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

[OBrianTallent]

New 52 was started by Didio as an attempt to bring in more readers. Unfortunately as he had stated in interviews at the time, the readers he was looking for were the people who read comics in the 90s. It seemingly never occurred to anyone that those people grew up and changed but the content they produced by and large was almost a replucant of slick, violent 90s content.
As has been said before, after they got the ball rolling there was no clue where it was going as directions changed all the time.
Then fans started asking for their favorites...where's the original Teen Titans, the original Wally West, the JSA...and all we got was mockery from the one driving the ship. Thats not a great way to win friends and influence people.
Then came along Convergence which hinted that those characters were there and gave readers hope they might be integrated into the new DC.
But they didn't.
Then came Rebirth as Geoff John's was promoted to similar status as Didio. People can say what they want, but Geoff knows what sells and how to sell it. Bringing back Wally West and hinting (again) that the JSA were around the corner and going into Doomsday clock it looked like all our favorites were about to be put on the board Then things changed all again and Didio was back in charge of the ship and things were quickly put back thevway he wanted.
Through it all, the common denominator was Dan Didio. Sure editorial re-wrote scripts, moved artists like spastic checkers but all that had to be done with allowance. Very little that happened in the last ten years happened because fans asked for it. The majority happened because Didio wanted it that way.
Thats not to say good didn't happen..there was. The majority of it though was a sabatoge of an enormous ego.

[Crazy Diamond]

Why would anyone expect the people who caused the mess to be able to clean it up and fix it? Once the likes of Dan Didio and them decided that they only wanted to cater to long-time fans who resented anything past COIE it was already over. The New 52 was their last attempt to correct the hole they'd dug themselves into but when your newest ideas are stuff like "Let's bring back Watchmen" and "We need an imprint like early Vertigo again" what does that say about the management? All the continuity stuff and dictates wouldn't have mattered if what came to replace it had been better than what was there before but instead most of the comics were mediocre at best and at worst just laughable. The few titles that I enjoyed like Dial H for Hero were already meant to be published before the New 52 and once they were put under the DC label instead of Vertigo they were dead on arrival. Selling digital comics for a dollar cheaper then raising the price to be the same as the floppies but a month late killed that as an alternative to going to the comic shop and outside of Injustice I don't think DC did much to take advantage of digital only series. It was just the same old stuff from Didio and it's amazing that he and his supporters lasted as long as they did.

[TheMaker1610]

The jarring lack of coordination between writers, no clear dorection, and the absurd editorial mandates/obstruction are what comes to my mind whenever these kind of threads pop-up
Not to say the n52 as a whole was ALL bad, but hell.. it could've done WAY better if Didio hadnt rush it because of his trademark whims..

On another note, I am still salty at how they did James Robinson dirty with the butchering of his E-2 book work.
I mean, if you give a writer a whole universe separated from the main one to work with, why in the blazing hell would you tamper with his work non-stop?

Say what you what about James Robinson, but his Earth-2 work was a gem. The E2 worldbuilding was something I can only compare to be on Hickman's level (The Apokolips War, The 5 years interlude, The New Wonders, the looming threath, The World Army, Terry Sloan'd whole character, among others)
To this day, I still consider E2 #0, "A Hero's Journey" a Masterpiece.

Taylor attempted to salvage what he could but it just wasnt the same, and Wilson just desecrated the whole thing.. E2 and Robinson deserved better..

[PennyDreadful]

The new 52 seemed to be by and for the people in charge, if you know what I mean.

[ducklord]

Wonder Tot can definitely be ignored. In fact, she was basically non-canon as soon as Teen Titans started, due to Wonder Girl being retconned as a separate character.

Man, I *knew* I should've gone with a more salient example, rather than going for the joke.

Still, there were a *lot* of Silver Age stories that were still, nominally, in canon by the time Crisis rolled around that deserved to drift away into non-canon status. To DC's credit, they were already kind of doing this on an ad hoc basis. After all, by the time Crisis rolled around, when was the last time a Flash writer had brought up Mopee*? Or a Superman writer had revisited all those stories where Lois Lane and Superman were complete jerks to each other over Clark's secret identity? Or Thomas Wayne, Jr.? In fact, I would posit that DC really didn't NEED a Crisis to quietly do away with their goofier, brain-bending stories - they were doing a fine job of it on their own.

* Submitted for your consideration: Cobalt Blue is the Mopee of the post-Crisis Flash continuity - A really bad idea that needlessly muddies up Barry Allen's origins and will never ever be mentioned again.

[Pinsir]

Wonder Tot can definitely be ignored. In fact, she was basically non-canon as soon as Teen Titans started, due to Wonder Girl being retconned as a separate character.

NO!!! Wonder Tot cannot be ignored!!!

The true Wonder Woman family is Wonder Woman, Wonder Girl, Wonder Tot and Hippolyta fighting Nuclear Man! They took this away from us! Reject modernity and embrace tradition!!!

[Restingvoice]

I mean with Wonder Girl being Donna they can just make Wonder Tot Nubia

[I'm a Fish]

I mean with Wonder Girl being Donna they can just make Wonder Tot Nubia

But Nubia is Diana's twin. How's that gonna work?

[Restingvoice]

But Nubia is Diana's twin. How's that gonna work?

Retroactive Con... is she still her twin in Infinite Frontier?

[scary harpy]

The jarring lack of coordination between writers, no clear dorection, and the absurd editorial mandates/obstruction are what comes to my mind whenever these kind of threads pop-up
Not to say the n52 as a whole was ALL bad, but hell.. it could've done WAY better if Didio hadnt rush it because of his trademark whims..

On another note, I am still salty at how they did James Robinson dirty with the butchering of his E-2 book work.
I mean, if you give a writer a whole universe separated from the main one to work with, why in the blazing hell would you tamper with his work non-stop?

Say what you what about James Robinson, but his Earth-2 work was a gem. The E2 worldbuilding was something I can only compare to be on Hickman's level (The Apokolips War, The 5 years interlude, The New Wonders, the looming threath, The World Army, Terry Sloan'd whole character, among others)
To this day, I still consider E2 #0, "A Hero's Journey" a Masterpiece.

Taylor attempted to salvage what he could but it just wasnt the same, and Wilson just desecrated the whole thing.. E2 and Robinson deserved better..

Agreed.

When I think of what could have been...

[I'm a Fish]

Retroactive Con... is she still her twin in Infinite Frontier?

She was in the backup of Immortal Wonder Woman. But, they just reincluded her in the main continuity and didn't talk about her backstory, so it's unknown right now.

[dornwolf]

The jarring lack of coordination between writers, no clear dorection, and the absurd editorial mandates/obstruction are what comes to my mind whenever these kind of threads pop-up
Not to say the n52 as a whole was ALL bad, but hell.. it could've done WAY better if Didio hadnt rush it because of his trademark whims..

On another note, I am still salty at how they did James Robinson dirty with the butchering of his E-2 book work.
I mean, if you give a writer a whole universe separated from the main one to work with, why in the blazing hell would you tamper with his work non-stop?

Say what you what about James Robinson, but his Earth-2 work was a gem. The E2 worldbuilding was something I can only compare to be on Hickman's level (The Apokolips War, The 5 years interlude, The New Wonders, the looming threath, The World Army, Terry Sloan'd whole character, among others)
To this day, I still consider E2 #0, "A Hero's Journey" a Masterpiece.

Taylor attempted to salvage what he could but it just wasnt the same, and Wilson just desecrated the whole thing.. E2 and Robinson deserved better..

God yes. So much potential until we hit the never ending misery porn that lasted until Abnett.

[ducklord]

I mean with Wonder Girl being Donna they can just make Wonder Tot Nubia

I always just figured that Wonder Tot was a fifth dimensional imp child... which conveniently explains how all those impossible stories could have happened in the first place.

Mr. Mxyzptlk - Wants to mess with Superman's head for the lulz.
Bat-Mite - Wants to help Batman fight crime.
Wonder Tot - Wants to play with Wonder Woman.
Quisp/Qwsp - Cautionary tale

[Captain Britain of Earth 20]

A) Stormwatch should of had Jackson King as leader & the Justice league international origin
B)Dick Grayson should have stayed Agent 37
C) Power girl & Huntress should have been stayed ongoing
D) Intergrate Wildstorm and Golden Age characters into an incredible alternate Earth 2

[Pinsir]

Folks...Wonder Tot is just WW as a child, where as Wonder Girl is just Wonder Woman as a teenager...you're over complicating it.