10 Reasons Why The New 52 Was Doomed To Fail
3. It Alienated Older Readers
Not content with alienating female fans the world over, DC also made an effort to amputate their traditional reader base too, by erasing decades worth of history from the equation.
Of course, this isn’t the only reason why older readers abandoned the reboot (any reader who values continuity over story-telling is doing their self no favour), but it was certainly a contributing factor. Being told the universe they grew up with - the one that introduced them to the medium itself - was basically gone, would make it difficult to embrace any replacement, particularly one as lacklustre as the New 52.
The thing is, for the ten years before the relaunch happened DC was genuinely going places, offering a style different from Marvel and affording their titles with a certain uniqueness that engendered a specific kind of feel on the page. That was all lost with the reboot, and for the old-guard among the DC faithful, the tonal reset proved too much to bear.
Compounding this reset further were, of course, the various editorial and creative issues that afflicted the reboot in its opening year. For fans accustomed to the quality of years past, the sudden drop in creative freedom didn’t go unnoticed and provided little incentive for them to stick things out.