There's a fascinating article up at CBR, Friday's Editorial Conference by Greg Hatcher that deals with the snafu DC is dealing with--or rather, not dealing with at all--in regards to the continuity that was shoved aside by Morrison, the departure of Dixon and a reflection on editors and their jobs.

The article itself is fascinating and wonderfully written. Dixon himself is commenting in the comments section, saying some interesting little things about not-named-at-all-but-totally Didio and the way he's running DC right now. Hmmm. Someone does sound like he's eaten plenty of Bitter Bars for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but I somehow don't think he's too far off his statements.

My take is this: Didio is dropping the ball in very, very large ways by not letting his people do the jobs they were hired for.

When a writer is hired and told that they will have the run of their characters/story line/whatever, that writer is going to write it. Dixon and Morrison have both done that. Morrison had Final Crisis #1 finished(ish) sometime in November and rumors say that Dixon had scripted out the Robin storyline for months and months and months in advance, as we all know he is wont to do with everything (productive bastard) and that R.I.P. fuckered with the entire thing of it. A good clue as to why there might have been a butting of heads in DC Central, though I'm still not certain why that would lead to Dixon Not Quitting. Unless he had nothing to write.

I smell a Robin In Pieces. Or something of the sort, considering we didn't get a sneak peek in the September solits.

It's all very botched and it should all reflect on Editor In Chief rather than the editors of each individual book--when hands are tied, after all, there's only so much stretching someone can do before their shoulder pops out of joint. And is thusly useless.

It's a shame to see Dixon go--politics aside--there's a definite home in the Batverse for someone who built Tim Drake up into the excellent character we see now and who has contributed so very, very much to all of those characters.

It's more of a shame, however, to see a possible collapse in the DC staffing. Wait, no, not possible. The evidence is right there--Countdown was a complete fiasco, to no one's fault but Didio's.

If you're going to tell a 52 issue story, make it good. Make it important. Don't make it fodder for joke cannons and irritated blog posts about how clearly DC's right hand isn't paying attention to what the left hand is doing. And when you have a massively big event planned for the summer and already know what is going to occur in the fall, make the 52 issue story reflect it. Enhance it. Set it up. Don't kill Orion in three different goddamn books. Don't piss off your readers and when one of your prominent, popular writers opens his mouth on a massive comic book news site and says "Oh, hey, by the way, forget everything that Countdown told you and all those stupid tie-ins" do us all a favor and have the editors do some damage control.

Hey Didio, it's alright to be wrong. Really. We're a sort of forgiving sort. Well, the ones that have moved out of their mother's basements are a forgiving sort. And Didio, you know, it's also okay to screw up and then admit it. For definitely. It's comic books! They're supposed to be fun!

Oh and hey, how about having all the editors for the Batverse books pop into a chat room to fill each other in on everything before the writers get insulted by being told, belatedly, that what they wanted to do and what they were hired to do isn't what they're going to be doing anymore.

Good show.