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‘I wish there was a plan’: The inside story of DC’s infamous New 52 reboot
- Thread starter Dalek
- Start date
I had completely forgotten about Pandora and all that stuff with the box. They were setting her up as the driving force of the main New 52 narrative early on in stuff like Flashpoint and I think some early Justice League stuff, then just completely dropped it.
Didio, man
Didio, man
I kept up with New 52 Batman for a while and liked it a lot when I was reading it. Fell off just over halfway through. Might finish it someday.
Never really got into anything else though.
Never really got into anything else though.
I read a little of New 52 Batman. The Court of Owls was kind of cool in that first arc. Harper Row had some potential, and might not have rubbed fans the wrong way if they hadn't erased Cass and Stephanie at the time. Death of the Family and some of the changes they made drove me away. The Mr. Freeze backstory change being one of the things that just felt like an unpleasant change for change's sake.
Yes that was Death of the Family or whatever it was called.
Honestly, DC from like the 90s on up to 52 was pretty incredible. Killer books in there. 52 really sucked the life out of the best thing DC has, the legacies of these characters. The DCU feels so much bigger than Marvel due to the histories there, and to throw that away on these reboots is really short-sighted.
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.
I bailed out of DC at this point.
All of these attempts at getting a bigger audience by retooling the creative remain doomed to failure as long as they're stuck in the current distribution model. Thank god they're out from under the Diamond arrangement (and I imagine the pandemic threw any plans at reworking physical distribution into complete disarray) but they've got to figure out something new
I completely skipped the N52 stuff honestly, I've dipped back into it now that people have called out some of the best stuff in hindsight
I completely skipped the N52 stuff honestly, I've dipped back into it now that people have called out some of the best stuff in hindsight
Multiversity Comics is doing weekly interviews with New 52 creators. This week's interview with Jeff Lemire about Animal Man was quite good - http://www.multiversitycomics.com/?s=520+weeks
"Everything happened in 5 years" made it seem like Batman just burned through a bunch of interns with the Robins.
Feel sort of bad writers had to defend this stuff while being confused and annoyed about this themselves.
See, Didio says this but I don't think he is ever willing to admit just how tone-deaf and ass-backward some of these choices truly were. Rebooting Starfire into basically being a Nympho. Making Amanda Waller sexy. Bruteforcing Barbara Gordon out of her wheelchair and putting her back in the Batgirl costume. Geoff Johns bungling of Cyborg. The complete shitshow was the handling of the Static book. It was "diverse" in a way to still go strictly for a straight while male audience first and foremost before anyone else.
"Lets reboot the DC Universe so we can remove storylines that create burdens on characters and hold them back, while keeping the stuff that made the characters as popular as they are" isnt a bad idea, like its impossible to write say Cheshire as anything other than a psychopath because they wrote a story where she nuked the equivalent of Libya which makes her relationship with Roy and Lian kind of useless because she's just Lian's sociopath mother.
The problem is that no one was willing to sit everyone down in a group and hash out the previous history, and put out a series of books explaining what is and what isnt out of canon making characters changes come off as random or haphazard.
The problem is that no one was willing to sit everyone down in a group and hash out the previous history, and put out a series of books explaining what is and what isnt out of canon making characters changes come off as random or haphazard.
I really liked a lot of books at the start, even though I was pissed at the change at the time. Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Dial H, Demon Knights, Batman, Batgirl, and Wonder Woman I thought were great. It was REALLY clear that they didn't know what they were doing, though. Suicide Squad and Teen Titans got rebooted multiple times, Batman/Gotham kept getting shoehorned into unrelated books, a lot of creators outside those protected seemed to be in constant states of maybe being fired (hell I think they fired then unfired Gail Simone).
I did like the 'unless we specifically contradict it, all old stories still happened' bit.
I did like the 'unless we specifically contradict it, all old stories still happened' bit.
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.
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Wild to me that New 52 is a decade old now. DC never really recovered even now from these mistakes, but I hope they do.
The weird N52 books like Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Dial H, Demon Knights and Frankenstein Agent of SHADE were rad, but the core stuff? Like building a rebooted universe on a foundation of mud.
The weird N52 books like Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Dial H, Demon Knights and Frankenstein Agent of SHADE were rad, but the core stuff? Like building a rebooted universe on a foundation of mud.
I jumped into comics for the first time with the New 52. I thought it'd be a good jumping point because it was a reboot and I could just read the old stories at my leisure. Turned out o be disappointing and unnecessarily confusing as far as canon goes. IT was such an odd choice to basically condense Batman's history to 5 years instead of slowly reintroduce Jason, Tim, Damian, etc. The lack of commitment to the reboot was very noticeable. Other than that, I liked Batman's book. I also liked Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Batgirl, Grifter, Green Lantern, Superboy and I have mixed feelings about Wonder Woman.
I was 70-30 DC to Marvel books, and a heavy reader through New 52, but I felt so burned by DC after that, and pretty much went 100% marvel after that event. Never really recovered, and the events they've done since then have shown me that DC has just continued to struggle.
God I hated that. The relationship as written completely diminished Diana and made Supes an angry, jealous jock. Just terrible all around.
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 thing I appreciated about New 52 is that DC took a chance on some wild books that would never get published today. It was mostly a failure as reboots go, but there were a few books I really appreciated them putting out.
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.
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…
man….i need to reread 52…
I learned to just not really care what they're trying to do for an overarching narrative anymore, so long as they put some good stories out. It worked out best for runs that were largely distanced from the rest of the DCU, ie Lemire's Animal Man and Azz's Wonder Woman, both of which were phenomenal. I miss the WondyxOrion ship.
Yeahhh... I don't like talking about it much. Still lots of good stories to be found though.
They had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
They had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
"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.
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.
This era sucked so much, it was my breaking point from being a lifelong reader of DC.
Didio sucks, yet I feel that Geoff Johns and Jim Lee share quite a bit of the guilt of the shittiness of the New 52 era.
Didio sucks, yet I feel that Geoff Johns and Jim Lee share quite a bit of the guilt of the shittiness of the New 52 era.
OP
OP
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!
They really fucked up a few of the Batfamily members. Disgusting, and they had been trying for a while, beginning with War Games, I didn't mind too much Jason being brought back, but then we had some fuckery with Tim and Cassandra too. Also, what Didio tried to do with Dick even before all that. Not sure how I feel about losing Oracle.
Then the bullshit with the legacy characters, Wally West, and the rest. That ugly Superman redesign, Jim Lee comes up with some truly hideous redesigns sometimes. And then some of those wtf designs, Lobo, Weller, I stopped reading comics for a long time, and even now I am not as much on board as I was before, I used to buy and enjoy so much.
I really need to go back and read some of the odd side non superhero series I missed, always hear good things about them.
Good riddance to Didio.
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I find it hilarious and sad that they didn't let Barbara wear glasses because of the Oracle connection. Like it's one thing to not have her be Oracle anymore, and another thing to scrub any connection at all.
Cass and Steph deserved better too
Cass and Steph deserved better too
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 stories
new 52 Wonder Woman was great I liked her characterizations the most there , shame it's all gone now
Yeah tbf weve been eating since that eraEvery single Jason fan during the New 52:
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.
Agreed, Snyder's stories were decent (though nowhere near the calibre of his stuff with DickBats) but they never came close to making up for everything we lost to get them (in my opinion anyway).
I mean, they did the exact same thing with most of their reboots, all the way back to Crisis (and as usual, the Legion and the New Teen Titans paid the price). Like they had to jump through so many hoops post Crisis to keep the Legion intact (and Giffen and the Bierbaums did a fantastic job), let alone what it did to all the ex sidekicks and Donna Troy in particular. And then you have Hawkman...
lol
DiDio sounds like a dumbass so much in this article. This, "I didn't even notice who I was talking to" and cancelling profitable books were the worst bits.
DiDio sounds like a dumbass so much in this article. This, "I didn't even notice who I was talking to" and cancelling profitable books were the worst bits.
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'.
I read the n52 for maybe 3 months before I literally dropped everything, you could tell back then there was no plan and things were all over the place
I still like 52.
And, of course, reading the stuff in the accompanying material, Waid (I think it's Waid) talks about how 52 was good because they kept Dan AWAY.
He thought they were fucking it up.
Then we got his version of that, Brightest Day.
And well, the world did not know the true meaning of fucked up until then
Yeah I hope People don't confuse 52 with the New 52, because 52 is my favorite Non Batman non Doom Patrol/Vertigo cape thing ever, even gave me a lot more respect for Booster Gold.