Man, I knew there was a reason Mark Waid was one of my favorite people. In an interview with Ain’t It Cool News, Waid spilled the beans on nearly every company he’s ever worked for.
“The biggest challenge [of 52] was actually, wisely, kept from us by [editor] Steve [Wacker]. EIC Dan Didio, who first championed the concept, hated what we were doing. H-A-T-E-D 52. Would storm up and down the halls telling everyone how much he hated it. And Steve, God bless him, kept us out of the loop on that particular drama. [Editor Michael] Siglain, having less seniority, was less able to do so, and there’s one issue of 52 near the end that was written almost totally by Dan and Keith Giffen because none of the writers could plot it to Dan’s satisfaction. Which was and is his prerogative as EIC, but man, there’s little more demoralizing than taking the ball down to the one-yard line and then being benched by the guy who kept referring to COUNTDOWN as ‘52 done right.’”
I think this is a fascinating look at the company, and actually puts a lot of what is going on into perspective. You’ll want to read the entire article, as there are enough quotes that can be pulled that would fill a month of Sundays worth of Quotes of the Week.
And if you are interested, we did our own little interview with Mr. Waid a while ago, where he hints at some of these things…
DC has announced the final issue of 52 will be 48 pages long! That’s over twice the number of pages we would normally get. DC doesn’t plan on hiking the price to compensate, stating the issue will still be $2.50.
