It's been ten years since New 52. What went wrong?

[HsssH]

They had plenty of goofy and wacky during DCYou phase.

[superduperman]

You could somewhat argue it's similar treatment that other characters have received as well by the editorial groups in charge - Wally West getting banished into limbo, Wonder Woman’s multiple reboots, and other sundry characters.

It’s a kind of weird “scorched earth policy” they sometimes applied seemingly from arbitrary and unfounded beliefs about marketing - that it’s better to rub salt in a wound and declare something never happened rather than just not feature those elements any more.

I always felt with Superman, the answers were staring them in the face both times and they neglected it twice - the New 52 should have launched with the “modern day” timeline featuring Lois and Clark married while the Action Comics “past” featured single-and-ready-to-mingle Clark, and just have the Justice League books take on him and Diana dating being in a nebulous past as well, then the Rebirth timeline should have just had a “time skip” take place to feature Clark and Lois married with Jon.

Yeah, it would have been somewhat sloppy, but not nearly as sloppy as the “burn what we were doing before!” approach.

I'm kind of of the belief that they either need to go back to the pre-Crisis continuity and kind of just bump things forward about five years where Superman and Lois are married with a baby son or a very hard reboot where no one's favorite stories get special treatment and exemptions. Either do it or don't. And if you do it, don't be afraid to defend your decisions. If you start from scratch, go back to Dick as Robin and Wally as Kid Flash. And be honest with your audience. "Look, the previous continuity was kind of a mess, you all know that, so just kind of bear with us here while we clean things up a bit." If they feel the need to bump things up from there, that's fine. But sit down and hash it out beforehand in a way they didn't in 1986. This "don't tell the audience what's going on behind the scenes" crap is part of what's frustrating fans. Us not knowing why they make some of the decisions that they do is part of what's running people off.

I think the most stable continuity that DC has right now is the Young Justice cartoon. Because that's exactly what they did. They started from the beginning and when they bumped things up, they told us beforehand. It's a fully functional universe that you can go backward or forward in with any of the characters. No one's coming along and saying "You know what? Ignore all of season three. None of that ever happened. But all the characters introduced in season three? We're keeping those and you don't know how they got there." DC has been playing catch up with Marvel in almost every area of media even though they came along first.

[godisawesome]

I'm kind of of the belief that they either need to go back to the pre-Crisis continuity and kind of just bump things forward about five years where Superman and Lois are married with a baby son or a very hard reboot where no one's favorite stories get special treatment and exemptions. Either do it or don't. And if you do it, don't be afraid to defend your decisions. If you start from scratch, go back to Dick as Robin and Wally as Kid Flash. And be honest with your audience. "Look, the previous continuity was kind of a mess, you all know that, so just kind of bear with us here while we clean things up a bit." If they feel the need to bump things up from there, that's fine. But sit down and hash it out beforehand in a way they didn't in 1986. This "don't tell the audience what's going on behind the scenes" crap is part of what's frustrating fans. Us not knowing why they make some of the decisions that they do is part of what's running people off.

I think the most stable continuity that DC has right now is the Young Justice cartoon. Because that's exactly what they did. They started from the beginning and when they bumped things up, they told us beforehand. It's a fully functional universe that you can go backward or forward in with any of the characters. No one's coming along and saying "You know what? Ignore all of season three. None of that ever happened. But all the characters introduced in season three? We're keeping those and you don't know how they got there." DC has been playing catch up with Marvel in almost every area of media even though they came along first.

One interesting contrast between Young Justice’s POV and the New 52 was that the YJ timeline has an ingrown desire to shift, change, and evolve in multiple ways, while the New 52 clearly regarded a “stable status quo” as a preferable ideal to aspire to... which ironically wound up resulting in greater inconsistency and arbitrarily change, because DC editorial was constantly pursuing that status quo in the sloppiest, most inorganic ways.

That’s arguably more where you can see the difference, rather than just continuity - every odd element of the old continuity that survived into the New 52 was the result of someone at DC believing it was part of the “stable status quo” they wanted... but often only in a crazy, clearly biased and often detached manner. At the same time, every mind-boggling stubborn and seemingly spiteful attempt to render other elements “verboten” was also arising from the same biased and detached “stable status quo” idea.

So you get a parade of Green Lanterns and Robins, but a loathing of even mentioning other Batgirls or Flashes, and a crazily facial ting approach to Wonder Woman and Superman continuity that clearly runs more off a desire to “get it right this time” more than anything else.

[Pinsir]

Eeeeeehhhh, it happened quite a lot during the New 52 era. I'm not saying there weren't any books to like during the New 52, but there were quite a lot of not-good books, and a lot of the goings-on behind-the-scenes seemed to suggest that they didn't really have a solid plan moving forward. It was very much haphazard.

Not with the same frequency and rarely resulting in the amount of bad blood and burned bridges.

Out of 52 books though, I'm not sure if these creative departures are all that significant given the numbers were dealing with and not all departures are equal either. I mean, Rob Liefield's departure wasn't a major blow to the industry.

My major point will always be; look at the 5 years that proceeded the New 52 and look at the 5 years of the New 52 and compare and contrast the quality of comics in both eras. The New 52 is a vast improvement. The only comics I think I've read from that period were by Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns and their work continued into the New 52 (I have read the Wonder Woman comics too, but I've read all WW comics so its a wash).

Keep in mind, I really only read comics that are highly recommended and I'm not that big a fan of the Post-Crisis continuity either.

[ducklord]

I've been mulling over line-wide reboots, restarts, etc. And let's face it people, pulling these things off is HARD.

With that in mind, let's compare and contrast of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the New 52, the only times (until recently) that the whole DCU got totally turned upside-down on purpose.

Crisis on Infinite Earths
Build-Up
For over a year, the Monitor hovered over the DCU, sometimes providing super-villains to "test" heroes, sometimes just observing. Something big was brewing.

The Main Story
The Anti-Monitor, the most one-note menace in DC history, eats most of the multiverse, but gags on the final five Earths. Lots of characters die real deaths, universes are fused, and a new timeline emerges.

Re-reading it, it's big on grandeur, but low on thematic coherence. The big deaths still hit hard, but it's not exactly what you would put in front of someone to convince them that "super-hero comics are cool!" It's for fans of the, DCU, and boy does it deliver on that front. I mean, it's got Fireman Farrell, for pete's sake!

Crossovers
Crisis occurred in the days before event comics had "auxiliary" mini-series and specials. As such, CoIE crossed over over into just about every DC comic being published. It was insane. The coordination levels between the titles were sometimes a bit off, but considering that it was a quantum leap forward for DC, it was danged impressive.

The Immediate Aftermath
An interesting thing about CoIE is how LITTLE immediately changed aftwerward. All of the books continued onward with their existing numbering schemes and storyline. The multiverse was gone, but the two books that were most affected by it (All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc.) plodded along for a few months with the same status quo. It helped that two of the characters that were about to get significantly rebooted (Superman and Wonder Woman) weren't part of the JLA at the time, so their absence from the greater DCU could be ignored for a few months.

The First Big Changes
In rapid succession, a few big things happen over the course of a year.
1. Superman reboots, wiping out his history as Superboy (hi there Legion, sucks to be you), the existence of any other living Kryptonians (hi again, Legion), and his membership in the JLA (whyyyyy?). This reboot was mostly annoying for the Legion, but otherwise was manageable-ish.
2. The JSA, which is now part of Earth-clutter, is shuttled off-stage with the Last Days of the Justice Society, and the All-Star Squadron finally catches up with the Crisis, eliminating all the Earth-Two dopplegangers from Golden Age continuity. This mostly sucks for Power Girl, Fury II, and the Seven Soldiers of Victory, who spend most of the next 30 years casting about for suitable replacement parents, origins, and team members with varying degrees of success.
3. Finally, the rebooted Wein/Perez Wonder Woman debuts. It's damn good, but her origin is set in the present-day, mucking up JLA history somewhat irreparably, and *permanently* screwing up Donna Troy (like, forever).

Later on, a couple more big-time continuity bumps eventually kicked in:
4. Hawkworld, by dint of not putting a "15 years ago" caption at the start of its mini-series, *permanently* screws up Hawkman.
5. Captain Marvel undergoes a reboot, but it doesn't take, so he's rebooted again. Since no one was particularly invested in Earth-S continuity, everyone seems to take this in stride.

Lingering Effects
Rather amazingly, the Crisis doesn't really continue rocking the DCU after that. The Legion continues to get slapped around for a few years, and Donna Troy and the Hawkpeople remain completely hosed, but the DCU as a whole settles into a pretty stable configuration. Earth-2's history gets more-or-less neatly folded together with Earth-1's, and most of the characters from Earth's S and 4 get brand-spanking new origins (Earth-X's history just gets ignore). Plus or minus a few tweaks (Zero Hour, notably), the same continuity stays in place for nearly two decades.

Wrapping Up
Even though CoIE is, no doubt about it, a continuity-shaking event across the entire DCU, it didn't change all that much for the ongoing titles. Also, even though it did erase big non-trivial chunks of history (the Golden Age dopplegangers, Wonder Woman in toto, Superboy), it also added a great deal to the DCU by establishing a shared history from the Golden Age through the modern age, rather than merely a parallel one. And the results were remarkably stable in the long run.

The New 52
Build Up
As close to none as one can possibly imagine. The New 52 came about as the result of a last-minute change to a Flash-centric summer crossover series. Even within that series, there were zero, zilch, nada bits of foreshadowing that the series would ultimately lead to a line-wide reboot. It was about as sudden as one could imagine.

The Main Story
Barry Allen, alleged veteran time-traveling speedster, does something spectacularly stupid, spews Speed Force across the space-time continuum, and creates a dystopian timeline in which Batman is even grimmer and grittier, and Grifter is somehow an important character. Eventually Eobard Thawne is stabbed to death, Barry learns an important lesson, and some random lady who doesn't even have the courtesy of lurking portentously in the shadows during the rest of the event shows up to reboot the DCU, while hinting that she'll have an important role to play in the future (spoiler alert: she won't)

I snark, but the actual mini-series wasn't that bad. It was sharply focused on its lead character (Barry) as he navigated through the wacky hellscape timeline he'd accidentally created. The third act reversal was nifty (it wasn't Thawne's fault, it was Barry's), even though you could see it coming a mile away. And the feels near the finish line were solid. I would even go so far as to say that, minus those ham-fisted edits to modify the ending, Flashpoint is a better standalone story than CoIE. Perez's art is still superior, though

Crossovers
Flashpoint did not crossover into the main DCU. It was a classic "Summer Annual" style event, with mini-series and specials diving deep into how effed up the Flashpoint timeline was. I'm sure some of them were good, but I honestly don't remember anymore, 'cause all those characters got erased when Barry "fixed" everything... as you knew he would. So let's move on to...

Immediate Aftermath
To DC's credit, the New 52 started *immediately*. All titles got a new #1. None of this "Mekanique holds back the Crisis until Roy Thomas can figure out what to do" malarkey. Everyone's got collars, Liefeld's on Hawk and Dove, and it's all-new and all-different and totally happening in the now, now, now! Whoo!

Except of course, for the Batman and Green Lantern titles, which were way too popular to interrupt their stories. They just got new numbers.

The First Big Changes
Unlike Crisis, which only had a handful of big changes, the New 52 had dozens. The problem was, they were sometimes difficult to tease out. Among the biggies:
1) There was no Golden Age of heroes in the New 52. All the costumed heroes had shown up during the last 5-10 years.
2) The Teen Titans had never existed as a group until now. Or had they? Maybe?
3) Cyborg was a founding member of the JLA.
4) Wonder Woman's history had been rebooted to facilitate murderous Amazons.
5) Ma and Pa Kent were dead again.
6) Barbara Gordon was Batgirl again... and may have been Oracle once?

It Gets Worse
It soon became apparent that the New 52 continuity was a roiling crapshoot. Several titles that, in hindsight, had clearly been intended for a pre-52 continuity had to be massively reworked, and were eventually cancelled. Others had ugly editorial edits inflicted on them. Other titles seemed like rejected mini-series revamps for characters that were given the green light to fill out a line.

Trying To Fix It
Within a few years, DC tries to start unwinding the damage. The New 52 Superman is killed off(!) and replaced/merged with his post-Crisis counterpart, confusing EVERYONE. The older Titans remember that, hey, we WERE a group after all. Almost everyone ditches the furshlugginer collars. Emo Lobo is trapped in a bottle and stuffed into a nameless void, never to be seen again. Geoff Johns tries to blame it all on Dr. Manhattan, a blue naked stand in for Dan Didio. Wally West returns, and absolutely nothing bad happens to him. Wonder Woman's origins are rebooted a couple more times to wipe out the sailor-killing and man-rape. Ma and Pa Kent are alive again. The JSA returns. A decade later, nearly ALL of the New 52's continuity changes have been wiped away like a jelly stain, leaving...

Lingering Effects
Even though the current-day DCU has been kinda/sorta returned to a post-Crisis state, the New 52's effects still linger. Not so much in the continuity itself, which appears to be gelling somewhat, but in the sense that, at any given moment DC might to decide, in a corporate-driven panic, to toss the whole thing over a cliff again for a short-term gain in sales. The mid-90's/early-2000's DCU felt weighty... it had flaws (Donna Troy), but fans never had the feeling that it was just going to up and disappear. Nowadays, even though the immediate effects of the New 52 have for the most part been erased, the DCU continues to feel like a very fragile place.

In Summary
Markovia is a land of contrasts, and I should get back to work.

[ssupes]

I feel like the Superman books were already in chaos before Convergence thanks to “Truth,” though they’d been in chaos before the New 52 because of Grounded. I’d argue the issue both events exposed was that DC was willing to blame aspects of the character for their problems s managing him before evaluating the editorial board for Superman.

"Truth" was after convergence not before, in fact after piecing together what happened after rebirth I'm pretty sure that Truth was a result of convergence.

[HsssH]

"Truth" was after convergence not before, in fact after piecing together what happened after rebirth I'm pretty sure that Truth was a result of convergence.

Interesting thought. Post-Convergence Superdad mini did place him in New 52 world so maybe initial plan was to keep New 52 but phase out Superbro? But once DCYou flopped they decided to get rid of him entirely.

[Digifiend]

I've been mulling over line-wide reboots, restarts, etc. And let's face it people, pulling these things off is HARD.

With that in mind, let's compare and contrast of the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the New 52, the only times (until recently) that the whole DCU got totally turned upside-down on purpose.

Crisis on Infinite Earths
Build-Up
For over a year, the Monitor hovered over the DCU, sometimes providing super-villains to "test" heroes, sometimes just observing. Something big was brewing.

The Main Story
The Anti-Monitor, the most one-note menace in DC history, eats most of the multiverse, but gags on the final five Earths. Lots of characters die real deaths, universes are fused, and a new timeline emerges.

Re-reading it, it's big on grandeur, but low on thematic coherence. The big deaths still hit hard, but it's not exactly what you would put in front of someone to convince them that "super-hero comics are cool!" It's for fans of the, DCU, and boy does it deliver on that front. I mean, it's got Fireman Farrell, for pete's sake!

Crossovers
Crisis occurred in the days before event comics had "auxiliary" mini-series and specials. As such, CoIE crossed over over into just about every DC comic being published. It was insane. The coordination levels between the titles were sometimes a bit off, but considering that it was a quantum leap forward for DC, it was danged impressive.

The Immediate Aftermath
An interesting thing about CoIE is how LITTLE immediately changed aftwerward. All of the books continued onward with their existing numbering schemes and storyline. The multiverse was gone, but the two books that were most affected by it (All-Star Squadron and Infinity Inc.) plodded along for a few months with the same status quo. It helped that two of the characters that were about to get significantly rebooted (Superman and Wonder Woman) weren't part of the JLA at the time, so their absence from the greater DCU could be ignored for a few months.

The First Big Changes
In rapid succession, a few big things happen over the course of a year.
1. Superman reboots, wiping out his history as Superboy (hi there Legion, sucks to be you), the existence of any other living Kryptonians (hi again, Legion), and his membership in the JLA (whyyyyy?). This reboot was mostly annoying for the Legion, but otherwise was manageable-ish.
2. The JSA, which is now part of Earth-clutter, is shuttled off-stage with the Last Days of the Justice Society, and the All-Star Squadron finally catches up with the Crisis, eliminating all the Earth-Two dopplegangers from Golden Age continuity. This mostly sucks for Power Girl, Fury II, and the Seven Soldiers of Victory, who spend most of the next 30 years casting about for suitable replacement parents, origins, and team members with varying degrees of success.
3. Finally, the rebooted Wein/Perez Wonder Woman debuts. It's damn good, but her origin is set in the present-day, mucking up JLA history somewhat irreparably, and *permanently* screwing up Donna Troy (like, forever).

Lilith was screwed up as well. The dumb thing is, George Perez was the New Teen Titans artist, and he's the one who rebooted WW as a writer, so the blame lies at his feet. Did he not know about Crisis (which was also his work) when he drew Lilith's Olympian Titans related origin? If he did he should've warned Marv Wolfman, the NTT writer.

[superduperman]

Lingering Effects
Even though the current-day DCU has been kinda/sorta returned to a post-Crisis state, the New 52's effects still linger. Not so much in the continuity itself, which appears to be gelling somewhat, but in the sense that, at any given moment DC might to decide, in a corporate-driven panic, to toss the whole thing over a cliff again for a short-term gain in sales. The mid-90's/early-2000's DCU felt weighty... it had flaws (Donna Troy), but fans never had the feeling that it was just going to up and disappear. Nowadays, even though the immediate effects of the New 52 have for the most part been erased, the DCU continues to feel like a very fragile place.

I think this is the biggest problem with it is that the DCU just feels like anything can be thrown out at any time for any editorial reason they want. New 52 Superman was just killed off at the last minute (there was a Superman meets Superman team up issue that was supposed to happen between him and Superdad that was retooled at the last minute where he was killed off and Superdad just straight up replaced him) Year One, which was Batman's origin for over 20 years despite the constant reboots Superman got, was just thrown out and replaced with something way more convoluted and not nearly as good. Something occurred to me last night that I hadn't realized before: Almost none of my DC books are canon anymore while all of my Marvel ones still are. That's three shelves worth of books that just straight up never happened in the current continuity. That's insane. All of the DC books I get now are out of continuity because there's no real point in getting books that won't be canon in five/ten years.

[prepmaster]

New 52 was so great that it lead to Rebirth. It has to be toxic fans that ruin everything.

[BlueRuggo]

Rebirth built upon and was made great by the New 52.

[prepmaster]

New 52 destroys continuity for short term sales boost

[BlueRuggo]

The continuity wasn't even that consistent beforehand. Attempts to soft reboot back to Pre52 have probably hurt more than helped, and almost nothing can be taken seriously anymore.

[prepmaster]

Rebirth built upon and was made great by the New 52.

Rebirth was an attempt to fix the flaws of the New 52.

[BlueRuggo]

Rebirth was an attempt to perfect the New 52 by bringing the best of the old and the new to their accompanying titles. It was mostly successful too.