DiDio’s Darker DC (Still) Dominates

(Or “I ran out of “D”s.)

I’ve complained numerous times about what I call “DiDio’s Darker DC”, because whatever issues I had with DC in the 1990s were to be blamed on the 1990s, while Dan DiDio’s time as editor-in-chief of DC Comics was when the de-heroing of the DC heroes really began. From trashing Dick Grayson and Wally West to wiping Clark and Lois’s marriage as well as Black Canary and Green Arrow’s, to the unnecessary deaths of Ted Kord and evilized Max Lord, the ruining of Batman and Wonder Woman’s reputation, a new Crisis every year, the total reboot into The New 52 after creating events like Identity Crisis and Countdown, and returning Hal Jordan and Barry Allen because he hates legacy characters (if that makes sense to you, then you’re less up on DC Comics history than Dan), there are only some of the sins DiDio has either created himself or brought in others who committed the sins under his watch and approval.

It’s been four years since Dan DiDio left DC Entertainment and now he’s working with Frank Miller to start their own publisher. Whatever keeps him off of ruining my favorite properties is fine with me. Remember, he’s also the one who pushed Transformers into Beast Machines ignoring the previous show with a darker tone, and that was just the beginning for old Danny boy. (You want to know if someone is wrong for geek media? Put him on Transformers. See also Michael Bay and Alex Kurtzman, who I’m convinced had little to do with Transformers Prime just by looking at what he co-wrote for Bay and what he’s done to Star Trek with Secret Hideout.) You’d think with Jim Lee in charge there’s be a new direction at DC Comics. While some critics maintain Lee does almost nothing his role as sole publisher, but if you ignore the activists getting in there’s so much wrong with the current DC universe that is still to be blamed on things DiDio started. It’s almost like DiDio hasn’t really left. Let me show you what I mean.

Alan Scott’s still gay

Whatever blame you want to put on Tim Sheridan for forgetting he was doing a superhero comic for the first few issues of his Alan Scott: Green Lantern comic (I hear he finally remembered last issue), Scott being gay wasn’t his doing. It happened with the New 52, when Scott was put back on Earth-2 when DC restored the multiverse (proving even I can credit DiDio for a good thing…back when the multiverse was still an interesting idea and not a cheap cop-out), and the New 52 is DiDio’s baby. We still live in what I call DC3, the third iteration of the DC multiverse. (DC1 is the pre-Crisis stuff, DC2 is the post-Crisis/pre-Flashpoint stuff, and DC3 is post-Flashpoint). He wasn’t gay BEFORE The New 52, but he is now.

This is of course cheap marketing more than representation, a token effort at best. In DC2, Alan was still straight like he was in DC1, even marrying his old enemy Harlequin (who was only in it to attract Alan…it’s a long story I just learned about) after his previous wife passed away. Apparently this is normal for Alan because his first wife and mother to his two children was the villain Thorn…who is a long story on her own. Point is, Alan was more into supervillainesses than Bruce, and given his track record…

Speaking of the kids, it was his son, Todd Rice, who was the gay character…and nobody cared. Actually, if you asked Todd (aka the hero Obsidian) nobody cared about him at all because he had worse ego issues than I do, but I can find more fans of Obsidian than I can Northstar…and Northstar has actually appeared outside of Marvel’s comics. I can’t remember a single Obsidian appearance in animation or physically acted. However, Obsidian is not a big enough name…but get a gay Green Lantern that the “normies” doesn’t realize isn’t the guy from Superfriends they grew up with, and that’s news. So when the universe rebooted…again…guess who got the gays. And it still continues.

Look, if you’re happy with anything in this list, fine. That’s not the point. The point is DiDio’s changes weren’t changed back. For example:

Barry’s mom is still dead

When it comes to the Flashes a few things were sort of fixed. DiDio wanted to get rid of Wally because he hated sidekicks and legacy characters. (Hey, Dan, does the name “Jay Garrick” ring any bells?”) He tried to use the race shield by bringing back a Kid Flash named Wally West…who was a black kid named Wallace. In the Rebirth event (not to be confused with the Flash’s “Rebirth” storyline noted in the above image, the story that brought Barry back to Flashdom) Wally was finally restored to reality, having been trapped in the Speed Force…but now he lost his wife and kids. It’s a pattern. DiDio hated superhero marriages as much as Quesada, but DiDio had a different reason in mind. Yes, this is something Dan actually stated. Superheroes can’t have families because they need to be focused on saving people, like Catholic priests or Jedi. Superheroes are more like first responders: the police, the military, or rescue workers. I don’t think he believes they should have families, either.

Barry also lost his wife, Iris (who by the way is a white woman in the comics but you non-comic fans wouldn’t know it), but at least now they’re engaged. Maybe. Totally the same thing, right? Ask Bruce and Selina. What Barry hasn’t gotten back at all is his mother, Nora Allen. She’s still dead. Hang on, folks. This is a ride we have to take.

Originally, Barry Allen was inspired to become a forensic scientist for the Central City Police Department after reading the comic book adventures of another scientist turned hero, Jay Garrick. (There’s that name again. What IS the connection?) Then came DiDio and one of his acolytes, “Retcon” Geoff Johns. Retcon Johns and Dan really wanted Barry Allen back, and so his noble sacrifice to attempt to save the multiverse was undone and Barry was back, but Retcon Johns and DiDio couldn’t believe that a comic book could inspire someone two want to be a hero. Why would two guys whose job it is to make comic book superheroes ever think comic book superheroes could inspire anyone? That’s just silly. So Professor Zoom, who has always been jealous of Barry for reason, got a “change timeline free” card and did what even the God Doctor couldn’t do, becoming the Reverse Flash Victorious and killing Nora, framing Barry’s dad Henry, and it was young Barry chasing the police car taking his father away that led to him wanting to become a faster runner and forensic scientist rather than the tales of the original Flash….THAT’s who Jay Garrick is! Wait, doesn’t that make Barry the “legacy character”?

Not only has this not been undone, but Barry’s attempt to change it led to Flashpoint…somehow…and undoing the Flashpoint timeline led to the New 52 and where we are today. Meanwhile, Wally ends up back in his timeline without his family and having to have his character desecration undone in a very stupid way, and he still isn’t really part of the DC universe like he used to be. At least they finally gave Barry a personality…namely the one Wally had in the DCAU, which is fair since they gave Barry’s job to Wally. Basically, Wally still gets screwed over, which is another leftover of the reign of DiDio.

Can you guess who is playing whom?

The Green Arrow/Black Canary marriage is still gone

Bill pulls off a surprisingly good Ollie Queen impersonation.

This goes back to that “heroes shouldn’t marry” nonsense. After Prometheus caused events that led to the death of Roy Harper’s daughter, Lian (and thanks to research I just found out she might have been better off because she got the aging treatment as well…we’ll come back to this as well dear Lord make it stop!!!!!!), Ollie kills him. Yes, I’m skipping a lot of very stupid things to stay on track as best I can. The Arrow clan is something of a mess and even the DC Database is having issues following it all. At this point, Dinah decides he really doesn’t care about her because he made this decision without consulting her and Roy is mad because he should have avenged his daughter blahdeeblahblah blah. So she breaks off their marriage and you see my response from back in the day above.

Not that it matters because best I can tell the New 52 wiped their marriage from continuity, and I didn’t even know Mephisto was working with Doctor Manhattan. Dinah had a husband who dies, but was brought back because comics, and did I mention Team Arrow is a mess? This has not been undone and I would be surprised if Peter and MJ’s marriage wasn’t restored before this one. No, I’m not counting alternate universes.

I guess older Jon needed a GPS to his home dimension.

Jon Kent is still CWed

Speaking of aged up kids, Jon Kent. While we can’t blame DiDio for bisexually gay Jon (that’s when they call a character “bisexual” in hopes of not suffering the same fan wrath as when Bobby “Iceman” Drake went gay because it makes the news sources, but you know they’ll never date outside their gender again: see also Tim Drake) we can blame him for Jon Kent being turned into a young adult. Although if it wasn’t for fixing DiDio’s mistakes there wouldn’t be a Jon Kent in the first place.

Dan DiDio took the opportunity of undoing the Supermarriage, something that was decades in the making, with the New 52. This and many other decisions wasn’t doing DC Comics any favors, so in the lone attempt by Warner Brothers to fix things, DiDio was forced to take a backseat, and the Rebirth event happened. In yet another long story shortened, New 52 Superman and Lois are replaced by DC2 Clark and Lois and now they have a son, Jon. How?

Don’t worry, Wally. We aren’t even going to try to get into that. So now we get something that’s potentially interesting. We get to see Superman raise his son, teach him to use his powers, and get the next best thing to “the adventures of Superman when he was a boy”. This could be great insight into why Clark is the way he is as he teaches Jon that there’s more to being Superman than the powers that a good quarter of the DC universe good and evil alike have. This could be awesome!

Well @##%# that noise, DiDio’s back! And he’s bringing Brian Michael Bendis with him.

You’d think the guy that created two cheap knockoffs teen heroes just to make his kids happy would explore the father/son dynamic of the Kents, as well as showing how Lois handles her son becoming the next Superman as only Lois could. This is Bendis, folks. He hates continuity more than DiDio does, and the only stories he’s done well were in other continuities where he could get away with whatever he wants. So he retcons Krypton’s destruction like he’s Retcon Johns, and of course sends Jon through hypertime to age him up to CW age. This not only killed any chance of watching Superman raise his son but ruined a fan favorite comic, Super Sons, where young Jon teamed with Damien Wayne as Superboy and Robin learned from each other and became best friends. Jon could form a duo with Lian, the Hyperaged Teen Titans or something. Now that Jon is a gay icon to activists who don’t read superhero comics there is no way this can ever be reversed and we’ve been denied something that two superkids who nobody mentions cannot replicate. (Yes, I learned later they aren’t twins. Still, nobody mentions them ever.)

They even tried to split Lois and Clark up again, but thankfully that was dealt with…for now.

And some dishonorable mentions

Thankfully, they fixed the logo, not that the current one is much to write home about. However, Wonder Woman is still Lady Kratos who is another of Zeus’ bastard children instead of a clay statue come to live to become the symbol of femininity and love in Man’s World while showing women can still kick butt and be women. The New 52 timeline of DC3 still exists. There are attempts to bring elements of DiDio’s 5G plan to replace all the biggest DC heroes so he can have those names on characters he dominates. Control the origin, control the power, and DiDio’s changes both directly and indirectly and through Retcon Johns, Bendis, and the other DiDio acolytes still influence current interpretations of DC heroes and villains to this day. 5G was even retooled into an event called Future State, and there are still attempts to make that the future as much as there used to be with Kingdom Come. And of course the current DC is still a darker version of our heroes, with their heroic status in question and characters like Harley Quinn that are supposed to be villains treated as heroes. Don’t forget trying to kill off DC heroes…again. It’s not just for questionable video games after all.

So Dan DiDio may be gone, but his footprint still damages the DC landscape as of this writing. His influence is there because like so many modern writers he made sure to put his stamp on the DC universe and characters so that his vision will still have a say in everything going forward without heavy retcons or yet another reboot…and DC has never been able to fully commit to a reboot for a host of reasons. DiDio isn’t really gone because in the ends it’s still his DC universe we’re suffering through, and you can’t blame activism for that. Just ego and ingenuity.