The Self-Destruction of the New 52 Part 4
By Arnoldo Acosta
SECOND CHANCES
“The one thing about The New 52 is that you can’t reintroduce these characters twice. You have to make sure when you do it; you do it right, If you look at them across the line, there are some books where they’ve done a great job reintroducing characters and some where they’ve done a terrible job.”
-James Robinson
This quote from James Robinson speaks loud of the sad truth of the New 52. I said this before in part one of this article. The New 52 was an opportunity to make a better DC, but that doesn’t mean that such opportunities should be wasted.
There are many characters that I can point out as wasted opportunities but those are just consequences of a bigger problem. I just want to give attention to a little thing:
As I mentioned in Part 2, in 2010 DC rebooted Wonder Woman under the pen of writer J. Michael Straczynski(JMS). This was similar to an elseworld story in which Wonder Woman had to leave Themisira when she was just a child and ends up being raised in the “Men’s World”. The general consensus was that most fans disliked this story for many different reasons, which included the sudden departure of JMS from the book. Personally I thought it was a pretty good “Elseworld story”. I think most people just hated it out of fear because they thought this was going to permanently replace Wonder Woman.
The thing that is impressive about this story is the coverage. This was a huge story at the time for many reasons but one of the most important reasons was that “Wonder Woman was getting pants”. It received coverage from different news outlets including The New York Times
The story ran its course and was later replaced by Brian Azzarello’s version of WW, which I already covered in part 2 of this analysis. However there was one single feature that was carried from the JMS All-New Wonder Woman into the New 52. THE PANTS
It seemed that DC was going to commit on covering the sexy legs of the legendary Amazon. It looked that the change would be permanent and Wonder Woman was going to get a new iconic look.
WRONG!
Despite Diana being featured with pants on the solicitations for the covers for issues #1 and #2 of Wonder Woman and Issue #1 of The Justice League she still had to be redesigned to shorts instead of pants.
This was a complete last minute decision.
That is the problem with DC: No Commitment.
This is the reason why the New 52 exists, DC lost the commitment to their own universe and than rebooted their universe, some titles benefitted but most didn’t. I’m not complaining over the fact that Wonder Woman is not wearing pants (though she does look better with pants). The problem is that DC, and that includes its editors, writers, and artists made a decision to do something and then they regretted that decision and made another one.
Now this wouldn’t be a big problem especially after the new 52, except it keeps happening again:
And again…
And again…
And again…
\
And again…
There are many more examples than even I can count and show here.
This are not things that have earn a second chance, and it is impossible to conceive this as part of the long term plan. In some cases this are the results of just minor changes, but others is because DC is trying to correct mistakes but at the same time not progressing the story. All are symptoms of the same illness, lack of foresight.
DC needs to think about the decisions they make; think of the positives, think of the negatives, think where these ideas will lead the story next year, next two, three years, and if the ideas end up having ill results then find a way to fix them, not just start all over again because it just renews the cycle it doesnt stop it.
Here is a humble suggestion from my behalf:
Measure Twice, Cut Once!
"…Why should readers care about the current cast if DC has already shown a willingness to ignore 18 issues worth of plot developments at the drop of a hat?And if the old status quo is intended to be restored eventually, that's even less reason to care about this team…"
I really cannot put it in better words.
To be concluded…