Inside the Comic Writer’s Studio: Dan Didio

Welcome everyone to the next installment of Inside the Comic Writers Studio. Like many of you, comics have been a lifelong passion of mine and deep down, I harbor the desire to make this passion my profession. My particular passion is the craft and art of writing, so with this column, it is my goal to seek out the best and brightest creators working in the industry today in the hopes of learning different perspectives and gaining insights into the industry we all love so much.

[Editors note: this interview first ran on Jul 6, 2007]

If you’ve been reading this column for a while, you know I’ve been telling you about some surprises that I had working. This time out, one of those has paid off. This time the Senior Vice President – Executive Editor of the DC Universe for DC Comics, Mr. Dan Didio, joins us! I had the distinct pleasure to speak to Dan about a variety of topics and he really could not have been more forthcoming or enlightening. Over the course of the interview, he mentioned how he really didn’t just show up one day and start writing Superboy for DC, about working with a certain “Joe” back in the day at Event Comics and gives an amazing piece of advice he learned from Len Wein.

ELM: Before I even begin, thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule to join us Mr. Didio, I do appreciate it. I have a ton of questions for you and I know time is a factor, so what I want to discuss is your career as a writer, your take on certain general topics on comic writing and since you are who you are, I think you are uniquely qualified to offer your opinion on the state of the craft today.

DD: Sure. Glad to do it.

ELM: Great. With that in mind, I like to start off every month with a simple question: what’s the first comic book you remember reading?

DD: Umm, it’s hard for me to say. I remember reading the old World’s Finest 80-Page Giants in barbershops and sifting my way through those and I remember certain Batman issues that I might’ve picked up while the Batman TV show was on. There I go dating myself. One of the first comics I got and one that I still hold on to is Amazing Spider-Man #40 … “Spidey Saves the Day,” where he defeats Green Goblin. Had no clue what was going on there, I didn’t know what the story was, but I was completely entranced by Spider-Man and the Green Goblin at the time and that’s really one of the first comics I remember reading.

ELM: You really can’t go wrong with those books. Do you remember when you actually took notice of the craft behind the stories and that they weren’t just “funny books?”

DD: Craft-wise? Well, my sister liked to write so I was always interested in writing because I used to always watch her and pay attention to what she was writing. I think instinctually, I always gravitated to writers before I gravitated to artists in buying comics. So that might have been one of the things I picked up craft-wise. I always say there were six writers that I would pretty much buy on a regular basis, then I would buy characters and artists after that.

ELM: Can you share with us who those six writers were?

DD: Umm, six guys: Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway, Steve Englehart, Steve Gerber, Marv Wolfman and Len Wein.

ELM: Well, you really can’t go wrong with a list like that. I’d like to touch on your career for a bit. I think most people think they know your story and how you “broke in” at DC. Can you share with us how that really happened?

DD: [laughs] Most people really don’t know how I started with the company. The funny part is everybody thinks “Oh there’s the guy who was co-writing Superboy and the next thing you know he is Vice President of Editorial.” Actually, those two things were completely independent of one another. Actually, my writing goes back for a while; I can present you rejection letters as far back as 1978, I think. Maybe there even might be one or two from 1976! I know I’ve got rejection letters from 1978 all the way up and I might even have some all the way into 2000, if I’m not mistaken. There was a long time where I was trying to do writing and trying to submit material and came close several times but was never quite there.

I did do comic book writing for some of the black and white companies way back when; I’m never gonna say what they are or where they are so people will have to find them on their own. [laughs] And I also did some writing, believe it or not, for one of Wizard’s spin-off magazines called Entertainment Retailing back in the ‘90s as well, during the days when I was working in publicity so I was doing some freelance writing for that. Also did some publicity work for Event Comics. Jimmy [Palmiotti] was a friend of mine and I worked for Jimmy and Joe [Quesada] those days and co-created a couple of characters with Jimmy that ran in a couple of those … what were those called? Creators Universe I believe; it was put out by [Nick] Barucci’s company [Dynamic Forces]. It was a card set.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. And then, Jimmy and I had submitted a number of projects over the years and when he finally started getting writing work with Marvel, DC came looking for him and he and I had a couple of proposals in there that were almost picked up. But through so many strange, strange, strange events, we went from pitching a Guardian mini-series to ultimately being the regular writers on Superboy in what was probably one of the strangest chains of events you will ever see!

ELM: Wow. Did you guys taking over on Superboy really just naturally evolve from that one Guardian pitch? It really does seem like a, well I hate to say it, but “strange” and roundabout way to end up on a series.

DD: Yeah, the pitch started as a Guardian story. It turned into a Guardian story featuring Superboy. Turned into a Superboy comic featuring Guardian and then basically turned into Superboy because they decided the Guardian part wasn’t important anymore! [laughs] And that’s how we got the job on Superboy.

ELM: Again, just “wow.” Well, was the character of Superboy one that you were familiar with and did you have any interest in writing him before that?

DD: Superboy? I was a huge fan of the original Superboy, you know, the adventures of Clark as a teen and one of the first regular comics that I purchased was a Superboy comic and I was familiar with the character as he [Conner/Kon-El] was appearing then but I never had that strong connection to him as I wasn’t reading him on a regular basis when we were offered the assignment. Needless to say, we went back, read pretty much every single issue and gauged where we wanted to go and developed a real fondness for the character and saw the potential in the character.

ELM: How long was it into your run before you really felt comfortable with writing the character?

DD: Again, it was a weird chain of events. By the time our first or second issue hit the stands, I was already interviewing for the job as Vice President of Editorial, in which I was introduced to Paul [Levitz, Publisher of DC Comics] through a different person, through a different set of circumstances. So, again, these are two completely unrelated events as I was writing. And, even when I was interviewing with Paul, during my third of six interviews, I informed him that I was actually co-writing Superboy at the time, which completely caught him off guard too. He actually went to his rack and pulled it off and goes: “Yeah, you’re right. There’s your name.” [laughs]

So, we were writing as I was interviewing and pretty much by the time I had gotten the job, the first thing I had to do in my official capacity was cancel Superboy. I told everyone that I hated the writing! [laughs] Naw, I’m just kidding.

ELM: Let me ask you this then. Since you were interviewing at the time, did you ever really get to focus on telling the stories you wanted to tell with the character?

DD: Well, the interviewing didn’t throw me off. We were actually interrupted by a rather strange crossover [World Without Young Justice], so it really actually interrupted the story that we were going with. We were in the process of telling a six-part story and in the middle of telling the six-part story, actually in issue #99 and the ending of the story was going to be issue #100, we were told that we had to throw out the script that we had for #99 and write an alternate reality version of Superboy where Superboy didn’t even appear in the story. This naturally threw off the timing and the pacing of what we had set up. So, not only did we have to rewrite #99, but we had to rewrite #98 and #100 because a lot of the information and a lot of the beats that we had in the issue had to be moved into other issues in order to at least some sense of the information and story we were telling; a lot of things got thrown out and a lot of things got pushed aside which is a shame because we thought we were heading to something and it lost some its momentum. But, it was an interesting learning experience for me for sure.

ELM: I know right now, you are incredibly busy in your day-to-day work for the company, but would you ever even consider going back and doing maybe a fill-in issue or an arc or a mini-series?

DD: That’s interesting that you ask that since I was just recruited to do something small, which I fought tooth-and-nail, but I have to admit it got a little bit of the best of me. So, I am going to be doing something again, something very small.

ELM: That’s certainly good news to hear. Would you ever consider doing anything more, something on a not so small scale?

DD: It’s hard for me in my position. I don’t feel comfortable to do the actual physical writing on projects while you’re trying to create an overall direction for the line. It’s a little difficult and it’s a little daunting and I have a lot of faith in my staff and a lot of faith in our writers to do a hell of a lot better job than I could ever do.

ELM: Before the interview, I went back to look at the press release from when you were hired in 2002, part of your job description was going to be “story development.” Touching on your previous statement, would you say that this entails more general, overall development regarding the DCU line?

DD: Yeah, we are in a position right now where we have a direction in what we are trying to do for the DCU and we have an overarching story that we’re trying to tell. I’d say about 75% of the concepts that are being created are editorially driven. And realistically, at that point, we are trying to figure out bringing in the best people for the job. One of the tougher aspects of the job is waiting for people to pitch you ideas, you know? And I’ve found that a lot of times some people hesitate to pitch me an idea because they think somebody else might be working on it, so, you might miss out on an idea there. And then you also might miss out when a character comes free, you might get four to six different pitches from four to six really incredible and competent writers and they all might be slight variations from each other so you’re always left in the position of trying to determine what is the better one. It just turns into a pushing and pulling match. And, we look at it this way, we know we have certain characters and certain ideas, this way we can really just go out and hire the best people for the job and that is something that I really look forward to.

ELM: That makes a lot of sense. How involved are you specifically on the larger, event stories that DC has come out with in the last few years, starting with Identity Crisis on through Infinite Crisis, 52 and One Year Later? Is it again more working on the overall picture or do you get involved to the point of working on plots or ideas?

DD: I get involved in the beginning, mostly. I’m involved in a lot of the pre-production side; you know, a lot of the initial stages, a lot of the planning. I’m in the discussions on the broad strokes of the story. And from there, realistically I take a step back and see it as it’s coming over. If I feel there is something major wrong or if we are missing a major opportunity, I’ll chime in. It’s impossible to micro-manage a position like this when you are handling 60 to 65 books a month. Realistically, the bigger the project, the greater the level of your interest and involvement and in that case you have to trust your in-house people. With Countdown and things like that, I’m interested naturally because it impacts the entire line. So, it’s important for me to be aware of what’s going on there to make sure that it works properly.

ELM: Since you did come into this job from the creative side of things, do you find it difficult at all to take a step back and let the writers and editors do what they do? I ask because as a creator, I’m sure it’s just your natural inclination to, well, want to create.

DD: It’s always difficult, and this goes for everybody. I think you could talk to everybody in every single phase of the production … my role to the writer’s role to the editor’s role, everybody would say: “You know, I would have done it a little differently if I had done the entire thing.” At the end of the day, what you’ve got to look at is the end result. You can’t sit there and go to yourself: “This should be better than this,” because what you might do is make a very subjective change. I always use the expression around here six on one hand, half a dozen on the other. It might work for me, but does it make the book better? Probably not; it’s just the way I would tell the story.

So therefore, you want to keep your opinions limited to what you really think will make an improvement and also limit your opinions to the point that you can make the improvement. You can’t go in in the eleventh hour and ask for wholesale changes because that is just not physically possible and it’s not fair to the people who put all the effort into the work. The hardest part is knowing when to let everybody just go. My greatest contribution to 52 was to stay out of everybody’s way! [laughs] Which was probably one of the most difficult things in my life!

ELM: Going back to your writing. You have a lengthy background in animation that we will get to shortly. Was there any part that was more difficult or challenging in making that switch from animation to comics?

DD: Yeah, most of my writing was for animation prior to this. I had done a lot of scriptwriting for animated series before I’d done anything else. So, there was some change in movement and the thing for me in moving from animation to comic book writing is when you’re telling animation you’re breaking down, you’re following the movement of characters every step of the way. I had to learn when to break a panel and when to jump scenes and realize that you didn’t have to show that same level of storyboard movement in comic book storytelling as you did in animation. And that’s just a matter of time and I wound up learning the tricks of the trade, which is basically that before I wrote a single page, I would draw a grid page next to what I wanted and literally draw stick figures in each panel and write what I wanted to happen so I made sure that it was paced properly. So, like I say, it was a learning experience.

ELM: So, would you say the differences between animation and comics are more technical than anything else, at least from your experience?

DD: Well, again, you are working with the limitations of your craft. There’s a real need and inherent desire to create a level of true conversational dialogue in comics and in animation. But, in both cases, you have to understand the limitations of the drawings and of the panel size and you have to change the dialogue to make sure that it does provide a certain level of information as well … recap information and basic information so that people don’t get lost in the story. You know, we get enamored with the patter of people talking to each other and you might come up with a great line or two which is built up great and in an interesting fashion as you write it, but bottom line, does it add to the story? Does it push the character forward? Does it push the story forward? And if it doesn’t, that’s always the first thing you cut even though it’s probably the one thing you enjoy writing the most.

ELM: I also have to imagine that it is tough as a writer to actually let the pictures speak for you. As a writer, this is almost completely contrary to what you are both taught to do and what is natural. Do you agree?

DD: Well, that’s the thing too, you also have to be aware of who’s your artist in comics. You don’t want to recap information in a panel that the picture explains perfectly. But, you don’t want to get caught with your pants down either and when the art does come in and there’s no background! [laughs]

All of a sudden your characters are talking about the Eiffel Tower and there’s no Eiffel Tower in the picture and it just happens to be the key moment of the scene. Those are things that you always have to be aware of … the people you are working with and the style of art that you will be receiving so that you can work to that style

ELM: Keeping with that idea then, how would you describe your style as a scriptwriter?

DD: What I did was put in pretty much anything that I thought was essential to the panel or essential to the story and everything else was pretty much open to interpretation. If I wanted a particular look or style or if I wanted a particular scene, I made sure I spelled scene out as “location,” because the location is essential to the story. If I wanted a particular look from somebody, I would spell that out specifically because it was something that was essential to the story. So, those are the things, but other than that though, probably the one thing that I was least descriptive about were fight scenes. I would just say who was winning, who was beating who or what was occurring, but the scenes I would leave up to the artist because they have a much more dynamic style and sense of the camera than I would.

ELM: A question that I ask everyone is whether or not they believe in the concept of “writer’s block.” What about yourself, is that something you believe in?

DD: Absolutely.

ELM: How did you work around it or work through it?

DD: You have to really break yourself of one really bad habit as a writer, which is I always say, “first draft, last draft.” There are a lot of people who write their first draft of anything as if it is their final draft. And they sit there and they slave over it because they think that this is the final draft, so therefore it has got to be perfect. This should never be the case. I think it was Ray Bradbury who said that he wrote a thousand words a day just to get a thousand words a day out of his system and then he throws them all away if they’re no good. I think what you’ve got to do when it comes to writer’s block is write, even if it’s crap. You know what I mean? You spend the entire day and write a 20-page script and if it’s all crap, you throw it out, but at least you got the crap out of your system and then you go back and try to see where you were wrong and you go from there. I hate to use the expression “force yourself to write,” but you’ve got to approach it the way you would any other job, especially when you are on deadlines and things like that. You’ve got to force yourself into getting into the habit of writing everyday.

ELM: Was writing for deadline ever a problem for you?

DD: I’m a huge deadline nightmare. I’m a terrible procrastinator. That’s always been my case. I did one year as a freelancer when I was in animation. I remember I built myself a daily routine, you know? I’d go out and walk the dog for an hour, write a couple hours in the morning, have lunch, then go back and write a couple more hours in the afternoon, then go out and write a couple more hours in the evening. And I probably wrote the same thing throughout the course of the day, but at the end I felt I had something that I was comfortable with.

ELM: Since you are so busy these days, do you ever have time to just sit down and write for writing’s sake anymore? I know you have your weekly DC Nation column, so is that where you get the chance to “scratch that itch” so to speak?

DD: The DC Nation page is a struggle for me every few weeks because, you know, we’re always trying to get that thing out … and be relevant in the information and irrelevant in our style and voice. So, it’s always a tricky thing. Also, in the fact of trying to make things sound important when people have probably heard about them two months earlier. That’s another difficulty of it, but it’s fun to do and I enjoy it. I also like having people spell me, because there’s only so much I have to say. [laughs]

There are certain things that I enjoy doing every once in a while. They brought me in to do a couple of the introductions for a couple of the Archives, which I thought was a lot of fun. There are little things like that that I like. Every once in a while, I’ll get a hankering but it’s hard for me because the days are so full and a lot of the desire to be creative, I fulfill in my day-to-day job just working with everybody else in the many projects and things that we have going.

ELM: Touching back on something you mentioned earlier, that being finding the right writers for projects. What makes a writer “right” for a character or a project?

DD: Voice, sensibility, style, tone with a slightly view askew. Some people write with a sensibility of strong characterization. Some people write with a sense of gravitas. Some people with a sense of expanded scope. You just naturally gravitate to those types of stories and dependent upon what you want that particular concept to bring to the table, that’s the writer you should go to.

ELM: If we can, I’d like to continue on this theme and apply it to the 52 and Countdown projects. What made Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, Grant Morrison and Mark Waid right for 52 and what makes Paul Dini and his writing team right for Countdown?

DD: Well, the 52 team we brought the four corners of the universe together in our writers. Greg Rucka gave us the street-level view of the DC Universe. Grant Morrison gave us the incredible expansiveness of the DC Universe. Geoff Johns gave us the “now” of the DC Universe and Mark Waid brought us the history of the DC Universe. When you bring all four of them together, I believe that rounded out the concept completely because it allowed us to really touch upon everything that made the DC Universe great and be able to movie into a forward direction.

With Paul Dini, we had so much going on and a lot of story lines and a lot of things happening, we knew what direction we were going to. What Paul does so well is he is able to really manage and bring consistency to character and story and pacing and voice to an overarching theme. I was probably more involved in the creation of the Countdown story because I had known [ahead of time] a lot of what was going on in the DCU and where everything was going. We were able to work out the beats and Paul was able to shape everything, flush it out and run with it and make it even better.

ELM: A little bit off topic, but what do you make of fans already making the assumption that Countdown is just a sequel or continuation of the 52 story?

DD: It’s funny because everyone is going to make those natural comparisons between 52 and Countdown and the problem is that the real comparison is it’s a weekly comic. That’s it. They couldn’t be any further apart. I hate to use this expression, because I’m sure this is one that’ll get everyone crazy, but I always use the line that 52 is world building and Countdown is world destroying! [laughs]

ELM: That line will probably make some fans, how shall I put it, “antsy” I guess.

DD: Well, that’s okay. It’s a great, fun ride. We had a meeting about it just the other day and Countdown should be the summer blockbuster; 52 is the Academy Award-winning movie at the end of the year. [laughs]

ELM: Well I know all of fandom is looking to see if you guys can duplicate that success all over again. Moving on to another overall topic for a moment, starting with the One Year Later event and continuing on recently, there seems to have been an effort to bring in writers from outside the comics medium onto characters that they are associated with. For example, you brought in Paul Dini for Detective Comics and Danny Bilson and Paul DeMeo for the relaunch of The Flash and Richard Donner to work with Geoff on Action Comics and upcoming you have Alan Burnett onboard Superman/Batman. You really can’t go wrong with having such tremendously creative people such as these on your titles, but does the philosophy of bringing writers like them, from outside the medium, tie into what you were saying earlier about finding the right writers for the right characters?

DD: You have to understand that if you look at the material that these guys created, Alan Burnett or even Richard Donner, you look at the fact that they had to adapt it to another format. They had to run that process when they did that. If somebody is sitting there and going, “I’m going to make a movie about Superman or a cartoon about Superman,” the first question they are going to ask is “What makes Superman great?” Then, “what is going to be the basis of my stories?” You know what, when you are creating a half-hour television show, you have to come up with a lot of story to fill that half hour! [laughs]

So, therefore, you have to get down to what the core is of the character in order to build strong material around it. So, that’s what these guys have been able to do and that’s one of the reasons why [we brought them in.] And when you look at the success that they had with the material they adapted, and that is why you would like to see if they could bring that same level of success to the comics themselves.

ELM: Understood. A question that I have asked quite a bit of late and that I have gotten a wide range of answers on regards what I see as a newer trend in the industry and that is writing collaborations. Since again you are in the position where you can take an overall view of the field, is this a trend or am I reading too much into this?

DD: I don’t think so. I think you just know they are happening now instead of before. There was a lot of ghosting in the earlier days! [laughs]

I think now with royalties and everything like that, it is appropriate for everyone to get credit.

ELM: That’s great! Do you see this as something that will continue though?

DD: It depends. A lot of times, a lot of people have initial ideas and a long, strong idea of a concept, that they don’t really have the time to execute it, but they want to work with somebody to help them execute it. That’s great … hooray for them. What I’m really hoping for out of this is that at the end of the day, I have two really strong writers instead of one; if this becomes the training ground for the next set of writers, then I’m all for it.

ELM: I read online in another column something that Geoff Johns had said that I would like your take on. I’m paraphrasing here, but he said in effect that comics are true masterpieces of collaboration. Can you explain in your own words what you think he meant by that?

DD: Well, it’s the one place where you have to work with everyone. It’s the words; it’s the pictures and pulling it all together, because it’s not just about the written word. You know, we always say if you’re just in it for the artist, then just buy the art. If you are in it just for the writer, than you should buy a book. But, if you are interested in something in this graphic format, then it’s not just about finding the right artist. Since we’re talking about writing, it’s also not just about finding the right writer.

It’s about finding the right connection, because some writers and artists just click immediately and some people don’t work together, even though it seems like a no-brainer and you might have something miss it’s mark. And, in some cases, you might have writers and artists who don’t get along and still produce something brilliant because they find a way to enhance each other’s work. So, it really is just such a collaborative job and it’s a lot mix and match, but you’re always hoping to put the match together to catch lightning in a bottle.

ELM: I want to get your opinion on what has been a hot-button issue online with fans for a number of years now. I don’t know if it’s a chicken or the egg, which came first type of situation, but a feeling that I have picked up on is the notion of decompressed storytelling and writing for trades. What is your take on this?

DD: The real question is “what is a story” as opposed to how long should it take. A lot of the problems with the storytelling from a few years ago was the fact that everybody was building towards a trade paperback. A trade paperback, it was going to be going to be six issues collected, therefore, no matter how small a story was, it had to be spread out into six issues so it could be collected into a trade paperback. Not the best way to build anything. You should not let the format dictate the story; it should be the other way. The story should dictate the format. If you have enough story to fill six issues, you need to use six issues. If you have enough story to tell one issue, you do one issue. You should not let it go the other way around. Once you do that, you’re changing your writing to suit something that should not be driving the ship.

ELM: I know we are running out of time here, so last question, what is the best piece of advice someone has given you regarding the craft of writing?

DD: Len Wein told me the most important thing I’ve ever heard before stepping into this job. He said, “the first story you want to write as a fan, is the last story you write as a pro.” [laughs] The fan always wants the happy ending and you got no place left to go after that. [laughs] As a pro, you should never tell that story, because you limit all the opportunities and the potential and the direction for the character.

ELM: That is amazing. That is a great piece of advice that every prospective writer should take to heart. Well, again, I know you are extremely busy and I really do appreciate you taking the time to do this. Thank you very much.

DD: No problem. It’s great. I appreciate it too. Any time, man.

Well folks, there you have it, a ComicBloc,com exclusive. I can’t say enough about how great Dan was during the course of this interview. We talked for close to 45 solid minutes and I truly hope it comes through just how personable he really is. I also hope that in some small way, this changes some perceptions that the fans have regarding him. I truly believe that he has the best interests of the DCU, its characters and fans at heart. We should all be on the lookout for his forthcoming writing project as well.

And to Mr. Didio, il miglior fabbro!