Power Girl: When Power Girl's Atlantean origin was revealed, fan reaction was mostly negative. Therefore, issues of JSA: Classified and Infinite Crisis subverted the reveal, and restored her origins as a Kryptonian and survivor of Earth-Two.
In the Emerald Twilight story event, Hal Jordan went Ax-Crazy after the destruction of his home city and underwent a Face–Heel Turn as the villainous Parallax, destroying the Green Lantern Corps, killing his friend Kilowog and all of the Guardians (except for Ganthet) and ultimately died. Many fans were not happy with this, seeing it as a Bridge Drop in favor of trying to prop up the Younger and HipperKyle Rayner to generate interest in the Green Lantern title. When Geoff Johns took over as the writer, he brought Hal Back from the Dead and retconned this into Parallax being an Eldritch Abomination who was responsible for the Lanterns' weakness to yellow (providing what many felt was a satisfying answer to what was widely seen as an especially ridiculous Weaksauce Weakness) and slowly pulled Hal over to Brainwashed and Crazy by feeding on and exploiting his grief over the destruction of Coast City. Many of the named characters Hal had killed were brought back to life, as well.
Arisia was first introduced as a 13-year-old GL who had a sort of little sister/big brother dynamic with Hal. This eventually turned into Arisia harboring an unrequited Precocious Crush on Hal, which later resulted in a story where she used her ring to age herself up so that she could enter a relationship with him. Fans found the whole thing kind of Squicky, so Johns later stated that due to her planet's prolonged orbit around its two suns, 13 years on her world were technically closer to 240 years on Earth.
As society marched on, fans began to raise eyebrows at Hal's origin, specifically the fact that the most fearless guy on the planet conveniently turned out to be a straight, white, male American. A story was eventually done that showed there were many Green Lantern candidates all throughout the globe, and Hal was chosen because he just happened to be the one closest to Abin Sur's crash site.
The editorially influenced attempt to recreate Cassandra Cain, the third Batgirl, as Robin's erudite Dark Action Girl nemesis (explained by her returning to her supposed assassin roots) provoked rather justifiable complaints that the writer and editor involved hadn't bothered to read Batgirl's solo title. A few months later, we found out that Deathstroke was feeding her mind-control drugs the whole time, and after Robin injected her with a counter-serum, she returned to her old self, though quite understandably keen on revenge against Slade.
An issue of Robin rectified the controversial issues of Stephanie Brown's death and Leslie Thompkins's moral downfall in the "War Games"/"War Crimes" arcs:
Stephanie's death was faked with Leslie's help to keep Black Mask away from her, and Leslie did not, as had previously been claimed, deliberately kill Stephanie by keeping treatment from her in order to discourage Batman from taking on Kid Sidekicks. Batman suspected the truth, but to give Stephanie her privacy, he never shared his feelings with Robin.
An earlier comic had used her absence from the memorial case to justify the claim that Stephanie was never an official Robin. Once it was revealed that Batman suspected she was still alive, it became the real reason why he never added Stephanie's Robin suit to the memorial — she wasn't dead, so she couldn't be a dead Robin.
Probably in an attempt to please fans of the three popular Batgirls (Bette Kane is obscure so she never gets used), the final issue of Gail Simone's Batgirl (2011) series was a Futures End tie-in that featured Cass, Steph, and a new Batgirl — Tiffany Fox — working together alongside Barbara Gordon as the League of Batgirls. The issue was almost universally well-received.
Mr. Freeze's revival during Knightquest was due to this trope — Freeze had been killed by the Joker during Robin II: The Joker's Wild, putting an end to a seemingly lackluster villain. Then Batman: The Animated Series came out and "Heart of Ice" suddenly made Freeze popular. When he came back, it was revealed he had a special device in his suit that put him in suspended animation to save his life.
Two-Face was just a nihilistic goon who made decisions made on his coin flips and was driven to villainy by being scarred, and even when written as suffering Dissociative Identity Disorder (previously called Multiple Personality Disorder), there's still the matter of it being infamous for sociopaths faking it and/or doctors creating it. Recent depictions have taken steps to avoid this:
The Dark Knight had his disfigurement, combined with the death of Rachel Dawes, end up as the capstone of a Trauma Conga Line Harvey went through that caused him to snap.
One of the most enduring images in all of Batman media is Martha Wayne's pearl necklace breaking and the pearls scattering everywhere when Bruce's parents are murdered. In real life, authentic pearl necklaces have knots at each bead specifically to prevent that from happening, implying that one of the richest men in the world would buy his wife fake pearls. This is addressed in the miniseries Batman Death And The Maidens where Batman meets the spirits of his parents (or a drug-induced hallucination). Martha admits that the pearls were fake, as she didn't want to wear the real ones just to go to the movies.
Batman: Wayne Family Adventures: The comic basically takes every fan idea about how the Batfam should be and makes it canon, and with a few minor exceptions has been met with unanimous praise for it. It's gotten to a point where a good chunk of readers consider the comic to be the superior version of the Batfamily.
For the past decade and a half, writers have come under fire for portraying Bruce as an abusive parent to his protégés, to the point where some writers have tried to say that he's more abusive to his family than to the Joker. Here, Bruce is portrayed as a good, if very tired, father figure, who makes an effort to be there for his kids and fix his mistakes when they occur.
A common criticism throughout the New 52, and by extension, Rebirth, was the retcon of ages in order to make Bruce Younger and Hipper, which only served to make a Continuity Snarl as it was practically impossible to realistically have had him go through Dick, Babs, Jason, Tim, and Damian as sidekicks given their age gaps. Here, Bruce seems to be past his thirties, with noticeable age lines across his face in multiple scenes.
Likewise, many modern writers have received criticism for frequently benching Cass and Duke. Here they're fairly important, with Duke moving into the manor being the focal point of the first chapter.
Another common criticism is that Jason in the comics, when on good terms with the rest of the family, often gets turned into the Generic Guy, or ends up having Dick or Tim's personality supplanted onto him. Here, he has a pretty distinct personality, being snarky and hot-headed, but also warm towards his siblings.
Damian's birthday comic was heavily criticized by the fandom for implying Talia al'Ghul was an abusive mother to Damian, which fans worried would contribute to her Flanderization and play into negative racial stereotypes. This was addressed in a later comic in which Talia appeared in person to check on Damian and was portrayed as a loving mother who had given him up because she wanted him to be able to have a happy life.
The Toyman, a B-list Superman villain, was traditionally just a funny man in a striped suit who built dangerous giant toys to rob banks and give the Man of Steel a hard time, but in the Dark Age he was re-imagined as a bald child murderer in a black cloak. This didn't go over too well. Fast-forward to 2008, when it's revealed that the bald Toyman was a defective robot decoy created by the real Toyman, who is now once again a funny man in a striped suit, albeit a dangerously insane one, who will do anything (up to and including murder) to protect children. Funny thing - the Darker and Edgier Toyman actually started out as a parody of the trend; he adopted the new persona and modus operandi because he was left out of the latest line of Superman action figures for not being a dangerous enough villain.
In 1986, DC killed off Kara Zor-El despite her being a popular character due to an editorial mandate declaring that Superman should be the last Kryptonian survivor. Fans didn't like this and DC tried and failed to replace Kara with other non-Kryptonian Supergirls with increasingly convoluted origins and backstories until they finally caved and reintroduced the character in 2004.
Continuing in that vein, Kara was given an "updated" — read: angrier and brattier — personality and a new origin: her father Zor-El was evil and sent Kara to Earth to kill baby Kal-El. Fans hated it. Next writers mellowed her character down and retconned her backstory several times. Superman: Brainiac and Supergirl #35 hand waved off all of the previous origins as dementia caused by Kryptonite poisoning and gave her back the classic Silver AgeOrigin Story.
The one-shot, Titans: Villains For Hire, managed to spark racial controversy when Ryan Choi, the second Atom, was killed (and his body carried around in a shoebox), and a new Atom series starring Ray Palmer (Choi's white predecessor) was launched. When DC announced its intent to reboot with the New 52, the Ryan Choi Atom was announced as joining the Justice League, to much fan rejoicing.
Fan reaction slowly started to sour, though, when the promised Ryan Choi, though name-dropped as alive, never appeared, while Ray was demoted to a supporting character in the short-lived Frankenstein: Agents of SHADE. An Atom did join the League eventually, but she was a completely new character and secretly an evil spy from another dimension. Fans grumbled about the lack of an heroic Atom, so when DC's next reboot rolled around with DC Rebirth, Ryan Choi appeared in DC Rebirth #1 heading out to rescue Ray Palmer. Fans rejoiced again. In addition, Convergence revealed the pre-Flashpoint Ryan to be Only Mostly Dead, and saw him restored and reunited with the pre-Flashpoint Ray, even getting to punish his Karma Houdini killer, Deathstroke.
The controversial mini-series Justice League: Cry for Justice saw Roy Harper having his arm ripped off and his daughter Lian being violently crushed to death. This led to an unpopular period where Roy relapsed and became addicted to heroin (which he had kicked in the 70s) and even became a member of Deathstroke's decidedly less-than-heroic Titans team. This whole series of events was retconned out by the 2011 DC relaunch, with Roy having both arms intact, no dead daughter tragedy, and his original heroin addiction replaced by alcoholism; however, when that proved unsatisfactory, the Crisis Crossover event Convergence resurrected Lian and had pre-Flashpoint Roy reunited with her and abandoning his dark days for good.
Justice League of America: There was an outcry over the death of Tasmanian Devil, one of the few openly-gay superheroes DC has, with fans calling writer James Robinson anti-gay (this is in the same storyline where Robinson killed off Lian). He later wrote a JLA story that ended in Tasmanian Devil's resurrection.
Harley Quinn: DC announced an art contest based around drawing a page for the #0 issue that ended with a panel described in the script as a naked Harley about to commit an Electrified BathtubBath Suicide. This sparked backlash over an apparent misogynistic eroticization of a woman's suicide, made worse by the fact that the script didn't include any of the dialogue, or indicate that it was meant to be contextualized as a fantasy sequence. When the issue was published, the final panel of the page showed a fully-clothed (well, as much as she ever is in the New 52) Harley Riding the Bomb instead.
DC attempted to give a number of female characters that had their own comics more modest, practical costumes as part of the reboot, annoying a number of fans in the process. Power Girl, Zatanna, and Black Canary characters all ditched their new suits in favor of costumes much closer to their classic designs.
For the Huntress series, DC brought back the original, 70's-era Huntress, Helena Wayne, but in the process Dropped A Bridge On Helena Bertinelli, her successor. The fans divided in a Broken Base over the incident. Then, following the events of Forever Evil (2013), DC revealed that Helena Bertinelli was in fact alive, and that she'd be a major character in the Grayson series.
The first issue of Red Hood and the Outlaws showed Starfire as amnesiac and unable to tell individual humans apart, which made the fact that she then slept with Roy Harper pretty iffy. Her personality and characterization were pretty much entirely erased, leaving her someone who just wanted to have sex with whoever was in front of her, not caring who because one human is the same as the next and she won't remember them anyway, and having no personality outside of that. There were three kinds of panels Starfire could appear in: (1) Fight scene, (2) Posing "sexily" if impossible poses are your thing, (3) saying "I'm bored, let's bang" to the nearest male. Pretty much nobody but the writer was even a little bit amused with an enduring, beloved, complex character who'd been reduced to a blow-up doll in barely any clothing — yes, even compared to her old costume. The head writer responded to the (many, many) complaints by saying that he wasn't going to spoil future developments to appease people, as if she wasn't supposed to be this way and it was going somewhere, but nothing like a "they found someone like Psycho Pirate screwed with her head and they punched him in the face a lot and got her personality back" storyline ever happened. Writers tried showing that this was an act before it was further clarified that Roy believed that if he left, then she'd forget him. Fans reacted with Squick and it seemed DC really couldn't win with this one, so she has left the team entirely to get a Lighter and Softer solo series in Starfire (2015), as well as a more modest costume (more or less the same as Teen Titans with hotpants instead of a skirt). Her familiar characterization returns, and nothing of her Outlaws days is mentioned.
The events of Brightest Day and resultant Search for Swamp Thing attempted to roll back the changes Alan Moore made to the nature of Swamp Thing in the classic "Anatomy Lesson" (that Swamp Thing was really a plant clone of Alec Holland and the real Holland was indeed dead) and bring in a version of Len Wein's original concept (Holland actually did become Swamp Thing; in this case, via the Entity and Deadman). While an attempt at this, this is one time Johns's fondness to retro stuff backfired as Moore is viewed by many as Swamp Thing's real father, so naturally fans didn't take kindly to this rollback and the New 52 series undid this. That said, even Moore and the writers between him and Johns tried to soft-pedal his own retcon a bit by having everyone still treat Swamp Thing as, for all intent and purposes, Alec Holland.
After the complaints about the Teen Titans relaunch disrespecting the vast history of the franchise by establishing Tim Drake's team as the first ever group of Titans, the Titans Hunt mini-series established that a prior team resembling the original Silver Age Teen Titans did indeed predate the modern group.
DC Rebirth was a Saving Throw for the New 52 era as a whole. The New 52 had alienated some longtime fans by embracing being Darker and Edgier and by wiping away beloved Legacy Characters and relationships in the interest of starting from scratch. Rebirth began to reintroduce several missing elements starting with Wally West, the third Flash, and openly stated that it intended to move toward the brighter side of the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. The New 52 changes were even blamed on a Reality Warper, Dr. Manhattan from Watchmen, metatextually saying that the problem was writers trying to mimic his comic of origin too much, as many others had in The Dark Age of Comic Books.
Red Hood and the Outlaws is a very divisive book at best, leaning on negative with comic readers as a whole. A lot of the disdain comes from how Jason Todd was turned into a generic edgy anti-hero, as opposed to the somewhat sympathetic villain role he had before the New 52. After years, Scott Lobdell finally moved him closer with his previous characterisation — he's more willing to kill again, his moral stance on killing is very clearly the result of his own Daddy Issues, he's on the outs with the Batfamily and Batman in particular once again and he no longer is teamed up with random superpowered teammates.
Many fans were upset when Nightwing was given amnesia and regressed to a Darker and Edgier character calling himself "Ric Grayson" and the entire Bat-Family just threw their hands up and decided that they couldn't help him. Nightwing Annual #2, written by Dan Jurgens, revealed that it was a plan by the Court of Owls to finally regain Dick as one of their Talons, as was their plan from the beginning.
The six-issue miniseries Flash Forward was a partial one for Wally West in general and Heroes in Crisis in particular. After considerable fan backlash to DC’s outright cruel treatment of him, driven by co-publisher Dan DiDio’s notorious hatred of the character, Flash Forward shows him single-handedly saving the entire multiverse, with numerous characters talking him up as a great and noble hero, and the most powerful Flash ever. Also, while the story ends with a Bittersweet Ending where Wally experiences a Death of Personality and becomes the new Dr. Manhattan, nevertheless Jai and Irey are returned to continuity and reunited with Linda, who has her memories of them and Wally restored. Also, the ending implies that a piece of Wally’s consciousness still exists, leaving the door open for later writers to bring him back.
The epilogue in The Flash #750note (released shortly after DiDio's ousting coincidentally) confirms that Wally’s mind and personality are intact, and features Wally viewing the entire Multiverse and essentially saying “this is broken, but I can fix it”.
Dark Nights: Death Metal took it further, for fans who disliked the Death of Personality and the troubling implications of Wally's Heroic Suicide, by having him not just firmly his old self again (though understandably very traumatised), but reunited with what's left of the Justice League, who all welcome him with open arms. He then becomes the Big Good of the event, as the plan for fixing the universe is to give him enough power to recreate reality, all but guaranteeing a retcon of many of the things people hatednote Note that between the previous events and the first issue of Death Metal, Dan DiDio was fired; after that, 5G was cancelled. For anyone who suspected or didn't trust him to be in charge of DC's relaunch and Wally's rehabilitation, this is more than welcome.
Further fixing things, it was revealed in The Flash #761 that Wally's actions in Heroes in Crisis were actually thanks to Eobard Thawne, using the Negative Speed Force to manipulate him. On that same note, this is used to explain why Wallace West joined Damian's morally wrong Teen Titans team and why Jay Garrick was MIA for so long. The Flash Annual #1 further reveals that Wally did not kill the heroes at all. The Speed Force had a massive surge caused by the villain Savitar in an attempt to take the Speed Force and triggered by Arsenal in a Heroic Sacrifice to help save the day.
Relatedly, one of the biggest complaints fans had about Cyborg's promotion to the Justice League during the New 52 was that it removed him from the history of the Teen Titans, erasing many of the close relationships he'd formed there in the process. The Justice League tie-in to Death Metal retcons Cyborg's origin by reestablishing him as a former Titan, with a good deal of the arc's character interactions revolving around his reunion with his former teammates Nightwing and Starfire.
This trope is the reason why Harley Quinn went from The Joker's longsuffering moll to an antihero whose personal cause is violence against women. When she was still just an original character on Batman: The Animated Series, her unexpected popularity caused many to question if the show was glorifying domestic abuse by having her stay by the Joker's side even though he treated her like crap. The animators were likely hoping it'd be obvious that they were villains who were both insane and not making the wisest decisions, but it didn't change the fact that Harley deserved better. The comics have changed things so that her defining trait is that she left the Joker, which has carried into other media featuring the character.
The DC Universe era Hawkman series tried this with the infamous Continuity Snarlhe and Hawkgirl suffer from by retconning that the Golden/Modern Age Hawks, Carter Hall and Sheira Hall/Kendra Saunders have incarnated not just in time, but space — and that Katar and Shayera Hol, the Silver Age Hawks, were actually part of this cycle, thus the Hawks were always the same people.
