How The New 52 Broke DC Comics

The New 52 Tells Us That Actually, Continuity Does Matter (Kind Of)

The New 52's problems were myriad and fundamental, but let's start at the beginning, and with arguably the most important point: that, ironically, in a bid to freshen things up, DC actually restored their characters to a new kind of status quo.

The new universe conceived by Johns and Lee did away with much of the backstory for certain characters and reset numerous relationships back to square one. This also had the effect of making some characters near enough unrecognisable. Superman and Lois Lane were no longer married, as was the case with numerous other iconic couples, while Green Arrow also suffered the misfortune of losing not only his iconic Van Dyke beard, but his relationship with Black Canary (a key change DC made a point of reversing for DC Rebirth).

Figuring what to keep and what to change also rendered the entire New 52 reset somewhat pointless. The idea was to entice new readers with a streamlined continuity, and yet numerous events from the old universe remained intact, despite the fact the "present" version of the timeline was only five years old.

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