Quote Originally Posted by bob/.schoonover View Post
It's not that I have a huge problem with it - just that when I think about the collection of this, it will read very poorly to follow up the neck crack with the beach scene. I mean, they can do a better version of the editorial caption - start 78 in the collection with "Before" at the top, as King is wont to do - but this just gets back to what we've discussed before: the shortening of this run, whenever it happened internally (my guess is it was actually happening before we found out about it by a bit), has really broken up the flow in order for King to hit all the story and emotional plot points he needs to hit. He's lost, what, 8 issues, for his run, and that doesn't even account for the fact that Bat/Cat #1 has to be a first issue which means it'll have to be written a bit differently than issue 86 would.
If I were to make an assumption, I would say that the decision to shorten it came probably about a week or so before we found out, since it was pretty clear the Bleeding Cool article was not something they were anticipating and more likely than not wanted to keep the Bat/Cat book a surprise until the 2020 solicits, rather than announce it half a year in advance. The announcement he was writing New Gods came about a week after the initial article too, so presumably that was when their talks and discussions about him taking the job were solidified, so by then is when had just a few months to start tweaking everything.