Originally Posted by
kevink31593
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.