DC Comics’ senior v-p and executive editor Dan Didio oversees the DC Universe line of superhero comics, and he’s the most public face of the line itself—cheering on fans at conventions and plugging new projects on the back page of DC’s weekly and monthly titles. This week marks the official beginning of the DCU’s biggest “event” in years, Final Crisis, a much-hyped seven-issue miniseries by Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones prominently featuring Jack Kirby’s early‘70s creations the New Gods; it will be accompanied by four other miniseries (Legion of Three Worlds, Revelation, Rogues’ Revenge and Superman Beyond) and a cluster of one-shot specials. As he prepared for its release (and for the early-June launch of the weekly Kurt Busiek/Mark Bagley series, Trinity), Didio discussed the state of the line and its readership, and what’s coming up beyond the “end” promised by Final Crisis.
PW Comics Week: Final Crisis, you’ve said, marks the end of the three-act structure the DC Universe line has been forming for a good long while. What happens afterwards? Is there a fourth act?
Dan Didio: Well, needless to say, we will be continuing to publish after Final Crisis, and we will be, hopefully, in a much stronger position than we’ve ever been in before. My hope is that what we’ll see is a very exciting direction and tonality for our universe, and more importantly a very clear interpretation of who our characters are and what they represent, so that people who’ve jumped on board with Final Crisis have a real idea of the style and tone of the DCU.
PWCW: You’ve talked in the past about how one of your goals is maintaining a relationship with your existing readers, people who are already committed to following the DCU, rather than necessarily making a deliberate outreach to new readers. But the highest-selling DCU title a year ago sold about 132,000 copies; the highest-selling DCU title in March 2008 sold about 88,000 copies, and the average sales of the DCU line are down more than 20% from a year ago. That suggests you’ve lost a big chunk of those existing readers in a year. What’s going on there?
DD: We’ve lost some casual readers, perhaps, but I think we all know the truth is that we do get spikes around events that take place across all the books and series. What you’re comparing to is when we came out of Infinite Crisis into One Year Later; you’re also looking at numbers from when we had an ongoing weekly series with 52, and that led into the start of Countdown as well. I think there’s a natural attrition of fans that we have on a continuous basis, and our goal is to create stories and events that bring people back to sample the books again and then, hopefully, stick around a little bit longer the next time through.
PWCW: The recent 50-cent special DC Universe 0 has taken some heat for being fairly inaccessible to people who weren’t hardcore DCU customers already. How did that issue end up being presented as a jumping-on point?
DD: My opinion is that DCU 0 was accessible to the people who understand and read comics and understand the stories and characters and world. We had DCU 0 for the people who are familiar with and excited by DC Comics, whether they’ve been reading them for five years or 25 years. DCU 0 showcased some of our prime talents and prime characters, and was able to generate interest so that people can go out and sample the stories that spin out from that book. Whether or not we’re going to attract a brand new reader, I also put that encouragement onto the stores themselves—we made that book accessible in price in order to get it into people’s hands. I think the goal for us was to get it into people’s hands, so they could sample it and make the choice of whether they want to follow the DCU paths or not. We put out the best product with our best characters, and from my standpoint, that’s the one way of making it successful.
PWCW: Looking beyond Final Crisis, what should people look at as the flagship DCU titles going into the next year or two?
DD: The flagship titles are always the flagship titles. We have our five key characters, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern and Flash; they’ve always been the heart of the DCU. We have our team books, Teen Titans, Justice League, Justice Society, The Outsiders, which have so many of our strong characters. And more importantly, we have a number of books that will spin out from Final Crisis that will give other characters a chance to be showcased and shine.
PWCW: A lot of the DCU’s new ongoing titles and miniseries of the last few years have been revivals of titles from the ‘80s: Batman and the Outsiders, Checkmate, Infinity Inc., Suicide Squad, Booster Gold, and so on. Were the ‘80s a golden age for the line?
DD: There is a sweet spot from the ‘80s, not least because the ‘80s were the last time comics were on the newsstands and were accessible to a mass audience¬people didn’t have to hunt down comics shops, they could walk into any store that had a spinner rack and pick up their favorite book. Also, I look at the ‘80s as an incredibly creative period of time in the DC Universe. That was right around the time that Crisis on Infinite Earths was taking place, and I think there was so much creative energy that you can’t help but draw stories from that. My goal is not to build stories about the characters from a particular period: we have stories being built about characters from the ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, we have new characters coming out—our goal is still to create characters that matter and build stories around those.
PWCW: One character that had a lot of buzz a couple of years ago was Batwoman—there was a big publicity moment around that, and then she dropped out of sight for the past couple of years. What happened there?
DD: Well, she hasn’t dropped out of sight: she’s been featured in 52, and she had guest spots in Countdown, Crime Bible and Gotham Underground. My goal was to create a very strong supporting character that stood out as a hero first, and I think we’ve accomplished that goal with her. We wanted to build the anticipation if we ever want to take her out and roll her out into her own series from that point.
PWCW: What’s going on with the All-Star line?
DD: We have All-Star Superman and All-Star Batman & Robin. After All-Star Superman #12, Grant [Morrison] is going to take a little bit of a hiatus on the book to deal with his commitments to Batman and Final Crisis. For All-Star Batman & Robin, Jim [Lee] and Frank [Miller] are committed up through #18, if I’m not mistaken, and then we have another team taking over after that, which is actually being done right now. We have another couple of books—All-Star Wonder Woman and All-Star Batgirl—which are on the slow burner, because we want to make sure we have enough material to put them out on a consistent basis before we actually put the first issue out there. We don’t want to create delay problems like we did earlier on.
PWCW: How’s Final Crisis doing, schedule-wise?
DD:Final Crisis is right on schedule for where we hope it to be. We’re going to run crazy, because books like this always run crazy, but we have a number of contingency plans to make sure that these books are right on time or as close to on time as possible.
PWCW: What do you think are the breakout titles for the next six months or next year, besides the Final Crisis titles?
DD: I always go back to our key titles, our key franchises. There’s a big story going on, “Batman R.I.P.,” right now, in the Batman books, that’ll be running through the end of the year; Gail [Simone] and Aaron Lopresti are doing a really fun story with Wonder Woman that will bring out that character really well; and with Superman being written by Geoff Johns and James Robinson, you’ll see a return of the “triangle era’s” crossovers between Action Comics, Superman and Supergirl.
PWCW: Do you have a long-term outlook for the structure of the DCU line?
DD: Absolutely. We have a clear sense of what we’re planning to do—we’re trying to contain the number of products that we do month in and month out so we don’t overtax any of our fans; we try to keep as much diversity as possible as we build our line. We’re happy to say that Final Crisis really is the final Crisis, but that’s not to say that we won’t have big events and big stories, and we’re got the ideas and the making of the stories that will take us through 2010 right now.
