DiDio Talks Post-"Convergence" DC: 'We Should Always Be Looking Forward"

[andersonh1]

He did not say that. He said a book is coming directly from convergence and the future will explain the ending but it wasn't a throw away story. He also said currently they are looking forward with their line which for some reason freaks people out

"Looking forward" is a little ironic considering how regressive the New 52 is.

- the vast majority of legacy characters are gone
- the main characters are all younger
- marriages and years of relationships have been undone, and along with them decades of character development
- DC is looking forward so intently that they've gone back to the 60s for Bat Mite and back to the 70s for Prez.

[Ilan Preskovsky]

I don't quite get the hate for Didio as he seems like a nice enough guy, who is pretty passionate about what he does and any blame for recent DC debacles are as much about Lee, Harris and the top brass as it is about Didio himself. But, holy crap, what an idiotic interview.

My biggest problem is the whole "only looking forward thing". Says the guy who saw to it that just about all legacy characters were replaced by their predecessors. And honestly, Dan, if your company was really about "looking forward", it wouldn't still be publishing stories about characters that are the better part of a century old.

Marvel and DC superheroes are all about looking backwards - that's really kind of been their schtick for as long as I can remember. You want genuinely fresh stories, go and read something from Image or Oni or one of the small press guys who are coming up with genuinely new, "forward-looking" content all the time. If that's really what you want, you're just not going to find it in what amounts to the 942nd issue of Action Comics.

DC (and Marvel) are all about their past and they have always worked best when embracing their long history and the legacy of these very, very old characters. Even in the '90s, at the height of the "replacement superhero", it was that sense of history, of, yes, legacy that made the best of those work (see: Waid's Flash or Robinson's Starman). Prior to the New 52, the vast majority of DC's output was indeed terrible and greatly in need of refurbishment but instead of making use of the recently re-established Multiverse and a fictional universe that now drew as much from Pre-Crisis as it did post-Crisis, and allowing talented creators to really run with the creative freedom that such a situation provides, the New 52 came along and instead stressed tight but immediately convoluted continuity AND a bland house style and got rid of DC's rich history for a misguided sense of "accessibility" that really lasted all of one week.

And now, again, post-convergence with all the stress on loose continuity and wider diversity - and, to be fair, great strides have been made with the latter - there's still the sense that this is still the "Didio-Lee-Harris DCU" where the richness of the DC Universe's long history and the true freedom of a Hypertime-infused Multiverse continues to be both ignored and grossly under-used. This is an attitude that unfortunately is reflective of their star writer, Geoff Johns, whose writing for the last decade or so has all stuck to a simple but very damaging formula: he boils down complex characters to their single defining trait and effectively recreated the DCU in his own image, turning a thriving fictional universe into something far more monochromatic. Sure, his love for the Silver Age version of his favourite superheroes made it seem that he was really tapping into DC's history but, in retrospect, he was really boxing everything in to a very Geoff Johns-ian present. It's certainly not all Johns' fault - any more than it's all Didio's - but its very axiomatic of what's wrong with the current version of DC.

This is the state of the current DC and as long as they continue to view their Universe through such myopic eyes and, at the same time, resolutely refuse the very things that make them stand out in the first place, their comics line will never be as good as it should be and, ironically enough, will continue to look increasing old-hat against a wider comics industry that is currently exploding with genuine creativity.

[GDC3]

Well, everyone gets an interpretation

Heh, good one.

[hsalf]

I would even go back as far as the "Triangle" years when *gasp* Dan Jurgens was actually a competent writer. Pak and Kuder might be the best Superman team of this century

I agree.

I quit reading Superman (and all comics) in late '99, it was getting pretty stale by that time and a long way from the glory years of the early 90s. But since I started collecting again, I've started reading Superman where I left off ( almost to Our Worlds at War) and the current Superman books are miles better.

[GlennSimpson]

People keep mentioned in the loss of legacies as not "looking forward", but the thing is, even when you "look forward", you still have to do it in a way that will make you money. You don't just do it for the sake of doing it.

The fact that Dan wants to move forward in his storytelling doesn't contradict the need to have a storytelling arena that features the best-known versions of the characters rather than their grown-up sidekicks or children or other characters using the same name. There's no need for younger versions of the characters - these ARE the younger versions of the characters. There's no contradiction, other than in a "jumbo shrimp" kind of way, where the contradiction only exists until you really look at the context.

[ShaggyB]

Let's stop using the term didiot. It's offensive and violates our rules. Consider this everyone's warning

[Crazy Diamond]

People keep mentioned in the loss of legacies as not "looking forward", but the thing is, even when you "look forward", you still have to do it in a way that will make you money. You don't just do it for the sake of doing it.

The fact that Dan wants to move forward in his storytelling doesn't contradict the need to have a storytelling arena that features the best-known versions of the characters rather than their grown-up sidekicks or children or other characters using the same name. There's no need for younger versions of the characters - these ARE the younger versions of the characters. There's no contradiction, other than in a "jumbo shrimp" kind of way, where the contradiction only exists until you really look at the context.

I'm sure DC was quite forward thinking when they threw Cassandra Cain under the bus, tried to kill off John Stewart, wiped out Wally West, and pushed Jason Rusch to the voice in Ronnie Raymond's head.

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to Section 8 and a few minis, but beneath all the hype and smoke and mirrors are pretty much the same people who made a reboot necessary in the first place. Didio seems to say one thing, but what he approves of is the complete opposite. It's a habit of his I don't know if he realizes that.

[GlennSimpson]

I'm sure DC was quite forward thinking when they threw Cassandra Cain under the bus, tried to kill off John Stewart, wiped out Wally West, and pushed Jason Rusch to the voice in Ronnie Raymond's head.

Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to Section 8 and a few minis, but beneath all the hype and smoke and mirrors are pretty much the same people who made a reboot necessary in the first place. Didio seems to say one thing, but what he approves of is the complete opposite. It's a habit of his I don't know if he realizes that.

Well, yes, what he's saying is what he thinks will get people to buy the comics. It's part of his job. His job is not to tell the comics media the harsh complete truth about everything.

And even if he's being honest, it's what he intends *now*, moving forward, so bringing up past things is irrelevant.

[Crazy Diamond]

Well, yes, what he's saying is what he thinks will get people to buy the comics. It's part of his job. His job is not to tell the comics media the harsh complete truth about everything.

And even if he's being honest, it's what he intends *now*, moving forward, so bringing up past things is irrelevant.

I don't expect him to tell the truth, but I don't know why he keeps contradicting himself.

The past often shows what the future might be and considering how they said they were moving forwards and yet Barbara Gordon is Batgirl and Ronnie Raymond is Firestorm, it just seemed odd.

[GlennSimpson]

I don't expect him to tell the truth, but I don't know why he keeps contradicting himself.

The past often shows what the future might be and considering how they said they were moving forwards and yet Barbara Gordon is Batgirl and Ronnie Raymond is Firestorm, it just seemed odd.

Again, it's only odd in a "jumbo shrimp" kind of way. Moving forward doesn't mean not using the best-known versions of your characters. It just means presenting those characters in new ways.

[dogwelder]

I laugh.
.
All this negativity for the direction of DC......lets talk about week one:

Action and JLA....pages and pages of everyone tap dancing and scatting how great these books are.

Midnighter and Omega Men...the majority of reviews were positive for both books.

Bizarro, Bat-mite, and Green Lantern...not as much attention but they all got nice reviews.

Green Arrow was pretty much disliked as was Wonder Woman Annual 1(which is par for the course).

Yup....one week in and everyone on this hateful thread agrees that Didio and new DC comics are a horror show.

[ChastMastr]

I'm sticking with what Jeff King said!

That's my position as well.

[Jon-El]

This doesn't sound much different that what happened after CRISIS. The door was shut on the old multiverse & we all moved forward. I honestly didn't mind but then I was 14. As I got older & got bored with the current comics, I grew nostalgic for the pre-Crisis era. Hopefully there will be plenty of interesting titles to win over fans clamoring for an older version of a character.

I checked out after OUR WORLDS AT WAR too! That was a rough time.

[golgi]

I laugh.
.
All this negativity for the direction of DC......lets talk about week one:

Action and JLA....pages and pages of everyone tap dancing and scatting how great these books are.

Midnighter and Omega Men...the majority of reviews were positive for both books.

Bizarro, Bat-mite, and Green Lantern...not as much attention but they all got nice reviews.

Green Arrow was pretty much disliked as was Wonder Woman Annual 1(which is par for the course).

Yup....one week in and everyone on this hateful thread agrees that Didio and new DC comics are a horror show.

Yeah, the majority of the books were great. Even Bizarro, which is surprising. It's really the same people complaining, because they have nothing better to do.

[dogwelder]

If a creator is someone a member likes he will praise his interview.

Take that same interview and attach it to a creator that a member dislikes and it gets panned.

Looking forward to Batman Superman 21....Earth 2 society....Section 8 and Starfire.