Earlier this month, George Pérez was among the featured guests at the annual Superman Celebration in Metropolis, Illinois. His question and answer session was recorded and hosted by Superman Homepage. Rich Johnson at Bleeding Cool transcribed some of the video, including the following quote:

Unfortunately when you are writing major characters, you sometimes have to make a lot of compromises and I was made certain promises, and unfortunately not through any fault of Dan DiDio, he was no longer the last word, lot of people making decisions, going against each other, contradicting, again in mid story. The people who love my Superman arc, I thank you. What you read, I don't know.

I've always been pretty outspoken against Dan DiDio and how I've interpreted DC's output under his direction as Publisher. While it is his job to be the public face of the company's decisions, for good or ill, to hear an industry veteran like Pérez explicitly say that DiDio isn't really the boss at DC should really teach me to temper my venomous tirades against the poor fellow.

It's been obvious for some time that DC's corporate parent, Warner Brothers, has been becoming increasingly intrusive in editorial interference of DC's storytelling. The obvious, continued editorial failures behind the rollout of the DCnU are the smoking gun pointing to a dysfunctional, fractured leadership.

As much as I have blamed DC Comics Co-Publishers DiDio and Jim Lee for the recent poor treatment of Booster Gold, I should give DiDio the benefit of the doubt with his plans for Justice League International. After all, if Booster Gold doesn't reappear in a new title soon, there will be plenty of blame to go around.

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I just picked up The Music of DC Comics: 75th Anniversary Collection cd. I open the case for the first time to put the cd in my computer's cup holder, and lo and behold, who do I find looking up at me from the back tray card under the cd but the Corporate Crusader and all of his DC pals.

DC's 75th anniversary, indeed! Jemm, Son of Saturn, meet Catman! I bought the cd for the music, but I'm in love with it for the interior art.

What's not to like about any cd that comes with its own comic artist credits? Pencils: Adam Dekracker, Brett Breeding, Ryan Sook, Jon Bogdanove, Ian Churchill, Craig Hamilton, Jonboy Meyers, Matthe Clark, Tom Derrinick, Mike McKone, Admira Wijayai. Inks: Brett Breeding, Ryan Sook, Joe Rubenstein. Colors: Raul Trevino, Dave McCaig, Ryan Kinnard, Richard Horie.

Hard core DC junkies may recognize this image as very similar to one that circulated a few months ago as a promotional image for Warner Brothers Consumer Products. There have been a few changes from that image, including but not limited to Booster Gold moving to a more prominent position behind Batman (location, location, location!) and Aquaman being re-drawn. For more details on the original, head over to the archive at onceuponageek.com.

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In continuing the discussion of sales over time for DC titles, you may be interested in this article over at comicsbeat.com. Each month The Beat runs a wrap up of month-to-month sales trends that are both illuminating and quite frequently baffling and surprisingly pleasing.

Of course the big industry discussion right now is the sudden lack of sales across the board for August. (More details here, here, and here.) Whether this is due to bad economy + high book prices, buyer fatigue, or the lack of a current mega-event (love 'em or hate 'em, they do drive sales across the board because we fans really are sheep), sales are dead flat.

Rumor has it that Warner Brothers is planning a big restructuring of DC in the immediate future, so don't be surprised if DC responds to this crisis by exploding into other media (movies, television, video games, underoos, etc.).

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Yesterday Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment announced the opening of a development studio in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in order to develop video games specifically based on DC properties. No games or titles were announced, though the business plan looks forward to a full-scale production company by 2015. While WBIE will no doubt be primarily interested in producing games to go with their upcoming movies (Green Lantern and Jonah Hex spring to mind), surely it can't be long now before Booster Gold finally appears in a licensed video game.

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