DC Convergence

Wow, going by the Author's Saving Throw page, this event resolved pretty much everything in the pre-Flashpoint timeline. I knew Ryan and Lian were coming back, but Ted, Earth-2 Superman, and the Dibnys too? Damn. Good on you, DC.

By the way, does that make this storyline basically a tacit admission by DC that they were wrong to reboot when they did and leave so many things hanging?

edited 31st May '15 7:09:42 PM by HamburgerTime

No, it's basically the writers saying "We didn't like these storylines and since DC said we could do basically anything, we're going to fix them." I mean, the writer for Convergence: Titans basically said that he hated Lian's death, which is why he brought her back.

If the writers hated doing those stories so much, were they all editorially mandated?

The writers of the new Convergence stories are not the same as the writers of the old stories — for instance, James Robinson wrote Cry for Justice which feature Lian dying, but he didn't write Convergence: Titans.

However, Lian dying (and Star City being devastated) was editorially mandated. Basically, although Robinson tried to write it well, Cry for Justice was a big clusterfuck. It started out as an ongoing, but was then changed to a mini-series. It was going to be about a separate Justice League team, but then they decided they didn't want to do that.

Finally, at the end, DC editorial wanted a bunch of cities to be devastated and more characters to die, but Robinson managed to convince them only to do Star City. And even though he didn't want to, Lian died.

Basically: DC really loved to fuck over James Robinson. Even when he provided them with a cool series, like Earth 2, they messed it up.

edited 31st May '15 8:24:13 PM by alliterator

Basically, Robinson had editorial protection when his friend Archie 'Nicest Man in Comics' Goodwin was alive, which is part of why his Starman series kicked so much ass, but afterwards, well...

What happened to Earth 2 is particularly bizarre. Here Robinson had a great concept and the sales were solid (especially in trade) - and they clearly had no interest in anything he was focusing on or setting up, from the way things began going.

From what I've heard about the drama over that, it almost sounds like someone in editorial hated him personally.

Yeah, it was basically Robinson going, "I'm going to set up this world without Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman and it's going to be really good and it's going to have all the JSA members, but younger."

And DC was all, "We want it to have an evil Superman and also Batman. Oh and it's going to be destroyed, too."

And Robinson was all, "...I quit."

It was more like "hey James can you were planning on having a batman in earth 2 can we give him a book and let Taylor write it?" To which he responded by quitting and then dc let the universe go to the namek of nargghs and then destroyed it even more after Taylor left

I can kinda see being really upset with the very idea that the setting should have a Batman in it, though. The whole thing was built on "Hey, a DC Universe without the Trinity." That hadn't been done before and was a pretty instant selling point for the series - the absence of the Trinity hung over everything and promised to be a distinctive feature of the world. So, to awkwardly drag in Flashpoint Batman...

Also, classic JSA villains seemed to keep showing up on the main Earth. I wouldn't be surprised if Robinson was shot down from using any of them.

But he was already planning on having a batman in it. A bat dad batman too. What pissed him off was someone working in his universe.

"If the writers hated doing those stories so much, were they all editorially mandated?"

Writers quit. Well, not Rob Liefeld. DC loves them some Rob Liefeld.

Some of it was editorially (or higher up) mandated, other bits were authors who had very specific opinions that the new writers did not share, and some was stuff that seemed to make sense at the time but turned out terrible in retrospect. Most long-time comics creators can come up with at least one thing they recoiled from after it was printed and realized the implications.

It didn't help that DC for a long time had a semi-secret "dibs" system where management-favored creators could glom onto characters they wanted to eventually do a project with, preventing the characters from being used in the meantime. These were often not the creators the fans wanted to see use the characters, and had active books. So, say, Cassandra Cain would languish in limbo for months/years while Editorial promised there were "big plans" but due to the semi-secret nature of the dibs list couldn't say, "whenever Rob Liefeld gets around to it."

This I didn't know about. Can you give me an idea of which creators/characters?

And really, they'd have Liefeld draw Cass Cain? DC management really does hate that character, don't they?

Cass Cain is the one character whom I can honestly say is better off in limbo than the hands of the current regime.