>>150967166
>and was really noticeable in N52.
Post-Brightest Day was a set up for a line refresh, no different to things like the current DC line refresh (All In). You have an event, set up some stuff for future books. Brightest Day's ending brought in Vertigo characters like Swamp Thing and Constantine. Other characters like Aquaman were resurrected. (Animal Man was originally a White Lantern too but cut.) So yeah, the actual reboot stuff was done in an incredibly short turn around, and that's mostly stuff like Justice League, Superman etc. The Scott Snyder Batman Court of Owls storyline was originally a Dick Grayson (Dickbats) story, similar to Black Mirror (another Dickbats Snyder story), but then adapted for Bruce Wayne, which actually majorly weakened the story (the Talons/Lincoln Marsh were all connected to Grayson). Batwoman, Batman Inc, Green Lantern, etc, all carried on like nothing had happened. Aquaman, Swamp Thing etc were all part of that already planned line refresh and had been set up in Brightest Day. The New 52 did have a sales boost, it did have wider exposure in mainstream news and some people now are nostalgic for it. But ultimately it was just a line refresh given a different name and when the boost diminished they just went to Rebirth.
The thing is, it is always done for sales and peaks/troughs have happened before. Prior to Batman Year One, Batman sales in the 80s had slumped to 75,000, figures not seen since the 70s. They repeat reboots and refreshes because ultimately it works, even if it becomes a case of diminishing returns. The Absolute line is just another Elseworlds that people treat like a quasi reboot and that saw a big boost to sales (Absolute Batman #1 sold like 400,000 issues, and since then the title is still holding a good chunk of audience in the hundreds of thousands). Comics always have the same entrenched tricks and quality gets lost along the way.
