Hello to all you beautiful people! Today I am here to talk to you about a subject that is four years or so too late. I am here to talk to you about what the problem with the New 52 is. For those that do not know – the New 52 was DC comics’ line wide reboot in 2011 in an attempt to gain new readers who may have been daunted by the convoluted back history of DC. In theory this is a fantastic move and I was a massive proponent for it for many years. But now as I look at my ever growing stack of back issues, I notice the number of DC titles I follow have dwindled down to two titles, Batman & Secret Six. So the question is, if this was such a good move why have DC’s book sales declined back roughly to where they were pre-New 52? Why has DC forgone the New 52 continuity in favour for a continuity free series? Well the answer to that is that the New 52 was flawed from the start. It has only taken me now to fully realise and comprehend why.
This may be old news to you guys, but to me it has come as a sudden revelation. A revelation I have realised when working on my own DC spec script for a story I have had for years and am finally putting to paper. The answer comes in three main points that all feed into each other. So folks, I hope you enjoy this little escapade into why I think, the New 52 failed.
The first and most important point is that we lost the legacies of many of the characters. DC prided itself with having this rich (albeit a bit convoluted) continuity. Characters like Superman and Flash lost years of character development and all the events that refined them over the years were gone. Starting from scratch with these characters was a bit frustrating. Let’s look at a smaller character, Bane. Bane evolved from being the Venom addicted Batman rogue to a noble anti-hero that swore off the drug through the series of Secret Six. His character was a highlight of that series – but with the New 52 Bane reverted back to being his usual Venom addicted self. Then you had someone like Flash – his great sacrifice in Infinite Crisis and passing the torch to his former side kick Wally West was wiped from continuity. Flash was one of these awesome characters that had a great legacy. When Barry returned they could have had a great dynamic between Wally Flash and Barry Flash – a storyline and status quo that we will never see. With the New 52 Flash’s whole history was wiped and we start from scratch. It just feels like they gave up so much when they wiped the history.Things were even more confusing as it wasn’t a clean reboot – some of the characters kept their history.
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Dan Didio, the man responsible for killing millions of super heroes
It wasn’t a clean reboot. At first I was happy that DC decided to keep the continuity for two characters, Batman and Green Lantern. As time has shown this causes massive issues. Trying to cram Batman’s 20+ years of continuity into five years is mind boggling. Comics have this unspoken rule that you don’t worry about time and years (Spider-Man would be in his in his seventies by now). We just accept that comics happen in a compressed timeline – they don’t reference it and we don’t ask about it. The issue is – that we now
have a line wide reboot where characters like Superman are just starting out – so uh-oh it kinda feels weird to have Batman keep the last 20 years of his continuity if Superman doesn’t have his. It breaks the suspension of disbelief and DC knew that. So they compressed the timeframe to five years. He’s had a different Robin each year according to this new timeline. Also in this time Knightfall happened, No Man’s Land, Batman RIP – it’s enough the boggle the mind. So the issue is that since it wasn’t a clean reboot the new DC history was muddied and confusing. Also there were some other weird things such as Jaimee Reyes being Blue Beetle with no reference to Ted Kord – the previous Blue Beetle. Does Ted Kord not exist in the New 52? Did he never become Blue Beetle? This leads me to my final point.
DC had no clue what the history to the New 52 was. Ithas become apparent that DC had no clue what the history of this new continuity would be – and I do see the irony in having a history for your new, rebooted continuity. There was a level of trust we had to give them – they dangled the answers before us, saying “don’t worry, we’ll explain everything.” But the problem is – they didn’t. DC cherry picked their favourite parts of continuity and shoved it into this new world. Even the bat family didn’t come off unscathed – pretty much every Batgirl after Barbra Gordon was scrubbed. Questions were asked like “Where is character x and how do they fit in this new continuity?” DC sat there with the all-knowing grin going “ohh h oho ho, just you wait.” Except, it never happened – basically what the New 52 did was clean DC of all the characters the editorial did not care for. But the issue is – they planned like they had a big plan and like they knew everything that had happened before the New 52. The problem is, they made this shit up as they went along. I almost wish that they had released a New 52 bible chronicling this new continuity. But the issue is that the New 52 was created for the fact to bring new readers in who were too daunted by the convoluted continuity. It almost did the exact opposite.
The fact is that the New 52 failed because there wasn’t a clear direction where to go – or even where they came from. I don’t mind if you scrub characters you don’t like – if you have a plan. DC just seem to have been stuttering and tripping over themselves to try and get something working. By trying to create something that was easily accessible DC created the exact opposite. To be honest this new direction they are going, continuity free stories, isn’t really the way to go either in the long term. I feel as if DC you is just a temporary band aid and DC will just slide back to it's New 52 ways. DC needs to have a solid game plan – enough of these yearly gimmick events, there needs to be a through line and somewhere for the grand narrative to go. Marvel for the last three years had Jonathan Hickman’s epic Avengers run that led to Secret Wars. Say what you will about that, but the fact remains that Marvel had this plan for three years and stuck to it. You cannot tell me that DC had planned for Forever Evil or Futures End when the New 52 started. So in my closing thoughts, I wish DC the best and I do think they have the best intentions – but there is a lack of vision and foresight that has become apparent. That is why the New 52 failed.