right? It was

a year and a half process building that stuff.

So what we did...

On the bigger characters, we did what was a list called the Immutables.

What you can't change, you know what I mean? And just things that are just etched in the lore that I felt were essential.

So we built a list for all our top characters.

It doesn't go as deep as you think because these characters have been started and restarted so many times, you know, that you know you want to make sure that at least there is some core that is familiar and recognizable and it's important to recognize what people love the most about those characters and hope not to change that along the way you know well people can argue whether or not we did it um but that was the case then the main thing for me with new 52 was uh to to bring as much um diversified product into the line that's what i really was more about it wasn't about restarting superman or unmarrying him or something like that it was more about putting out other styles of books that really show the depth and breadth of a comic book line when i first started reading dc comics in the 1970s um superheroes were only 40 of the output of dc comics they had Western comics, they had war comics, they had horror, they had romance, they had comedy, they had all these different types of books.

How did you manage that negativity? What helped you separate valid critique from all the noise? I like how you said, not gentle.