m thinking of how much stronger some of those New 52 books started out as before eventually slipping into chaotic instability that either had some tie to Didio or to one of his subordinates that he should have nipped in the bud when he could. The original Batwoman creative team quitting after a last minute interference on their marriage plan, Berganza’s mess in the Superman books only spiraling even further out of control, the bad gimmick ideas like What the New 52 and that weird era where Hal had a power glove, Superman was going through Truth, and Batman was Gordon....

The New 52 had plenty of gold books and creative teams, but it feels like Didio excercised no quality control and tended to run off promising or established writers, sometimes right after strong runs, all while heading towards the next ill-planned Big Event.

I mean, I know Scot Lobdell has his fans for Red Hood and that Damage book, but there was a period where Lobdell could engender bad blood for both what he put in the book and did outside of it but still get multiple books that were arguably outside his actual skillset and ability to produce, while guys like Andy Diggle, George Perez, Marc Andreyko, and Kylo Higgins were losing books or quitting.

[Bruce Wayne]

I mean, I know Scot Lobdell has his fans for Red Hood and that Damage book, but there was a period where Lobdell could engender bad blood for both what he put in the book and did outside of it but still get multiple books that were arguably outside his actual skillset and ability to produce, while guys like Andy Diggle, George Perez, Marc Andreyko, and Kylo Higgins were losing books or quitting.

DC was suffering from a bad case of nepotism during New 52. Lobdell (along with Nocienti/Mackie/Defalco/Liefeld) getting jobs at DC was absolutely due to Harras being given the EiC job at DC and putting his people in. You had a similar situation where Zub was hired for BoP only to be fired before even one issue was released and replaced with Christy Marx, who apparently didn't even pitch for the job, because she and Didio worked together at Mainframe during the 90s.

I think the constant creative music chairs you see on New 52 was directly a result of management collectively having a case of ADHD where plans were always changing. For example DC for New 52 was building towards a Wildstorm crossover which never happened due to various reasons that probably included sales. I think this is very endemic to how Didio ran things. You can see similar patterns when Idelson was in charge of Wonder Woman/Superman/Action Comics after Infinite Crisis where there was a constantly shifting creative music chairs with a constant litany of new writers coming in and old ones quitting. Or in the caste of Wonder Woman where you had a bad case of editorial imposing its own ideas on creators like Simone wanting to use Rucka's interpretation of the Greek Gods only to be blocked by higher ups or how editorial reworked Rucka's plans for WW into Amazons Attacks and then put in new writers who were easier to control to implement th0se plans.