Fate of "Prime Earth" (New 52) Superman Speculation

[The Shredder]

Non canon stories seem to serve Superman best these days, and have for awhile now. Atleast with that route, the "It's my Superman or NOTHING!" crowd is at a minimum.

[Atlanta96]

I don't know how this is degrading, since main superman is clark kent too

I meant reducing Superman to a supporting character, in a Superman supporting character's book. It's like making a powerless Wonder Woman a supporting character in a Steve Trevor series. Cringeworthy.

[Sacred Knight]

I really have a difficult time believing one story arc caused people to leave Superman and essentially be done with him. I've heard that analogy with Convergence, but to me, if the New52 was such a great thing, just prior to Convergence, why wouldn't those same readers who decided to jump off the ship, simply just return following the 2-month hiatus? To me, it speaks volumes about the quality/reception DC's books were having on their readers. No, we just won't come back two months later, like anybody else who is enjoying stories in that universe, rather, we'll just call it a day. THAT'S A RED FLAG.

I dunno, the sales charts I have seen didn't show a steep dropoff till 2015. Only thing that happened then was Convergence and DCYou. Again, it wasn't all fantastic prior. The Superman title had some ugly turnover, Action had some hicupps between Morrison and Pak and Kuder, but still things appeared fairly steady. Just not great. I don't know what it will take to make Superman great again. I just know by now that it will never happen under this regime. That is a certainty. Frankly he's doomed to be okay to bad as long as this core hierarchy is together. Maybe pretty good for brief periods of time despite their interferences.

[edwardsdv]

Convergence broke the habit - TRUTH allowed it to stay broke.

[The Shredder]

I dunno, the sales charts I have seen didn't show a steep dropoff till 2015. Only thing that happened then was Convergence and DCYou.

So what caused the drop off in 2015? A 2-month hiatus? That's it? I don't know, it's just weird multiple readers could go from, "Hey, I'm really enjoying this!" to "Wait? 2 months?!? I'm DONE with this!". Unless of course there was a underlining problem not being addressed ....

[superduperman]

Yeah all this conversation is convincing me of is that I never actually like Superman at all I guess, you win Tayswift.

I love the character but the comics themselves have always been a mixed bag. I have to concede part of that is because he might not be the easiest character to write for. I think it's okay to like a character and not like what they are doing to them. But it does make it hard to find stuff to read or enjoy with them in it. But I also think part of the problem is that writers aren't allowed to come up with original ideas either. Look at American Alien. It's a good story because Landis was left to his own devices. Ditto Morrison.

[Agniwolf]

So what caused the drop off in 2015? A 2-month hiatus? That's it? I don't know, it's just weird multiple readers could go from, "Hey, I'm really enjoying this!" to "Wait? 2 months?!? I'm DONE with this!". Unless of course there was a underlining problem not being addressed ....

the underlining problem, imho, could be the excess of crossovers

from the moment doomed started the character didnt have enough space to breathe, they should have stopped the x-overs for at least two years so that the character and his suporting cast rebuild themselves from the events. in my case i disliked the part where johns makes Clark go back to the DP (although ulysses saga was a refresher in the middle of doomed) and abandons Cat and this return was not even explored, so if there is a red flag it was the we did not want a xover so soon and they come and say "hey, here is a new x-over, it will tie-in on another one and then the next saga is a x-over as well"

[The Shredder]

I'm not going to argue that the sheer amount of crossovers ISN'T a issue that needs to be addressed, but in this day and age where crossovers, major main universe crossovers even, coming down the pike at a rapid rate, would be the underlining problem with the direction of the New52 Superman line. Could be, possibly, maybe so. I'm not sure how many readers could be buying a title out of just habit, but the problems that plagued the New52Superman incarnation is interesting to think about.

[superduperman]

So what caused the drop off in 2015? A 2-month hiatus? That's it? I don't know, it's just weird multiple readers could go from, "Hey, I'm really enjoying this!" to "Wait? 2 months?!? I'm DONE with this!". Unless of course there was a underlining problem not being addressed ....

The underlying problem is management. Truth was a stupid story. It was a watered down version of what Morrison did and seemed to be directionless. All they saw was "Hey! People liked it when we stripped him of his powers and put him in a T-shirt! Let's do that again!" completely missing the reason WHY the Morrison version worked to begin with. The book wasn't in great shape story wise before then but there's a huge difference between a lull and being out of ideas.

[Doctor Bifrost]

Fair question. For starters, his history was a lot cleaner than his predecessor. People tend to forget this but prior to the reboot, it wasn't clear what stories "counted" and what didn't. The only sure ones were the death and the marriage. At least with New 52, it was clear none of them were. They were starting from scratch. Something many of us felt he needed.

But that's not really true, or at least not completely true. The New 52 Superman had a complicated history, including many events from the character's prior publication history, just "smooshed" into 5 years. Sometimes they were referenced, sometimes they weren't. Obviously, for example, he had adventures with, and long-standing relationships with, the members of the Justice League. I think it was clear that he had already died and come back to life once. (In the same way that Barbara Gordon had been Batgirl, then spent time in a wheelchair, then recovered her ability to walk - all "off-stage," in a way that may have resembled, but was not identical to, the original post-CoIE, pre-FP history.)

And we had no way of knowing what was included and what wasn't.

They didn't really start him from scratch. They implied a lot of adventures "that may have resembled, but was not identical to, the original post-CoIE, pre-FP history."

That's what happens, when you don't develop a character organically, but present him with a history that's pick-and-choose from previous versions.

To be honest, this was the situation after Crisis on Infinite Earths, too.

[edwardsdv]

I love the character but the comics themselves have always been a mixed bag. I have to concede part of that is because he might not be the easiest character to write for. I think it's okay to like a character and not like what they are doing to them. But it does make it hard to find stuff to read or enjoy with them in it. But I also think part of the problem is that writers aren't allowed to come up with original ideas either. Look at American Alien. It's a good story because Landis was left to his own devices. Ditto Morrison.

I was being somewhat facetious. I love superman but like with all things we love theres always that one element of it that you basically just wish would go away. For me that was always ALWAYS Lois Lane. I accept her when shes around as like the price we pay for having Superman stories but if I had my way she wouldn't be around at all, which is part of what I liked about New 52 Superman. Morrison's hadn't even met the lady and Lobdell's version had Cat Grant and Wonder Woman in great roles while Lois was off doing whatever and it was great. Johns dragged her back into prominence and now Lois is going to be a very strong part of both (double-shipped!) superman titles and (likely) have her own title where she has super powers. Oh, brother. I especially hate her being the mother to Superman's child so so much and I also hate Jon as written by Jurgens so far so I think I have plenty of reasons to want to reject this entire direction.

But nope, I guess the fact that Lois is around and I hate her means I hate all Superman stories, Tay.

[Dolores - The Worst Poster Ever]

So what caused the drop off in 2015? A 2-month hiatus? That's it? I don't know, it's just weird multiple readers could go from, "Hey, I'm really enjoying this!" to "Wait? 2 months?!? I'm DONE with this!". Unless of course there was a underlining problem not being addressed ....

The sales dropped because of the derailment of the Truth arc. After the Convergence break, Action Comics & Superman actually saw an increase in sales, only slightly in the case of Superman but there was an increase, and both books started charting better digitally. Problems arose when DC wanted to cut the DCYou Initiative short and return to the status quo faster than expected.

For Superman, this was a problem because Before Truth was something Yang had to do in order to get to the story he wanted to tell, but just before he was done with it, plans changed so he the set-up story which wasn't very good had no pay-off in his run, with Romita's final issue having some very rushed art.

For Action Comics, sales dropped once the fill-in artists took over. At one point a fill-in artist was needed for the fill-in artist, it got that bad. Pak and Kuder had showed a lot of promise in their first three issues of Truth, but the book sank to mediocrity when the plans changed and Kuder was no longer on art duties.

Yang never got to tell his story, and Pak/Kuder only got three and a half issues to tell theirs.

Had the creative teams not had to suddenly change their plans, Superman would have likely stabilized in the mid to high 40 thousand range, and Action Comics would have stabilized in the high 30 thousand range.

People were interested in Truth, that's why it saw an increase in sales, but it wasn't the slam dunk DC wanted, which resulted in the mess it became which led to the lowest sales of the New 52.

[The Shredder]

I would agree that sheer mismanagement is one of the major problems. Direction is very important, and a character could have all the potential in the world, but if the editorial doesn't allow for it go anywhere, the character thus becomes expendable, whether by the company, or by the readers wallets, which I suppose TRUTH was a example of, since it did New52Superman's direction no favors whatsoever. Mismanagement was also certainly a factor in the New52 direction as a whole being mandated. Oh, how I miss the days when DC was much more of a competent publisher.

[The Shredder]

The sales dropped because of the derailment of the Truth arc. After the Convergence break, Action Comics & Superman actually saw an increase in sales, only slightly in the case of Superman but there was an increase, and both books started charting better digitally. Problems arose when DC wanted to cut the DCYou Initiative short and return to the status quo faster than expected.

For Superman, this was a problem because Before Truth was something Yang had to do in order to get to the story he wanted to tell, but just before he was done with it, plans changed so he the set-up story which wasn't very good had no pay-off in his run, with Romita's final issue having some very rushed art.

For Action Comics, sales dropped once the fill-in artists took over. At one point a fill-in artist was needed for the fill-in artist, it got that bad. Pak and Kuder had showed a lot of promise in their first three issues of Truth, but the book sank to mediocrity when the plans changed and Kuder was no longer on art duties.

Yang never got to tell his story, and Pak/Kuder only got three and a half issues to tell theirs.

Had the creative teams not had to suddenly change their plans, Superman would have likely stabilized in the mid to high 40 thousand range, and Action Comics would have stabilized in the high 30 thousand range.

People were interested in Truth, that's why it saw an increase in sales, but it wasn't the slam dunk DC wanted, which resulted in the mess it became which led to the lowest sales of the New 52.

Thanks for this informative post.

[Prime]

Editorial destroyed Superdad years ago and now it destroyed Nu Superman.