THE NEW 52 WAS ANNOUNCED 15 YEARS AGO TODAY

Fifteen years ago today, DC announced The New 52.

If you weren’t buying comics in 2011 it’s hard to describe what a big deal The New 52 was. DC was ending their entire mainstream line and then releasing 52 new titles. Some would replace the ones that were ending. Some were new titles altogether. Everyone would start at issue one. Even Action Comics, which had recently celebrated its 900^th issue, and Detective Comics, which was just about to reach 900, were going to be starting over. Reactions on message boards, blogs, sites, and social media ranged from excited to cautiously optimistic to righteously angry as only comic book fans can get about their books.

My own reaction was weird. When The New 52 was announced I had just come back from my self-imposed exile from reading the Superman books and was busy catching up on what I missed when I saw the announcement. At first, I was stunned and then I just started laughing. There was something really funny about coming back to the books just a few months before DC was rebooting their line. I had come to terms with the fact that “my” era of comics was over and was willing to take the current era on its own terms and suddenly DC hits the reset button.

It was like breaking up with someone, getting back together with them again, and then they say, “By the way, I got a job in another state and if you want to stay with me you have to start over too.”

Okay, the stakes in that scenario are slightly higher, but still.

The New 52 lasted a little under four years. Technically. DC kept the logo as part of their trade dress from August 31, 2011 (which was the day Justice League #1 was released) until March of 2015. In April of that year DC put out the Convergence event, which was a nine issue main series surrounded by a number of two-issue mini-series. That storyline saw past eras of DC getting thrown together and frankly explaining the full plot of the event would take more time than this post really needs. The event was partially done to eat up the two months it was going to take for DC to move its corporate and editorial offices from New York City to California, but there were some fun stories and matchups and if nothing else it gave us Jonathan Kent, the son of Lois and Clark.

After Convergence, the New 52 logo was dropped from the covers and a new initiative was launched called DCYou, which didn’t last long. On February 18, 2016, DC announced that they were once again rebranding their mainstream universe and restarting the bulk of their line under the name Rebirth. They also reinstated the numbering on Action and Detective Comics skipping ahead 52 issues from when they started the second volumes.

I wrote that The New 52 “technically” lasted a little under four years because most readers lump the nearly five years between the start of The New 52 and the start of Rebirth into the same era. All told we’re talking four years and nine months between the two initiatives. To give some perspective on this, The New 52 lasted a few months longer than the Confederacy did in the United States.

Again, the stakes aren’t comparable, but still.

Looking back, it really wasn’t that long of a time period. The post-Infinite Crisis era lasted slightly longer and between DCYou, Rebirth, Infinite Frontier, Dawn of DC, and All-In we’ve gotten five initiatives since The New 52 ended. Now The New 52 is another era in DC’s history. A time period that, like all past eras, can be read for fun or studied on an academic level.

Living through it is something else. I’m not suggesting that it was this horrible period where everything was bad. There were some definite bright spots. They were few and far between, but they were there. Good or bad, it was the reality of reading DC’s line and to me it felt like, “Well, this is the reality forever and ever and it’s never going to change.”

It’s hard to see the edges of the bubble when you live in the middle of it, especially when it keeps getting larger.

And I find that perspective fascinating. At the time the bubble I was in was full of people that were largely unhappy with how the books were going. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman run was well received and Geoff Johns’s run on Justice League was a dependable read month after month. Some characters, like the Flash and Green Arrow, coasted through those years staying under the radar. They weren’t sucking wind, but they weren’t setting the world on fire either. Some characters, especially Superman, struggled and it felt like that was never going to end. Especially since, in Superman’s case, every fix seemed to make the situation worse.

It’s like that scene in the Jerry Lewis film The Ladies Man where Lewis’ character is dealing with a tough guy and accidentally sits on his hat and then proceeds to absolutely ruin the hat while trying to fix it.

Now, we’re so far removed from that time period that it doesn’t matter.

Weird.

In considering all of that it’s easy to forget that the anticipation and launch of The New 52 was legitimately exciting. While there were those that were upset that Action and Detective were getting renumbered and were upset that the books they were enjoying were coming to an end, there was a real sense of enthusiasm for what was coming. It helped that the two lead dogs in DC’s kennel at the time were going to be relatively untouched. Batman and Green Lantern weren’t going to be changing all that much. This was a bit of a cop out and took away from the “we’re starting everything over from the beginning” vibe DC was going for, but for those readers it definitely softened the blow.

The lead-up was filled with creative team announcements and preview art. One of the funniest bits was the Justice League promo piece by Jim Lee that got out because of merchandising. Toon Tumblers, a company that releases drinkware with DC heroes and other characters on them, dropped this piece of art on their Facebook page to hype what they would be selling at the upcoming San Diego Comi-Con.

And just like that it was everywhere. News sites and blogs and Tumblrs were breaking it down like it was the Zapruder Film. Were Mera and Deadman and The Atom and Hawkman and Green Arrow and Firestorm going to be part of the League? Is Wonder Woman wearing pants? Are these the new costumes?

I’m not sure that it was released without DC’s involvement or if this was some faux guerilla marketing. Either way, it got people talking.

Another piece of the marketing puzzle were the panels that DC hosted about The New 52 at the previously mentioned San Diego Comi-Con. I forget how many there were…three I think…but they were lively and fun. Dan DiDio hosted each one and each one broke down what the titles were going to be and why they were doing what they were doing. I wished I had saved them.

Then, on August 31, 2011, DC released Flashpoint #5 and Justice League #1.