Gail Simone answers questions about the New 52

[atomicskull]

It is pretty interesting seeing people reminiscing and talking about the good and the bad of that era. James Gunn got into Suicide Squad thanks to New 52! It was the gateway to comics for a lot of people.

I tend to ignore the words of the distractors when it comes to anything. It was really cool to see people express their love for the New 52.

[atomicskull]

Yet you are.

Folks were willing to give the books a shot including those books like I Vampire that were free of drama and were actual good reads.

Lets not sit up here and think Static fans were happy. Nor Wally West, Teen Titans, Jaime Reyes and others that show DC throw whatever they could find on the wall to see if it stuck.

Creators like George Perez were not leaving because they enjoyed it. They left because it was as what Gail is pointing out.

I was in comic book stores too and guess what folks were dumping DC titles.


We got told the New 52 was planned out yet we saw some messes. Books that had to be reedited when they became trades like Teen Titans.

If they had properly planned it out-guess what it might still be going.

I don't really get into the politics of these things. I just simply buy the books and move on.

[superduperman]

Things were bad in 2011, but they weren't as bad as the early 80s when even Batman often sold under 20,000 copies a month and they were almost purchased by Marvel.

Making the reboot the result of a simple Flash story was always a mistake. The precedent, whatever you may think of its quality, was an event about 'infinite earths' as was so ridiculously massive in scale that the universe got rewritten. Even if you like Flashpoint as a story, erasing an entire continuity and starting over because Barry misses his mom makes no sense.

It could have used more time in the oven and better planning and communication. If anything they should have waited until at least January 2012 to work out the details instead of just shooting from the hip. Nu52 Superman might still be the default Superman if the writers of Action Comics and Superman had just been able to communicate with each other in the early days.

The fact that there were quality books that came out of such a hastily and poorly conceived mess is a testament to the talent DC had at the time.

As I've said before. Didio's skills like almost entirely in marketing. He doesn't know how to write or how to manage. So unfortunately more effort and thought was put into the marketing aspect of the Nu52 than anything else once you get above the level of the individual writers.

Nuperman was doomed the moment Jurgens proposed bringing back the post-Crisis Superman with a kid. I would argue Convergence to some degree killed the New 52 because it reminded fans of all the previous eras they had lost. It also came out at a time when the New 52 was falling apart due to editorial fiat. A lot of cool concepts were lost with New 52 Superman. And it angers me to think that the hate for the New 52 cost us some of those ideas. Like the T-shirt and jeans era. New 52 had one of the coolest origins for Superman. But the backlash to it made them unwilling to incorporate any elements of it into Rebirth.

[Frontier]

I wonder how much of the good that did come out of New 52 might have happened anyway. That is, was there anything good that came out during the New 52 that happened because of the New 52, or did the good stuff that came out during those years happen in spite of the New 52?

I can't answer that, myself; New 52 was a jumping off point for me, as I coincidentally found myself in financial straits almost exactly at the same time that the New 52 was being out into effect (my financial mess kicked in within a month of the New 52 starting); and I didn't bother returning to any meaningful degree until Multiversity and Convergence pulled me back in. And within a year of that, Rebirth was starting to undo the New 52. So the bulk of the time in question is not something that I experienced personally. As such, my question is genuine, not rhetorical: are there any good stories that came out of the New 52 that couldn't have happened without it?

Snyder had plans for the Court of Owls before the reboot, it was just planned with Dick still as Batman by then, and Green Lantern carried on without any change so that was always in the cards.

Geoff Johns was probably always going to do a new Aquaman book. I'm not sure if the run would've been exactly the same because the New 52 cleared the deck for a lot of what Johns did in his run.

Actually, I think Johns and Jim Lee taking over Justice League was also planned before they settled on a reboot.

[Ilan Preskovsky]

This is all proof positive, once again, what a dumpster fire the New 52 was. Not that there weren't a bunch of very fine books, especially on the fringes (though by the next year, they were either gone, editorially destroyed or just not as good anymore) but as an overall direction for both the DC Universe and DC as a company, comments by Simone and people like Phil Jimenez proves just how badly handled it was. Didio brought in new talent and some (but not many, I'd wager) new readers but he did so, clearly, by alienating plenty of their existing talent and long time readers. DC's sense of history, from the JSA to Young Justice, has long been the lifeblood of DC's shared universe, and removing that, while somehow still maintaining an even more befuddling and convoluted continuity.

If they had done the New 52 as an Ultimate Universe sort of thing, with obviously much fewer titles, it could have worked. As it was, it was doomed from the start.

[Superfly Frankenstein]

Looking at how DC was during the period right before Flashpoint, there were some interesting ideas. I liked Cornell’s run on Action. The dynamic on two Batmen was great. The possibility of Wally and Barry and Jay as Flashes, awesome. A lot of the stuff could have carried on. I always felt that after Brightest Day, Aquaman and Hawkman was getting series and Firestorm and Hawk and Dove looked promising. I saw a piece of art about 8 years ago of what Jim Lee and Johns was going to do with JLA (and it was definitely pre N52, because Supes had his red briefs on) and it looked great. I think if N52 had never happened, sales would have started to increase due to what might have been cool stories, regardless.

[nj06]

How long did the New 52 era last officially?

[Dataweaver]

September 2011 to May 2016 (the launch of Rebirth); just under five years.

[nj06]

September 2011 to May 2016 (the launch of Rebirth); just under five years.

Thanks!

Is DC currently still in the Rebirth continuity, or yet another, newer, continuity?

[Dataweaver]

*chuckle*

DC is now in the “It All Happened” continuity, where literally everything published in the main DCU is all in continuity, even the contradictory stuff. The way it works is that the continuity changes that have occurred over the years have all been acknowledged, to the extent that the characters themselves are aware of them: Superman remembers his New 52 debut, and his Secret Origins debut, and his Birthright debut, and his Man of Steel debut, and his 1956 debut, and his 1938 debut; and he's aware of everything else that ever happened to him and which continuity was in place when it happened. And so is everyone else. In theory, at least; in practice, this is too much for many people to cope with, and they've subconsciously blocked out most of this to preserve their sanity. Or they've forgotten things simply because there's just so much to remember.

[John Venus]

Is any body surprised by any of this? We heard the same thing from creators who walked out of titles due to sheer frustration. It was evident in the contradictions seen in all the books. No consistency between each creator of a title. Last minute abrupt changes. Titles that switched direction at the last minute. Bizarre and unnecessary changes to characters to the point where they might as well be different characters (*cough* Wonder Woman *cough* Lady Shiva *cough*). Same tone applied to every character regardless of whether that particular tone fit the character (*cough*Simone's own Batgirl run *cough*).

[sunofdarkchild]

To be fair, it's hard to see how Simone's Batgirl run could have turned out well no matter who was writing it. Throwing out her history as Oracle while keeping The Killing Joke in continuity was throwing out the baby while keeping the stinky bathwater. Perhaps more importantly, having a lighter tone that was more distinct from the rest of the bat-books would have made the book too similar to the BQM series which had ended literally the month before. It was either be too similar to Batman or too similar to the Stephanie Brown book, and then there would have been no point in making the switch. It was in a no-win scenario. The BQM series was far superior in pretty much every way, but it could afford to have a different tone from the rest of the line and the Cass Cain Batgirl books so it had its own identity.

[Restingvoice]

*chuckle*

DC is now in the “It All Happened” continuity, where literally everything published in the main DCU is all in continuity, even the contradictory stuff. The way it works is that the continuity changes that have occurred over the years have all been acknowledged, to the extent that the characters themselves are aware of them: Superman remembers his New 52 debut, and his Secret Origins debut, and his Birthright debut, and his Man of Steel debut, and his 1956 debut, and his 1938 debut; and he's aware of everything else that ever happened to him and which continuity was in place when it happened. And so is everyone else. In theory, at least; in practice, this is too much for many people to cope with, and they've subconsciously blocked out most of this to preserve their sanity. Or they've forgotten things simply because there's just so much to remember.

I was reading the last arc of Rebirth Wonder Woman, and there's a scene where Diana stopped Superman from helping her partnering with Max Lord because she keeps getting visions about Max Lord controlling Superman, which she didn't know if it's premonition or other things.

This matches what Barry said at the end of Death Metal about how flashes of other continuity memories will show up from time to time, and the only example I know so far.

Superman himself is the Superman Reborn, not the Post Crisis Superman transplanted to New 52 Universe at the beginning of Rebirth. That one remembers Max Lord from his experience that he's really careful of him during the Justice League vs Suicide Squad.

[Dataweaver]

You're disregarding the effects of Death Metal and Infinite Frontier. That's where the “It All Happened” continuity went into effect. Superman Reborn is merely one of the continuities that everyone now remembers.

[Zero Hunter]

None of this surprised me. When even a guy like Paul Levitz who was writing Legion again when the Nu52 hit had no idea what was going when he used to be the head guy at one point shows what a mess it was behind the scenes with no real thought or plan in place. Didio said "were rebooting" and that was the whole plan. If they had any long term overarching plan which they seemed to at one point it was scrapped without anything else planned which is why DC is such a clusterfuck right now.