I have a few ideas of my own that we'll get to in a moment, but first it's worth going straight to the source. Our own Graeme McMillan had a chance to talk with DC Executive Editor Dan Didio during Comic Con. Here's what he had to say regarding the whys and wherefores of Blackest Night:

Blackest Night, you're bringing a lot of people back as zombies for want of a better way of putting it...

They're not really zombies.

They're undead creatures who go around killing people.

Okay.

What's the purpose of doing this? Are you doing it for nostalgia, are you doing it to confound nostalgia in that you may be bringing characters back, but in a way that's different from what they expect...

I think so. There've been a lot of stories told about death, and killing of characters, over the last few years. Geoff came up with the idea for Blackest Night several years ago, and when it came time to move together, everything came together to where we are right now. But the Blackest Night story was always going to be the story that it is [now]. And part of that story was to explore the nature of death, we also explore a little bit about the concept of "revolving door death," as the story progresses, but more importantly, I think we really come back with a more defined sense of rules about what death really means in the DC universe.

I've said it somewhere else and I'll say it again, one of the mistakes we made [in terms of killing characters] was that we were going with quantity over quality. What we're really trying to do is be much smarter, and really, if somebody dies, it should have much stronger ramifications for the character, and the story, and across the universe.

Is it a possibility to undo deaths in this series?

There's a lot of things that have potential coming out of this. [Laughs]

Nice dodge.

Thank you! [Laughs]

Honestly, it's pretty hard to imagine Blackest Night won't be used as a massive vehicle for bringing dead characters back to life. After all, there's no way the Martian Manhunter or Aquaman are remaining dead forever, and I can't really think of a better place to revive them than in a massive company-spanning event that is all about the consequences of death. But that still doesn't mean Blackest Night is exclusively or even primarily about undoing superhero deaths, and that goes double for Necrosha.

So why then are both Marvel and DC launching massively death-obsessed stories so close together? What's the appeal of undead superheroes? Well, I have some theories…

1. Death has major dramatic and thematic heft.

Or it should, in theory. Death in comic books has been largely devalued ever since Superman came back to life after his bout with Doomsday in the nineties, turning death into little more than a brief retirement for temporarily unpopular characters. Indeed, the returns of such long dead heroes as Jason Todd, Bucky Barnes, and Barry Allen have made it crystal clear that a character's death is really just the start of the countdown for his or her return.

You would really have to go back over twenty years to find the last comic book deaths with real impact, including Barry Allen and Supergirl's heroic sacrifices in Crisis on Infinite Earths and Captain Marvel's painful death at the hands of a terminal illness. And, of course, two of those have since been more or less undone (and prior to Secret Invasion there was some definite playing around with Captain Marvel's real fate).

There have been attempts in recent years to take death seriously again, but most of these have been of the one step forward, two steps backward variety. Marvel promised the death of Captain America would indeed be permanent, and less than three years later Captain America: Reborn has begun. DC attempted to remove Bruce Wayne in Final Crisis without exactly killing him off, but the fact that his survival is a confirmed fact does somewhat cheapen the eulogies and tributes other characters have offered for him in recent months. Dramatic irony and pathos are both great things to have in a story, but they don't necessarily mix together terribly well.

As much as the revolving door of death has still been spinning freely, both companies have tried to reinvest death with some of its former impact. In DC's case, this has largely taken the form of focusing on characters whose deaths are a key part of the superheroes' origins. For Hal Jordan, this has been his father, the fearless test pilot Martin Jordan, while Barry Allen is haunted by the memory of his murdered mother (not to mention his father, who he believes was falsely accused of the crime). Of course, even this is not entirely consistent. Grant Morrison's Batman: RIP went so far as to suggest that not only was Thomas Wayne alive, but he was actually a psychopathic supervillain who was never really Bruce's father at all. (That was since disproved. Probably.)

Marvel, on the other hand, has simply done a better job resisting the urge to resurrect characters. As much as their claims regarding the permanence of Captain America's demise were soon shown to be false, they do seem to be treating death as a rather more final thing than DC. Secret Invasion was in part meant to reveal a recent rash of unlikely returns as part of the larger Skrull plot, although Hawkeye did manage to remain alive and human (and was even reunited with Mockingbird). As much as Janet van Dyne is probably coming back sooner or later, there are a whole bunch of characters, particularly mutants, that Marvel has killed off and left that way, thus leaving plenty of viable candidates for Necrosha's undead army.

What all of this has accomplished, really, is simply the sense that death can be permanent, and thus it's again possible to tackle death in comics in a way that is at least vaguely relatable to the world we live in. Blackest Night has already made much of the fact that there are many who never come back, and those who have are aberrations, cosmic freaks who should not be. These events are taking death in comic books one step further – death is no longer simple a way to underscore the seriousness of the latest threat, but is instead the threat itself.

Blackest Night and Necrosha are about confronting mortality and dealing with the inevitable through the quintessentially comic book means of having living superheroes fight their dead comrades. And, of course, if Marvel and DC can actually follow through with their promises to treat death more seriously and use it more sparingly in the aftermath of these events, then so much the better. Of course, that probably does mean they'll want to undo as many major deaths as possible while they still can…

2. You've got to bring these characters back sooner or later, so you might as well make a big production out of it.

For better or worse (and I know there are plenty of arguments that this is for the worse), comics are meant to be an infinite medium. To be sure, arcs within ongoing books can have clear beginnings and endings, but overall a character's story is meant to run and run forever. There's a reason Grant Morrison was able to somewhat plausibly imagine DC reaching the millionth issue of its books – ultimately, that basically is the goal of superhero comics.

Of course, that can create conflict with creating finite adventures that have their own stakes and consequences – in other words, telling actual stories. Much of the time, comics get by this by simply ignoring all previous stories that don't directly impact the current arc. (For instance, I'm fairly sure the time Superman and Wonder Woman spent a thousand years together fighting monsters is still in continuity, although you'd never know it from the way any of the characters interact.) This is rather more difficult to do when major characters actually die, which does generally necessitate some sort of change to the status quo.

But then, if the status quo changes too much, soon enough the call goes out for a return to the more iconic version. Kyle Rayner, Wally West, Bucky Barnes, and Dick Grayson must eventually hand the mantle back to Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Steve Rogers, and Bruce Wayne. This has been particularly commonplace in recent years, as an era of self-consciously grim and gritty (and thus death-filled) comics have been replaced by ones more concerned with the history of the medium, often bringing back long forgotten elements and plot points from the Silver and Bronze Ages.

As such, you've got a whole bunch of dead characters with a whole bunch of comic book writers ready and willing to bring them back. And why bring all of them back piecemeal when you can turn it into one massive event? Thus the need for Blackest Night, and quite possibly for Necrosha as well. (Admittedly, there's not really enough known yet about Necrosha to say whether it explore similar territory, so some of this may only apply to Blackest Night.)

If there's one thing DC has arguably always done better than Marvel, it's turn massive continuity reboots into epic events. Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis might both be a little too impossibly vast in scope for their own good, but they do rather defiantly take ownership of what could otherwise be embarrassing admissions of creative failure (although the less said about Zero Hour the better).

Blackest Night is tackling about a big a topic as one can in the DC Universe without traipsing into that pesky multiverse, and both Dan Didio and event mastermind Geoff Johns have suggested they also want to explore more metaphysical territory. In this sense, Blackest Night could be somewhere between Johns's own Infinite Crisis and Grant Morrison's Final Crisis, which was all about (well, as much as it was all about anything) the moral order of the DC Universe, and whether good fundamentally had to triumph over evil.

Similarly, Blackest Night apparently wants to explore the cosmic underpinnings of why some characters have come back and why others haven't. It's a way of turning years of cheap shocks and inconsistent editorial decisions into a gigantic masterplan, and it might almost look elegant when all is said and done. But perhaps I'm being too lofty in my thinking. Perhaps it's as simple as…

3. Zombies are huge right now.

I'll admit that I don't always keep up with my cultural zeitgeists as much as I should, but I'm fairly sure zombies are supposed to be the new vampires. (Or are they the new pirates?) Certainly, the past decade has been kind to the walking dead, with movies like 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead becoming hits and books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies somehow attaining both popular success and critical acclaim. And it seems like you can't go another day without news of some another ridiculous zombie version of a pop icon in the works.

And, of course, comics themselves have done very well with the undead. Zombies are a key part of a rotation of character types in the steady stream of "[BLANK] vs. [BLANK]" comics that also includes vampires, ninjas, robots, aliens, pirates, werewolves, cowboys, and Amazons. Marvel has had plenty of success with its Marvel Zombies franchise, which will continue at least as long as the House of Ideas has iconic covers to zombify. It's hard to argue zombies have made for a lot of high art in comics, but their stories have largely been good, goofy fun, and the sales figures certainly reflect a healthy readership for their stories.

As such, it makes a ton of sense to prominently feature zombies in your company's next big event. Even stripped of the particular wrinkle of bringing back prominent superheroes as undead killers, zombies seem to work just fine in abstraction, and there's every reason to think a "Green Lantern Corps vs. Zombies" or an "X-Men vs. Zombies" event would do very well for their respective companies – all the additional character stuff is just icing on the zombie cake.

The only slight problem with this is whether either Blackest Night or Necrosha actually, technically speaking, involves zombies. Dan Didio certainly doesn't seem to think the Black Lanterns can be considered zombies. I suppose it depends how important it is that the villains of Blackest Night partake in classically zombie activities, like, say, eating brains (something I wrongly suggested they would be doing in a post I wrote back in February).

All of this really sets up a technical argument over the definition of "zombie" that I'm not really qualified to have. I will say that whatever one's precise understanding of the concept, I'm pretty sure the Black Lanterns meet a lot of the requirements, and the undead mutants in Necrosha will probably be even closer, if only because their origins will be more explicitly supernatural, what with the villainous vampire Selene prominently involved.

How's the convention?

I got in just Friday, I got in late so I hit the ground running, and it doesn't matter what day you arrive now, every day seems sold out, every day is packed. Every day is Saturday as far as I'm concerned. It's pretty intense, the reactions to everything we've got going on from Wednesday Comics to Blackest Night to Superman to Batman has been extremely strong for us. You put a lot of time and energy into working all year to get to this point and to get people having that level of excitement and wanting to know more, and keep reading what's going on right now, gives you a renewed feeling of energy to just dig back in when you get back in to the office.

So what is the most successful thing, or the most popular thing, from the reactions you've been seeing so far?

Without question, it's Blackest Night. I mean, if you walk around the convention floor, you see all the shirts. And I think now, I can honestly say that, with all the colored Lantern shirts, we've finally found a way to knock out Superman and Batman as the most iconic shirt walking around the convention floor. From my standpoint, that is an incredible validation for all the efforts that Geoff [Johns], Pete Tomasi, Ivan Reis and all the guys have put into getting us where we are right now.

What about Wednesday Comics, how do you think that's going over?

I absolutely adore Wednesday Comics, naturally. You know, it was a big risk for us, we took a lot of chances on it. So, for us to hear people coming back not only critically applauding it, but we also have very strong sales, better than we were expecting. Honestly, we walked into it with a lot of hesitation, we didn't walk into it saying 'This is going to be a great money-making book for us,' but we knew it had some weird potential.

I have to admit, it stymied everyone internally, from publicity to sales to marketing, everybody embraced it, everybody got excited about it, but everybody wasn't sure how it was going to do. The first issue exceeded our expectations, and we continue to stand higher than we thought we were going to on the book.

Do you think it's because there's good value in doing non-continuity tales that offer new readers a better opportunity to come into?

You know, I get the new reader question a lot, but I don't think this is about new readers. It's about an interesting format, I think it's a different way to tell stories. Honestly, if you read all the stories, are you getting the origins of everyone? Are you getting all the backstory on everybody? You're not seeing that. What you are seeing are just good, fun stories.

I think new readers can come into comics reading Blackest Night as much as they can come into comics reading Wednesday Comics as much as they could come in reading all the relaunches on all the new Batman books. As long as we tell something that feels exciting, something that feels compelling, something that makes you want to pick up the next month's books, I think that's how you get new readers, that's how you get more readers, and just as importantly, hold onto the readers that you've got.

Do you think that Wednesday Comics is something that you could do again, or is it a one-off?

That's probably the most asked question right now. As I like to say, we still have another nine issues to come out, and the reality is, the only way we can go out there and do a second series of these is to go out with a better arrangement of talent, you know, one that's more high profile, more energetic, and hopefully try to exceed what we've accomplished on the first one.

Which is a tall order, considering what's been accomplished in the first one.

Yeah, yeah. So what I want to do is sit back, and see how this performs, see what it does as a collected form, we're still discussing how we're going to release that, so from my standpoint, once we achieve that, we're going to be able to stand back and think about what we need to accomplish next.

Any teases as to what the next weekly comic will be? Or is there even another weekly comic coming down the line?

Yeah, as a matter of fact, we're discussing a couple of projects right now. One we thought was going to hit this year, but we moved it to next year. I really enjoy the weekly format, I think it's the way to go, it always has relevance to what's going on in the line, or there's something that feels unique about it. There will always be strengths to it. You can look at every one we've done in the weekly format, from 52 and Countdown [To Final Crisis] to Trinity and you can see the strengths of each one, what they've accomplished. The hard part is always coming up with a way to one-up yourself, like I said. I think it's something we've accomplished with Wednesday Comics, but more importantly, I think [weekly is] a valuable format, especially with the buying patterns and type of audience that we have.

A lot of people are going digital at this convention, there's a lot of talk about digital comics, is that something you're thinking about, or are you just concentrating on "comic" comics?

I'm always concentrating on "comic" comics, because at this point, you look like the readers that we have, that fanbase is built on a very collectable mentality, that's what our fanbase is, that's why comics are succeeding while other magazines are failing. We're not advertising reliant, which is the first thing, so it's the collector aspect that keeps it going.

But to say that we're not focusing on a digital aspect would be false. We're always aware of that, we know that is the future, and that's where things are heading. But the format and when you roll that out, that's a different point.

Is part of it waiting for one particular format? There're a lot of formats, and there's a lot of conversation about which is better.

There's always a lot of conversation. This is my own personal viewpoint: Much of our audience, much of our reader base is very comfortable reading paper, you know what I mean? Once we have an audience that's built, that's learnt, on reading things on a screen, then you'll see a natural migration over to that, but things haven't reached that point in our foundation. I still think what's strong about what we do is the collectability, and that's why we focus on the publishing side we've got going on.

Right now, you've got Green Lantern, Justice Society and Batman getting a push. What should people be looking at in the next year that they may not be looking at now?

Naturally, you'll see a lot of things going on with Superman that's building to a bigger story next year, and I think it's pretty obvious where a lot of that is heading. Also, there's a storyline coming out of [Justice League] Cry for Justice that comes out of that, goes into [Justice] League and then goes into Titans, so you'll see something happening over in the group books a bit, as well.

So are you bringing all the books back together like you did in Countdown To Final Crisis?After that, you pretty much let everything breathe.

Exactly. What I like to do is set milestones, something we should hit every month and use as guidestones. Every month, something happens that everybody reacts to. It's a little bit of an osciliating effect: The stories come together, they feel the cohesion of the universe, and then they break apart and do their own thing, and then they come together again as things go on there. It gives the writers a chance to expand and fill their character base, but also continue to give that cohesive nature to the DCU, and I think that's what most people are looking for.

I look at what we have, and I always say that we have eight key franchises, and what we have is that we've always tried to build stories based around those franchises, and then make them interact. The Bruce Wayne story leading into Batman Reborn, and the Dick Grayson as Batman story is really playing throughout the whole Batman world. Much of what's going on with the World of New Krypton is playing across the Superman books. You had Rise of The Olympian that was taking place in the Wonder Woman series, which has a lot to do still over there. Cry for Justice will be feeding into Justice League of America. And then it comes to the Teen Titans books as well. It'll be an interesting way to see how those things interact.

We came out of the "Thy Kingdom Come" storyline in the JSA and now we watch JSA become a mini-franchise, between Magog and Power Girl and JSA All Stars. And Green Lantern through Blackest Night and Flash through Rebirth, you're going to see our key characters and franchises getting something that really drives them.

But you're going to keep them separate for now?

Well, I like to say that, but we have Green Lantern running, we have Flash running and we have JLA running, and you can see that Flash is playing an integral part in Blackest Night. Not that whole, 'here comes an event so everyone has to be together,' it's more about, who makes most sense for this particular event and watching what happens when we do that so that it feels more organic, and not as forced.

Are you guys changing the ways you do events? Blackest Night feels more focused, if that makes sense, in a way that <em.Final Crisis wasn't.

"Crisis" stands for it's own thing, it stands for multiverses, multiple worlds, multiple incarnations, multiple interpretations, which is all over the place. It's really a cornerstone of DC, but we've sort of played that card a lot of times now, we've decided to take a half-step back and focus on more personal stories and focus on the key characters, like we are doing with Blackest Night. But that's not to say that the next time we go through, we might not have something that's...

...Crisis-esque.

Mmm, I wouldnt say "crisis-esque," but I would say it has the scope of something large, but it still has a very personal context to it.

According to professional rumormonger Rich Johnston, the news shouldn't come as that much of a surprise:

This isn't the first time the internet has called for Dan's head and whipped themselves into believing that a message board post was the equivalent of a shareholders' report, only for reality to bite them in the arse. I wrote something very similar this time last year and was accused of being a DC stooge. I was right then, looks like I'm right now. Look forward to the same thing come June 2009... [Y]es, there was an emergency senior editorial meeting held last week... who knows what answers it will provide? It is likely that there is some editorial shakeup in the works. But as of now, for the foreseeable future, Dan is still The Man.

Heidi MacDonald's reasoning is just as down to Earth:

There are many behind the scenes reasons for this, and we’ll do our best to parse a few of them, but the bottom line appears to be that DC management clearly feels that there is no one better equipped for the job and has confidence that DiDio can return to his early, sales-boosting ways.

This ties in with something that I was told this weekend - That, despite DC's disappointing performance under DiDio, they may be forced to stick with him due to the lack of anyone else within the company with the experience and/or ambition to step into the position instead. Todd Allen looked at possible reasons why DC wouldn't have put up a stronger defense of DiDio considering the beating he's been taking:

DC isn’t exactly the most fan-friendly publisher in the world and if they’ve just extended a contract, it would be perfectly in character for them to ignore all protests, as opposed to having to defend someone who’s in the middle of a negotiation... Indeed, if this happened over a month ago and it never got out, you could almost say they were keeping it a secret. When Marvel extends Joe Quesada’s contract, you hear about it and you don’t hear rumors of his ouster for a few months afterwards.

Nonetheless, the fact remains: Dan DiDio is still both large and in charge at DC. Here's hoping we get to see a tell-all "I'm still here!" interview before too long.

The rumor about a resignation were made public by writer Warren Ellis, in one of his Bad Signal mailings early Friday morning:

If what I just heard is true, then it's going to be a really
interesting day in the comics news business... If it's not, well, I just wasted seven seconds of your time. You'll live.

As he had predicted, the news broke on Comic Book Resources, where Rich Johnston shared the following:

I understand that last week, John Nee handed his resignation in to DC Comics. As of today, however, he was still working at the company offices.

DC themselves refused to comment, but Nee's resignation was claimed confirmed for the site by "independent sources." Online reaction to the news was mixed; IDW Publishing's Scott Dunbier, who had worked with Nee at DC's Wildstorm imprint for years before resigning himself last year, posted that

John Nee is an honorable man and my friend. I hope he is happy and successful in whatever he does.

while "Tom Power" (presumably a pseudonym) left the following comment at Newsarama:

Nee’s departure won’t even be noticed by readers and consumers, but it will buoy the spirits of everyone who had to work under him. Nee was known for his being tone deaf to the feelings and sensibilities of others; what he probably saw as being forthright and outspoken was regarded by people with actual human emotions as a form of Tourettes and a total lack of empathy. Knowing people who worked under him at DC as I do (and having interacted with him on various bits of business over the years), I feel safe saying that he won’t be missed.

So, who was this apparently divisive figure?

John Nee came to DC through Wildstorm, the one-time independent studio headed up by 1990s superstar artist Jim Lee purchased by DC late in 1998, where he was VP General Manager for the imprint until his promotion last year to Senior Vice President of Business Development for all of DC Comics. During his time in both roles, he was responsible for the expansion of DC's international publishing programs, as well as the creation of DC's CMX manga imprint, the long-coming Sony/DC Comics MMO, DC's participation in online/cell publisher Flex Comics and - maybe most importantly of all - Lego Batman.

While his stepping down from his current position may not have an immediate effect for fans, it's still unknown what it may mean for the publisher itself; in response to Publisher's Weekly's Heidi MacDonald calling the resignation "capp[ing] off what had to be considered a week of bad news and turmoil for DC," Warren Ellis wrote (in another Bad Signal mailing):

Sadly, I don't think that does cap off the week for DC. I don't think they're going to have a very good day at all, tomorrow. I hate this, really.

Despite that Friday mailing, nothing was announced on Saturday or Sunday... Not that that stopped the rumor mill. Almost everyone assumes that Nee's resignation is part of larger changes, and while the nature of those changes varies depending on who you listen to (Most outlandish take: Nee has resigned in preparation for Jim Lee to leave his own post at DC and start up another independent publisher. Most plausible: Nee has resigned to facilitate a series of sideways moves that will slide Dan DiDio out of the Executive Editor position and someone else in), very few people believe that Nee's resignation is as simple as it seems on first inspection.

Dan DiDio's appearance at this weekend's HeroesCon has done little to inspire confidence in his staying power; although he told fans at the DC Nation panel that such rumors "come with the job" - not that they're helped when Jimmy Palmiotti teases the crowd with a "no comment" when asked if he wanted DiDio's gig (He's since made it clearer that he was joking and doesn't want the job) - others felt that he seemed very worn down and defeated:

DiDio stayed pretty gruff throughout the State of the Industry panel and dodged moderator Tom Spurgeon's questions about the past week at DC, marred by Chuck Dixon's acrimonious exit. Not inspiring anyone, at one point DiDio said, "We have the same characters... There's only so much you can do with them. You've seen it all, you've heard it all."

I mean, it's honest, but, man. Talk about a buzzkill.

It will, it seems, be another very interesting week for DC Comics.

After more than a year of falling sales and stories that left readers and critics cold, DC's summer 2008 flagship comic Final Crisis was seen by many to be the one book that could fix all problems and return the publisher to the #1 spot in terms of fan conversation, critical acclaim and sales. After all, it had a fan-favorite creative team (X-Men, JLA, Invisibles and We3 writer Grant Morrison and 52 cover artist JG Jones) and promised to not only provide thematic closure to, but also wrap up long-running subplots from, the last four years' worth of DC comics. Where could you go wrong?

Well, the first issue of the series (which appeared last month) could have reviews like this one, from well-respected comics critic Tom Spurgeon:

The general feeling that I had in the midst of reading it is a strange one, and not something I've seen anyone else try to put into words. The whole work feels arbitrary in a way, if I can explain it like that. For something that comes out of a shared universe and the last four years of concentrated plot maneuverings made by the company entire, much of the plot in Final Crisis #1 feels strangely impressed on top of the book like an overlay.

Or this, from former DC editor KC Carlson:

I had to find out from the internet what Anthro was drawing in the sand, and it’s a good thing I did, because I also found out that the story really ramps up in its third issue! Meaning I have to be 12 bucks into the story before anything exciting happens?

While there were some positive reviews, this review from Comic Book Resources seemed to sum up the general feeling towards the launch:

This isn't a disaster just yet, but six more issues of this caliber and this could spell the end of the sales power for a company event at DC Comics. "Final Crisis", indeed.

Part of the bad feeling people had for the book was due to the weekly 51 issue prologue series, Countdown to Final Crisis. After a year of apparently hastily put-together stories that sacrificed consistency and coherence for the ability to meet deadline, everyone was more than slightly surprised to see that Final Crisis not only seemed to ignore Countdown's plot, but also outright contradict it in places. To make matters worse, Final Crisis writer Morrison gave an interview about the discrepancy that hinted at disharmony with what was going on behind the scenes at the publisher:

Final Crisis was partly-written and broken down into rough issue-by-issue plots before Countdown was even conceived, let alone written. And J.G. was already working on designs and early layouts by the time Countdown started. There wasn’t really much opportunity, or desire, to modify our content at that stage. [W]hen Countdown was originally being discussed, it was just a case of me saying ‘Here’s issue 1 of Final Crisis and a rough breakdown of the following six issues. As long as you guys leave things off where Final Crisis begins, we‘ll be fine.’ Obviously, I would have preferred it if the New Gods hadn't been spotlighted at all, let alone quite so intensively before I got a chance to bring them back but I don’t run DC and don’t make the decisions as to how and where the characters are deployed... If there was only me involved, Orion would have been the first dead New God we saw in a DC comic, starting off the chain of events that we see in Final Crisis... The Countdown writers were later asked to ‘seed’ material from Final Crisis and in some cases, probably due to the pressure of filling the pages of a weekly book, that seeding amounted to entire plotlines veering off in directions I had never envisaged, anticipated or planned for in Final Crisis.

But, of course, it doesn't matter how you make an omelette as long as it tastes good, right? And Final Crisis was the most successful comic book of last month, as intended, right? Well... not exactly:

Secret Invasion #2 was the bestselling comic book of May, comfortably edging out the first issue of DC's big summer event, Final Crisis.

How comfortably? Well, the second issue of Marvel's Secret Invasion sold 5 copies for every 4 copies sold of Final Crisis, which tends to add up when you're talking in the tens of thousands of copies (Comic Book Resources' estimates a 41,000 difference between the books). In fact, May was a very bad month for DC overall, with main rival Marvel having 50% more market share than them, and seven titles in the top 10 selling comics of the month to DC's three.

Luckily, there's a distraction from the sales disappointment: Chuck Dixon, a long-time DC writer recently fired by the publisher, has taken to the internet to share his dissatisfaction with the situation, officially refusing to discuss the situation while also posting blog comments like

DC, currently, is run from the top down in a way that makes [1980s Marvel Editor in Chief, infamous for his interference in other people's work and ego] Jim Shooter’s aegis at Marvel look like a hippie commune... The difference between his reign at Marvel and the current one at DC is that Shooter was successful at raising circulation and longterm planning.

and

I’ve worked under tyrants and I can say that I’d prefer to work under a talented, knowledgeable tyrant with a successful plan than a directionless gladhander with a ouija board any day of the week.

Nothing like a happy work environment and former employees willing to sing your praises, is there? Not that things look set to get better anytime soon; with confirmation on Monday that concern that JG Jones won't be able to meet deadline on Final Crisis has led to another artist being assigned to draw parts of each future issue bringing yet more calls for DiDio to step down or be fired, it's beginning to look like the rumors that DC is looking for a new guy to turn the publisher around and rebuild bridges with creators, retailers, fans and anyone else who's still paying attention when DiDio's current contract expires in October (or perhaps even earlier) may be true after all.

But who would that new guy be? The loudest buzz is around Jimmy Palmiotti, currently under an exclusive contract as a writer for DC Comics, but whose previous positions include co-founding Event Comics and co-head of Marvel's "Marvel Knights" imprint, both with friend and current Marvel Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada. Palmiotti's name has been mentioned as possible replacement in comic pro circles for a while now, and a recent Publishers Weekly article about DC's troubles quickly turned into a "Palmiotti for Boss" session. What was interesting was Palmiotti's response in that same thread as to why his then-partner Quesada got the top Marvel gig and he didn't:

joe wanted the E.I.C. job and went after it while we were doing Marvel Knights…and he was the perfect guy for the job…Its obvious to everyone. I never wanted the job then because i wanted to create new characters and start writing…and to do that, i had to start from the ground up again to make it work.

Interesting use of past tense there, Jimmy: "I never wanted the job then"? "I wanted to create new characters and start writing"? Has something changed, perhaps...?

Other than Palmiotti getting sideways involved in the online chatter, it's notable that no current DC creators have spoken out in support of their boss on this subject (In comparison, when Marvel's Quesada was being called out for removing Spider-Man's marriage via deal with the devil, Marvel's top writers publicly stood behind him on message boards and news sites), adding yet more fuel to the uncomfortable atmosphere fire.

While it's unlikely that DiDio will go before the end of convention season (if he ends up going at all), that decision may just make matters more awkward in the short run for DC, who'll be seen to be unresponsive to all the bad press and have to face multiple convention panels hijacked by fans asking variations on "Why do you still have your job when you suck so bad?" One thing is certain; while it's got to be pretty good to be the guy in charge of Marvel Comics right now (Most successful American comic publisher and two hit movies this summer), if The Dark Knight isn't a box office smash and millions of nerds point the finger at DC's Executive Editor (unfairly, as he has no real control over the movies), there's no way that Dan DiDio is being paid enough money to shoulder the blame for all of DC's perceived problems this year.

Even though I thought I was joking when I said that the tease "Superman Red or Superman Blue" was about Clark Kent's political affiliation, it turns out that I was 100% right, according to DC's Executive Editor, Dan DiDio:

We're entering a very interesting election year this year, and what I think is important about it is that it's that there's this excitement - a sense of "building"...there's change in the air in regards to the whole political process that's at play in the United States. What we want to do is tap into that emotion, and tell a story that plays in the DC Universe with our characters, while using the political backdrop we're seeing now to help to define our characters better... For the first time, we'll be having our characters make true political stands in regards to their leanings, as well as what motivates them to be heroes, and what they believe is necessary for their world and their country to move in the direction they believe to be the right one.

This is not about the actual candidates. Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton and John McCain do not appear in this comic [laughs]. These are candidates that represent particular political beliefs, and it's more about why the heroes are motivated or respond to particular candidates themselves, or the platforms of particular candidates.

The biweekly series launches in September.

Dan DiDio on DCU: Decisions

The board - a callback to a subplot from DC's successful 52 series - is made up of multiple phrases or, weirdly enough, math problems that tie into already-announced, rumored or completely unknown stories for Superman, Batman and their (super) friends. Some of them are obvious:

Submit and Resist are both titles tied in with the upcoming Final Crisis storyline, as already announced by DC. Same with Evil Won (Final Crisis taking place after evil has apparently beaten good in that traditional never-ending battle), First Boy/Last Boy (Crisis will, according to writer Grant Morrison, start with Anthro, the first boy on Earth, and end with Kamandi, the last boy on Earth), Girlfight (Morrison has promised a fight between Supergirl, the teen girl personification of all things good, and Mary Marvel, newly-appointed pin-up girl for evil) and Loneliness + Alienation + Fear + Despair + Self Worth (etc.), which is one possible version of "the Anti-Life Equation," DC's mythical way to remove free will in people (This version appeared in Morrison's 2006 Mister Miracle series, which has been named multiple times as the key book to read before Final Crisis).

Equally clear are Best Woman For Job - A Man, which ties into this summer's Wonder Woman storyline where it's decided that Wonder Woman has failed in her mission to bring peace to the world and needs to be replaced with a man called The Olympian; 1,000/3 = 1, a reference to Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, which brings three different worlds of 1000 years in the future together; You Can Go Home Again, tying into this summer's Justice Society of America Annual, which takes Power Girl back to a version of her home planet, Earth 2; I Am Batman?/I Am Bruce Wayne?, about Wayne's identity crisis in Batman: R.I.P.; The Dead Shall Rise, the already-announced tagline of next year's The Blackest Night storyline; and Sightings All Around Us, which is a shout-out to DC's new "Sightings" branding for declared-important comics.

Everything else, though, is a little more shaky - 52 - 1 = 0 could be about DC's 52 alternate Earths, or simply pointing to last week's DC Universe Zero. Kings Reborn may be a reference to the potential return of the original Aquaman, who was, after all, King of Atlantis, and Rockin' Robins just might be about which Robin gets to become the new Batman. But the other ones...? Here are our entirely baseless guesses:

100% Alien - Something to do with the rumored death of 1950s alien-amongst-us, the Martian Manhunter.
Who is Wonder Dog? - Well, it used to be Rex, Nazi-fightin' pup, but for some reason, I'm seeing a Wonder Woman tie-in here...
There is No-One... Yet - Probably a Final Crisis mention of some sort, as is He Is The Force (The "astro-force" being a Jack Kirby invention as is Crisis badguy Darkseid) and He Wakes The World Ends.
The Son Rises - I'll be very surprised if this isn't a reference to Damien, Batman's bastard son, in the wake of Batman R.I.P.. Same with Murder/Suicide, Father/Son, although that one could also apply to Final Crisis villain Darkseid and his good guy son Orion.
The Traitor Among Us - Who better to have traitors (and, for that matter, an "us") than a gang of villains? It's either something to do with Final Crisis: Rogues' Revenge or Gail Simone's new Secret Six series.
No 2 For You is more than likely another Power Girl/Earth-2/Justice Society of America Annual reference, as PG has to end up back on regular Earth in time to launch her own series this summer, but 1 (JSA) 2 probably has more to do with the team's rumored break-up this summer.
Mercy Ruling and Who Questions the Question are both very likely to have something to do with Greg Rucka's Final Crisis: Revelations series, where God's spirit of retribution, the Spectre, meets lesbian private eye the Question.
TT Have No Reception reminds us all that there isn't a Teen Titans cartoon any more. Or, perhaps, that the Titans comic will be spinning off something called Terror Titans this Summer, about some unpopular teenage badguys... whereas Titans, the other TT-spinoff book is dealing with the eeeevil reborn Trigon, who just may be 4 Times As Red in his new incarnation.
No Glory No Gold seems to be a shout-out to the Booster Gold series in some way, while Paper Not Plastic feels suspiciously like a reference to a revived Plastic Man for some reason... Better than Rocket Vs. Satellite, which suggests that the JLA's spacebound headquarters is soon not going to be alone up there.

The last two, however, are just weird: Superman: Red or Blue? is, I hope, hints that we'll finally investigate Superman's political preference (Let's face it; he's an Obama man. You know it, I know it, it's pretty obvious) instead of rehash the old Superman-gets-split-in-two storyline we've seen at least twice before, and I am convinced that Post No Bills is there purely to fuck with us.

But now that we've put ourselves out there, why don't you tell us what you think the board is all about? We shouldn't be the only ones embarrassed about how off-base our suggestions are this time next year, after all.

Dan DiDio on DC Universe #0 [Newsarama]

Physicists disagree violently as to whether more than one version of our universe may exist. The usual fantasy of alternate universes comes from shows like Star Trek or Doctor Who, where you visit another universe and everything's the same except evil, and with more eyepatches or different facial hair. Here's the evil Worf from an alternate universe enjoying some fun leash-play with Garak, from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
DC's current weekly comic, Countdown to Final Crisis, featured a long backup feature called "History Of The Multiverse," in which a group of identical men with weird hair tried to summarize every comic in which someone had visited an alternate universe.For some reason, in DC Comics, the only people who are different in the alternate universes are superheroes, so that Batman is married and has kids, or is a pirate, or was around during World War II. We never see an ordinary person who has different versions in different universes, except maybe for the mail-carrier who starred in that weird crossover between the Milestone and DC universes in the 1990s.

So I was super curious to hear what DiDio, who masterminded the return of the multiverse, would say about its appeal. Is there a philosophical background to the obsession with seeing how things could have turned out differently? The first time I asked DiDio, at the DC Nation panel, he said "Good question" and then didn't really answer. I pressed him a bit more, and here's what he said:

The DC Universe has been built on the multiverse concept. We wanted to bring it back to show the strength of that concept and the multiple interpretations of the characters. And now we're going to focus on the current universe and the current versions of the characters.

These answers made sense (especially the part about nostalgia) but they didn't really satisfy me. I wanted to know what it was about alternate timelines that so fascinated a group of writers and editors in their thirties and forties. Was there some intrinsic appeal to the idea of being able to see how your life might have shaped up if you'd made a different set of decisions?

So I cornered DiDio in the hallway a while later, and asked him again what he thought was so intrinsically fascinating about the multiverse. This time, he said it's all about business. He hadn't wanted to give that answer on the panel, because it's boring, but it's also true. DC Comics went on an acquisition binge during the Silver Age, buying up Charlton Comics, Fawcett Comics and a host of other publishers. Because each publisher had its own stable of superhero characters (like Fawcett's Shazam), who barely fit in with the DC characters, it made more sense to pretend that each cast of characters came from a different universe. And then, as the crossovers between the different acquisitions' "universes" became more colorful, they became a fun thing in their own right. As for why DC is revisiting the idea of different universes now, it still seemed to come down to nostalgia, and trying to recharge some old properties.

I never quite got the answer I was hoping for, about the reasons why alternate universes might seem glamorous and exciting to the DC crew. But maybe if I corner Grant Morrison or Dan Jurgens next time, I'll have more luck.

For the first major convention of the year, Wondercon was surprisingly light on any real news, with the biggest player, DC Comics first suggesting that they were going to tell us something big the next day, and then telling us that they'd rather wait until April after all. The lack of any major surprises to take away from the con (Both of the stories that actually did break, J. Michael Straczynski working for DC Comics and Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan working on new issues of Demo for Vertigo, seemed to be common knowledge on the con floor before their official announcements) seemed to affect the regular con-goers with an unusual feeling of malaise hitting even the 501st Legion as they performed con security. This wasn't helped by the no-shows from creators - not only was the Image Comics panel cancelled, but both Boom! Studios' Mark Waid and Aspen Studio's Michael Turner failed to make it to the show.

That isn't to say that the entire show was a disaster, mind you; the pros who did make it there were entertaining and available - Particular shout-outs should be given to Oni Press's James Lucas Jones (Expect me to tell you all about Wonton Soup very soon) as well as DC's Jann Jones and Dan DiDio, whose late-Sunday panel "For The Love of Comics" turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable conversation not about upcoming DC Comics but what is awesome about comics in general (Goofiness and obsessive collecting being two of the answers), entirely free of the kind of hucksterism that you might expect from a DC panel.Bill Willingham proved to be a fine gentleman able to keep people's attention throughout the various panels he dominated (and I'm not just saying that because of his apology to me about this), and even if some DC panels may have been half-empty, the two showings of the animated version of Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier were packed with enthusiastic fans (With good reason; it's a better movie than I expected).

That's not even talking about Saturday's CBLDF party that we co-sponsored, populated by the creme de la creme of comics folk, from retailers to creators (Hi, Cecil!) to fans, with we journalist types mingling and posing for photos that I feel like I should be apologizing for; I didn't mean for my head to be that shiny. Overall, it may not have been the most exciting weekend in terms of comic conventions - that'll be San Diego Comic-Con in July - but it was definitely a fine, exhausting, one nonetheless.

In response to rumors about DC instituting a new zero-tolerance policy for creators who break deadlines, DiDio dropped his usual huckster persona to talk about the problems that the company faces with late books. Admitting that the "reality is, a lot of people can't meet the monthly schedule," he said that DC's aim was to make sure that books shipped in a timely manner:

We had a month where we didn't put any Superman books out because they were all late... In our minds, that was inexcusable.

Asked to "cut back on killing and maiming young heroes" in their comics, VP of Sales responded that "Sidekicks die!" should be the ad copy for upcoming comics. DiDio admitted that it was a concern, and said that they'd try to cease with the teenage torture. On a related topic, the panel all agreed that they didn't want to pull back on teenage suffering of the emotional type, with writer Judd Winick pointing out that "they can't all be happy, who the hell's gonna buy that?"

The amount of potential deaths was also a topic for discussion when it came down to DC's big summer series, Final Crisis. When asked if there would be a limit to the amount of deaths happening in that series, DiDio said that he couldn't promise anything, and announced the official tagline for the series for the first time: "It's the day evil wins." We also found out that "The Great Disaster" that's been the plot McGuffin of Countdown to Final Crisis will happen within the pages of Countdown (and may include a giant turtle version of Jimmy Olsen fighting New God Darkseid), and that the Final Crisis is something altogether different that may spell doom for the multiverse: "It's called Final Crisis for a reason," DiDio said.

Before that happens, fans can expect to see Power Girl go home to Earth-2 in the pages of Justice Society of America in a way that may lead to a future solo series for Superman's parallel-universe cousin. One of the reasons that the multiverse may be about to end again is that even the creators can't keep the various earths straight; when someone asked about Earth-13, no-one on the panel knew exactly what Earth that was. "I have a big white board - " DiDio started to explain, before Countdown editor Mike Carlin cut him off by saying "This is why we have charts."

New titles teased, besides the Batgirl series, were a new Lex Luthor miniseries focusing on his evil genius and technology, as well as a return of the 1990s Milestone characters (better known to most from the WB's Static Shock cartoon); asked about a possible return of those characters, everyone on the panel got very nervous as DiDio chose his words very carefully: "I think the Milestone characters are great," he said, "I think it'd be very exciting to see that creative strength in the DC Universe." Bob Wayne broke in, adding "It's a subject that takes more lawyers than fans to make happen."

The panel closed with DiDio telling everyone that the upcoming The Dark Knight and The New Frontier movies were projects that everyone at DC were very excited about, and inviting everyone to tonight's world premiere of the latter at the convention.