The New 52 Insiders Sneak Peek

[cranger]

New 52 bought me back to comics. But i just know that everything in the article is just negativity and finger-pointing. Comic fans are already extremely toxic, that's even more certain than death and taxes. The article is just going to make it worst.

I have not read through the whole thing yet, but after a quick skim I feel as though reading the statements from the creators and staff is fine enough, but the 'commentary' is as expected a little negative.

[Rod G]

Can’t say I care much for the tone of this article.

[Rod G]

New 52 bought me back to comics. But i just know that everything in the article is just negativity and finger-pointing. Comic fans are already extremely toxic, that's even more certain than death and taxes. The article is just going to make it worst.

I agree with you, atomicskull.

[superduperman]

New 52 hate gets so old lol. No one is talking about DC books, so i guess they had to pull this stunt. Some things work, some things don't. It's a business nothing personal, plain and simple. The writers and artists don't get any sympathy from me, if you people were so miserable then leave. People want Dan Didio to be the devil so bad.

I don't think there's any question Didio overplayed his hand. He hated "legacy" characters and micromanaged everything to the point where no one wanted to work with him anymore. And some of his rules were, quite frankly, stupid. Like no marriages. The guy desperately wanted to get rid of Dick Grayson and Wally West. There's no way to spin that as a positive. As someone who thought the New 52 was a good idea, I actually blame Didio and his stupid rules for sabotaging it. The micromanaged continuity was the bulk of what killed it.

[Restingvoice]

I wouldn't mind micromanaging continuity so much if it's actually good, but as they said themselves, it was rushed, and each person has a different idea... so they have to quietly abandon some of the early ideas... but even when they try to be consistent, some of the new ideas are also not good and they change things on the fly anyway.

There's no overarching plan where writers can at least plan things in advance and keep going that way. They have to adjust things on the fly. In this kind of work state, the whole thing just ends up being annoying, because not only do you have to keep things consistent in-universe, you also have to adjust to the whims of someone else.

[cranger]

I see two ideas here, as far as stories going in different places and needing a plan. One is, and honestly this is small, where someone wants to use a character or something in a future story and finds out someone else did, and someone has to resolve the dispute. And that happens all the time, even now with things planned out as they are. The other example that happened with the New 52 is people referencing 'back story' like whether there were Titans or if Superman died, stuff like that, and that was something that really was not that big a deal outside of vocal group obsessed with 'what still counted'.

The other idea as far as being on the same page is that part I actually hate, and that is the kind of 'meta story' that Snyder keeps talking about. I enjoyed his Batman well enough, but I think he needs to thank his artist for that. Having all the other Bat books bow to the 'main story' just took the wind out of their sails, and this is something the publishers still have a problem with.

In my view, or at least my understanding, is most of the great and memorable stories and runs were more less done on the fly. Perhaps that is why the books I enjoyed the most in the New 52 were the ones that seemed like they wanted to explore new ground on their own.

[Sacred Knight]

I don't think there's any question Didio overplayed his hand. He hated "legacy" characters and micromanaged everything to the point where no one wanted to work with him anymore. And some of his rules were, quite frankly, stupid. Like no marriages. The guy desperately wanted to get rid of Dick Grayson and Wally West. There's no way to spin that as a positive. As someone who thought the New 52 was a good idea, I actually blame Didio and his stupid rules for sabotaging it. The micromanaged continuity was the bulk of what killed it.

An overplayed hand is a great way to describe it. Like anyone else, he had good ideas and bad ideas. But he'd put large swathed edicts on these ideas. And when they were good, hey no foul really. But when they were bad? Yeah. Marriage for instance. Now anyone who knows me knows where I stand on this. By and large I don't like it. Most controversial I don't like it for Superman and Lois Lane. There's very few characters and relationships I think it serves well in the long term. But an entire edict on it is just...why? What's wrong with case by case? Flat out edicts rarely do anything positive. At the absolute best, they can be fairly benign. But even then it doesn't make much sense.

[sunofdarkchild]

In what other work environment would "the employees don't get any sympathy from me and should leave" apply?

DC has had bad management for the last 2 decades. Didio should never have been in any department that makes creative decisions because he's bad at it. He's a bad writer and he proved this every time he wrote a comic. As an editor he 'writes with death' where the fact that a character dies is the story and substitutes for having an actual story even if the writers are unanimous in opposition. He should have been in marketing, not editing, then we wouldn't have had things like characters being 'toxic.' It's not that Didio is a bad guy. He was incompetent at the job he had and his ideas were usually bad ones.

Not everything that went wrong is purely on Didio. Bob Harras, the guy who led Marvel into bankruptcy, was also running DC and a lot can be laid at his feet. Who knows what DC was thinking hiring him in the first place. I don't think the complete failure of communication that messed up the Superman line early in the Nu-52 can be blamed on either Didio or Harras. That's its own sad story.

The management at DC is what needed a reboot, but I guess it's pretty hard to fire an editor.

[superduperman]

You could probably write an entire book on what went wrong with the New 52 and whose fault it is. I really wish some of the people who had bad experiences there had gone on the record. That way we might have gotten a better picture of what happened and who is to blame. The comment section of that article has no qualms about laying the blame at the feet of Didio. Simone has talked a little bit about her experiences there. I don't think we'll ever know the big picture unless someone who thinks their future is secure comes forward at some point. And the whole Harras thing was dumb. This is the same guy who told the Spider-books to DRAG OUT the cone saga so his stupid X-crossover could get center attention at Marvel.

[Lee Stone]

A lot of new readers came in with New52. As did collectors, for the first new #1 for Detective Comics and Action Comics.
But a lot of readers bailed, too, once the dust settled and it became apparent that it was a reboot.
I was one of the ones that bailed.

I was originally excited for it, because of Generation Lost and the lead-in to JLI.
But then changes were made, the girl from Booster's Flashpoint story was removed from the cast, and then replaced with Godiva...
Then Generation Lost didn't happen, or did it?
The core Justice League just formed with Aquaman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Superman and Cyborg...
With no explanation of how we got from them to a JLI existing...
Cyborg was in the League now, with his origin tied to them... No mention of the Titans, DC's biggest hit during the '80s...
J'onn was no longer a Leaguer. Which meant he couldn't have been in the JLI with Beetle, Booster, Fire & Ice. Or with Max Lord.
Generation Lost was built on the story of Max Lord breaking character and going all evil-like, even killing long-time friend Blue Beetle.
But the story was unraveled because J'onn (the first person to trust Max after he did a mind-scan) was no longer in the League, the League couldn't have existed in the way it was remembered, and thus... the League in Generation Lost had no real history together anymore.

So by the time the New52 JLI got released it was changed from a spin-off to Generation Lost and Brightest Day to a generic replacement team for the Global Guardians.

Also, I may be an old fuddy-duddy, but all the graphic violence in the first couple months to show people comics have 'grown up'™ was a bit over the top.

[skyvolt2000]

In what other work environment would "the employees don't get any sympathy from me and should leave" apply?

Public School employees say HI....

I really wish some of the people who had bad experiences there had gone on the record.

A lot of them HAVE and some did not want to out of respect of other creatives.

Static Shock was the poster child of everything TOXIC. Marc Bernardin also QUIT the industry because of Harvey Richards.

[Restingvoice]

You could probably write an entire book on what went wrong with the New 52 and whose fault it is. I really wish some of the people who had bad experiences there had gone on the record. That way we might have gotten a better picture of what happened and who is to blame. The comment section of that article has no qualms about laying the blame at the feet of Didio. Simone has talked a little bit about her experiences there. I don't think we'll ever know the big picture unless someone who thinks their future is secure comes forward at some point. And the whole Harras thing was dumb. This is the same guy who told the Spider-books to DRAG OUT the cone saga so his stupid X-crossover could get center attention at Marvel.

Marc Bernardin has a whole thread about it on Twitter, and I think it's been posted in other threads, and I copied it but forgot where I put it. I got this though:

When I was writing Static Shock for DC, the editor on the book hated, HATED everything I was trying to do. He once told me "I just don't think you understand how superhero stories work." Every time I saw an email from him, I got sick to my stomach.

Wait wait I found it:

DC’s #New52 is trending, eh? I have very mixed feelings about the New 52. On the one hand, it was the only time I was ever invited to write a mainline, monthly DC comic book. On the other, writing Static Shock was the single worst experience I’ve ever had in comics.

I got the call from then-group editor Eddie Berganza asking if I wanted to take over Static because the launch writer, John Rozum, was stepping away. (I didn’t, and still don’t know the reasons for that. Maybe I should’ve asked.)

Excited, I agreed on the phone. Eddie then set a lunch to talk about it. I had a bunch of ideas. I basically wanted to make it Buffy: Give Virgil some friends in school who knew his secret and a teacher who discovered the truth.

I showed up to lunch to get my marching orders. There was a surprise third person at lunch: Assistant Editor Harvey Richards, who would actually be editing the book. Cool.

First order of business was to wrap up John’s story, that had been going for six issues. My first issue was to be #7. So i read through what John was planning and found a way to land that bird that made sense.

Issue 8 was my first real go at Static. And Harvey made it awful. Edits that pulled the story in directions I didn’t like. Changes I didn’t agree with. Vetoing almost every decision I wanted to make. It got to the point where an email from him would make me physically sick.

When I turned in the first draft of the script for issue 8, the note I got back was “I just don’t think you understand how superhero stories work.”

I was crushed by the experience, by an editor who either didn’t understand me, didn’t like me, didn’t like his job, or all of the above.

Static Shock was canceled before my first issue hit stands. I only ever wrote two issues, 7 and 8. And 8 ends with the heroes looking forward to new, shiny adventures that would never come.

When I got the news of the cancellation, it was greeted with a sigh of relief. I didn’t write a comic book for years after that. It broke me. And I haven’t written for DC since. (There have been conversations about things, none of which came to fruition. Yet.)

I’ve told part of this story before, but always leaving out the name of the editor. But you know what? **** it. What happened happened and I feel the way I feel.

Ten years later, I think I’m doing okay. Maybe I do know how stories work after all. (attached was a Writer's Guild of America award for Outstanding Writing Longform Original 2017)

https://twitter.com/marcbernardin/st...68145261379586

[cranger]

Let me preface this with saying I don't take sides in this stuff and think most stories of these interactions are naturally biased, however there is still some amount of the process that can be learned from these tales:

http://scottmcdaniel.net/interviews/...ATICSHOCK.html

[superduperman]

Let me preface this with saying I don't take sides in this stuff and think most stories of these interactions are naturally biased, however there is still some amount of the process that can be learned from these tales:

http://scottmcdaniel.net/interviews/...ATICSHOCK.html

This Rozum guy sounds REAL popular.

[atomicskull]

Let me preface this with saying I don't take sides in this stuff and think most stories of these interactions are naturally biased, however there is still some amount of the process that can be learned from these tales:

http://scottmcdaniel.net/interviews/...ATICSHOCK.html

There's always two sides to every story. The editors aren't always to blame and these writers aren't always saints. This whole thing is simply one-sided.