The New 52 Insiders Sneak Peek

[Restingvoice]

https://www.polygon.com/comics/22679...s-oral-history

Dan DiDio
DC vice president starting in 2002, DC co-publisher from 2010-2020


The origin [of the New 52] comes from a couple of places. First things first: We had a change in management. We had Diane Nelson coming in [as DC’s new president]. And she really wanted to challenge us and really to make an impression and a statement. So we needed to make a statement. That’s part one.

Part two was the market was extraordinarily soft. Our numbers were off by double digits — I want to say 30 to 40 percent, some big number from what it was from the previous year — and trade sales were slowing down, and periodical sales were slowing down. It wasn’t just DC; it was the whole marketplace.

From the moment I started at DC [...] I was always trying to get to that spot where we can sort of restart the wheel and really create this entry point for everybody to jump on, and contemporize our characters.

Marvel had such success with [Miles Morales and the Ultimate line], and I kept on pointing to that. I thought to myself, We needed that. I tried a couple of times — the All-Star line was supposed to be a shot at that, the Earth One books were supposed to be shot at that. They were good as stand-alone concepts, and we got some great work from that, but it didn’t drive a line. And ultimately, the only way it works is if you drive the cohesiveness of the line. We were doing it piecemeal, but to really make an impression, to really catch the attention of the marketplace, you had to do something dramatic. And ultimately, that’s what turned into the New 52.

Diversifying the line

We really wanted to make sure we were reaching out and trying different things and different types of stories. As much as people talk about Superman or Batman, or any one of the relaunches of the primary characters, I was more excited about the Men of Wars, or I, Vampires, and the other things that were part of that, because ultimately, that’s the part of comics that brings in the casual readers — people picking up books if they’re not superhero fans, but want to read the medium.

Why 52 books? I mean, it’s interesting, because ultimately, the office was constructed to support somewhere between 60 to 80 books on a monthly basis. OK. So if you’re going to put out less product, you’re going to make a staffing change. So realistically, we’re working with the [in-house] staff that we have. We did not want to rearrange the staff; we didn’t want to do that. So the challenge was to create enough engaging material to support the structure, but also to be able to broaden it out.

Pandora

There was probably going to be a greater role for the Pandora character early on. She was going to be a little bit of a mechanical character behind the scenes who was working some of the differences out on how the world moved forward from what happened prior to Flashpoint.

Continuity

When you’re creating 52 series simultaneously, you have to give everybody a certain amount of latitude to be able to tell their stories, without the stories impacting each other, because ultimately, it slows the process down, and it also impedes the creativity of it. So, while there was a goal not to contradict each other, people did push stories out in directions that made it hard for them to reconcile with each other. You found pockets where people work together, you know — Frankenstein and Swamp Thing work together; I did a brief crossover with Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE on OMAC — but the reality was, things were moving in the wrong directions.

The sense of bravado

The downside of success is a level of, I don’t want to use the word arrogance, because that’s wrong. But the sense of bravado — now I got it, now I can prove anything. One of our staples at the beginning was we wouldn’t let any book go under 20,000 in sales. OK. So that’s why you saw cancellations at eight months, because [while] the books were making money, they were profitable, they just didn’t hit this artificial number that was created.

What we didn’t realize at that time is, we created the churn, as I called it. There are going to be eight books or so that are just going to [come in below our target number], so what you should do is find the best eight and stick with them. But [if you cancel and replace them], you find out that you were getting even more diminishing returns. Then all of a sudden, the eight [books below our target number] become 10, and then you’re filling more holes than you have ways to fill them. You get so focused on the churn of the bottom, you’re not focused on maintaining the success at the top.

The Collapse

Truth be told, I think the New 52 ended because the cycle and windows had collapsed on people’s expectations, which is an interesting thing. I think Paul Levitz put that in my head when I first got into DC. He said to me that a lot of times what would happen is that you would launch a character, they would have a period of time to run, before ultimately wind up failing. And then it would be what we used to call toxic, meaning you couldn’t do anything with the character, and you had to put it on a shelf for five years, let the toxicity fade away, and then you bring it back out and you relaunch them.

But then what was happening was that we were closing those windows [at the start of the New 52]; we were canceling books and relaunching them within a month or two months, so we collapsed a lot of those windows. So the expectation started to collapse, so you have an expectation and delivery. And when you deliver to a number, then you have to exceed that number and exceed that number and you’re constantly having to challenge yourself to be bigger and better and bolder. And then when you start to fade, then you have to scramble to find ways to compensate for that.

Valid Complaints

There was a level of inconsistency in the storytelling — as I explained, we did a lot of planning up-front to get to the New 52 launch. So, when you look at the first six months, I’ll tell you, honestly, some of the best books DC put out during my time were there. Just really powerful, wonderful storytelling top to bottom.

Then what happened is, the schedule starts to get you, and we start to make some tweaks and changes along the way and your own success gets in your way. You don’t spend the same amount of time and energy getting it right to the rules of what [the] New 52 was, and the proper introduction, and how things work, and making the changes to the characters valuable.

Later, because people are rushing, you’re getting superficial changes that almost feel like somebody is dusting something off — it’s different, but it’s not really. And that’s what started to lead to the confusion. You started to get things that felt just slightly off from where you remember them. So why bother reinventing it in the first place? And I think that’s the most valid argument you’re going to get from everybody. The level of attention to the reinvention became less and less as they progressed.

Therefore, you just got a jumbled sense of past continuity, new continuity and a mix with half hearted reintroductions that really didn’t work for the story, and didn’t really satisfy the long term fans. That’s the dead zone, where once you fall into that mud, you’re trying to dig yourself out, but you’re just sinking quicker and quicker. It’s pulling you underground.

In Conclusion

I would say, we got about a good three and a half years of what I hoped would have been five years. But I think, just because of the sheer volume of material, the idea that you can do something and then leave it and let it run for a dozen years isn’t a reality anymore. We’ve created a different expectation in the marketplace of this constant sense of reinvention.

The goal was to see whether or not there was more [direct market] audience out there. And yeah, I think we know the answer.