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[Ntikrst]

Even with 5 choices and the all of the above option, it still isn't enough.

If The Taliban ever wanted to watch recruitment skyrocket they should just issue a Fatwa against Dan Didio.

[Zechs]

Wow Amazons Attack. I'm surprised it strikes such a raw nerve.

[holtom2000]

Wow Amazons Attack. I'm surprised it strikes such a raw nerve.

It was a leftover idea turned into an ill conceived series

[Doc Jon]

Actually, for me, it was Infinite Crisis.

DC was actually doing well up to that point. It seemed like the had a plan that included the entire universe and it was supposed to lead somewhere. Everything from Identity Crisis, Jason Todd and so on.

And then we got Infinite and nothing was really answered but it was supposed to happen in 52. But it wasn't. So OYL was supposed to do it. But it didn't. Or whatever that sequence was. It just kept getting worse and worse and it was obvious there was no plan at all. And we kept going to Final Crisis and the Flashpoint and then DCnU.

To me the downward spiral accelerated at Infinite Crisis. When you need a page by page breakdown of a comic just to understand what's happening (and you actually read comics) then it's a fail.

[chap22]

As a serious response to ESF's repeated queries, here's how I think Didio has kept his job:

Say what you will about Identity Crisis, good bad or indifferent, that sumbitch moved product. How many printings of that motherfucker cracked the NYT best seller list? And following that, give him credit, the buildup to IC, beginning with Countdown and following through the 4 minis and the tie-ins elsewhere, was about as exciting and cohesive as the DCU had been AS A WHOLE in my lifetime. And yeah, IC itself and OYL used up an awful lot of that goodwill by sucking, but at the same time 52 was taking place, which IMO was DC's best event since COIE, and maybe ever. Add in stuff like Johns's GL Rebirth and that franchise's reinvigoration, to the point where GL books were outselling Avengers and X-books for a while there, new stuff like Wednesday Comics and the Earth One OGNs, and of course te publicity and sales for the Nu52, and Didio has some feathers in his cap. And I think that kind of stuff is what's saved his job for so long.

Does it outweigh the bad? Nowhere close, IMMO. But I think that job's more about numbers than quality to the bean counters he answers to.

[mrorangesoda]

It was a leftover idea turned into an ill conceived series

That wasn't really important or given much follow up and gifted the internet a hilarious panel to post. I don't see the harm.

[Zechs]

It was a leftover idea turned into an ill conceived series

I know, but I figure Countdown or Pa Kent be getting the votes.

[SilverPhoenix]

That's a good one (for my money, too many of these are "they don't love a character I love").
Do you think it's isolated to/sprang from DC though? From what I've seen, the current JLA is probably the most high profile offender, but I think like "overly decompressed storytelling" it's just become a mainstream undercurrent.

Well, if you're ready for a multi-pronged answer, I'm ready to give you one.

Short Answer: No. If there is anything to take away from the release of Captain America Vol. 6 (besides it's agressive mediocrity) it's the fact that Marvel has embraced that it'll ultimately be a static Universe. It won't be like DC where what you see is what you're going to get, but ultimately the Status Quo will depend on who's getting a movie or appearing in one.

Long Answer: What I find interesting besides the obvious answer is how Marvel and DC got to where we are now.

For DC, it was property manipulation that would almost have to be saluted, if it weren't for how much scorched earth they left in its place. Didio and Johns literally moved Heaven and Earth to get the characters they grew up back to the places where they thought they should be. Whether it was poisoning valuable assets (Cassandra Cain could've made DC serious money as a whole), creating villains that could represent them (Superboy Prime was little more than a plot device to begin clearing the way for the DCU of their vision) or reversing pivotal storytelling moments (Barry Allen's death still remains the best thing to happen to the character), they stopped at nothing to see their vision done.

By the time the relaunch came, not only had most of the legwork had been done, they now had an excuse to get rid of all of the "undesirable" (i.e Legacy Characters and virtually all of the changes made to characters in the Post-CoIE DC) aspects that they couldn't do completely do away with before. Being armed with the weapons "accessibility to new readers" (which would've made sense if they actually aimed for new readers) and "New Universe = New Continuity" (which they don't even have straight), DC looks almost like it did in 1984.

Now for Marvel, it's road down this path is quite different and could be a subject of a whole article, but for our purposes there are 5 main reasons why we are where we are now.

1) The rise of the Avengers Franchise: In 2004, Marvel made it known that they wanted Avengers to be their Justice League, the unquestioned number 1 franchise of the company. Being charged with the leg work, Bendis took the path of least resistance and swept away the Avengers as we knew it, in a story that got people talking. Disassembled is still quite memorable due to the fact that began these trends.

- The reliance on shock storytelling.

- The over proliferation of it's S (The Icons), A and High B-List Characters

- The manipulation or outright ignoring of continuity (I always said that Wanda going crazy wasn't legitmate, it was the reason why she went crazy that was the problem)

With the old swept away, New Avengers was launched and filled to the brim with Marvel's most bankable characters. However, there was still one thing in the way hence...

2) No More Mutants: Say what you will about Grant Morrison's work on the X-Men, but he had no problems telling the next phase of the X-Men story. After what seemed like a period of wheel spinning in Claremont's Status-Quo (which Marvel tried to progress in 1999 - 2000) than felt longer than it actually was, Grant Morrison bought the mutant story to where it could've became anything Marvel wanted. However, if you have Mutants in a place where they could affect the Marvel Universe in ways the Avengers can't, then you need to put them in a place where they can't, no matter how much it affects the franchise. Hence part of the why we went from 2 million mutants to 200. In 3 words, Marvel KILLED most of the progression that the X-Universe saw in those 5 years.

3) One More Day and One Moment in Time: Speaking of killing years of progression, these 2 stories are married to each other in that regard. Of course, we need to make a special mention of "Sins Past" as it not only made Peter's relationship with Gwen Stacey a lie, but it made everyone ask the question "If even Gwen Stacey isn't beyond tainting" what else in the Spider-Mythos is up for demolishing? Beyond destroying Peter's marriage, One More Day and One Moment in Time didn't just invalidate Peter's core philosophy (With Great Power comes Great Responsibility ), but it made it so that Peter Parker will never progress beyond douchetard 28 year old who will always screw up whatever good happens to him.

4) Marvel Studios: With Bankruptcy fully behind them (and no Quesada didn't save Marvel from this) Marvel decided to take control of what it saw as its' future and open up a studio that would put them in a position to exploit it's own properties on Silver Screen. With the movie rights of X-Men, Spider Man and the Fantastic Four (along with numerous others) sold off to other studios, The Avengers were at the forefront of their movie plans and Iron Man's success not only put The Avengers movies on the fast track (effectively helping to kill Bucky Cap and Thor: Lord of Asgard), but made the next step inevitable and in 2009 we had...

5) Disney's Purchase of Marvel: Without going too long into the particulars of this purchase, Disney's buying of Marvel effectively put the Marvel character catalog in the same place that Mickey Mouse is in now. In 2012, Mickey's primary existence is not to be a character in a story, but to be an IP that's exploited for licensing cash. In the case of the Marvel characters, this hurts worse because one of the vital foundations of a great story (a story having a lasting affect) will almost always lose out to marketing concerns that mandate that a character must be a certain way to protect the IPs value.

And before I finish this post off, let's gove a special shout-out to the unofficial Reason #6 why Marvel is now a Static Universe.

6) The Advent of $3.99 as a regular price point: Even though $3.99 was not a new phenomenon when Marvel decided to price it's 22 page content at that point in 2009, $3.99 for each issue of the comic changed the habits of comic buying public. With each book potentially eating an extra dollar into the comic budget, fans had to make a choice between buying that 6th $3.99 book that was deemed "important" to the Marvel's meta-plot at the moment or the $2.99 book that while might have been a better comic, but was not important to meta-proceedings.

- The fan chose the former, which in turn...

- Helped the Shop Owners (Marvel's real customers) choose to order more of the $3.99 books and less of the $2.99 ones, which in turn....

- Drove Marvel to cancel the $2.99 books, which had pretty much all of the progressive storytelling that Marvel was engaging in.

Thus here we are. Goodbye to Captain Britain and MI: 13, Agents of Atlas, Exiles, Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, The Incredible Hercules and a host of others and hello to a Marvel filled almost exclusively with Avengers, X-Men and other movie tentpole titles, giving us the Marvel Universe as we know it now.

[TheSecondLex]

Worst: Superman origin clusterfuck

Not-Worst: pissing off Bru and others. Because if he hadn't driven them away, we'd never have gotten Bru's excellent Cap runs

[Zechs]

Making Barry Allen Flash again has pissed a lot of you off it seems.

[Keb]

You left Blackest Night off that list.

I have to say, All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder is actually kind of fun in an absolutely ridiculoid kind of way. If they had a less serious artist, I think people wouldn't take it too seriously and realize the sheer stupidity of it. Its a testament to Frank Miller's genius that if you slap the name Batman on something and have an artist draw it all pretty, people will flock in droves to buy it.

[Zechs]

You left Blackest Night off that list.

Had to be removed. Since it was already over the limit.

[Zenguru]

for once and don't die of shock here twigg, we agree.

This just in: twigg dies of shock.

But Didio rebooted him!

Now he's nutwigg.

Ba ha ha!

[sdsichero]

This just in: twigg dies of shock.

But Didio rebooted him!

Now he's nutwigg.

Ba ha ha!

DAMN YOU DIDIO!!!

His greatest crime though? Is yet to come...

*ominous music*

[holtom2000]

This is so interesting. There have been some successes under didio but that seems to be in spite of him, not because. And he's left a legacy of hiccups that have now painted him into a corner. What else can he do to spike sales when you've raped, killed and changed all your characters?