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

[zvrk]

It wasn't needed it at all in the first place, but hey when youth complex, poor management and lack of imagination join forces all you get is hype and more problems than the ones you had in the first place.

[Pinsir]

It was honestly too perfect.

[Jadeb]

Personally, I think the problem was the same issue that plagues DC to this day: “Reboot” implies they’re clearing the decks for a fresh new era of storytelling ... but they aren’t really interested in a new era of storytelling. They’re interested in repackaging the usual for an aging fanbase that doesn’t want change. So, yeah, I don’t think they’re “planning” these reboots well, because they’re not really reboots — they’re short-term sales stunts. The new status quo won’t last more than a few years, so why bother? DC no longer needs to be concerned about building a cohesive universe for long-term storytelling, because “long-term” no longer fits into the sales strategy.

[noisebloom]

Changing characters and their backstories is probably never going to go over very well unless you have some way of keeping that history intact. Fans invest so much in the progression of characters that it came off as DC saying "these things that happened don't really matter".

Flashpoint was excellent, but then it was just like... what? Not clear at all as to if there was a strong top-level vision for the "reboot". Rebirth was closer to a proper reboot, but the fact that Doomsday Clock took so long to get done meant that things didn't quite fit right and left a lot of unanswered questions.

[HandofPrometheus]

I also think it wasn't needed. If Batman and Green Lantern were able to keep their continuities and still sell well, then what exactly was the point? This also showed how bad this was planned since two properties didn't bother to reboot which even caused more confusion.

Si many favorites were wiped clean and either came back as the worst versions of themselves or haven't even been reintroduced at all.

[Citizen Kane]

10 years, eh? I remember the announcement like it wasn't even that long ago...

And when it was announced, I was completely disinterested with the New52 as soon as they confirmed it was a reboot. Even now, I barely have any trades, floppies, or collections from that era, save for a few outliers.

[Stanlos]

They blew up EVERYTHING only to redo the same stories only told in an inferior fashion

[ducklord]

The thing about the New 52 is that, in hindsight, it is painfully obvious that it was never supposed to happen. And that's why it very quickly started falling apart.

Looking back at Flashpoint, you can tell that it was never intended to be a full-on reboot of the DCU. Barry was supposed to put the DCU back together at the end, with whatever continuity nips and tucks the DC editors wanted (maybe an end to the Super-marriage, perhaps). But the whole business with Pandora was a last-minute alteration to the story, and it shows.

Given that it was a last-minute thing, it's no wonder that so many of the titles weren't on the same page. And when an entire line of titles that are nominally in a shared universe isn't on the same page, stuff flies apart. Continuity, if you cared about such things, really just plain disappeared for several years at the start of the New 52.

And that's not even taking into account some of the editorial decisions and quality of some of the titles. Batgirl wasn't a bad title, but man, regressing her from Oracle was an odd choice. Putting Rob Liefeld on *three* titles doesn't exactly scream "striding boldly into the second decade of the 21st century." Emo Lobo. Whatever the heck Lodbell thought he was doing with Starfire in that first issue of Outlaws. All those weird little mini-series and half-series that looked for all the world like DC was cleaning out their rejected character reboot proposal drawers.

Seriously, the fact that it wasn't chucked within a couple of years was something of a miracle.

[BruceWayneJr.]

They gave me a jumping-off point and I took advantage.

They blew up EVERYTHING only to redo the same stories only told in an inferior fashion

It's the circle of life.

[superduperman]

The irony of this is that if Didio had made New 52 an alternate universe, he could have had his world without sidekicks like he wanted. It makes you wonder if he was afraid it wouldn't work if it had competition with the previous universe.

[LastSonOfShaolin]

I'm only a casual comic book fan but I just wanted to say I hadn't collected comics in years before I wandered into my local comic store in the summer of 2010 and took a chance on the latest Batgirl monthly. I fell in love with this book immediately and got every single issue in the series. I also got into Dini's Zatanna series as well during this time.

I was so upset when the New 52 started shortly after and those two books specifically got cancelled that I didn't even bother with jumping on board with the New 52.

I know I'm just one random insignificant fan but I thought it was funny how I got back into DC comics 6 or 7 months before the reboot. Then that ended my return when it was supposed to do the opposite. Bring new fans in.

[Lightning63]

The stories themselves are good but the whole thing just suffered from poor management. You could tell that they were unsure if they wanted a hard or a soft reboot and were unsure as to what history was kept and which was cut.

[9th.]

They half assed it and didn't stick with it all the way. You can't have your cake and eat it too, either you reboot or you don't.

[captchuck]

I thought it was a cheesy way to try to get fans to buy 52 comics+ per month. It made me buy fewer DC Comics.

[John Venus]

-It was rushed. Poorly planned. Everything was tonally the same. The new designs sucked.

-It should have just been a relaunch with minor tweaks to continuity like Zero Hour. It couldn't even fix what reboots are suppose to fix such as characters with convoluted backstories (Donna Troy, the Hawks) or characters whose backstories were beginning to strain credibility such as most of the JSA (admit it, only Alan had a credible explanation for his longevity).

-Fixing what's not broken (Wonder Woman's origin, skinny Amanda Waller, sexy Lobo).

-Letting biases and poor marketing decisions override good story telling. Just because you don't like Cass Cain, Wally West, Helena Bertinelli, Stephanie Brown, doesn't mean those characters don't have fan bases or people who are willing to pay you to publish more adventures featuring them.

They could have done an ultimate universe or they could have let the old Post-Crisis universe become the new Earth-2, finally letting characters age and retire out of their roles and the new main universe feature the younger, hipper version of classic superheroes. It could have been done. They just went about it in the worst possible way.

There were some good titles but we could have had that without trading away the ones that came before.. Flushing down decades of story telling in an era where building a body work mattered the most was a terrible idea.