The talk on the New52 reminded me one of the very few things I liked on it was the ATTEMPT to connect so much more of the DC Universe across one another in organic ways.
Granted, that "attempt" crashed and burned horrifically. ....very horrifically. But that brief honeymoon period of wondering what overarching plot lines would play out like, or figuring out the universe's "new" history was - when everything was fresh and anything could happen - before realizing how shit it all was was fun.
The New 52's biggest issue is that there was no plan. Writers from that time admitted the whole thing was thrown together last minute when Didio realized he could do the reboot as part of Flashpoint.
For anyone not aware, the reason Final Crisis was called that was because Didio's big brained idea was that it would be the final event comic of the Post-Crisis continuity and lead to a huge reboot. After the problems with Countdown's story, which Morrison ignored completely when he did the actual crossover, the idea was scrapped and instead we got the Batman Reborn era with Dick as Batman, etc. But Didio still wanted to do it, so around March/April depending on who you were, he told a bunch of writers to start working on a new universe where superheroes have only been around for five years, and the first book, Justice League by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, launched August 31st.
A quick business departure, the turnaround for Diamond is four months from when you first show the book to them. You send them the ad you want in the catalogue, they print it in next month's issue, after a month of order they give those numbers to the publisher, who then orders the number from the printers, and then they finally show up in the store roughly four months after Diamond first got the ad for the book. Also, DC and Marvel require at least a two issue buffer for completed art. Meaning at best, the writers and editors had a month to work out what the book was going to be about, unless they were given an outline by editorial which many were, others were given a vague idea and had to come up with something around that.
The other issue was that it was confusing what was canon and what wasn't. Johns and Morrison had pull, so their Batman, Flash and Green Lantern works were still canon, but Morrison's Batman stuff counted on a Batman who had been around for 15 years and John's work was based on Silver Age continuity. Later they tried to fix things by saying Bruce has been Batman for ten years, but they also tried to claim Tim Drake was never Robin, even altering captions and dialogue that identified him as a previous Robin. And then in came the crossovers that screwed things up even harder before the thing was a year old.
The whole venture was a mess, which is a shame because its stated goal worked. Those first few months, DC sold gangbusters and left Marvel in the dust. Comics stores were re-invigorated by new customers who were interested in this jumping on point for them. It could have been great, if they'd just gotten everyone together a year beforehand, worked out the rules, and then planned accordingly.
