YMMV / DC Infinite Frontier

• Awesome Art: Wonder Woman is drawn by Travis Moore, who does a great job of making Diana very pretty. The same goes for her new friend Sigfried the Dragon Slayer, who despite being a Viking, is a handsome Pretty Boy.
• Broken Base: The news of Lian Harper being reintroduced into the main continuity has been split, mostly over how she is being handled. The more vocal critics object over her Plot-Relevant Age-Up and her amnesia to the point they consider her an In Name Only character, not unlike what happened to many of the characters in New 52. Others are more accepting after a beloved character has been absent from the main continuity for over ten years and just want to see Roy and Lian reunite.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • With a number of characters being brought back including both Roy and Lian Harper, there will be fans speculating about what these characters have been up to or whether not they will interact with others as they did in the previous continuity. Potential plots may include:
  • Roy and Lian reuniting.
• Heartwarming Moments: Alan Scott coming out to his kids. Todd realizing what he was doing and his sheer happiness for his father, them sharing knowing looks before he finally says it, and followed by Jenni tearfully embracing her gay dad and gay brother, all make it extremely emotional, for what amounts to only three pages of story.
  • On the other hand, the reaction of Alan's wife Molly has not been shown. That reaction may be quite different given how long the two have been married.
• I Knew It!: Many fans guessed/hoped that Wally West was going to be the main Flash again once Death Metal and Future State were over. Besides this just being the direction Speed Metal built towards, but with Dan DiDio gone (Wally was DiDio's Creator's Pest), there was no need to keep mistreating Wally, and with many of the creators at DC currently being people who grew up with Wally and/or were working during his hey-day, along with the strong fan sentiment, it seemed natural that he'd get embraced again.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!:
  • Though people are largely positive about it, two of the biggest causes for concern amount to this. Firstly, Batman-related content continues to dominate the line, to the point Batman books outnumber both Superman and Wonder Woman's titles combined. Secondly, the event is marketed as a return to the norm and doing away with the Audience-Alienating Era, which many feel is what they promised already with DC Rebirth.
  • There's also some disappointment that they chose to continue Jon Kent down the character arc he was on, when many were hoping he'd be de-aged back to 10 and returned to being Superboy. The main reasons being that there's zero chance he'll genuinely replace his father, the general dislike for the decision to age him up in the first place and that it means he's moved further away from his friendship with Damian.
  • The second issue of Secret Files reveals that Lian Harper's existence was brought back into continuity. However, fans have immediately voiced their annoyance that she's still dead. Thankfully, she's actually alive, although without her memories, going by "Shoes", one of the Alleytown Strays that Catwoman is mentoring. Though the fact that she was aged up and stripped of her memories and former personality to give her angst, as well as separating her from her parents, is eerily similar to what DC did to Jon Kent which was famously unpopular. What doesn't help matters is that gutting her personality and making her support for a Batman-related character is exactly what DC did to her father, and that was also massively unpopular. Adding that Lian's also suffering amnesia with nothing left of the kindhearted girl she once was, it's eerily and frustratingly reminiscent of when DC had Nightwing shot in the head and losing all of his memories to become Ric Grayson. Keep in mind the Ric era lasted for two years and was loathed by everyone for a variety of reasons (such as Dan Didio's acknowledged ongoing attempts to destroy Nightwing and the plot also being handled by the loathed Scott Lobdell) In essence, Lian's return has been criticized for being a mashup of multiple editorial decisions that were all hated by the fandom.
• Old Guard Versus New Blood: Is an attempt to appeal to both. On the one hand, Post-Crisis continuity (as well as Pre-Crisis continuity from both Earth 1 and 2) has been restored and with it, so has some older set-ups like Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown's Batgirls, Wally West returning to being the primary Flash alongside the extended Flash Family, and the JSA and their legacies returning to form. At the same time, they're introducing and promoting many new characters to prominences, such as Naomi, Yara Flor's Wonder Girl, Jess Chambers and Bolt, and many newcomers for Teen Titans Academy, while also starting everything off with a fresh status quo that should be more-or-less easy to jump into.
• Pandering to the Base: Given that the event is intended to be about realigning DC to fix their recent mistakes, it's gotten some heat from New 52 fans, particularly over benching Barbara Gordon to return her being to Oracle (though she's remaining Batgirl part-time, and given that Batgirl was canceled due to incredibly low sales numbers, it's not as if many were really caring that much about her), and to having Barry Allen be Put on a Bus to give Wally West the Flash title again, as well as being lighter and more idealistic instead of Darker and Edgier. For most fans, long-term and new, this is fixing some severe mistakes, but for the Vocal Minority who joined the fandom during the New 52, it feels like fans of the pre-New 52 DC are Running the Asylum (which is ironic considering how the New 52 was handled).
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Since his return in 2009, Barry Allen has been a controversial figure, as he was responsible for the erasure of the Flash Family and the mistreatment of Wally West both in-universe and out^note out-of-universe, he was a Creator's Pet for editors who believe the other characters made him less special and thus were written out; in-universe, it was Barry creating Flashpoint that caused Dr. Manhattan to discover the DC Universe and alter it, which is what erased the Flash Family and caused all the suffering that occurred in the DC Universe, not helped by him also getting completely revamped with a new, Darker and Edgier backstory that slowly became the entire basis of his character, as well as taking elements of Wally's character by becoming Younger and Hipper, all while doing nothing to help his beloved nephew/surrogate-son as he suffered. Come Infinite Frontier, Barry's completely dedicated to helping his long-suffering nephew, and is shown actively checking in on the other Flash Family when Wally goes missing and Barry loses his speed to make sure they're OK. He's also once more characterized as an adult old enough to have a 20-something son, as well as portrayed as a caring father figure, who's upbeat but in a nerdy way and makes no mention of his dead mother. Essentially, they revived the Silver Age characterization of Barry Allen.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: The usual Dick/Kory vs Dick/Babs fight has been really ramped up here, with Tom Taylor's Nightwing run clearly favoring Dick/Babs while Tim Sheridan's Teen Titans Academy clearly favoring Dick/Kory.
• Spoiled by the Format: The character bios in DC's Festival of Heroes: The Asian Superhero Celebration spelled it out to readers that "Shoes", one of the Alleytown Strays in Catwoman, is Lian Harper, while the story she was featured in is a bit more ambiguous about her identity.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: A number of readers have commented about the Spectre's disdainful feelings towards the idea of Jon Kent becoming Superman by agreeing with him. While the Spectre's meant to be seen as a dick about the subject, the fandom has largely hated the fact that Jon was so quickly aged from 10 to 17 due to how overall bland he became. So many agree with the Spectre that Jon shouldn't be Superman because he should've never been forced to age so fast.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Barry Allen once again when his whole sequence with Wally West features Barry stating he is leaving to help President Superman deal with something Multiverse-related. In regards to his departure, Barry tells Wally that he's now the Flash and is leaving Earth-0 under Wally's care. While this is meant to be seen as if Barry's passing the torch to Wally, aside from the glaringly obvious issue that Wally was already the Flash for years, the whole thing comes across as if Barry's patronizing Wally. The idea that Barry thinks he needs to give Wally his blessing after everything Barry did that ended up practically destroying Wally's life is incredibly galling on Barry's part. Later on, Barry's responsibility for wrecking the Multiverse as a whole are acknowledged by Machinehead of Earth-8. Machinehead points out to President Superman that all of their worlds suffered massive damage thanks to Barry causing Flashpoint and he's just been allowed to roam free ever since. While President Superman does technically agree with Machinehead's observation in that, yes, Barry did cause Flashpoint, Barry's screwups are further downplayed due to Machinehead acting in the role of a villain working with a Multiverse-wide Injustice League in league with Darkseid. So even if Barry does try to atone for his treatment of Wally as mentioned below, he's still not properly held accountable for his overall crimes due to the accuser once again being an antagonist who poses an immediate threat.
    • This is fortunately mitigated by the following arc in The Flash, which reframes the situation as Wally was trying to retire from heroics. Though the original scene still stands, the situation is less that Wally needs "permission" to be the Flash, but rather he needs to rediscover his passion for being the Flash, due to the Trauma Conga Line he'd been through. Barry is fortunately very sympathetic of Wally and helps him first in his attempt to rid himself of his powers so he can retire in peace, then goes full Papa Wolf trying to find Wally when he goes missing. He unfortunately loses a little sympathy when he declares that they should've simply forgiven Wally after what happened in Sanctuary, as he blatantly leaves out that Wally wouldn't have ever been in Sanctuary if Barry had just helped him find Jai and Irey in the first place.
  • Cheshire after Festival of Heroes revealed she knew Lian was alive and left her amnesiac daughter at a church in Gotham City thinking it would be better for her than going back to Roy. Unfortunately, knowing that Lian is currently a homeless orphan who had to resort to stealing on a regular basis in order to survive and the implication the rest of her childhood and most of her adolescence was spent growing up without a family or any real sense of stability only makes Cheshire come across as shortsighted and incredibly neglectful. With the general implication she allowed Roy and everyone else to believe Lian was dead, and thus deciding Lian was better off without the love and support of her father and their extended family, Jade doesn't come out looking good at all. One even has to ask why Jade thought this was a good thing to do, when she herself had a similar childhood after her mother died. You could argue she believed that Roy would not be able to care for Lian after falling off the wagon, but he would have likely gotten clean if he knew she was alive. There's also the fact that Lian has always adored her father and their extended family, so if she does regain her memories she'd most likely be heartbroken or enraged at her mother deliberately cutting her off from Roy, the Titans, and the Arrow Family under the excuse it was for her safety.
• Win Back the Crowd:
  • Fan reception to Brian Michael Bendis on Justice League is naturally mixed thanks to his equally-vocal Fandom and Hatedom, but people are responding well to the line-up, which has avoided the Big Seven focus^note which had been the case for the last decade and people were growing bored of, primarily because it was considered creatively uninspired and quite limiting to what the Justice League can be, to instead a mixed team featuring new characters like Naomi, old classics like Green Arrow and Black Canary, and unexpected ones like Hippolyta and Black Adam.
  • The announced creative team of Becky Cloonan and Michael Conrad is considered this for Wonder Woman fans after the Audience-Alienating Era and So Okay, It's Average run of James Robinson, G. Willow Wilson, and Mariko Tamaki. In addition, the announced, Sensational Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman: Black and Gold as part of the character's 80th Anniversary have also been well-received.
  • The announcement that Dan Jurgens would be writing a new Blue & Gold miniseries reuniting Booster Gold and the Ted Kord Blue Beetle was very well-received by fans on social media, after what was considered to be an Audience-Alienating Era for Booster Gold in Tom King's Batman (Tom King).

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