You know, these days, with the Internet and all, lots of DC’s business is conducted through e-mail and on the telephone. So it IS unusual to see the hallways of DC’s offices bustling with writers and artists!

This used to be normal back when I entered the business—before fax machines!!!—as the writers and artists would actually hand deliver material on a weekly basis. Shortly after Fed Ex became a factor artists and writers started moving away from the big bad city that the comics publishers resided in—probably just so they could breathe some fresh air, though more likely because it was harder for us to grab them when we needed something ASAP!

Nowadays with everyone able to post high resolution scans of the art for any given title—we work with people all over the globe and we don’t even touch the physical art boards here in New York City anymore. (Man, THAT’s weird for a guy whose first gig in comics was photocopying Jack Kirby’s actual penciled art for KAMANDI and/or Walt Simonson’s pages for the Batman/Manhunter team-up back in the early 70s!!! Yup… I was a High School Intern at DC back in the day!)

So, not touching art, or seeing writers and artists in person makes it a real event when the talent comes into town to meet with us about the future!

In these two weeks before Thanksgiving we have Geoff Johns, Pete Tomasi, James Robinson, Sterling Gates, Eric Trautman, Tony Bedard, Keith Giffen, Judd Winick and more coming through the hallowed halls to help plan, with their editors and Dan DiDio, all of 2010– and beyond– in the DC Universe!

These meetings for a couple of new series as well as Superman and Justice League related titles are some of my favorite part of making the comics. They bond everyone involved to the goals and concepts shaped and honed TOGETHER and everyone leaves feeling like they are part of the family and that they matter to making the agreed upon stories “the best ever”! (And yes, Families sometimes have “feuds” but even THAT passion can help fuel the Never-ending Battle between the covers!)

I was in on instigating some of these so-called Summits back when I was editor of SUPERMAN… and they all came about because of a dinner a bunch of us had at a convention in Cleveland, IL during Superman’s 5oth anniversary in 1988.

There were a bunch of us Superman types on hand to help celebrate. Jerry Ordway and Roger Stern were there… George Perez was about to join us on the return of Superman TO ACTION COMICS… and the master himself Curt Swan even joined us at this legendary dinner. Together we all went out to discuss an ACTION ANNUAL that would bring George into our team… and would have Curt returning to the Man of Tomorrow as well! The dinner was fun and productive with everyone contributing ideas to the mix—including Curt who was only to draw a few pages in the annual.

When the dinner was over I asked Curt how this “plotting session” compared with the ones he’d done in the old days. He said that it was great—because he was never invited to join in the plotting back then. He was clearly excited to have been involved.

This got me to thinking… excitement behind the scenes always makes for excitement on the page… so we quickly scheduled the first real Super-Summit for shortly after that. And the meetings have stayed a staple of the creative process since then in one form or another.

The excitement in the halls this mid-November promises to translate well for next year… so let them keep inventing ways to keep us all apart—we’ll still find a way to get together and blow everyone away with what we can come up with!

The one thing I’ll never understand is how anyone did comics (or ANYTHING) before Post-It notes were invented! (But even those work best when everyone’s all in the same room!)

…But a thousand words ain’t too shabby, either!

Don’t get me wrong… words AND pictures are where it’s at fer me… but reading ANYTHING these days puts us all in a very, very elite club. But if you find yourself liking the work of the writers– nay, AUTHORS– who pen DC Comics these days, there is a veritable library of OTHER material available to you these days written by the very same people.

Used ta be that a comic book writer “escaped” the four-color and “pulp” ghetto and went on to become Mickey Spillane or Mario Puzo… and never looked back (except maybe to write a SUPERMAN movie or two, I guess… ).

Nowadays we have novelists (and television and screen writers, for that matter—but that’s another blog) coming to comics to DO comics. Because they LOVE comics!

Brad Meltzer’s one fellow who’s had plenty of success BEFORE he wrote some GREEN ARROW comics and JLA comics and IDENTITY CRISIS for us! Check out his “Book of Lies” for a nice literary world meets comic book history mash-up!

You’ve also probably read Greg Rucka’s work for DC and Oni Press on series like 52, GOTHAM CENTRAL and DETECTIVE COMICS and White Out… but you really should get a look at one of Greg’s coolest creations– Atticus Kodiak– in one of the seven novels Greg’s written that chronicle the adventures of this hard-as-nails BG (body guard). Start with “Keeper” and don’t stop!

Jodi Picoult, author of “Nineteen Minutes”, “Change of Heart” and thirteen other novels did a nice run on WONDER WOMAN (collected in WONDER WOMAN: LOVE & MURDER thank you very much). Hope she’ll do more someday.

And we’ve even got people doing both comics and prose at the same time! Working with Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham on JSA titles currently sets me up for reading their recent novels. Matt’s started a series for Pyr titled “Midwinter” and it’s an excellent fantasy set in an intriguing world that’s ripe for sequels for sure. And Bill W.’s just seen “Peter & Max: A Fables Novel” published—this is an all new all original story set in Vertigo’s FABLES Universe… not a novelization (though we’ve seen our share of those over the years and Marvel’s still working with Stephen King on his “Dark Tower” series)!

And willya look at THIS?! Bill’s novel was published BY Vertigo! Way to go “funny” book publisher!

And outside of our universe, writers like “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” author Michael Chabon have seen their characters come to new life in comic books for Dark Horse even… Peter David still works in both media… and scores of other examples of the back and forth between words & pictures and just words are out there… as I run out of room here.

Anyone you’d like to see us hunt down? I know I’d love to see the Batman villain “Fight Club”’s Chuck Palahniuk has in him.

Great time to be reading… anything!

Legions of us (us– you– >gasp< — THEM!) are packing now and will soon converge on the southern California town of San Diego… for the 40th Annual COMIC-CON INTERNATIONAL! (Next Wednesday, in fact!)

40 years! 1970 to 2009! >Whew!<

And this will be my 19th time at this show in the last 20 years… and, man, has Comic-Con become the event of the year in that time! Today this convention is regularly covered on television and in magazines and draws creators and fans of all media… a far cry from the days when folks sat in hallways with their dog-eared collection of comics at their feet… just looking to trade for something they didn’t have—or hadn’t read!

Now Hollywood and Gaming and media of every stripe make this their home-base/launching pad—reaching the folks they need to speak to directly/instantly. Some people grouse that the show isn’t about comics anymore… but this convention has been about comic art, film and science fiction from the start! And this kind of attention and respect for the form some of us work in– and all of us enjoy– IS exactly what we were looking for, wasn’t it?

And while I’ve only been to 19 cons in San Diego I have been attending conventions around the world (England, Mexico, Australia) in the years since… and actually attended my first convention when I was 11 years old in New York City. My Mom took me to one of the early
shows run by the legendary Phil Seuling in Manhattan in1969.

What I liked about that convention then is what I like about going to San Diego now: I get to meet the people who do the creative work I like. Before comic conventions you couldn’t meet Picasso… or Hitchcock… or Groucho as a fan… but now, thanks to conventions like the one next week, we can meet the people we admire and respect. We can chat… and bond… and share what we all love!

We have a place where we belong to each other… people can tell me what they like or dislike about the work I’m involved in… AND if I’m lucky I get the chance to say hey to the comic writers and artists I know and love (and hope to work with in the future)… as well as rubbing elbows with folks like the guys from MR. SHOW (not comic books—but comics)… Jane Wiedlin (hey, music ain’t comics… but it IS something I like! And DC Comics DID sport Go Go Checks for a period!) and maybe… just maybe … I will bump into Hayao Miyazaki!
>Gasp! Again!<

See you there… us and them, too!!

In about a month or two Justice will be served up fresh and furious by a brand new team starting with JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #29! That’s right, fabled writers Bill Willingham & Matthew Sturges will join phenom artist Jesus Merino just as several new members join the storied super-hero team itself in a story arc that’s sure to shake the JSA and the group’s Mansion headquarters to its very core!

Almost every villain available AND their brother have joined the bounty hunt for almost every single member of the JSA… while a murderous mystery takes hold at their home base—with two new legacy members at the center of the storm!

That’s the general pitch—but so you don’t think this is just another biased load of hype you really DO have to take a look at the attached bunch of pages from the first couple of issues of this storyline—called THE BAD SEED! These pictures by amazing artist Jesus Merino really ARE worth a thousand words so I will basically shut up from here on!

I did say basically… because I don’t want to sell the writers and their contributions short either… bringing a fresh—if skewed look to the show, Willingham & Sturges are outdoing themselves. And while I can’t speak to their day-in-and-day-out interaction/collaboration… they seem to be on the same page—though something tells me that the JSA might not be the only team shaken up by this lead off adventure!

Oh… and some folks will be returning to the JSA, too… so the fate of this series really IS in good hands!

This past Wednesday saw the publication of TRINITY #45… and as of today all the plots are written… the co-features are drawn and inked through issue 51… And Mark Bagley and Art Thibert are well into the art for issue #50.

So that’s seven more issues for you… and one and a half for us!

Without patting ourselves on the back here for doing what we set out to do (we SHOULD always do that)… I WOULD like to pat the guys who’ve done the Herculean part of the assignment for the last year! Weekly comics are hard… but we’ve done a few of them lately… and I was personally involved in the SUPERMAN titles when they were virtually weekly back in the day. But weekly comics are HARDER when you have a bunch of people represented on virtually half of the pages of every single issue for that year!

No one writer or artist did that on SUPERMAN… JG Jones DID do every single cover on 52—and that was amazing. The writing team of Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid and Geoff Johns did a quarter of each issue for a year. And only Paul Dini was in on the whole of COUNTDOWN… supervising another team of writers.

But Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley, Fabian Nicieza and Art Thibert have touched the equivalent of about half an issue every single week for the last year! This is a simply phenomenal achievement!

For the artists this is a commitment of over 600 pages in one year and Kurt’s had his hand in every single page that’s 1160 pages in one year, sports fans!

Sure we’ve had help from co-featured players like Scott McDaniel, Tom Derenick and Mike Norton with Andy Owens and Wayne Faucher, too… and most of them had other gigs producing comics on time for DC this year!

(And you won’t catch leaving out recognizing the weekly work of colorists Pete Pantazis on the Bagley-Thibert section and Allen Passalaqua on the co-features—they haven’t missed an issue either. And while letterer Pat Brosseau HAS missed about 30 or 40 pages… it wasn’t his fault, AND that’s still 1100 pages on this one series!)

In an age where everyone can debate the ultimate merits of any single comic series (or novel, or movie, or TV show), nobody can argue with a great work ethic… I would like to offer a round of applause to the TRINITY team!