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

[edpower]

COIE was epic so, even with it's problems, "Clutter-Earth" had weight to it. The New 52 came out of Flashpoint, which was a good storyline, but just that...a storyline. Hence, the whole New 52 continuity never had anymore weight to it than the temporary Flashpoint or, say, House of M timelines.

[DrNewGod]

I meant prior to Nu52 hitting though. Jay, Ted Knight and a lot of JSA's longevity was explained as them being exposed to the energy created by Ian Karkull. Even by 1999 that was straining credibility. The other thing is they never really explore what it means to have lived so long, especially since they would have lived to see people they know and love grow old and die while they remained young. Not just the heroes but their love interests as well. With Captain America, you get the whole 'man out of time' aspect. The closest I recall the JSA coming to that was Sylvester Pemberton in the Pre Crisis DCU. In JSA Classified, the writers seem to struggle to tell stories with Ted Grant because logically everyone he knew from the 40's would be dead at this point in the time line. He had no colleagues beyond the JSA, Batman and Catwoman.

IMO, if you're keeping the Pre-Flashpoint world, the answer to that would have been to start a DC title analogous to Astro City. Make a hard rule that no story in it can be set within the last (relative) 10 years, to prevent tripping over stuff that goes on with the current titles, and give people their various fixes by running features about the superheroes in times past. It also lets you run something like John's JSA, or even Infinity, Inc., without having them compete with JLA or The Teen Titans.

COIE was epic so, even with it's problems, "Clutter-Earth" had weight to it. The New 52 came out of Flashpoint, which was a good storyline, but just that...a storyline. Hence, the whole New 52 continuity never had anymore weight to it than the temporary Flashpoint or, say, House of M timelines.

Crisis also had the benefit of being something nobody had ever seen before. Over time, I've decided it's not that great of a story, no matter how large and grand, but I couldn't see it at the time I was dazzled by the sheer size and Did They Actually Do That!?!ness of it.

[HsssH]

Even ignoring COIE I don't feel like Flashpoint was a memorable event.

[Rod G]

Gatekeepers in the fandom.

Rebirth didn’t work out.


I wouldn’t be surprised if this “Linearverse” turns out to be one big dumpster fire.

[SiegePerilous02]

They failed to heed the lessons of the past. COIE was a mess and was the "Original Sin" of making DC continuity needlessly confusing in big, noticeable ways across the board and created problems that plagued the IPs to this day. This was even more poorly planned out than that with far less good coming out of it and a poorer story (Flashpoint) kicking it all off. The same mistake of rebooting some stuff but not all of it was also a major problem and just created confusion.

I liked some stuff that came out, but a lot of it could have existed with minimal changes without rebooting (just like a lot of the best stuff after COIE). I do think Morrison's Action Comics is better for Superman than most of the stuff before or since, but that's sadly only 17 issues out of a wider mess that lasted 5 years.

Rebirth started out with some promise, but I think it was in some ways even less exciting overall than New 52 and fizzled out even more quickly

[WebLurker]

Linkara sums up the problems with the new 52 well

So, long story short, DC should've made the New 52 like Marvel's Ultimate Universe?

[The Darknight Detective]

Nose dive started after Convergence.

Right. Up to that point, DC was clearly doing better than what we had been seeing prior to the New 52 regarding salea.

[edpower]

Oh also, AMAZING artist, but Jim Lee's costume designs are mediocre and his original characters are derivative and uninspired.

[godisawesome]

Bad editorial.

Personally, I never read as much dc as during New 52. Wonder Woman, Superman, Swamp thing, Animal Man, I Vampire, Demon's knights... at that time my pull list was only composed of dc comics.

But at some point (quite quickly) nothing made sense anymore, the universe was no longer coherent, dc fired its best writers, and it seemed like there was an internal battle between those who wanted to keep the old stories and those who wanted to change everything.
When you compare with Marvel, DC has the worst editorial department (if you forgot the Marvel now period). They sabotage themselves every time and depending on the author's fame they are either too intrusive in his work and disrespectful, or they let him do anything he wants. Since the new 52 I have absolutely no confidence in DC, I know that in the long run they are unable to stick to a direction.

I think that’s the most accurate take on it - the New 52 wound up losing a lot of the genuine goodwill and investment in had because of editorial groups dropping the ball in a lot of areas. The same staff weaknesses that existed before the New 52 still existed after it began, and eventually ramped up.

For instance, I’d say Superman and Wonder Woman were arguably in need of the shot-in-the-arm the New 52 provided... but they inevitably saw an eventual slip back into subpar writing and storytelling that plagued them before hand. Aquaman and Flash had arguably been doing okay because of the creative teams dealing with them... and then inevitably wound up being letdown by the editorial teams failing to secure strong talent for a long enough time. And the Batman books arguably had a good line editorial team... but were repeatedly inconvenienced by the larger editorial network that slowed down Batman Inc out of fear of Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain, and forced out Batwoman’s first creative team because of a fear of marriage.

And of course, the same problem carried over into Rebirth as well.

There was something I’d call the “Scott Lobdell Principle” going on - being willing to kowtow to editorial authority no matter how capricious it was would allow you arguably unearned freedom and opportunity. Dude was doing okay on Red Hood and the Outlaws, but everywhere else he got a start clearly had more to do with being willing to discard anything editorial didn’t like, sell whatever editorial did like, and he got plugged into places where older, more celebrated talents were pushed out of, and where young up-and-comers weren’t given any freedom.

The difference between the New 52 and Post-Crisis On Infintie Earths was editorial board strength and wisdom - dudes like Denny O’Neill and Archie Goodwin handled people and properties better than guys like Eddie Berganza and Dan Didio.

[skyvolt2000]

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.

Depends on who you were a fan of-

characters that had nothing wrong with them got screwed like Jaime Reyes and Static.

others like the Titan franchise got ruined.

We won't discuss Wally and the toxic group.

Nor the wanting to kill off John Stewart with his replacements Jessica & Simon ready to show up

ANd as someone pointed out those New 52 books are the ONLY intro for some folks to the public.

There is a reason New 52 Static is going for blood money prices.

[Alan2099]

DC took all the worst ideas from Crisis and mixed them with some of the worst ideas of the Ultimate and topped it off with a nice healthy dash of some of the worst elements of 90s image.

Then they insisted that Batman and GL hadn't changed.

[Sacred Knight]

IT'S BEEN TEN YEARS SINCE NEW 52. WHAT WENT WRONG?

Convergence would be my answer.

Convergence holds a special hatred in my heart especially for what it did to Superman, as innocuous as it seemed at the time.

[mr_crisp]

It was DC's attempt to do 'Heroes Reborn'.

[superduperman]

Convergence holds a special hatred in my heart especially for what it did to Superman, as innocuous as it seemed at the time.

If you're selling a new universe to people, maybe don't remind them of what they lost.

[hairys]

not enough good talent involved, with writers worse than artists.