George Perez quit DC’s new 52 Superman comic after a mere six issues. Here’s a few fun things he had to say about working in post-Crisis on Infinite Reboots DC:
?”It was not the experience I wanted it to be.”
? “Unfortunately when you are writing major characters, you sometimes have to make a lot of compromises, and I was made certain promises, […] and unfortunately not through any fault of Dan DiDio — he was no longer the last word, I mean a lot of people were now making decisions […] they were constantly going against each other, contradicting, again in mid-story.”
? “”I didn’t mind the changes in Superman, I just wish it was the same decision Issue 1 or Issue 2, and I had to kept rewriting things because another person changed their mind, and that was a lot tougher.”
? “The writer who replaced me, Keith Giffen, was very, very nice. I’ve known Keith since we both started in the industry, he called me up when they asked him to do Superman to make sure I wasn’t being fired off Superman. And regrettably I did have to tell him no, I can’t wait to get off Superman. It was not the experience I wanted it to be.”
?”I had no idea Grant Morrison was going to be working on another Superman title. I had no idea I was doing it five years ahead, which means … my story, I couldn’t do certain things without knowing what he did, and Grant wasn’t telling everybody. So I was kind of stuck. ‘Oh, my gosh, are the Kents alive? What’s his relationship with all of these characters? Who exists?’ And DC couldn’t give me answers. I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re deciding all these things and you mean even you don’t know what’s going on in your own books?’ So I became very frustrated …”
Well, let’s break this down, shall we? Dan DiDio is co-publisher with Jim Lee, so there’s not a lot of people above him other than president Diane Nelson, who may be mucking about with the company’s biggest characters. Of course, Chief Creative Officer Geoff Johns could have carte blanche over comic stories, as well as editor-in-chief Bob Harras. Although if DiDio is saying one thing and Johns or Harras is saying another then the chain of command over at DC is pretty fucked. This would not shock me.
Of course, if anyone at DC is changing their minds about any editorial decisions on an issue by issue basis, then obviously there was no clear editorial policy set up prior to the relaunch, and apparently they haven’t gotten around to making one yet. That’s insane.
What’s even more insane is that they didn’t have a plan for Superman specifically. Maybe getting all their narrative ducks in a row prior to the relaunch was too big a task — although I’d think that would exactly be the right time to do it — but Superman is one of DC’s two flagship characters. They decided to have a prequel with absolutely no plan on how it might affect the current continuity Superman comic? They couldn’t tell George Perez that they even doing a prequel? Jesus. Not that I had any doubt that the new 52 was an executive order that DC had no time to plan before implementing it, but if I did, those doubts would be gone.
If you think I’m raggin on DC, well, I obviously am. But Marvel’s only news seems to be that
Mjolnir is breaking for 46th time. DC may be screwing things up spectacularly, but spectacular failure is far more interesting than the constant wanking motion Marvel seems to be doing. (
Via Comic Book Resources)
