posted October 17, 2002 12:33 PM               

Also, what is the status of the Superboy Archive?

posted October 18, 2002 09:53 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Mike Falcon:
Then why the Thunder Agents or Spirit lines?

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I think those were both special cases:

The Spirit is part of the greater Will Eisner library, which was suddenly up for grabs upon the denise of Kitchen Sink. And it's such a prestigious property that I imagine making an exception for it was no problem.

THUNDER Agents, as I understand it, essentially came to DC.
Someone said "Hey, if I can make a deal for you to have the rights to reprint THUNDER Agents, would you be interested?"
DC said, yeah, yeah, sure.
And a while later the guy came back and said the deal was made, somewhat to DC's surprise.
It dropped into their lap. Or at least that's the story.

posted October 22, 2002 07:28 AM               

I was just wondering if DC could declare a moratorium on Roy Thomas archive introductions. I've enjoyed many of his works, but enough is enough. Are the original artists and writers asked to write the introductions? I could understand if no one else was available, and it even makes certain sense to have him write the All-Star ones (tho' a little variety would be nice), but I've never heard of a Roy Thomas Aquaman connection. My favorite intros were the two short ones to the Black Canary volume, by the original creators.

posted October 23, 2002 10:00 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Bob Greenberger:
Dale handles those pesky Archives and makes intro choices based on a vareity of criteria. DC makes an effort to involve living participants where practical. For example, Julie Schwartz didn't want to write the Dynamic Duo intro but agreed to be interviewed by Mark Waid, who wrote a superlative piece.

GA Sandman remains on our list of GA archive proposals at each planning meeting so sooner or later he will get his turn in the spotlight. Just can't say when.

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Great! Thanks for letting me know..it IS gratifying to know that Wes is on the radar...hope it starts with the gasmasked era.

posted October 23, 2002 04:12 PM               

As for the process, here in Collected Editions we probably bat around a few dozen ideas ourselves. We then get input from Bob Wayne and the Marketing crew. Bob, Dale and I usually look at sales orders to see which series are slowing down or keeping pace and we also look at the schedule to see what might be coming out that we can tie together. An example of the latter is the Dynamic Duo Archives coming out the same month as the DC Direct action figures. One supports the other. The superboy 147 facsimile was my idea to support the release of four new Legion action figures.

From there, we make our proposed lists of 12-15 Silver Age and 12-15 Golden Age suggestions and bring it to our annual meeting. Paul Levitz usually has his own instincts on this material and we have a lively discussion. It was at one of these meetings, for example, that Paul himself conceived the Black Canary collection.

We strive to hit balances between characters that appear in GA and SA collections, such as Superman and Batman; balancing them against new offerings and series continuations. Sometimes we brainstorm in the room if the list doesn't generate enthusiasm.

By meeting's end, we have a 95% complete roadmap for the following year. And then the tweaking begins. I'm well into 2003's offerings and we've shifted stuff on the schedule and added more than a handful of projects as circumstances dictate. It certainly keeps things from getting dull.