This could probably get me in trouble. When you talk to me about talent, I used to say this to people, and they used to get somewhat offended. I said, "I don't see people when the stories are being written or drawn sometimes, because I'm looking at what's engaging to me." Do I notice your name? No, I'm looking at the characters.
I used to be forceful in some conversations, because I was so focused on what needed to be said and done with the character's story. I didn't even realize who was in a room, or who I was talking to. I was just addressing the idea rather than the people.
The oral history of DC Comics’ infamous New 52 reboot
What happened when DC Comics rebooted the universewww.polygon.com
Great article with lots of anecdotes of behind the scenes stories at the time.
De-aging Batman while trying to keep the his and the Robin's history intact was dumb as hell. Nightwing, Red Hood and Batman were all practically the same age. Not having a guideline of what happened and what didn't really made things confusing.
When I looked at the New 52, it wasn't just about relaunching the books, but also diversifying the product and the characters. And everything was about diversification, before "diversification" became a buzzword.
We really wanted to make sure we were reaching out and trying different things and different types of stories. As much as people talk about Superman or Batman, or any one of the relaunches of the primary characters, I was more excited about the Men of Wars, or I, Vampires, and the other things that were part of that, because ultimately, that's the part of comics that brings in the casual readers — people picking up books if they're not superhero fans, but want to read the medium.
That's not embarrassing at all. Everyone new and old got pulled in from the hype. New 52 gave the comic industry a big boost in new readers that it desperately needed. It may not have benefitted DC in the long-run but it benefitted other companies during that time.This is embarrassing for me to admit in comics circles but I got back into comics for a few years starting with all the publicity following New 52. Returned to my local comic shop for the first time since my childhood and started subscribing to New 52 books.
I ended up loving Animal Man, Swamp Thing, and the Azzarello run on Wonder Woman. I also really liked the Batman & Robin run up to a certain big plot incident I won't spoil here (only maybe the first 12-15 issues before that happened). It ultimately spring-boarded me over to other contemporary things going on through the comics world that I ended up falling in love with, namely Mark Waid Daredevil, Jonathan Hickman Avengers, and Matt Fraction Hawkeye and I really loved the short run Fraction did on FF (not Fantastic Four, but FF was its sister book and I thought it was super charming albeit briefly-lived). I also came to it pretty late but the Superior Foes of Spider-Man by a then smaller-time Nick Spencer was brilliant and funny as hell. And outside of cape stuff, I got into Saga, The Wicked and the Divine...
I dropped off a few years a little ways into Marvel NOW and have only half-heartedly followed Hickman X-Men since, but that is probably the most I've actually done comic books for my lifetime, and it all started with the maligned New 52.
So like... what IS the current continuity in DC?
I'm so out of touch I had to remember Superboy Prime was before this
I hated the fact that Superman and Wonder Woman were together.
I mostly agree with this, except it gave Snyder clout enough to do what he wanted and all that has really come of it is the never ending shitty Metal stuff.New 52 was indeed wack but Snyder's Batman run was fantastic from start to finish.
Im not going to say your wrong for feeling that way, but I do feel it's worth noting that the Nora origin was also a retcon change to appeal to the strong emotional response to the cartoon where that version of Victors origin was introduced. Not saying any of it is wrong or right it's comics, and retcons of previous retcons seem to be a feature not a bug.The Mr. Freeze backstory change being one of the things that just felt like an unpleasant change for change's sake.
I mostly agree with this, except it gave Snyder clout enough to do what he wanted and all that has really come of it is the never ending shitty Metal stuff.
Im not going to say your wrong for feeling that way, but I do feel it's worth noting that the Nora origin was also a retcon change to appeal to the strong emotional response to the cartoon where that version of Victors origin was introduced. Not saying any of it is wrong or right it's comics, and retcons of previous retcons seem to be a feature not a bug.
That and the fact that they tried to cram all of Batman's history into 10 years is crazy. Especially since he has a 10 year old son!The New 52 versions of the Teen Titans were awful (they ruined Tim Drake and made him never Robin or even Tim Drake being his real name). Also how they wrote a lot of female characters like Harley, and Starfire was really gross and problematic.
The more I look back at it; Batwoman is the only New 52 series I have ever revisited more than once. Batman wasn't bad either. But outside of that, I really wanted to like Wonder Woman & The Flash, but I couldn't get into them.
I still will never forgive this shit for being the reason Stephanie got kicked out of the Batgirl suit either.
They gave up on rebooting, they didn't give up on continuity. The goal is to play with it the same way Marvel does.
Tbf that's actually kinda mythologically accurate in some storiesOh shit, and the Wonder Woman book--which was pretty well received, I think?--giving Diana daddy issues and then making the Amazons roving sea-rapists can also fuck off forever.
Yeah tbf weve been eating since that era
To be even more fair I agree that the Nora origin fits Freeze best it just didn't bother me, and as a horror fan I liked staple face joker. I actually really like Snyder's run but if it didn't wirk for you it's all good, they really did screw up with the new 52, and while I may have liked the stories that Snyder told, what it did to the bat family and continuity in the larger sense was pretty bad.That's completely fair. I shouldn't have painted my opinion that way, or made it seem like retcons and changes are inherently bad. I'm not against retcons and changes, as you said comics are kind of built on retcons. I think for me, the Freeze retcon was just a sign that I wasn't going to like the direction DC was going in. I probably have too much affection for the character's arc through the BtAS and Batman Beyond. It just felt like with the New 52 interpretation took a character with at least some kernel of humanity and just removed it to make Freeze yet another unpleasant psycho to add to the pile. Combine that with stuff like the Joker walking around with his face stapled on and it was clear the N52 just wasn't for me.
To be even more fair I agree that the Nora origin fits Freeze best it just didn't bother me, and as a horror fan I liked staple face joker. I actually really like Snyder's run but if it didn't wirk for you it's all good, they really did screw up with the new 52, and while I may have liked the stories that Snyder told, what it did to the bat family and continuity in the larger sense was pretty bad.
What's utterly insane to me is that they did the exact same thing with Rebirth.
In the case of Shazam its probably a good thing they dropped any of the Post-crisis to pre-flashpoint stuff, they really had done the marvel family dirty in the last few years before the 'relaunch'."Everything is canon!", which doesn't actually mean that. It varies a lot from character to character. In general both Post-Crisis and New52 continuity are valid, in spite of being heavily contradictory at points, with the New52 origins generally thrown out. Batman and Wonder Woman's histories are treated as fully canon, going back to the Golden Age, meanwhile Superman has all the post-Crisis continuity and some New52/Rebirth elements, but older elements from Silver or Golden ages are limited to minor references here and there. Then you have Shazam, who is still almost purely New52.
I still like 52.52, Final Crisis, and Morrison's Batman were some of my favorite modern DC, so you can bet I was less than enthused with New 52. The weird titles were dope. The stuff Jeff Lemire wrote was great, and I personally loved Morrison's Action Comics, but there was a lot I didnt like about tossing decades of continuity away.
man….i need to reread 52…