“I really dont understand why you want them to completely start over and erase everything to ever exist and forget all the old history all together.”
I didn’t. DC wanted to reboot the mainstream universe to entice new readers. The “logic” being no one wants to start at Batman #856. Of course we know that’s not how comics work. No one starts at the beginning and then reads in order, but they are right in thinking that the misconception is a deterrent to an extent. However, I think the real gateway into comics is by recommendation. If you have family or friends who encourage and interest in comics you will seek them out to read. So they were partially correct, but not in a way that would make any real difference. Comic sales continue to fall because there is too much completion vying for our attention, and the bulk of it is free. If kids do develops an interest they’re more likely to watch a YouTube video on Batman rather than buy a Batman comic.
So new universe. New 52. We can do anything we want. What do they do? Rehash the same old stuff, but not even that, they can’t even fully reboot correctly because Johns put too much effort into his GL mythos. Sulk. Oh, well, let’s keep the regular GL readers happy and the newbies can figure it out later. Oh, these writers/readers don’t like the direction this Superman is going? Let’s bring the old one people miss. We’ll figure it out, the newbies will too, I guess.
They wanted to start over. They wanted to reboot their characters. They chose to erase everything. I was quite happy before Flashpoint. Still am. My initial problem with Prime Earth was it erase the continuity I was just getting acquainted with. I have a whole back catalogue of New Earth I could never read in a lifetime anyway, so I’m not concerned now. My issue with it now is that it’s a clustercuss. I’m sure people thought this during periods of NE too, but PE should have learned from those mistakes. Why was PE handled so poorly? Editorial had the chance to start from scratch and record and adhere to a consistent continuity. That would have been a project that really set them apart from other comic companies. If you’re going to end something and start anew, do it. Why do I want to read another thinly disguised version of A Death in the Family, Knightfall or Judas Contract? I did that already.
“I mean what’s the point of just completely tossing out things that make characters actually themselves?”
What’s the point of keeping things exactly the same? Besides, New 52 was for “new” readers, right? They don’t know what defines the old Alan Scott, Superman, Lobo, etc. In PE, being gay is Alan Scott being himself. In NE it’s not. Out with the old, in with the new.
“Or for that matter, why don’t you want modern comics to appeal to you?”
It’s not that I don’t want them to appeal to me. It’s that they don’t. Or rather, I have invested myself in one continuity. I’m not investing myself in another. I was very nearly a “new” reader the tried to entice. If I had been delayed and convinced to start with a New 52 title instead of Blackest Night I may have become invested in Prime Earth instead, a I would have known Alan Scott to have only been gay and I would have wondered why there was an “imposter” Lobo who was replace by the “real” Lobo who looked like the “imposter.” I would have still gotten angry at Convergence, but for different reasons. But I didn’t. I read backwards, not forwards. (Or parallel? I hate multiversity.) In the end I don’t care what happens in PE because none of it concerns my continuity. Why should pre-Flashpoint continuity concern you?