How The New 52 Broke DC Comics

Green Arrow The New 52
DC Comics / Andrea Sorrentino

Batman was the worst to suffer from this, with the Caped Crusader having supposedly lived through the events of The Killing Joke, Knightfall and Final Crisis (sort of), whilst also training several Robins in that short space of time. The reboot also disrupted Grant Morrison's run on Batman, with Batman Inc. being shoehorned into the canon when it could've happily existed outside of it. DC Editorial attempted to make the timeline more navigable by clarifying which stories were and weren't canon shortly after the reboot began, but the truth was that the new continuity was just as confusing as the old one, only with none of the character development to show for it.

But if the foundations of the new universe itself were rocky, that was nothing compared to the controversies that were occurring off the page. Just 1% of the creators involved in the relaunch were women, and this was exacerbated by several misogynistic and sexist tropes featured in its stories. Scott Lobdell's frankly diabolical Red Hood and the Outlaws series kicked off its opening arc with a leering portrayal of Starfire, while Judd Winick's Catwoman also debuted with a gratuitous rooftop tryst between the character and Batman. Add to that a disastrous retconned origin for Wonder Woman from writer Brian Azzarello, which recast the Amazons as rapist pillagers, and you only begin to scratch the surface of just how bad the New 52's attitude towards women was both on and off the page.

Arguably the most damaging controversies, though, manifested at the editorial level. Gail Simone - who was acclaimed for her work on Birds of Prey and Secret Six prior to the reboot - was unceremoniously fired from the main Batgirl title, only to be rehired after fan backlash.

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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.