Originally that would probably have been Edmond Hamilton for the Nightwing & Flamebird of Krypton. I’m guessing that Marv borrowed the name from that. But he can confirm or deny for himself!
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Thankyou for answering my question Marv, have a great week!
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Well, every time I, for about 10-15 years, that I came up to the DC offices, I would speak to someone and say, “Can we finish off this story? I really like it, I really think it’s great.” they would say they’d look into it, and it just never happened. In a way I just stopped thinking it would, but I never stopped asking. Then one day I got a phone call and they said, “we want to do it now”, and I went “wow, perfect, great!” and Claudio was up for it because he had to do a lot of corrections of the original art and coloring. He did a lot of work long after he had to. I was thrilled, I was utterly thrilled by it. It was a story that form the day I wrote it, I knew it was special.
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We began by just writing issue 1,2,3,4,5,6,7, down on a page. And then as ideas would come, I would put it like, “this belongs in issue 7, this belongs in issue 3”, so I could look back at it and see if the structure works, if it makes sense logically. It’s such a large story, you have so many different possibilities to take all these characters, so it was very important it all made sense.
Also, it’s a 12 issue story, and nobody had done anything like this before, so there was nobody I could go to and ask how you put together a 12 issue story. What I was able to do was think of it as 3, 4 page stories. So, if you look at it at the end of the first four issues, The Monitor, who you think is going to be the hero and save everybody, he dies. So that finishes that first four. The next four, The Flash dies. And major elements happen in those four issue story, so it was easier to keep track if I thought of them as three x four issues stories, than if I was trying to fill up 12 issues by themselves.
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One of the important things for me and George was that we knew how big the story was going to be. We were blowing up universes, after all. We knew about the characters that were going to die, we knew all these things. But that would be like constantly hitting the reader over the head with bigger and bigger things. With ever bigger thing we introduced, we made sure there were smaller characters tories. That this thing was always going to be about the characters the big stuff was for the “wow” factor, but I wanted to tell these tories about the characters, so we had a beautiful page in one of the middle issues where Supergirl and Batgirl get together and just talk about how scared they are, because this thing is wiping out universes. We took the time for a human beat, and we did that consistently. We kept coming up with more character-driven moments that the readers will remember, more than just fights. People forget fights, but you don’t forget the characters tuff. We made sure if you have a large surprise, a giant, universe-shattering concept, you also have all these smaller character things to remind you how great the characters are.
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I can confirm,… I DID NOT TEAR-UP when Barry Allen died!
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I always knew there was a similarity between Batman and Deathstroke, but I was never considering him as Deathstroke’s enemy. I don’t consider Deathstroke as a villain, never have. He took on the job of attacking the Teen Titans because his son failed and died, and his son had signed a contract with The Hive to kill the Titans. When Deathstroke’s son died, he had to take on the mission. He would not have ever attacked the Titans, he didn’t care about the Titans, they were never of any importance to him. Here we have a character that was on a mission he didn’t want to do, and couldn’t figure out a way out of it.
Because of that I never thought of him as going against Batman, but for the most part I see him as a character that is sucked into this life against his will, and was unable to get out of it.
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One of the great thing about working with artists today is you actually know most of them, you can meet them, you can talk to them. In the past, when we first began, I don’t think writers and artists ever talked together. it was a job, something they did for a living, they weren’t comic fans themselves. They got into it because they wanted to do comic strips. Today, almost every person who is an artist or writer is a fan. A Ia someone who loves the characters- certainly my case! So I can speak with the artist, we can get together, we can find out what the artist enjoys drawing and cater material to that, which makes them care about it even more. The fact that we can now work together, as a writer I welcome the artist to call me and say “I have a different visual, can we try this?” Great! if it makes the story better, that’s all I care about.
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If you’re a writer, don’t think of yourself as a comic book writer. Think of yourself as a writer who does comics. As a writer you’re going tow ant to try everything. I do animation, I do video games, I do short stories, I do novels. My favorite medium is comics, and that’s the one I love to do, but every time I do one of the others, it just makes me a better writer. You should never limit yourself, because that means you’re not allowing ideas to come in. Write as much as you can, draw as much as you can, get better and tell your stories. And one of the nice things today is you can even publish it yourself.
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I might have missed this being asked earlier so I apologize in advance if so Mr. Wolfman!!
Understandably, DC comics has to appeal to a running continuity and organization is key
Was there ever a story that you wanted to do that you just couldn’t get done because it wouldn’t work with continuity? Like say using a specific character that was unavailable or a setting that you weren’t allowed to use?
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Thank you for the great advice!
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My feeling was that Dick Grayson was no longer the kid, no longer the partner of Batman. He had graduated college, he was older but he was still dressing like he did when he was eight, when he was Robin the Boy Wonder. Like very real person, you reach a certain age and you want to go out on your own. And that’s exactly what Dick wanted. He didn’t want to be the kid in those green swim trunks. he wanted to be equal to Batman, and prove he was an adult and handle his own life. that’s the struggle everyone has. I think it was very important for him to break out. Now nobody, had ever done that before. We never had a kid partner become a character on their own, without the adult. But I think it was time for Robin, it was weird for the time period. The world had changed quite a bit by then. I just wrote a Robin story, and the Robin anniversary that came out last month, and it very clearly talks about why Robin wanted to leave, and wanted to stop being Batman’s partner.
I’m glad to hear it was a great birthday after all, and I hope you have many more!
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Thank you so much! And I think embracing that part of the character is how you managed to create such a relatable and well loved character.
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Deathstroke and Wintergreen were not inspired by anything in real life, he really just came to me in a second. Generally, most characters come from what the idea of what the character is about, then I develop who the character is, depending on what I need them to do. Slowly it develops a personality based on the needs of a story, and then the personality, having been developed, because that character from that point on. I can’t think of anyone that would specifically be the reason I created those characters, or came from somebody else.
Great artwork!
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I think possibly Winters from the Knight Force, because he can go into a lot of directions that I wasn’t prepared for when I first came up with him, but as I got to play with him, he started to take me into weird places to tell the stories.
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Thank you everyone for joining in and asking great questions, we’ll see you in the funny pages!
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Thank you for doing this!
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Thank you. Mr.Wolfman.
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Thank you Marv.
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Okay thank you so much for taking the time to answer my question Sir, and thank you for all of the great stories you’ve given us! 
And yes I love the show overall.
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