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DEATH CAPADES!

CUTTING EDGE

How about ICED?

"...except for patriotic fundraising purposes!"

Great Batman covers.

I don't have a term for that.

I don't think about it that deeply. But for whatever it's worth, I don't think it's widely used, but still, I don't credit anyone with coming up with it when I use it.

And now fake Elizabeth Strout is trying to steal my whole name! And then prey on other comics writers by using it, hmm?

I don't think so? I don't remember for sure, but I think I saw/heard someone else use it, and it might have been Mark Gruenwald.

Well, Shape's kind of fun to write, I suppose. And Gru may have considered him an Elongated Man of sorts.

Len wanted to tell a faux-JLA story and he only had 48 pages (or whatever it was). So he wanted to get the characters that didn't fit that off-stage fast. I think he might have been going to kill Shape, too, but I didn't find Shape interesting enough to save. And the he changed his mind.

It was one of those moments that worked out well, I thought. Now, Magdalene and Swordsman -- I would have thought someone would have brought them back by now...

It ain't the material, it's what you do with it.

Or, to think of it another way: People still stage Shakespeare plays, and even when using the same literal text (usually), they find new things to say, new ways to say it, new ways to delight and engage an audience. And Shakespeare was retelling a lot of older stories his own self.

...he could maybe get a story by writers who wanted to use him rather than death at the hands of a writer who didn't. In his next big story, he died anyway, but at least it was a death that came out of his character and personality and choices, not just housecleaning.

No, I left him on earth because if I hadn't, Len Kaminski was going to have him die in the spacecraft crash at the beginning of the SQUADRON SUPREME Special, that was in the works, just to take him off the stage. I didn't think he deserved such a pointless death, so I had him stay behind where...

...line-average sales drop, which is what got Carmine Infantino fired as publisher and replaced by Jenette Kahn. So Martin Goodman getting butthurt about his son not being publisher at Marvel revolutionized the mainstream at both companies.

Running alongside this: The launch of Atlas/Seaboard comics in 1974 spurred Marvel and DC to scramble to pump out lots of new magazines to keep Atlas from getting a foothold on the stands. At Marvel, one of those new projects was the new X-Men. At DC, the flood of new titles made their...

...whether that same plot twist was used in 1956, or the same bit of drama showed up somewhere in 1988. You may use the same bricks but you're not building the same pyramid. And watching it being built your way is a new experience. Probably for a new audience, to boot.

I gotta figure people who write private-eye novels, romantic comedies or whatever else feel the same way sometimes. But nobody's done it your way. How you see it, what you bring to the characters, what they get out of that story, how the voice of it feels...all of these are more important than...