Quote Originally Posted by kevink31593 View Post
I've watched a few of those "Ask Chuck Dixon" videos before, I see them pop up in my Facebook feed every so often. I enjoy listening to what he has to say, even though I don't always agree with him 100%. I grew up enjoying reading almost everything he wrote for the Batverse in the 1990s, as it came out. (The first three Batman comics I ever bought and read were Batman #467-469, the "Shadow Box" arc, written by Dixon. I bought it in a 3-pack at KB Toys at my local shopping mall when I was 10 years old, shortly after BTAS premiered.)

Anyways, I thought this video was a nice behind the scenes recap from Dixon's point of view, of the Bat crossover era of 1990s and early 2000s, so I thought it worth posting here. Some things that stood out to me:

I loved hearing him talk about Knightfall, it sounds like he really had run on that storyline, and the lead up to it.

Dixon's comment about his taking the "lead" for most of Legacy, because Doug Moench and Alan Grant were getting tired of crossovers. I recall right after Legacy ended, there was a "From the Den" column from Denny O'Neil that was featured in every single Batman related book one month. Denny essentially announced that effective immediately, there would be no crossovers for 18 months, story arcs within series would be 3 issues max, and every month at least one Bat book would have a single part story. In retrospect, I think it's obvious that Denny was just taking care of his writers, keeping them happy. I think the readers benefited also, I thought there was a good variety of stories during that period.

"The junior woodchuck editors Scott Peterson, Jordan Gorfinkel, and Darren" comment got a chuckle out of me. I think I've seen or read other Dixon interviews in the past, where he talks about how the "junior editors" gradually took over from Denny O'Neil in the late 1990s. Peterson was actually Dixon's editor on Detective Comics, as I recall. And Gorfinkel was the editor on Birds of Prey. I think Dixon has some respect for them since he mentions them by name. He didn't mention anybody from the Murder/Fugitive era by name....

I liked Murder and Fugitive when they came out, and I was really enjoying both Rucka's Detective Comics and Brubaker's Batman titles at the time. I can see Dixon's point about how he wasn't treated equally in that crossover, though. When he talks about the 3 day summit for that event, I'm just guessing the "one guy who tried to run the whole meeting" was probably Greg Rucka. Not knowing who the villain was going to be ahead of time for "Murder/Fugitive" definitely sounds like a serious problem. It sounds to me like Dixon was talking about an initial meeting, months before "Murderer" came out, and I'm guessing they probably came up with the finale in a following summit meeting, without Dixon present.
I watch all of them, hoping to hear more about Stephanie Brown. There was also a bit more fleshed out plans for Dixon's Blue Beetle Incorporated/Stephanie Brown Robin 6-month plan in this latest video, which I always love to hear.

Knightfall is remembered and beloved for a reason, I think, when nothing else but No Man's Land from that era is as much, though thankfully the new trades have made that period much more accessible again. Wish they'd release more of his Robin stuff, so I can get people to read Steph's early history...

I did not know about the "no more crossovers" thing from Denny, but I like hearing that kind of thing. I do wonder, though, about legacy from those kinds of choices. It's very fun to read the comics of that era, but how many of them "matter" in the ways that a crossover matters? How many of them get collected?

Dixon greatly respects Scott Peterson and Jordan Gorfinkel - he talks about them affectionately all the time. He was REALLY mad at his editor at the end of his time on Robin - and I'm not sure if he meant Matt Idelson, the main editor, or the associate editor, Michael Wright, because someone in that team refused to let him do his Tim as Blue Beetle/Steph as Robin arc, but literally the issue after Dixon left (101), they made Steph an alternate universe Robin in a very, very weak storyline (with some great concepts, but very poorly executed). I can't say I blame Dixon for being extremely frustrated with that whole situation, let alone what happened to Steph in War Games and Bludhaven later.

I still like Bruce Wayne, Murderer and Fugitive, because I love the character of Sasha Bordeaux, and it's full of really rich character and mood stuff. However, it is also very messy, and I think the fact that there's a ton of unnecessary stuff going on during Fugitive, and the villain isn't really developed until the very end, feeling almost like...they decided late in the story process, and thus didn't craft a well constructed mystery from the start.

I think the driver of Murderer/Fugitive was, indeed, Rucka - the other option is Brubaker, who wrote the afterward in the Fugitive trade - but the interesting thing is that Rucka himself has expressed extreme frustration with editorial on Fugitive, saying that his last several issues of Detective in that event were all by different artists, which indicates editorial interference in a massive way. I think it's clear that the period after Denny O'Neil left was not a very good one for the creators, even if I still like some of the stuff that came out then.