Every time DiDio opens his mouth, you realize he's the single worst thing to happen to comics, period, in decades. From romanticizing heroes who kill over heroes who won't, turning those that won't INTO killers, having people like Batman who would NEVER tolerate murderers as partners or even associates suddenly be all chummy with psychopaths like Jason and Damien, turning "free-spirited" female characters like Starfire into full-blown sluts, killing off much-beloved secondary characters so that heroic characters can now have "dark, tragic" backstories...
The guy's a f*cking idiot. Could be because his background is in TV and not writing comics, TV writing is like the single lowest common denominator for "shock value" storylines and otherwise flat-out trash. It's no surprise to me someone that functionally-retarded could fail upwards in that industry, enough to gain a foothold in a "less demanding" medium like comic books.
DC under Levitz had definitely become a meandering, aimless mess from around 1999-2002, what with the complete lack of continuity between books (even those starring the same character), no direction to speak of, and flat-out boring stories with awful art... so yeah, the first two years of DiDio's run on top were a breath of fresh air by comparison, sure. I admit, the guy even had me fooled. But everything the guy has championed post-Infinite Crisis and 52 has been a DISASTER. The "Sales First, Story Second" approach to running DC has NOT worked.
The only time in its history that DC has ever shined, was when Mike Carlin and Denny O'Neil were running most of it. And those years were GLORIOUS. Mark my words, no amount of retcons and relaunches will EVER bring DC back to the heights they hit from 1986 to 1996. I mean, I called it way back in the late 90s when they fired Dan Jurgens off the Superman books, despite being one of exactly four people who actually know how to write Superman, and possibly THE best Superman writer in history. Why fire him? "Eh, time for a change."
That was the very first awful decision DC Editorial made and it was all downhill from there.
The upside is, even if I focus strictly on collecting and reading DC from 1986 through Flashpoint, that'll still take the rest of my life and I never have to pay attention to this new garbage.