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He went 180 on The Question from Ditko's vision, but I consider Denny O'Neil and Denys Cowan's 36 issues run as the top of their game. I can only imagine what the fan reaction was back then to this unnecessary reboot.
Well now it looks like DC is spinning The Question along the supernatural lines as he makes up "The Trinity" with Pandora and The Phantom Stranger in the upcoming "Trinity War". I think THAT'S an unnecessary reboot
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I also seem to remember mention of Alan Moore's "Charlton project" in one of those issues where he discusses Captain Atom being a much more active factor in the story than Doctor Manhatten would end up not being. As well as another proposal to make the Charlton characters a weekly anthology series.
Interestingly in the preview synopsis for "The Watchmen", Moore calls Dr. Manhattan the main character. But of course, Rorschach is really the one that carries the story along...Once again showing how things change from the initial proposal...
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Looking more thoroughly thru this issue now, I have to say this was a great era for comics for me. I was in my senior year in high-school and I recall talking about a lot of these plotlines in study hall in the library every day with all of the other comic "geeks" And it really was my first experience with comic shops on a regular basis and publishers than weren't Marvel or DC. Lotsa great stuff!
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The latest BackIssue has a nice interview with Jennette Kahn, and she and interviewer (and former DC staffer) Bob Greenberger refer to 1986 as "the big year" for DC. So you were right in the thick of it.
I was 11, so it was exciting but somewhat bewildering. I had matured enough to fully grasp some of the concepts and deeper aspects of the old DCU that I loved, and here they were disassembling it and rebuilding it...and not always for the better.
Still, there was a great creative energy in all of comics at the time, and it felt a little more sincere than today's money-grabbing stunt overhauls...but maybe I was just naive.
Yeah I have to snag that issue of BI...In my eyes Jennette Kahn could do no wrong. Well, sure she probably had missteps and misfires like the rest of 'em but as you point out
they were more sincere in attempts to grow the business and marketplace through experimentation, not just for the quick buck with the gimmicks. And Dick Giordano was a good right-hand man. When they left DC everything slowly went downhill. Paul Levitz was one of the old-guard but I'm assuming he must have had a lot of stuff forced on him by corporate. And now we're at the point were we have a former TV-executive and a glorified pin-up artist and a fanboy running the company into the ground.
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^Yup. When Khan, Giordano, Levitz and Joe Orlando were running things, you really felt like they were trying to really grow the business and push comics forward and make people stand up and realize it was a legitimate art form. As each of those folks slowly left DC, a little bit of the company left with them. Levitz hired DiDio, and I can't forgive him for that. But, as you said, I'm sure he was pressured upstairs from WB to do something.
It's an interesting read. She has had one heck of a life, starting out young and creating Dynamite magazine for Scholastic, and then two other kid magazines before being snapped up by DC. Now she has a Hollywood production company. Her company was involved in Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino!
Plenty of great back issues for cheap, terrific reading and lots of deeper content than is usually available on the web when it comes to interviews or discussion. Love all the coulda or woulda beens... Steve Englehart was supposed to take over Daredevil after Frank Miller... he was planning on ditching the Guardian of Hell's Kitchen angle that Miller set up after Born Again and move Matt to San Francisco and join the West Coast Avengers.
I already have the next one (Winter '85) coming in the mail. With my recent cutback on modern comics thanks to DCs New 52 I'm finding myself nostalgic for older stuff and these Previews have reminded me of some great stuff in my collection that I haven't read in years and how exciting it was "back-in-the-day".
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