Wrong turns made in storylines for DC Comics

[Refrax5]

How can you undo a decades-old storyline? Was that even relevant by the time Hal Jordan came back?

I wasn't referring to the story itself, just that Johns threw out most of Hal's complexity in favor of making him this kind of douchey fighter jock stereotype.

But drifter Hal was still a thing until shortly before he turned into Parallax.

[NathanS]

Talked a bit about 'drifter' vs 'settled' Hal not that long ago interestingly in the Hal thread. There's always been a... tension as different writers gravitate to one or the other. And I like both? As noted some good interesting stuff of come of 'the man who just never feels comfortable where he is,' just not sure of his place or is looking for one. At the same time, the relationships and plot setups and issues he faces when he's in one area with a good supporting cast can also be really good and interesting. You often end up with someone who is just as torn. He craves the stability of a place and to be Hal, with connections maybe the good old thrill of test piloting*. But also a wonder lust and the feeling of needing to move on can grip him. It's an interesting contradiction and adds to the character I think. At the same time, you do have writers favoring one over the other and sort of coming in and declaring one or the other the 'real' Hal and downplaying his other half.


*Having finished a re-read of ACW, I have to say I do love the first story of him in Gremlins that's just dealing with a test flight gone wrong.

[married guy]

I love Babylon 5 but JMS's comics work was a mixed bag I loved Midnight Station and the Twelve, but I thought his Wonder Woman, Superman, and Superman Earth One were terrible. Supreme Power didn't bring anything new to the table in terms of dark and gritty superhero deconstructions. Haven't read his Spiderman run yet, people speak positively of the issues he did with John Romita Jr, but I also heard people hate Sins Past and One More Day.

I really enjoyed his Spidey run...... right up to Sins Past.
That was the storyline that got me to drop Spider-Man after more than a decade. And I've never regretted the decision!

[married guy]

I'd say my biggest one is Identity Crisis...never mind what happened to Sue Dibney or the actions of the League, though both of those are awful, but just the idea that the natural character progression of some longtime villains...Trickster and Pied Piper turning into heroes, Captain Cold and Golden Glider becoming anti-heroes, Dr. Light becoming an ineffectual fool with a fear of children...was done away with as having their minds altered by Zatanna. It was really the first nail in the coffin of DC for me, demonstrating that any kind of reform by a criminal MUST be because of tampering by a hero, rather than actual growth. Just hamfisted fanboy "these guys were bad when I read comics and they should be bad again!" garbage.

Second to that, I say bringing Barry Allen back to life. Regardless of my personal feelings of the character, his sacrifice in Crisis demonstrated true heroism. And the methods in which he was brought back was like Hal Jordan's resurrection turned up to 11, i.e. bending over backwards and not giving a damn about anything that came afterwards because one or two people in power wanted him back. Honestly, even if they brought Barry back as a time-traveling earlier incarnation who knew Crisis was waiting for him at the end, that would've been preferable to the mess we got. And that doesn't even get into the whole Nora Allen thing. The irony being that the same people who felt that Barry had to come back to life also felt he wasn't an interesting enough character without some artificial angst/trauma grafted onto his character...no way he can just be a good guy who became a police scientist to do the right thing. No, clearly his mother had to have been murdered to drive him to do that.

And finally, the last nail in the coffin was the whole Flashpoint/New 52 mess.

Wow.
THIS.
I couldn't have put it any more succinctly.

[John Venus]

- Cassandra Cain's ill-conceived heel turn in One Year Later.
Just the dumbest, poorly thought out, shock for shock value, treating your audience with transparent, giggling contempt. The fact they spent years desperately trying to roll it back just proves what a dumb-assed idea it was. And in retrospect, that it was probably the first shot in Dan DiDio's efforts to regress Barbara back into the Batgirl role just adds another layer of awful to the whole thing.

- Making Zeus Wonder Woman's father and the rapist Amazons.
Just a completely wrong-headed approach to the character and her mythos that misses one of the main points of the character. Wonder Woman was created to subvert the original myths. When you "deconstruct" subversion, you're just regressing. It's like re-making the Shrek movies and deciding this time the ogre will be the villain who kidnaps a princess that doesn't know martial arts. In other words, the exact kind of fairy tale the story isn't supposed to be.


-Wonder Woman's journey/arc in through Infinite Crisis.

I was actually enjoying where they were going with her in the lead-up. Diana's life is falling apart, she's a fugitive, her reputation is getting trampled, her friends are turning their backs on her, the Amazons are being attacked by OMACs, the gods are abandoning her. I was into it. Her back was against the wall, and I wanted to know how it was all going to pay off.

Then Infinite Crisis tells us the real problem is Wonder Woman isn't human and doesn't understand humans. And it's like...since when? Where the hell did that come from?
I imagine if you weren't/don't follow actual Wonder Woman comics, you just accepted it at face value, but going into IC as a WW reader, it honestly comes across like everyone is suddenly gaslighting Diana while she's at her lowest.

Very jarring shift that, speaking for myself, went a long way toward me turning on the idea Batman is one of Diana's closest friends. Because Bruce thoroughly scum-bags her this whole story. The Brother Eye debacle, which directly led to her killing Max Lord in the first place, was all his fault. Then he turns his back on her because she made a difficult choice in a situation HE put her in. And at the end of it all, rather than apologize or admit he did her wrong, Bruce decides she was the problem all along and takes it upon himself to set up a secret identity and government job for her that she never asked for.

In the end, my main takeaway from Infinite Crisis is Bruce hates Diana. He might not think he does, but deep down, he clearly despises her. And this has never been adequately addressed. We have to keep pretending they're the best of friends.


- J. Michael Stracynski's Wonder Woman run, The Odyssey, was an unmitigated disaster and waste of two or three intriguing premises.

For those who don't know, Odyssey tells the story of Wonder Woman facing an evil goddess, failing miserably, and getting turned into the goddess's avatar. The other gods, acting as a deus ex machina, then have what is essentially an alternate timeline doppelganger take Diana's place. They hand-wave how this doesn't screw up continuity with a magic spell. And after an overlong, overwritten, meandering plot that drags on far longer than it needed, we discover the reason WW was so easily corrupted was because she....

.....wait for it.......



...was out of touch with humanity. AGAIN!

And the reason Nu-Diana is able to win and prevail is because she wasn't raised on Themyscira, therefore making her more down to earth and in touch with the little people.
In other words...last of her kind, raised in humble surroundings, comes to believe killing under any circumstance is bad...she was more like Superman.

An alternate timeline where Diana never becomes Wonder Woman? Could've been interesting. We've never seen that done with her.
An alternate timeline where Diana was taken from Themyscira as a child and forced to live on the run in secret? Also an interesting idea.
Diana being forced through a gauntlet of pain and loss because an evil god wants to break her? Could've been a compelling arc.

But none of those was what JMS wanted to tell. He wanted to effectively replace Wonder Woman with his personal fan fic version of the character. And it was torture.

The irony of Johns/Didio claiming that Diana was unrelatable only to turn out that *they* were the ones who couldn't relate to her. One thing I will credit WW17 is that they got her personality right; Diana is curious, compassionate and implicitly wants to help people without it stemming from tragedy (except for the whole death of Antiope thing).

JMS had a great run on Thor which was also the basis for the character's first movie. He could have done some amazing stuff if they allowed him to focus on the mythological aspects of WW's story. I blame editors more than I do him for the way his run turned out.

[Agent Z]

- Cassandra Cain's ill-conceived heel turn in One Year Later.
Just the dumbest, poorly thought out, shock for shock value, treating your audience with transparent, giggling contempt. The fact they spent years desperately trying to roll it back just proves what a dumb-assed idea it was. And in retrospect, that it was probably the first shot in Dan DiDio's efforts to regress Barbara back into the Batgirl role just adds another layer of awful to the whole thing.

Yeah this may just be one of DC's dumbest decisions in the 2000s. At least in their top 5 ones. That said, the way they retconned it surprisingly made a lot of sense.

-Wonder Woman's journey/arc in through Infinite Crisis.

I was actually enjoying where they were going with her in the lead-up. Diana's life is falling apart, she's a fugitive, her reputation is getting trampled, her friends are turning their backs on her, the Amazons are being attacked by OMACs, the gods are abandoning her. I was into it. Her back was against the wall, and I wanted to know how it was all going to pay off.

Then Infinite Crisis tells us the real problem is Wonder Woman isn't human and doesn't understand humans. And it's like...since when? Where the hell did that come from?
I imagine if you weren't/don't follow actual Wonder Woman comics, you just accepted it at face value, but going into IC as a WW reader, it honestly comes across like everyone is suddenly gaslighting Diana while she's at her lowest.

Very jarring shift that, speaking for myself, went a long way toward me turning on the idea Batman is one of Diana's closest friends. Because Bruce thoroughly scum-bags her this whole story. The Brother Eye debacle, which directly led to her killing Max Lord in the first place, was all his fault. Then he turns his back on her because she made a difficult choice in a situation HE put her in. And at the end of it all, rather than apologize or admit he did her wrong, Bruce decides she was the problem all along and takes it upon himself to set up a secret identity and government job for her that she never asked for.

In the end, my main takeaway from Infinite Crisis is Bruce hates Diana. He might not think he does, but deep down, he clearly despises her. And this has never been adequately addressed. We have to keep pretending they're the best of friends.


- J. Michael Stracynski's Wonder Woman run, The Odyssey, was an unmitigated disaster and waste of two or three intriguing premises.

For those who don't know, Odyssey tells the story of Wonder Woman facing an evil goddess, failing miserably, and getting turned into the goddess's avatar. The other gods, acting as a deus ex machina, then have what is essentially an alternate timeline doppelganger take Diana's place. They hand-wave how this doesn't screw up continuity with a magic spell. And after an overlong, overwritten, meandering plot that drags on far longer than it needed, we discover the reason WW was so easily corrupted was because she....

.....wait for it.......



...was out of touch with humanity. AGAIN!

And the reason Nu-Diana is able to win and prevail is because she wasn't raised on Themyscira, therefore making her more down to earth and in touch with the little people.
In other words...last of her kind, raised in humble surroundings, comes to believe killing under any circumstance is bad...she was more like Superman.

There's a bit of irony (and hypocrisy) from fans and writers who think making Diana bulletproof is making her too much like Superman, yet doing and enjoying stories that make her far more like Superman than a simple power change.

[Aahz]

- Cassandra Cain's ill-conceived heel turn in One Year Later.
Just the dumbest, poorly thought out, shock for shock value, treating your audience with transparent, giggling contempt. The fact they spent years desperately trying to roll it back just proves what a dumb-assed idea it was. And in retrospect, that it was probably the first shot in Dan DiDio's efforts to regress Barbara back into the Batgirl role just adds another layer of awful to the whole thing.

I think most of One Year Later was pretty ill-conceived, I mean was there any change that people actually liked?

[blunt_eastwood]

Second to that, I say bringing Barry Allen back to life. Regardless of my personal feelings of the character, his sacrifice in Crisis demonstrated true heroism. And the methods in which he was brought back was like Hal Jordan's resurrection turned up to 11, i.e. bending over backwards and not giving a damn about anything that came afterwards because one or two people in power wanted him back. Honestly, even if they brought Barry back as a time-traveling earlier incarnation who knew Crisis was waiting for him at the end, that would've been preferable to the mess we got. And that doesn't even get into the whole Nora Allen thing. The irony being that the same people who felt that Barry had to come back to life also felt he wasn't an interesting enough character without some artificial angst/trauma grafted onto his character...no way he can just be a good guy who became a police scientist to do the right thing. No, clearly his mother had to have been murdered to drive him to do that.

And finally, the last nail in the coffin was the whole Flashpoint/New 52 mess. I still mourn we never got to see the ongoing JLI series spinning out of the Justice League: Generation Lost mini.

Agreed. Bringing back Barry and the original multiverse are stupid ideas that destroy any weight that COIE had. Plus it makes it difficult to have any kind of legacy.

And yes the New 52 was the worst thing I've ever seen. Do it as a separate universe like Ultimate Marvel or a separate imprint like Black Label or Earth One.

[mathew101281]

New 52, it did everything wrong that Crisis did, but a hundred times worse.

1. Erased essential or exciting character elements, and replaced them with something either, disrespectful, confusing, or boring.
2. Clearly didn't have a solid all-encompassing plan for the universe, and was clearly winging it way too much.
3. Took something that was fine and loved, and probably only needed a few tweaks to stay relivent, and replaced it with something divisive and polarizing, that needs even more tweaks.

[blunt_eastwood]

New 52, it did everything wrong that Crisis did, but a hundred times worse.

1. Erased essential or exciting character elements, and replaced them with something either, disrespectful, confusing, or boring.
2. Clearly didn't have a solid all-encompassing plan for the universe, and was clearly winging it way too much.
3. Took something that was fine and loved, and probably only needed a few tweaks to stay relivent, and replaced it with something divisive and polarizing, that needs even more tweaks.

4. Took away everyone's underwear

[Nomads1]

New 52, it did everything wrong that Crisis did, but a hundred times worse.

1. Erased essential or exciting character elements, and replaced them with something either, disrespectful, confusing, or boring.
2. Clearly didn't have a solid all-encompassing plan for the universe, and was clearly winging it way too much.
3. Took something that was fine and loved, and probably only needed a few tweaks to stay relivent, and replaced it with something divisive and polarizing, that needs even more tweaks.

I think the biggest difference between COIE and the New 52, was the quality of the talent involved. Post-COIE DCU brought in the biggest talent DC had at the time, and many rising stars, placing them at their biggest titles. People at the top of their game. John Byrne on Superman, George Perez on Wonder Woman, Jim Starlin on Batman (following Frank Miller), Mike Grell on Green Arrow, Keith Giffen, J. M. DeMatties and (new find) Kevin McGuire on JLA, John Ostrander, Mike Baron and many others that were making a name for themselves on smaller companies. Not all were winners, of course (for exemple, I hated Baron's Flash, and only started to enjoy the character again when William Messener Loeb came on board, and some very popular characters like the LSH, Hawkman, Wonder Girl, the All-Star Squadron, were seriously damaged), but the general track record was so impressive, that I was actually open to the changes of the New 52 (and I was quite enjoying DC previous to Flashpoint). However, what we got was some A talent already quite burntout, Harras bringing back a lot of his pals well over their prime, and not having any relevance in years, and the one or two characters that managed to keep up the quality of their stories being hampered by shoddy, poorly planned continuity changes. It was a real mess. And they kept doubling the bet. So, now, we're in this mess where no one actually knows what counts and what doesn't. A shame.

Peace

[Nomads1]

4. Took away everyone's underwear

LOL. Yeah, that too.

Peace

[astro@work]

4. Took away everyone's underwear

^ Winner of today's interwebz. Brilliant!

[Sacred Knight]

I'll die on the hill that bringing back Barry Allen was not only a good idea, it was overdue. He still had fans and there's this revolving door of death but no, only he has to stay dead. It was bullcrap. And as I'd pointed out earlier, very little of COIE mattered 10 years after the event was over. It only became relevant again in 2005, and that was a complete deconstruction of it in the first place. Only his death was forced to stick from an event that no one remembered once Kara Zor-El was brought back a year earlier in 2004. His cameo in Infinite Crisis should have been his full-fledged return.

All that said no, Wally didn't deserve to fall into irrelevance for a while in order to accommodate bringing him back. But that was due to wrongheaded creative decisions that didn't have to be made. Could've easily had Wally just go on vacation for a couple months, let Barry find his footing, then have both act as their own versions of the Flash in their corresponding title and city. Flash isn't Superman, its on a lesser scale more like GLs. Fans accept two in one world.

[Jon Clark]

I'll die on the hill that bringing back Barry Allen was not only a good idea, it was long overdue. It simply wasn't fair. He still had fans and there's this revolving door of death but no, only he has to stay dead. It was bull crap. And as I'd pointed out earlier, no stake of COIE mattered 10 years after the event was over. Frankly he should have come back in Zero Hour.

I'm of the opposite opinion. Barry's death was up there with Dick Grayson becoming Nightwing as two of the pillars of showing that things at DC moved forward. Between GL: Rebirth and Flash: Rebirth it was like DC was retreating and deciding its best days were in the past.