A selection of some of the funniest, most interesting and strangest quotes from the past week:
“Kids love axes!”
– blogger Rachelle Goguen, in her page-by-page commentary on All-Star Batman and Robin #5
“People call it a call back to Silver Age comics, but I just call it the place where the characters were at their greatest — where we saw their greatest strengths. It’s really building upon what people remember and know the characters to be, and what people most liked about those characters.
“We never want to create a situation where the concept behind a character has nothing to do with people’s perceptions of that character. That’s something I’m very specific about and the goal is to build a much more contemporary world around a character but stay true to the things that make them great.”
– Dan DiDio, executive editor of DC Comics, on recent shifts in the DC Universe
“I have to sell a lot of comic books to be able to afford to be out here, doing this. I make lots of money in comics so I can afford to farm.”
– Chuck Rozanski, farmer and owner of Mile High Comics, selling produce at Colorado’s Boulder Farmers’ Market
“The small, makeshift booth is only about two square metres, but it feels like I’ve got enough technology in here to run a small country.”
– the BBC’s Richard Kimber, checking out a media immersion pod in Tokyo
“If the new Captain America proves to have as good a measure of the national pulse as the old one, the world should brace for a US foreign policy that will be low profile and limited, but still quite lethal.”
– Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, foreign editor of The Hindustan Times, on Captain America as political barometer
“It’s not really a black and white issue. Way more than nine out of 10 new books fail and new characters or revamped characters generally don’t make it. The only difference is a black character is less likely to get a second or third chance. DC used the tools they had to draw attention to the book and it was extremely well done for most of its run. People just didn’t buy it.”
– writer Dwayne McDuffie, on the cancellation of DC’s latest Firestorm series
May 18th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Dwayne, IIRC, Firestorm was being cancelled way before you joined the party. You only made it’s loss a disappointment because of the excellent job you did with the issues you DID write.
May 18th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
So what Dan Didio is saying is that they’re going back to the Silver Age of comics. Ok…
May 18th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
So, which issues of the Silver Age comics had the mind-control/wiping-by-heroes, on-screen rape, and graphic death scenes again?
May 18th, 2007 at 9:45 pm
Except for the on screen rape, all those things did happen in the Silver Age. Nice try, I mean, the whole mind wipe thing Silver Age story is referenced in Identity Crisis.
May 19th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Correct me if I’m wrong, but is the first time that Didio has actually said that they were trying to recreate aspects of the silver age?
Usually when asked about reverting to the silver age, Didio says something about “not going back, but highlighting the timeless aspects of the character; getting back to basics.”
But this is the first time that I’ve read Dan say that silver age was “where the characters were at their greatest.”
What does he consider the silver age? Cause I feel stories like “longbow Hunters,” the entire Starman by Robinson, Johns’ Flash, Morrison’s JLA are most definitely “modern.” And I think those were some creative peaks for characters.
May 19th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Kevin, I love the (hopefully intentional) juxtapositioning of Rozanski’s and Kimber’s quotes.
May 20th, 2007 at 8:15 am
Here’s the REAL quote of the week:
“The initial plan was 80 pages — we sent Diamond 27 pages. We had others, but I didn’t want to send anything unfinished.”
- well-intentioned but ultimately clueless internet whiner Tim Leong, likely not clued in to the irony…
May 20th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Cheap shot at Tim Leong, Anonymous. Because Diamond has to solicit the books so far in advance, Leong obviously had to send a few pages along so Diamond could look them over. Having the entire book ready before letting Diamond look at it and MAYBE put it in the catalog would mean that the entire contents of the book would be a minimum of 3 months old and likely up to 6 months old. Dated information would be fairly useless to most readers.