DC's New 52: Reviews and Discussion (Spoilers welcolme and likely)

Enough to make clear Talia's conditioning of her son?

 

According to editorial comments made at Comic-Con, it's three Robins: Dick, Jason, and Damien. Tim never actually became a Robin: he went straight into the Red Robin role, allowing for potential overlap. My own timeline puts Dick as Robin for three years, Jason for maybe six months or so, then a gap until Damien came along.

 

The Robin fuck up is just one of a list of reasons why the nu52 is imperfect.

 

Which is why a cold, hard, reboot should've been done.

 

I would agree, but that was never going to happen as has been explained in the thread before. I know there are those who don't care, but for those who do, attempting to reconcile this compressed timeline is just...impossible. I understand DC's stance about making everyone younger, including the reality itself, but packing in everything into five years is just plain silly.

 

Really, a cold, hard, reboot shouldn't be that big of a deal. Yes it'd undo a lot of good stuff but it wouldn't make that stuff vanish from your collections or from stores. It'd still be there. Same reason why the Abraham's Trek movie "reboot" doesn't bother me. I still have everything to watch and enjoy.

Cold, hard, starting over should have been what they did. Make the #1s all true "#1s." (Though they should have given Action the honor of reaching 1000 before doing it.)

Dine right (which, granted, DC isn't great at) it could've been very effective and avoided this mess with trying to compress so much BS into five years. I mean in five years Bruce really burns through 3 or 4 Robins? One of which being his own grade-school aged kid?! Hell, it's hard to even see how "The Killing Joke" and Babs' paralysis works in all of this. It's a lot.

Would a hard reboot have been that bad of a way to go?

 

Yes because as has been explained to you before Batman and Green Lantern were titles that were high sellers for DC already. They didn't need to touch those. Everything else was up for grabs in their eyes, especially Superman. Remember that above all else, this was a sales grab. Pure and simple. One that has worked for the most part in spades for them.

I have agreed that a reboot would have been the way to go several times in the thread...it just wasn't going to happen though. Although I'm sure it that was an option they have discussed. As I've said before in the thread, they probably also didn't want to rock the boat too much. Have their cake and eat it too mentality. Except that they have indeed pissed off certain groups of fandom. They didn't want to piss off everyone, so a few here and there is okay!

 

Maybe not bad, but is the current situation REALLY a problem? Doesn't seem to be effecting sales of Batman. Nor the stories. Its nerds just trying to reconcile old fictional facts with new fictional facts. But truly, the old "facts" are gone.

In actuality, it's only a "problem" for a few, and they are going to buy the books anyway.

 

Yeah, I don't really care how many Robins can dance on the head of pin. All I ask for is to be entertained.

 

Actually, while I recognize that the books are still being sold to some people, others have just given up on the whole DCU at this point, often precisely because of problems like this.

 

Yes. True. HOWEVER, it has brought in MORE people than it lost. You cannot deny, this has been a success for DC. Certainly from a financial point of view.

 

Yeah I still kind of think they should have done that especially with the 0 month batbooks showing what it would look like with the peak into the new old days.

 

What really bothers me is that they felt like their entire pre-Flashpoint DCU was completely unsalvageable that other than Batman and Green Lantern, no one else was worth saving.

And that, to me, is complete bunk.

Maybe they should have been looking at doing what Marvel NOW is doing, changing up creative teams. Honestly I'm glad that they're finally getting Bendis off of Avengers for like, the first time in almost a decade, it's time for new blood. And while things are getting refreshed nothing is going away.

I mean, I read DC titles sporadically here and there for the past few years, because it literally seemed like every few years they tossed out something. DC really just isn't interesting now. It's like somehow the 90s have returned to DC and not the good stuff either. I'm waiting for Superman to get a mullet again and Batman to get even more armored up.

 

Trust me Nick there was nothing much worth saving. Jonah Hex was good(but not a book with any history so who cared), Superman was pathetic, Justice League was bland to boring, Flash was sporadic but it was Barry again so no history in over 2 decades really, LSH wasnt bad but the history there is so screwed up its not worth getting into. So for the most part GL and Bats were the only books that had anything in them that were worthy of being retained.
Marvel on the other hand is pulling the reactionairy move of redoing things to recapture market and for me almost nothing looks interesting. Out of the current 15 or 20 Marvel titles I now get it looks like I will be going down to 5 or 6. To many strange groupings and odd teams.

 

As has been said numerous times in the thread and probably in the original thread, Batman and Green Lantern were selling for them. Not very much else was. The other thing they decided to keep over into the relaunch continuity is the Legion future. I assume that was probably Paul Levitz's influence combined with Geoff Johns, since Johns brought this version of the Legion back. Everything else was literally up for grabs.

I've never denied the sales success. Or gaining new fans. I have stated that I'm happy for those who have rediscovered comics due to the New 52. I'm glad that people are enjoying the books they are, but we can not deny that there are problems and just plain flaws with some of the changes that DC has implemented. There have been a lot of pros but for me personally I think there are mostly cons.

 

That's true, at least in the short term.

However that's not what you said in your earlier post. You said the complainers would buy the books anyway, not that the complainers would be replaced by new readers.

 

So your point is that my post wasn't nuanced enough? Of course some of the complainers stopped buying, as some of the complainers still do, as those DC has lost has been replaced by greater numbers. Is it short term? How are you defining short term? A year? Five years? All business has ups and downs. And when the numbers go down, the company will respond.

 

Ha! DC is even ret-conning the Nu52 continuity itself in order to perpetrate the whole "Tim Drake was never Robin" thing.

 

Yeah this has happened from the start. They're basically making tweaks and retcons as they go along. Not only have they removed references of the name Robin, but also the previous incarnations of Titans teams. There is only one Teen Titans team now.

 

Yeah, that's just a little freaky and obsessive compulsive.