Dan Didio talks everything comics! Favorite character(s),breaking in,etc.

[Brian Adkins]

It's a typo and I meant EiC. Sorry!



The Dick Grayson thing, as far as I'm aware is more complicated than that; Waid and Johns actually gathered the support of all creatives they could to show Didio how bad an idea that was. But they spent all their influence in that, so Bart became the Flash. (Waid has described that as a hard fight that he lost) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Now, for things that were blocked from Didio, we don't know, because Levitz is one discrete fella, but word in the rumor mill is that Paul covered for Karen Berger for a long time while Didio wanted to re-absorb Vertigo properties into the DCU (and the way Vertigo went after Paul was gone kind of confirms that), that he blocked a full on reboot after Final Crisis and, maybe, blocked Barrys's return on Infinite Crisis. We'll never know: Levitz will take these things to his grave and Didio most likely signed a NDA, but if we look at things with and without Levitz, it checks out.

Okay. Thank you.

[lgcruz]

Levitz is discreet, but Dan Abnett might be more forthcoming:

"It was quite difficult to write, in and as much as it required so much cross-checking with DC. Because it started out of Rebirth, it had Wally West in it, which was a major, major Rebirth element and it was like months and months and months of going around 'Can we do this?' 'Can we say that?' 'What are you gonna do with that?'. And as it went on, there was an obligation to be involved in every crossover. Because we had Nightwing in the book, everything that Batman was doing took Nightwing in a different direction, and there were all these different pools. In fact there was this one notorious moment, which I remember I recovered from, and didn't kill anyone but myself!, that I was actually at a Writer's Conference in Burbank with all the writers, and we were all standing around talking about what we were doing on our books, and then Tom King stood up and went 'So in the next issue of Batman, Nightwing gets shot and then...' and then there was me, as well as Ben Percy, who was writing Nightwing, and we both went 'WHAT?!' and our editors went 'We didn't know!'. And I was like 'OH MY GOD WHAT', YOU'VE SHOT NIGHTWING?!', so I did scream a little while at Dan Didio and everyone for a little while in a very polite British way."

While sadly I can't find a source for the quote, i'm inclined to believe it's true considering how the comics developed over time and the snippets from interviews I can source.

CV: How will Nightwing’s recent injury in the pages of BATMAN affect his role in TITANS?
DA: Drastically. That’s a major drama to come. Nightwing was the heart of this team: it was his idea, his quest, and he was the driving force. The team could be shattered by what’s happened to him. The problem is, the role the Titans play is vital, supporting the Justice League. They can’t just stand down because they’re shaken up. We’re going to find out if the Titans can work as a team without Nightwing’s “glue” driving them forwards.

CV: In HEROES IN CRISIS #1, Tom King may have just killed off Arsenal. What are your thoughts on this, considering how integral he was to TITANS, especially the final story arc of the book before JUSTICE LEAGUE: NO JUSTICE?
DA: Another shocker. I think Tom’s got it in for me . Seriously, the drama of HEROES IN CRISIS (a great series, by the way), will have an impact on TITANS. I want to make sure the interconnected nature of the DCU is properly connected. We’re not going to ignore things happening elsewhere.

And then heroes in crisis ruined wally as well, which was one of the main draws for the writer/artist team in the first place.../

Dan, Wally is the only character that seems to have any sort of memory of both the pre-“Flashpoint” and the lost years of the New 52 timeline. Will we ever be seeing him reference things that happened quite some time ago, pre-“Flashpoint,” or is that going to be tabled for the time being?

DA:I think that general awareness is there. I think our focus is particularly on the continuity that you’re talking about, but one of the things that we want to do, and Dan [DiDio] has said he really wants to see happen, is that we are, not just us personally, but the DCU books are reflecting the entirety of continuity rather than ignoring certain parts of it. Obviously, from ‘Rebirth’ we can see that time has been messed up severely, and the particular impact has been in the most recent times. I like the fact that it’s been crafted in a way that doesn’t deny the New 52. Doesn’t say that’s wrong, didn’t happen, or anything like that, it’s just saying that something has happened and that’s what disrupted all of this, no matter how incompatible and contradictory, has happened, and we’ve got to figure out the truth of that. I do think that opens all sorts of doors creatively, not just for the times, but for other books in the DCU, generally speaking. It’s great fun, we test them. I’ll put something in and I’ll run it past the editorial and it’ll go up to the powers that be, and can we say this or can we get away with that, and that kind of stuff. It’s nice. We’re monitoring it and doing it gently and carefully to make sure that it makes sense.

You guys are tasked with telling the story of Wally West, maybe the single most beloved character that we have seen return in quite some time. What sort of feelings do you guys get from being so involved with bringing Wally back to the DCU?

DA: I’ll let Brett answer that because the way he feels about it is exactly how I feel about it.

BB: Yeah, and I’ve said it before, Wally is my favorite character in comics, period, and finally getting able to draw the character that got me into reading DC stuff is my dream job. On top of that, I get to work with Dick Grayson and Donna Troy. I’m super excited. I’ve been pitching this stuff to Dan DiDio for six years to get Wally back, and I finally get to work on it. I’m super stoked. They wrote something in the first issue, and when I read that, I just completely geeked out and I was smiling for the rest of the night. That’s something so small, but just that one little thing that he wrote made my day.

In short, while it's hard to tell why certain options were taken (only DiDio can answer that), my interpretation is that some writers got to do what they wanted without being held to a company standard or even overall plotline by their editors, like DiDio claims. Then their decisions would impact the work being done by the other writers, who have to adapt to someone else's decisions without being able to defend their stories or even reach a compromise that would satisfy both sides. This can only result in polarising events for former group and a disjointed story for the later group, and describes what i mean by editors running out of control.

[Holt]

Imagine another writer making the unilateral decision to shoot one of your main characters in the head and not finding out about it until a company retreat.

[BohemiaDrinker]

Levitz is discreet, but Dan Abnett might be more forthcoming

Oh, from creatives, you can find a lot of these kinds of quotes out there. And I mean A LOT. I was just talking about the Didio/Levitz alleged situation.

[Badou]

Imagine another writer making the unilateral decision to shoot one of your main characters in the head and not finding out about it until a company retreat.

The things King was allowed to get away with is just ridiculous. It really felt like he didn't care about any other writers, which is the opposite of what you want when you have someone leading events and franchises.

[Vordan]

The things King was allowed to get away with is just ridiculous. It really felt like he didn't care about any other writers, which is the opposite of what you want when you have someone leading events and franchises.

That’s how it works when you’re on Batman. You’re the one driving the rest of DC and everyone else has to work around what you want to do. And to be fair to King, Ric was not his idea.

[Badou]

That’s how it works when you’re on Batman. You’re the one driving the rest of DC and everyone else has to work around what you want to do. And to be fair to King, Ric was not his idea.

Snyder didn't act like that though. People had to work around him of course, but he didn't take characters from writers and abuse them and let the other writers deal with the fallout. At least not to the scale of King. I mean King's idea was to have Dick be bedridden after getting shot and have Tim run around as Nightwing while Dick had to learn to walk and talk again. Not the best idea. King just didn't have characters like Dick or Wally's best interest in mind while writing his stories, and especially not their creators' best interest either.

[Agent Z]

Snyder didn't act like that though. People had to work around him of course, but he didn't take characters from writers and abuse them and let the other writers deal with the fallout. At least not to the scale of King. I mean King's idea was to have Dick be bedridden after getting shot and have Tim run around as Nightwing while Dick had to learn to walk and talk again. Not the best idea. King just didn't have characters like Dick or Wally's best interest in mind while writing his stories, and especially not their creators' best interest either.

Personally, I think King's idea would have been better than what we got.

[Frontier]

The things King was allowed to get away with is just ridiculous. It really felt like he didn't care about any other writers, which is the opposite of what you want when you have someone leading events and franchises.

This is why I think King is better off on one-off series instead of flagship books.

[Brian Adkins]

Imagine another writer making the unilateral decision to shoot one of your main characters in the head and not finding out about it until a company retreat.

That is without a doubt a huge communication issue.

[lgcruz]

And now tom king claims that he only wanted to keep nightwing out of action momentarily, and that alfreds death was supposed to be a scarecrow fakeout but editorial forced him otherwise:



Well, i guess not even some writers get what want.

[Tzigone]

And now tom king claims that he only wanted to keep nightwing out of action momentarily, and that alfreds death was supposed to be a scarecrow fakeout but editorial forced him otherwise:

I've heard the first one before. As for the second - what was going to his "change that will last 15 years" then? Wasn't just going to be another kid, was it?

[Restingvoice]

Imagine another writer making the unilateral decision to shoot one of your main characters in the head and not finding out about it until a company retreat.

It's been like that for a long time. When Dick was going to be killed in Infinite Crisis, Devin Grayson wasn't told about it. She was prepping for DickBabs wedding which she had to cancel. When Forever Evil have Dick unmasked, Kyle Higgins was setting up a new home base and villain and had to scrap that for a filler arc leading up to Forever Evil

I've heard the first one before. As for the second - what was going to his "change that will last 15 years" then? Wasn't just going to be another kid, was it?

BatCat and Helena I bet. That's why King can now only do BatCat in BatCat book that portray their relationship throughout 3 time period (that King already portray bits and pieces in short stories of his Batman) while the main series postpone their relationship one year (to see if BatCat book actually sells high enough I bet)