All I know is this: My writer now heads up nearly ALL of DC's overall books and directions, and he'll never go to Marvel now. It's a glorious glorious day for me. Until his writing starts to slip. Which is my only major worry, even though he's making every reassurance that it won't. I'll wait to see how that will come about.
I know, that's what I'm a little worried about, but as it's been discussed, he's been doing this kind of thing for awhile by also writting for Smallville, the Flash movie, Robot Chicken, and coordinating on the GL film with the director and actors already, and still churning out scripts.
The only thing is, if his writing comes to an end, I see it being after Brightest Day because he'll just be getting that up and going with Tomasi and that lasts until next May, so we'll just have to see. I think he has potential to do both for now, but he'll be writing fewer books, and most definitely not helming huge linewide crossovers like Infinite Crisis or Blackest Night, but rather sticking to things like Flash or Green Lantern, and fewer mini series. Time will tell though.
Johns becoming the CCO is a great move, given that more than half his ideas have already helped reshape the DCU in the last 5-10 years (some for better, some for not so better) but I think he's his ideas/writing are getting better the more he writes and plans. Also, I think Johns continuing to write while taking an upper management position is actually a boon.
It seems like many creators, when they take an upper management/editorial position, become detached from the titles on the ground and focus too much on the bigger picture and forget how the titles on the ground should/need to be mapped out to better serve whatever major event is going on and the DCU at large.
I think Final Crisis is a perfect example of this. Too many cooks in the kitchen and far too many ingredients than was necessary to create a good story, but that all kept getting swept under the rug because top DC management insisted on pushing out the last Crises story how they wanted it.
Agreed. But I already see foreshadowing of some possible backlash.
Let's look at the upcoming Bi-Weekly Brightest Day, being co-written with Peter Tomasi.
We have the potential here for either another 52, which for the most part has been praised, enjoyed, and considered a success.
We also have the potential for another Countdown, which most everyone looks at as a terrible, muddled, waste of time and money that barely fed into the next event and action in Final Crisis.
So now, if Brightest Day goes the way of 52, everyone will just see it as nothing out of the ordinary from the Johns/Tomasi team, and they'll label it as proof he can right and be CCO with no problem. But really, it could have just been an already greatly thought out and executed storyliine from the beginning that was 52 destined as is.
But if it comes out as a Countdown, everyone will most likely start blaming his new job as CCO, saying he can't write the same quality books and ideas while handling this new gig and he needs to chose one or the other. When, possibly, the book just wasn't going to be as successful as everyone thought it would be, like with Countdown.
I honestly see potential undeserved backlash/praise for his new job coming based on the reception of Brightest Day, even though many will refuse to look at it as much of this story being organized, and overall plotted before he actually took the title on.
It will definitely be interesting to see how things progress with this book.
