They Changed It, Now It Sucks/Comic Books

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • This is pretty much the opinion the head writers and editors at DC (led by Dan Didio and Geoff Johns) had about the changes their predecessors made to the DCU in the 80s and 90s, in particular Crisis on Infinite Earths and Emerald Twilight. As a result, Infinite Crisis, Green Lantern Rebirth and the multiple Batman/Superman crossover events have been their way of retconning those changes, leading to backlash from the current fandom shouting that the current changes have ruined the DCU FOREVER.
  • The DCNU relaunch is already getting "They changed it now it sucks" backlash.
    • As noted by coverage at the San Diego Comic Con, this is mostly due to bad advertising where the main blurbs are "see, we're going back to how it used to be" (aggravating current fans, who weren't reading when it was how it used to be) and not giving out details people actually wanted that weren't very spoiler-oriented (Was Tim Drake sill Robin in his past? What happens to Stephanie Brown? Did you really just say Ma and Pa Kent are both dead? Does Wally West exist at all? why does this feel all Elseworlds-ish?? Etc.
    • Every single change to Batgirl - Barbara Gordon crippled = this. Asian Ninja Batgirl = this. Replacement of Asian Ninja Batgirl by Blonde with blue eyes = This and Unfortunate Implications. Finally, replacement of the single fun character in the Bat-family by Barbara Gordon, a decision seemingly only supported by middle-aged women who don't care about anything since The Killing Joke (read: the fairly influential author, who became an author to improve the lot of comicdoms women after The Killing Joke. Yes, really.), an idea long derided as being worse than any other choice of new Batgirl. Yeah.
      • YMMV on that last bit, since the first issue of the new Batgirl series was one of the best-selling issues of the entire relaunch. It even outsold a bunch of fan-favorite titles like Wonder Woman and Batwoman, and far outsold the first issue of Steph's series.
    • Although Stephanie's series did not have the advantage of a vast amount of controversy, a star author noted for work on that character, and a large amount of marketing besides. See Broken Base YMMV page for even more.
    • There was some controversy surrounding the decision to retcon Cyborg into being a founding member of the Justice League, with some fans angered by what they saw as mucking around with the team's history for the sake of diversity. So far though, the new Justice League title has been the highest-seller of the reboot.
    • It's not clear yet what happened to post-crisis/pre-flashpoint Huntress and Power Girl (they either got merged with the new ones or wiped from history). But the prospect of loosing the characters they knew only to get back the (pre-crisis) characters only the writers remember doesn't sit too well with some current fans.
  • Wonder Woman's new revamp initially to be got this reaction, the general consensus being that the coolest thing about it would be watching the fan's reactions.
    • The first two issues were met with massive acclaim and were extremely strong sellers though. It's been said that it successfully got readers not normally interested in Wonder Woman to check it out.
  • The recent announcement of slimming up the full-figured Amanda Waller has resulted in a lot of fans crying foul as they consider her figure to be an integral part of her charm. ("Her nickname's 'The Wall'. That's not a wall, that's a fencepost.")
  • James Robinson's run on JLA is got this reaction, mainly because of his decision to focus on seven second-stringers: Batman (Dick Grayson), Donna Troy, Jesse Quick, Jade, Supergirl, Starman, and Congorilla, rather than on the "real" Justice League (defined by those who complain as either all A-Listers or as whichever team they grew up reading about). Robinson himself is aware of it, and has made it known that he considers this league as "real" as any other, yet this has done little to stop the sheer amount of complaining on DC's official boards.
    • There was also some griping about the Unfortunate Implications behind Robinson getting rid of all the non-white characters like Vixen and Doctor Light in order to write a group of his mostly-white pet characters.
    • Lampshaded in the final issue, where Batman makes a very thinly-veiled speech about not caring about how poorly his version of the League was received by the public, and that they should be proud of their team.
  • Some fans of the Ultimate Marvel line of comics are pretty clear about their opinion of the new Ultimate Comics line : because it takes place after Ultimatum and as a result of it, all the stories in it are complete garbage and the people who likes it are bribed/tasteless/morons.
  • The initial reaction to Brian Michael Bendis' controversial revamp of the The Avengers franchise, where he killed off longtime members Hawkeye, Ant-Man, and Vision, and had Scarlet Witch go insane. The subsequent decision to add characters like Spider-Man, Wolverine, Echo, Spider Woman, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist to the team was also controversial amongst many old-school purists. Ultimately, Bendis' revamp of the franchise proved massively successful, at least from a financial standpoint.
  • While Brazilian comic Monica's Gang is frequently accused of this (then again, which Long Runner comic hasn't tried to change to get new audiences?), complete with a Spinoff Teenagers manga, there was once a good in-universe example: Penadinho (in English, Bug-a-booo) stars various stock monsters. One comic had the title character, a Bedsheet Ghost, coming by his Frankenstein Monster friend, Frank, who is lammenting how the creature of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein looked. Then Frank reminds Bug-a-Boo of Ghost. Later two other characters, a vampire and a werewolf, complain about Wolf.
  • Batman Reborn and Superman: New Krypton, two events released around the same time, garnered similar responses, at least initially. Superman was pulled out of Superman and Action Comics, with those books being taken over by Mon-El, and Nightwing and Flamebird respectively, while Damian Wayne was made into the new Robin, Dick Grayson into the new Batman, and Stephanie Brown into the new Batgirl. The flagship title Detective Comics was also given to Batwoman. While Batman Reborn proved to be a massive success, New Krypton was met with almost-universal critical panning and falling sales. The New Krypton event was eventually Cut Short, and Superman was brought back to his namesake series.
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