Tom Spurgeon reported late on Friday that DC refused to allow an excerpt of Paul Pope’s roundly acclaimed Batman Year 100 from being included in this year’s edition, despite the efforts of guest editor Lynda Barry, series editors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel, Pope himself, and publisher Houghton Mifflin:
Pope said that he was contacted fairly only on in the process by Madden and Abel to try and get the comics publisher to OK the addition. “I made formal requests, as did Lynda and a number of other people with some degree of influence.” One unfortunate outcome is that it may have kept Pope from the book altogether. “Jessica and Matt said not to worry, because if DC would not allow the addition of my Batman pages, they would be running my story “Fun! Comics” — from THB:CFM #1, which debuted at SDCC that year — so I would be in the collection regardless. Despite the fact that I own THB and Batman was a work for hire project, I wanted to see the Batman pages run in the book as well, so I lobbied for that. Lynda had been searching for some superhero material to add to the series, mine fit the bill. Her intention was to shed light on quality material from the so-called ‘mainstream’ of comics. I’m all for that.
“Months went by and I figured the matter was dead in the water, que sera sera. Then I get an email in the 11th [hour] from HM, letting me know they were about to go to press and were still trying to get DC to OK the addition of the Batman pages. In the end, DC took so long to formally deny the request that it not only prevented the Batman pages from running, it also forced HM to go ahead with the book without any material from me at all.”
Related: The revelation initially came out of this extended interview Spurgeon did with Barry. Which you really should read.
