Live Q&A w/ DC Publishing Staff of ROUND ROBIN, Tues 4/6 @12pm PT/3pm ET!

[RoundRobin]

@Starman814

While these seem like great pitches, it would be helpful to know a creative team as well. Any idea when we might hear who will be involved in the making of these books? It could possibly sway my voting.

MMc: Creative teams will be announced with the start of Round 2. We really wanted the pitches to be the stars in this first round.

[ElongatedJ]

What went into the decision to not release creative team information? I can imagine some of the reasons, but it feels like, while that could tip the scales for some of these, on the other hand, it plays a big part in what we, as fans would imagine the feel of a book might be…?

[Jay_Kay]

@RoundRobin

Let it be known that the self-styled Bad Boy of Comics hates short people.

Would you say that you…look down on them?

[Mae]

@RoundRobin

So all those Harley/Ivy stans, just be patient (and look to the Bat group!!).

[RoundRobin]

@Row.Harper

Thank you all for being here and answering questions! I’m very excited about all these series. My original question was what @HubCityQuestion asked about JLQ (But not nearly as beautifully worded). So my question now is:

Some of these pitches include lesser known/used characters like Nightrunner, Etta Candy, Jesse Quick, and Ambush Bug. Is there any chance that, even if they don’t win this competition, that we will see these characters in another place in the DCU? If not their own series, at least in someone else’s series?

Thank you so much for doing this competition and letting us help pick a series for DC’s future! I hope more events like this happen here on DCUI.

MMc: You never know when a character will pop up in the DCU. If we were to tell you that they were going to show up soon, that would give away plot points for the other books in the DCU. You wouldn’t want us to spoil things now, would you?

KK: Yeah, this is “DC’S ROUND ROBIN” not “HEY WE’RE HERE TO SPOIL EVERYTHING AND TAKE THE FUN OUT OF IT.” In all honesty, though, we do have plans for all the pitches that don’t advance to the next round, we just want to make sure that what we ultimately decide to publish is in the best interest of the pitches themselves, the creative teams behind them, and the fans. Don’t say we never gave you anything! (Also, have you read LET THEM LIVE! UNPUBLISHED TALES FROM THE DC VAULT yet? AB is buggin’ out with his usual witty banter in that series, and it’s coming out RIGHT NOW!)

[Jurisdiction]

@Jay_Kay

Would you say that you… look down on them?

I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN MAKE TERRIBLE, CRINGY PUNS AROUND HERE!!!

[RoundRobin]

@HubCityQuestion

Andrew Marino! We just got finished reading The Totality together, a work which involved collaboration between a LOT of artists. How did you keep them all coordinated, and what were the biggest challenges in putting this Justice League relaunch together?

AM: Keeping all the artists coordinated with each other and drawing the same costumes and environments can be a huge undertaking. One thing I strived to do as the assistant and editor on a number of those titles was to have the most up-to-date and accessible reference library as possible. I would read the scripts, and go through a pull images from whatever issues or series I needed, and then save those away for both the artist who’d be drawing the script as well as any future artist that might need it. That’s always saved me a ton of time. The coordination is definitely one of the biggest challenges, but I’d say the biggest for that particular relaunch was making sure both the Justice League and Legion of Doom teams had exciting characters in it that felt both classic and new. It’s hard to do when there have been so many Justice League teams over the years, but the writers and artists brought so much life to those characters that it made the challenge all the more manageable. They made it all their own which is the best thing to see as an editor.

LE: What CAN’T the Bad Boy of Comics do? (Besides coming up with a nickname that anyone else will use?)

KK: Hey, how come Andrew gets all the questions? What gives?!

[RoundRobin]

@RexRebel

Andrew Marino, I loved having different teams do the League and the Legion, in the books, it made a marked difference in each group’s tone, I felt. How did y’all come up with the idea of doing that or was it just a result of scheduling?

AM: So happy to hear you enjoyed it! We knew going in that we wanted to highlight both sides of the story because they’re so connected. They’re ultimately two-sides of the same coin working towards the same goal by different methods. Scott Snyder and James Tynion IV have worked together for years, so when we were discussing the book’s structure, it sort of happened naturally that Scott would focus on the Justice side, and James would help highlight the Doom. Then bringing in all the different artists was the icing on the cake! Having Jim Cheung and Jorge Jimenez handle the bulk of the Justice story made the most sense to us because it was a bit more of a straightforward story, but since the Doom issues took on some different perspecitves, it allowed us to bring in some different artists on those issues to really bring each one to life in a unique way.

[RoundRobin]

@Quadpen

Hey! I love the idea behind the round robin (there’s an obligatory reference here)
My question is, would there be a possibility that the non winning comics would be released or are they going to be shoved aside never to see the light of day again

AM: Personally, I want to make all of my pitches come true haha. I want to tell all these stories if I can.

LE: I want all of the pitches I worked on to exist! And also all of the others! These really are some fantastic ideas and I hope we can make them all happen, one way or another.

KK: I’ve mentioned this before in a few other answers, but first of all, thank you for loving this weirdo idea from Team GPI. We definitely want to figure out a way to showcase all the pitches and ideas that don’t advance rounds – we just want to make sure that what we ultimately decide to publish is in the best interest of the pitches themselves, the creative teams behind them, and the fans.

[Jurisdiction]

@RoundRobin

Team GPI

what’s this?

[RoundRobin]

@millernumber1

A couple questions:

1. Since this is a PM chain, are answers being sent directly to the questioner, rather than added to the chain?

2. Some have speculated that the 1 page and 10 page previews of the titles are already produced, and will be released as an anthology similar to the New Talent Showcase at a later date - is there any truth to that speculation? My own reading of the schedule is that there’s time built in to produce those previews, and only the two finalists will get the 10 page previews produced, but I am not sure. It would be cool if all of the previews are produced and released as an anthology!

3. What was projected engagement with this project, and what would be considered successful? Has engagement met or exceeded those targets?

LE: Wouldn’t that have been a smart idea?

AM: We could’ve produced the art ahead of time?! Oh dang, why didn’t we do that?

MMc: Getting things done in advance is no fun. Scrambling to get you the previews in time for the next round of the competition just fills us with that rush of adrenaline that you can’t get anywhere else. Also, Andrew feels that all of his pitches are going to win, so the rest of us don’t need to worry about getting anything else done.

KK: @millernumber1, you have a wonderful grasp of the comics production schedule…and you’re right, it would have been more forward-thinking to get everything in advance. HOWEVER…the world of comics budgeting is against us, and we wanted this to be as authentic an experience as possible, so we honestly have NO IDEA what is going to win…so that’s why there is more time between the release of rounds 2/3 and 3/4, so the creators have time to craft the best story possible.

And our social team might be better equipt to answer your engagement questions, but I know we’ve gotten over 177K votes on Twitter, and more than triple that on Instagram (as of when I’m writing this, anyway), and people seem super engaged not only with the voting, but speculating on what will make it to the next round! That was a big part of this endeavor, creating a direct line from the fans to us, your humble editors.

[millernumber1]

I think Andrew got all the questions because they advertised his presence.

[RoundRobin]

@JaguarLoosy

Slightly tangential, but this is among the many reasons I would like to see a regular anthology series from US publishers (a la 2000AD or Heavy Metal). Stories that might not justify the sales of an ongoing could find a space in such a book and creators who may not otherwise find a voice could be published. DC already does this for holidays, have they considered such a thing as a long term ongoing? (Sorry for the partial response, hit send by accident).

MMc: You should check out some of our anthology series - Batman: Urban Legends, Sensational Wonder Woman, Batman: Black & White, Superman: Red & Blue, Wonder Woman: Black & Gold, and Legends of the Dark Knight!

LE: Plus we’re the team behind those quarterly anthologies, so thank you very much!

[RoundRobin]

@FelixLeiter

Andrew - thank you so much for taking the time to answer some of our questions! I have many but will try to whittle them down a bit:

1. Can you take me through the process of editing a multi-issue event like this? When you’re working with so many different creative people - writers, artists, colors, letterers, etc. what is the workflow with regards to story, script, layout, art, etc? If you decide to make a change in a panel in issue #4 that sets off a domino effect of changing events/panels in earlier issues how is that addressed or handled?
2. Which Justice League character is the best and why is it Hawkgirl?

AM: So a lot of the early story coordination takes place with the writers to make sure our story is paced well across the issues. That’s also when we’ll start to plan what issues will get referenced again or what scenes we’ll show again from a different perspective. Then it’s just a matter of knowing what artist will be drawing what scene when and sending along the proper ref to the next artist depicting that same scene. We do so much up front work on the script coordination to make sure we don’t have a situation where an artist needs to redraw something because we’ve made a change.

Dang, my favorite JL character is tough. I’ll give you my top 3. Flash is the character that got me into reading comics, and will always be near to my heart. The Flash Family opened the door for me into this world so I love riding the lightning with them. Green Lantern taught me how epic comics could be. I’m a self-proclaimed GL expert and love talking about obscure Lanterns out in the universe. Last is Superman, not just because I think he’s motivational, but because of my dad. Superman is his favorite, and growing up, he’d show me Superman stories and talk about what makes that character special. Whenever I get to work on Superman, it’s kind of like I’m back to being a kid being inspired all over again. Though, I do love Hawkgirl! She’s a total badass, and I’d love to tell more stories with her.

MMc: Sorry, Felix, but Aquaman is the greatest member of the Justice League!

LE: I think I can speak for Andrew when I say that his favorite team is actually the Force of July, and his favorite member is Sparkler. He has told me this many times and if he denies it he’s joking.

[RoundRobin]

@KookieSuperApe

Hi, publishing staff! Thank you very much for taking the time to join us and answer our questions. My questions:

1. How were the first round match-ups determined? How was it decided which pitches would face off against each other in the first round?

2. Were these existing pitches that you decided to turn into a tournament, or were the pitches created specifically for the tournament? That is, did the pitch ideas come first, or did the tournament idea come first and then you asked for pitches?

MMc: This is like the chicken and the egg, isn’t it? I believe that all of the pitches were created just for this competition.

LE: The four I worked on were brand-spanking new! Which makes it even more impressive that all of these creative teams absolutely blew me away. I’ve been so excited to share all the cool ■■■■ we’re making with you, the internet!

KK: Honestly, when you get obsessed with certain characters (or creators!), you always want to find a way to get a book of theirs to greenlight, come hell or high water. So while many of these pitches were crafted specifically for this event, our desire to create books showcasing characters like NIGHTRUNNER, ASTERIA, ETTA CANDY, ZATANNA, JESSE QUICK…honestly ALL OF THEM really just lives in our brains all the time. So as we figured out what a bracket-voting style event would look like, we figured fans ALSO had their passion projects and characters, as did some of the fantastic creators we roped into this insanity, and something like DC’s ROUND ROBIN was a great way to get everything we love in one place.

First round match ups were created randomly - before we launched we played it internally, trying to guess what would move forward, and we have been pleasantly suprised at how some of the match ups have played out so far (did NOT see some of these upsets coming!)

[millernumber1]

oh, wow - thanks for the info on Instagram! I know Insta has a lot more followers than Twitter for the DC account, but that’s pretty cool to get some info on the rough difference in numbers!

Thank you so much for responding!

[RoundRobin]

@Jurisdiction

1. What inspired you to hold Round Robin?
2. Did you come up with the storylines we choose from?
3. Out of the options given, which storyline would you vote for?

AM: I’ll leave what inspired us to, Katie. She’s got a great answer for that. For my pitches, I came up with a kernel of an idea for them. Like I’ve always wanted to work on a Jesse Quick book, so I then went out to a team I thought would do a great job! But everything after that point is what the creators came up with after I said “what do you think about Blue Beetle?”

Out of all the options given, I’m biased that I want one of mine to win haha. But out of my four (Blue Beetle, Jesse Quick, Robins, and Lobo/Animal Man), I genuinely can’t choose. I want to tell all of those stories with the teams behind them. These are titles I’ve wanted to do for a long time, so I wish all four could win!

KK: Oh man, the pressure. But yes, I do have a great answer - Team GPI’s main goal is to create new content for fans in ways they weren’t expecting. So Marie Javins had an idea about engaging readers by producing potential series, and Jim Lee doubled down on the idea by suggesting a bracket-voting competition. So we took those prompts and created DC’s ROUND ROBIN - a totally new endeavor for DC and one we were hoping would really give readers the opportunity to weigh in on what new title they’d want to see from DC in a super direct way.

And like Andrew said - these ideas were all passion projects that lived in our heads, characters we truly loved and wanted to give more attention to, or creators we really wanted to tap and let loose on THEIR passion projects. So choosing between one or another is like choosing your favorite child! So we’re glad we left that decision to you all, our readers.

[RoundRobin]

@Mae

Also, are the number of votes being considered, such as the JLQ/Robins pairing garnering twice the amount of votes than any other pair? To me that signals that DC fans are really clamoring for a groundbreaking and history-making ongoing queer series.

KK: I’ve mentioned before, but we definitely want to figure out the best way to give life to all of these amazing concepts – it’s just figuring out the best way to do that that honors the concepts, the creators, and the fans. As for the number of votes counting towards voting - if we were holding a regular ‘VOTE FOR THE NEXT SERIES’ then sure, that’s how that would work, but we here in GPI are a competitive bunch, so the bracket structure gives us a chance to add stress to everyone’s life each week (or with each new round of voting). Because it’s all about the DRAMA! But we do love seeing the fan reactions and listening to what people are truly clamoring for…that’s one of the reasons we did this in the first place!

AM: I love the pitch for JLQ! I would love to see it come to life.

[Mae]

Side question, if there is time. Not really about the Round Robin, but the upcoming DC Pride anthology and Dreamer. How did that story come about, were you involved? And is it true that Dreamer would be part of JLQ?

[RoundRobin]

@Snoo-Zee

I will reiterate what others have asked: how were the first round matchups decided, and can you confirm whether only one single pitch will be eventually greenlit?

KK: The first round bracket was created randomly, as we love each and every single one of these ideas (and honestly, it’s too tough for us to pick!) And while there will only be one winner of DC’s ROUND ROBIN, we’re currently figuring out how to give a home to all of these wonderful ideas.