10 Reasons Why The New 52 Was Doomed To Fail

4. Scandals, Right Off The Bat

Starfire New 52
DC Comics

On top of the aforementioned editorial issues that quite literally plagued the relaunch, the new DCU itself was home to many a scandal during its publishing run, especially in respect to its treatment of women.

To begin with, barely any women were involved in the reboot at a creative level, with only Gail Simone and Amy Reeder having lent their talents to the relaunch during its formative months. The company's initial response to concerns that women were being excluded from the editorial process was completely crass and even combative, and while they later rectified their original defence, one couldn't help but feel that DC were taking their non-male readers for granted, and indeed, ignoring the urgent need to diversify their payroll.

Then there were the scandals that occurred on the page, which only seemed to further highlight the need for more women-led books to be published. The eye-wateringly terrible Red Hood and the Outlaws sported a depiction of Starfire that wasn't just anatomically wrong, but plain old creepy too, and DC kicked off Catwoman with a comically bad first issue that involved basically nothing but non-stop Bat-boning for its entire duration.

Certainly, DC's approach to women-led works (and women in general, it must be said) during this period can be summed up as being both diabolical and shambolic. No wonder readers were put-off by the whole thing.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.