DC Comics is the original superhero universe, and that has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because they’ve been able to set the tone for superhero comics, and a curse because they aren’t the new hotness, but the stodgy old publisher that everyone rebels against. It also means that DC is the first publisher to have to relaunch its line. It all began with 1956’s Showcase #4, where Barry Allen first appeared as the Flash, replacing Jay Garrick and kicking off the Silver Age of comics. This would be far from the last DC relaunch, and since then, the company has relaunched its line and the various heroes therein numerous times.
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When people think of DC relaunches, they think of the big continuity-altering events like Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was one of the most successful relaunches in the history of the comic industry. However, there have also been a lot of disappointing relaunches, times when the publisher tried its best to drive interest in its characters and failed. These ten DC relaunches were all disappointing, squandering some of the greatest comic characters ever.
10) DC Explosion
Most modern DC fans have no idea what the DC Explosion was, but it almost ended the publisher in the late ’70s. Marvel had been eating their lunch throughout the decade, and they decided to fight back by expanding their line and adding pages to their page counts. There were multiple books set on alternate Earths, C and D-list characters were given books, with ads put out hyping it up. However, back in those days, newsstands were the main method of selling comics, and they ordered books with larger numbers more often than those with smaller numbers (so an issue #100 of something got ordered more than a #1 because it had been successful for years). Most of the new books were canceled within the first few months, and the DC Explosion became the DC Implosion.
9) “Brave New World”
Infinite Crisis was a blockbuster, launching the DC Universe into some awesome directions. After the book ended, we got 52 and “One Year Later”, but it wasn’t the only relaunch. The publisher packaged a bunch of B and C-list characters together for “Brave New World”, which kicked off with an 80-page, $1.50 comic called Brave New World #1. It was meant to relaunch characters like Martian Manhunter, Captain Marvel/Shazam, the Atom, the Creeper, OMAC, and the Freedom Fighters. It was an okay comic, but it didn’t have the same impact as 2005’s Countdown to Infinite Crisis #1, like DC had hoped, and the books all sort of faded away. The publisher was relaunching everything at the time, and this one just didn’t have the star power to get readers interested.
8) Si Spurrier’s The Flash (Vol. 6)
Wally West is the greatest Flash, and his return in 2021 made fans very happy. The Flash went back to legacy numbering and writer Jeremy Adams reminded readers why they loved Wally and his family. However, for some reason, DC would replace him with writer Si Spurrier in 2023 and relaunched the book. Now, I liked Spurrier’s run on The Flash, but there were a lot of readers who burnt out on it quickly. Spurrier tried to take the Flash in many different directions, and a lot of fans weren’t on board. Even for those of us who liked it, it got rather complicated, and is the kind of run that works better when read in one sitting, especially the first year of the book. Fans loved the Adams run, and when the Spurrier run wasn’t just a continuation of its tone and ideas, a lot of fans ran away.
7) Titans (Vol. 4)
After Dark Crisis On Infinite Earths, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman decided to retire the Justice League and allowed the Titans, led by Nightwing, to take their place. Titans (Vol. 4) was relaunched by Tom Taylor and Nicola Scott, and fans of the team were more than ready for them to finally take their place at the top of the superhero community. Titans was good, but unfortunately, it was just the same kind of Titans book we had always gotten, pitting the team against the same kind of threats that they’ve faced since their days as the New Teen Titans, even down to battling an evil Raven again. Other than Titans: Beast World, it was all just retreads, and it floundered the potential of the Titans as DC’s top team.
6) Bendis’s Legion of Superheroes
The Legion of Superheroes are the first major teen superteam, and they’ve had numerous relaunches over the decades. The vast majority of them have been pretty good, but there’s one that’s infamous among fans of the team: Brian Michael Bendis’s 2019 relaunch of the Legion. DC went all in on Bendis when he jumped to the publisher from Marvel, giving him the Superman books and basically all of the teen heroes in the present and future. Bendis’s Legion kicked off with Legion of Superheroes: Millennium, a pretty good reintroduction to the team that saw Jon Kent travel to the future to join them. However, the series that came after it was a let down. Bendis’s worst excesses, namely his talking heads and same-y dialogue, were on full display here, and it turned a lot of Legion fans off. The book isn’t terrible, but it never really felt like a Legion comic, and it only lasted a year before going away.
5) Post-Zero Hour Hawkman
There aren’t many comic characters more complicated than Hawkman. He debuted in the Golden Age and was the leader of the Justice Society for years. In the Silver Age, Hawkman was relaunched as an alien policeman from Thanagar, and the Golden Age Hawkman was relegated to Earth-Two. After Crisis on Infinite Earths, the various Earths were blended together and Hawkman’s new origin made no sense. There were other such cases, so in 1995, DC tried to fix the problem with Zero Hour: Crisis in Time. Hawkman’s various histories were melded together, the versions of the character physically melding. It was bizarre, and no one really explained the mechanism of the whole thing. Hawkman would go the way of the dodo for years because of this relaunch.
4) Titans Academy
The New 52 killed all interest in the Teen Titans after DC rebuilt the team in the ’00s. It didn’t matter what the publisher did with them, fans just weren’t interesting in them anymore. After Dark Knights: Death Metal, DC relaunched numerous titles (more on that next) and gave readers Titans Academy. The book starred the grown-up roster of the New Teen Titans and a bunch of teen heroes, all learning the ropes of being a hero from their elders. Fans weren’t very interested in the book, and it went away. DC still hasn’t figured out a way to make the Teen Titans work, but this definitely wasn’t the direction they should have gone in.
3) “Infinite Frontier”
Dark Knights: Death Metal created the idea of the Omniverse, which was really just bringing back the infinite multiverse by another name, and led to a major relaunch. However, what it mostly did was put out Batman books. Nearly everything that DC was publishing at the time was Batman-related, with the only non-Batman-related solo ongoings going to Superman, Jon Kent, the Flash, Wonder Girl, and Wonder Woman. There were a bunch of miniseries, many of them related to Batman, and a lot of Black Label (guess who starred in most of them). The relaunch was called “Infinite Frontier”, but it might as well have been called “Infinite Batman”, all while trying to incorporate Dan DiDio’s “5G” ideas that no one wanted (“5G” stood for the fifth generation of heroes; DiDio wanted to get rid of the older heroes, changing history so some of them aged in real time, and replace them with younger legacy versions like Jon Kent, Jace Fox, and Yara Flor). Things would get better after Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths, but it was sort of a dark time to be a DC fan if you didn’t love Batman.
2) Bendis’s Superman Relaunch
The New 52 messed up Superman and DC Rebirth fixed the character by bringing back the pre-Flashpoint Superman, making fans happy. However, that was about to change. Bendis left Marvel, DC got him, and handed him Superman and Action Comics. Kicking off with Man of Steel, Bendis’s run on Superman was mediocre. Bendis at least was able to nail Superman’s individual voice, a problem he had at Marvel (the vast majority of Bendis-written Marvel characters all talked like Spider-Man; once you realize it, you’ll never be able to not notice it), and had some alright ideas, introducing new villiains like Rogol Zaar, Red Mist, Synmar, and the Invisible Mafia. However, none of it landed. He had Superman reveal his secret identity (a lot of people disliked it, but Bendis was able to make it make sense, at least) and tried his best, but the books never rose to the level of great, staying fair to middling his entire run.
1) The New 52
The New 52 is one of DC’s biggest mistakes. The published had spent the ’00s rebuilding a DC Universe that was more like the old pre-Crisis days. There were ups and downs, but fans were mostly happy with what they were getting from the major books and characters. However, sales weren’t as high as they would like, so then-head honjo Dan DiDio decided to relaunch the entire line. There was barely any planning involved, and creators all worked feverishly with editorial to make the whole thing work. It was chaos behind the scenes, but the books sold well… initially. Sales fell because the lack of planning a consistent canon of events frustrated readers, and the behind the scenes chaos saw creators dropping like flies. The New 52 can be looked at as a cautionary tale, and hopefully the publisher learned their lesson.
What DC relaunch disappointed you the most? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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