At this point, "New 52" isn't that bad at all.

[MajorHoy]

A surprisingly not crap article from Polygon that interviews a bunch of the people involved: https://www.polygon.com/comics/22679...source=twitter

Lmao

From what Vordan quoted:

. . . How we got to 52 was an interesting thing, because originally it was 40. Realistically, the math was something like, it was like 10 books a week. There was consistency of what you were putting out there. It seemed like that was the [number] that people would be able to absorb in the course of a week. But ultimately, we needed a little more product, so we pushed it up to 48. I had it at 48, and Jim had it at 52. When I asked him, “why 52?” He goes, “You had a lot of success with that weekly series 52. It seems like a lucky number.” And I mean, when you have logic like that, how do you argue?

I'm wondering about that "lucky number" bit because if 40 "was like 10 books a week", did anybody realize 52 would be 13 books a week?

Holy triskaidekaphobia!

[Bruce Wayne]

Didio era DC was never very good with long term planning or dealing with the consequences of their ideas. It was like the cat with ADHD constantly chasing the pointer.

[Robanker]

Rogol Zaar begs to differ...

I blew up Krypton and so did my son and all we got was this lousy shirt.

Get in line. That smoking gun has a lineup of perpetrators a mile long.

[HsssH]

I always thought that we got 52 due to 52 weekly and there being 52 Earths, but I guess this now officially confirms this.

[brandnewfan]

I think it's true that the New 52 had a wider variety of comics. There was kind of something for everyone. More so with DCYou, which offered an even wider variety and with art and writing that wasn't standard (which, to me, should have been a success....but I believe it was a case of wrong place/wrong time).

But the problem with the New 52 was that they had some really bad writers on quite a few of the early books...they were already taking a risk with the entire concept of the New 52, and I get that they had a lot of books to release, but they should have invested in stronger creators early on (just because a writer is capable of churning out 5 different titles a month doesn't mean that should necessarily be allowed)...and then there was even worse editorial staff mucking things up on nearly every title.

How cool would it have been to get a well-reviewed Firestorm book? Or a good Hawk & Dove book? It would have been fun to watch Grifter take off. Deathstroke should have been a slam dunk. Scott Lobdell should not have been writing a book about teenagers, because he is very clearly so out of touch with that demographic; Teen Titans should always be fun, but his TT book was atrociously not fun.

Then there were the decisions from down high. No Wally West. Compressing all the Robins in just 5 years. I understand they wanted a shorter timeline, but to truly accomplish that in a way that makes any sense you have to either scale back a little or allow for a some leeway; they did neither and it came out like a mess.

[John Venus]

It should have been a soft reboot that also cleared up some of the decades long messes like Donna Troy's origin, Babs being Gordon's niece, the JSA's longevity and other stuff or they should have started with a clean slate with the Post Crisis verse becoming the new Earth-2.

Also if you are going to claim that Batman had 5 Robins in 5 years you can't expect the old history to make sense. Neither can you expect us to believe Babs time as Oracle, Identity Crisis, Death of Superman, Emerald Twilight, Rebirth, Sinestro Corps War or Blackest Night all still happened the way it did just in 5 years. They tried to claim those stories still happened somehow but IIRC went back and forth on it like usual.

[MajorHoy]

. . . Scott Lobdell should not have been writing a book about teenagers, because he is very clearly so out of touch with that demographic; Teen Titans should always be fun, but his TT book was atrociously not fun...

In defense of Lobdell, how much editorial interference / redirection was at fault on Teen Titans?
Remember, he suddenly got hit with that "There Were Never Any Previous Teams of 'Teen Titans' after he had already started writing stories that indicated there had been (and even had an issue or two published!), resulting in the need for revisions when those issues were later collected.
(Batwoman and possibly a Green Lantern title also had the same problem.)

[Thor-Ul]

Well, at least we got confirmation than there was no a long term plan.

[MajorHoy]

Well, at least we got confirmation than there was no a long term plan.

Hell, we knew that from the get-go!

[Rac7d*]

Hahahahahaha. Yeah...no. The New 52 was a literal dumpster fire. Yeah, there were titles for a bunch of different characters but a lot of those titles weren't at all good. Mr. Terrific, Static, Savage Hawkman, etc. were all awful and JLI and Firestorm were pretty mediocre at best if still passable.

There were a few gems from that era like Animal Man and Swamp Thing, but what good is a diverse line-up if the line-up is still bad for the most part?

It's frustrating that there are so many Batman titles, but at least the actual quality of the content that DC is putting out nowadays is head and shoulders above what they were publishing during the New 52 era.



Quoted for truth.

When was the last time the Wonder Woman side of the DC Universe was being given FIVE ongoing series, including an entire anthology series dedicated to her and a miniseries in Wonder Woman: Evolution? It's almost as if DC is finally giving Diana the cred she deserves.

Then we also have a Suicide Squad that's been purged of Batman characters for the most part (MAJOR FORCE!!); a Black Manta miniseries; Justice League Incarnate (with Captain Carrot on the team no less); and, a freaking HUMAN TARGET maxiseries––that's a deep cut of a character if I ever saw one.

So, yeah, there's a lot of Batman books and it's a bit frustrating...but DC is still trying new things and delivering series for some very underappreciated characters. These solicits are kind of deceptive cuz they bury the lead and all the non-Batman stuff is toward the end.

wonderwoman is being outsold by Yara who she has not met yet. Diana had a movie last year. The issue is demand and DC is a business they will always put profit over a diverse set of titles people say they want more then they go out and buy

[Restingvoice]

A surprisingly not crap article from Polygon that interviews a bunch of the people involved: https://www.polygon.com/comics/22679...source=twitter



Lmao

The best part about the whole 52 thing is... and I don't know if DiDio realized it when he said it... it's a number he picked to accommodate as many writers and artists as possible... instead of the number that new readers will realistically buy

I don't think he intends for everyone to buy every title, he's diversifying the line so that there's something for everyone and anyone can choose at least 1 book, but knowing that these characters are set in the same universe, 52 is overwhelming.

[achilles]

Sorry, I don't think there's enough booze and drugs in the world to make me think that the nu52 was anything other than an unmitigated disaster, done by people who completely missed the point of nearly every character. Some of those titles were among the worst I've ever read; indeed, some of the worst I've ever imagined. The ideas were bad; the execution, worse.

[OBrianTallent]

The New 52 concept was one born completely out of hubris. This is what sums up the entire failure of the New 52, Dan Didio: “I don’t see people when the stories are being written or drawn sometimes, because I’m looking at what’s engaging to me.” Too many interviews and too many convention speeches have Dan talking about what was interesting to him and more importantly what wasn't. Wally West, Dick Grayson, Donna Troy, Garth, Roy Harper...those characters were not interesting to him. How many times did he openly call characters "toxic". In the article, he attributes that to Paul Leviz. Maybe Paul was the one who said it originally, but Paul also had the good sense to not openly label favored characters with bad names. Didio also openly discussed that he felt heroes should not be happy before. Which is the exact opposite of what a hero should be. A hero should be a beacon of hope, to show that despite circumstances there is happiness. Dan wasn't interested in what made readers happy or engaged...he was interested in what HE wanted to see.

The gender diversity was much commented upon in particular — at launch, only two women were employed on DC’s 52 new books, writer Gail Simone and artist Amy Reeder — driving DC to respond to the controversy months before the line debuted. “We want these adventures to resonate in the real world, reflecting the experiences of our diverse readership,” DiDio and Lee said in a statement released in July 2011. “Can we improve on that? We always can — and aim to.” One of the female creators brought in later was Christy Marx, an animation and video game writer, who worked on two series as part of the line.

In an effort to create diversity, he brought in a writer who hadn't written main stream comics in almost (or over) 20 years. Nothing against Christy, I actually liked her take on Amethyst, despite it's massive departure from what the original vision of the series was (which I think was part of it's downfall.) But....really? You want to catch people's attention by getting a writer who's main comics attraction was an 8 issue series from Marvel's Epic Comics line in 1984? And then Ann Nocenti? Whom I love, by the way, but if you want to get attention....get attention! Why was Kelly Thompson not offered a book then? Or Kelly Sue DeConnick? Also, why FIRE your most HIGH PROFILE female writer in an email? As has been pointed out many times over, the New 52 appeared to have been characterized by a type of nepotism and good ol' boy network.

The thought was, you want to see what works and what doesn’t work. You don’t want to put stories in canon that people have no interest in, because ultimately, the worst thing you could do is tell a story to undo a bad story, which happens a lot. It just makes [everything] more convoluted and messy. So instead, we pushed it out and if it worked, we built around it. If it didn’t work, then we sort of just discounted it and put it on the side and moved forward.

And then there is that. Two words sum up the entire mess...Donna Troy. The worst thing you can do is tell a story to undo a bad story? Shouldn't that be the point? To fix what is wrong? You dont take a great story and undo it? Donna Troy had gotten to a place where her story was....serviceable. It could be boiled down to a couple of lines and be relatively understood. But then they wanted to, when they finally decided to let a creative team bring her back (and a team who's writer was not at all familiar with even the main character she was writing and instead let her artist husband tell her about the character) as a murderous creation and lead a slaughter of colony of men. Wonder Woman, a feminist icon for over 70 years...created entirely by a women (Hippolyta and the goddesses) was now a product of rape...as were, it seemed, many of the Amazons.
While, yes, The New 52 did make major strides in offering a line of comics and characters the likes of we hadn't seen in decades, Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE is still one of my most favorite books ever, what we got was a self centered vision of an egotist out of touch with what really would sell comics. What Marvel got right with the Ultimate Universe was they did not throw out their entire line to do it. It was an imprint. Had DC attempted to do the New 52 in an imprint for a few years and then maybe have a big event that merged them together when it was seen how awesome it was because things were started small and planned out...that would have been potentially great. Had things even been planned, that would have been even greater. Too many times in those interviews, there was one constant...lack of long term planning. Let's do this, no make it this, but it's printed, then change it in the next issue, do that, not this, add this....

“No, we liked it, the next person liked it, maybe the next person up after that didn’t like it, but they can’t read the full output every day, right, so there’s a delay? Yeah, it sucks that we didn’t find out until now.”

This is where it all comes down to. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Dan wanted people to tell great stories, but (go back to the very first quote I used) he only wanted stories that were engaging to him. If Dan had written a successful long term run on a comic book series...there might have been some legitimacy in that statement. It wasn't however. Bob Harris was listed as Editor In Chief, yet how much did we actually here from him? Nothing really. It was always Dan. I sometimes get the feeling that Bob's title was because they needed one that couldn't be Dan for whatever reason.
Ultimately, the New 52 is a failure, too many creators who will no longer work with DC Comics because of circumstances from that time period, too little story beats that have lasted over time, too few books that have continued from that era. As Dan said, if it failed, just move on.

[SJNeal]

Ultimately, the New 52 is a failure, too many creators who will no longer work with DC Comics because of circumstances from that time period, too little story beats that have lasted over time, too few books that have continued from that era. As Dan said, if it failed, just move on.

This thread had me thinking about said creators yesterday.

I was looking at a list of the launch titles, and found myself lamenting the loss of names like Justin Jordan, Joshua Hale Fialkov, Van Jensen, Kyle Higgins, Gregg Hurwitz, Duane Swirzcnycki (sp?) et al. Not everything they did was amazing, but there were a lot of damn good ideas that never got fully realized, or were cut short prematurely.

[D.Z]

It's all over and mostly undone now on Earth 0, so whatever.