Sorry but why is the subreddit overly full of Didio faces? Did I miss something?
This is from his interview with Newsarama almost a couple months back:
A lot of it was for show. It was theater. We used to do the conventions and we used to have people worked up about Dick Grayson and Wally West, so we fed into that energy. Anytime I go to a convention and we talk about character, I consider that a win. So much of the conversation nowadays is not about character or story anymore, which is a shame, because that's the only conversation that should be taking place.
For me, Wally West was a core concept issue. My problem with Wally was that his origin was always dependent on [his uncle and previous Flash] Barry Allen. He was never his own character. He was always going to be subservient to Barry in some way because his origin was determined by Barry. There was always a Flash in front of him and his powers were because of him. I always felt, as a true Flash, if we were trying to get to the simplest form with regards to media and things like that, we had to go back to Barry because the story starts with him. With [original Robin] Dick Grayson β and this is the same with Wally β people loved them because they aged with them, so they feel this affinity that these guys have grown up with them. The problem is that much like Batman and Superman, now Dick Grayson and Wally West have to stop aging, because they're going to pass their mentors. Dick Grayson's going to get older than Bruce Wayne at some point, because Bruce doesn't age and Dick Grayson's going to be the older guy if he does keep growing up.
Therefore, those things constantly force the reboots that we're faced with, because it creates these log jams and these multiple interpretations of characters all sharing the same name. Ultimately, in my mind, we kept on collapsing our timelines and created confusion about how long certain characters were in certain roles, and what they did in those roles. For me, with Dick Grayson, the issue wasn't about the fact that I didn't like the character. In fact, when I said we should kill Dick Grayson, it was purely story driven.
We were in the middle of Infinite Crisis. The driving point of Infinite Crisis is the fracturing of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and their inability to work together fractures the impact of the other heroes. I needed a defining moment that would bring these three together after all the troubles, something that they can unite over. I felt the death of one of the characters that touched them all in a way was going t
... keep reading on reddit β‘POTENTIAL SPOILERS
I'm gonna say this first, because I AM biased and it's relevant. I love Wally West. He's one of the only characters in mainstream comics that we saw grow from a child into a sidekick into a husband into a father into a hero. I started reading comics at the library when I was 10 (2004-2005), because I was a huge fan of all the animated shows. I was already a fan of The Flash so I started with him. The library didn't have a huge selection, but it had scattered issues from the 50s to the 90s including a collection of the Crisis on Infinite Earths.
I didn't just fall in love with The Flash, I fell in love with the journey of Wally West. Where Barry was basically a perfect hero, Wally was this flawed everyman. When Barry died, it became clear to me that even if it weren't intentional from the very beginning, Barry's purpose was to die, because the main character was Wally (for the time). His tenure of The Flash was fated to end which was necessary for the continued development of the legacy. I was never a huge fan of Bart, but I accepted that he was The Flash when I caught up to the 2000s... But strangely enough he was only The Flash for like... Seven years. Which would've been okay if they moved onto a NEW Flash, but nope! Barry Allen was brought back to life and so DC Comics was caught into a temporal loop.
As a child and teenager, I didn't really understand the business side of things. I paid attention to the stories and focused on which writers/artists I preferred like Carmine Infantino and Mark Waid. The company and comics were far from perfect, but it was like DC became a different company in the mid-2000s.
The only correlation I can find is Dan DiDio became Vice-president of DC in 2004. He has been known to speak ill of Wally (specifically) for years and very recently made one of the stupidest statements I've ever heard that only proves my disdain to be warranted. "He was never his own character... his origin was always dependent on Barry Allen."
I'm not even sure where to begin here. It's like he misunderstood every aspect of Wally West's character and Barry Allen's purpose, because the reality is that he grew up with Barry Allen and was upset that his character was no longer in the spotlight. And like a spiteful child jealous of their younger sibling, he proceeded to completely ruin Wally West's character in every way he could think of and stole every aspect of originality from powers to relationships to give to Barry. At th
... keep reading on reddit β‘From an interview with Janelle Asselin:
"My other favorite personal Didio story is the time I tried to hire Jamal Igle to draw Birds of Prey while Gail Simone was writing it. Igle had done some fantastic character sketches and Simone and I were super excited to work with him on it. Iβd gone through the proper channels to get the hiring approved, including Marts clearing it with Didio, but apparently it hadnβt registered until someone had a problem with the hiring that they took to Didio.
Didio called me to his office to tell me I needed to fire Igle and hire someone with a different style. To explain what he wanted, he started miming with his hands large breasts in front of his chest. I said to him, Dan, please stop making those gestures, to which he responded βwhat?! Iβm Italian!β as if that made it okay?
Anyway, the point of me saying all that is that I honestly think that Berganza was one of the least of their problems, and thatβs why it sort of confuses me why so many good people would stay there so long or even return to the company after leaving"
http://www.tcj.com/2020-report-day-day-three-interviews/3/
I know a little, but not a lot about why there is bad blood/beef there. My friend and I are talking about it here at work, and weβre trying to make sense of it beyond what we read on Bleeding Cool.
