The return of the Mighty Mighty New 52 Discussion thread

[superduperman]

I prefer the New 52 to Rebirth also. Can we set up a support group?

[Dataweaver]

Sort of like the support groups we pre-n52 fans set up and were belittled for by n52 fans? Go for it. And with any luck, you’ll be treated better than we were.

[byrd156]

Sort of like the support groups we pre-n52 fans set up and were belittled for by n52 fans? Go for it. And with any luck, you’ll be treated better than we were.

Lol, isn't this thread basically a "support" group for them?

[thetrellan]

I would say since the 70's Batman has probably kept more than most characters in the reboots that started with the Crisis. They really have not changed much about his origin either, except for a while Joe Chill was not the killer (dumb choice in my opinion) of his parents. I never understood why Denny let that one fly.

Superman has had at least 3 origins since Crisis. I mean, they all have the basics of him coming to earth and Krypton being destroyed, just the circumstances around it have been altered.

Tell me about it. Byrne's take on Krypton is my favorite. I always thought the dispassionate society inspired by THX 1138 could have produced more interesting phantom zone criminals, for one thing. But instead DC just forgot about all that, and eventually retconned out Byrne's vision. Retcon after retcon, all Krypton ever was is a reason for a very strong man to be flying around on Earth. True science fiction is even harder to come by in comics than it is on film. That just ain't right.

[thetrellan]

Sort of like the support groups we pre-n52 fans set up and were belittled for by n52 fans? Go for it. And with any luck, you’ll be treated better than we were.

Because Flashpoint is the only universe for me. :P

Seriously, at the risk of sounding too much like the dude who wanted to invent nonsense words because he thought 'quadrilogy' and 'pentalogy' have too many syllables (and never realized that at least four syllables is the norm for the convention, while only 'trilogy' is just 3), we need to come up with better terminology. All this pre-this and post-that is getting kind of clunky.

Silver age could be the 'Infinite Earths' timeline, IEU, or just Infinite. Everything from CIE to Flashpoint could be the monoverse timeline. Despite numerous retcons along the way, the continued existence of Qward, all the Elsewords and the Tangent universes becoming part of a new multiverse near the end and all that, I think it describes that era pretty well, but do think we could do better. And everything after Flashpoint could be 52U or 52M (M for multiverse). Flashpoint is just FU. I think that describes it pretty well on multiple levels.

[Dataweaver]

If we're drawing distinctions between New 52 and Rebirth, we're going to need something more fine-grained than what you're proposing. Here's how I break it down:

1. The Golden Age. From Action Comics #1 to a point in the 50s when nearly every superhero title was cancelled or repurposed to non-superhero stories. There was a transition period where the surviving Superman and Batman titles gradually mutated from this to the next one; it's possible to find specific issues of each title where the transition to place, but there's no single month of publication when everything switched over.

2. The Infinite Earths. Named for the sprawling Multiverse that the Flash discovered early on, when a direct continuation of the Golden Age was incorporated into the setting as Earth 2. The Infinite Earths era has two ages within it: the Silver Age, running from the mid-50s until roughly 1971; and the Bronze Age, running from there until 1985. Around 1971, there was a massive tonal shift at DC: Clark Kent became a news anchor at WGBN while the New Gods started aopearing, Bruce moved out of Wayne Manor into a tower in Gotham, Dick went off to college, the Teen Titans put away their costumes and joined a rehabilitation program run by Mr. Jupiter, Wonder Woman ended her “secret agent” phase and got back into costume, Green Lantern and Green Arrow teamed up as Hard-Traveling Heroes, and so on — all within the span of a few years.

3. Earth-Sigma. Sigma is the greek letter used in math to denote a summation of multiple terms. In this case, I'm using it to refer to the period between the Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis when the Infinite Earth's were mostly destroyed and the survivors were combined into a single Earth. This period also has two eras in it: an early stage that ran from roughly a year or so after the Crisis (kicked off by John Byrne's Man of Steel) until somewhere in the mid-90s; and a second era running from the mid-90s until the early 2000s. I generally use Zero Hour as the break point, though a case could be made that the actual transition came about roughly a year or two later with Kingdom Come and its critique of the tone that had been overtaking the DCU over the past decade.

4. The 52. Technically starting with Infinite Crisis, I actually peg the start of this period to 2003, when Graduation Day put an end to the Titans and Young Justice, Peter David's Supergirl got replaced by “Cir-El” leading up to Superman #200 throwing Superman's origin into chaos, and so on; all of it ended up building up to Infinite Crisis. Despite IC's talk about reaffirming heroism and pushing back against the darkness, this era of DC was a rather dark, gritty, and destructive one on the whole.

5. The New 52. This gets a full bullet-point treatment because of the sharp transition: not even Crisis on Infinite Earths or Infinite Crisis managed to transform the entire DCU in the span of a single month. But New 52 did. I'm using “New 52” for two things here: the overall period that began with the aftermath of Flashpoint and continues to this day, and the era from then until the release of Rebirth, which is followed by the Rebirth era. I actually put the beginning of Rebirth a year later, with the release of Multiversity and Convergence acting as prolog to DCU Rebirth and the actual change kicking in with Superman Reborn.

[thetrellan]

If we're drawing distinctions between New 52 and Rebirth, we're going to need something more fine-grained than what you're proposing. Here's how I break it down:

1. The Golden Age. From Action Comics #1 to a point in the 50s when nearly every superhero title was cancelled or repurposed to non-superhero stories. There was a transition period where the surviving Superman and Batman titles gradually mutated from this to the next one; it's possible to find specific issues of each title where the transition to place, but there's no single month of publication when everything switched over.

2. The Infinite Earths. Named for the sprawling Multiverse that the Flash discovered early on, when a direct continuation of the Golden Age was incorporated into the setting as Earth 2. The Infinite Earths era has two ages within it: the Silver Age, running from the mid-50s until roughly 1971; and the Bronze Age, running from there until 1985. Around 1971, there was a massive tonal shift at DC: Clark Kent became a news anchor at WGBN while the New Gods started aopearing, Bruce moved out of Wayne Manor into a tower in Gotham, Dick went off to college, the Teen Titans put away their costumes and joined a rehabilitation program run by Mr. Jupiter, Wonder Woman ended her “secret agent” phase and got back into costume, Green Lantern and Green Arrow teamed up as Hard-Traveling Heroes, and so on — all within the span of a few years.

3. Earth-Sigma. Sigma is the greek letter used in math to denote a summation of multiple terms. In this case, I'm using it to refer to the period between the Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis when the Infinite Earth's were mostly destroyed and the survivors were combined into a single Earth. This period also has two eras in it: an early stage that ran from roughly a year or so after the Crisis (kicked off by John Byrne's Man of Steel) until somewhere in the mid-90s; and a second era running from the mid-90s until the early 2000s. I generally use Zero Hour as the break point, though a case could be made that the actual transition came about roughly a year or two later with Kingdom Come and its critique of the tone that had been overtaking the DCU over the past decade.

4. The 52. Technically starting with Infinite Crisis, I actually peg the start of this period to 2003, when Graduation Day put an end to the Titans and Young Justice, Peter David's Supergirl got replaced by “Cir-El” leading up to Superman #200 throwing Superman's origin into chaos, and so on; all of it ended up building up to Infinite Crisis. Despite IC's talk about reaffirming heroism and pushing back against the darkness, this era of DC was a rather dark, gritty, and destructive one on the whole.

5. The New 52. This gets a full bullet-point treatment because of the sharp transition: not even Crisis on Infinite Earths or Infinite Crisis managed to transform the entire DCU in the span of a single month. But New 52 did. I'm using “New 52” for two things here: the overall period that began with the aftermath of Flashpoint and continues to this day, and the era from then until the release of Rebirth, which is followed by the Rebirth era. I actually put the beginning of Rebirth a year later, with the release of Multiversity and Convergence acting as prolog to DCU Rebirth and the actual change kicking in with Superman Reborn.

Actually you are right. The JLA era introduced when the Flash was reinvented for more modern audiences represents a kind of reboot, even though it wasn't called as such. But since the original JSA continuity became part of the newly discovered multiverse, and the Flash wasn't introduced with any kind of event or fanfare, I think we can safely include it under one umbrella for most purposes.

Sigma is an obscure reference that will stymy even intellectuals. In fact, even after reading your explanation I'm not getting it. And I got the equivalent of straight As in college through intermediate algebra. Probably better than monoverse, though. Perhaps we'll just go with NE for New Earth, even though it perpetuates the false idea that NE is what Earth went by from CIE on. The term started only when Tangent crossed over with the DCU, not long before Flashpoint, relatively speaking.

I don't think grittiness and Superman retcons rate any distinction when the rest of continuity was less affected than it was when Superman history was integrated between New 52 and NE versions (sorry, just had to try it out for size). And I don't consider that retcon to rate such a distinction, either.

Aside from that, I think we're in agreement. Good thinking there. Now counterpoint some more. This is really great. Not that this represents any kind of comic book slang summit, lol.

[Rod G]

I wonder . . .

I wonder . . .

[Jabare]

Snyder is still doing too much with the Justice League book. I'm actually rooting for the villains so this storyline can end

[Rod G]

I prefer the New 52 to Rebirth also. Can we set up a support group?

Sounds like a great idea, superduperman.

[Raijin]

I prefer the New 52 to Rebirth also. Can we set up a support group?

You should make one and leave this thread for the people who disliked it. Everyone is happy and in their own space.

[BohemiaDrinker]

Snyder is still doing too much with the Justice League book. I'm actually rooting for the villains so this storyline can end

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!

(It's funny because it's true )

[thetrellan]

Snyder is still doing too much with the Justice League book. I'm actually rooting for the villains so this storyline can end

You need to read more titles. When you lose track of what's happening, nothing bothers you. Well, aside from how Marvel treats their universe these days. Besides, Aquaman can always use a little more lore, and I think the new JL book has been pretty good. I notice you don't give Tynion any grief over this.

Ah, what the hell? Whine on, if whine you must. Get it all out. What good is the internet for otherwise?

[superduperman]

Sort of like the support groups we pre-n52 fans set up and were belittled for by n52 fans? Go for it. And with any luck, you’ll be treated better than we were.

Okay, to be fair, that wasn't me. Ironically I think the world that mixes all the different versions best is Injustice. The good Injustice universe looks pretty good!

[NexusTenebrare]

Sort of like the support groups we pre-n52 fans set up and were belittled for by n52 fans? Go for it. And with any luck, you’ll be treated better than we were.

Except the New52 fans aren't whining about it nearly as much as you pre-n52 fans were. You don't see us filling up every thread on this and other DC-related boards with crying for what we lost.
As for being treated better. DC literally put out a book calling our favorite continuity loveless, lacking in legacy, etc., etc. and used it to restore (however badly botched) your precious continuity.