Honestly, I will never forgive the New 52 line for taking Mr. Freeze, a man who loved his wife and was doing crime to save her from the disease that was killing her, and turning him into some freak who was just obsessed with a cryogenically frozen women he'd never met.
Im sure I left the same at the time--but honestly since I'm thinking they got it right. Older and more cynical I guess. If you missed the Sean Murphy/Klaus Janson collabartion from a few years ago, it is perhaps the way both views of Freeze are right: he is a sympathetically human man, a family man who loves his wife/ he is ultimately a cracked and deadly arch villain worthy of as much and more contempt as any of them. HIghtly recommend if the true arc of the character is interesting to you. Or if you just like good one-off bat-villain stuff.
I think Linkara put it best when he said that DC didn't commit. They didn't commit to the reboot, to introduce their heroes to the readers. Even though the entire point would be to simplify things and reach a new audience, the New 52 titles were written with the old audience in mind. Crossovers and events after only a few issues, a focus on well-established characters rather than diversification, the list goes on.
Yep. Some books acted like it was a hard reboot and started the hero back to day one (Teen Titans, JLA, Blue Beetle...), some were soft reboots with some goofy stuff cut out (Batgirl, Suicide Squad, Green Arrow), and some acted like there was no reboot (Batman, Green Lantern, Animal Man).
I love his review but I also like Chris's at the same time with Linkara you could feel the rage and disappointment but you're right they didn't commit, it's like they wanted to do the ultimate continuity but the 616 at the same time it almost seems like the new 52 was just tonal and art wise, very superficial. It almost felt like they were going back to the '90s era of thinking and well look how that turned out for everybody
I used to regret that I did not pursue a career in comics, whether as a writer or artist, but when I hear about the shabby terrible way creatives are treated by companies like DC sometimes, I feel I dodged a bullet. I feel for the writers and artists who were let down in this experiment.
The "everything happened in the last five years" hurt the credibility of New52, a lot. Whoever thought that was a good idea, really didn't think it through at all.
They destroyed Superman and his persona. This was already discussed by DC themselves. Which is why they ended up finding a way to bring back the old Superman. This is why it failed. They redid their main hero. And it was really bad.
Something I wish I mentioned: when I say fail, I mean in a long term sense. But that first two years of big sales? I should have commended them a bit more on that because that definitely mattered to them and to retailers. Yes, you can absolutely hear my kittens meow at a certain point. They’re talkative and I missed editing out one set of meows. 😅 Image of Jim Lee and Geoff Johns at 7:56 by Luigi Novi.
My DC reboot universe that takes place in the 2010's is called Prestine DC. My Marvel reboot universe set in the 2010'*s is called New Birth Marvel. My DC reboot in 2020's is called DC relaunching. And 2020's Marvel is New Dawn Marvel.
Geoff Johns: "I didn't want to be hindered by past interpretations of characters, which is why I kept all of the lore from my Green Lantern books even when it breaks continuity...wait."
Lmao Johns is a great writer and probably the best thing that happened to green lantern but that man is something else every time I hear something about him it is him contradicting himself.
@Jorge G Figueroa ya but when your the one who knows the material, maybe you can do something better than making let's say parallax a giant space cloud. .
It was bad from the debut. Had to read the stories myself instead of looking at montages on YT to see how big DC dropped the ball. They made Superman a punching bag and emo. They got rid of 20+ years of fan favorite stories. They messed up the Robin lore. Killed off Damian for no reason. Made the Joker superhuman. Made Jim Gordon *batman* and the worst travesty of all. They got rid of Wally West. It was bad from the beginning
@@DHworldwide185 the Jim Gordon Batman ark was super interesting to me plus I loved the villain. I enjoy seeing what if story’s occasional so seeing a in continuity Bruce Wayne who isn’t Batman was really compelling for that ark. It was just super different
@@willppp Different does not mean good. Gordon was by far one of the LEAST qualify to take over for Batman. He even took his spot in the Justice League (somehow). The villain was terrible imo and the fact that “only Bruce can stop him” was just ridiculous as well.
I want to say I have never seen this mans videos before this one and I was taken aback by the old school TH-cam cake thing and the intro, then I checked his channel and saw he’s been here since 2006 - man is a true OG wow
It was pretty poorly managed from what I recall, a lot of artists and writers complained that there were confusing and contradicting instructions from DC editorial regarding how they should use characters, what was/wasn't canon, etc. And while there were a lot of great books throughout the New 52, the lack of cohesiveness and quality control was really really apparent.
@@jaylan7847 I would argue. That pre-new 52, DC was actually releasing some of the best stuff they ever did. I still go back and read titles I loved, and discover new things I love from that 2000's era.
There is saying my old boss used to say. Which is “You cant be half pregnant” and The New 52 really symbolizes that. Lots of ideas that were about 50% committed and thought out. So as soon as you put thought into it the whole thing falls apart.
I just remember being pissed that some of my favorite characters that had been around for years and I had grown up reading about like Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, Donna Troy, and Wally West just didn't exist anymore
Wally came back, but all of a sudden, he was black man! jajajajaja. Donna disappeared. But you have to admit that the stories of the justice league were really good in the New 52 era. Then everything went to hell with the rebirth.
@@brunodelacruz06 I didn't have a problem with Wally being black, my problem was that ignoring his skin color he just wasn't the same character at all. Also I did like parts of New 52, like Snyder's Batman, but I just couldn't ignore characters I love getting deleted from existence. Or other characters that were still around getting horribly mistreated like Tim Drake. Also I actually liked Rebirth a lot, what I didn't like was them suddenly pumping the breaks on it and messing up stuff that it did that I thought was great. Like aging up Jon, fucking Bendis.
@@legogeneralgrievous3958 No that was after. Pretty sure that was part of the end of the New 52 and beginning of Rebirth (could be wrong though, could probably get a better answer from Google)
Love the commitment on the face in the cake gag! Unlike DC's commitment to continuity, you went hard enough to get solid coverage while not so hard as to make a mess of everything. And you clearly had a planned story and payoff that segued into the next part of the video, which wass you said, "Not bad!".
@@buhnana6117 New 52 was my jumping on point for digital comics (RIP Comixology). I remember having a lot of fun following Batman, Wonder Woman and Animal Man, but also had a soft spot for DC Universe Presents Deadman, the Green Lantern books... Dial H for Hero, remember that one?
One big side effect of the New52 you didn't touch on was the cancellation of titles AND characters. Tim Drake (RED ROBIN) and Stephanie Brown (BATGIRL) were enjoying their own successful titles (well, I liked them) that were suddenly ended as the New52 launched. Tim was allowed back as part of the new TEEN TITANS title, but Stephanie just disappeared, as did Cassandra Cain, another previous Batgirl. Dan DiDio went out of his way to make sure Steph didn't pop back in, calling her "toxic." This interference included the TV series YOUNG JUSTICE, in which Steph was supposed to appear but was immediately sidelined. It wasn't until BATMAN & ROBIN ETERNAL that Steph and Cass were "introduced" into the New52 continuity... in Oct 2015. The New52 would end a few months later.
Not sure if it's related but booster gold was one of my favorites and had 49 issues, then it was ended because the new 52 began and Michael ended up in justice league international which didn't do him justice.
@@MikeStJacques From Wikipedia's entry: "The New 52 is the 2011 revamp and relaunch by DC Comics of its entire line of ongoing monthly superhero comic books. Following the conclusion of the "Flashpoint" crossover storyline, DC _canceled all its existing titles_ and debuted 52 new series in September 2011." They cancelled everything and relaunched the main titles. BATGIRL was relaunched with Barbara Gordon. The previous BATGIRL title was retconned out of existence because Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain had never been Batgirls in the new universe.
The five year timeline was a real issue for me pretty early on, mainly with Batman. It was really hard to believe that in that time, he went through Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and then Damien Wayne. That's a lot of history to put them in their respective position in the New 52. I jumped off Batman pretty quickly, but stayed on the entire way with Wonder Woman. I can always respect an writer/artist duo who stays on for the long run.
Their run on animal man and swap thing was epic. I loved the art and storyline. When it ended I wanted more so badly. If you guys haven't checked it out, it's a must. Even if you don't like animal man or swap thing.
The New 52 is what ended my monthly subscriptions. I had been an avid reader & collector for over a decade up to that point, spending $100 a month on average. More during big events. When everything started over, it felt like a part of me died because so many characters changed so drastically or disappeared all together. It wasn’t until Rebirth happened that I started kinda keeping up again, but even then, I never went back to buying monthly issues. Instead, I’ll buy Trade Paperbacks for my favored titles.
Trade paperbacks are the way to go because you get the whole story at once and don’t have to worry about having gaps if you can’t find a particular issue.
Grant Morrison having to write the ending to his his Batman storyline around this was like trying to watch a train conductor trying to pilot a jumbo jet after said train was retired, it was nuts
Not Really. _Morrison's_ Bat run was really episodic via chapters. Like _Batmn & Son_ (655-658) Prologues the Run & introduces Damian. > Than _Black Glove_ (667-669, 664 & 665 & 672-675), along w/ _Batmn RIP._ (676-681, 701, 682-683 & 702) as well as FINAL CRISIS. That's A Chapter. > Than ((the BEST Bat book somewhat x-over ever)) The _Reborn_ era; Batmn 687 the RIP Epilogue, Batman & Robin (1-16). And Although not by _Morrison_ this Era also includes _Winik's_ Batmn (688-692) story, _Battle of the Cowl_ 1-3, _Paul Dini's_ classic _"HUSH Trilogy"_ (Dtec 846-850 & 852, than Streets of Gotham 1-4, 14 & 16-21). Also _Scott Snyder's_ Best Batmn as well occurred in the _Reborn_ era; Batmn _Black Mirror_ (Dtec 871-882), which also featured Dick in the Cowl. All concluding w/ _Morrison's_ Batman: _The Search for Bruce Wayne_ (1-6 mini-series). That's another Chapter. > Than Bruce is Back! _The Return Batman_ 1 (one shot), than Batman INCORPORATED (1-10 or 11) and than lastly Batman INC #New52 is the final chapter. My point is [that] they're All independent chapters. It's not continually necessary to read every single issue A-Z that _Morrison_ wrote to understand the linear progression of his story. Or "run". Especially the Final INCORPORATED/ INC Chapter. It's All really quite brilliant what he did -- when ya lay it all out.
The biggest problem with Crisis on Infinite Earths was that, despite all of the planning they did for it, they really didn't plan it out very well. John Byrne was allowed to make drastic changes to Superman's history, such that he never operated as Superboy, and Supergirl never even existed. But no one bothered to tell Paul Levitz about this ahead of time, and he kinda needed to know all that when writing Legion of Super-Heroes. The Legion was inspired to form by Superboy specifically; so who was their inspiration now? Both Superboy and Supergirl were prominent members, but now neither one were ever there, so... who filled those roles? If Superboy was the reason Mon-El was in the Phantom Zone for 1000 years, what was his story now? The solution there wasn't very satisfying; first it was said that the Time Trapper created a "pocket universe" in which there WAS a Superboy (even though CoIE was intended to get rid of any such parallel worlds), and then, in the 5YL Legion, they actually did a "quiet reboot" of the entire DC continuity (that conveniently only changed Legion history). And then you have Donna Troy, whose origin story involved a Wonder Woman who never existed either. And Infinity Inc., that had members who were the children of characters who also no longer existed. The second biggest problem was that they didn't commit to the new timeline. Changes were allowed to be made well after the fact, that couldn't fit into the new continuity. Hawkworld, which rebooted Hawkman for the post-Crisis continuity, would have been fine, except it was decided that Hawkman and Hawkgirl were completely new characters now. But they were still part of JLA history, so... who was supposed to be in those stories? (First they tried to patch it by saying it was the Golden Age versions, except that they had post-Crisis appearances after the JSA characters were shunted off into another dimension, so it couldn't be them, either.) The fact that Hawkman (the guy who flies with fake wings who somehow is needed on the Justice League with Superman) created so many continuity problems that DC just flat-out refused to let him even appear for years shows how badly DC mishandled CoIE. And then they tried to fix the post-Crisis problems with Zero Hour... and failed to plan ahead properly for how the post-Zero Hour continuity would work. And then they did the same thing again with Infinite Crisis. And then with Final Crisis. Really, given how slapdash Flashpoint/New 52 was compared to their previous line-wide reboot events, the entire thing turning out to be a massive flustercluck was pretty much a guarantee. (And there's also the inherent problem with creating "jumping on" points for new readers: whatever you do, it's ALSO going to serve as a "jumping off" point for old readers...)
And then with all this lack of commitment and the subsequent events to explain major continuity errors, it all just ends up doing the exact opposite of what the entire point of COIE was in the first place....making the comics more new reader-friendly. We went from a continuity that, sure, had a lot of goofy things, and had some pretty frequent multiverse shenanigans, but where everything published still counted. To a continuity where some of the books counted, some didn't, some were unclear, and you have a long and convoluted continuity history to go through to understand which books you're reading actually matter or not. In the end, it just made everything more complicated and less new reader-friendly, which kinda defeated the whole purpose of COIE in the first place. In hindsight, if keeping things simple was their goal, I think they would have just been better off keeping the pre-Crisis continuity around, for all it's problems. That's what Marvel has been doing, and they're pretty consistently the number 1 in sales, so it doesn't seem to be as much a turn-off to readers as DC editorial seems to think it is.
I honestly didn't realize those sub-sequent cross-over events were attempts to fix anything, I thought they were straight-up, naked, greedy CASH GRABS!! In the 80s, cross-over events were few but incredibly special. By the 2000s, there was never a moment when a multiple cross-over was NOT happening, at either Marvel or DC.
Hawkworld should have been an Elseworlds story (but the term was not invented yet). That would have saved the character. But as you say, DC had no clear vision past COIE. The books that frustrated me the most were Justice League and Flash. There's no way those books exist except as an extension of the pre-Crisis continuity. Wally constantly fussed over Barry, who wasn't supposed to exist or was to be "forgotten." Yet the Wally book never shut up about him. And the JL book was also born out of the pre-COIE JLA (often referencing the old team). They tried to keep some pre-COIE stories as back story for post-COIE teams but the reboot of Superman, Wonder Woman, and later Hawkman, made this idea ridiculous. We were reading Superman every week--all brand new--and he had NO past with the rest of the JLA. So how did those old stories still count when some of the characters did not technically exist? Just one headache after the other.
@@marvelfannumber1 Actually Marvel replaced their universe with a new continuity within the past 10 years in the 5th Secret Wars series (which was just called Secret Wars, no number). The previous multiverse was the 7th continuity, the rebuilt multiverse is the 8th continuity. Don't know if they ever explained why they picked those numbers, but a year or two later they got to have a great scene with 7 versions of Eternity teaming up to take down the first continuity's evil Eternity.
As a long-time DC reader, I think the biggest crime of the Nu52 reboot was Dan Didio and Jim Lee's total disregard to us long-time readers. They pretty much said they don't need us and I didn't read DC pretty much for that entire run of time. i discovered Archie comics around that time, which was about to go through a reboot of it's own. I'm still reading the Archie comic line now. DC never truly has recovered from the Nu52 fiasco.
I really only like Marvel comics. Im always trying DC comics, and am happy when I find something good, as it's a different experience from Marvel. As a long-time DC reader, could you please give me some good runs to check-out? I have Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Year One and DKR. Thanks for your help! "LiL'JpD."
@@joedent3323 If you like Marvel, check out John Byrne's runs on Superman, Wonder Woman, Legends miniseries, Jack Kirby's Fourth World (which I am just about to finish) and Doom Patrol. He also has a mini-series series of books called Superman & Batman: Generations, which takes place outside of continuity. George Perez has a memorable Wonder Woman run also. Also of note, Marv Wolfman and George Perez's legendary run on The New Teen Titans. The Giffin/DeMatteiss/Maguire run of Justice League is also worth mentioning. Those are just a few suggestions to start with.
Your video actual confirmed what my local comic shop owner told me about the New 52. Namely, that it was a Hail Mary to boost sales. And it did for a little while he told me. But, like you said, there was no plan to make the line coherent and so the sales bump is only short term. Which, honestly, astonishes me at how short sighted Dan Didio was. And even though we got Rebirth I still don’t think DC has recovered.
Yeah, they had to do something and initially it worked well for sales. I would argue that with some planning they could’ve extended and built on those sales for a longer period.
@@ComicTropes The tragedy for me is I had no idea at the time that DC was struggling. For going on twenty years I had been reading mainly DC titles, and before the New 52, I thought they were knocking it out of the park on a lot of levels. I loved Starman, and Flash, and Green Lantern. Infinite Crisis was great, as was Blackest Night and then Brightest Day. To this day I think No Man’s Land is one of the best Batman events ever. So I was truly perplexed that DC would want to reboot everything when it seemed to me that everything was going strong. I think it really boils down to Dan Didio being the wrong guy at the wrong time. His vision and skill was just too limited. And perhaps he was trying too hard to impress the people at Warner’s or was simply too scared. At the end of the day, I think DC needed someone better than him to run the show. Perhaps in different hands DC would have been able to regain some market share without resorting to a gimmicky reboot.
@@MaximumWarp2099 I worked in a comic shop and pre new 52 was nothing. Nobody was into DC. A few DC characters were doing okay but Marvel and Image were way more popular.
The business model may have failed, but the launch of Batman with The Court of Owls got me back into comics. Over the next several years I spent thousands on physical and digital collections across DC and Marvel.
I personally loved the New 52. But I fell off from it as a result of too many delays on storylines i was trying to follow, way too many crossovers that ruined it for a new reader like myself at the time, and I honestly just felt out did not like a lot of the storylines that were going on, while storylines i really enjoyed got cancelled or weren’t handled properly (looking at you Trinity). I think new 52 could have been incredible. But they dropped the ball, hard.
This is going to sound silly but the court of owls/talon nursery rhyme having 0 meter and not sounding at all like a nursery rhyme or poem with its last line was such a small and lazy misstep that I felt was a perfect encapsulation of everything I hated about capullo’s batman Cool ideas, haphazard execution, no attention to detail, no respect for the medium
The Court of Owls felt like it took too much retconning to exist. Do they ever explain why the world's greatest detective knew nothing of their existence in his city?
Issue being that had the new 52 not happened that probably still would’ve happened given the new 52 didn’t really effect Batman lmao. Point is that it was negative overall and I’m not sure Batman comics of the time should count
the New 52 was great for me, a teenager who wanted to get into comics but needed a new way in. That said, thats really all it was for me, an open door, as I went on to find the much better stories that really made DC what it is and am a die hard DC fan to this day
Same here, i was about 11, just getting into comics n the new 52 was my gateway into DC. I'll stick by that some of the Scott Snyder Batman run is great but other than that n some other books, the new 52 wasn't good for much more than being a jumping off point for new readers.
I was a reader that came back because of the New 52. Loved it. Which also caused me to pick up titles from Valiants relaunch, along with Marvel & Image but not as many. I really like how the video talks about the things story wise that came from the New 52. I still read weekly issues. People that say it's a complete failure. Are just wrong IMO. Batman & Robin was my favorite title.
Snyder said it himself in your interview, the creative teams were all chaos and nobody new what to do, the lack of planing and rushing got the new 52 killed. Still grateful for the batman run that got me into comics. great video
There were 52 books, you can't really plan this thing, you just give it a good start that writers will have room to tell good stories, that is probably why they made the start 5 years into when heroes first came out, so they will have the main heroes and not lose the second stringers or the second generation heroes like the Robins, etc.. They will come up with setups and stories that from if initial reaction it didn't go well they have to jetison it or the writer. Even if they spent years planning what to do and stories to tell - it will still depend if the readers will like it.
Idk what it is with the New 52, but I always find it such a fascinating time in terms of being a fascinating train wreck. So many behind the scenes stories have came out of it with more each and every day. I find it baffling how badly DC management screwed this up, and why a single person couldn't just steer the ship in the right direction.
My biggest beef would be what happened to Tim Drake and all the Batgirls, and indirectly affecting how Grant Morrison finished his Batman run. He had it set up to include more of the Bat-family right before New 52 but the final volume of Batman Incorporated took a lot of them out. Also the status of Gordon and Bruce and how long they've known each other. It took a lot of the impact out of the finale. I still love it though.
The New 52 came out when I first started reading comics. Books like teen titans, Batman and Robin, and Justice League were all great books that kept me reading because they seemed kind of stand alone. I don't imagine I would have kept reading without the New 52
My experience was different, though I was not trying to read individual issues, but the massive story line books, such as Court of Owls or Death of the Family. For Death of the Family to make much sense, I had to buy Batman's Story, Jason's Story, Dick's Story, Tim's Story, the Joker's Story, and the overarching story that tied the disparate stories together. Teen Titans was even worse. I would be reading and everyone is in one fight, and I would turn the page to the same fight with characters inexplicably killed or moved or to a new battle or scene with no rational explanation. I had to buy Red Robin, young Flash, and Superboy to begin piecing all the missing pieces together, buy even then there were pieces missing. Further, there were people who appeared and disappeared randomly with no explanation such as Danny the Street/Alley of whom I had never heard. This was a constant irritation. WhenI can buy Death in the Family, Lonely Place of Dying, No Man's Land, Knightfall, Death and Life of Superman, and others that come with a cogent and understandable story line, then is it too much for the New 52 to give me the same?
One of the weirdest things that I remember seeing right out the new 52 was they had a picture of Batman with some his robins Damien, Tim and Dick. In the ages were just kind of ridiculous how they were draw Dick look like he might have been 20 barely and Tim couldn't be more than 15 and even though he wasn't there that would make Jason like 17 and Damien 10. Even though Batman had only been operating for 5 years how would have four robins
The number of Robins one can have within an adult's superheroing period has always been a sore point for any reboot of a batman franchise. For example the arkham games struggle to cram jason in between dick and tim. It's pretty clear that tim was supposed to be an amalgam tim and jason, but then of course they needed some "brand new villain" for arkham knight.
The New 52 also kept flipping back and forth to wether Tim was ever Robin or if he skipped straight to Red Robin to condense the number of Robins Batman has had in his condensed history.
I really did love that initial New 52 run, especially what they did with Swamp Thing / Animal Man - I never regularly read DC before it kicked off, so it seemingly worked on me at least in terms of gaining new readers - still collect a bunch of titles to this day thanks to it.
I still read the animal man and swamp thing but another couple great runs were the green arrow and flash runs from number one. I read by trade paper back usually. I collected these tps because the stories read like movies to me.
My memory from back then can basically be summed up as "how is Geoff Johns such a good writer and such an awful writer at the same time." I understand the struggle of 80 years of Canon and I look at it as "loose" Canon. The good and impactful stories will stick in the public zeitgeist and hold sway over the status quo. How many revelatory or shake up moments happen are just dropped or ignored cause they are dumb or just dont fit with what would make sense for the story. Or you're Grant Morrison and are insane.
He definitely did what I thought was impossible....made Green Lantern damn interesting again. That Blackest Night storyline was the FIRST time I picked up a DC comic since the 90s. He did a fairly decent job with Aquaman's world building too. Then he lost his mind.
@Will N they're like akira toriyama (writer and artist for dragon ball), they just make up stuff as they go along and whenever they make too strong of an enemy they just go "oh superman was holding back, now he's going 100%", "oh flash was holding back, now he's gonna run at his top speed, "Oh green lantern was holding back, now he's gonna image he perfect solution to this problem and create it", "Oh aquaman was thirsty, now he's gonna shoot a fish like a bullet at light speed"
Even with all the "messiness" during the new 52, I can say that seeing #1 or Vol 1. on the title of these books helped me, as well as a lot of people, get back into comics or get into comics for the first time.
The New 52 was just one big mess. I hated the fact that they got rid of important histories of certain characters, especially how they treated Starfire. Ironically, though, the New 52 was what led me to create my own versions of the iconic DC superheroes over on DeviantArt, which is still going pretty strong, honestly.
I just wanted to come here and go to bat once more for one of my favorite New 52 books, Resurrection Man. It was seriously under appreciated. The main character cannot die. Each time he is killed, he comes back to life with a different superpower, and it’s usually something he can use to counter what previously killed him. There are two trade paperbacks covering the series, and he even crosses paths with the Suicide Squad for a couple of issues. I recommend it to anyone and everyone.
One of the problems was that they didn't have the courage to reboot all of the DC characters in The New 52 phase. Batman and Green Lantern continued with their old chronology, which made no sense. 52 magazines was also a lot. Some unnecessary changes, like Nightwing having the uniform color red for example, Lobo with a totally different look and personality and without the charisma of the original.
They may not have completely rebooted those characters but they were still retrofitted to the New 52. You can't say batman and Green lantern were completely the same in the New 52.
Green Lantern had the benefit of Geoff Johns being the writer, and he had the clout to more or less continue storylines begun and developed pre-New 52. His success on the property and revitalising it could be why it got four titles during New 52, which you’d expect more from the Batman name.
bro, new 52 superboy was so confusing and trash that they brought back the post-crisis/pre-flashpoint superboy (conner kent) and forgot about the new one, except now because conner was from another world everyone literally forgot about him. Honestly, if I could've written new-52 superboy, instead of a complicated time travel plot, I would've just made him a clone of the present day superman and (unknown to him at first) lex luthor, similar to his young justice interpretation, but he's created by the agenda and harvest instead of cadmus, and his design, abilities and personality would all match YJ tv show superboy, since that's by far the simplest and favorite superboy and a great reimagining.
@@Kira22558 but wouldn't it make sense to attract the new fans who already love the young justice superboy so you can get them into the comics by essentially having the same superboy? Plus that superboy has already been proven to work.
I think making 52 new titles was a mistake. Probably could've just made it a 120-150 pages anthology with 7-9 stories per issue, and they can be collected into trades once they have a chapter count of 6-8.
If they did that, you just know people would have been angry that they never let John’s finish his green lantern run and it would be a big in answered “what if” for the comic community.
I really enjoyed the ultimate marvel series because it was an alternative universe that didn't get bogged down with everything and it was a different take on the same characters that had a clear ending to their stories. Then they brought ultimate spider-man back with what I consider a mediocre run with a good ending that ruined the other good ending, then they ruin it again.
Your interview recently with Scott Snyder was surprisingly open about the chaos of the new 52 and I really appreciated it. As always, a phenomenal video chris.
I have always questioned wisdom that a book's history is holding it back from getting new readers. I started reading in the late 70's. While it was still cool to get a first issue of a new character, there was something almost magical about starting on a comic with a issue in the hundreds. The books had a kind of gravitas. We all knew we were picking up a soap opera. We had faith that if some history needed to be explained that the writer would have a character give some exposition.
I miss the days of the superhero soap operas and high issue numbers. The sad truth is, the medium has changed and the way people consume media has changed. I miss when you could pick up a random issue #318 and it would relay everything you need to know while giving you a near complete story. Today, a random #8 feels like jumping into an episode of a television show at the 20 minute mark, giving you 5 minutes of content and then making you wait a month for the next 5 minutes.
Yeah, I started reading comic books in the late 80s, and I was perfectly capable of picking up what I needed to know on the fly. Even in Claremont's notoriously convoluted X-men stories of the time, it was possible to enjoy it from issue to issue without understanding every single reference and call back. And considering the sales numbers of comics at the time reached extraordinary new highs, I can infer that there were a lot of readers in my position. You can make a comic book friendly to new readers without erasing its history; trust your audience's intelligence.
I agree but will also say that back in the 70s, comic story-telling was a lot different. Most stories were self-contained (often literally happening within the pages of a single issue) with little impact on a character's status quo. In more modern comics, things have changed a lot. In an attempt to make every single story seem incredibly important, a story has to have major impacts on a character's status quo, while also going on endlessly (or at least, for a minimum of six issues, just enough for a TPB). So, when a reader is busy reading another issue of "Superman's Girlfriend, Wonder Woman", he might be mightily confused when that version of Superman dies to be replaced by a previous version of Superman whose history now overwrites that latest version of Superman with Mr. Mxyzptlk showing up to explain that now the new/old Superman's history will take the place of the old/new Superman, except some stuff didn't happen and most definitely Wonder Woman was never Superman's girlfriend. In the 70's, we just had one issue of DC Comics Presents, where Cupid makes Superman and Wonder Woman fall in love temporarily with no consequences after the issue was over. Heck, even in the late 80's, we just had one comic where Superman and Wonder Woman try kissing each other and realize that they're not that into each other.
I agree, and I will also add that when I started collecting comics in the mid 80s, all that continuity encouraged me to hunt down other comic issues. For example you might be reading a Fantastic Four issue where one of the characters makes a comment. There's a little asterisk in the talk bubble and a note at the bottom says you would know the details if you picked up Amazing Spider-Man 42. You pick up Amazing Spider-Man 42 and you see the details of the comment but you also pick up on some subplots there that maybe ties to daredevil. That gets you pulling Daredevil issues and looking for Daredevil back issues. You always felt that what you were reading was not just a comic but a window into a living and breathing world. Some of my most treasured books are the Marvel essential black and white reprints of the Marvel handbook. Reading through that you see that even minor characters might have three or four pages of History to them, were they interact with a variety of characters. By comparison, whenever Marvel puts out a mini handbook they can fit all of the context for a character on half a page. There's nothing to grab you, nothing to really prompt you to take a walk through history and find other stories. I've recently been cleaning out all of my collections and I've been looking at prices. Things that sell really well I will try to sell, lesser items I donate. And what I'm finding is that what people want, and what generates the most money, are out of print trades that collect stories prior to the late 90s. I have trades in my collection that are in mint condition, were published from stories in the last 10 years, and they're worth new half cover price. Meanwhile I have some older trades that if I were to part with them could go for well over cover price. That says it all doesn't it
Started a little later, but early enough in the internet era so as to be almost pre-internet. Certainly I didn't have much access to it. And I'd go one further; I not only didn't mind the things I didn't understand, I thought those things were fascinating and I actively went looking for other comics that mentioned them. I was always more of a reader than a collector, but on some level it was kind of the point, or at least a primary attraction.
They couldn't even fix the issue of reading multiple different series to keep up with plot. Death of the family still required reading 7 different series which is completely inexcusable to me. An open door to try to get readers that winded up being just another convoluted reboot of the characters and their stories without appropriate beginning middle or ends. What happened to 52 superman and his character? Gone and replaced; hope you didn't get too attached to him.
@@PanelVulture I'm sorry but I don't consider a story where the superman Im following has to die so the classic version can come take his place to be a satisfying conclusion. How can it? They're barely planning any of this stuff out and half the reason they write their stories is to cover their own tracks. It's such a rotten pattern that keeps overlapping itself. Remember when crisis was supposed to simplify stuff? Now "pre or post crisis?" Is a real question some people ask to figure out what character/world is being talked about. It's retarded. A satisfying beginning middle and end for superman need to be relevant to the character and stories they were telling, not a final swerve caused by editors/writers shifting to a different version of the character I may or may not be familiar with. This is why manga is continuing to take a giant dump on western comics. I pick up one piece number 1 and it's gonna be that story through to the end. No reboots, no rewrites, no other writers/artists coming in to make the quality inconsistent, no conflicts between departments resulting in unbearable story telling (spiderman clone wars for example), none of the bullshit. I remember trying to read the new Archie comics. But then a few issues later there's a new artist and it just goes to shit, looked like coloured sketches compared to the decent art the first issues had. Big superhero western comics are just broken now. Invincible is a shining beacon of hope.
DC saw crossovers were massively popular thanks to events like Blackest Night, and tried to recapture lightning in a bottle. The Green Lantern franchise saw four major crossover events, and Batman titles tended to be affected by Batfamily events. The New 52 version of Nightwing barely settled before a big event upturned his life, fortunately Grayson only had one issue tying into Robin War.
I worked at a comic shop when the New 52 launched. I remember a lot of regulars were excited, several complained about losing the continuity they'd been collecting for years. 2 months in the regulars were only picking up Batman, Animal Man, and Superman, and there was one guy that collected anything Green Lantern. There were way too many comics coming out at the same time, especially after how many Flashpoint comics had just come out. Everyone knew Flashpoint wasn't going to stick, so only a few of our regulars bothered collecting it. It felt like a slo-mo train crash.
Sounds like your shop was struggling. I worked at a shop where people were getting like a dozen new 52 tittles a month. Nightwing and Phantom stranger were doing great. Anything with a Lantern sold well. We were ordering 30 copies of Larfleeze.
@@redrick8900I worked for one in NYC that’s fairly popular and had a similar experience to the main comment. At first yeah people bought it like crazy, but there was a fairly quick transition to people not buying anything other than the the books he listed unless they were like a mega fan of a character
@@oldylad Well mine was the opposite. When New 52 first started everyone was complaining and saying they were going to stop buying DC so we underordered and then came four years of the best sales numbers for DC the store ever saw. Before and after New 52 Image was outselling DC.
Another thing worth mentioning that pissed off a lot of readers around the time of The New 52 was that DC had launched a campaign of "Drawing the Line at $2.99" where they promised that no classic titles would be raised in price. As soon as legacy titles like Action and Detective got re-numbered with The New 52, the price went up.
As a lifelong comic nerd who became partner in a comic shop around that time period, it was really strange. We had the greatest customers in the world and even they would come in angry and confused. "How can Batman have had 3 sidekicks in less than 5 years?" "Was Dick ever Robin?" "Where are the Titans?" "What secrets does *this* Amanda Waller know?" "Why isn't Sandman part of the DCU proper?" "Are there more Bang Babies?" "Was Voodoo ever a WildCAT?"... It created a kind of bottomless frustration, both as a fan and a retailer. When Marvel announced Marvel NOW! (and later, "All-New, All-Different") some people were genuinely scared that it would be a Marvel New52. Some people even cancelled their pull boxes as a reaction to the first news about NOW!; That's how gunshy Dc's reboot had made fans (and industry insiders) across the board. Don't even get me started on Rebirth.
I think another problem with the New52 was that the higher ups at DC wanted to reboot their entire universe, but at the same time, they didn’t want to commit. They didn’t want to completely change certain things during the New52 because they didn’t want to get rid of certain things that these characters and the books they were in popular.
I remember that some characters simply weren't rebooted at all, like green lantern or batman. Their first stories would talk about some events that even i that read comics once in a while didn't record, how could someone who was just getting into comics understand what was happening.
@@luisfilipe2747 Yeah that was one of the major problems with the new 52. There would be characters that would mention events such as Blackest Night, Death of Superman, Final Crisis, and Battle for the Cowl during the New52 which were events that happened before flashpoint, and it didn’t make any sense considering that majority of the heroes in the New52 were not as experienced as their pre-flashpoint counterparts, and that those stories had a lot more heroes and villains that were not introduced until near the end of the New52.
@@xanderg.1070 The most vivid thing for me was the whole robin thing. During the first year of the new 52 there was already a red hood and Nightwing, but they NEVER took the proper time to explain how that came to be, there was just a page on one of the first batman issues summarizing how they became those characters, but using a pre flashpoint explanation, but that explanation couldn't fit in the timestamp of new 52. That lack of commitment to properly makes thing from the 0 was a real bummer
@@luisfilipe2747 Indeed, and if you think about, starting the New52 with the formation of the Justice League, and their first battle against Darksied. Then have a five year time skip was a major red flag. If you’re going to reboot your universe, you got to do it right, and properly build up to it instead of doing a time skip because you don’t want to go through all that character development all over again. New52 should have started with a Batman or a Superman book then worked their way up to JL and other heroes.
I think more of the fans just didn't like the idea of reboot, were pretty fond of the existing versions, and not surprising a lot of the writers also didn't want NEW version rather than what they had long worked on.
The New 52 really tarnished the legacy characters that so many people love from DC, and I will say is arguably one of the strongest advantages it has over Marvel. Wally West, Cassandra Cain, Donna Troy, Connor Hawke, etc. Even if they weren’t gotten rid of, the history of them were condensed and erased; the 4 Robins and Roy Harper. Thankfully we’re past the point now with most of them being restored and Wally even being the Flash again.
I always thought it was kinda messed up that Geoff Johns' Green Lantern stuff seemed to be one of the few storylines that continued virtually unbroken into the New 52.
It was definitely a sticky situation. His green lantern run is one of the greatest comic book runs of all time, and a story that you just couldn’t break up. At the same time, if you decided to keep enough other books going, then it defeats the purpose of a reboot. All in all, DC just shouldn’t have done it. John’s original plan for flashpoint was to be a flash event that would have lead into a Wally West solo series, ironic that the story would cause Wally west to disappear.
I'm just a Guy from Spain Who likes comics and i'm triying to learn english by my own,man, just wanted to say that seeing all your videos are helping me a lot! They're all super interesting and the edition is great! And thanks to that i'm really geeting better and better every month!
I always felt like New 52 ended up being DC's New Coke moment; it didn't do what they had intended, but it did make the audience miss and appreciate what they had, which helped going into Rebirth. Wrote an essay about it back in 2016 or so, I'll try and hunt it out if anyone has any interest.
I look forward to reading it. As 1 of those readers for whom The New 52 served as a jumping-on point, I'm always interested in learning about older generations' opinions on the state of the DC Universe pre-2011. I'm not very well-informed on the broader Post-Crisis/Pre-Flashpoint universe outside of the Bat family titles.
This explains so much. I was so confused we’re the characters were with their lives. They seemed to be young but old at the same time (if that makes sense).
The most unbelievable part is that dc actually invested in a lore expert. Or that they had the grace to hold off to honor their 50th, than simply rush it in a lazy cash grab like they do now
I was already falling out of love with comics by the time the New 52 came around, so it was more of a "final nail in the coffin" situation for me. I did pick up a number of the new more oddball titles just to check them out (I Vampire, Dial H, etc) but those didn't last long anyway, and none of them were making up for the titles that were canceled to make way for the New 52 (canceling Gail Simone's "Secret Six" should be considered a crime against humanity). Deep, extensive continuity was one of the things I loved most about reading comics, so when DC decided continuity wasn't important, they effectively decided my dollars weren't important either.
I got into DC with the New 52. I liked a lot of the stories, but as time went on and I read older books, I saw the big issues of this reboot… Mainly the fact that it was a reboot that didn’t wanna commit to being a reboot. There was stuff that was still somehow canon to the New 52. Like, there was a new Superman look, new Wonder Woman mythos and new everything else… Except Batman and Green Lantern just continued like as if a reboot didn’t happen. Big events like Blackest Night and Final Crisis still happened. Like, HOW!? If this is a reboot, then something that requires ALL PREVIOUS EVENTS TO HAVE HAPPENED shouldn’t have happened. It was such a mess as I kept reading. I love some of the New 52 books, but overall it fell apart as time went on.
It's interesting to hear the business side of this. The New 52 is when I got into comics and it was a great time, there was no pressure to understand decades of storylines. In many ways, DC earned my readership for life.
It definitely soured those of us who had been fans for decades and familiar with pre-crisis/post-crisis continuity. I haven't bought a comic since 2011.
I don't understand. I collected comics since the 80s. but it never felt like an obligation to read comics from 60s or 70s? If I seek them out, it is because I wanted to. Batman celebrated 1000 issues of Detective comics. I never felt the need to read all the stories. a good writer is going to recap the essential points for readers to know the relevant information. Otherwise, everyone will have to be historians and multiple degrees to read comics... hahaha... The only thing that publishers might profit from a reboot is number 1 issues, which is what everyone wants to collect.
@@joshuabekel9700 Because you didn't give it a chance, you only wanted your fix that wasn't selling enough to keep the publisher going. Every age be it the golden age or to the present are full of bad comics and good comics, there is no exception, the New 52 is no different. i'm probably older than and much earlier reader than you but I always knew it always goes back to how it was or near enough. In the meantime, just enjoy the present comics ehich at the time was the new 52.
@@PanelVulture I was reading comics before Crisis happened. And there was still not a "need". Comics, like relationships, you don't need to know every moments of someone's life to enjoy his/her company. Using my example, I don't need to read every Batman comic to enjoy Detective Comics.
I was only 3 years in on Batman comics when New 52 came around, but I found the unwarranted reboot to be just as toxic as if I'd been reading for 13. When I read that DC regularly rebooted every 10 years, I just stopped reading DC altogether. Had a much better experience getting back into X-Men with House of X after bowing out after House of M.
Loved the content. I remember being so excited for the new 52 and loved how originally they had condensed it so it was easier to follow. I was very upset when rebirth was announced. Thank you again for what your putting out there!!
It was really interesting to see what was happening behind the scenes during New 52! I've also never heard a better and more concise explanation of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Flashpoint.
I think the problem was they combined so many different types of talent. You have your Grant Morrison's who revere continuity in their and others' stories and then you have your Geoff Johns's who will retcon, cut, and "forget" things to help tell *their* stories. Then you put Dan DiDio, who really just wanted to prove himself and nothing else, at the helm of this massive project and you get complete, abject failure
I don't think Morrison reveres continuity; there's plenty they ignore. It seems their approach is more a "the stories I grew up reading and/or like are absolutely canon, the ones I dislike aren't, and I'll figure the rest out as I go along." Honestly, that seems to be how most creators approach writing for Marvel and DC these days.
@@Flyboy1953 I don't know where you're getting this information from, but I'm pretty sure Wolfman was the one who wanted to have the Earth-2 Superman take over, and Byrne had no plans for Superboy because he was the one who wanted to get rid of Superboy. Plus the post-Crisis Linda Danvers didn't show up until the '90s. They definitely weren't planning that far ahead.
I always enjoyed some aspects of the new 52, such as action comics and batman, plus the logo looks really cool and should've stayed as the official logo.
I had been out of comics for a while right before the New 52 started. I had been picking up a few random books at the Books-A-Million in the city closest to me, but all they really carried were the "big" books. Flashpoint barely seemed like a blip. Just another summer event. But it did feel like SOMETHING was up, since all of the books I was picking up were trying to rush their stories to their ends. So, when I got wind of what the New 52 was, I was kind of excited. I mean, I figured it would be one of those changes that lasted maybe a year, but some of the books looked interesting. I was excited to get into some old favorites with a new spin. Imagine my shock when I pick up the Green Lantern books and it's business as usual except the books are #1 again. Same with Batman. Of the ones I bought, Superman was the only one that felt different, and I wasn't a fan of either of the titles. Batman started good, but it was just annoying when some books were brand new and some were not. Marvel felt like it was going through something similar. You could tell they wanted to reboot, but chickened out again. And I couldn't get a lot of the more "weird" DC books I would have bought at a comic store, since Books-A-Million was not about to stock the "lesser" titles. Didio nailed DC himself with his statement about "diminishing returns." But he got it better than he thought. DC is known for rebooting about every 20 years. It might not be a "crisis" event, but something usually changes. And it usually IS a crisis event. When there were a couple of decades between changes, you would have pushback from the old fans, but within about a year things would get a shot in the arm and stabilize until the next time. But in the last couple of decades, DC has been doing crisis events almost every five years or quicker. And the diminishing returns are catching up. People know it's not going to stick and if they growl loud enough, DC will reboot again. As per this new Dark Crisis. They were on the right track with Rebirth when they focused on writers doing individual books and not worrying about so many crossovers. And keeping the price down. But it looks like they're going full steam ahead toward the cliff now. I hope not, but nowadays, who knows?
In the 80s, cross-over events were few but incredibly special. By the 2000s, there was never a moment when a multiple cross-over was NOT happening, at either Marvel or DC.
Stories just need definitive ends. I've liked a lot of superhero cartoons over the years largely because the narrative is self continued and has a sense of finality to it.
Thank you so much for making this video. I don't know anything about the 52, but loved how you narrated the DC history in detail. This a nice documentary in its own right.
I'd been reading Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti's take on Jonah Hex from the get-go, and was thankful they were able to keep going with him on All-Star Western. The character is a favorite of Dan Didio, and that helped keep his title on the racks for a lot longer than many others, both before and after Flashpoint. Of all the New 52 books, ASW seemed to ignore the whole "reboot" idea the most, as J&J constantly found ways to give nods to classic Jonah Hex stories from not only their own run, but decades prior. They even made reference to Jonah's death and later fate as a sideshow exhibit, which we first learned of back in 1978! Stuff like this made it one of the best titles of The New 52...but since it wasn't a superhero book, it tended to get overlooked.
I’ve been watching your stuff for years. Especially back when I was nose deep in the comic book store every week. I haven’t kept up with comics as much as I’d like lately, but I’ve always kept up with your videos because they offer a much deeper look into them that I wanted back when I started. I’m definitely going to be subscribing to your patreon
I've found a lot of helpful inspiration from various ComicTropes videos, so thank you for your work. It's the bananas intro that got me leave a comment. I hope it helps you in the algorithm if that's still a thing. Anyhooch I really enjoyed the sillycore/weirdocore video intro.
For myself, I grew up reading DC, mostly Superman, Justice League, and Legion of Superheroes. As I experienced reboot after reboot, I finally decided that nothing was really left of what I grew up with and I stopped buying comics.
They should have rebooted everything and then commit for every comics to stand alone, no crossovers, no cameos or obvious references. So the moment they cross over, it would be actually special.
The problem with the New 52 was clearly upper management. I mean choosing an arbitrary number of sales and then cancelling books that were doing okay but didn't meet that arbitrary number of sales. There were some really good titles that came out and that I loved but didn't generate the number of sales they wanted so they were cancelled.
I think alienating the older fans didn't help either. Obviously any reboot was gonna alienate the older fans but outright getting rid of characters like wally west? The character that has been the flash for decades? The character a lot of people consider to be the definitive flash? That was a bad call. There were no perfect solutions here but they needed to find a better balance. Getting In a new reader isn't worth it if to get that new reader you got an old customer to quit buying your stuff.
@@galactic85 They didn't alienate older fans. I worked at a comic shop when New 52 came out. Everyone that had said they were quitting comics or done with DC came in frantic to get all the number ones they could find, and then they gushed over the new Batman like a scientologist for L Ron Hubbard. DC's sales doubled.
Wasn't around much for the entire New 52 but I've been slowly reading Earth 2 over the last couple of months and I've been enjoying the heck out of it.
Wow! You are the comic book fan's researcher. This is like a university course on comics. Variant Comics east your heart out! I'm subscribed! Thank you for very much for the extremely detailed and researched presentation! Don't stop! Cheers!
I'm glad you pointed out some of the strong titles that came out of the New 52. On top of what you mentioned, I remember Swamp Thing and those early years of Tomasi's Batman and Robin being great fun.
Action Comics was pretty good, as Palmiotti kept a consistent hand to Jonah Hex. And it undid the depressing end to Jonah (that he ends up a skeleton in a freakshow) by saying it was an imposter posing as him, and gave him a nice sendoff as his face restored (from a trip to modern Gotham), he rides off to the sunset with Tallulah Black
There's something very comforting about seeing the hardships the comic companies went through only to survive on the other side. It makes me feel optimistic.
New 52 was when I finally decided to give DC a go, this coincided with my local comic store offering TPBs at US cover prices (in Australia most stores sold them at DOUBLE the US cover price), so I decided to collect a bunch of titles in TPB form. I collected several of the Batman titles as well as Nightwing, Red Lanterns, Suicide Squad, Red Hood & the Outlaws, Deathstroke, Justice League and JL Dark. I really enjoyed all the books I bought and I actually thought the choice of artists was well above what Marvel had at the time. It's such a shame they ended up making such a mess of it.
I bought the first 5 issues of all 52 books. It quickly saw that I couldn't read 52 books a month. I dropped down to 8 books going forward (mostly Bat-Family stuff and Supergirl and Superboy). Then eventually I dropped down to just Batman.
I thought that the Batman, Green Lantern, Auquaman, Action Comics and Justice League were some of the best runs for those titles. Not to mention the creation of I,Vampire, Re Hood and the Outlaws, Demon Knights, Red Lanterns and Justice League Dark. The Court of Owls multi-title arc in the Batman books was especially great.
Man I thought the oversight at current day DC was terrible. It’s crazy to think the little concern for internal continuity for the stories during the New 52 was provided by the writers, not a story editor or continuity expert! These days the concept of the omniverse, which remains one of the worst storytelling decisions ever made in history, allows writers to do what they want, and those in the industry these days don’t consider continuity important enough to care.
I mean, that's because it is. I don't think anyone had actually read through the 700+ Batman issues that came out before New 52, for example. everyone remembers the individual books or crossover arcs like, say Year One, Crisis, and so on.
Yet most of the more popular stories came from the previous era such as Post Crisis in 1987. That is why New 52 failed. Either do a complete reboot or don’t do it at all. They try to half ass it and the lore became even more confusing.
Ironically the new 52 didn't seem to do much to change that in the end considering that the higher ups clearly didn't even seem to know what stories were and were not cannon anymore. Morrison's Batman run was allowed to conclude because DC didn't want to alienate Morrison, but their time on Batman drew from so much of the characters 40 plus year history. When the new 52 happened they just continued Batman Incorporated with a new #1 issue, but now you were left wondering how much of the prior stuff Morrison wrote had even actually happened.
New 52 got into reading DC. I think I started reading comics around 2008 so the reboot helped with DC since I didn't know a lot of the continuity at the time. Had some nice titles but a lot of duds too.
I remember bumping into a friend of mine at the bar years ago. He was lamenting the then-upcoming new 52. I feel old.
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Great review of the rise and fall of 2011's reboot! Man, I really miss the Animal Man/Swamp Thing mini universe, it was a beautiful and intense story to both read and watch.
Yet another fabulous video that digs into history as a starting point, and ties it back into the subject matter at hand. The New 52, although I enjoyed the initial launch, in the end it created more problems than it solved in my opinion because it was all over the place creatively.
The lack of commitment for one as well as the lack of communication didn’t help very much for sure in the New 52 even if some things leading into Flashpoint felt out of many things.
This was excellent. This stopped me buying comics for about 4 years. As a Batman only buyer at the time, the character was going really well. I loved Batman and Robin,with Dick as Batman. The new villains like Professor Pyg and the Flamingo were engaging. While Batman Incorporated was carrying on with the Characters from Batman I really enjoyed, like Knight and Squire. So to have that all picked up and chucked away really put me off. I have some of the new 52, some unread that I only bought due to ordering commitments and didn’t pick up anything until Star Wars 2015 run..something again I have bought and never enjoyed…so went back to plugging gaps in my 90’s runs I really loved.
In my opinion Dial H was one of my absolute favorites to come out of the new52. It was horror, it was sad, it was definitely a cool idea. Sadly it didn’t last but it sure as hell got further than most stories.
I loved Dial H, but it started going off the rails towards the end when it brought in dial users from other Earths and that Batman style hero who was curtain themed (Curtain Man?). I wish they would have just stuck with the two original characters sharing a dial.
When New 52 was announced I was actually stoked because it was a chance to get into these classic comic characters on the ground floor, and I ended up getting a ton of them through the first few months. Eventually though the fatigue of keeping up with the releases set in, and then Rebirth was announced and I just felt over it. I did love Court of Owls though, and the Trench storyline in Aquaman, as well as various Green Lantern books. I liked Hawk and Dove too so that cancellation hurt
It's interesting to see so many people around my age talking about how New 52 was their entrance to DC, because I was a very young comic reader at that time as well, but I had begun getting into DC just a little while before that, so it had the opposite effect for me. I hadn't been reading comics for very long (obviously, I was a kid), but what I liked about them even then was that they were a world that had already existed for a long time and had plenty of old stuff to learn about. To me, that wasn't intimidating, but was instead part of the appeal of comics as I understood them. New 52 basically felt like the rug being ripped out from under me before I even really got started, throwing everything away right as I was getting my bearings, and I found it very off-putting, personally.
I enjoyed the stories for what they were and they had some great gems , the lore stuff didn't bother me as much. Cause you can't keep building on old foundation
@@brianbenjamin653 That's cool and obviously the logic is sound. I've read some of the stories from that time since then and there was plenty of good stuff there. But like I said, as a kid who hadn't lived through any of the Crises, it was my first experience with any kid of major continuity reboot and I was simply not a fan. Luckily for DC, it seems that I was in the minority in terms of young readers, as evidenced by this comment section
@@brianbenjamin653 Not especially, but in fairness I didn't really give much of it a chance- Honestly, the changes made to a few of my favorites (like Superman and Teen Titans) were enough for me to sour on the whole enterprise, probably unfairly. If I had been reading Snyder's Batman at the time I'm sure I would have loved it (which I later did) but I wasn't interested. In the end it led me to getting into Image and Independent comics as a whole which was great. In terms of Era? If were talking DC as far as big titles and major characters, i'd say Post-Infinite Crisis, to pre-New 52. Not all perfect, and in retrospect there was a need for something new, but i'll always have a soft spot for that period. If we're talking favorite overall, like anything DC ever did, It's 80's-90's Vertigo, no question. Obviously I wasn't reading that stuff contemporaneously with it's release but that's definitely the stuff that I love the most
I'll say this: I had a major comic book store tell me that they were worried about keeping the lights on, went all in on the New 52, and did quite well. Basically, it saved the store. From a financial standpoint, it was a win...for a while.
Terrific video, Chris, thanks for sharing. In your research, did you find anything relating to Bob Harras' involvement? I recall from the time that he had a pretty strong influence on the tone of (and some of the talent involved in) the New 52 (which is to say that part of the reason that several of the titles had a big "90s" feel to them was because he was the 90s Marvel guy). When the first round of cancellations started rolling around, I recall him being the one singled out as being responsible for some of the bigger perceived missteps (like Liefeld's Hawkman).
I’ve read similar articles about Harras’ involvement. He was a strong hand in bringing in Liefeld and Lobdell and I’m pretty certain just those two acts were a sore spot for other creative teams at DC at the time.
You should do a part 2 about how DC destroyed a great thing with the Rebirth initiative elevating DC to New heights and then how it came crashing down.
As stated above, Animal Man was fantastic. Also, from what I heard Static Shock was pretty good and there was a comic series written by Dan Abnett called "Resurrection Man" that lasted 12 issues and started off kind of bad but got pretty good near the end. Also, if memory serves me correctly, there was a thing going on with Frankenstein and Agents of S.H.A.D.E but I don't remember if anything came of it. Still, great video and a solid breakdown of what happened and why.
You want me to say something OTHER than the fact that DC's constant obsession with "fixing" its continuity is ruining it both financially and creatively? Look, people, continuity is not our enemy. It's not that important and it's not that hard to get new people into comics if you run it the right way, the medium did it for DECADES before the age of the speculator bubble, we can have that again, just stop with the shock events, stop with the new number 1 issues, and stop trying to "fix" the timeline when no one actually cares! Marvel's been on top since the 60s or the 70s and they've never done a single reboot. Not one! Just stop! Let writers write stories and leave the status quo to the creatives for god's sake. Trust fans, old and new to "yes and" things they haven't read. It's not hard, we all do it with EVERY story we read.
I'd say more than "no one actually cares" about the continuity. I'd go as far as saying that the continuity is something that is attractive to readers. Even if it's also scary to some of them. To see a character you don't recognize, and then as you learn about them, you learn about their relationship with the character you do like? That's always been a rush, at least for me anyway.
The new 52 I found to be a complete trainwreck and really made no sense whatsoever for dc comics in my opinion and it felt to me like there was no plan for this reboot and it ended it up to be a complete and utter failure in my opinion.
China's Miéville Dial H was by far the best comic in the series. Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Action Comics, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. were all pretty good.
Back in the 1980s, comics like those would have been given a chance to flourish. Comics had at least 2 years or 24 issues to show what they could do. Most comics are sleepers. People forget how the original X-Men sold poorly initially. What a terrible time to be an artist or writer if companies don't support your vision and only look at quarterly growth charts.
Oh Green Arrow, with all respect, was horrible. There was no correlation to the character in appearance or behavior. It had more in common with the CW show which at the time was Green Batman. I have always been a fan of the Errol Flynn looking, anti-authoritarian GA.
The New 52 came out at an interesting time for me as I was getting into comics more frequently since 2008, but at that point in time, comics were a bit confusing with so much happening that it was hard to keep up, and considering where I was living, most titles weren’t available to me (no LCSes anywhere either, just supermarkets and bookstores) so I missed out on a lot of crossover stuff. The New 52 was the perfect opportunity to re-introduce characters to new audiences, and I had a lot of fun reading the titles that I could get my hands on, and it was surprisingly easy to read without much overlap from other titles (unlike Marvel which makes you feel guilty for not reading 10+ titles before reading 1 title). I wasn’t mad with most of the retcons they did, but I wasn’t a seasoned reader at the time, so I wasn’t “personally” affected by it, like some people were. My biggest nitpicks with the New 52 was when Scott Lobdell took over Superman, people’s reactions and criticisms to some of the titles and situations happening (Not really part of the New 52, but a byproduct, but it still made me feel alone and like I couldn’t share my enthusiasm with what was happening. To this day, I still have this kind of experience/feelings with fandom culture and social media as a whole).
Honestly, I will never forgive the New 52 line for taking Mr. Freeze, a man who loved his wife and was doing crime to save her from the disease that was killing her, and turning him into some freak who was just obsessed with a cryogenically frozen women he'd never met.
That version of the character was introduced in BtAS. It was a great arc for the character, but it was just another reboot for the character.
Yes, thats the thing that made me quit DC Comics
Im sure I left the same at the time--but honestly since I'm thinking they got it right. Older and more cynical I guess. If you missed the Sean Murphy/Klaus Janson collabartion from a few years ago, it is perhaps the way both views of Freeze are right: he is a sympathetically human man, a family man who loves his wife/ he is ultimately a cracked and deadly arch villain worthy of as much and more contempt as any of them. HIghtly recommend if the true arc of the character is interesting to you. Or if you just like good one-off bat-villain stuff.
I also wasn't a fan of the recent story where his wife woke up and froze Freeze, and then got her own armor and became Mrs. Freeze.
That was the best! I loved that angle.
I think Linkara put it best when he said that DC didn't commit. They didn't commit to the reboot, to introduce their heroes to the readers. Even though the entire point would be to simplify things and reach a new audience, the New 52 titles were written with the old audience in mind. Crossovers and events after only a few issues, a focus on well-established characters rather than diversification, the list goes on.
Yep. Some books acted like it was a hard reboot and started the hero back to day one (Teen Titans, JLA, Blue Beetle...), some were soft reboots with some goofy stuff cut out (Batgirl, Suicide Squad, Green Arrow), and some acted like there was no reboot (Batman, Green Lantern, Animal Man).
I love his review but I also like Chris's at the same time with Linkara you could feel the rage and disappointment but you're right they didn't commit, it's like they wanted to do the ultimate continuity but the 616 at the same time it almost seems like the new 52 was just tonal and art wise, very superficial.
It almost felt like they were going back to the '90s era of thinking and well look how that turned out for everybody
I used to regret that I did not pursue a career in comics, whether as a writer or artist, but when I hear about the shabby terrible way creatives are treated by companies like DC sometimes, I feel I dodged a bullet. I feel for the writers and artists who were let down in this experiment.
The "everything happened in the last five years" hurt the credibility of New52, a lot. Whoever thought that was a good idea, really didn't think it through at all.
They destroyed Superman and his persona. This was already discussed by DC themselves. Which is why they ended up finding a way to bring back the old Superman.
This is why it failed. They redid their main hero. And it was really bad.
Something I wish I mentioned: when I say fail, I mean in a long term sense. But that first two years of big sales? I should have commended them a bit more on that because that definitely mattered to them and to retailers.
Yes, you can absolutely hear my kittens meow at a certain point. They’re talkative and I missed editing out one set of meows. 😅
Image of Jim Lee and Geoff Johns at 7:56 by Luigi Novi.
For a moment I thought schizophrenia was kicking in when I heard kittens all of a sudden, lol.
I thought I was going crazy
My DC reboot universe that takes place in the 2010's is called Prestine DC. My Marvel reboot universe set in the 2010'*s is called New Birth Marvel. My DC reboot in 2020's is called DC relaunching. And 2020's Marvel is New Dawn Marvel.
What's their opinion on New 52?
two lol, its all cool though kittehs are awesome.
Geoff Johns: "I didn't want to be hindered by past interpretations of characters, which is why I kept all of the lore from my Green Lantern books even when it breaks continuity...wait."
Lmao Johns is a great writer and probably the best thing that happened to green lantern but that man is something else every time I hear something about him it is him contradicting himself.
@@irishhotshot6765 Best thing to happen to green Lantern until he helped write the Green Lantern movie
@@maxpena007 so 50/50 to green lantern then tbh didn't know that haha
@@maxpena007 to be fair, he wasn't the only writer
@Jorge G Figueroa ya but when your the one who knows the material, maybe you can do something better than making let's say parallax a giant space cloud. .
It's interesting to see it from a more business point of view. Because I had a completely different experience...
I could have given them more credit for their initial sales.
It was bad from the debut. Had to read the stories myself instead of looking at montages on YT to see how big DC dropped the ball. They made Superman a punching bag and emo. They got rid of 20+ years of fan favorite stories. They messed up the Robin lore. Killed off Damian for no reason. Made the Joker superhuman. Made Jim Gordon *batman* and the worst travesty of all.
They got rid of Wally West. It was bad from the beginning
@@DHworldwide185 the Jim Gordon Batman ark was super interesting to me plus I loved the villain. I enjoy seeing what if story’s occasional so seeing a in continuity Bruce Wayne who isn’t Batman was really compelling for that ark. It was just super different
@@willppp Different does not mean good. Gordon was by far one of the LEAST qualify to take over for Batman. He even took his spot in the Justice League (somehow). The villain was terrible imo and the fact that “only Bruce can stop him” was just ridiculous as well.
Because you're in denial about the very real problems the comic book industry has. There's a reason why Manga is killing comic sales.
This man put his face (and glasses) in a cake to entertain us while talking about comic books. He didn't have to, but he did. Respect.
I’ll be the 52nd like to this comment on 11/26/22, 8:52 pm est
That's good slapstick, lol!
It deserves the double salute!
He should have just skipped that bit tbh
I want to say I have never seen this mans videos before this one and I was taken aback by the old school TH-cam cake thing and the intro, then I checked his channel and saw he’s been here since 2006 - man is a true OG wow
It was pretty poorly managed from what I recall, a lot of artists and writers complained that there were confusing and contradicting instructions from DC editorial regarding how they should use characters, what was/wasn't canon, etc. And while there were a lot of great books throughout the New 52, the lack of cohesiveness and quality control was really really apparent.
Yep. No clear vision. Even George Perez gave up on Superman out of frustration.
They also cancelled a lot of quality pre-52 titles for this forced reboot.
@@jaylan7847 I would argue. That pre-new 52, DC was actually releasing some of the best stuff they ever did. I still go back and read titles I loved, and discover new things I love from that 2000's era.
this mans just repeated the video.
@@MatthewBreck lmao true, to be fair I was early and commented before watching the vid, but yes
A comic run so bad it managed to ruin a solid streak for the DC animated movies when Warner decided to adapt it into their continuity.
There is saying my old boss used to say. Which is “You cant be half pregnant” and The New 52 really symbolizes that. Lots of ideas that were about 50% committed and thought out. So as soon as you put thought into it the whole thing falls apart.
I just remember being pissed that some of my favorite characters that had been around for years and I had grown up reading about like Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, Donna Troy, and Wally West just didn't exist anymore
Ikr I felt the same way when they got rid of The JSA
Wally came back, but all of a sudden, he was black man! jajajajaja. Donna disappeared. But you have to admit that the stories of the justice league were really good in the New 52 era. Then everything went to hell with the rebirth.
I thought it was Wally who sat on the Mobius chair? Or was that before the new 52?
@@brunodelacruz06 I didn't have a problem with Wally being black, my problem was that ignoring his skin color he just wasn't the same character at all. Also I did like parts of New 52, like Snyder's Batman, but I just couldn't ignore characters I love getting deleted from existence. Or other characters that were still around getting horribly mistreated like Tim Drake.
Also I actually liked Rebirth a lot, what I didn't like was them suddenly pumping the breaks on it and messing up stuff that it did that I thought was great. Like aging up Jon, fucking Bendis.
@@legogeneralgrievous3958 No that was after. Pretty sure that was part of the end of the New 52 and beginning of Rebirth (could be wrong though, could probably get a better answer from Google)
Love the commitment on the face in the cake gag! Unlike DC's commitment to continuity, you went hard enough to get solid coverage while not so hard as to make a mess of everything. And you clearly had a planned story and payoff that segued into the next part of the video, which wass you said, "Not bad!".
Also unlike the New 52 the cake had a period where it looked good, while New 52 was shit from the first published page.
@@deepfriedokra i mean Batman was great starting out
All you do is re-ice the cake and invite unknowing friends over for free cake. Boom! Little to no commitment required lol.
@@buhnana6117 New 52 was my jumping on point for digital comics (RIP Comixology). I remember having a lot of fun following Batman, Wonder Woman and Animal Man, but also had a soft spot for DC Universe Presents Deadman, the Green Lantern books... Dial H for Hero, remember that one?
@@Kikkoman85 I really liked Dial H, I wish they didn’t cancel it.
One big side effect of the New52 you didn't touch on was the cancellation of titles AND characters. Tim Drake (RED ROBIN) and Stephanie Brown (BATGIRL) were enjoying their own successful titles (well, I liked them) that were suddenly ended as the New52 launched. Tim was allowed back as part of the new TEEN TITANS title, but Stephanie just disappeared, as did Cassandra Cain, another previous Batgirl. Dan DiDio went out of his way to make sure Steph didn't pop back in, calling her "toxic." This interference included the TV series YOUNG JUSTICE, in which Steph was supposed to appear but was immediately sidelined. It wasn't until BATMAN & ROBIN ETERNAL that Steph and Cass were "introduced" into the New52 continuity... in Oct 2015. The New52 would end a few months later.
Tim never recovered from the New 52 IMO.
Not sure if it's related but booster gold was one of my favorites and had 49 issues, then it was ended because the new 52 began and Michael ended up in justice league international which didn't do him justice.
Marvel and DC don't cancel so-called "successful" titles. It's safe to say most titles are losing $$.
@@MikeStJacques From Wikipedia's entry: "The New 52 is the 2011 revamp and relaunch by DC Comics of its entire line of ongoing monthly superhero comic books. Following the conclusion of the "Flashpoint" crossover storyline, DC _canceled all its existing titles_ and debuted 52 new series in September 2011."
They cancelled everything and relaunched the main titles. BATGIRL was relaunched with Barbara Gordon. The previous BATGIRL title was retconned out of existence because Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain had never been Batgirls in the new universe.
So your saying the introduction of Stephanie brown killed the new 52
The five year timeline was a real issue for me pretty early on, mainly with Batman. It was really hard to believe that in that time, he went through Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake and then Damien Wayne. That's a lot of history to put them in their respective position in the New 52. I jumped off Batman pretty quickly, but stayed on the entire way with Wonder Woman. I can always respect an writer/artist duo who stays on for the long run.
Also need to ask. Has Jena Hudson (AKA the new villainess The White Rabbit from the Batman: The Dark Knight comic) been seen since Rebirth?
Their run on animal man and swap thing was epic. I loved the art and storyline. When it ended I wanted more so badly. If you guys haven't checked it out, it's a must. Even if you don't like animal man or swap thing.
Swamp thing is cool. DC comics series of swamp thing are crap
Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Frankenstein, and OMAC were the best things to come out of the New 52.
The New 52 is what ended my monthly subscriptions. I had been an avid reader & collector for over a decade up to that point, spending $100 a month on average. More during big events. When everything started over, it felt like a part of me died because so many characters changed so drastically or disappeared all together. It wasn’t until Rebirth happened that I started kinda keeping up again, but even then, I never went back to buying monthly issues. Instead, I’ll buy Trade Paperbacks for my favored titles.
It’s what started mine
Trade paperbacks are the way to go because you get the whole story at once and don’t have to worry about having gaps if you can’t find a particular issue.
I spent $50mth for years when the new 52 came out so I helped make up for it
Grant Morrison having to write the ending to his his Batman storyline around this was like trying to watch a train conductor trying to pilot a jumbo jet after said train was retired, it was nuts
Not Really. _Morrison's_ Bat run was really episodic via chapters. Like _Batmn & Son_ (655-658) Prologues the Run & introduces Damian.
> Than _Black Glove_ (667-669, 664 & 665 & 672-675), along w/ _Batmn RIP._ (676-681, 701, 682-683 & 702) as well as FINAL CRISIS. That's A Chapter.
> Than ((the BEST Bat book somewhat x-over ever)) The _Reborn_ era; Batmn 687 the RIP Epilogue, Batman & Robin (1-16). And Although not by _Morrison_ this Era also includes _Winik's_ Batmn (688-692) story, _Battle of the Cowl_ 1-3, _Paul Dini's_ classic _"HUSH Trilogy"_ (Dtec 846-850 & 852, than Streets of Gotham 1-4, 14 & 16-21). Also _Scott Snyder's_ Best Batmn as well occurred in the _Reborn_ era; Batmn _Black Mirror_ (Dtec 871-882), which also featured Dick in the Cowl. All concluding w/ _Morrison's_ Batman: _The Search for Bruce Wayne_ (1-6 mini-series). That's another Chapter.
> Than Bruce is Back! _The Return Batman_ 1 (one shot), than Batman INCORPORATED (1-10 or 11) and than lastly Batman INC #New52 is the final chapter.
My point is [that] they're All independent chapters. It's not continually necessary to read every single issue A-Z that _Morrison_ wrote to understand the linear progression of his story. Or "run". Especially the Final INCORPORATED/ INC Chapter. It's All really quite brilliant what he did -- when ya lay it all out.
Morrison is non-binary and uses They/Them. I’m not saying that to mock Morrison, I’m being dead serious
The biggest problem with Crisis on Infinite Earths was that, despite all of the planning they did for it, they really didn't plan it out very well. John Byrne was allowed to make drastic changes to Superman's history, such that he never operated as Superboy, and Supergirl never even existed. But no one bothered to tell Paul Levitz about this ahead of time, and he kinda needed to know all that when writing Legion of Super-Heroes. The Legion was inspired to form by Superboy specifically; so who was their inspiration now? Both Superboy and Supergirl were prominent members, but now neither one were ever there, so... who filled those roles? If Superboy was the reason Mon-El was in the Phantom Zone for 1000 years, what was his story now? The solution there wasn't very satisfying; first it was said that the Time Trapper created a "pocket universe" in which there WAS a Superboy (even though CoIE was intended to get rid of any such parallel worlds), and then, in the 5YL Legion, they actually did a "quiet reboot" of the entire DC continuity (that conveniently only changed Legion history). And then you have Donna Troy, whose origin story involved a Wonder Woman who never existed either. And Infinity Inc., that had members who were the children of characters who also no longer existed.
The second biggest problem was that they didn't commit to the new timeline. Changes were allowed to be made well after the fact, that couldn't fit into the new continuity. Hawkworld, which rebooted Hawkman for the post-Crisis continuity, would have been fine, except it was decided that Hawkman and Hawkgirl were completely new characters now. But they were still part of JLA history, so... who was supposed to be in those stories? (First they tried to patch it by saying it was the Golden Age versions, except that they had post-Crisis appearances after the JSA characters were shunted off into another dimension, so it couldn't be them, either.)
The fact that Hawkman (the guy who flies with fake wings who somehow is needed on the Justice League with Superman) created so many continuity problems that DC just flat-out refused to let him even appear for years shows how badly DC mishandled CoIE. And then they tried to fix the post-Crisis problems with Zero Hour... and failed to plan ahead properly for how the post-Zero Hour continuity would work. And then they did the same thing again with Infinite Crisis. And then with Final Crisis.
Really, given how slapdash Flashpoint/New 52 was compared to their previous line-wide reboot events, the entire thing turning out to be a massive flustercluck was pretty much a guarantee.
(And there's also the inherent problem with creating "jumping on" points for new readers: whatever you do, it's ALSO going to serve as a "jumping off" point for old readers...)
They forgot the old rule, every issue is somebody's first issue.
And then with all this lack of commitment and the subsequent events to explain major continuity errors, it all just ends up doing the exact opposite of what the entire point of COIE was in the first place....making the comics more new reader-friendly.
We went from a continuity that, sure, had a lot of goofy things, and had some pretty frequent multiverse shenanigans, but where everything published still counted. To a continuity where some of the books counted, some didn't, some were unclear, and you have a long and convoluted continuity history to go through to understand which books you're reading actually matter or not. In the end, it just made everything more complicated and less new reader-friendly, which kinda defeated the whole purpose of COIE in the first place.
In hindsight, if keeping things simple was their goal, I think they would have just been better off keeping the pre-Crisis continuity around, for all it's problems. That's what Marvel has been doing, and they're pretty consistently the number 1 in sales, so it doesn't seem to be as much a turn-off to readers as DC editorial seems to think it is.
I honestly didn't realize those sub-sequent cross-over events were attempts to fix anything, I thought they were straight-up, naked, greedy CASH GRABS!! In the 80s, cross-over events were few but incredibly special. By the 2000s, there was never a moment when a multiple cross-over was NOT happening, at either Marvel or DC.
Hawkworld should have been an Elseworlds story (but the term was not invented yet). That would have saved the character. But as you say, DC had no clear vision past COIE.
The books that frustrated me the most were Justice League and Flash. There's no way those books exist except as an extension of the pre-Crisis continuity. Wally constantly fussed over Barry, who wasn't supposed to exist or was to be "forgotten." Yet the Wally book never shut up about him. And the JL book was also born out of the pre-COIE JLA (often referencing the old team). They tried to keep some pre-COIE stories as back story for post-COIE teams but the reboot of Superman, Wonder Woman, and later Hawkman, made this idea ridiculous. We were reading Superman every week--all brand new--and he had NO past with the rest of the JLA. So how did those old stories still count when some of the characters did not technically exist? Just one headache after the other.
@@marvelfannumber1 Actually Marvel replaced their universe with a new continuity within the past 10 years in the 5th Secret Wars series (which was just called Secret Wars, no number). The previous multiverse was the 7th continuity, the rebuilt multiverse is the 8th continuity. Don't know if they ever explained why they picked those numbers, but a year or two later they got to have a great scene with 7 versions of Eternity teaming up to take down the first continuity's evil Eternity.
As a long-time DC reader, I think the biggest crime of the Nu52 reboot was Dan Didio and Jim Lee's total disregard to us long-time readers. They pretty much said they don't need us and I didn't read DC pretty much for that entire run of time. i discovered Archie comics around that time, which was about to go through a reboot of it's own. I'm still reading the Archie comic line now. DC never truly has recovered from the Nu52 fiasco.
Spot on Alan. Reboots declare the company finds no value in long time customers invested in the published continuity.
I really only like Marvel comics. Im always trying DC comics, and am happy when I find something good, as it's a different experience from Marvel.
As a long-time DC reader, could you please give me some good runs to check-out? I have Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Year One and DKR.
Thanks for your help!
"LiL'JpD."
@@joedent3323 If you like Marvel, check out John Byrne's runs on Superman, Wonder Woman, Legends miniseries, Jack Kirby's Fourth World (which I am just about to finish) and Doom Patrol. He also has a mini-series series of books called Superman & Batman: Generations, which takes place outside of continuity. George Perez has a memorable Wonder Woman run also. Also of note, Marv Wolfman and George Perez's legendary run on The New Teen Titans. The Giffin/DeMatteiss/Maguire run of Justice League is also worth mentioning. Those are just a few suggestions to start with.
@@joedent3323 Check out No Justice
@@alancooper6443 Thanks for the info - I will check out those tips! 😀
Your video actual confirmed what my local comic shop owner told me about the New 52. Namely, that it was a Hail Mary to boost sales. And it did for a little while he told me. But, like you said, there was no plan to make the line coherent and so the sales bump is only short term. Which, honestly, astonishes me at how short sighted Dan Didio was. And even though we got Rebirth I still don’t think DC has recovered.
Yeah, they had to do something and initially it worked well for sales. I would argue that with some planning they could’ve extended and built on those sales for a longer period.
@@ComicTropes The tragedy for me is I had no idea at the time that DC was struggling. For going on twenty years I had been reading mainly DC titles, and before the New 52, I thought they were knocking it out of the park on a lot of levels. I loved Starman, and Flash, and Green Lantern. Infinite Crisis was great, as was Blackest Night and then Brightest Day. To this day I think No Man’s Land is one of the best Batman events ever. So I was truly perplexed that DC would want to reboot everything when it seemed to me that everything was going strong. I think it really boils down to Dan Didio being the wrong guy at the wrong time. His vision and skill was just too limited. And perhaps he was trying too hard to impress the people at Warner’s or was simply too scared. At the end of the day, I think DC needed someone better than him to run the show. Perhaps in different hands DC would have been able to regain some market share without resorting to a gimmicky reboot.
@@MaximumWarp2099 I worked in a comic shop and pre new 52 was nothing. Nobody was into DC. A few DC characters were doing okay but Marvel and Image were way more popular.
The business model may have failed, but the launch of Batman with The Court of Owls got me back into comics. Over the next several years I spent thousands on physical and digital collections across DC and Marvel.
I personally loved the New 52. But I fell off from it as a result of too many delays on storylines i was trying to follow, way too many crossovers that ruined it for a new reader like myself at the time, and I honestly just felt out did not like a lot of the storylines that were going on, while storylines i really enjoyed got cancelled or weren’t handled properly (looking at you Trinity).
I think new 52 could have been incredible. But they dropped the ball, hard.
This is going to sound silly but the court of owls/talon nursery rhyme having 0 meter and not sounding at all like a nursery rhyme or poem with its last line was such a small and lazy misstep that I felt was a perfect encapsulation of everything I hated about capullo’s batman
Cool ideas, haphazard execution, no attention to detail, no respect for the medium
The Court of Owls felt like it took too much retconning to exist. Do they ever explain why the world's greatest detective knew nothing of their existence in his city?
@@jimkissel2140Yes. The explanation was Shut Up, Snyder has a Story to tell
Issue being that had the new 52 not happened that probably still would’ve happened given the new 52 didn’t really effect Batman lmao. Point is that it was negative overall and I’m not sure Batman comics of the time should count
the New 52 was great for me, a teenager who wanted to get into comics but needed a new way in. That said, thats really all it was for me, an open door, as I went on to find the much better stories that really made DC what it is and am a die hard DC fan to this day
Same here, i was about 11, just getting into comics n the new 52 was my gateway into DC. I'll stick by that some of the Scott Snyder Batman run is great but other than that n some other books, the new 52 wasn't good for much more than being a jumping off point for new readers.
Exactly same here
@@rhysmenmuir6356 yeah besides the bat titles and anything Geoff Johns was working, Majority of the N52 titles were pretty bad.
I was a reader that came back because of the New 52. Loved it. Which also caused me to pick up titles from Valiants relaunch, along with Marvel & Image but not as many.
I really like how the video talks about the things story wise that came from the New 52.
I still read weekly issues. People that say it's a complete failure. Are just wrong IMO.
Batman & Robin was my favorite title.
Exactly. I became a monthly reader because of the new 52 back then.
Snyder said it himself in your interview, the creative teams were all chaos and nobody new what to do, the lack of planing and rushing got the new 52 killed. Still grateful for the batman run that got me into comics. great video
There were 52 books, you can't really plan this thing, you just give it a good start that writers will have room to tell good stories, that is probably why they made the start 5 years into when heroes first came out, so they will have the main heroes and not lose the second stringers or the second generation heroes like the Robins, etc.. They will come up with setups and stories that from if initial reaction it didn't go well they have to jetison it or the writer. Even if they spent years planning what to do and stories to tell - it will still depend if the readers will like it.
That same Batman run got me back into comics too.
Idk what it is with the New 52, but I always find it such a fascinating time in terms of being a fascinating train wreck. So many behind the scenes stories have came out of it with more each and every day. I find it baffling how badly DC management screwed this up, and why a single person couldn't just steer the ship in the right direction.
My biggest beef would be what happened to Tim Drake and all the Batgirls, and indirectly affecting how Grant Morrison finished his Batman run.
He had it set up to include more of the Bat-family right before New 52 but the final volume of Batman Incorporated took a lot of them out. Also the status of Gordon and Bruce and how long they've known each other. It took a lot of the impact out of the finale. I still love it though.
The New 52 came out when I first started reading comics. Books like teen titans, Batman and Robin, and Justice League were all great books that kept me reading because they seemed kind of stand alone. I don't imagine I would have kept reading without the New 52
My experience was different, though I was not trying to read individual issues, but the massive story line books, such as Court of Owls or Death of the Family. For Death of the Family to make much sense, I had to buy Batman's Story, Jason's Story, Dick's Story, Tim's Story, the Joker's Story, and the overarching story that tied the disparate stories together. Teen Titans was even worse. I would be reading and everyone is in one fight, and I would turn the page to the same fight with characters inexplicably killed or moved or to a new battle or scene with no rational explanation. I had to buy Red Robin, young Flash, and Superboy to begin piecing all the missing pieces together, buy even then there were pieces missing. Further, there were people who appeared and disappeared randomly with no explanation such as Danny the Street/Alley of whom I had never heard. This was a constant irritation.
WhenI can buy Death in the Family, Lonely Place of Dying, No Man's Land, Knightfall, Death and Life of Superman, and others that come with a cogent and understandable story line, then is it too much for the New 52 to give me the same?
One of the weirdest things that I remember seeing right out the new 52 was they had a picture of Batman with some his robins Damien, Tim and Dick. In the ages were just kind of ridiculous how they were draw Dick look like he might have been 20 barely and Tim couldn't be more than 15 and even though he wasn't there that would make Jason like 17 and Damien 10. Even though Batman had only been operating for 5 years how would have four robins
I love that issue. I didn't care about the time line. It don't get hung up on it. I just enjoyed the books as they came. It was great.
Internships that's how. Batman is a terrible employer and his robins quit as soon as they find something better.
The number of Robins one can have within an adult's superheroing period has always been a sore point for any reboot of a batman franchise. For example the arkham games struggle to cram jason in between dick and tim. It's pretty clear that tim was supposed to be an amalgam tim and jason, but then of course they needed some "brand new villain" for arkham knight.
@@Nono-hk3is _" the arkham games struggle to cram jason in between dick and tim"_
It's impossible to read this and not think of something lewd.
The New 52 also kept flipping back and forth to wether Tim was ever Robin or if he skipped straight to Red Robin to condense the number of Robins Batman has had in his condensed history.
I really did love that initial New 52 run, especially what they did with Swamp Thing / Animal Man - I never regularly read DC before it kicked off, so it seemingly worked on me at least in terms of gaining new readers - still collect a bunch of titles to this day thanks to it.
I only lately got to read New 52 Swamp Thing and it was amazing
@@MortonFMurphy It clearly drew inspiration from the old Alan Moore, Rick Veitch and Millar / Morrison series, but it was fine.
I loved that swamp thing run. Swamp thing annual 1 was my inspiration for a tattoo
I still read the animal man and swamp thing but another couple great runs were the green arrow and flash runs from number one. I read by trade paper back usually. I collected these tps because the stories read like movies to me.
Pre new 52 you needed a doctorate in DC comics to follow any of their books.
My memory from back then can basically be summed up as "how is Geoff Johns such a good writer and such an awful writer at the same time."
I understand the struggle of 80 years of Canon and I look at it as "loose" Canon. The good and impactful stories will stick in the public zeitgeist and hold sway over the status quo. How many revelatory or shake up moments happen are just dropped or ignored cause they are dumb or just dont fit with what would make sense for the story. Or you're Grant Morrison and are insane.
Why do you think Geoff was awful?
He definitely did what I thought was impossible....made Green Lantern damn interesting again. That Blackest Night storyline was the FIRST time I picked up a DC comic since the 90s. He did a fairly decent job with Aquaman's world building too. Then he lost his mind.
Geoff Johns, great writer, terrible planner.
@Will N they're like akira toriyama (writer and artist for dragon ball), they just make up stuff as they go along and whenever they make too strong of an enemy they just go "oh superman was holding back, now he's going 100%", "oh flash was holding back, now he's gonna run at his top speed, "Oh green lantern was holding back, now he's gonna image he perfect solution to this problem and create it", "Oh aquaman was thirsty, now he's gonna shoot a fish like a bullet at light speed"
Even with all the "messiness" during the new 52, I can say that seeing #1 or Vol 1. on the title of these books helped me, as well as a lot of people, get back into comics or get into comics for the first time.
The New 52 was just one big mess. I hated the fact that they got rid of important histories of certain characters, especially how they treated Starfire. Ironically, though, the New 52 was what led me to create my own versions of the iconic DC superheroes over on DeviantArt, which is still going pretty strong, honestly.
I just wanted to come here and go to bat once more for one of my favorite New 52 books, Resurrection Man. It was seriously under appreciated.
The main character cannot die. Each time he is killed, he comes back to life with a different superpower, and it’s usually something he can use to counter what previously killed him. There are two trade paperbacks covering the series, and he even crosses paths with the Suicide Squad for a couple of issues. I recommend it to anyone and everyone.
I read the New 52 Suicide Squad run, and I saw him, yeah he's an interesting one.
That sounds fucking awesome, I need to check him out
Loved that book one of the best things that came out the New 52.
I heard about this one I’ll have check it out and post a video review
Sorry dude, compared to pre-new52 version of Resurrection Man, New52 version is not that great. At least it was written by his original creator.
One of the problems was that they didn't have the courage to reboot all of the DC characters in The New 52 phase. Batman and Green Lantern continued with their old chronology, which made no sense. 52 magazines was also a lot. Some unnecessary changes, like Nightwing having the uniform color red for example, Lobo with a totally different look and personality and without the charisma of the original.
They may not have completely rebooted those characters but they were still retrofitted to the New 52. You can't say batman and Green lantern were completely the same in the New 52.
@Will N they were both originally given 5 years as well, they changed it to 10 for them later o
Green Lantern had the benefit of Geoff Johns being the writer, and he had the clout to more or less continue storylines begun and developed pre-New 52. His success on the property and revitalising it could be why it got four titles during New 52, which you’d expect more from the Batman name.
The whole New 52 reboot broke my heart and there are still a lot of characters that haven't recovered from it.
bro, new 52 superboy was so confusing and trash that they brought back the post-crisis/pre-flashpoint superboy (conner kent) and forgot about the new one, except now because conner was from another world everyone literally forgot about him.
Honestly, if I could've written new-52 superboy, instead of a complicated time travel plot, I would've just made him a clone of the present day superman and (unknown to him at first) lex luthor, similar to his young justice interpretation, but he's created by the agenda and harvest instead of cadmus, and his design, abilities and personality would all match YJ tv show superboy, since that's by far the simplest and favorite superboy and a great reimagining.
@@ProjektTaku it was dc trying to get new fans
@@Kira22558 but wouldn't it make sense to attract the new fans who already love the young justice superboy so you can get them into the comics by essentially having the same superboy?
Plus that superboy has already been proven to work.
@@ProjektTaku yeah you right
There are also plenty who haven’t recovered since the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
I think making 52 new titles was a mistake. Probably could've just made it a 120-150 pages anthology with 7-9 stories per issue, and they can be collected into trades once they have a chapter count of 6-8.
Nah it would have failed in the end much the same due to a lack editorial management and direction.
But... you can't sell 8,000 books all at once if you do that! I think that's the biggest issue. The New 52 was too much, too fast.
If they did that, you just know people would have been angry that they never let John’s finish his green lantern run and it would be a big in answered “what if” for the comic community.
Nah bad writers need to be switched out asap. Look how they ruined Red Hood by handing him over to Lobdell for a DECADE even though no one liked that
I really enjoyed the ultimate marvel series because it was an alternative universe that didn't get bogged down with everything and it was a different take on the same characters that had a clear ending to their stories.
Then they brought ultimate spider-man back with what I consider a mediocre run with a good ending that ruined the other good ending, then they ruin it again.
Your interview recently with Scott Snyder was surprisingly open about the chaos of the new 52 and I really appreciated it. As always, a phenomenal video chris.
High quality acting on that accidental cake smash!
Acting? Dude, it was a real accident. Watch it again.
😂😂😂😂
Lol this made laugh out loud. Chris is a comedic genius. Much love from South Africa 😂
I have always questioned wisdom that a book's history is holding it back from getting new readers. I started reading in the late 70's. While it was still cool to get a first issue of a new character, there was something almost magical about starting on a comic with a issue in the hundreds. The books had a kind of gravitas. We all knew we were picking up a soap opera. We had faith that if some history needed to be explained that the writer would have a character give some exposition.
I miss the days of the superhero soap operas and high issue numbers.
The sad truth is, the medium has changed and the way people consume media has changed.
I miss when you could pick up a random issue #318 and it would relay everything you need to know while giving you a near complete story. Today, a random #8 feels like jumping into an episode of a television show at the 20 minute mark, giving you 5 minutes of content and then making you wait a month for the next 5 minutes.
Yeah, I started reading comic books in the late 80s, and I was perfectly capable of picking up what I needed to know on the fly. Even in Claremont's notoriously convoluted X-men stories of the time, it was possible to enjoy it from issue to issue without understanding every single reference and call back. And considering the sales numbers of comics at the time reached extraordinary new highs, I can infer that there were a lot of readers in my position.
You can make a comic book friendly to new readers without erasing its history; trust your audience's intelligence.
I agree but will also say that back in the 70s, comic story-telling was a lot different. Most stories were self-contained (often literally happening within the pages of a single issue) with little impact on a character's status quo. In more modern comics, things have changed a lot. In an attempt to make every single story seem incredibly important, a story has to have major impacts on a character's status quo, while also going on endlessly (or at least, for a minimum of six issues, just enough for a TPB). So, when a reader is busy reading another issue of "Superman's Girlfriend, Wonder Woman", he might be mightily confused when that version of Superman dies to be replaced by a previous version of Superman whose history now overwrites that latest version of Superman with Mr. Mxyzptlk showing up to explain that now the new/old Superman's history will take the place of the old/new Superman, except some stuff didn't happen and most definitely Wonder Woman was never Superman's girlfriend. In the 70's, we just had one issue of DC Comics Presents, where Cupid makes Superman and Wonder Woman fall in love temporarily with no consequences after the issue was over. Heck, even in the late 80's, we just had one comic where Superman and Wonder Woman try kissing each other and realize that they're not that into each other.
I agree, and I will also add that when I started collecting comics in the mid 80s, all that continuity encouraged me to hunt down other comic issues. For example you might be reading a Fantastic Four issue where one of the characters makes a comment. There's a little asterisk in the talk bubble and a note at the bottom says you would know the details if you picked up Amazing Spider-Man 42. You pick up Amazing Spider-Man 42 and you see the details of the comment but you also pick up on some subplots there that maybe ties to daredevil. That gets you pulling Daredevil issues and looking for Daredevil back issues.
You always felt that what you were reading was not just a comic but a window into a living and breathing world. Some of my most treasured books are the Marvel essential black and white reprints of the Marvel handbook. Reading through that you see that even minor characters might have three or four pages of History to them, were they interact with a variety of characters. By comparison, whenever Marvel puts out a mini handbook they can fit all of the context for a character on half a page. There's nothing to grab you, nothing to really prompt you to take a walk through history and find other stories.
I've recently been cleaning out all of my collections and I've been looking at prices. Things that sell really well I will try to sell, lesser items I donate. And what I'm finding is that what people want, and what generates the most money, are out of print trades that collect stories prior to the late 90s. I have trades in my collection that are in mint condition, were published from stories in the last 10 years, and they're worth new half cover price. Meanwhile I have some older trades that if I were to part with them could go for well over cover price. That says it all doesn't it
Started a little later, but early enough in the internet era so as to be almost pre-internet. Certainly I didn't have much access to it.
And I'd go one further; I not only didn't mind the things I didn't understand, I thought those things were fascinating and I actively went looking for other comics that mentioned them.
I was always more of a reader than a collector, but on some level it was kind of the point, or at least a primary attraction.
They couldn't even fix the issue of reading multiple different series to keep up with plot. Death of the family still required reading 7 different series which is completely inexcusable to me.
An open door to try to get readers that winded up being just another convoluted reboot of the characters and their stories without appropriate beginning middle or ends. What happened to 52 superman and his character? Gone and replaced; hope you didn't get too attached to him.
@@PanelVulture I'm sorry but I don't consider a story where the superman Im following has to die so the classic version can come take his place to be a satisfying conclusion.
How can it? They're barely planning any of this stuff out and half the reason they write their stories is to cover their own tracks. It's such a rotten pattern that keeps overlapping itself. Remember when crisis was supposed to simplify stuff? Now "pre or post crisis?" Is a real question some people ask to figure out what character/world is being talked about. It's retarded.
A satisfying beginning middle and end for superman need to be relevant to the character and stories they were telling, not a final swerve caused by editors/writers shifting to a different version of the character I may or may not be familiar with.
This is why manga is continuing to take a giant dump on western comics. I pick up one piece number 1 and it's gonna be that story through to the end. No reboots, no rewrites, no other writers/artists coming in to make the quality inconsistent, no conflicts between departments resulting in unbearable story telling (spiderman clone wars for example), none of the bullshit.
I remember trying to read the new Archie comics. But then a few issues later there's a new artist and it just goes to shit, looked like coloured sketches compared to the decent art the first issues had.
Big superhero western comics are just broken now. Invincible is a shining beacon of hope.
@@PanelVulture didn't they merge the two supermen?
DC saw crossovers were massively popular thanks to events like Blackest Night, and tried to recapture lightning in a bottle. The Green Lantern franchise saw four major crossover events, and Batman titles tended to be affected by Batfamily events. The New 52 version of Nightwing barely settled before a big event upturned his life, fortunately Grayson only had one issue tying into Robin War.
@@danielalvarado3846 I think so, but the end result was 52 superman disappearing and original supes coming back, so basically got replaced/killed off.
I worked at a comic shop when the New 52 launched. I remember a lot of regulars were excited, several complained about losing the continuity they'd been collecting for years. 2 months in the regulars were only picking up Batman, Animal Man, and Superman, and there was one guy that collected anything Green Lantern.
There were way too many comics coming out at the same time, especially after how many Flashpoint comics had just come out. Everyone knew Flashpoint wasn't going to stick, so only a few of our regulars bothered collecting it.
It felt like a slo-mo train crash.
Sounds like your shop was struggling. I worked at a shop where people were getting like a dozen new 52 tittles a month. Nightwing and Phantom stranger were doing great. Anything with a Lantern sold well. We were ordering 30 copies of Larfleeze.
@@redrick8900I worked for one in NYC that’s fairly popular and had a similar experience to the main comment. At first yeah people bought it like crazy, but there was a fairly quick transition to people not buying anything other than the the books he listed unless they were like a mega fan of a character
@@oldylad Well mine was the opposite. When New 52 first started everyone was complaining and saying they were going to stop buying DC so we underordered and then came four years of the best sales numbers for DC the store ever saw. Before and after New 52 Image was outselling DC.
Another thing worth mentioning that pissed off a lot of readers around the time of The New 52 was that DC had launched a campaign of "Drawing the Line at $2.99" where they promised that no classic titles would be raised in price. As soon as legacy titles like Action and Detective got re-numbered with The New 52, the price went up.
As a lifelong comic nerd who became partner in a comic shop around that time period, it was really strange. We had the greatest customers in the world and even they would come in angry and confused. "How can Batman have had 3 sidekicks in less than 5 years?" "Was Dick ever Robin?" "Where are the Titans?" "What secrets does *this* Amanda Waller know?" "Why isn't Sandman part of the DCU proper?" "Are there more Bang Babies?" "Was Voodoo ever a WildCAT?"... It created a kind of bottomless frustration, both as a fan and a retailer. When Marvel announced Marvel NOW! (and later, "All-New, All-Different") some people were genuinely scared that it would be a Marvel New52. Some people even cancelled their pull boxes as a reaction to the first news about NOW!; That's how gunshy Dc's reboot had made fans (and industry insiders) across the board. Don't even get me started on Rebirth.
Rebirth kinda created a good start for many people
Honestly, after years of disappointment with the New 52, Rebirth was a joy for me to read.
imagine doing such a bad move that it even affacted your rival, idk if that's good or bad
@@ironmaster6496it's good that people aren't buying your rival's comics, bad because not a lot of them are buying your comics instead
I think another problem with the New52 was that the higher ups at DC wanted to reboot their entire universe, but at the same time, they didn’t want to commit. They didn’t want to completely change certain things during the New52 because they didn’t want to get rid of certain things that these characters and the books they were in popular.
I remember that some characters simply weren't rebooted at all, like green lantern or batman. Their first stories would talk about some events that even i that read comics once in a while didn't record, how could someone who was just getting into comics understand what was happening.
@@luisfilipe2747 Yeah that was one of the major problems with the new 52. There would be characters that would mention events such as Blackest Night, Death of Superman, Final Crisis, and Battle for the Cowl during the New52 which were events that happened before flashpoint, and it didn’t make any sense considering that majority of the heroes in the New52 were not as experienced as their pre-flashpoint counterparts, and that those stories had a lot more heroes and villains that were not introduced until near the end of the New52.
@@xanderg.1070 The most vivid thing for me was the whole robin thing. During the first year of the new 52 there was already a red hood and Nightwing, but they NEVER took the proper time to explain how that came to be, there was just a page on one of the first batman issues summarizing how they became those characters, but using a pre flashpoint explanation, but that explanation couldn't fit in the timestamp of new 52. That lack of commitment to properly makes thing from the 0 was a real bummer
@@luisfilipe2747 Indeed, and if you think about, starting the New52 with the formation of the Justice League, and their first battle against Darksied. Then have a five year time skip was a major red flag. If you’re going to reboot your universe, you got to do it right, and properly build up to it instead of doing a time skip because you don’t want to go through all that character development all over again.
New52 should have started with a Batman or a Superman book then worked their way up to JL and other heroes.
I think more of the fans just didn't like the idea of reboot, were pretty fond of the existing versions, and not surprising a lot of the writers also didn't want NEW version rather than what they had long worked on.
The New 52 really tarnished the legacy characters that so many people love from DC, and I will say is arguably one of the strongest advantages it has over Marvel. Wally West, Cassandra Cain, Donna Troy, Connor Hawke, etc. Even if they weren’t gotten rid of, the history of them were condensed and erased; the 4 Robins and Roy Harper. Thankfully we’re past the point now with most of them being restored and Wally even being the Flash again.
I always thought it was kinda messed up that Geoff Johns' Green Lantern stuff seemed to be one of the few storylines that continued virtually unbroken into the New 52.
It was definitely a sticky situation. His green lantern run is one of the greatest comic book runs of all time, and a story that you just couldn’t break up.
At the same time, if you decided to keep enough other books going, then it defeats the purpose of a reboot.
All in all, DC just shouldn’t have done it. John’s original plan for flashpoint was to be a flash event that would have lead into a Wally West solo series, ironic that the story would cause Wally west to disappear.
I'm just a Guy from Spain Who likes comics and i'm triying to learn english by my own,man, just wanted to say that seeing all your videos are helping me a lot! They're all super interesting and the edition is great! And thanks to that i'm really geeting better and better every month!
I always felt like New 52 ended up being DC's New Coke moment; it didn't do what they had intended, but it did make the audience miss and appreciate what they had, which helped going into Rebirth. Wrote an essay about it back in 2016 or so, I'll try and hunt it out if anyone has any interest.
I look forward to reading it. As 1 of those readers for whom The New 52 served as a jumping-on point, I'm always interested in learning about older generations' opinions on the state of the DC Universe pre-2011. I'm not very well-informed on the broader Post-Crisis/Pre-Flashpoint universe outside of the Bat family titles.
Yes please 🙏
Rebirth wasn't nearly as successful as New 52.
This explains so much. I was so confused we’re the characters were with their lives. They seemed to be young but old at the same time (if that makes sense).
Yes lol, they looked like they were sexy early 20 year olds, but had the backgroud and experience of a tired 55 years old person lol
Countdown/New 52 was my exit point for weekly trips to the comic store. Thanks for catching me up. :)
Well said Rich.
Monthly and several hundred dollars. I checked out completely. Not bought a comic since 2011.
Countdown/new52?
Those two things didn't happen concurrently. There were 4 years in between them.
The most unbelievable part is that dc actually invested in a lore expert. Or that they had the grace to hold off to honor their 50th, than simply rush it in a lazy cash grab like they do now
I was already falling out of love with comics by the time the New 52 came around, so it was more of a "final nail in the coffin" situation for me. I did pick up a number of the new more oddball titles just to check them out (I Vampire, Dial H, etc) but those didn't last long anyway, and none of them were making up for the titles that were canceled to make way for the New 52 (canceling Gail Simone's "Secret Six" should be considered a crime against humanity). Deep, extensive continuity was one of the things I loved most about reading comics, so when DC decided continuity wasn't important, they effectively decided my dollars weren't important either.
I got into DC with the New 52. I liked a lot of the stories, but as time went on and I read older books, I saw the big issues of this reboot… Mainly the fact that it was a reboot that didn’t wanna commit to being a reboot. There was stuff that was still somehow canon to the New 52. Like, there was a new Superman look, new Wonder Woman mythos and new everything else… Except Batman and Green Lantern just continued like as if a reboot didn’t happen. Big events like Blackest Night and Final Crisis still happened. Like, HOW!? If this is a reboot, then something that requires ALL PREVIOUS EVENTS TO HAVE HAPPENED shouldn’t have happened. It was such a mess as I kept reading. I love some of the New 52 books, but overall it fell apart as time went on.
It's interesting to hear the business side of this. The New 52 is when I got into comics and it was a great time, there was no pressure to understand decades of storylines. In many ways, DC earned my readership for life.
It definitely soured those of us who had been fans for decades and familiar with pre-crisis/post-crisis continuity. I haven't bought a comic since 2011.
I don't understand. I collected comics since the 80s. but it never felt like an obligation to read comics from 60s or 70s? If I seek them out, it is because I wanted to.
Batman celebrated 1000 issues of Detective comics. I never felt the need to read all the stories. a good writer is going to recap the essential points for readers to know the relevant information. Otherwise, everyone will have to be historians and multiple degrees to read comics... hahaha...
The only thing that publishers might profit from a reboot is number 1 issues, which is what everyone wants to collect.
@@joshuabekel9700 Because you didn't give it a chance, you only wanted your fix that wasn't selling enough to keep the publisher going. Every age be it the golden age or to the present are full of bad comics and good comics, there is no exception, the New 52 is no different. i'm probably older than and much earlier reader than you but I always knew it always goes back to how it was or near enough. In the meantime, just enjoy the present comics ehich at the time was the new 52.
@@PanelVulture I was reading comics before Crisis happened. And there was still not a "need". Comics, like relationships, you don't need to know every moments of someone's life to enjoy his/her company.
Using my example, I don't need to read every Batman comic to enjoy Detective Comics.
I was only 3 years in on Batman comics when New 52 came around, but I found the unwarranted reboot to be just as toxic as if I'd been reading for 13. When I read that DC regularly rebooted every 10 years, I just stopped reading DC altogether. Had a much better experience getting back into X-Men with House of X after bowing out after House of M.
Loved the content. I remember being so excited for the new 52 and loved how originally they had condensed it so it was easier to follow. I was very upset when rebirth was announced. Thank you again for what your putting out there!!
It was really interesting to see what was happening behind the scenes during New 52! I've also never heard a better and more concise explanation of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Flashpoint.
I think the problem was they combined so many different types of talent. You have your Grant Morrison's who revere continuity in their and others' stories and then you have your Geoff Johns's who will retcon, cut, and "forget" things to help tell *their* stories. Then you put Dan DiDio, who really just wanted to prove himself and nothing else, at the helm of this massive project and you get complete, abject failure
I don't think Morrison reveres continuity; there's plenty they ignore. It seems their approach is more a "the stories I grew up reading and/or like are absolutely canon, the ones I dislike aren't, and I'll figure the rest out as I go along."
Honestly, that seems to be how most creators approach writing for Marvel and DC these days.
@@Flyboy1953 I don't know where you're getting this information from, but I'm pretty sure Wolfman was the one who wanted to have the Earth-2 Superman take over, and Byrne had no plans for Superboy because he was the one who wanted to get rid of Superboy.
Plus the post-Crisis Linda Danvers didn't show up until the '90s. They definitely weren't planning that far ahead.
I always enjoyed some aspects of the new 52, such as action comics and batman, plus the logo looks really cool and should've stayed as the official logo.
The Snyder Capullo run on Batman was great.
I had been out of comics for a while right before the New 52 started. I had been picking up a few random books at the Books-A-Million in the city closest to me, but all they really carried were the "big" books. Flashpoint barely seemed like a blip. Just another summer event. But it did feel like SOMETHING was up, since all of the books I was picking up were trying to rush their stories to their ends. So, when I got wind of what the New 52 was, I was kind of excited. I mean, I figured it would be one of those changes that lasted maybe a year, but some of the books looked interesting. I was excited to get into some old favorites with a new spin. Imagine my shock when I pick up the Green Lantern books and it's business as usual except the books are #1 again. Same with Batman. Of the ones I bought, Superman was the only one that felt different, and I wasn't a fan of either of the titles. Batman started good, but it was just annoying when some books were brand new and some were not. Marvel felt like it was going through something similar. You could tell they wanted to reboot, but chickened out again. And I couldn't get a lot of the more "weird" DC books I would have bought at a comic store, since Books-A-Million was not about to stock the "lesser" titles.
Didio nailed DC himself with his statement about "diminishing returns." But he got it better than he thought. DC is known for rebooting about every 20 years. It might not be a "crisis" event, but something usually changes. And it usually IS a crisis event. When there were a couple of decades between changes, you would have pushback from the old fans, but within about a year things would get a shot in the arm and stabilize until the next time. But in the last couple of decades, DC has been doing crisis events almost every five years or quicker. And the diminishing returns are catching up. People know it's not going to stick and if they growl loud enough, DC will reboot again. As per this new Dark Crisis. They were on the right track with Rebirth when they focused on writers doing individual books and not worrying about so many crossovers. And keeping the price down. But it looks like they're going full steam ahead toward the cliff now. I hope not, but nowadays, who knows?
In the 80s, cross-over events were few but incredibly special. By the 2000s, there was never a moment when a multiple cross-over was NOT happening, at either Marvel or DC.
Rebirth died the moment Time Warner began talks to sell to AT&T. When that happened, DC started going crossover heavy again.
Stories just need definitive ends. I've liked a lot of superhero cartoons over the years largely because the narrative is self continued and has a sense of finality to it.
Thank you so much for making this video.
I don't know anything about the 52, but loved how you narrated the DC history in detail.
This a nice documentary in its own right.
I'd been reading Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti's take on Jonah Hex from the get-go, and was thankful they were able to keep going with him on All-Star Western. The character is a favorite of Dan Didio, and that helped keep his title on the racks for a lot longer than many others, both before and after Flashpoint. Of all the New 52 books, ASW seemed to ignore the whole "reboot" idea the most, as J&J constantly found ways to give nods to classic Jonah Hex stories from not only their own run, but decades prior. They even made reference to Jonah's death and later fate as a sideshow exhibit, which we first learned of back in 1978! Stuff like this made it one of the best titles of The New 52...but since it wasn't a superhero book, it tended to get overlooked.
I’ve been watching your stuff for years. Especially back when I was nose deep in the comic book store every week. I haven’t kept up with comics as much as I’d like lately, but I’ve always kept up with your videos because they offer a much deeper look into them that I wanted back when I started. I’m definitely going to be subscribing to your patreon
What an undertaking. Definitely still has some highlights worth going back and reading.
I've found a lot of helpful inspiration from various ComicTropes videos, so thank you for your work. It's the bananas intro that got me leave a comment. I hope it helps you in the algorithm if that's still a thing. Anyhooch I really enjoyed the sillycore/weirdocore video intro.
For myself, I grew up reading DC, mostly Superman, Justice League, and Legion of Superheroes. As I experienced reboot after reboot, I finally decided that nothing was really left of what I grew up with and I stopped buying comics.
They should have rebooted everything and then commit for every comics to stand alone, no crossovers, no cameos or obvious references. So the moment they cross over, it would be actually special.
I hated the idea at first and dropped the titles I was collecting pre-New 52, but later came to love Scott Snyder’s work on Batman via tpb.
The problem with the New 52 was clearly upper management. I mean choosing an arbitrary number of sales and then cancelling books that were doing okay but didn't meet that arbitrary number of sales. There were some really good titles that came out and that I loved but didn't generate the number of sales they wanted so they were cancelled.
I think alienating the older fans didn't help either. Obviously any reboot was gonna alienate the older fans but outright getting rid of characters like wally west? The character that has been the flash for decades? The character a lot of people consider to be the definitive flash? That was a bad call. There were no perfect solutions here but they needed to find a better balance. Getting In a new reader isn't worth it if to get that new reader you got an old customer to quit buying your stuff.
That's how comics work. Poor sales leads to cancelation.
@@galactic85 They didn't alienate older fans. I worked at a comic shop when New 52 came out. Everyone that had said they were quitting comics or done with DC came in frantic to get all the number ones they could find, and then they gushed over the new Batman like a scientologist for L Ron Hubbard. DC's sales doubled.
Wasn't around much for the entire New 52 but I've been slowly reading Earth 2 over the last couple of months and I've been enjoying the heck out of it.
I’ll forever be grateful for the New 52 as it got me into reading DC comics (I was 11 at the time)
Same here. The New 52 was my introduction to comics.
Wow! You are the comic book fan's researcher. This is like a university course on comics. Variant Comics east your heart out! I'm subscribed! Thank you for very much for the extremely detailed and researched presentation! Don't stop! Cheers!
I'm glad you pointed out some of the strong titles that came out of the New 52. On top of what you mentioned, I remember Swamp Thing and those early years of Tomasi's Batman and Robin being great fun.
Action Comics was pretty good, as Palmiotti kept a consistent hand to Jonah Hex. And it undid the depressing end to Jonah (that he ends up a skeleton in a freakshow) by saying it was an imposter posing as him, and gave him a nice sendoff as his face restored (from a trip to modern Gotham), he rides off to the sunset with Tallulah Black
There's something very comforting about seeing the hardships the comic companies went through only to survive on the other side. It makes me feel optimistic.
@@TheBigGSN5 i mean they did survive
New 52 was when I finally decided to give DC a go, this coincided with my local comic store offering TPBs at US cover prices (in Australia most stores sold them at DOUBLE the US cover price), so I decided to collect a bunch of titles in TPB form.
I collected several of the Batman titles as well as Nightwing, Red Lanterns, Suicide Squad, Red Hood & the Outlaws, Deathstroke, Justice League and JL Dark.
I really enjoyed all the books I bought and I actually thought the choice of artists was well above what Marvel had at the time.
It's such a shame they ended up making such a mess of it.
I bought the first 5 issues of all 52 books. It quickly saw that I couldn't read 52 books a month. I dropped down to 8 books going forward (mostly Bat-Family stuff and Supergirl and Superboy). Then eventually I dropped down to just Batman.
You missed out. New 52 Nightwing is one of the best books DC ever put out.
@@alphanerd7221 It was too much to filter to figure out what stuff was good.
@@Pegwarmers They cut their number of books almost by half for New 52.
@@alphanerd7221 yeah, but before new 52 I wasn't trying to read all the titles.
@@Pegwarmers You said you were a Batman guy. How many Bat Books are you putting over Nightwing?
I thought that the Batman, Green Lantern, Auquaman, Action Comics and Justice League were some of the best runs for those titles. Not to mention the creation of I,Vampire, Re Hood and the Outlaws, Demon Knights, Red Lanterns and Justice League Dark. The Court of Owls multi-title arc in the Batman books was especially great.
Man I thought the oversight at current day DC was terrible.
It’s crazy to think the little concern for internal continuity for the stories during the New 52 was provided by the writers, not a story editor or continuity expert!
These days the concept of the omniverse, which remains one of the worst storytelling decisions ever made in history, allows writers to do what they want, and those in the industry these days don’t consider continuity important enough to care.
New 52 was an entry into comics for me because I found a lot of past lore for the characters to be confusing and long winded
Lots of ppl seemed to have jumped on as DC intended. Just reading the replies.
I mean, that's because it is. I don't think anyone had actually read through the 700+ Batman issues that came out before New 52, for example. everyone remembers the individual books or crossover arcs like, say Year One, Crisis, and so on.
Yet most of the more popular stories came from the previous era such as Post Crisis in 1987. That is why New 52 failed. Either do a complete reboot or don’t do it at all. They try to half ass it and the lore became even more confusing.
Ironically the new 52 didn't seem to do much to change that in the end considering that the higher ups clearly didn't even seem to know what stories were and were not cannon anymore. Morrison's Batman run was allowed to conclude because DC didn't want to alienate Morrison, but their time on Batman drew from so much of the characters 40 plus year history. When the new 52 happened they just continued Batman Incorporated with a new #1 issue, but now you were left wondering how much of the prior stuff Morrison wrote had even actually happened.
@@DHworldwide185 Crisis was a half assed reboot.
New 52 got into reading DC. I think I started reading comics around 2008 so the reboot helped with DC since I didn't know a lot of the continuity at the time. Had some nice titles but a lot of duds too.
I remember bumping into a friend of mine at the bar years ago. He was lamenting the then-upcoming new 52. I feel old.
Great review of the rise and fall of 2011's reboot! Man, I really miss the Animal Man/Swamp Thing mini universe, it was a beautiful and intense story to both read and watch.
Yet another fabulous video that digs into history as a starting point, and ties it back into the subject matter at hand. The New 52, although I enjoyed the initial launch, in the end it created more problems than it solved in my opinion because it was all over the place creatively.
The lack of commitment for one as well as the lack of communication didn’t help very much for sure in the New 52 even if some things leading into Flashpoint felt out of many things.
This was excellent. This stopped me buying comics for about 4 years. As a Batman only buyer at the time, the character was going really well. I loved Batman and Robin,with Dick as Batman. The new villains like Professor Pyg and the Flamingo were engaging. While Batman Incorporated was carrying on with the Characters from Batman I really enjoyed, like Knight and Squire. So to have that all picked up and chucked away really put me off. I have some of the new 52, some unread that I only bought due to ordering commitments and didn’t pick up anything until Star Wars 2015 run..something again I have bought and never enjoyed…so went back to plugging gaps in my 90’s runs I really loved.
In my opinion Dial H was one of my absolute favorites to come out of the new52. It was horror, it was sad, it was definitely a cool idea. Sadly it didn’t last but it sure as hell got further than most stories.
I'll check it out, that's a cool recommendation
I loved Dial H, but it started going off the rails towards the end when it brought in dial users from other Earths and that Batman style hero who was curtain themed (Curtain Man?). I wish they would have just stuck with the two original characters sharing a dial.
Criminally overlooked series
@@mikelarson7856 what would you compare it to
@@blackphoenix77 ohhh open window man hahaha
When New 52 was announced I was actually stoked because it was a chance to get into these classic comic characters on the ground floor, and I ended up getting a ton of them through the first few months. Eventually though the fatigue of keeping up with the releases set in, and then Rebirth was announced and I just felt over it. I did love Court of Owls though, and the Trench storyline in Aquaman, as well as various Green Lantern books. I liked Hawk and Dove too so that cancellation hurt
I'm so happy you had brought back the opening comedy skits. They are perfection.
Aw the new 52 the Dark age of DC comics
As a lapse comic reader returning around New 52, felt like it was great and a success.
It's interesting to see so many people around my age talking about how New 52 was their entrance to DC, because I was a very young comic reader at that time as well, but I had begun getting into DC just a little while before that, so it had the opposite effect for me.
I hadn't been reading comics for very long (obviously, I was a kid), but what I liked about them even then was that they were a world that had already existed for a long time and had plenty of old stuff to learn about. To me, that wasn't intimidating, but was instead part of the appeal of comics as I understood them.
New 52 basically felt like the rug being ripped out from under me before I even really got started, throwing everything away right as I was getting my bearings, and I found it very off-putting, personally.
I enjoyed the stories for what they were and they had some great gems , the lore stuff didn't bother me as much. Cause you can't keep building on old foundation
@@brianbenjamin653 That's cool and obviously the logic is sound. I've read some of the stories from that time since then and there was plenty of good stuff there. But like I said, as a kid who hadn't lived through any of the Crises, it was my first experience with any kid of major continuity reboot and I was simply not a fan. Luckily for DC, it seems that I was in the minority in terms of young readers, as evidenced by this comment section
@@zaengo that's crazy, so you had no book that appealed to you? Also what is your favorite DC Era?
@@brianbenjamin653 Not especially, but in fairness I didn't really give much of it a chance- Honestly, the changes made to a few of my favorites (like Superman and Teen Titans) were enough for me to sour on the whole enterprise, probably unfairly.
If I had been reading Snyder's Batman at the time I'm sure I would have loved it (which I later did) but I wasn't interested. In the end it led me to getting into Image and Independent comics as a whole which was great.
In terms of Era? If were talking DC as far as big titles and major characters, i'd say Post-Infinite Crisis, to pre-New 52. Not all perfect, and in retrospect there was a need for something new, but i'll always have a soft spot for that period.
If we're talking favorite overall, like anything DC ever did, It's 80's-90's Vertigo, no question. Obviously I wasn't reading that stuff contemporaneously with it's release but that's definitely the stuff that I love the most
The amount of research Chris put in these videos is mindblowing. WOW. Another great one.
I'll say this: I had a major comic book store tell me that they were worried about keeping the lights on, went all in on the New 52, and did quite well. Basically, it saved the store. From a financial standpoint, it was a win...for a while.
Terrific video, Chris, thanks for sharing.
In your research, did you find anything relating to Bob Harras' involvement? I recall from the time that he had a pretty strong influence on the tone of (and some of the talent involved in) the New 52 (which is to say that part of the reason that several of the titles had a big "90s" feel to them was because he was the 90s Marvel guy). When the first round of cancellations started rolling around, I recall him being the one singled out as being responsible for some of the bigger perceived missteps (like Liefeld's Hawkman).
I’ve read similar articles about Harras’ involvement. He was a strong hand in bringing in Liefeld and Lobdell and I’m pretty certain just those two acts were a sore spot for other creative teams at DC at the time.
@@jordanfox2128 I had totally forgotten that Lobdell had been brought on for the New 52!
You should do a part 2 about how DC destroyed a great thing with the Rebirth initiative elevating DC to New heights and then how it came crashing down.
It failed because they didn’t sell it in grocery stores
That too.
As stated above, Animal Man was fantastic. Also, from what I heard Static Shock was pretty good and there was a comic series written by Dan Abnett called "Resurrection Man" that lasted 12 issues and started off kind of bad but got pretty good near the end.
Also, if memory serves me correctly, there was a thing going on with Frankenstein and Agents of S.H.A.D.E but I don't remember if anything came of it.
Still, great video and a solid breakdown of what happened and why.
That Teddy Fresh jacket is looking pretty fly Chris!
DC readers wanted to move forward, not go back to square one.
You want me to say something OTHER than the fact that DC's constant obsession with "fixing" its continuity is ruining it both financially and creatively?
Look, people, continuity is not our enemy. It's not that important and it's not that hard to get new people into comics if you run it the right way, the medium did it for DECADES before the age of the speculator bubble, we can have that again, just stop with the shock events, stop with the new number 1 issues, and stop trying to "fix" the timeline when no one actually cares!
Marvel's been on top since the 60s or the 70s and they've never done a single reboot. Not one! Just stop! Let writers write stories and leave the status quo to the creatives for god's sake.
Trust fans, old and new to "yes and" things they haven't read. It's not hard, we all do it with EVERY story we read.
I'd say more than "no one actually cares" about the continuity. I'd go as far as saying that the continuity is something that is attractive to readers. Even if it's also scary to some of them. To see a character you don't recognize, and then as you learn about them, you learn about their relationship with the character you do like? That's always been a rush, at least for me anyway.
The new 52 I found to be a complete trainwreck and really made no sense whatsoever for dc comics in my opinion and it felt to me like there was no plan for this reboot and it ended it up to be a complete and utter failure in my opinion.
Because DC made so much sense before that.
6:55 I'm pretty sure i heard something "meowing" several times at this moment of the video. 🐈
China's Miéville Dial H was by far the best comic in the series. Animal Man, Swamp Thing, Action Comics, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. were all pretty good.
Back in the 1980s, comics like those would have been given a chance to flourish. Comics had at least 2 years or 24 issues to show what they could do. Most comics are sleepers. People forget how the original X-Men sold poorly initially. What a terrible time to be an artist or writer if companies don't support your vision and only look at quarterly growth charts.
Aquaman was good too.
Oh Green Arrow, with all respect, was horrible. There was no correlation to the character in appearance or behavior. It had more in common with the CW show which at the time was Green Batman. I have always been a fan of the Errol Flynn looking, anti-authoritarian GA.
The New 52 came out at an interesting time for me as I was getting into comics more frequently since 2008, but at that point in time, comics were a bit confusing with so much happening that it was hard to keep up, and considering where I was living, most titles weren’t available to me (no LCSes anywhere either, just supermarkets and bookstores) so I missed out on a lot of crossover stuff. The New 52 was the perfect opportunity to re-introduce characters to new audiences, and I had a lot of fun reading the titles that I could get my hands on, and it was surprisingly easy to read without much overlap from other titles (unlike Marvel which makes you feel guilty for not reading 10+ titles before reading 1 title). I wasn’t mad with most of the retcons they did, but I wasn’t a seasoned reader at the time, so I wasn’t “personally” affected by it, like some people were. My biggest nitpicks with the New 52 was when Scott Lobdell took over Superman, people’s reactions and criticisms to some of the titles and situations happening (Not really part of the New 52, but a byproduct, but it still made me feel alone and like I couldn’t share my enthusiasm with what was happening. To this day, I still have this kind of experience/feelings with fandom culture and social media as a whole).