@lvenger: @joshmightbe said:
Because new comic fans are under the impression that the New 52 altered 75 years of history and don't seem to know about the 5 previous massive continuity altering events that took place in the past like Crisis on Infinite Earths and Zero Hour. At most New 52 took out maybe a decade and a half of continuity. As for Marvel a lot of the hate comes from their older fans who current Marvel is actively taking a s**t on and not only that but the writers seem to take great pleasure in the fact that the old fans are upset. Basically DC is a buddy who's going through some changes where as Marvel is a sh**ty ex burning the crap you left in their apartment on your lawn.
This is kind of true. Except that usually when there's a big altering of continuity, the previous large parts remain canon.
Crisis on Infinite Earths was the first, and it remained canon after Zero Hour, Infinite Crisis and Final Crisis. Each of those remained canon after their successor too.
The New 52 got rid of everything except for what the main DC writer wanted (namely his Green Lantern), as well as fundamentally changing numerous characters.
What happened to someone like Jay Garrick after COIE? He moved to Earth 1. Hardly a big deal.
What happened to the Question as of the New 52? He became a cosmic entity and the only thing that's reminiscent of his former character is his look. A VERY BIG DEAL.
It's not really the steamline or restart of canon that's the major issue with the New 52, after all, that's often needed. If the X-Men rebooted tomorrow and wiped out the last 5-8 years or so, it'd be the best news I've heard in a looooooooong time. However, it's the fact that virtually every character was neutered, destroyed, or altered irrevocably. Things that made them unique were dropped, writer-bias played an ENORMOUS part in how characters were written and teams were built, and even the most important arcs were dropped.
John Constantine was assimilated into a world of costumed heroes from his much more serious fantasy/horror Vertigo world and changed into a guy who uses spells. Now in the Vertigo world he had used magic like that, but only a handful of times in 25 years. Turning him into a spellcaster style wizard takes away what made the character unique (and the original outlay for him); he was the "blue-collar warlock" who defeated his amazingly powerful enemies with cunning and use of connections. When you whittle away those personal intricacies of characters, it's an endless process. You take one thing, and then another to suit your story, and eventually they cease to be a character and just become a caricature.
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