Dan Didio finally explains just what his problem with Wally West and dikk Grayson was:
Nrama: You drew a fair amount of fan heat for being the guy who theoretically hated dikk Grayson or Wally West. Is this indeed the case? Or was it just pro wrestling, drawing heel heat?
DiDio: 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 dikk 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] dikk Grayson — and this is the same with Wally — 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 dikk Grayson and Wally West have to stop aging, because they're going to pass their mentors. dikk Grayson's going to get older than Bruce Wayne at some point, because Bruce doesn't age and dikk 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 dikk Grayson, the issue wasn't about the fact that I didn't like the character. In fact, when I said we should kill dikk 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 to be the perfect way to do that. dikk Grayson was that character. I felt he was the character that everybody had such a great affinity and love for.
By putting him in that role that if he died, he would bring Superman and Batman together again and unite our heroes against the great threat, I think that's a noble death, and I think that's something that had value. Same type of death happened in Crisis on Infinite Earths. You want to have that level of importance.
Think about it: In Crisis on Infinite Earths, they kill Barry Allen, they kill Kara Zor-El, two major characters in the DC Universe. I figured we needed to do something that would be the sequel to that story and we needed a death of equal weight of that character.
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I disagree with him but do understand his point.
The whole interview is pretty good. I know a lot of people hated Didio but I always liked that he seemed to want to try new shyt and give lesser known characters a shot more than most people in his position would ever be willing to.
The interview is
HERE and it's worth checking out.
The x-men as we know them were made in 75. The Phoenix saga is in the 70s, Spider-Man is straight fire in the 70s, fantastic four and daredevil too.
I gotta check.. was pretty sure phoenix saga was early80s
And I ain't even mad
