Looking back on nine years of the New 52, what I'm finding is that the event wasn't the problem, just the execution. Obviously as a person invested in decades of continuity, I frown on a total reboot, but it still could have worked. It's just wasn't that, for starters.

It goes back to the Crisis in 1986. A lot of people were brought in, mostly from Marvel, to get in on the ground floor of a revised DC Universe. So of course DC got cold feet, and only John Byrne holding firm on Superman set in stone a point of demarcation.

The Byrne reboot was at one pole and the Legion of Super-Heroes were at the other. Either the "modern" DC Universe started in 1986, or there was a continuous thread going back fifty years. And instead of resolving the conflict, DC just went back & forth between warring camps.

DC is to comics as the U.S. is to politics. One Supreme Court rules for marriage equality, and the next could potentially overturn a woman's right to choose. They're always one reboot away from rolling back any progress made in the last & making no one happy.

The consensus is that the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot worked. DC was barely hanging on to any audience in the mid '80s, and Crisis killed the golden goose that was the New Teen Titans. For the most part, DC looked forward and after some stumbling, made a coordinated effort.

That said, Superman faltered after Byrne left, & he maybe wasn't allowed to go far enough with changes. Wonder Woman limped along, even with Pérez. Aquaman still a sad bastard. Titans, the Hawks, & the JSA were gutted. Atom & New Gods tanked. Pall was cast within a couple years.

On the other hand, Batman was massively fortified post-Miller. The bold Justice League International proved a sturdier franchise than Titans. Most remember the Charlton integration fondly. Proto-Vertigo evolved from Swamp Thing. True continuity. Overall, an enormous net positive.

DC had creative & commercial ups & downs Post-Crisis, but the arrival of Dan Didio signaled a sea change at DC. They were tired of being perpetually in second place, especially in a new millennium experiencing another sales downturn. With Quesada at Marvel, that improved.

Marvel Comics moved more units than anybody ever in the '90s, many of them by Jim Lee. He teamed with Didio to fill DC management with the guys responsible after they became "available" when the industry collapsed. Problem being, that was largely due to their strip-mining.

Jump to 2010. The Superman line had been run off a cliff by New Krypton and "Grounded." Wonder Woman was in a broadly ridiculed costume & story arc. Morrison's Batman was insane and the rest of that line was floundering. JLA & JSA lost all their mojo. No new titles popping.

Wildstorm, former bastion of Image Comics & once a contender for being a top publisher on its own, lost all their cache & creative under Levitz. Didio doubled down with the post-apocalyptic hellscape World's End and the tiny fart of Worldstorm. Embarrassing collapse continued.

Blackest Night was a very successful event that notably launched the bi-weekly maxi-series Brightest Day, but what was coming out of that? Limp relaunches of Firestorm, Hawkman, Deadman, & Swamp Thing? A definitely doomed Martian Manhunter or Hawk & Dove book? Where to go next?

Didio was peddling a noble cause to Rich Johnston back in the day about saving the industry and countless job, but I never entirely bought it. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure the jobs being saved were his own and the Chromium Age Marvel editorial staff he'd taken on.

Much has already been made of the rushed, ultra-secretive, micro-mismanaged nature of the relaunch. It fairly reeked of desperation & greed, with no clear architecture or even a willingness to cop to being a reboot. "Bring up your Q4 or you're out" tracks as best explanation.

Geoff Johns is the Marv Wolfman of the line. Waning golden boy should have left his top-selling Green Lantern on a high note, but instead noodled along with the same concepts for another few tiresome years. Aquaman was a solid success that could have launched out of Brightest Day

Likewise, Grant Morrison was continuing a hyper-dense, sometimes tedious, years long Batman arc being rendered inconsequential by Schrödinger's reboot. Thankfully, Snyder & Capullo actually pulled the trigger on a fresh start, as did Finch & Daniel to a lesser degree.

New 52 Superman was chef's kiss stupid. Learning nothing from Countdown, everybody told to follow Morroson's lead. Where's Morrison going? No one knows! Just give Superman '90s fractal tech-gear and give up on any creative team retention until we sort it out in 18 months or so!

Take a character already dogged by complaints of being a bumpkin out of step with modern tastes in a low stakes personal journey and... add Grapes of Wrath cosplay? It wasn't a Dark Knight Strikes Again level fall from grace, but they literally killed this Superman off afterword.

Think about that for a second. They killed Superman, and replaced him with a What If...? afterthought with a tween son like they were Spider-Girl. And. No. One. Cared. If anything, there was a sigh of relief from putting it out of its misery.

I don't want to get into the whole Jon Kent thing. It's not my bag, but I know there are passionate fans that I don't want to rap with over this. Still, let's take the guy that's always being called overpowered and have a miniature version of him in the same household?

Brian Azzarello & Cliff Chiang did a comic book together, and they have fans. There's always a Wonder Woman comic that has a small but sure fan base. They were put together and sold well enough combined. Then nobody ever referenced the run again. It's a male child on Themyscira.

I'm in the minority of fans that didn't care for Greg Rucka's first Wonder Woman run, and I never read the second beyond the first trade. Beautiful art by Sharpe & Scott. Recently read some of Tynion's Justice League Dark that does more interesting things with the heroine.

Static Shock ran for four seasons of television, but whether because of the slim margins on comics, stinginess about fees, or a perception that this audience won't support heroes of color, DC never even tries to sell the character. Eight issues by first-time writer McDaniel.

I've never been able to verify this, but have to assume that there must be some sort of royalty structure with the Wildstorm properties that prevents their full integration into the DC Universe, as was done with Charton, Fawcett, Quality, etc. Near-constant segregation from core.

Wildstorm sold millions of comics. There was speculation after the DC purchase that Image might fold without them. DC unquestionably ruined the stew, but you can't seriously tell me that no creators want to do anything with these characters outside of a few isolated New 52 titles

The infamous Voodoo is the worst of both the Milestone & Wildstorm integrations. Our only other book starring a person of color is a stripper & an inhuman murderer who practices both acts graphically in her debut issue? No further DC appearances after cancellation a year later.

So many of the books were inevitable or rebrandings. Swamp Thing, Hawk & Dove, Aquaman & Deadman (x2 titles?) all spun out of Brightest Day without continuing storylines. All Star Western just Jonah Hex in Gotham. So much "see what sticks" to reach arbitrary 52 titles.

These are ancient gripes, though. DC should have looked a quarter-century backward at the Crisis road map and learned from their mistakes, instead of repeating all of them plus more. What's the point? Because the New 52 ended years ago, and I'm finding there has been correction.

Bendis & Reis seem to have at least gotten people interested in whether Superman lives or dies again, though the whole Leviathan spy thing feels extremely out of place. I'd have rather read that elsewhere. The next Superman creative teams are going to matter a lot.

The end of the Wonder Comics line shows the limits of Bendis' ability to sell on his name alone. Did we need two teen teams, especially when the New 52 decided all Titans' histories should be irreconcilable divorces and fatal car crashes like Donna Troy's?

I haven't heard anybody exactly gush over the Wonder Woman title in years, but it's one of the few bi-weekly ongoings, so she's got a sizeable name recognition sell-through now. But seriously, check out Justice League Dark, where she's creating her own lane as a universal icon.

I'm never going to get over John Constantine becoming a corny super-hero, but the disintegration of the Vertigo partition gives DC magic characters an edge they sorely lacked for decades. Black Label also offers a slimmed down Vertigo, particularly Hill House.