10 Reasons Why The New 52 Was Doomed To Fail

6. It Made Continuity More Confusing

Despite being founded on the promise of rectifying all those niggling little continuity errors that somehow, for some reason, repelled new readers from the medium, the New 52 actually managed to make things even more convoluted than they were originally. Which is quite impressive, if we're being honest.

The entire universe was founded on the premise that heroes had only really been around for about five or so years. Now, the main problem with that, of course, is that it's pretty contrived and, well, nonsensical to have all the world's heroes pop up at the same time. That, and it doesn't really afford much space for writers to manoeuvre, especially if they're trying to establish at least a semblance of a history in order to craft their stories.

What followed was a hodgepodge of unenforced rules that resulted in a disparate continuity where, in actual fact, the reboot's changes were left at the discretion of the company's writers.

Take Batman for instance: Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo's series made frequent reference to Dick Grayson's time under the cowl after the events of Final Crisis, except Final Crisis never happened in this universe, and with there being only five or so years of superhero-dom to account for, the fact that Batman burned through about three Robins in that time is frankly worrying. Confusing, definitely, but also worrying.

It just didn't make any sense, and this picking and choosing of the pre-Flashpoint continuity only made things all the more frustrating for readers old and new.