So if DC is this ashamed of everything it's done this decade, why did they do it?
To be perfectly honest, I have pretty much come to the conclusion that all the Crises were ill-considered actions that have only forced DC to tie itself in knots trying to undo them, then undo the undoing...basically, DC has become one constant repair job. Meanwhile? The best comics they put out, more often than not, are the ones totally outside continuity. ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, for instance. Or, related, when Geoff Johns simply decided to bring all that stuff back into Superman like Kandor, proper Brainiac, the real LSH, and so forth, he just did it. And it worked and it was accepted, and sold.
I mean, it seems to me the point of the Crises was to allow them to reboot clean. But they never had the nerve. And now the Crises too are part of continuity, which is kind of ridiculous: it seems to me you're defeating the point then. Except that of a sales jolt, like a crack high. But you know what? You can only do so much crack before your brain is a dried-out rind.
DC now gives the impression of an old friend who's changed due to excessive drinking or something, and who has warped their whole lives as a workaround to allow the drinking, not realizing it's the drink that's the problem.
I wonder if DC could still have done all it wanted if they'd just continued from where they were going in the 80s, when they were allowing more character development than before. I suspect there'd be no difference now, just a lot less confusion.
The first Crisis was supposed to STOP confusion, but all they did was make it worse than it ever had been before.