Dan Didio has held MANY titles during his tenure at DC, but most of them are all in some kind of executive or editorial position where he has dictated how the DC Universe has progressed.
And quite frankly he's not been that great at it.
And quite frankly he's not been that great at it.
Oh, sure, there are plenty of successes to be named during his tenure - many good comics and good directions for the DCU have been made... but sometimes those were in SPITE of what Dan Didio wanted.
This was the guy who thought that Countdown was superior to 52, apparently loudly proclaimed how much he hated 52 (an amazing, well-written weekly series that followed Infinite Crisis), and kept pushing for more events after the massive success of Infinite Crisis.
Speaking of Infinite Crisis, he was the guy who wanted Dick Grayson to be killed off at the end of that because of that whole sliding scale of timelines thing - because the first generation of sidekicks had grown up to be heroes right alongside their mentors and thus the...
...mentors like Batman had to be aged up to accommodate, and there's nothing the Big Two hate more than being reminded that their characters should be older by now.
One expression of that is in marriage - while of course people don't HAVE to get married, it's a pretty...
One expression of that is in marriage - while of course people don't HAVE to get married, it's a pretty...
...common thing for adults to grow up, get in a relationship, and get married. After all, if you find someone you love more than anyone else, you want to share the rest of your life with that person, right? Well, Dan Didio disagrees, especially when it comes to the Bat-family...
...wherein he cancelled the planned marriage of Kate Kane (Batwoman) and her then girlfriend Maggie Sawyer, stating especially that members of the Bat-family were not allowed to be happy and have happy personal lives.
That's right, kids: you're not allowed to move past trauma...
That's right, kids: you're not allowed to move past trauma...
...have a happy personal life, or anything along those lines if you decide to put on a cape and fight evildoers. Doing good is only about misery.
And oh, speaking of the Bat-family and associated characters, there's always his attitude towards Cassandra Cain and Stephanie...
And oh, speaking of the Bat-family and associated characters, there's always his attitude towards Cassandra Cain and Stephanie...
...Brown, fan-favorites that - as I outlined in the Cassandra Caintrospective - had enough of a following to keep a book afloat and in better numbers than other characters. When Cass was forced into a villain role, he gave not one fig for those same fans, but that's nothing...
...compared to Stephanie Brown. Long story short, Stephanie Brown was Robin briefly, but was later murdered in a terrible crossover storyline. Many fans felt that she should get some memorial in the batcave since, you know, she was Robin and Jason Todd got a memorial - said...
...memorial even got to stay around AFTER HE WAS RESURRECTED. But Steph? NOPE! Dude HATED Steph, hated the popularity of her, and the token gesture of PUTTING HER DAMN COSTUME ON DISPLAY IN THE BATCAVE, a background detail so minor that Grant Morrison finally did it himself...
...because he had heard about the controversy and thought, "Why not? It's a pretty small gesture and fans deserve to have their love for a character respected," was something he KEPT REFUSING TO DO. I think better heads won out eventually and convinced him to not only do that...
...but fix Cass and Steph (resurrecting her and making her Batgirl for a very good series), but that's kind of a common theme with a lot of stories I heard about the guy - other, better writers and editors had to keep convincing him that his ideas were stupid and terrible.
Much like other big-name creatives in this and other industries, I do not consider Dan Didio the be-all, end-all worst person EVAR in comics. He's had writing moments that I enjoyed and much better writers under his control have made garbage... but he has been in charge of DC...
...stuff for FAR too long and I am happy that he is apparently leaving. Farewell, Krankor.
