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Audience Alienating Era / The DCU

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https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wonder_woman_1970_480x0_c_default.jpg
Wasn't she supposed to be a Greek warrior or something?

It may be the comic company with the most devoted fandom, but The DCU is infamous for its negative periods.

Please do not enter any examples until five years have passed since the Audience-Alienating Era began, and take care to avoid Complaining About Shows You Don't Like.

The following have their own pages:

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    DC Comics in general 

    Wonder Woman 
  • Wonder Woman (1942): In The '70s, DC decided that Wonder Woman should be retooled as a more down-to-earth hero. Officially the decision was "to appeal to feminists", in actuality it was an attempt to cash in on the popularity of Emma Peel of The Avengers (1960s), and the "modernist" fashion trend sweeping the United States. As a result, she was depowered and turned into a kung-fu superspy in a white pantsuit. This move backfired in what DC claimed their goal was. It angered prominent feminists like Gloria Steinem, who denounced it as a profoundly sexist move to remove the power of one of the greatest female superheroes. It succeeded somewhat, in that it did draw readers to the comic book, until the modernist fad faded. It was more so alienating to the Wonder Woman brand in general, as attempts to merchandise "mod" Wonder Woman or adapt her to other media all fell on their face, with the live action television show proving general audience preferred the classic take on the character after the lone pilot in line with the "mod" comics to get off the ground went on to crash and burn.
  • A significant amount of people consider everything published between William Moulton Marston's death and George Perez's run in Wonder Woman (1987), nearly 40 years, to be this. Due to the regressive nature of the Comics Code Authority, Wonder Woman had her fairly radical Golden Age mythos almost completely stripped from her, and her continuity was constantly in flux. It became obvious DC had little to no idea of how to work with her, leading to ideas being thrown at the wall and never sticking (for example, Steve Trevor was killed off multiple times). Tellingly, while Post-Crisis altered character continuity to varying degrees, Wonder Woman was the only one who gained a complete and utter reboot, one that proved successful enough that it has been the basis for the character ever since.
  • Quite a few consider John Byrne and his three-year run on the book to be this, as Byrne did his usual thing of ditching as much of what the writers and creators before him made as he could. The resulting Soft Reboot did some real damage to Diana's world by getting rid of her existing supporting cast and moving her to a new city (making it something of a patient zero for the critique of Wonder Woman not having much of an identity), and it was also widely seen as the smoking gun for Donna Troy's infamous Continuity Snarl by giving her a notoriously convoluted origin. Aside from that, Byrne self-admittedly didn't care about Wonder Woman, leading to Diana feeling like a supporting character in her own book so that he could instead play with the New Gods and other Kirby creations—and Kirby diehards rarely have anything nice to say about Byrne. The main positive result of it was the introduction of Cassandra Sandsmark, and even then, that has much more to do with later stories penned by Peter David and her appearances in Young Justice than anything Byrne wrote.
  • Wonder Woman (2006): The set-up after Infinite Crisis. After the Amazons and Greek Pantheon got Put on a Bus, DC tried to do an ill-fated revival of the white-suit Mod Era, not only four decades after the fashion trend died in the United States but after The Avengers itself was over. Even if one could stomach Diana as a secret agent in a white jumpsuit, she suddenly gained the boorish Nemesis as her love interest. That would be bad enough, but writer Alan Heinberg had other work, the run suffered from huge Schedule Slip, and replacement writer Jodi Picoult had to be brought on before Heinberg's first arc was even finished. From the outset, there were already a few big red flags: Picoult was an established multi-genre author, but had never written a comic book before (the closest was a superhero comic-style inset in a 2006 novel), she did not have any knowledge or interest in the franchise or comics in general (leading to her writing Diana as a sheltered fool unfamiliar with basic mortal society), and she was a personal acquaintance of editor Jim Lee from his time at Princeton, making the whole thing look like Lee called in a favor to trade off Picoult's name recognition. What really sunk the book, though, was that her run was also a tie-in to Amazons Attack!, considered one of the worst stories of the era due to unnecessary gore, a ridiculous plot, the Amazons being turned into Straw Feminists and continuity so poor that very basic details changed between issues.
  • Wonder Woman (2011): After Brian Azzarello's successful, albeit controversial, run in the New 52 era, Meredith Finch was chosen as his successor. Azzarello's run had the advantage of being clearly driven and self-contained. Finch's run, on the other hand, was meant to tie into the larger DCU and reintroduce characters that Azzarello's run ignored. The result was nothing short of a disaster. Narratives had no direction whatsoever, Diana came off as an ineffectual idiot, a new outfit was introduced that was mockingly described as "The Clown Suit", Donna Troy was reintroduced with a new origin that was instantly reviled by fans, and the series introduced such stupid plot decisions as a Face–Heel Turn for Hera that essentially spat on all the Character Development she had received in Azzarello's run. Add in downright Liefeldian artwork from Finch's husband David that objectified Diana, and you have arguably the most hated run in Wonder Woman's entire history.
  • James Robinson's run, which started during the Wonder Woman (Rebirth) era after Greg Rucka's acclaimed return to writing the character and Shea Fontana's brief run, has been reviled by many. Not only was Robinson a largely unwanted addition (especially since, per his own admission, he was made writer as a favor), but his run was picking up a point from the N52 era, which Greg Rucka's second run was largely dedicated to erasing. Even giving it the benefit of the doubt, many soured quickly as it saw Diana and her supporting cast ended up Out of Focus in favor of her Long-Lost Relative Jason, who was quickly despised by fans for being a Wangst-filled fratboy who was given constant Character Shilling. Add in a downright ineffectual portrayal of Darkseid and glacial pacing (to the point that entire issues did nothing but recap background elements readers were already told about) and fans were basically counting the days until Robinson left the book.

    The Flash 
  • The Trial of the Flash, the final Flash story of the Pre-Crisis era. A bit like The Clone Saga, this was a storyline that just wouldn't end, with Barry trying to get his wedding going, then being charged with murder, then time travel got into the mix... While meant to be long, it wasn't meant to be Barry's last story; partway through, the order came down from editorial that Barry would die in Crisis on Infinite Earths and to keep publishing the comics up to that point.
  • Wally was brought back from the Speed Force after Bart's death, but this time the book, once again, faced criticism due to his twins turning out to be Base-Breaking Characters that some accused of being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad. Mark Waid left DC completely (he would return to the publisher in 2020) after an editorial clash and the book had to live on life support for a year with fill-in writers until Barry Allen was brought back. Mark Waid says it's probably one of his works he was most severely disappointed about.
  • Barry's return met with this reaction from many, particularly those who loved Wally's character, but also non-Flash fans. With Barry's return brought about a sudden demotion of Wally into an extra at best (until being erased completely), while Barry's character was given several controversial rewrites, including giving him a Darker and Edgier backstory involving his mother's murder that many felt was unnecessary, to promoting him as the 'most important' of the Flash legacy that was felt as a disservice to the rest of the Flash family, who all in-turn were given a sharp Demoted to Extra status. General comic and DC fans dislike it for missing the point of the DCU and bringing back a character whose death was highly regarded, and whose resurrection was considered altogether unnecessary. Not helping is that Barry's return also brought back Eobard Thawne, which led to the removal of other villainous speedsters like Hunter Zolomon, Inertia, the Black Flash and Lady Savitar. That Thawne came back with retcons to his history and powers, as well as the retcon of him basically being responsible for everything bad that's happened to Barry, does not help him from being seen as overpowered and poorly written.
  • The New 52 era of the series is generally disliked by fans due to hitting the Reset Button on the franchise hard, erasing the entire Flash Family outside of Barry and with it the themes of legacy and generational power which had defined the franchise for the last 20 years, while Barry himself was left as a Vanilla Protagonist with little in the way of interesting personality or conflict. While the Brian Buccellato/Francis Manapul run did manage to overcome this and became one of the era's more well-liked books (despite some unpopular creative decisions), the Robert Venditti and Van Jensen was when the cracks really showed themselves. Unlike the previous duo, neither Venditti nor Jensen had any pre-existing knowledge of the franchise, and they were given the task of reintroducing important characters like Wally West and Eobard Thawne that Buccellato had avoided having to do. They dropped the ball completely, with incredibly divisive changes to Wally West and an extremely inconsistent Professor Zoom, leading to arguably the worst run of The Flash. Unlike the previous examples, which all had their fans and defenders, this run is quite possibly universally hated by readers. Add on Brett Booth's divisive 90s Image-inspired art right after Francis Manapul's acclaimed pencils, and the book had turned into a nightmare that never seemed to end. In the end, the series' sales reached rock bottom again and Geoff Johns had to do DC Rebirth to fix the damage this run had done to the character and his allies.

    Green Lantern 
  • In the '90s, Guy Gardner had his own solo series. After losing two separate rings to a Parallax-influenced Hal Jordan, he rechristened himself "Warrior" and somehow became the last descendant of an alien race, which gave him the power to turn his arms into guns... for some reason. Writers ignore this era at their peril, though: despite the godawful concept (apparently submitted as a joke), and equally bad '90s art, Beau Smith's run on Warrior is responsible for much of Guy's development from Jerkass to Boisterous Bruiser who owned a bar that was popular with superheroes and readers alike.
  • The '90s also saw Alan Scott change his title to Sentinel, to cement Kyle Rayner's position as the only Green Lantern, and was given an ugly costume and a retool to his personality that made him much more aloof and distant. This period was heavily disliked by writers too, and notably James Robinson wrote this line in Starman when Solomon Grundy called Alan "Lantern":
    Alan Scott: That's not my name anymore. I'm called Sentinel now.
    Grundy: A pity... The old name suited you.

  • Robert Venditti's run. While it was on the steep hill of continuing after Geoff Johns' legendary run, it rapidly became despised with its primary storyline that turned the Emotional Spectrum into a limited reservoir in a failed attempt to turn the franchise into a metaphor for environmentalism. Then, after that and several other stories failed to gain interest, Venditti jettisoned all the Lantern Corps (which had become one of the core elements of the mythos) and had Hal as the sole Green Lantern, wielding an ancient artifact made by the Guardians. Come Rebirth, virtually all the major changes Venditti made were undone and Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps, still written by Venditti, was warmly received by fans.

    Aquaman 
  • After Infinite Crisis, Aquaman got Put on a Bus and was replaced by a completely new Legacy Character named AJ Curry for Aquaman: Sword of Atlantis, while the original stuck around as a sea monster before being killed off. So disliked was the decision that it rendered the entire franchise largely unusable for several years, until Blackest Night finally saw the original get resurrected and the franchise getting a successful relaunch in the New 52.
  • Cullen Bunn's short-lived run on the New 52 title. The story is generic pulp fiction that Bunn himself even admits did not suit the character. At the same time, it also did its best to undo all the work the Johns and Parker runs did before it. Arthur is now hated by Atlanteans again despite the entirety of Johns' run focusing on his gaining acceptance. Mera is now hunting Arthur, destroying all the development their relationship went through in both previous runs, particularly Parker's. None of the supporting cast returned, not even Tula, who had been consistently used since being introduced. Arthur now has weird powers like teleportation thanks to Poseidon, who literally no Atlantean before this run made mention of, and who Arthur outright denied the existence of over in JLA. The reveal that Mera has an evil twin sister was laughed at for its incredible soap drama-esque nature. The mere cover of the first issue pissed fans off for very obviously trying to incorporate aspects of the movie design into Arthur's classic look, the result being an incredibly ugly costume. The only redeeming factor of the entire thing was introducing the New 52 Garth (though this also ignores Johns' run which mentions him being a newborn), and even then, Bunn didn't do anything with him, and this was likely Executive Meddling since DC began pushing the original Teen Titans at this time (complete with their own miniseries), meaning anyone could've done it. The backlash to Bunn's run was so strong that Bunn wanted to leave the book before his first issue even shipped, and was convinced to at least finish his arc by his editor.

    Green Arrow 
  • The New 52 series, Green Arrow (2011), up until Jeff Lemire's run. Starting on an already sour note by using Smallville's Green Arrow design and turning Ollie Younger and Hipper, writer J. T. Krul began his run with an Anvilicious Take That! against video games and new media that felt especially off-base considering not only how long-debunked its views were, but also the well-known left-leaning nature of its protagonist. After Krul left, things fell to Ann Nocenti, who told unremarkable, confusing stories where it seemed like half the dialogue wasn't on the page. Jeff Lemire began his run by burning the previous stuff to the ground and nobody complained.
  • After Lemire's run, Andrew Kreisberg and Ben Sokolowski took over and proceeded to toss away much of the goodwill Lemire had brought. Kreisberg being one of showrunners of Arrow and Sokolowski a writer on the show, they decided to reinvent the book into being essentially a comic adaptation of it, right down to using a Malcolm Merlyn-style bad guy who's the father of Mia Dearden (much like her TV counterpart Thea), and introduced Felicity Smoak to the fold. Characters from Lemire's run were written out in passing, and despite Oliver having been thought dead and losing his fortune during Lemire's run, he's suddenly got his life and fortune back with no explanation as to how. Much of the problems the show would have (this happened before Arrow's infamous Seasonal Rot in Season 3) were found in the comic, including Felicity's Spotlight-Stealing Squad and Romantic Plot Tumor, and subsequently DC replaced the writers with Ben Percy for DC You, who would immediately discard Felicity and Diggle, bringing back some of the previously-discarded supporting cast from Lemire's run, and quietly phased out most of the Arrow influences.
  • The majority of fans are in agreement that post-Justice League: Cry for Justice was one for Roy and Lian Harper, on account of Roy getting his arm severed and Lian getting brutally murdered in order to push Roy into being an angst-riddled, drug-addicted, psychotic vigilante. Fans loathed this era for how it stripped Roy of everything that made him an interesting character and for how Lian was reduced to a plot device in the worst possible way, especially when DC tried to spin this as a good thing because they thought they couldn't do any good stories if Lian was dragging Roy down. Fan and critical backlash at Rise of Arsenal and Titans: Villains for Hire proved otherwise.
  • In the New 52 and Rebirth, Roy got his arm back, but DC retconned Lian out of existence and, with the exception of Convergence, have shown no signs of wanting to bring her back. Roy himself was reduced to a prop to boost Jason Todd, having little characterization beyond struggling with substance abuse. And then DC Dropped a Bridge on Him and killed him off in the first issue of Heroes in Crisis, followed by another retcon on his past addiction by stating he was using prescribed pain meds and switched to heroin because it was safer and cheaper. This would be fixed in subsequent storylines with Roy's death retconned as a Heroic Sacrifice, his return as a Black Lantern and subsequent resurrection, and Lian would even turn up alive at long last under the identity "Shoes McGee", one of Catwoman's proteges, though Roy and Lian were still kept apart.

    Justice League 
  • Justice League Detroit. To wit, around 1984, the Justice League title had begun to undergo a sales decline. With Crisis on Infinite Earths still in the planning stages, the idea was made to make the book Younger and Hipper to appeal to the audience of New Teen Titans, which had become DC's most popular book at that point, by having the vast majority of the team be Put on the Bus, the JLA Satellite be destroyed, and having a group of new young heroes settle into a team lead by Aquaman, operating out of an abandoned factory in Detroit. Virtually no one liked the change in direction, as the new team members came off as shallow and unlikeable (most infamous being Vibe, a character who embodied basically every Latino stereotype under the sun), and it was clear long-time writer Gerry Conway had few solid ideas on where to go with the book, centering much of the run on angles like the team fighting a poor-man's Galactus Expy and Zatanna being kidnapped and held prisoner by cultists, then falling in love with their leader after merging minds with him. After an attempted Author's Saving Throw that moved the team out of Detroit and re-added Batman failed to make things work, the team was unceremoniously ended, with half the new team members being killed off and a third being Put on a Bus.
  • While Keith Giffen and J.M. Demattis' run on Justice League International is beloved, the book and its sister series Justice League Europe suffered immensely after both left the series in 1991. The following six years of stories, despite being headed by popular writers such as Mark Waid and Christopher Priest, are now largely forgotten. It became clear that no one at DC had any real idea what to do with the League, leading to gimmicky angles (such as killing off JLI Ensemble Dark Horse Ice, a decision which Waid would later openly regret), and giving into 90s tropes DC otherwise largely avoided, most blatantly in the infamous and short-lived Extreme Justice spinoff. It wouldn't be until Grant Morrison took on the writing role with JLA (1997) that the book would recover, in the process giving what many consider the definite run on the team.
  • The post Infinite Crisis series. While the general consensus is that it started off decently strong under the writing of Dwayne McDuffie, it eventually was hijacked by editors and became infamous as a big advertisement of everything else going on in the DCU, picking up and finishing story threads from other series; and the editors being able to dictate who could and could not be on the team. Not helping matters is this era saw the widely loathed Justice League: Cry for Justice mini-series, arguably the most reviled story in the League's history, owing to the pointlessly cruel, Darker and Edgier tone, poor writing that consisted largely of characters shouting endlessly about justice, and nonsensical storytelling.
  • While it has some fans, including doing relatively well enough to inspire a live-action film, Geoff Johns's run of Justice League (2011) was often seen as being emblematic of everything that was wrong with New 52, from its lack of legacy to Scrappy villains (such as Pandora and Grail). The first few arcs were widely derided for their Flanderization of the main seven, particularly with Wonder Woman and Batman, as the former was often portrayed as a violent barbarian and the latter as a controlling jerk. While Throne of Atlantis was seen as a possible Growing the Beard moment, it was immediately followed up by the more convoluted and padded-out Trinity War. Not helping matters was heavily panned romantic pairing of Superman and Wonder Woman. Following Forever Evil (2013) was a mess of Ass Pull moments and dropped plotlines that culminated in the Crime Syndicate being casually wiped away by Dr. Manhattan to make way for DC Rebirth. The final arc Darkseid War further left several plot twists (such as there being three Jokers and Wonder Woman having a brother) whose follow-ups were so poorly received that they could probably warrant their own respective A.A.E. entries.
  • Bryan Hitch's run in Rebirth is another low-spot. The main complaints are that the decision to keep things strictly limited to The Seven has led the roster to feel stale, the nonsensical attempts to ship Barry Allen and Jessica Cruz (despite little interest in the pairing and Barry's own book resuming his relationship with Iris West), the general feeling of disconnection, with virtually nothing happening in the book being reflected in the rest of the DCU and that the run seemed to basically recycle one or two arcs repeatedly. It even got memetic, as whenever the run was brought up when it was still going, people would constantly ask when a new writer would get the title. While the short follow-up run by Christopher Priest was considered an improvement, few tears were shed when it was announced that the book would relaunched under the "New Justice" line.

    Teen Titans 
  • General agreement is that the first decline occurred after George Perez left. This sent a number of shockwaves throughout the book, including a huge increase in Wangst, Deathstroke being Easily Forgiven, and the introduction of the much-reviled Danny Chase. Then came the long, difficult-to-follow Titans Hunt arc, and the book began self-destructing, with a ton of uninteresting and/or unlikable new characters being introduced, loads of 90s clichés, chaotic storytelling, and art, and tons of Ass Pulls. After Cyborg got Put on a Bus to Hell, the book was left in shambles, with the team constantly changing and being interrupted by crossovers. By the end, many felt the ending to the run was a Mercy Kill. However, many fans consider Roy's era as the leader of the Titans as a positive time, especially with his father figure dynamics with Rose Wilson, the second Terra and Grant Wilson (to the point of helping him with coping with the trauma from past sexual abuse), Kyle Rayner and Donna Troy joining the team as powerhouses, as well as managing to bookend the title in a way that felt respectful to the legacy of the title.
  • Everything in Titans (1999) after Devin Grayson left. While her replacement started off relatively strong, a bizarre case of Executive Meddling by editor Andrew Helfer (who wanted to push a team of random runaway orphans as the main characters) caused a huge amount of planned storylines to be tossed away, with the replacements making very little sense with the prior set-up. This, combined with an infamous story where Jesse Quick slept with her mother's fiancé, left the book in shambles by the time Helfer left, and it was left dragging its feet until it was canceled.
  • While divisive for its approach to the Young Justice characters, Geoff Johns' 2003 relaunch of the series was largely well-received in terms of direction. Unfortunately, after Infinite Crisis, Johns' plans for the book went down the drain due to the one-two punch of Superboy's death as a result of legal disputes with Siegel and Shuster's estates and Bart Allen being given a Plot-Relevant Age-Up and then death due to plans to bring Barry Allen back in the Flash. This left the book directionless for years after Johns left, and the series bounced between various writers with inconsistent creative direction and ideas (including an infamous story where a demonic Wonder Dog killed Marvin and crippled Wendy from the Superfriends and was later killed himself by the Titans, leading to backlash from comics sites), characters holding the Jerkass Ball, and the unstable team roster. It didn't help that the mid-2000's is when the Titans as a whole were made into DC's main supply for C-List Fodder in events, making the tone all the more dour. Things did eventually begin with stabilize with the possibility of both Damian Wayne and Irey West joining, only for that to be Cut Short by the New 52 and abandoned.
  • The New 52 Teen Titans is considered one of the weakest titles of the reboot, even among Scott Lobdell's other panned works from the same era. The first arc failed to leave a good impression on readers, as the plot haphazardly tried to cross over with six other books, and the lead characters had core personality traits ironed out to almost In Name Only level. Later plotlines excessively focused on fight scenes to the detriment of character development, which also contributed to a convoluted and inconsistent narrative where the Titans didn't feel like a team or even like friends. This, mixed with uncomfortable sexualisation of minors, very bland villains, and bizarre attempts to incorporate traits from Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol make this era of the team one of its most infamous.
  • Will Pfeifer wrote largely forgettable stories trying incredibly hard to be "relevant", with the social media side of things amped up and characters being unlikeable, a huge amount of focus on Creator's Pet Manchester Black, and tons of continuity issues with the previous run. When Lobdell was brought back, Pfeifer had to rush whatever he had planned and just ended up dumping most of it. The series then limped along with some fill-in writers (who wrapped up some lingering plot threads) until the DC Rebirth relaunch, which ignored the majority of the New 52 era while also making fun of it in-universe.
  • Dan Abnett's Titans (Rebirth) run. The series started off strong, with a focus on the friendship between the characters and the return of Breakout Character Wally West. However, the huge mishandling of Wally West and Donna Troy that seemed to fundamentally misunderstand parts of their characters, awful romance plots that went nowhere or were unwanted or poorly executed, Conflict Ball elements that existed for no reason (especially when the Justice League show up to basically be huge assholes for no reason a few times) and plots that felt straight out of the 90s all led to a title that nobody but the most diehard fans liked. The handling of Donna Troy is especially despised for, against all odds, reigniting her Continuity Snarl by being beholden to her despised New 52 incarnation, in a relaunch where writers seem to be encouraged to scrap what they dislike from that era. The only positively received aspects were Donna Troy's relationship with Roy Harper and the implication of a past history between Roy and Cheshire (because it leaves the door open for Lian Harper's return). In the end, the series was cancelled, and Abnett even apologised in-universe for his handling of Wally. Unfortunately, attempts to shift the book into a new focus in the aftermath of Justice League: No Justice did not quite pan out. The book lost the majority of its cast to other titles and was forced to replace them, becoming tangled in the stories of other titles. The new direction didn't resonate with fans, leading the series to be cancelled not long after.
  • Teen Titans (Rebirth) isn't considered much better in this regard. Like its sister book, it started strong, but quickly fell apart afterwards. The main problem ended up being the portrayal of Damian, who ended up being written as a huge jerk who treated his team like crap and yet was never really reprimanded for it. Even beyond that, the team, being largely whoever was available from the Wolfman/Perez run or their legacy versions, felt extremely stale and unable to develop as a group, with attempts to develop a bond between them being composed of characters quite literally explaining their character and motivations to others and then just becoming friends out of nowhere and never developing beyond that. The stories were pretty much regurgitations of prior runs or incredibly basic concepts and the book kept getting tied into crossovers that developed the stories of other books, leaving it utterly directionless. Sure enough, the run ended as a result of DC's Justice League: No Justice Crisis Crossover, with Promoted Fanboy Adam Glass becoming the new writer and everyone besides Damian and Wallace getting dumped.

    Doom Patrol 
  • Paul Kupperberg's run in the '80s is regarded as a bland and forgettable attempt to profit off Teen Titans and X-Men-style angst. Probably the only reason people know it exists now is that the critically acclaimed surreal Grant Morrison run is known to have started with issue #19, so there must have been something in the previous 18 issues.
  • Jon Arcudi's run is only remembered for its Audience-Alienating Ending where he Dropped a Bridge on massive Ensemble Dark Horse Coagula, DC's first trans superheroine just to give more angst to Robotman, alongside also killing Dorothy Spinner. Despite Coagula (and Rachel Pollack's overall run) being subjected to heavy Values Resonance Vindicated by History, they still haven't been brought back from the dead aside from a cameo in DC Pride, a move that has been harshly criticised by Doom Patrol fans. The criticism only intensified when DC chose to ignore the Pride cameo a year later with Unstoppable Doom Patrol, which not only doubled down on the idea that Coagula and Dorothy were dead, its creative team chose to do it right before Rachel Pollack herself died after a well-known and lengthy battle with lymphoma.
  • Also of note here is John Byrne's brief run in the mid-2000s, which is remembered for virtually nothing apart from retconning every previous version of the team, including the original and the aforementioned beloved Morrison run, out of existence with no explanation. This was undone with a Hand Wave in an Infinite Crisis tie-in, which explained that the retconning was one of the many temporal anomalies caused by the eponymous event, with all versions of the Patrol returning afterward.
  • The New 52 wasn't kind to the team: The Drake-era team isn't formed until after Forever Evil and is heavily Demoted to Extra and Out of Focus even by Doom Patrol standards. The Kupperberg-era team dies on its first appearance as C-List Fodder, and perhaps worst of all, the Morrison and Pollack characters are nowhere to be seen. Even weirder, Teen Titans (New 52) seem to be adapting some elements of the Morrison run, such as Danny the Street and the Men from N.O.W.H.E.R.E, but it never really amounted to anything, and they were In Name Only versions of the characters.

    Power Girl 
  • Power Girl's Post-Crisis self had no origin since she was an alternate reality version of said character from a reality which never existed. Her origin was retconned to being the daughter of Atlantean wizard Arion who used her as a baby-maker for the real Chosen One before being swiftly discarded (with good reason). Now she's back to being Supergirl's double from Earth-2.
  • The New 52 turned Karen into a hostile Anti-Hero stranded in another Earth with a bland costume, separated her from much of her original supporting cast in favour of making her closer with Huntress (an idea that admittedly sounded cool but wasn't used to its full potential), and flanderising her sex appeal (She went from The Tease to Lovable Sex Maniac). This, plus the general cynicism that permeated the Super-books of the era and the removal of the JSA, the team she has always been part of, made this period almost universally despised.
  • After World's Finest was cancelled, a new Power Girl, Tanya Spears, joined the Teen Titans. She quickly became a Replacement Scrappy alongside Wallace West, due to being an In Name Only version of the character and having no personality, as well as being yet another attempt of separating Power Girl from the JSA titles. Tellingly, while Wallace was eventually Rescued from the Scrappy Heap, Tanya has been in Comic-Book Limbo ever since DC Rebirth.

    Other 
  • The Atom: For a short while in the 1990s, Ray Palmer was de-aged to a teenager and was placed in charge of a new incarnation of the Teen Titans in Teen Titans (1996). Fans reacted poorly, the series booted him onto the JLA, and Ray's de-aging was quietly undone.
  • During The New 52, Black Canary was revamped heavily thanks to the annexing of the Justice Society of America from continuity, which, among other things, led to a completely different backstory. Rather than Dinah Laurel Lance following her mother, Dinah Drake, the two were merged into a single character, Dinah Drake-Lance, who instead of being a Golden Age crimefighter was a former homeless girl who was taken in by a dojo master and became a member of Team 7, with history tied with Penguin and Deathstroke. Ironically, things were fixed when they decided to reinvent Black Canary as the lead singer of a punk-rock band also named Black Canary, a premise that sounds alienating, but ended up restoring much of Dinah Lance's personality, wardrobe, and history, including her status as a legacy character following her mother's footsteps (albeit now, her mother had been missing since she was young and she'd spent her teen years homeless), so that when the book ran its course, Dinah had pretty much been restored to her pre-52 status, and the new aspects (being a rock singer and formerly homeless) being mostly well-received additions.
  • "The New Blackhawk Era". In 1967, DC decided to try to bolster sales on Blackhawk by revamping the flying squadron as costumed superheroes. Superhero fans continued to not care about the Blackhawks, while Blackhawk fans wanted them to continue being the Blackhawks, and especially didn't appreciate their reinvention being prompted by the Justice League telling them what losers they were. The classic version was restored a year and a half later (with their superhero headquarters being blown up with the costumes inside), but not in time to save the book. In JLA: Year One, a brief gag has them wearing the costumes for less than a day, before deciding this is a stupid idea.
  • Cyborg suffered a substantial one in the New 52 era when DC attempted to promote the character to A-List as a core member of the Justice League (Geoff Johns, who wrote the Justice League run featuring Cyborg, also incorporated him into Flashpoint presumably to test the waters on whether he would be successful as an A-Lister). Not only was the decision highly controversial among fans for erasing both the role of the Martian Manhunter and his relationship with the Teen Titans, but Vic's actual personality, role and relationships were all left severely diluted, with little attempt to integrate him into the League's dynamic outside of a token friendship with Shazam in the latter half of Johns' run, leading to accusations of tokenism from DC to promote a black character. Zack Snyder would make Cyborg The Heart in his Justice League film as a way to fix this when adapting the same material. Varying adaptations around the same time also perpetuated this depiction throughout the 2010s to the point of it becoming his default portrayal among mainstream audiences, seeming to popularize him in this role, to the point that DC League of Super-Pets still featured him as a core Justice League member long after DC's push for him in the comics as one would end. Despite this, Vic wouldn't receive a solo series until 2015, and, while David Walker's run gained some praise, his Rebirth book was widely accused of re-treading the same stories over and over about his lost humanity without actually committing to building him up, all while he continued to function as The Generic Guy on the Justice League. It wouldn't be until 2020 and the publication of Dark Nights: Death Metal that Vic's relationship with the Titans would be finally restored.
  • Deathstroke suffered one through the New 52.
    • The 2011 run started off good but then just went nowhere once Liefeld took over, who drove it into the ground and killed any potential plot. Infamously, it was one of the New 52 creator shuffles that happened when sales started to drop, to the point it went through Jordan, Williamson and Liefeld in 6 issues (8-14).
    • The 2014 third volume started off again strong but plots were dropped and meandered for no good reason. Even though the artwork was fine-ish, the whole main story just stopped at one point and was brought up later in a flashback comment. It didn't help that through it, Deathstroke slowly devolved more into an edgy '90s Anti-Hero, as with most New 52 characters. The 2016 Christopher Priest run was considered a massive step up, however, and it remains one of Rebirth's most beloved titles.
  • Firestorm, under the watch of John Ostrander in the late '80s, became Darker and Edgier, leading up to the big revelation... that the character was meant to be Earth's fire elemental. Oh, and the power plant sabotage that brought Ronnie Raymond and Martin Stein together in the first place? Not an accident. In an attempt to make Firestorm's origin more deep or something (see also: the first of the JMS/Quesada Spider-Man offenses listed in the Marvel section), it was later explained that Martin Stein was always meant to be Firestorm/the fire elemental. Ronnie just got in the way (which was "rectified" in Firestorm (vol. 2) #100, when Stein replaces Ronnie and Mikhail "Pozhar" Arkadin in the Firestorm Matrix). This baffling turn, in all likelihood, was an attempt to tie into the revelations with Swamp Thing, as had been done with a few other characters. Sadly, what worked for a horror-based Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore led to mass-alienation in Lighter and Softer works written by anyone slightly less talented than Moore.
  • Hawkman:
    • The best example would be the era that happened a little after the beginning of the Hawkworld ongoing and Hawkman's return over in JSA. Namely for how amazingly convoluted things became, with the Fel Andar retcon that turned him into a supervillain, as well as just being the era of Continuity Snarl that pretty much everyone now ignores, yet still has come to define Hawkman in the public consciousness.
    • The New 52 Hawkman was changed into a barbarian psychopath with barely any personality or supporting cast, as well as no ties with the JSA, while still refusing to tone down his Continuity Snarl.
  • Impulse:
    • Right after Infinite Crisis, Wally West was lost to the Speed Force along with his family and this led to Bart Allen becoming the Flash after a Plot-Relevant Age-Up. Due to the character losing his individuality and Fun Personified nature, even his own fans hated it. This series ended as a massive failure, to the point that DC had to kill Bart to forget it ever happened, and everyone involved with Bart's character voiced active dislike towards it. The creative team of the book said they had no intention of writing for the DCU ever again due to the terrible experience, while Bart's time as the Flash is seldom ever brought up, and when it is, it is always in a negative way, in-universe and out.
    • New 52's Bart Allen (no, sorry, Bar Tor) was changed from an energetic Bunny-Ears Lawyer Nice Guy Keet to an angsty Christian fundamentalist with no ties to the Speed Force (his powers seem oddly more in line with Jay Garrick's original superpower awakening) who was from the future and led a rebellion against a totalitarian regime, but when he saw his sister get killed he chickened out, betrayed his rebellion and sold them and was sent to the past for his own safety. Not helping this bizarre new retcon was his fluctuating characterization, lame costume, and general annoyance, and his hatedom just augmented when his backstory was revealed. Tellingly, he was quietly Put on a Bus to Hell towards the end of the series, with no mentions made of this version of the character since then.
  • Metal Men:
    • The 90s series. Given that the Metal Men are basically the Silver Age given shape, that a 1990s comic featuring them would be this is to be expected. It did not disappoint. First, it retconned their origins so they were Doc Magnus's old friends in robot bodies rather than robots. It followed up by killing off Gold, The Leader, and putting Doc's mind in a robot body as well. Doc's new form was Veridium, a nonexistent mystery metal that gave him generic energy powers. There's a lot of core aspects to the Metal Men: their AI angle, the simple but strong personalities, the good character dynamic, Doc being the Non-Action Guy and Team Dad, and the scientific (on paper, at least) use of real metallurgical properties as the basis for the team's powers, and the miniseries threw them out right from the starting line, even before getting into the skeeviness of how Doc was now being set up with the fiancee of his dead brother. The series was shoved firmly into Canon Discontinuity by 52, which declared that it was all just a hallucination brought on by Doc's loneliness and going off his meds.
    • During the Silver Age itself, there was "The New Hunted Metal Men", in which circumstances cause the Metal Men to lose control of the powers, causing unintentional collateral damage and putting Doc Magnus into a coma, not to mention souring public opinion of them. After four issues of being on the run, the Metal Men were ultimately deemed too destructive for society and set for execution, but a sympathizer helps fake their deaths and allows them to continue saving the world under secret human identities (complete with Steven Ulysses Perhero aliases), while Doc Magnus himself becomes Brainwashed and Crazy (with said brainwashing being claimed to be irreversible). The comic was ultimately cancelled as a result, but the Audience-Alienating Era was undone by The Brave and the Bold, which had the Metal Men abandon their human identities and their reputation get restored, and their comic was relaunched a few years later, with Doc Magnus returning to normal with help from the CIA. Craig Shutt describes the entire era in-depth here, and Commander Benson details why this direction didn't work here.
  • The New Gods could be said to have been on one since Jack Kirby left the book, not helped by his original run being Vindicated by History and becoming a Cult Classic. The New Gods were a heavy victim of Depending on the Writer where their true nature (Sufficiently Advanced Aliens vs. Physical Gods vs. Anthropomorphic Personifications), levels of power (requiring the entire Legion of Superheroes, Superboy and an empire of Daxamites to defeat a severely weakened Darkseid vs. the Suicide Squad being able to contain them), characterisation (Notably in Orion, Highfather and Darkseid) and politics (New Genesis being a Utopia of art, technology and peace vs. A war-affected dictatorship with severe Fantastic Racism) were inconsistent and constantly in flux, with only Grant Morrison's JLA (1997) and Walt Simonson's Orion being considered actual very good depictions of the characters. The Audience-Alienating Era seemed to be heading towards an end after Final Crisis applied Arc Welding and reconciled every depiction of the New Gods in a comprehensive (sort of) way, but the New 52 was a step backwards, subjecting Darkseid to Adaptational Wimp and Orion to Adaptational Jerkass, and depicting the former as barely more than a Generic Doomsday Villain with a cliched plot about finding his daughter, Grail. Fortunately, Tom King's critically acclaimed Mister Miracle (2017) alongside Dark Crisis restoring Darkseid to his lovecraftian roots and Final Crisis being Vindicated by History seem to have finally found a proper depiction of the New Gods that has chimed with the fans, but only time will tell.
  • During the New 52, a reinvention of The Question was attempted that presented him as a supernatural entity along the lines of the Phantom Stranger and Pandora who, rather than wearing a special mask that made him appear faceless, was literally cursed to lack a face. The angle proved incredibly unpopular due to rendering the character unrecognizable. A short while later, Question's identity of Vic Sage was then reintroduced in New Suicide Squad as an ARGUS agent who becomes Amanda Waller's successor as the squad's overseer, but this depiction was unpopular as well. After vanishing for several years, both Vic and Renee would return under the traditional identity, with the entire supernatural angle and his role as an ARGUS agent being rendered Canon Discontinuity.
  • Shazam!: After the lead-up to Infinite Crisis saw the Wizard killed off and the Rock of Eternity destroyed, Billy Batson was Put on the Bus to take the Wizard's place, Mary was depowered, and Freddy Freeman would take on the mantle, with the code-name being changed to Shazam for the first time. What began from there was a long series of back and forth, as Billy, Mary, and Black Adam's family were stuck in the Heel–Face Revolving Door, with virtually no creative direction or idea as to where anything was going, while Freddy himself did virtually nothing besides get impersonated by Prometheus in Justice League: Cry for Justice. This dragged on until the Shazam! (2012) reboot, which while incredibly controversial at the time of its original publication due to portraying Billy as a cynical jerk has since been Vindicated by History for its other aspects (the Shazamily), and provided the basis for all modern incarnations of the character going forward.
  • The Spectre:
    • The Spectre had a storyline about Uncle Sam, starting with the basis that, as he was the Anthropomorphic Personification of America, he hadn't always been Uncle Sam, instead being the Minuteman, or Brother Jonathan, or split in two as Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, depending on the era. All very reasonable. Somehow, that led to him being reinvented as The Patriot, who wore a white bodysuit with red stripes on one shoulder and a blue patch with stars on the other, and a golden space helmet with an eagle on top. Eventually, somebody realized that, by their own rules, he should keep being Uncle Sam until a new "Spirit of America" image took root naturally, and he reverted to his old look.
    • A good chunk of The Spectre's Post-Crisis run can be considered this. It was during this period that the character's Good is Not Nice characterization started getting more and more Flanderized to the point he would sentence the entire population of a country to death just because they were in a war. This eventually lead to Corrigan abandoning the Spectre, itself leading to the Day of Vengeance storyline, where the now host-less and directionless Spectre got tricked into murdering every magic user in the DC universe, only stopping when the Presence itself intervened and forcefully bonded it to a new host. If it wasn't for the design and name, you probably wouldn't recognize this as the same character as the Pre-Crisis Spectre. Oh, and he also started being the subject to The Worf Effect at every opportunity.
  • Many consider everything done with the Suicide Squad since the New 52 began to be this, despite ironically being when DC tried to push the team as A-Listers. Among the complaints include the mindless nature of the storytelling in contrast to the deeply complex and political nature of the original Ostrander run, Deadshot and Harley Quinn becoming a combined Spotlight-Stealing Squad, the Anyone Can Die nature of the team being watered down to where the team is mostly invincible A/B-Listers with deaths being either fake-outs or relegated to minor characters, and Amanda Waller being flanderized from a complex, morally grey Anti-Hero into a full-blown villain with zero redeeming qualities, which eventually escalated into the rest of the continuity when the DC Infinite Frontier run turned her into a Multiversal Conqueror, followed by her becoming an outright Big Bad in Dawn of DC, not helped by her facing no consequences in stories where she was the main villain, often winning instead. About the only exception to this is Tom Taylor's short-lived run, which despite being Cut Short is liked for at least trying to readjust the series back to something fans of the original run recognize.
  • Brian K. Vaughan's run on Swamp Thing becomes this by refocusing on Alec Holland's half-human daughter Tefé, and making her an angsty sociopath who seemed to dislike both humanity and the Green equally, and reduced Alec to a satellite character in a book with his name on it. Vaughan took the poor reception in stride, joking that the only people buying the comic by the end of his run were his immediate family. Later runs on the title undid almost everything Vaughan initiated, depowering Tefé, giving her some much-needed morality, and refocusing back on her father - until the New 52 wiped her from the DCU completely.

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