How The New 52 Broke DC Comics

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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