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

[DrNewGod]

1. Foremost, they did not learn any lessons from CoIE: everybody else got a cold boot, but Morrison's Batman and John's Green Lantern went uninterrupted.
2. The previous created a view DC was run for the benefit of a few elite creators, and the broad story that some fans treasured was irrelevant.
3. Fans of DC's Legacy features (JSA and LoSH, in particular) felt kicked to the curb
4. It was uneven: the Action Comics reboot was excellent, while the Outlaws and Hawkman titles...? Yikes!

It wasn't a bad idea, it was a terrible execution.

[OBrianTallent]

-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 Flushing down decades of story telling in an era of building a body work was a terrible idea.

This is pretty much my thinking as well. New 52 was the ultimate vanity project.

[John Venus]

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.

I had a similar experience. I became a fan of Wally West Flash thanks to JLU. After years of reading just Batman comics I decided to pick up his ongoing and it turned out to be his last issue because the title was going to be cancelled so they could bring back Barry Allen; a character who has been dead for the entire duration of my existence till that point.

There were plenty of people who had similar experiences to yours. There were readers who grew up with the 2003 Teen Titans show who picked up Red Hood & The Outlaws and they were turned off by the over sexualized Starfire in that title. The people at the top had no idea what the new generation of readers wanted. And before anyone says it, yes, Starfire has always been a highly sexualized character but it was the execution that mattered. There was no uproar over how Connor depicted her in her ongoing series or how Perez depicted her in NTT.

[LastSonOfShaolin]

-

-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.

I use to be one of those people who didn't understand why anyone would like different versions of characters. Like why would you want Wally over Barry? Or Kyle over Hal? Or Donna over Diana? Matrix over Kara?

I realized quickly once I started reading Millers Batgirl what a fool I was in thinking that. Now Stephanie is my Batgirl. I have nothing against Barbara. I respect her as a character and as the original. But Steph just spoke to me more. This is why I never bothered to try Babs return to the cowl in the New 52.

And like you mentioned in your other post quoting me Wally was your Flash. I can feel your pain when Johns brought back Allen.

[married guy]

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.

This.

The New 52 would have worked better as a "Ultimate' universe.
DC then COULD have had their cake and eat it too.
The DCU with all the legacy characters running around the DCUU with the New 52.
The Jim Lee redesigns were all pretty ugly too....

[Digifiend]

-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).

Most of the JSA are legacy characters nowadays so don't need longevity explanations. Jay's longevity explanation is the Speed Force - frankly at this point they should use that to have him skip over the 1960s to the 2000s, not unlike Max Mercury. Wildcat's is a magical nine lives, which he can replenish if he doesn't lose them all in quick succession. But how does that explain why he doesn't age? He doesn't get younger when he dies, he's just permanently stuck in his 60s. Pat Dugan, STRIPE, is also from World War II, but was time displaced, then of course became Stargirl's stepfather. Ma Hunkel, the original Red Tornado and grandma to Cyclone, doesn't have any explanation at all and probably should be dead by now, as she wasn't even young in the 1940s. They need to either explain how she can still be alive, or kill her off and retcon Cyclone to be her great-granddaughter.

[failo.legendkiller]

N52 destroyed DC continuity for good.

[Restingvoice]

This year marks the ten year anniversary of the New 52 continuity reboot. Now, I know we've been down this road before but I'd be curious to hear what you all think of it and why it didn't work. What could have been done to fix it? What should it have done differently? Was there any way it could have worked? What would you have done differently?

My first drop was when they include crossover issues in each series respective trade but the special issue one only in the crossover trade, so if I'm following each series I would have to buy everything, double dipping just to get that special issue one.

Either collect them all in one book or in each of the series. Don't do both.

My second drop was the inconsistency between titles, the first time was when exactly the Justice League know each other's identity, three second was Aquaman sleeping through Forever Evil when he's supposed to be captured. The Aquaman one is especially confounding because it's by the same writer.

Perez said he had to keep adjusting stories because Morrison kept his stories secret, and Johns... I don't get it why he made Aquaman and Forever Evil don't match. What are you doing. If you're working on the same universe and character, share your story, if you're writing both stories... I don't get why it has to be inconsistent.

My boiling point was the gosh awful new back stories they gave to certain characters followed immediately by an awful crossover stories, what a waste of money.

I don't care if it's Lobdell or editorial. Just because it's a reboot doesn't mean you can just do whatever. Characters have fans. Do you want them to buy comics or not. Even as a new fan, I was like... New 52 Tim is so unlikeable and these stories just make no sense.

My annoyance increase every time they gave Superman angsty story where he got possessed and turned violent, and there's a lot of that in New 52. By the time Final Days of Superman roll out, I was like, sure, just... mercy kill him at this point.

I get it you want to make Superman a lonely alien, but if you keep piling up on the angst it stopped being sympathetic and just become annoying.

[Jekyll]

Should have never happened and was a blatant assassination of every non silver age character.

[Powerboy]

Personally I felt it was general confusion not just as a reader but you could tell even the teams didn’t know what the hell was going on. It goes beyond what was canon/not canon. When George Perez comes out years later and states he’s pretty sure chunks of his Superman run weren’t written by him you’ve got issues.

Honestly if your going to reboot actually reboot. Everybody starts at zero including Batman and Green Lantern. No protecting characters history’s because the writers involved. To this day Earth-2 is the only book I liked as it’s actually lived up to its promise of something new.

This was the Number One complaint about the Post-Crisis reboot in 1986 as well. If you're going to reboot, then reboot. Don't vaguely say this happened but that didn't or have origins followed by a gap of several years so you can insert vague and sometimes inconsistent events into those years. Start on Day One and tell the whole story.

It seems like DC learned nothing from the Post-Crisis mistakes and made them all again in 2011.

[Pinsir]

Lol, ya'll mad at the New 52 for killing the thing that you liked that was already dead. Pre-52 DC comics was garbage, worse than the 1950 comics when the industry was actually dying.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I got into DC comics a bit before the New 52. I didn't mind the pre-52 comics but I wasn't attached to them.

To me, the New 52 felt like someone throwing paint against the wall and seeing what sticks. So you didn't have faith in the universe and world building.

[Coco Loco]

The New 52 worked until it didn’t. It achieved its primary goal, which was to sell a truckload of comics. The New 52, along with the growing success of the Walking Dead, gave a shot in the arm to the Direct Market at a time when it was really hurting.

Its inherent flaw IMO was forcing everything design and tone wise into generic superhero fisticuffs with faux-Jim Lee art and character designs. That sort of thing can be done well and sometimes was in the New 52, but the way they went about it removed the weird corners of the DC Universe. Once upon a time DC would be publishing JLI and the O’Neil/ Cowan Question at the same time, and it was this weird patchwork world that was quirky and allowed for all types of stories. The New 52 minimized that in favor of having a “consistent” universe.

I also think they pruned the old continuity more than they really needed to. In some ways it was a victim of its own success, because once it was a hit DC leaned into the idea of totally jettisoning everything from pre-Flashpoint, as opposed to just using the New 52 as a hard relaunch.

[Johnny Thunders!]

Did it go wrong? I think Aquaman and Wonder Woman benefited from the retooling. I am not sure what has been retconned out of existence but I still enjoy reading a few of those books. Would we be talking Suicide Squad the movie or Justice League Dark if not for the New 52? The numbering issue bothered me. I wonder if my Action Comics 1,000 is truly the 1,000 issue.

[Digifiend]

Numerically, it does add up. They renumbered for New 52 but went back to Legacy numbering for Rebirth - and that legacy numbering was 52 issues after the previous one, because the 52 issue New 52 run fills that gap. Same goes for Detective Comics.