My issue with the New 52 isn't continuity, it's just how halfassed and desperate the whole measure was. They clearly needed something to grab headlines (I suspect Didio had his bosses breathing down his neck, since DC has been in freefall for a while now) so they pulled this out of their ass a few months before they did it. There was no thought put into it at all, and the fact that it sabotaged a number of great books--even Morrison's Batman, Inc has had to awkwardly work around the new continuity, despite the fact that Batman's vast history and the rich tapestry that is the DCU was a fundamental part of the comic. And that's a book that got a "special pass" or whatever.
That's the thing: for all the wrong turns DC has taken over the years, it's made some excellent leaps forward, most of which have now been undone for dubious reasons. The fact that DC thinks anyone wanted Barbara Gordon back as Batgirl when she was infinitely cooler as Oracle, plus she represented disabled people, PLUS there were not one but TWO Batgirls everyone seemed to like better, pretty much says it all about how clueless DC has become. There was a great Comics Alliance editorial a while back about how the rush to return back to the Silver Age isn't just weird, it's actively hurting some of DC's most interesting characters. Hal Jordan, Ray Palmer and Barry Allen all came back, all of them displacing FAR more interesting legacy characters and replacing them with standard-issue, boring, square-jawed Kennedy-era white guys, because comics fans (and Geoff Johns) are apparently stuck permanently in the past. In Allen's case, they also undid one of the best, most satisfying and heroic deaths in superherodom, one that people had the common fucking sense not to touch for 25 years. For some reason, Jaime Reyes has survived the chopping block, but if this continues I wouldn't be surprised to see Ted Kord back in the suit.
And what's really tragic about this is that their attempts to "bring back the silver age" have missed the point of what the silver age WAS. It's entirely superficial and clueless, beginning and ending with getting Barry Allen and co. back and making lots of references to that era of comics. But they still want the stupid "grim and gritty" shit, the misogyny, the pointless violence. They've added the Authority (supposedly Stormwatch, but come on) to the DCU, and removed everything interesting about them. They've made fucking Grifter and Voodoo into headlining characters, as if anyone gave a shit. They want the early 90s back, because that era did SO much for comics with no consequences whatsoever. They just don't freaking get it.
I'm not going to rant about Before Watchmen because I did that at length in the appropriate thread. But all of this combines to create a portrait of a company that has no idea what it's doing, that's run by people who have had their heads jammed up their ass for decades now, that still think they live in a clubhouse with a "no gurls allowd" sign and can't understand why their sales are plummeting. (And they are plummeting. Despite the much ballyhooed sales bump of the new 52, the sales are basically back down to where they were before it launched, i.e. in the toilet.) Meanwhile Marvel, despite having its own issues, generally have their shit together and are producing inventive, appealing comics for all ages by some of the top talent in the industry, even putting aside the fact that they have a wildly successful movie division.
Didio should have been out last year, and the fact that he's clinging on by basically burning through the company's legacy just saddens me. By the time the WB brass finally oust him and put an adult in charge, the company is going to be ashes. Then they have my permission to die.
