Letters to Justice League #78

My fear was that the Joker is a Batman villain, and that means he works within a certain level of villainy, so how do I elevate that without betraying the core of the character? When I found my hook—the Joker “breaking up” with Batman and “moving on” to the Justice League—I was energised to follow the story wherever it went, and I’m glad that it’s come together the way it has, that said…


…My biggest concern when approaching this story was that I’d set up so many dominos, I needed them all to fall properly—effectively—and in the right order!

As I wrote the series across the months then years, I started setting up the threads I wanted to pull together for this arc… I knew I wanted it to be a big anniversary story, I knew what I wanted the end result to be… and as I got closer and closer to #75 I was finding that I still hadn’t set up enough of what I needed to deliver the story I wanted. That’s why the Guardian back-ups and eventual special had to come out, the Christmas stories, the Annual… and it was all written with a deadline in mind. By our seventy-fifth issue, I had to have everything in order, or… it wouldn’t work.

I’ve felt that every arc since #50 could have benefited from more space, more issues, but knew that it wasn’t possible. If you look at the Collections board, where I’ve batched together all the issues into arcs, you can see the likes of “From The Outer Darkness” and “Fire of Unknown Origin”-- four and five issues apiece—and I know they’d have benefit being six issues long, or maybe even seven. “Surface Tension” and that involved ALL bodies of water no longer having the capacity for things to float upon them—and it was three god damn issues. That could have been an Aquaman-centric mega event if we had the time and space!

I’ve said it before, even the likes of "Until The Ends Of The Earth" could have really used more issues for each of the three story threads to be expanded upon. They were each major Justice League adventures, and instead we had to put them in one arc across four issues, just to make sure #75 landed when it needed to.

But yeah, I’ve sown so many seeds, and over the next few arcs, they’re all about to come to fruition.


Thank you so much, that means a lot! The DC2 is a passion of mine, and I can’t seem to get away from it—not that I’ve tried particularly hard. I think we’re entering somewhat of a creative renaissance with the upcoming slate of books that will be making their way onto the site in the next few months. That, combined with the push I’m making for collaboration in 2019… I’m very excited.

And we wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for Mark, who’s kept the light on all this time, and has driven the site forward with all the books that have been coming out month on month since the original heyday of the site. I know I wouldn’t be able to work here if it wasn’t for him!


Would you believe me if I said I know exactly where they’re going to be in 2021?