Dan DiDio OUT at DC Comics

[AquaParade]

Originally Posted by MikeandRaph87

Same here. I don't care much for Damien, but it allowed Dick to grow into what it was avoided for him to grow into the true and only successor to Batman while making it his own at the same time.Also, the inverse of the light-hearted/brocading pair. I bought every issue with Dick Grayson under the cowl.

Totally. That flipped dynamic was such a joy to read. So many great lines fed through the characters by Morrison in that run too. "Batman and Robin - together again for the first time". It totally felt like a natural fit for Dick as well. The first three issues are particularly special to me, but the whole run is a treat.

Such a shame they cut it short, especially given Morrison's desire to keep going.

[CyberCubed]

I just hate the idea of 4 Robin’s all so close in age, especially with Bruce being an immortal 35 year old. It just doesn’t make sense and means each Robin was only around for like 2-3 years.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

I just hate the idea of 4 Robin’s all so close in age, especially with Bruce being an immortal 35 year old. It just doesn’t make sense and means each Robin was only around for like 2-3 years.

Yeah - it's like Star Trek Insurrection. A planet of people who age normally under they are in their late 20's/30 somethings. LOL!

But that's also part of the charm of comics.

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by ZariusTwo

Would you f*ck Helena Wayne?

I'd do pretty much any Huntress, yeah

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by IMJ

Yeah - it's like Star Trek Insurrection. A planet of people who age normally under they are in their late 20's/30 somethings.

It's a lot simpler than that. You read your average 20-22 page issue of anything, it's usually happening in real time. i.e., you're reading 20 minutes -- for example -- in Spider-Man's life. More often than not, it will be "TO BE CONTINUED" directly into the next issue which comes out in a month, which features the next 20 minutes in Spider-Man's life. Even though a month has passed in reality, only 40 minutes has actually passed in Spider-Man's life.

12 months x 20 minutes... that's 4 hours of a character's life per year we actually get. So with Spider-Man, it's been 58 years since he debuted. That's... 232 hours of a character's life we get to experience, or just over 9 days. Of course you can adjust for when you see them sleeping, or when time actually passes because they tell us it does... but it's not lot of time.

My point is, it only seems like Dick and Jason and Tim spent years with Batman to us. In-universe, there's not that much time passing at all and that's not even remotely weird.

[Leo656]

I used to enjoy it when occasionally they'd drop a throw-away line into a story to kind of catch readers up on how much time had passed in-story. Like when Superman went off into space after killing Zod, after he came back Lois or someone mentioned that he was gone for an entire year. That was nice, because I had been wondering.

I think if you get too strict with it it messes everything up, because there's simply too much going on for it to all neatly fit, but a few things like that every so often are nice.

[MikeandRaph87]

One thing I had no idea was Geoff John's had a feud with Didio and Rebirth is Johns concept. I know Green Lantern continued on despite the New 52, but I was under the impression that early on Johns, Morrison, and Judd Winnick were Didio's innercircle. The return of Hal Jordan and then later Barry Allen was their shared idea, Johns coming to Didio with the pitches.

Once all the courtesies wear off and time passes I think it will be seen that every bad idea came from Dan and other successes came from others such as Johns, Levitz,etc. I just cannot think of anything positive thing that he did.

[Leo656]

Yeah, they seem like oil and water to me; Johns is a traditionalist with a heavy affection for the Silver Age, and DiDio is an iconoclast who just wants to be as controversial as possible. Frankly I'm amazed that they ever got anything done together.

[AquaParade]

There's too much we don't actually know for me to make a judgement on how well the man did his job, but there were definitely some good initiatives out of DC over the last decade to go along with whatever complaints many will have.

I believe he got the ball rolling on the Young Animal Imprint, but I could be wrong. Black Label is cool, in theory, as well.

[Leo656]

Never met him. But I've heard enough horror stories from people who have met him, including many who've worked directly with or under him, to believe that there's plenty of smoke to the fire.

I empathize with him to a point, because as a member of "Team Corporate" he has to answer to shareholders and suits and has to deal with stuff that us "mere mortals" can't even fathom, and what Corporate wants usually has little or nothing to do with what fans want to see. But on the flip side, DC under DiDio has done the complete opposite of what the fans collectively wanted to see SO many times, that it makes you wonder if maybe things might have gone better if they'd actually listened to what they wanted instead of telling them what they're supposed to want a little more often.

I mean, when New 52 leaked out, people collectively said, "Please do NOT do this. We don't WANT this." Except for a vocal minority of people (mostly Marvel fans) who had never cared about DC anyway. DC and DiDio's response was basically, "Well, we're doing it. We're committed to it. Deal with it or get lost." And then when it didn't work they had to call a mulligan on it ANYway, but they didn't get back even half of the readers they'd pushed out the door, and the ones who jumped onto the New 52 out of curiosity - Spoiler Alert - didn't stick around anyway, because they were never going to.

I don't know. Like I said, I know DiDio has had to make decisions from a much more corporate mindset than a fan's perspective, but I kinda feel like he just doesn't value the same things as the readers do. The closest person I can compare him to is Vince Russo; all shock and awe, no long-term planning or consideration for what the "hardcore fans" want.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

It's a lot simpler than that. You read your average 20-22 page issue of anything, it's usually happening in real time. i.e., you're reading 20 minutes -- for example -- in Spider-Man's life. More often than not, it will be "TO BE CONTINUED" directly into the next issue which comes out in a month, which features the next 20 minutes in Spider-Man's life. Even though a month has passed in reality, only 40 minutes has actually passed in Spider-Man's life.

12 months x 20 minutes... that's 4 hours of a character's life per year we actually get. So with Spider-Man, it's been 58 years since he debuted. That's... 232 hours of a character's life we get to experience, or just over 9 days. Of course you can adjust for when you see them sleeping, or when time actually passes because they tell us it does... but it's not lot of time.

My point is, it only seems like Dick and Jason and Tim spent years with Batman to us. In-universe, there's not that much time passing at all and that's not even remotely weird.

I've had this exact conversation a thousand times online and often have rationalized things exactly as you did here. But then if you really want to mind #$@! the convo, you can spin in how every title will have the occassional "epic story" in one arc that takes place across some period of time that wipes out everything.

Batman stories that span "weeks" or "months", and you find this out in one line of dialog, or how about Busiek's Kang War story that spanned almost a year of "comic time" in dialog (one off lines in a story that go something like "Wonder Man, we've been organizing the resistance for months now and we've only....").

Time in comics has been discussed like this forever. Back in the day it took place in letter's columns! LMAO!

[AquaParade]

Originally Posted by Leo656

Never met him. But I've heard enough horror stories from people who have met him, including many who've worked directly with or under him, to believe that there's plenty of smoke to the fire.

I empathize with him to a point, because as a member of "Team Corporate" he has to answer to shareholders and suits and has to deal with stuff that us "mere mortals" can't even fathom, and what Corporate wants usually has little or nothing to do with what fans want to see. But on the flip side, DC under DiDio has done the complete opposite of what the fans collectively wanted to see SO many times, that it makes you wonder if maybe things might have gone better if they'd actually listened to what they wanted instead of telling them what they're supposed to want a little more often.

I mean, when New 52 leaked out, people collectively said, "Please do NOT do this. We don't WANT this." Except for a vocal minority of people (mostly Marvel fans) who had never cared about DC anyway. DC and DiDio's response was basically, "Well, we're doing it. We're committed to it. Deal with it or get lost." And then when it didn't work they had to call a mulligan on it ANYway, but they didn't get back even half of the readers they'd pushed out the door, and the ones who jumped onto the New 52 out of curiosity - Spoiler Alert - didn't stick around anyway, because they were never going to.

I don't know. Like I said, I know DiDio has had to make decisions from a much more corporate mindset than a fan's perspective, but I kinda feel like he just doesn't value the same things as the readers do. The closest person I can compare him to is Vince Russo; all shock and awe, no long-term planning or consideration for what the "hardcore fans" want.

Well said.

New52 was interesting. I'm compelled to commend it for being bold, exciting, and a passionate attempt to put a spark into a dying industry. It deserves credit as well for leading to a few great hits.
I wouldn't try and defend it overall though. Definitely a bit of a disaster.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by AquaParade

New52 was interesting. I'm compelled to commend it for being bold, exciting, and a passionate attempt to put a spark into a dying industry.

It's just puzzling to me, though. They do "Final Crisis" which was going to be the final story of the old continuity... but they made Morrison pump the breaks on all that (probably because they realized it wasn't a good idea to give readers a literal jumping off point)... and they go on to do "Brightest Day" for a whole year, which was not a bad story at all that rearranged the deck and put all of the characters old and new in great places to be. Also, it led into the classic JL:I reforming. Everybody was happy! Sales were good. So what do they do IMMEDIATELY next? "Flashpoint" and the New52 reboot. It was as uncalled for as it was infuriating.

[Leo656]

For sure, it was like the exact opposite of what "Brightest Day" and everything else seemed to have been building towards.

Rumor was that it was how both Final Crisis AND "World of New Krypton" under-performed that forced the New 52 reboot. They pushed both of those things extremely hard and they weren't the breakout hits they should have been. New Krypton, specifically, should have been trimmed down by about 2/3s. It started out great but OH MY LORD did it turn into a slog with all the Superwoman and Mon-El and Nightwing/Flamebird stuff.

Both those events could have worked just fine with a little bit of editing, so it's a shame they ended up being the final nail, more or less.

[Andrew NDB]

Hah, I completely forgot about World of Krypton. I remember it being interesting as a concept, though finding the event pointless. Final Crisis, that was Didio's fault. Morrison was going to do the big "Final DC Story" until the last minute, when Didio changed his mind (or when people made Didio change his mind). So now you've got the big "Final DC Story" that is no longer going to be that, but it's already kind of designed like that. Like a gun, that can't shoot.

[Leo656]

I think everyone forgot about World of New Krypton. I don't know anyone who was reading it at the beginning who managed to stick around until the end of it. It took literally forever getting there. One year long, felt like five.

Basically, a year-long slog of "Can Earthlings and Kryptonians co-exist?" and "Is Zod really a decent guy who's simply been misunderstood all this time?", taking up WAY too much real estate in WAY too many books, with WAY too many side-plots, only to arrive at Foregone Conclusion Central with the answer to both of those questions being a resounding "Oh HELL No." Which we all knew before it started.

Like, there's nothing wrong with occasionally exploring a story where everyone already knows full well how it's going to end, but for f*ck's sake, IF everybody already knows how it's going to end, then there's simply no point in stretching it across 80 issues. We know before we open issue #1 that Zod's gonna turn heel and we know all the Kryptonians are gonna die or get zapped to the Phantom Zone. Superwoman, Mon-El, Nightwing and Flamebird... NOBODY CARES! Nobody has EVER cared about those characters. They took up way too much space in what would have otherwise been an interesting plot about Kal-El trying to revive his species and being forced to work side-by-side with Zod to do so, even if everyone knew going in that it wasn't going to end well.

The joy is in the journey, and all that, but the whole time I was like, "When are we gonna get to the fireworks factory?!" And then when they finally did I was too exhausted to care.

[Andrew NDB]

Oh, remember one of the worst examples of Didio diddling? "Cry for Justice," right? I don't think I really need to get into detail. If you read it, you know.

[AquaParade]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

It's just puzzling to me, though. They do "Final Crisis" which was going to be the final story of the old continuity... but they made Morrison pump the breaks on all that (probably because they realized it wasn't a good idea to give readers a literal jumping off point)... and they go on to do "Brightest Day" for a whole year, which was not a bad story at all that rearranged the deck and put all of the characters old and new in great places to be. Also, it led into the classic JL:I reforming. Everybody was happy! Sales were good. So what do they do IMMEDIATELY next? "Flashpoint" and the New52 reboot. It was as uncalled for as it was infuriating.

My guess is that fans being happy and sales being "good" wasn't enough for an industry in decline. I believe it was something of a last ditch effort to pump comics back in the mainstream. Yes, at the expense of current, invested readers. It was an explosive idea that backfired.

[TommyT]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I mean, when New 52 leaked out, people collectively said, "Please do NOT do this. We don't WANT this." Except for a vocal minority of people (mostly Marvel fans) who had never cared about DC anyway. DC and DiDio's response was basically, "Well, we're doing it. We're committed to it. Deal with it or get lost." And then when it didn't work they had to call a mulligan on it ANYway, but they didn't get back even half of the readers they'd pushed out the door, and the ones who jumped onto the New 52 out of curiosity - Spoiler Alert - didn't stick around anyway, because they were never going to.

Ok, so, this parallels the whole Rise debacle. Almost word for word, if you just switch DC for Nick, it’s one in the same.

Now, I know how the big machine works, maybe a little too well, but I still haven’t actually figured out WHY this continues to happen, across all fandoms, over and over again. It would be fascinating, if it weren’t so gut wrenching.

Who is driving the stupid into us?

[MikeandRaph87]

I have read that ever since Didio got an executive position he was looking to completely reboot the comics continuity and line with every crisis, first Infinite Crisis, then Final Crisis, again with Blackest Night, but every time Paul Levitz said, "no". Then the next even was Flashpoint and Paul was not there to put his foot down. Flashpoint was meant to be like Blackest Night, a big event centered around a character no need to read this or that if you don't want to. I really enjoyed Blackest Night and the best part was it was self-contained and looking at the bigger story was optional. Flashpoint is enforcing things on an entire line that most of it had nothing to do with it. DC was in a good place. It was unnecessary. What surprises me is Didio thought the New 52 would be a long-term success. Short-term samplers sure, but overhaul? I want to see his executive standpoint on what made him think an entire line revamp was necessary.