Was the New 52 an objective mistake in regards to Superman?

[Ascended]

Which, along with no solid plan in place is what doomed the New 52 and specifically new 52 Superman. If the powers that be didn't lean so hard on the " the old Superman sucked and New 52 Superman is soooo much kewler!" type of promotion, I think we would still be working with New 52 Superman as the basis of Superman going forward rather than PreFlashpoint. I still think that by now things would have drifted to more classic elements like a relationship with Lois and maybe even the classic suit, but we'd probably still be working off Morrison's origin with more of the PreFlashpoint continuity folded into that framework rather than a PreFlashpoint framework with some New 52 elements folded in like we have now.

I very much would like to see DC's marketing strategy for those years.

On the one hand, the reboot was supposed to bring in readers, new or lapsed, and since those people weren't reading Superman in the first place, distancing the product from what came before does make a degree of sense. If you weren't reading Superman pre-Flashpoint, being told that the "new guy" was rougher and edgier and whatever other lies DC told might have gotten your attention in a way that "it's the same guy, but we're starting the story over" wouldn't.

But like with so many other things, DC's inability to go "middle of the road" and their knee-jerk reactionism and sensationalism succeeded only in making established fans angry, and the lack of consistency (or any kind of planning at all) didnt provide a quality product to keep the new people around long term, and in the end we were left with sale figures equal to the end of post-Crisis anyway.

I'd love to see what DC's marketing budget and strategies are. I'm no expert but I do have a good eye for advertising and I'd love to take that budget and spin something worthwhile out of it. Give me a call, DC, I'll sell some damn comics for you!

[Yoda]

You had editors saying that as long as they were around you'd never see Superman in a relationship with Lois Lane again at all. Not just the marriage, but any relationship. So I mean, that's a major facet of the character for a lot of people (raises hand) and they explicitly were saying it was boring and never to return. That's one pretty explicit example. And around that time I dropped pretty much all the New 52 books. Ironically, I think that editor actually got moved off the books and left DC pretty soon afterwards.

[rpmaluki]

I guess its a difference in perception. I don't really think they stomped all over him in many senses more than the literal that in that he had been erased. Yes they marketed as New 52 Superman as more modern and "cool", but I can't recall them ever outright or even strongly alluding with strong language that he was an awful version. It could have been handled with better care yes (I still say it wouldn't have made a TON of difference because lip service doesn't change the fact your guy is gone) but at the same time I don't recall many if any outright instances of insult. Heck, I'd say that Tomasi's flippant "this is the Superman you should love" during Rebirth when questions about New 52 Superman came about were much more harsh than anything said about the pre-FP version after he left. Even meta commentary within the books I felt was more strongly insulting to New 52 Superman during Rebirth than it ever was toward post-Crisis Superman in New 52 materials.

It is about perception. They may not have explicitly said it but that's the message some got and some could say all the Rebirth meta stuff was in response to that. I don't doubt how hurtful that was to N52 fans and like I said, this trend is far too repetitive. At some stage, I hope it ends, for the character's sake.

[Sacred Knight]

Oh they ragged on the marriage and romance, I didn't mean to come across as denying that. I remember that. Those are elements that I file under could have been handled with better care, as I said. I mean, I agree with every word of that, I could probably have a beer with Didio ragging on the marriage but just because I agree doesn't mean I'd have ever advised them to actually say it out loud. That said, I still don't recall them ragging much actually on post-Crisis Superman himself, on his own. Oustide the general mantra of "younger, modern, cooler".

It is about perception. They may not have explicitly said it but that's the message some got and some could say all the Rebirth meta stuff was in response to that. I don't doubt how hurtful that was to N52 fans and like I said, this trend is far too repetitive. At some stage, I hope it ends, for the character's sake.

Agreed, at this point it'd be nice if they embraced one objective fact: the history of Superman has fractured the fanbase into different sections. Partly of their own mishandling and negligence, but also in large part just due to the natural passage of time and the vast number of different, even contradictory ideas that have been introduced for this 80 year character. Respect it all, at the very least publicly. And make an effort to give fans options.

Would that focus be unfair to fans of B-level characters and down who don't get much exposure with one version of their faves much less many? Kinda. But at the same time those characters aren't Superman. Don't have the selling power, recognizability, nor longevity. There's a lot to be said about that.

[Yoda]

Oh the ragged on the marriage and romance. Those are elements that I file under could have been handled with better care, as I said. I mean, I agree with every word of that, I could probably have a beer with Didio ragging on the marriage but just because I agree doesn't mean I'd have ever advised them to actually say it out loud. That said, I still don't recall them ragging much actually on post-Crisis Superman himself, on his own.

That's kind of the thing though. That was an element of Post-Crisis Superman that I enjoyed and view as integral to the character as anything else. I had dropped the books pre-Flashpoint so it's not like I thought everything was perfect before Flashpoint. I was honestly into the idea of a reboot at the time as well, the idea of seeing these stories retold in a modern context appeals to me. It brought me back. I was out again after like a year and followed them on or off afterwards. Now most of that was because I thought the stories were terrible. But the comments from various editors and creators factored into it because if that was the underlying ideas they held I had no reason to think I'd enjoy the stories they were going to tell.

[Sacred Knight]

Completely understand. That's why if I were head of advertising or whatever, I would have said "Whatever you do, don't piss all over the marriage in interviews or anywhere else." There's moving on from something and then there's being unnecessarily mean about it. And had the status quo continued I would have advocated for Lois and Clark fans getting theirs somewhere. It couldn't have happened really in Earth 2 due where that story originally was intended to go, but something. Now that the tables are turned, I feel the same way toward N52 ideas.

[Vordan]

I mean New 52 Superman WAS different. He was them trying to tackle on all the same tired complaints we get from people who get all their Superman knowledge from 9gag memes.

Superman is a boring Boy Scout who’s always perfect = New 52 Superman who was in direct conflict with the government, is hotheaded, and makes mistakes in his first couple of years.
Superman has a perfect life and has never encountered hardship = Restoring the Dead Kents and having Metropolis not immediately love him unconditionally.
Superman is overpowered = Well Lobdell ruined this one with his “I can bench press 5 planets without breaking a sweat”, New 52 Supes started out as a street-level hero. He got more powerful over time but at the beginning he was pretty weak.

Morrison tried to address criticisms of Supes by going back to the original Siegel and Shuster hero, which is what DC always should’ve done. Shame it didn’t work out but at least they tried. Now I just ignore idiots who repeat those tired criticims. They tried to give you what you said you wanted and you didn’t buy it so **** off.

[Sacred Knight]

I'd say he was less different altogether rather he was just different some from the post-Crisis version. He was very similar to pre-Crisis takes. The only thing truly and completely different about him was his costume when you get right down to it and that outside of light-hearted dates/teasing he actually went out with Wonder Woman. Other than that pretty much every aspect of him fit some form of a pre-Crisis element, so rather being completely different he was just different to a couple generations who weren't around for the way he used to be to see the similarities.

[Vordan]

I'd say he was less different altogether rather he was just different some from the post-Crisis version. He was very similar to pre-Crisis takes. The only thing truly and completely different about him was his costume when you get right down to it and that outside of light-hearted dates/teasing he actually went out with Wonder Woman. Other than that pretty much every aspect of him fit some form of a pre-Crisis element, so rather being completely different he was just different to a couple generations who weren't around for the way he used to be to see the similarities.

Yeah but c’mon, you think the casual reader has ever touched a Pre-Crisis book? For them the Post-Crisis yuppie with the ideal All-American upbringing, living Kents, and Boy Scout morals was the only version. That’s why people were so butthurt, for most Superman started with Donner or Byrne.

[Yoda]

I also think a lot of these changes are retroactively justified by tying it into some aspect of Pre-Crisis when in fact they were done haphazardly to generate outrage and media attention. When New 52 was announced, the lack of the marriage was a main point in the mainstream news media. That was the hook they used to get the story out. Same with the Wonder Woman relationship. Now not only is Superman not married, but Lois Lane is out, Wonder Woman is in.

Now Morrison I can believe was going for a Golden Age Pre-War take. But if you are going to try to convince me that Scott Lodbell was purposefully trying to call back to pre-Crisis, I really will need to see some receipts for that claim.

I think we will likely see a lot less of that going forward because supposedly Warner Bros is keeping the comics on a tighter leash so that the presentations of the characters are more consistent across all aspects of media.

[Sacred Knight]

Lobdell pretty much did his own thing. As did Johns. Hell most of the Superman title did because of that lack of communication and poor planning. But the basis of the character that Morrison cultivated was largely based on pre-Crisis elements and was followed upon pretty closely in Action Comics at the very least. That much was deliberate and not just a coincidence of trying to shake things up at every turn. The whole venture wasn't planned carefully, thus not executed properly, but there was absolutely a strong inspiration in place for him. But no, it wasn't consistent across every title, which goes back to poor communication. I don't see much retroactive justification though in what New 52 Superman was based on. Its pretty clear, and it wasn't just to generate cheap attention. It used the controversial element to tout it, but that's similar to how both of the big 2 advertise their new initiatives. Just look at how Marvel is advertising their next event. Controversial change. Time will tell if there's more to it than that in actual practice, but that's always the go-to advertisement method.

[Ascended]

The pre-Crisis parallels in the New52 are pretty plain to see if one cares to look, but let's not forget that the Super-line had been moving back in that direction for a good decade before the reboot hit. It started with the return of Silver Age Krypton, Krypto, and Kara Zor-El under Loeb in the very late 90's or early 00's (I forget when exactly), then spread to include Clark's time with the Legion, his powers manifesting at a young age, the death of a Kent (which seemed like trying to split the difference), and so forth under Johns. We saw post-Crisis Clark's power levels slowly rise across the 00's until he was, perhaps not at crazy Silver Age levels, but far beyond where he had started in 86.

The New52 just offered a chance to put those pre-Crisis elements back into the foundation of the character's current continuity. Some writers didn't run with that ball (like Snyder's Unchained) while others did (Morrison and Pak). Ultimately, the lack of communication, DC's general apathy to the character, and the terrible editorial skills of Berganza ruined all the potential of the line, and in classic fashion DC over-reacted and literally ran back to post-Crisis Superman, never understanding why their books were actually failing but instead latching onto whatever "solution" seemed easiest and appealed most to management's personal bias. >shrug< But there was indeed a healthy dose of pre-Crisis in the makeup of New52 Superman, which is one of the many reasons I enjoyed so much of that era. And pre-Crisis had been finding its way home long before that, anyway.

[manofsteel1979]

To be fair, the Wonder woman relationship stuff wasn't part of the initial New 52 marketing push. I think Bleeding Cool leaked early on that was going to be the behind the scenes push once the ball got rolling, but DC was either denying it or "no comment"-ing it until three months out from JL#12, where the infamous kiss was shown.THEN the publicity machine started ramping up the Superwoder angle to push down everyone's throats,to the delight and disgust of many.

And no, I don't think Lobdell was intentionally doing a bronze age paeon with his version of Clark , particularly in regards to personality. However his version of Krypton and the silver age power levels were definitely out of the preCrisis era. Lobdell definitely wrote Clark the way editorial and DC'S marketing wing wanted Clark to be. Lobdell is one of those guys who basically writes what editorial wants him to write and he can write multiple books relatively competantly and always hit his deadlines. It was DC'S editorial that was pushing for a Superman that was a bad ass that made questionable choices, and that's what Lobdell wrote.

However , Geoff Johns aside over in JL ( who seemed to have Superman constantly be floating all red eyed and stoic in the background for like half of that run), pretty much everyone else from George Perez and Dan Jurgens, to Greg Pak,Charles Soule and Scott Snyder generally wrote Superman pretty much some degree of Boyscout. The only exceptions are the first 7 issues of Morrison's Action, swaths of Lobdell's run, and perhaps most of TRUTH, and the afore mentioned first year or so of Geoff Johns JL.

As for the rest, as Ascended said above it wasn't like DC wasn't moving away from Byrne's version already. By the time of Flashpoint the character was closer to the 1985 Superman than the post 1986 Superman.The only thing that remained aside from the illusion that everything since Byrne was Canon and co-existed with the pre Byrne continuity (it didn't) was Ma Kent still being alive and the marriage to Lois, but they had been trying to undo the later since about a decade prior. Flashpoint just gave them the clean break to do it.

[Sacred Knight]

The pre-Crisis parallels in the New52 are pretty plain to see if one cares to look, but let's not forget that the Super-line had been moving back in that direction for a good decade before the reboot hit. It started with the return of Silver Age Krypton, Krypto, and Kara Zor-El under Loeb in the very late 90's or early 00's (I forget when exactly), then spread to include Clark's time with the Legion, his powers manifesting at a young age, the death of a Kent (which seemed like trying to split the difference), and so forth under Johns. We saw post-Crisis Clark's power levels slowly rise across the 00's until he was, perhaps not at crazy Silver Age levels, but far beyond where he had started in 86.

The New52 just offered a chance to put those pre-Crisis elements back into the foundation of the character's current continuity. Some writers didn't run with that ball (like Snyder's Unchained) while others did (Morrison and Pak). Ultimately, the lack of communication, DC's general apathy to the character, and the terrible editorial skills of Berganza ruined all the potential of the line, and in classic fashion DC over-reacted and literally ran back to post-Crisis Superman, never understanding why their books were actually failing but instead latching onto whatever "solution" seemed easiest and appealed most to management's personal bias. >shrug< But there was indeed a healthy dose of pre-Crisis in the makeup of New52 Superman, which is one of the many reasons I enjoyed so much of that era. And pre-Crisis had been finding its way home long before that, anyway.

As usual, pretty much all of this. In fact, in regards to pre-Crisis material being brought back in, I can even think of one element where they took a somewhat shook-up returned element, and returned it to its classic, foundational form even before the reboot. Krypto. When he was first brought back, Loeb worked him in by making him a refugee of the fake Silver Age-inspired Krypton Brainiac 13 had created. In other words he got creative to bring something classic into a continuity that didn't support it because of post-Crisis edicts. By One Year later though, the dog's origin had been retconned back into his classic, that he was simply the El's dog on the real Krypton and was rocketed away like Kal was. The old edicts by then were completely gone. So really they had been committed for a while to bring even pre-Crisis foundational roots back to the post-Crisis Superman. The reboot just gave them a chance to do these without relying on retcons (outside of course of the retcon of the whole universe reboot, lol), doing things in a more real time and from-the-start basis. ....Which they pretty much immediately sabotaged across the board by implementing an immediate 5 year time skip to juggle. :facepalm

[HeroVladimir93]

I mean New 52 Superman WAS different. He was them trying to tackle on all the same tired complaints we get from people who get all their Superman knowledge from 9gag memes.

Superman is a boring Boy Scout who’s always perfect = New 52 Superman who was in direct conflict with the government, is hotheaded, and makes mistakes in his first couple of years.
Superman has a perfect life and has never encountered hardship = Restoring the Dead Kents and having Metropolis not immediately love him unconditionally.
Superman is overpowered = Well Lobdell ruined this one with his “I can bench press 5 planets without breaking a sweat”, New 52 Supes started out as a street-level hero. He got more powerful over time but at the beginning he was pretty weak.

Morrison tried to address criticisms of Supes by going back to the original Siegel and Shuster hero, which is what DC always should’ve done. Shame it didn’t work out but at least they tried. Now I just ignore idiots who repeat those tired criticims. They tried to give you what you said you wanted and you didn’t buy it so **** off.

Just ignore those people. They won't be happy with Superman no matter what happens. For better or worse, the New 52 added to the substance of the Superman universe.