I’ve just got back from a weekend away with no access to comic news – catching up, I read this piece over at the Beat about Dan DiDio having left DC Comics.

Bloody hell!

There’s a post at The Absorbascon that sums up something that’s been in my head for a while:

People have been describing this as ‘the end of an era’, which it is. But that isn’t the “DiDio Era”; it’s the “DiDio versus Johns Era”. Like some sort of real-life Anti-Monitor and Monitor, DiDio and Johns have been waging a barely disguised universe-threatening battle over whether the DCU would be positive or negative.

You can trace it through nearly everything that’s happened in the last 10 years. The New 52 versus Rebirth. Wally West the symbol of hopefulness versus Wally West PTSD-crippled mass murderer. Dark Multiverse versus the Metaverse. Eventually, Johns, realizing that his power over DC’s characters in mass media gave him greater influence than DiDio’s power over them in comics, left DC Comics for DC Entertainment. And without Johns to counterbalance DiDio’s negativity, DC Comics became sour enough that readers finally started to spit it out rather than swallow it.

Johns has his problems – he seems to blame Alan Moore and WATCHMEN for the whole grim and gritty problems in DC, but let’s not forget he was the one who gave us FOREVER EVIL where the Justice League were defeated and the bad guys – Lex Luthor and the Rogues – had to save the day.

That said, I’ll take a Geoff Johns led DC over DiDio any day; maybe the forthcoming 5G thing will actually pick up and run with the Rebirth refresh?

Man this is going to be interesting over the next few days.