Was New 52 doomed from the start?

[My Two Cents]

The whole answer to why New 52 failed can be summed up in Jeff Lemire's Animal Man book with art by Travel Foreman.
The book was off too a fantastic start and than D C had to toss it and Swamp Thing into a long Rot crossover and
basically derailed everything Jeff had built to that point. But it did not begin or stop there as far as the New 52 goes,
it was everywhere and anywhere because a few people got to rule the roost and others re-wrote and re-drew and
re-wrote and re-drew or packed there bags.
I guess the move to California and more Sun helped things or at least the books have been far better (imho)

[Korath]

Was there just too much animosity towards the reboot for New 52 Superman, or any of the titles, really, to ever succeed? Are we just going full circle and what is happening now inevitable? It seems like a lot of people were so upset about the dissolution of the marriage that they were never going to give the reboot a chance. Sort of like Brand New Day. I know Spider-Man fans that to this day still won't touch the books until the marriage is restored. Now Marvel has sort of caved giving the Renew Your Vows mini it's own ongoing. So was New 52 doomed to failure before it even took off? I know a lot of people hated the direction books like Wonder Woman took but Superman was basically your classic version with a new suit. Was there just too much working against the entire concept of the New 52 for it to ever truly be accepted by fans?

Comics fans are extremely conservative in generals, and Superman's fans even more so than usual, so I would say that, yes, it was doomed to fail. Changing anything in the so-called "iconic" characterization of Superman is bound to be met with screams and overreaction. Even the new Superboy has had a rough time so fr being accepted by the most hardcore tenants of the "tradition" and he is the son of the "so-perfect" and "important" couple of Superdad and Malois...

[Ascended]

In the sense that it was a reboot, no. Sales started strong, people were eager to give the books a chance. In the sense that editorial were making a lot of bad decisions, yes. It was rushed and poorly planned.

Had DC and WB taken time with the reboot, giving the Post-Crisis a proper send-off, letting Johns finish his Green Lantern run and Morrison his Batman run before the reboot, and not pushed away so much talent, things would have been a lot better.

Agreed.

The rushed nature of the reboot, along with the crippling and contradicting mountain of editorial mandates, killed the thing. And the marketing didn't help any at all either.

[Browncoat Alex]

It should have been a complete reboot. Keeping the continuity for the popular books and dumping the continuity from the not popular books was a bad start. Everyone should have just started off fresh. Either that, or don't do it at all. I understand that the pre-flashpoint Superman was getting pretty terrible by the end, but I think that could have easily been fixed with better writing.

[hellacre]

Nope. Comic numbers analysis suggest otherwise. I think was when they brought in Convergence and took a strange shift with DCYou. New 52 Superman sales took a leap when Truth and Savage Dawn ended and he got the costume back only for them to kill him. Too many Crossovers hurt books that all had good individual arcs that did not need disrupting so much. Read some of the collections when those crossovers hit now...messy and confusing if you have no idea about other titles.

The Sales of Rebirth is not greater that new 52 despite having many incentives like double shipping, returnability, cheaper books, more superbooks etc. Comics Beat did a good analysis recently.

[Sacred Knight]

It should have been a complete reboot. Keeping the continuity for the popular books and dumping the continuity from the not popular books was a bad start. Everyone should have just started off fresh. Either that, or don't do it at all. I understand that the pre-flashpoint Superman was getting pretty terrible by the end, but I think that could have easily been fixed with better writing.

That was definitely what I consider to be the biggest issue with the whole thing. And the most funny, considering it was what hampered the post-Crisis verse after COIE. Which told me that 25 years later, the then-current DC brass could not do the simplest of research and learn from a tangibly evidential mistake. As much as I supported the idea of a reboot at the time, I was saying from day one and still say to this day that if you do make the conscious decision to reboot, you have to go all in. Or don't do it at all. Those are the two choices. In between gets you a mess.

But with all that said, with all the issues the reboot had, the real trouble still didn't begin till the DCYou. That horrible misstep was the death knell. Not anything having to do with the true original New 52 movement (as bad as some elements were).

[Kuwagaton]

But with all that said, with all the issues the reboot had, the real trouble still didn't begin till the DCYou. That horrible misstep was the death knell. Not anything having to do with the true original New 52 movement (as bad as some elements were).

DCYou caused me to give up temporarily, but unfortunately I can't even say it was the first serious sign to me. I kept quiet all along but when Lobdell was on shaky ground already and had to fill in as Diggle was taken off, I decided that the line direction was officially a disaster. Pak came on strong, but then it hurt to see that a respected Marvel writer coming in with a future superstar wasn't a really big deal so I lost hope on that pretty early.

[rui no onna]

Nope. Comic numbers analysis suggest otherwise. I think was when they brought in Convergence and took a strange shift with DCYou. New 52 Superman sales took a leap when Truth and Savage Dawn ended and he got the costume back only for them to kill him. Too many Crossovers hurt books that all had good individual arcs that did not need disrupting so much. Read some of the collections when those crossovers hit now...messy and confusing if you have no idea about other titles.

The Sales of Rebirth is not greater that new 52 despite having many incentives like double shipping, returnability, cheaper books, more superbooks etc. Comics Beat did a good analysis recently.

Actually, it's mostly Batman, Justice League and Harley Quinn that are already down to immediate pre-Rebirth numbers. Other Rebirth titles are selling around where they were at the beginning of New 52. All things considered, not bad given returnability has already ended for a couple months already. If the tail end sales of New 52 hadn't dipped so low, then DC wouldn't have needed Rebirth.

As for the double-shipping thing, sure they're down to selling 60K per issue of Superman but that means they're selling 120K issues of Superman per month. They're probably still making more money than when it was selling 60K per month at $3.99.

[darkseidpwns]

DC You was pretty good actually. Midnighter, Omega Men, Son of Batman(when Gleason was writing), Gotham by Midnight were top books. Granted most of the fantastic books came from the Bat office.

[Agent Z]

Comics fans are extremely conservative in generals, and Superman's fans even more so than usual, so I would say that, yes, it was doomed to fail. Changing anything in the so-called "iconic" characterization of Superman is bound to be met with screams and overreaction. Even the new Superboy has had a rough time so fr being accepted by the most hardcore tenants of the "tradition" and he is the son of the "so-perfect" and "important" couple of Superdad and Malois...

Most of the hatred of Jon comes from the new 52 fan base

[TheCape]

Sales were in shaky ground before DC You, remenber the first storyarc that Pak did in Action and that all of us liked.
This are his sales
Decemer 2013: 37.489
January 2014: 36.042
February 2014: 35.305
March 2014: 34.231
April 2014: 37.809
Those are worst than the numbers of Action before the reboot and not much better than the ones on Pre-New 52 Superman. Doomed manage to spikes sales up to the 40k area and Johns did the same (with better results) on the Superman title that was in a similar state of sales. So, the problems didn't started with DC you.

[Atomic Man]

it wasn't doomed but it did start by putting Perez into the Superman title and not giving him free reign. I would have just waited for Morrison to end his first Action arc and the launch the Superman title with new blood. The crossovers pretty much were bother problem here. Constant crossover killed the world building Morrison was laying out and it didn't let the characters get a little character development which was needed. WW/Superman thing had plenty of potential but DC is full of dumb people and killed it before anything interesting could have happened. Was there really a need for stories like Truth and Doomed?

I think the problem was that there wasn't enough warning from the higher ups to really plan a full reboot. I'd love to know if Morrison was going to be involved with the regular Superman titles before Flashpoint. We know Johns and Lee were planning to work on JL before the reboot order came down. DC should have made Morrison the architect of the Superman corner of the DC, writing Action and Superman for at least a year while being the lead guy for the other teams to follow. Pak (or Diggle, or a bunch of other great talent) could have picked up the Superman title when Grant left. Truth and Doomed were both completely unnecessary, most especially Truth. That was the first time we really got to see just how little DC/WB thought of Superman and how much they were willing to change him to remake him in their image of what he they think he should be. That was the mortal wound that doomed New 52 Superman, and when Superman isn't working, the rest of the DCU suffers as well.

Some stuff was. Because some stuff was just bad and and became worse and worse as time went on that it just became unsalvageable. Teen Titans for instance. But Superman, not at all. Even Truth didn't leave things in that bad a spot because most things resovled itself fine. The only remaining kink was the identity being outed, and its not like magic hasn't' fixed stuff like that before. Superman was fine. They decided to go in a different direction because of their internal preference. Which is fine, as since sales were rather similar there's no need to really justify switching, as opposed to a situation where sales were through the roof or something. But it certainly had nothing to do with the concept being doomed and needing to fix things post-haste.

I'd argue that every title in the New 52 that wasn't in the Bat and GL families was doomed from even before the first issues hit stands. There was no coherence, no plan, no unified vision outside those books. The Superman in JL was nothing like Morrison's Action, the 5-year nonsense was contradicted and argued by writers and editors themselves, and no one could quite agree or decide on what happened and didn't happen during those 5 years or even if events like COIE had happened or not.

I think the moment Nuperman was doomed was when Grant left. I've gotta say though that doing everything to antagonize the fan base of the previous version instead of trying to bring them in didn't do any favors to his longevity. Good will goes a long way . It's the only thing that saved Pre FLASHPOINT Superman for as long as he was around.

Even when pre-Flashpoint Superman was at his worst, there was still a sense that those low points could be easily left behind. Grant leaving meant that there was now no one with that level of passion for the character and it was a steady decline until Truth, which was the free fall before the crash.

It wasn't necessarily doomed from the start, but it was so badly planned and mishandled that it was always going to have problems. It was obvious that it wasn't an actual creative choice, but a sales gimmick.

I mean, you've got Dan DiDio and Jim Lee saying "we have to renumber our high-number series or people won't take the reboot seriously," while at the same time not completely rebooting two of the six biggest characters.

The whole thing was a gimmick that forced on DC editorial at what sounds like the last minute. It was a do or die approach to "fixing" what was perceived as a problem. Superman was seen as one of those "problems," but I think the changes to the character had more to do with the lawsuit and the hate that some DC and WB execs have for the character than what was going wrong in the books at the time.

Actually, it's mostly Batman, Justice League and Harley Quinn that are already down to immediate pre-Rebirth numbers. Other Rebirth titles are selling around where they were at the beginning of New 52. All things considered, not bad given returnability has already ended for a couple months already. If the tail end sales of New 52 hadn't dipped so low, then DC wouldn't have needed Rebirth.

As for the double-shipping thing, sure they're down to selling 60K per issue of Superman but that means they're selling 120K issues of Superman per month. They're probably still making more money than when it was selling 60K per month at $3.99.

Thank you for refuting this oft-repeated "argument" regarding sales.

Most of the hatred of Jon comes from the new 52 fan base

Which I don't understand at all. He's been extremely well-written and is a lovable kid. Meanwhile, Damian Wayne continues to be an annoying pissant and is defended and loved by a segment of the fanbase.

[adrikito]

DC doomed N52...

[Minerboh]

Bad writing and a certain horrific armor doomed the New 52.

[manofsteel1979]

Actually, it's mostly Batman, Justice League and Harley Quinn that are already down to immediate pre-Rebirth numbers. Other Rebirth titles are selling around where they were at the beginning of New 52. All things considered, not bad given returnability has already ended for a couple months already. If the tail end sales of New 52 hadn't dipped so low, then DC wouldn't have needed Rebirth.

As for the double-shipping thing, sure they're down to selling 60K per issue of Superman but that means they're selling 120K issues of Superman per month. They're probably still making more money than when it was selling 60K per month at $3.99.

Yep. Think about it. It used to cost readers 8 dollars a month to keep up with the core Super books. Now it takes 12 dollars with double shipping and sales are still UP. The real test will be next June and the first year down, but 6 months in there is a stability in the sales.

But, I guess people will want to see what they want to see, especially if you have an agenda for failure.