What did Dan DiDio do?

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CoyoteUnion
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What did Dan DiDio do?

Post by CoyoteUnion »

I don't know much about the comics industry (I'm more of an animation guy), and most of what I know about comics comes from you guys. Everyone online seems to hate Dan DiDio, but I don't know anything about him and no one explains why, so what did he do?
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Davies
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Re: What did Dan DiDio do?

Post by Davies »

He was perceived as the guy in charge at DC for the last decade, and blame for a lot of the poorer choices that DC has made in that time -- the New52 reboot, the Generations concept -- was frequently laid at his door. Also, he expressed a lot of views that upset and annoyed people, like the idea that heroes shouldn't be allowed to be happy or have happy relationships. And before that ... well, I'll let the Transformers wiki speak for what came before that, as well as noting that he apparently got Reboot cancelled.
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Ares
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Re: What did Dan DiDio do?

Post by Ares »

He basically made a lot of controversial decisions that fans and creators didn't care for, had a habit of thinking that he was always right, and seemed to enjoy trolling fans.

For instance, Dan once banned all heroes who weren't already married from getting married on the following grounds:
Heroes shouldn’t have happy personal lives. They are committed to being that person and committed to defending others at the sacrifice of their own personal interests.

That’s very important and something we reinforced. People in the Bat family their personal lives basically suck. Dick Grayson, rest in peace—oops shouldn’t have said that,—Bruce Wayne, Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon and Kathy Kane. It’s wonderful that they try to establish personal lives, but it’s equally important that they set them aside. That is our mandate, that is our edict and that is our stand.
It reads like a literal declaration of war against happiness. It was especially egregious because it was done right when they could have had the first lesbian wedding in DC, which Dan nixed.

He also wanted to have Nightwing killed off because he didn't see the point of the character, feeling that they already had a Robin and that Dick being in his 20's just artificially aged Bruce. The rest of the creative team had to basically talk him down from killing Dick.

He was a major factor in turning Superboy Prime evil, and then had creators use him as a mouthpiece to mock fans that complained about the state of DC Comics. Basically, they would put the words of their detractors in SPB's mouth, and have SPB act in the most insane, petulant and evil manner possible.

Dan hated the original comic series 52, would walk up and down the office halls talking about how much he hated it, despite the fact that it was very popular. In Dan's opinion, 52 was bad because the writers had too much control . . . but because of that control they managed to tell an amazingly engaging story. Later on, Dan pushed through the comic Countdown to Final Crisis, and declared it to be "52 done right" . . . which only showed how disconnected he was from the industry. Because of the heavy editorial mandates (which was what made this series "done right" in his mind) the book became an utter mess that no one liked. He even ignored the requests of Grant Morrison, the writer of Final Crisis, by trying to tie Countdown into FC in a way that contradicted Morrison's own plans. But given Final Crisis was a mess as well, I look at it a case of two bad things making each other worse.

He was the one that pushed Judd Winick to get rid of Billy Batson and replace him with Freddy Freeman as the main Champion of Shazam, named Shazam, which ruined the Marvel Family for 5 years. And then Flashpoint/the Nu-52 happened that ruined the Marvel Family for another 10 years.

Dan was the person who took the Flashpoint event and used it to reboot the entire DC Universe into the Nu-52, done top to bottom in a manner he preferred as a darker, more deconstructed setting. He gave the writers of the current books very little warning, and the setting was launched with little planning or coherency.

Later on, other editorial staff made Dan backtrack on the Nu-52 and launch the Re-Birth initiative to try and bring the DCU back to form. But Dan knee-capped that initiative at every turn and promoted books like Doomsday Clock and Heroes in Crisis to keep the tone he wanted, dragging out the darkness for as long as possible, until he was finally booted out.

Basically, Dan DiDio ran the Post-Crisis DCU into the ground to the point where he could reboot it, turned it into something dark, and then fought tooth and nail to keep it dark until he was finally let go. It's going to take years for the DCU to recover, if it ever can. He came off as nasty to fans and as a control freak tyrant to the writers. With comics, I feel the job of the editors is to protect the integrity of the pop culture icons that are the characters that DC Comics has created for over 80 years now. They're suppose to work with writers to tell the best stories possible, to ensure the writers don't damage those characters or the setting, and to try and grow the fanbase.

In short, Dan DiDio was bad at his job.

And as Davies mentioned, he was also responsible for the mess that was Beast Machines. Basically, any success that happened under Dan's leadership happened in spite of him, not because of him.
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Ken
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Re: What did Dan DiDio do?

Post by Ken »

He made the mistakes of a) assuming his preferences are the preferences of the typical comic book fan and b) assuming that there is such a thing as a typical comic book fan.

Shortly after he became DC's executive editor, DC started cancelling lighthearted books like "Young Justice" and coming out with drek like "Titans/Young Justice Graduation Day" and "Identity Crisis". This was 16 years ago.
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