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

[Yoda]

Yeah, it just depends on readers' acceptance of those "hand waves".

Exactly. If you like it, it's a perfectly executed transition. If you don't it all of a sudden doesn't make sense.

Nevermind they both essentially have the same explanation now, Dr. Manhattan.

[Lokimaru]

The first issue of Superman Unchained references Clark leaving the Daily Planet. So no, Unchained definitely is not a prequel.

My bad sorry about that (dug out my copy of the trade). Lex saying the essence of Superman is Trial and Error actually resonates with this discussion though. What is Man of Steel but Trial and Error? BvS, Justice League, Injustice, The New 52, Bryne, Superman Returns, Reeve superman, Silver Age, Golden Age. Some Worked, Some Didn't but what is Superman with out Trial and Error? He's only Human after all.

[manofsteel1979]

I would have had no problem with the concept of Truth had the powers that be not already spent the previous three or so years of the New 52 "shaking Supes status quo!" Every other month, and in the lead up to it , editorial and the PR department doing everything they could to frame Lois Lane as being basically Supes newest foe and dragging her name through the mud after spending said previous three years generally ignoring her or otherwise keeping her off limits to other writers. Those two things really really soured me to the whole thing.

I gave it an honest chance, and some parts early on were kind of intriguing and there were some powerful images and moments there, particularly Pak's first few issues of it. However, it quickly became, to put it bluntly, dogshit. The execution went off the rails and it just didn't end and it got to the point that for the first time in 20 years I dropped the Superbooks and likely wouldn't have ever returned had the rumblings of Rebirth not pulled me back in.

I'm all for occasionally testing the metal of your heroes and putting them through the wringer and knocking over the apple cart. The problem is there were very few apples in said apple cart at the time, and what little world building that Pak was doing in ACTION and to a lesser extent Batman/Superman was just pretty much permanently derailed. It kept happening through the New 52 and it was this never ending string of " shocking status quo changes" and crossover upon crossover...I just couldn't take it.

As flawed as John Byrne's Man of Steel and that reboot was in terms of altering important aspects of the character, at least they let him actually build a basis and a solid foundation for the character. When we got to EXILE early on in the Triangle Era, which was also a story that upended Supes then proverbial apple cart, it worked. Mainly because there were actual apples in the cart! Stakes! Character development and an evolution of our hero. Yeah there were a lot of crossovers through that time, but it all rolled out organically and logically from what was built prior.

That's why the Triangle era and frankly the post Crisis Superman is hard to shake, because for all it's faults in comparison to what came prior and after, it was built on a solid foundation of stone over the course of like years of building a world. New 52 Supes foundation was built, frankly,on sand. No solid foundation or at least a foundation that DC refused to properly build on for whatever reason.

The problem was never really New 52 Superman as a character. The guy Morrison created and Greg Pak elaborated on was not that far from classic Superman outside of asthetics and a few odd quirks that could have easily been fixed over time as the triangle era guys did with Byrne's initial version. The problem was always in execution and horrible mismanagement and an editorial philosophy that was absolutely obsessed with constantly trying to fix and augment what was never broken in the first place.To be fair that same philosophy was in place before the New 52 and some could even make the case it's happening now currently in regards to certain aspects of Bendis' run, but it was never quite as bad as it was during the New 52 era.

[Korath]

As to SM/WW, I wasn't reading New 52 as it came out past the first 6 months except for Morrison's run and Batman. Didn't do much more than skim through Lobdell's stuff or the Action issues before Pak once I went to catch up but I don't recall much of anything in Johns run or Pak's. Superman Unchained ignored it completely. Was there stuff in Doomed outside of SM/WW? I honestly don't recall it.

Doomed can't happen without the SM/WW relationship, not without massive changes which amounts to making Death of Superman with Selina Kyla as Supe's girlfriend. No matter how much some peoples may place Lois Lane on a pedestal, she doesn't work like Diana does as a lover for this story to exist. A large part of how Superman overcome's Doomsday at his lowest is thanks to what already happened in the SM/WW and the love between the two.

[JAK]

I know he hated the marriage, but he hates all marriages for characters. It's interesting that Bendis has essentially the exact opposite opinion. I think Didio likes sales, fan engagement, and success and would personally officiate the wedding of every DCU couple if he thought it would lead to steady sales increases.

Very true, on all counts. I get that it's a business, but he could stand to be a bit more... cagey?

Something about Lois just brings out the worst in a lot of creators and editors though. They just can't help but stick their foot in their mouth talking about her. I really don't get it, she's been a central part of every successful mass media interpretation of the character (i.e. made them more money than DC's comic division could hope to) and yet they can't seem recognize this and treat her as disposable.

I think part of it is because a lot of comics still have a "boys club" mentality: a number of writers came into enjoying these characters when they were kids or teens, and that can (not always, but can) shape their perception of how to handle certain things. Why a married man like Lee could still say that marriage was "the end of the story". He *should* know better, from personal experience, but didn't when it came to comics. Now, you could say he was trying to find a way to frame the marriage being gone after the reboot, which is fair... but he could have just said "it's a whole new universe and we're starting from the ground up". Whoever came up with saying marriage is a narrative endgame likely has at least a somewhat adolescent framework in their head when they look at comics. And I feel compelled to say that's not *always* a bad thing - in fact I think writing for a large age range is good.. but it doesn't seem to serve Lois very well, in general. Hopefully that's coherent, that went a lot of places at once, lol!

Adding Jon is more of a sitcom trope I guess than a stunt, but adding a kid out of nowhere is a trope for a reason.

I do see that, but given that these are characters we've seen for decades, this was just the next logical step. So I guess I don't see it as something that came out of nowhere, but it depends on one's perspective on that.

I think Jon and the New 52 are what is similar. His introduction couldn't get any less organic in my eyes. I mean, his first creation, Convergence, was fairly organic. What came after very much was not once it was merged into the old canon. It was literally a flipping-of-the-switch change, creating and inserting something into an established history that never existed before. To me that's a consequential asspull just like erasing a history entirely. New 52 did their asspull by erasing history and starting over. The story then grew from there. Rebirth did its ass-pull by inserting a ten year old character into an old continuity that never existed before as if he'd always been there. The story grew from there. I find it both scenarios fairly close to identical in concept, and even in scope because although the latter was just one change, it was substantial enough a change that it has a major chain reaction effect that affects and changes a whole lot of history. That's not that dissimilar from a history just rebooting altogether.

Yeah, I can see the insertion into the timeline being pretty inorganic. I think I see that less as a stunt and more of a "since we're doing x, how do we make y fit". Rebirth was a stunt, though, I'll agree there. Or if not a stunt, a company-wide course-correction - but I do know that's splitting hairs a bit.

Also, I kinda have two "timelines" in my head after all the reboots we've had: there's the timeline as the characters understand it, which is very fluid as continuity changes all the time, and then there's the kind of "Vanishing Point" timeline, where the continuity changes are part of the struggle and chronology - in that one, Jon's creation will always be in convergence, in an era of a split Superman. The timeline as the characters understand it is simply continuity "naturally" adjusting for the insertion/re-insertion. If that makes any sense?

Purists were against Truth from the Start after it was Leaked that Lois was the cause of Clark SI being exposed. They weren't even curious on how something like that could happen, they were just flat against it on general principle.

It's hard to be curious when the PR department has the framing all wrong. That'd be like me being in charge of PR for Aquaman and saying "a crazy psycho stabs people with a pitchfork for 2-hours and then becomes king" Nothing to do with the story at all except for one small part, and the rest sounds horrible. You can't just always blame "purists" for a bad PR model, just as I don't blame New52 fans for liking their version of the character.

They didn't introduce him, ride the story for 6 issues and the dump him into another dimension or just ignore him until people forget about him. Initial concept maybe there's a similarity but in actual execution there's no comparison.

Now that I would have absolutely called a stunt.

I would have had no problem with the concept of Truth had the powers that be not already spent the previous three or so years of the New 52 "shaking Supes status quo!" Every other month, and in the lead up to it , editorial and the PR department doing everything they could to frame Lois Lane as being basically Supes newest foe and dragging her name through the mud after spending said previous three years generally ignoring her or otherwise keeping her off limits to other writers. Those two things really really soured me to the whole thing.

I gave it an honest chance, and some parts early on were kind of intriguing and there were some powerful images and moments there, particularly Pak's first few issues of it. However, it quickly became, to put it bluntly, dogshit. The execution went off the rails and it just didn't end and it got to the point that for the first time in 20 years I dropped the Superbooks and likely wouldn't have ever returned had the rumblings of Rebirth not pulled me back in.

I'm all for occasionally testing the metal of your heroes and putting them through the wringer and knocking over the apple cart. The problem is there were very few apples in said apple cart at the time, and what little world building that Pak was doing in ACTION and to a lesser extent Batman/Superman was just pretty much permanently derailed. It kept happening through the New 52 and it was this never ending string of " shocking status quo changes" and crossover upon crossover...I just couldn't take it.

As flawed as John Byrne's Man of Steel and that reboot was in terms of altering important aspects of the character, at least they let him actually build a basis and a solid foundation for the character. When we got to EXILE early on in the Triangle Era, which was also a story that upended Supes then proverbial apple cart, it worked. Mainly because there were actual apples in the cart! Stakes! Character development and an evolution of our hero. Yeah there were a lot of crossovers through that time, but it all rolled out organically and logically from what was built prior.

That's why the Triangle era and frankly the post Crisis Superman is hard to shake, because for all it's faults in comparison to what came prior and after, it was built on a solid foundation of stone over the course of like years of building a world. New 52 Supes foundation was built, frankly,on sand. No solid foundation or at least a foundation that DC refused to properly build on for whatever reason.

The problem was never really New 52 Superman as a character. The guy Morrison created and Greg Pak elaborated on was not that far from classic Superman outside of asthetics and a few odd quirks that could have easily been fixed over time as the triangle era guys did with Byrne's initial version. The problem was always in execution and horrible mismanagement and an editorial philosophy that was absolutely obsessed with constantly trying to fix and augment what was never broken in the first place.To be fair that same philosophy was in place before the New 52 and some could even make the case it's happening now currently in regards to certain aspects of Bendis' run, but it was never quite as bad as it was during the New 52 era.

You've said this much better than I could, and you have more New52 knowledge than I have, so I'll just defer to you and quote all this for truth (the word, not the story..lol). Well done, sir. (I did make one small inference addition/correction - it's underlined in the quote - if I don't have that right, let me know, I'll remove it)

[Miles To Go]

Interest also wasn't lost in short order. It in fact grew to the point it received its very own title which lasted until the initiative ended.

The title was launched fairly early into the initiative though, and outside of that overrated Charles Soule portion, most of the material existed to deconstruct the pairing under the illusion of "challenging the relationship", even Johns, who introduced it, was getting bored of it by the time he took over the Super books and was playing it down. The plan from the get-go was to have always ended it badly and spin the characters off into different things anyway, there was no real commitment to the premise.

No matter how much some peoples may place Lois Lane on a pedestal, she doesn't work like Diana does as a lover for this story to exist.

I very much doubt that. Were this pre-flashpoint, they'd find a way to make his love for Lois fit the scenario like a glove more so than N52's puppy dog love for easy-going Diana

[manofsteel1979]

Purists were against Truth from the Start after it was Leaked that Lois was the cause of Clark SI being exposed. They weren't even curious on how something like that could happen, they were just flat against it on general principle.

Well, a lot of that comes from how the PR department of DC and people like John Romita Jr. At the time basically said the reason Lois outed Superman was that she was a greedy career minded witch that only was concerned about exposing her friend for a scoop. There was little attempt at building a mystery. No ," why does Lois Lane expose Superman's identity? Buy the issue to find out!" The PR material and stuff coming from the creators was unambiguous about Lois' motives and it was obviously catered to create controversy just for the sake of it. To troll people who like Lois as a character and encourage the patronage of people who seem to really dislike her, all to fan the shipping wars anew.

We all know now the PR was not in the least bit accurate in terms of why she does it, but given as it was basically being marketed as a big "f--k you!" to fans of Lois Lane and the Lois and Clark relationship, those readers can be forgiven for not wanting to trust the people behind the story and support something like that with their money. I know I was this close to dropping Superman and DC altogether because of that crap. I stuck with the early part of the story, was both pleasantly surprised and disgusted that Lois actually came off looking better than Clark in the whole outing situation, then eventually realized the story was garbage ultimately and dropped the books like a bad habit.

[manofsteel1979]

You've said this much better than I could, and you have more New52 knowledge than I have, so I'll just defer to you and quote all this for truth (the word, not the story..lol). Well done, sir. (I did make one small inference addition/correction - it's underlined in the quote - if I don't have that right, let me know, I'll remove it)

Nope, you got it right. I'm sure you and others have long realized now that MOS1979 rarely carefully proofreads his posts! In fact I'll usually post...then edit...then add some more thoughts... delete some others...edit some more. Etc.

[JAK]

Nope, you got it right. I'm sure you and others have long realized now that MOS1979 rarely carefully proofreads his posts! In fact I'll usually post...then edit...then add some more thoughts... delete some others...edit some more. Etc.

Oh, you're absolutely preaching to the choir - I try to proofread, but then 10 minutes later I think "wait, I should have said..." and I'm back at it. My posts have a "cooking" period of an hour, at least, lol

In fact, I was originally just going to make the correction and leave it at that, but then I thought it'd be best to make sure so it doesn't look like I'm trying to put words into your mouth or anything like that.

[rpmaluki]

Well, a lot of that comes from how the PR department of DC and people like John Romita Jr. At the time basically said the reason Lois outed Superman was that she was a greedy career minded witch that only was concerned about exposing her friend for a scoop. There was little attempt at building a mystery. No ," why does Lois Lane expose Superman's identity? Buy the issue to find out!" The PR material and stuff coming from the creators was unambiguous about Lois' motives and it was obviously catered to create controversy just for the sake of it. To troll people who like Lois as a character and encourage the patronage of people who seem to really dislike her, all to fan the shipping wars anew.

We all know now the PR was not in the least bit accurate in terms of why she does it, but given as it was basically being marketed as a big "f--k you!" to fans of Lois Lane and the Lois and Clark relationship, those readers can be forgiven for not wanting to trust the people behind the story and support something like that with their money. I know I was this close to dropping Superman and DC altogether because of that crap. I stuck with the early part of the story, was both pleasantly surprised and disgusted that Lois actually came off looking better than Clark in the whole outing situation, then eventually realized the story was garbage ultimately and dropped the books like a bad habit.

Pretty much this. PR said one thing, which stoked the flames of hatred towards Lois. It didn't even play out like that but the damage was done. And you are correct, Clark was written so horribly during this debacle, I couldn't believe it. It wasn't even the first time I feel he acted shamefully for a Superman. And both times, it involved Lois. I could deal with a lot of things, certain changes but not what happened in truth (his behaviour towards Lois) and Clark almost sacrificing Lois to Parasite to protect himself. That is just low.

[manofsteel1979]

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.

No doubt there would have been some people who wouldn't have latched onto New 52 Superman even if Jerry Siegel himself came back from the dead to write him. There are still people smarting over the 86 reboot after all. However I do think the majority of the old school ( as in our generation of readers) that ended up dropping the books at the start would have been willing to give it a more honest shot had the people in charge at the time didn't over play their hand . Of course people would have been annoyed with having 30 years of continuity wiped out, but most of us and people like JAK would have rolled with it if they felt like they were being included rather than rejected.

And I agree some of the metacomentary in the books around the start of Rebirth was unfortunate. New 52 Superman had his fans. Heck I was once one of them. He did deserve more respect. However I still think the company PR from the transition into new 52 was far more damaging and insulting towards the existing readership. But YMMV.

And to give the Rebirth era creators some credit, there was an effort made to incorporate some story elements and continuity of New 52 Superman into the current version. Yes it was done via merger which was dubious, and yes in some ways it was lip service and many elements like Super wonder were outright eliminated from the equation, but at least an effort was made to try and extend an olive branch to the New 52 fans. It was probably more like an olive twig with one olive on it, but it was better than what the New 52 transition offered concerned older fans , which basically was a wedgie and then kicked out the door. Of course, again, YMMV.

[Yoda]

No doubt there would have been some people who wouldn't have latched onto New 52 Superman even if Jerry Siegel himself came back from the dead to write him. There are still people smarting over the 86 reboot after all. However I do think the majority of the old school ( as in our generation of readers) that ended up dropping the books at the start would have been willing to give it a more honest shot had the people in charge at the time didn't over play their hand . Of course people would have been annoyed with having 30 years of continuity wiped out, but most of us and people like JAK would have rolled with it if they felt like they were being included rather than rejected.

And I agree some of the metacomentary in the books around the start of Rebirth was unfortunate. New 52 Superman had his fans. Heck I was once one of them. He did deserve more respect. However I still think the company PR from the transition into new 52 was far more damaging and insulting towards the existing readership. But YMMV.

And to give the Rebirth era creators some credit, there was an effort made to incorporate some story elements and continuity of New 52 Superman into the current version. Yes it was done via merger which was dubious, and yes in some ways it was lip service and many elements like Super wonder were outright eliminated from the equation, but at least an effort was made to try and extend an olive branch to the New 52 fans. It was probably more like an olive twig with one olive on it, but it was better than what the New 52 transition offered concerned older fans , which basically was a wedgie and then kicked out the door. Of course, again, YMMV.

I agree with both your above posts on this and Truth/general New 52 arc. I've said it before, I had dropped the books pre-Flashpoint and was into the idea of a reboot. I liked the initial Morrison arc, but the Superman book was terrible, the direction they were taking Lois was not something I thought was interesting or good for her character (both her "promotion" to the sidelines and new boyfriend Poochie). All that said, I might have stuck it out a little longer had I not been as plugged into the comic news with the creators/editorial statements as I was because it all seemed to point to everything I liked about the character for the last 20 years of reading was bad, boring, bland, and stupid.

But even with that I kept up with a lot of the books over the years, I picked up Unchained and Pak's run for the most part and went back and picked up the full runs of all the Super-books before Rebirth started (one good thing about being a Superman fan is modern back issues from the 90's on usually are pretty easy pick up in dollar/quarter bins by me). I didn't like a lot of it granted - I'll never consciously buy a Lobdell book again - but there was some that I enjoyed.

All that said, the transition to Rebirth was handled far better than the transition to New 52. Rebirth had some unfortunate statements on some fronts, but New 52 transition was outright hostile comparatively.

[JAK]

No doubt there would have been some people who wouldn't have latched onto New 52 Superman even if Jerry Siegel himself came back from the dead to write him. There are still people smarting over the 86 reboot after all. However I do think the majority of the old school ( as in our generation of readers) that ended up dropping the books at the start would have been willing to give it a more honest shot had the people in charge at the time didn't over play their hand . Of course people would have been annoyed with having 30 years of continuity wiped out, but most of us and people like JAK would have rolled with it if they felt like they were being included rather than rejected.

And I agree some of the metacomentary in the books around the start of Rebirth was unfortunate. New 52 Superman had his fans. Heck I was once one of them. He did deserve more respect. However I still think the company PR from the transition into new 52 was far more damaging and insulting towards the existing readership. But YMMV.

And to give the Rebirth era creators some credit, there was an effort made to incorporate some story elements and continuity of New 52 Superman into the current version. Yes it was done via merger which was dubious, and yes in some ways it was lip service and many elements like Super wonder were outright eliminated from the equation, but at least an effort was made to try and extend an olive branch to the New 52 fans. It was probably more like an olive twig with one olive on it, but it was better than what the New 52 transition offered concerned older fans , which basically was a wedgie and then kicked out the door. Of course, again, YMMV.

Yep, exactly.

As for the olive twig (I might need to write a joke song about that for my Christmas album next year, lol), I can definitely see why New52 fans felt they should have had more representation. The problem is, when you're looking at all of Superman's history (save the Golden Age stuff, if we're doing Earth-1/Earth-2), he had 20+ years of Silver/Bronze and 20+ years of Post-Crisis/Pre-Flashpoint that had to all share space... so there was no real way for a 5 year span to get all of the major points in since it was about 11% of his history at best (20+20+5 so 5/45, being generous to New52). So I can understand the issue while still getting that it really wasn't going to go any other way - especially when it all has to crunch into a 10-ish year timeline.

[JAK]

I agree with both your above posts on this and Truth/general New 52 arc. I've said it before, I had dropped the books pre-Flashpoint and was into the idea of a reboot. I liked the initial Morrison arc, but the Superman book was terrible, the direction they were taking Lois was not something I thought was interesting or good for her character (both her "promotion" to the sidelines and new boyfriend Poochie). All that said, I might have stuck it out a little longer had I not been as plugged into the comic news with the creators/editorial statements as I was because it all seemed to point to everything I liked about the character for the last 20 years of reading was bad, boring, bland, and stupid.

But even with that I kept up with a lot of the books over the years, I picked up Unchained and Pak's run for the most part and went back and picked up the full runs of all the Super-books before Rebirth started (one good thing about being a Superman fan is modern back issues from the 90's on usually are pretty easy pick up in dollar/quarter bins by me). I didn't like a lot of it granted - I'll never consciously buy a Lobdell book again - but there was some that I enjoyed.

All that said, the transition to Rebirth was handled far better than the transition to New 52. Rebirth had some unfortunate statements on some fronts, but New 52 transition was outright hostile comparatively.

One of these days I need to find the interview I did with George Perez in Metropolis. He talked quite a bit about how DC basically gave him nothing to go on and just told him to figure it out. That had to be just the most frustrating process imaginable.

[Yoda]

One of these days I need to find the interview I did with George Perez in Metropolis. He talked quite a bit about how DC basically gave him nothing to go on and just told him to figure it out. That had to be just the most frustrating process imaginable.

I recall Perez saying that was the reason he left basically, he had no idea where things were going and editorial kept changing things and overruling him. I think he had asked if Lois & Clark had ever dated and couldn't get an answer. Then after he left one editor said he left because he was too old and couldn't keep up with a monthly book. I believe it was the same editor that said as long as he was working at DC Clark and Lois would never get together. I mean, I didn't think Perez was a good fit to relaunch a modern take on Superman, but you have to be a real jackass to badmouth George Perez to try to prop up your mess of a title.