Biggest missed opportunity of the last few years in your opinion?

[HandofPrometheus]

DC Rebirth should have been a hard reboot. Not the pussyfooting around that we were given. Wherein steps were made to restore certain elements of pre-Flashpoint, but the New Fifty Two continuity, in large was mainly held in tact. My fear is that the post Crisis continuity will never be restored and we will forever be left with this unhappy medium we have now. This seems like where the DCU is headed.

If rebirth was a reboot that would be DC making their coffin.

[kilderkin]

Doomsday clocks relevance to rebirth

Both have become irrelevant imo

Of course clock might pull it back but it's never gonna hot me like it could have

[failo.legendkiller]

Have fooled fans with the huge lie of Rebirth

[Jekyll]

Barry Allen really meeting the DCU as it developed during the years that he was gone. After FINAL CRISIS, I wanted to see Barry meet and interact with Tim Drake's Robin, Kyle Rayner's Green Lantern, Conner Kent's Superboy....heck, Barry's own grandson Bart Allen/Impulse/Kid Flash. I wanted to see Barry fight enemies such as Bane, Doomsday, Savitar (I know he briefly did in FLASH: REBIRTH, but that was hardly a "fight"), etc. I wanted to see how he came to terms with a DC Universe that had changed so much since his "death" in COIE.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

I’m going to add to this in that we have never truly got to see Barry and Wally interact with one another. I mean we got some panels and conversation during Flash War but it is a relationship that warrants more interaction than one story arc.

Wally loved and looked up to his Uncle and Barry in all indication truly loves his nephew, but we have yet to really have them interact with one another. Especially after Barry returned!

[j9ac9k]

#1 - Failure to make "Doomsday Clock" relevant. After all the hype and excitement, it's just dragging it's corpse along to the finish line. It will remain to be seen if they can redeem it with the rest of the story, but at this point I expect an okay story that just sets up things (like the Legion or JSA) that should have happened by now.

#2 - One that I personally feel they missed the boat on was the "Renegade" storyline for Hal Jordan. Nobody thought it was going to last, but here was a chance to showcase Hal without the GLC and being some outlaw on the run, with a ship and a crew. Fine, just admit you're making him Star-Lord for a year and have fun with it and show a different side of Hal - show him as an adventurer rather than a space cop. But no, it was mostly the same, but with longer hair and really uninteresting crewmates. (the ship at least was a good idea, but again it went nowhere)

[superduperman]

New 52. They had a chance at a truly clean slate and they shot themselves in the foot so badly there. Between the five year timeline, the perpetual crossovers, screwing up things like Superboy and the TT and even the SM/WW relationship, they could have rebuilt the DCU from the ground up but just put so many restrictions on themselves for no reason. No marriages, trying to squeeze something like four Robins in a four year time frame? If they were going to do it they should have just told Johns and the others who demanded their past stories be kept to pound sand. This is, to some degree, the same problem they had after COIE. They wanted to keep things like the TT history so badly that they ended up with a Wonder Girl who predated Wonder Woman. When it comes to hard reboots, DC won't pull the trigger.

[Ascended]

This. Next time they reboot, they should actually make it a hard reboot.

Is that really viable though? If you go back to day 1, you lose out on so many popular characters and character-defining moments.

Is it worth losing out on Nightwing, Jason, Damian, Tim, Cassie Sandsmark, etc? Is it worth losing the impact of Superman's death or Dick's time in the Batsuit? DC has a lot of viable properties that can't really exist in the early days of the DCU without major adjustment to the chain of events. And if you're going to change things enough to keep some things, then why bother going back to a "year one" that isn't even like year one?

Besides, Clark's death and marriage, Dick's graduation to Nightwing, the introduction of new characters (who have themselves been around for decades). I've already read and seen that. I'm not inclined to pay to see it done again, and likely done worse.

[Coco Loco]

Is that really viable though? If you go back to day 1, you lose out on so many popular characters and character-defining moments.

Is it worth losing out on Nightwing, Jason, Damian, Tim, Cassie Sandsmark, etc? Is it worth losing the impact of Superman's death or Dick's time in the Batsuit? DC has a lot of viable properties that can't really exist in the early days of the DCU without major adjustment to the chain of events.

DC tried to get around this in the New 52 by doing what was essentially a hard reboot, but starting most of the books (except JL and Action) 5 years into the characters’ histories. You don’t necessarily have to start from scratch in a hard reboot. It’s tough to do it while still hedging your bets, though, which was DC’s plan. They didn’t really commit to an all-in reboot until they saw that the books were selling.

[Buried Alien]

DC tried to get around this in the New 52 by doing what was essentially a hard reboot, but starting most of the books (except JL and Action) 5 years into the characters’ histories. You don’t necessarily have to start from scratch in a hard reboot. It’s tough to do it while still hedging your bets, though, which was DC’s plan. They didn’t really commit to an all-in reboot until they saw that the books were selling.

Five years simply wasn't nearly adequate to accommodate all that was valuable in DC's history. Case in point: the Robin situation.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[JasonTodd428]

I'm going to go with Earth 2 as being a the biggest missed opportunity of the last few years. Robinson had a good thing going there and I felt there was a lot of potential with the idea of that with Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman all dead other heroes rose up to take their place. DC really screwed that up though by forcing Robinson to leave and then basically sh*tting all over what he had set up.

[Ascended]

DC tried to get around this in the New 52 by doing what was essentially a hard reboot, but starting most of the books (except JL and Action) 5 years into the characters’ histories. You don’t necessarily have to start from scratch in a hard reboot. It’s tough to do it while still hedging your bets, though, which was DC’s plan. They didn’t really commit to an all-in reboot until they saw that the books were selling.

True, DC tried to have its cake and eat it too, and it didnt work so well.

Im against reboots on principal though; I dont think there's much that can't be fixed with six months of quality writing.

[JasonTodd428]

True, DC tried to have its cake and eat it too, and it didnt work so well.

Im against reboots on principal though; I dont think there's much that can't be fixed with six months of quality writing.

Yeah, I think reboots cause more problems than they fix to be honest.

[Frontier]

The handling of Wally West after Rebirth.

Similarly, the DCU is without an Oracle, and Babs seems to be off the market. Felicity would be a perfect successor. Use her.

They tried to bring Felicity into the comics. It didn't work.

DC has a noticeable lack of POC characters (that are actually USED)...why not promote the barely used John Diggle in the pages of GA to an active hero as Spartan?

Diggle was fairly prominent in Percy's Rebirth run. Not Black Canary prominent, but pretty prominent.

Barry Allen really meeting the DCU as it developed during the years that he was gone. After FINAL CRISIS, I wanted to see Barry meet and interact with Tim Drake's Robin, Kyle Rayner's Green Lantern, Conner Kent's Superboy....heck, Barry's own grandson Bart Allen/Impulse/Kid Flash. I wanted to see Barry fight enemies such as Bane, Doomsday, Savitar (I know he briefly did in FLASH: REBIRTH, but that was hardly a "fight"), etc. I wanted to see how he came to terms with a DC Universe that had changed so much since his "death" in COIE.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

I'd say moving Barry past the "dead mother, imprisoned father" characterization was a big missed opportunity.

Flash War was definitely a missed opportunity. I like your solution even though some would remain very disgruntled, but there was something else to do there that reestablished Wally. I think he should have been sent on a quest to get his family back.

I definitely think the handling of Wally after Rebirth is one of the biggest missed opportunities by DC corporate.

Rebirth in general had a lot of missed opportunities to reestablish key relationships; Titans was pretty much a failure; Hal and Barry's friendship was nowhere to be seen, same with Hal and GA's; Aquaman was awesome but some of the family is missing and would fit right in.

Well, Hal and Barry's friendship never really left since it was established in the New 52 from the start, and Percy's GA run had a whole issue dedicated to re-establishing Hal and Ollie's friendship.

[DevilBat66]

The best way to do the "hard reboot" is to just make the old continuity a new Earth in the multiverse. Like they made the old WW2 comics a Earth 2 in the Silver Age.

You restart the main characters with new #1's from scratch while keeping a few of your popular books that rely on legacy heroes to continue under a new imprint.

Fans of the old continuity don't get the shaft and the fans that want to read Superman, Batman, et al from the very beginning get what they want.

It's not that hard to make it work.

[ArsonoptiX]

Earth 2: a stellar series that could have opened up a brand new sandbox. I loved the Val Zod supes. Sputtered and died

Milestone: DC has a set stable of awesome POC characters that many people would love back. I liked the Static but Hardware and Icon are sorely missing. I'll include in the DC Direct brand as well.

Wildstorm: Wetworks are to cool NOT to be in comics. This is a gold mine concept with the right person.

Putting heroes back in the trunks. Even with 30+ years in comics...I still find trunks stupid. I was elated that the New 52 did away with them and gave Batman a more armored suit...which makes sense. I think we've gone backwards putting them back in trunks

Letting Mr Terrific fail because of the pre comicsgate crowd

Not letting Black Adam cut loose...and giving him a cape

Killing the Crime Syndicate