Did DC's New 52 Fail?

all right everybody I've got the brand new cake for the party so we are ready wow oh hi you caught me ruining something new speaking of something new that got ruined let's talk about the DC's New 52 and how it became a failure not bad [Music] hello welcome to Comic tropes I'm your host Chris on August 31st 2011 DC Comics launched a brand new initiative the new 52 DC home to some of the most recognizable characters in comic books from Batman to Superman to Wonder Woman and many more was losing market share to its biggest competitor Marvel Comics The New 52 was intended to be a big reset button that would allow existing readers to see news stories and be a good jumping on point for new readers but there was no clear plan or structure in place and within five years everything from the new 52 pretty much was undone today we're going to talk about why the new 52 was a failure because while it did create some excellent individual titles as a brand initiative the new 52 was not successful before we go any further please consider hitting like And subscribe that really helps my channel and without any further Ado let's get into it [Music] the new 52 was DC's attempt to reboot their comic book Universe which they had originally done once before back in 1986. DC Comics has a lot of history they began making comic books back in 1935 and their superhero work started with Superman in 1938 by winter of 1940 DC introduced a shared Universe with the crossover team of the Justice Society of America in All-Star comics issue 3. and in September of 1961 writer Gardner Fox introduced the concept of the Multiverse with the story The Flash of Two Worlds combined with these ideas DC bought Captain Marvel from Fawcett comics in 1972 and the Charlton superheroes like Blue Beetle in 1983 to clean all of this up writer Marv Wolfman successfully pitched a 12-issue event which came to be titled crisis on infinite Earths the story involved a cosmic villain ending entire universes and when the superheroes save the day everything was combined into one new cohesive Universe it allowed DC to keep what worked like Batman and reboot the more complex continuities of characters like Superman and Wonder Woman but crisis on infinite Earths had a lot of time to plan things out Wolfman pitched the idea to DC all the way back in 1981. it was mentioned in the December issue of the comics Journal that year as an upcoming 12 issue Maxi series the editors and Senior staff at DC hired a continuity expert to read all of their books which delayed the plan book to 1983 and then DC decided to push it out further to 1985 to honor their 50th Anniversary executive editor dick Giordano mentioned it in his monthly column meanwhile in DC's titles from June of 1984 4. in an interview with comic-con.com Wolfman explained quote I knew up front and they did too how big this was going to be but no one knew how well it would sell or whether it would sell at all it was a risk DC was willing to take because my thoughts were that DC needed a lot of help at the time and they did too when Marv Wolfman says DC needed help back in the 80s he's not kidding in previous videos I've talked about the DC implosion of the 1970s when they drastically cut back on a lot of their titles in fact in the early 80s they even floated the idea to Marvel Comics to license their characters to their biggest competitor so DC definitely was struggling at the time Marvel had almost 70 percent market share at that point it wasn't really quite the same thing in 2011. [Music] DC Comics was purchased by a much larger company Kinney National company in 1967. in 1972 their entertainment assets were spun off into Warner Communications which included DC in 1989 Warner merged with time which meant that DC was an even smaller part of the overall conglomerate in 2009 Warner somewhat arbitrarily rebranded DC Comics as DC entertainment and moved their offices in 2010 from downtown New York out to Burbank California the thought was that they could share existing office space and Hollywood execs would be closer to the comic book Department to develop movies out of the intellectual properties they owned at the same time Diane Nelson was appointed the president of DC entertainment and she in turn appointed artist Jim Lee and editor Dan de Dio as co-publishers of DC Comics in this new position Dan diddillo was looking to make a big change he said as much in the oral history of the new 52 by Graham McMillan for polygon the Dio said quote we had Diane Nelson coming in and she really wanted to challenge us and really make an impression and a statement so we needed to make a statement if we look at the market share in the Years leading up to the new 52 event in 2011 DC was fairly steady with the market share percentage they maintained but if we examine their actual sales the numbers had been steadily declining since 2007. a marketing initiative to increase sales was a sensible idea the deal was clearly inspired by competitor Marvel Comics a decade earlier Marvel had rolled out their Ultimate Universe series of comics which were fresh takes to characters like Spider-Man the X-Men and the Avengers made with top talent like Brian Michael Bendis and Brian hitch but Marvel didn't reboot their ongoing titles instead they had their ultimate titles run simultaneously it was a good jumping on point for new readers DC had given half-hearted efforts at the same concept of creating rebooted titles free from continuity constraints their All-Star line included a critically acclaimed Superman run and a critically reviled Batman run the latter of which was plagued with delays and never finished in 2009 they announced a new take on that with their Earth One graphic novels but only one of those Superman had come out by the time DC decided to move forward with the new 52. co-publisher Jim Lee and writer Jeff Johns were also key architects in what became the new 52. they worked together as artist and writer respectively on the new 52s debut title Justice League number one at the midnight release for the book at Midtown Comics back in August 31st of 2011 each spoke about the goals behind the new 52 initiative Jim Lee spoke to the accessibility of the title saying quote when you do stuff like this it really opens the door to people sampling the books if you give Justice League to someone who's never read Comics before if they've seen one Batman or Superman movie they'll understand it completely John's added to that explaining quote I didn't want to be hindered by past interpretations of it so we talked about it a lot and decided to start at Ground Zero so now we know that Dan didillo especially wanted an opportunity to make a statement and start with a clean slate he was looking for his crisis on infinite Earths and he got that opportunity when the creative team was talking about an event comic coming up called Flashpoint this was going to be their opportunity to create the new 52. that was not the original intention with Flashpoint but it did become ground zero for the new 52. [Music] looking back at interviews with the creative teams involved in the new 52 it's clear that the idea was created pretty late in the game for instance just a half year before the new 52 launched writer Jeff Johns had a spotlight panel at the 2010 New York Comic-Con and when asked about what was ahead for the flash he mentioned an event comic called Flashpoint and then a second flash title to be called flash speed force about the various speedster's supporting characters around the hero while flashpoints started in May of 2011 speed force never materialized flashpoint was a five issue series by writer Jeff Johns and artist Andy kubert in which the flash uses his super speed powers to change the timeline it's revealed that he went back in time to save his mother from dying when he was young but this led to a butterfly effect of changes in the modern day Thomas Wayne is Batman much more vengeful now that his wife and son have been murdered Wonder Woman leads the Amazons in a brutal war against Aquaman and the atlanteans Superman is trapped in a lab and Cyborg exists as the premier superhero for the U.S in the polygon oral history writer Judd winick recounted the DC held a writer's Summit the year before Flashpoint and that while the original idea had been for the flash to bring things back to the status quo it was instead decided that this could lead to changes at first simpler ideas like Superman and Lois no longer being married but eventually de dios wish to reboot everything was decided upon Flashpoint ends with flash running through time and resetting things only to witness three timelines converging a mysterious shadowy figure named Pandora explained that the timeline had been split into three to weaken the heroes for a coming battle and now they were being reunited it included moving DC's vertigo line and Jim Lee's Wild Storm characters into one cohesive continuity and let's be clear there were some excellent Comics that came out of the new 52. Jeff Lemire and travel Foreman launched in Erie an exciting take on animal man and his family it built on Alan Moore's concept of the green and Grant Morrison's edition of the red to introduce the black a force associated with death and Decay Amanda Connor and Jimmy palmiati relaunched Harley Quinn as an independent Oddball redefining her personality and outfit and ended up being the most influential writers on the character since her creation by Paul deeney and Bruce Tim in the Batman animated series Scott Snyder and Greg capullo took on Batman and introduced several successful arcs including the court of owls year zero and death of the family Grant Morrison tackled The Adventures of a young Clark Kent becoming Superman Brian azarello changed the Mythos and tone of Wonder Woman into something more like Game of Thrones with Greek mythology and Cliff Chang updated the look of the Amazons some books that got mixed critical reviews still went on to influence characters in both the comics and movies Suicide Squad added Harley Quinn and king shark to the lineup Birds of Prey began the path to moving Poison Ivy from villain to anti-hero Batgirl controversially brought Barbara Gordon back as Batgirl and no longer the wheelchair using Oracle DC gave an initial effort at launching a diverse array of books for characters like the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle static shock and voodoo and the new line took some big Swings with titles aimed at tackling genres other than just superheroes such as the romance horror title I vampire or westerns like All-Star Western starring Jonah Hex but even with the really good titles there was nothing consistent about the rules of the new 52 itself some books had as little as two months between being pitched and accepted and put into development it meant that without any real rules or framework on how the new 52 would work there were going to be problems problems like a lot of books being canceled a lot of creative turnover on the books themselves and after an initial rapid burst of sales there was an equally rapid fall to back where things initially were [Music] it did not take very long for the Crux to show in the new 52 just half a year in DC announced they were canceling six titles by issue eight including Blackhawks Hawk and Dove Men of War Mr terrific omac and static shock Daddio explained that he initially mandated cancellations if a title fell under 20 000 copies and that makes sense on paper but that led to further problems in his polygon interviewed Deo elaborated saying quote that's why you saw cancellations at eight months because while the books were making money they were profitable they just didn't hit this artificial number that was created what we didn't realize at the time is we created the churn as I called it there are going to be eight books or so that are just going to come in below our Target numbers so what you should do is find the best date and stick with them but if you cancel and replace them you find out that you are getting even more diminishing returns then all of a sudden the eight books below our Target number become 10 and then you're filling more holes than you have ways to fill them up you get so focused on the churn of the bottom you're not focused on maintaining the success at the top within the first two years of the new 52 DC had already canceled 27 books primarily the non-superhero titles like GI combat and sword of sorcery one of the ideas behind the new 52 was to give the superheroes less history it was decided for example that Superman and Batman had had their Adventures but had only been existing as superheroes for about five years that led to some continuity discrepancies big ones for instance Superstar George Perez was given the Superman title to write and illustrate he'd done something similar for DC following crisis on infinite Earths with an acclaimed Wonder Woman reboot but this time what he didn't know was that DC had given Grant Morrison the title Action Comics which was about Superman's Adventures five years prior to the modern day at 2012's annual Superman celebration in Metropolis Illinois Perez was a guest and commented on his experience he told the crowd quote I had no idea I was doing it five years ahead from Morrison's action which means in my story I couldn't do certain things without knowing what he did and Grant wasn't telling everybody Perez went on to explain he became frustrated because his editors couldn't give him clear answers on the status quo of the character he was writing Perez said quote are the Kents alive what's his relationship with all of these characters who exists and DC couldn't give me answers I said oh my gosh you're deciding all these things and you mean you don't even know what's going on in your own books Batman was already a top selling title when the new 52 started so DC didn't want to change anything about it it just said his adventures took place but within a condensed five-year period except that led to logical inconsistencies that were never addressed for example Batman's current Robin was his 10 year old son Damien but in the comics he had his son with Talia al Ghul after he already became Batman so how does someone who's been Batman for five years have a 10 year old son creators were becoming irritated with the lack of clarity on what they could and couldn't do Andy diggle was set to write Action Comics after Grant Morrison's run but before the first issue came out he tweeted that he was leaving the book for professional reasons on March 14th of 2013 writer Joshua Hale fjalkov was promoting his upcoming run on Red Lanterns and Green Lantern Corps but just six days later bleeding cool was reporting that fjalkov had departed DC in September of 2013 writer and artist J.H Williams III posted a Blog explaining he was leaving Batwoman because at the last minute DC editorial had told him that they would not allow Batwoman to marry her fiance Maggie Sawyer writer John rosam quit static shock Rob liefeld quit all three titles he was working on Robert venditti was announced to write Constantine but was replaced by Ray Fox before for the first issue was released the same thing happened with Jim Zub on birds of prey replaced by Christy marks before issue 1 came out perhaps the most visible sign of DC not having a clear plan was what happened with writer Gail Simone Gail's Batgirl was a sales and critical success and this is despite the fact that there were legitimate concerns over DC changing Barbara Gordon from being Oracle one of the few handicapped Heroes out there but the new 52 was a reboot with the characters all younger Gayle opined that Barbara was always destined to become Oracle so it was still fair to tell stories about her time as Batgirl but the bottom line is the book was a top seller so it was no small surprise when Gail tweeted in December of 2012 that editor Brian Cunningham had informed her by email that she was off the title this led to a large fan cry and DC reversed its position announcing Simone's return just 12 days later there was seemingly no plan for the new 52 this is mirrored in quotes from countless creators at the time Ten Years After The New 52 multiversity Comics interviewed many of the creators working on the books at the time some quotes showing the confusion follow Mike Costa writer on Blackhawks stated quote I was literally told we don't know if there's Kryptonite in the new 52. Justin Jordan who wrote team seven and Green Lantern new Guardians among other books said quote creatively I think it was a mixed bag some of the books that spawned out of New 52 were really good and some weren't and I wish they had more of a plan kind of going into it and that they were sort of willing to let the creative team do their own thing writer Ron Mars recalled being offered the new title Voodoo based on the Wild Storm character Mars explained quote I said is she a good guy is she working with DC heroes where do you want her positioned and they didn't have an answer another great example of how there was no cohesive plan for the new 52 is the character of Pandora DC had her pop-up at the end of Flashpoint explaining that the universes were merging okay I'm with you so far DC went so far as to insist that she appear as a cameo in every single issue of their 52 launch titles that's a lot that's a lot of commitment to saying that Pandora was going to be a big deal and then nothing there was never any explanation for exactly what she was doing until they killed her off five years later [Music] simply put five years in DC's sales were back to where they were when the new 52 started the first couple of years gave them a great jolt but it faded away as titles got canceled and there was no consistency in February of 2016 DC teased an upcoming event rebirth in July the event took place restoring most of the original continuity pre-new 52 Action Comics and Detective Comics returned to their original numbering in DC's 80-page rebirth special Pandora is murdered by a mystery assailant and Intimates that he is the actual person responsible for these reboots the later mini-series Doomsday Clock written by Jeff Johns explains the mysterious man behind Pandora is Dr Manhattan from the famous comic Watchmen it's honestly not a very satisfying end to the new 52 itself but on the other hand it allowed DC to move forward having shared continuity is a complex unwieldy thing to manage I understand that reboots are probably necessary when you've got decades and Decades of history behind some of these characters but I think that there's also something very different between crisis on infinite Earths and the new 52. it shows us that it's not just about the execution of the individual titles because there were some very good titles that came out of the new 52 but the new 52 itself never made sense it shows that the thing that crisis on infinite Earths did well was they had a plan they had goals and they communicated these goals and ideas and plans and structure all that important stuff to the talent communication is key because without it you might have something new that doesn't necessarily mean that it's better thanks so much for watching this episode it was very interesting looking back at something almost well yeah a little over a decade old now uh it was an interesting time in comics I definitely remember being excited about stuff like animal man which I hadn't been excited about before uh so there were good books coming out at the time I I don't mean to diminish what a lot of the talent did so whose fault is it you know I don't have a clear answer on that piece but I think that if you don't have a plan you have to just keep looking upwards to the top you know did Diane Nelson do anything to have a clear goal in place no she sort of delegated those tasks to the people below her so I'd say you know Jim Lee doesn't have a lot of interviews or quotes about the New 52 you know he went along with it but he was working as an artist and a writer and not enough in my opinion as a publisher I think Dan diddillo on the other hand just wanted to do a crisis on infinite Earths and I think he rushed it I think that Flashpoint seemed like a logical place to do this and they just went for it without thinking about what all the repercussions would be for every character involved so those are the people I Look to I think Jeff Johns also probably has to share some responsibility as one of the key creative Architects and an important writer for DC at that time and I'm sure that everybody involved would probably agree with what I'm saying um you know the new 52 showed that initially a reboot can lead to sales but if it doesn't make sense you're going to lose your audience those are just my random closing thoughts I appreciate you staying with me by the way if you have an opportunity please consider checking out my patreon there's always a link in the description below YouTube does not necessarily pay that much at the level that I'm at so I really do rely on my patrons to make stuff like this possible and I just want to take a moment to thank everybody on patreon uh patreon I should say for as little as a dollar you can support the show and I will do my best to give exclusives from time to time Early Access blog posts things like that so just want you to consider that it would really help the channel a lot help me to continue doing this because otherwise I just have to put in a lot of extra hours at my job and it sort of leads to burnout not that that's anything any of you have to really worry about that's my problem just explaining what's going on behind the scenes every once in a while I like to give you a glimpse at stuff like that but I've said more than enough thank you very much for being here I'm going to see you very soon with a new exciting episode and until then I want you keep reading comics thanks for watching this video if you liked it please consider hitting like And subscribe if you'd like to support the show there are merchandise links beneath the YouTube video and you can always hit join on YouTube or visit comic tropes on patreon to get access to special perks if we look at the market share in the Years leading up then in DC's 80-page rebirth special Pandora is murdered by a mystery assailant and imitates nope [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: ComicTropes

Views: 436,046

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Length: 28min 10sec (1690 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2022