DC Firsts - The New 52 Recap

So let's recap the thirty three issues of the new 52 I read and reviewed.

	Changes	New Reader	Was it
Title	well received?	Friendly?	good?
Justice League	Yes	Yes	Yes
Action Comics	Mixed	Yes	Yes
All Star Western	Yes	Yes	Yes
Batgirl	No	Mixed	No
Batman The Dark Knight	Same	Mixed	Mixed
Detective Comics	Same	Yes	No
Batman	Same	Yes	Yes
Batwing	Yes	Yes	Yes
Batwoman	Same	Mixed	Yes
Birds of Prey	No	No	Mixed
Catwoman	No	No	No
Blackhawks	Mixed	Yes	Mixed
Captain Atom	No	Yes	Mixed
Deathstroke	Mixed	Yes	Yes
Demon Knights	Mixed	Yes	Yes
Flash	Mixed	Yes	Yes
Green Lantern	Same	No	Yes
Green Lantern New Guardians	Same	Mixed	Mixed
Grifter	No	Mixed	No
Savage Hawkman	No	No	No
Hawk and Dove	Same	No	No
I, Vampire	Yes	Yes	Yes
Justice League Dark	Yes	No	Mixed
Justice League International	Same	Mixed	Yes
Legion Lost	Mixed	No	No
Mister Terrific	Mixed	Yes	Yes
Red Hood and the Outlaws	No	No	No
Suicide Squad	No	Mixed	No
Supergirl	Same	Yes	Mixed
Superman	Yes	Yes	Yes
Teen Titans	Mixed	Yes	Yes
Voodoo	No	Yes	Mixed
Wonder Woman	Yes	Yes	Yes
Totals	Yes - 7	Yes - 18	Yes - 16
	No - 9	No - 8	No - 9
	In the middle - 8	In the middle - 7	In the middle - 8
	Same as before - 9

So as far as the changes go, my opinion is that about 38% of the titles that actually had noteworthy changes were for the worse. Overall, about 27% of the "New" 52 really was about the same as what it was before the relaunch.

In terms of being new reader friendly, more than half of the titles fell into that category, so it is a good start. 24% were clearly not however. That is almost a quarter of the titles reviewed. If the idea of the reboot was to entice new readers, that is probably too large a number of books that are not achieving the goal.

In the end, the most important thing is whether the product was good or not. Just under half fell clearly in that category. About 27% were not what I consider good. The rest were a mixed bag. Even if you factor out books that, under usual circumstances, I would be unlikely to take an interest in adding to my reading list (Action Comics, Blackhawks, Batwing, Detective Comics, Mister Terrific, Red Hood and the Outlaws, Suicide Squad), we're left with 13 out of 26 titles that I felt were actually good. So 26 titles I would probably be willing to read monthly under normal circumstances and I thought only half of those were actually good. That isn't really an acceptable result when you consider they turned over most of their line in an attempt to rejuvenate it and yet only 13 of 26 titles a long time, loyal reader would be willing to plunk down cash for actually hit the right note.

Yes, some of the changes turned out well. But I'm not really sure DC has helped themselves with their core readers in the long run. If there are not enough of the new readers (who showed up for the relaunch) sticking around, then DC may find all they really accomplished was to alienate some of the loyal readers who have been happily feeding their coffers for years and years and years.