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  1. #16
    Extraordinary Member Prime's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by manofsteel1979 View Post
    Short answer,better editors. Although frankly if we had better editorial management in the first place prior to 2011, then I don't think there would have been a New 52 Superman in the first place.

    Long answer, it comes down to one word. Commitment.

    Commitment to reboot your whole universe from square one. No exceptions. I honestly think the moment DC decided the New 52 was going to reboot everything not with a bat or Green Lantern logo but leave those two properties largely be spelled doom for Nuperman. The biggest mistake DC made in 1986 was not going full reboot then and they repeated the same mistake in 2011.

    If DC wasn't willing to take everything back to ground zero, neither should Superman have been. You should always utilize what you have,perhaps retool and adjust, then move forward. Many people say there was nothing wrong with Nuperman that good writing couldn't fix,which was true, but also applied to Pre flashpoint Superman in 2011 and Pre Crisis Supes in 1986.

    However once the decision is made to reboot, commit to it. Do the hard work. Build and take the time to do things right. For instance, you want Wonder Woman and Superman together? Fine. Build it naturally and organically over a couple years worth of comics, not just tease some stolen glances in a handful of Justice League comics, then have them kiss, and then suddenly they are a couple because you say they are? Sorry. Don't buy it. You wanna change Superman's costume? Fine. Just don't arbitrarily throw on a high collar and draw lines all over the suit and call it a new suit. Again, put thought into it and come up with something that is unmistakable as Superman, but with actual thought and care behind it. You want to do something that shatters the status quo and reshape Superman in the way TRUTH was supposed to? Then instead of doing crappy crossover after crappy crossover, actually build a status quo that we will actually care about losing.

    Outside of Morrison, Perez and Pak, no one at DC seemed to give a damn about New 52 Superman ( or more specifically Superman in general) and with that apathy emanating from editorial, the readers, for the most part stopped caring as well.
    THANK YOU!!!! This is what we needed.

  2. #17
    Extraordinary Member adrikito's Avatar
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    NO TRUTH AND SAVAGE DAWN.. or... NO CONVERGENCE

    DC said this(superdad as superman) was planned before... LIES.. Superdad was to appear before DC changed his encounter with superman..
    Last edited by adrikito; 06-23-2016 at 07:51 AM.

  3. #18
    Uncanny Member MajorHoy's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jadeb View Post
    . . . Morrison had a vision for the early days of the character, but there was no vision for what was to follow. It was a mess from the start.
    Problem with "Morrison's vision" was that it was taking up the early days of New52 Superman, AND it was a work in progress.
    DC seemed to give Morrison free reign to do whatever he wanted, and then had to have Pérez back track and make whatever he turned in then conform to whatever Morrison wrote or decided he was going to write.

    If they really wanted to have Morrison control the early days and destiny of the character, they shouldn't have started Superman #1 until Morrison's first story arc was completed, then have Morrison and Pérez collaborate on where each of them would go with present-day stories.

  4. #19
    Omnes Viae Ad Infernum 666MasterOfPuppets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by superduperman View Post
    What ideas do you think would have saved New 52 Superman? Would having him hook up with Lois have done it? Would giving him a more traditional costume done it? Obviously crossover fatigue and stories that go nowhere didn't help but what else could DC have done that would have prevented his death?
    I think the main ideas (attitude, SMWW, more of a social crusader mixed wityh Silver Age craziness) worked. What didn't work were bad writing and excessive editorial meddling/ crossovers. There wasn't too much character development.

    So, the contrary to that would have saved him.

    EDIT: they could have done that at any moment. Even now. Rebirth was not necessary.
    Last edited by 666MasterOfPuppets; 06-23-2016 at 08:41 AM.

  5. #20
    Astonishing Member Francisco's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by MajorHoy View Post
    Not screwing over George Pérez.
    Not letting Scott Lobdell write anything.
    Finding better editors.
    Not letting their best Super-book, Supergirl, get flushed down the toilet.
    Not having the Superman/Wonder Woman hook up.
    Not having the books become crossover city.
    (Do I need to continue with the litany of mistakes they made?)
    George Perez wasn't writing New 52 Superman. He was writing post-crisis Superman with a New 52 costume.
    One of the best things they did was to pair him up with Wonder Woman. Way better than re-theading the same story after almost 20 years of marriage.
    Your other points I agree with.
    "By force of will he turns his gaze upon the seething horror bellow us on the hillside.
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  6. #21
    Extraordinary Member superduperman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by manofsteel1979 View Post
    Short answer,better editors. Although frankly if we had better editorial management in the first place prior to 2011, then I don't think there would have been a New 52 Superman in the first place.

    Long answer, it comes down to one word. Commitment.

    Commitment to reboot your whole universe from square one. No exceptions. I honestly think the moment DC decided the New 52 was going to reboot everything not with a bat or Green Lantern logo but leave those two properties largely be spelled doom for Nuperman. The biggest mistake DC made in 1986 was not going full reboot then and they repeated the same mistake in 2011.

    If DC wasn't willing to take everything back to ground zero, neither should Superman have been. You should always utilize what you have,perhaps retool and adjust, then move forward. Many people say there was nothing wrong with Nuperman that good writing couldn't fix,which was true, but also applied to Pre flashpoint Superman in 2011 and Pre Crisis Supes in 1986.

    However once the decision is made to reboot, commit to it. Do the hard work. Build and take the time to do things right. For instance, you want Wonder Woman and Superman together? Fine. Build it naturally and organically over a couple years worth of comics, not just tease some stolen glances in a handful of Justice League comics, then have them kiss, and then suddenly they are a couple because you say they are? Sorry. Don't buy it. You wanna change Superman's costume? Fine. Just don't arbitrarily throw on a high collar and draw lines all over the suit and call it a new suit. Again, put thought into it and come up with something that is unmistakable as Superman, but with actual thought and care behind it. You want to do something that shatters the status quo and reshape Superman in the way TRUTH was supposed to? Then instead of doing crappy crossover after crappy crossover, actually build a status quo that we will actually care about losing.

    Outside of Morrison, Perez and Pak, no one at DC seemed to give a damn about New 52 Superman ( or more specifically Superman in general) and with that apathy emanating from editorial, the readers, for the most part stopped caring as well.

    This sums up everything! The costume always looked like it was designed by a middle schooler on the back of his notebook during math class. I know Jim Lee has a leadership position at DC but someone should have forced him to go back and draw a proper costume this time. He should have been forced to look at the Earth One costume and get ideas from there. That one and the one they eventually used for the Smallville comic are probably my favorite (though the Smallville one didn't exist at the time). And I think DC's obsession with Batman is eventually going to end up killing the entire line one day. You can't keep building everything around him. Especially at everyone else's expense. The irony is, he was probably the one who suffered the most from DC's five year timeline. And, yeah, this one hand not knowing what the other hand was doing crap, like with Morrison and Perez, is a huge problem.

    I also think that when New 52 started, a lot of people just assumed it would eventually end up where the last universe did. Lois and Clark together. I think the new direction scared a lot of people off. I get that Superman is a hard character to write for, which is why I think they need a tougher criteria for his writers. He needs a new editor. Period. This is why I think it's funny all these pre-Flashpoint fans saying the "real" Superman is back. The same people that ruined "our" version is still in charge of yours. Do you really think they're going to do a better job with him then they did with ours?

  7. #22
    Incredible Member suemorphplus209's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by superduperman View Post
    This sums up everything! The costume always looked like it was designed by a middle schooler on the back of his notebook during math class. I know Jim Lee has a leadership position at DC but someone should have forced him to go back and draw a proper costume this time. He should have been forced to look at the Earth One costume and get ideas from there. That one and the one they eventually used for the Smallville comic are probably my favorite (though the Smallville one didn't exist at the time). And I think DC's obsession with Batman is eventually going to end up killing the entire line one day. You can't keep building everything around him. Especially at everyone else's expense. The irony is, he was probably the one who suffered the most from DC's five year timeline. And, yeah, this one hand not knowing what the other hand was doing crap, like with Morrison and Perez, is a huge problem.

    I also think that when New 52 started, a lot of people just assumed it would eventually end up where the last universe did. Lois and Clark together. I think the new direction scared a lot of people off. I get that Superman is a hard character to write for, which is why I think they need a tougher criteria for his writers. He needs a new editor. Period. This is why I think it's funny all these pre-Flashpoint fans saying the "real" Superman is back. The same people that ruined "our" version is still in charge of yours. Do you really think they're going to do a better job with him then they did with ours?
    Also the same ones who screwed it up bad enough for the New 52 to actually happen as well.

  8. #23
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    I think the foundation for the loss of New 52 Superman was a fairly subtle thing grounded in that point of the New 52 where the honey moon ended and a bunch of DC's editorial boards went a little bit crazy for a bit. I mean, I personally disagree with a lot of New 52 Superman's defining traits, and am a whole hearted supporter of SuperMarriage, Bussiness Lex, and pretty much all the Post-Crisis trappings of the 90's and the ones that snuck into Man Of Steel and BvS. But I'm going to have to admit that aside from my personal biases, there wasn't anything wrong with the Superman books until it became clear that writers could not control the franchise because editorial was too assertive.

    There's only three writers who seemed to be able to do what they themselves wanted to do with Superman while they themselves were writing him, and their names were Grant Morrison, Scott Snyder, and Geoff Johns. No one held the writing job immediately after Morrison for long enough to really exploit the good will from his work, Snyder was mostly just given a miniseries publicity stunt, and Johns's run seemed like a desperate attempt to get some super star talent on the book. As a result, nothing seemed to really stick from arguably the best writers in the business, while guys like Andy Diggle and George Perez publicly dropped the book because editorial couldn't manage them properly.

    As a result, the Superbooks never really hit a true nadir of horrific writing, but they seemed perpetually stuck in a restricted and inconsistent format. I think Scott Lobdell epitomizes the problems the books faced. I'm a Lobdell hater thanks to Teen Titans, but I also know that he's been turned into editorial's hatchet-man more often than was healthy for his writing. I personally don't think he was good enough to be the main Superman writer, but he seems to have been the only one with a strong relationship with editorial, and it still kind of screwed him over. He came in with a lot of ideas, but still had to shill what editorial wanted him to, got his run overstuffed, and eventually left most of his ideas stillborn because there were too many demands on him.

    So in hindsight, the switch back to the crossover heavy format for the books was editorial trying to clean up its own mess. No one can stand to work under the editorial board long enough to build their Superman? Okay, then editorial will build their Superman in the same, largely successful, way that the 90's books pulled off. It's just that the 90's in DC saw outrageously good writers holding editorial positions, while simulataneously employing all the ambitious writers the artist-favoring Marvel and Image had kicked out, so their weekly story format was strong, and the New 52's...wasn't.
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  9. #24
    Phantom Zone Escapee manofsteel1979's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    I think the foundation for the loss of New 52 Superman was a fairly subtle thing grounded in that point of the New 52 where the honey moon ended and a bunch of DC's editorial boards went a little bit crazy for a bit. I mean, I personally disagree with a lot of New 52 Superman's defining traits, and am a whole hearted supporter of SuperMarriage, Bussiness Lex, and pretty much all the Post-Crisis trappings of the 90's and the ones that snuck into Man Of Steel and BvS. But I'm going to have to admit that aside from my personal biases, there wasn't anything wrong with the Superman books until it became clear that writers could not control the franchise because editorial was too assertive.

    There's only three writers who seemed to be able to do what they themselves wanted to do with Superman while they themselves were writing him, and their names were Grant Morrison, Scott Snyder, and Geoff Johns. No one held the writing job immediately after Morrison for long enough to really exploit the good will from his work, Snyder was mostly just given a miniseries publicity stunt, and Johns's run seemed like a desperate attempt to get some super star talent on the book. As a result, nothing seemed to really stick from arguably the best writers in the business, while guys like Andy Diggle and George Perez publicly dropped the book because editorial couldn't manage them properly.

    As a result, the Superbooks never really hit a true nadir of horrific writing, but they seemed perpetually stuck in a restricted and inconsistent format. I think Scott Lobdell epitomizes the problems the books faced. I'm a Lobdell hater thanks to Teen Titans, but I also know that he's been turned into editorial's hatchet-man more often than was healthy for his writing. I personally don't think he was good enough to be the main Superman writer, but he seems to have been the only one with a strong relationship with editorial, and it still kind of screwed him over. He came in with a lot of ideas, but still had to shill what editorial wanted him to, got his run overstuffed, and eventually left most of his ideas stillborn because there were too many demands on him.

    So in hindsight, the switch back to the crossover heavy format for the books was editorial trying to clean up its own mess. No one can stand to work under the editorial board long enough to build their Superman? Okay, then editorial will build their Superman in the same, largely successful, way that the 90's books pulled off. It's just that the 90's in DC saw outrageously good writers holding editorial positions, while simulataneously employing all the ambitious writers the artist-favoring Marvel and Image had kicked out, so their weekly story format was strong, and the New 52's...wasn't.
    Pideas.he equation was different. With the Carlin era, the stories were born from the writers collaborating with Editorial being merely the guide for executing all their ideas.

    The Idelson/ Berganza era seems to reverse the equation.
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  10. #25
    Incredible Member magha_regulus's Avatar
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    They should have let Morrison have editorial control and set the parameters for the new status quo. They should have really followed through with Superman and Wonder Woman's relationship. I agree with other posters that they should have done a complete line wide reboot and the whole 5 year later thing should have been scrapped. They should have started everything from the beginning. We should have been seeing Superman team ups with Batman and Dick Grayson as Robin. We should have seen the rivalry and flirtation between Lois and Superman. We could have gotten those 5 years worth of stories and then in the present day gotten some really great stuff with more emotional impact because we'd have seen the characters grow. Dick would've become Nightwing by now, Superman and Wonder Woman's relationship would've started about now. They just rushed things.

  11. #26
    Extraordinary Member superduperman's Avatar
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    About the crossover heavy format. Keep in mind, back in the nineties when this was the norm, most comics cost something like $1.25 or $1.50 at the most. Today, DC has to promise to keep the price of an individual issue under $3.00 to win people back. You couldn't go the "buy every title a character is in" route today. Most people can't afford it or don't think it's worth it.

  12. #27
    Incredible Member magha_regulus's Avatar
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    They Should have also introduced Supergirl organically and not given her her own book until she was introduced in the Superman line. The same is true for Kon-El, although I really don't like the character and think he should be sent to comic book limbo. To me Superboy is a young Kal-El period.

  13. #28
    Incredible Member suemorphplus209's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by manofsteel1979 View Post
    Pideas.he equation was different. With the Carlin era, the stories were born from the writers collaborating with Editorial being merely the guide for executing all their ideas.

    The Idelson/ Berganza era seems to reverse the equation.

    Has anyone given some statements as to how constrictive editorial has been at DC recently?

  14. #29
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    Quote Originally Posted by andersonh1 View Post
    They broke New 52 Superman. They took him too far away from spec, especially with the Truth storyline, and he was pretty much beyond repair. You'd have to go all the way back to the beginning, let Morrison establish the new version of the character, and then not stray as far away from classic Superman storytelling as they did. They went astray years ago, in my opinion.
    I think the whole reason they got away with doing Truth was because they knew they'd be doing a big reset button on parts of the continuity and the brand at issue #52.

  15. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by manofsteel1979 View Post
    Pideas.he equation was different. With the Carlin era, the stories were born from the writers collaborating with Editorial being merely the guide for executing all their ideas.

    The Idelson/ Berganza era seems to reverse the equation.
    As far as I know, most of the editorial interference alleged with Idelson or Berganza's comics, New 52 or before, came from over their heads. And while there are stories of Cunningham, I think, letting Gail Simone go or issues with Liefeld or Rucka, my impression is that the editorial tinkering didn't originate with editors. Editors were tasked with enforcement of things like "Batman doesn't sit" but my impression is that a lot of the back and forth even going back to 2000 was above editors' heads. Eddie approved quite a few stories over the years he had to revoke permission on and things like Krypto coming back in the 2000s had to be cleared through Jenette Kahn.

    And even then, it's not that DiDio was sitting around plotting to mess with creators' comics. (He was unaware of Simone's firing and had her unfired.)

    I think it's that you have brand guidelines and notes being drafted by different people above Berganza or Idelson's heads, which leads to rewrites and some jerking around (all filtered through editors).

    So maybe Johns says he wants the batmobile and scenes of Batman at a computer to get more play. This gets filtered through an editor. Then Bob Harras hates Batman sitting and sends his notes to an editor who now has to ask for a rewrite. The creator says, "Why is my editor changing his mind?" But the editor is just having to take ownership for conflicting branding directives from the people over his head and has to enforce those notes, even when they contradict.

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