#or how geoff johns was determined to wreck

[cantsayidont]

March 1986. The fate of Earth-1's Wonder Woman, seeming annihilated in a single blast from the Anti-Monitor during the final battle of the Crisis on Infinite Earths. Or, so it appeared at first:

Earth-1's Wonder Woman reverted to her original condition, to be reborn in her rebooted incarnation, while the aged Earth-2 Wonder Woman departed to dwell forever among the gods of Mount Olympus. What happened to the Steve Trevor whom the Earth-1 Diana had just married is unclear, but since he was originally from another Earth (not Earth-1 or Earth-2), the most likely explanation is that he simply ceased to exist. Poor Steve.

[fantastic-nonsense]

Decided to address this as its own post, since my response to the post itself didn’t actually get any traction:

See, I’d buy this except A) I have been a DC reader for far too long and B) I was actually around and bitterblogging when Didio actually said “heroes shouldn’t have happy personal lives.” That was in 2013.

For context, at the time he said this (right after the editorial veto on Kate and Maggie’s wedding), Dan Didio was literally refusing to let the writers write heroes having happy personal lives. Examples:

Clark and Lois broke up over petty stupid shit and then Clark said “I didn’t really love her that much anyway” and swanned off with Diana for awhile (See Superman/Wonder Woman). Like they split Clark and Lois up on their 75th anniversary year. Honestly, I feel like this point alone makes my point, but I’m going to keep going

Grant Morrison was remaking Talia Al Ghul into a literal batshit crazy character that didn’t bat an eye at killing her own son to get back at Bruce

on that note, the killing/fridging of Damian Wayne to advance the angst arcs of like the entire Batfam happened about this time too

Bruce and Selina were hostile towards each other (like lmao them getting married now is justice for readers who had to deal with what DC put us through from 2011-2013 with them)

Barry and Iris were not married and had barely met each other at the time, and the rest of the Flash family was erased from existence

including Wally West (and by extension Linda Park and Wally’s two kids), meaning that they simultaneously broke up two of the happiest and most stable marriages at DC

Arthur and Mera’s relationship was in editorial flux and DC couldn’t decide if they were married or not, despite Mera being Arthur’s queen for over two years at that point

Dinah Lance was married to another man and she and Oliver Queen barely knew each other, and there was all kinds of angst happening on both sides of that

Hal Jordan and Carol Ferris were once more broken up and/or waffling on the status of their relationship

Hawkman and Hawkgirl/Hawkwoman weren’t together (despite their whole schtick being “continually reincarnated souls that find each other in every life”)

The “Core Four” Birds of Prey members (Babs, Helena, Dinah, and Zinda) either didn’t exist (Helena, Zinda) or had their previously good relationships with each other erased (Babs and Dinah)

Dick Grayson and Barbara Gordon were no longer together and had a pretty rocky relationship

Gail Simone had to deal with editorial interference on Barbara’s Batgirl book because they wouldn’t let her write what she wanted because it was “too happy”

they did a weird sort of waffling erasure concerning Dick and Damian’s time as Batman and Robin (so that the two weren’t nearly as close) in favor of emphasizing the relationship between Damian and Bruce

Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown were erased from existence, and Scott Snyder literally created Harper Row because he wasn’t allowed (by editorial edict) to use Cass in his comic

Starfire was a sexualized amnesiac that didn’t remember the Teen Titans

the original Teen Titans had apparently never met

Conner Kent/Superboy and Cassie Sandsmark/Wonder Girl were broken up and were hostile towards each other

Tim Drake was in an absolute disaster of a relationship with Cassie, and the Teen Titans were a mess in general because the Teen Titans comic was being written by fucking Scott Lobdell of all people

heroes that previously had great interpersonal relationships with each other now either hated each other, were lowkey and sometimes outright hostile to each other, or simply didn’t know each other

Grim and gritty Booster Gold happened. Yeah. I know.

Grimdark Jaime Reyes/Blue Beetle happened.

Grimdark bratty Billy Batson happened. Like what even was the thought process there

Lots of other bullshittery where characters didn’t know each other, were erased from the universe/didn’t exist, or had their relationships erased/sabotaged/ended happened

People literally wrote posts upon posts and pulled together photosets on photosets (and even more photosets) of all the ships and various relationships that had been utterly wrecked by the New 52. Hell, I wrote posts about how bitter I was about DC wrecking my characters’ personal lives because of Dan Didio’s stupid mentality. Kate and Maggie were in no way the only casualties of this debacle. So...was it tone deaf beyond belief to not let Kate and Maggie marry and sent a very different message to people than they probably wanted? Hell yeah. Was it the result of homophobia? Probably not. So yeah: I’d buy the whole “homophobia” thing if I hadn’t been there for the whole hellscape trainwreck that was 2011-2016-era New 52 comics and knew better.

Also:

9/5/2013 - Citing last-minute editorial meddling on approved storylines (and not because of an anti-gay marriage stance from DC Comics, as some spreading the news would have you believe), J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman stepped down from their duties on Batwoman. Williams stated on his site,

“Unfortunately, in recent months, DC has asked us to alter or completely discard many long-standing storylines in ways that we feel compromise the character and the series,” wrote Blackman and Williams. “We were told to ditch plans for Killer Croc’s origins; forced to drastically alter the original ending of our current arc, which would have defined Batwoman’s heroic future in bold new ways; and, most crushingly, prohibited from ever showing Kate and Maggie actually getting married. All of these editorial decisions came at the last minute, and always after a year or more of planning and plotting on our end. We’ve always understood that, as much as we love the character, Batwoman ultimately belongs to DC. However, the eleventh-hour nature of these changes left us frustrated and angry - because they prevent us from telling the best stories we can. So, after a lot of soul-searching, we’ve decided to leave the book after Issue 26.”

It wasn’t just the marriage that got nixed in the Batwoman book.

tl;dr: it wasn’t homophobia and this isn’t a double standard. It really was Didio just being an absolute dick for 5 years and refusing to let heroes have happy personal lives and romantic relationships, and in general, it was the absolutely ridiculous editorial interference on various levels that led to several of the debacles of the New 52 days (not just this one). The game has changed due to the Rebirth initiative. Writers and editors alike have thrown tons of shade on Didio’s perspective. Geoff Johns, after five years of putting up with it, basically told Didio to fuck off and took over the reins in steering the direction the company took with the characters/plotlines. Hence Rebirth and DC’s apparent determination to get all of the classic couples together again and have them be in (more or less) happy and healthy relationships.