With the grinding blur of New York Comic Con now in the rearview mirror, I’ve been digesting some of the great conversations I had with industry folks over that weekend. One of the most interesting was an interview DC Comics arranged for me at their booth with Joshua Williamson, one of the main architects of the company’s recent massively successful story strategy as well as the current writer of Superman and Legion of Super Heroes.
Williamson is an interesting figure in DC’s organization these days because he is not just a writer capable of telling big, universe-churning stories. He’s also someone with experience on the business side, particularly in comics retail, who brings those insights into the way he approaches serialized storytelling.
“I wasn’t just coming in here as a freelance writer,” he said at the start of our interview. “I do a lot of story planning and consulting. I talk to DC a lot about publishing.” As such, he seems like a good person to talk about how DC’s creative approach issue by issue lines up with EIC Marie Javins’ overall vision for the line that’s driven its market success.
Writing with retail in mind. “When I’m writing, I try to remember being that guy in the store, behind the counter, trying to sell the comic,” he said recalling conversations he had with former DC sales and marketing folks like Bob Wayne and Stuart Schreck about the importance of the direct market. “I think about the communal experience. I think about those connections. I love these characters, and I feel like my job in many ways is to present and explain my love for them.”
Of course comics is full of professionals who love comics, and that has been both a blessing and a curse. There are times when the tangle of continuity grows too complex to be approached by casual fans, or when the sense of community turns into an exclusive clubbiness. DC has, at times, been prone to playing too heavily into that, manufacturing crises and continuity events that landed with diminishing returns, exhausting existing fans without bringing in new ones.
These days it is doing the opposite of that. The lineup is bristling with new takes on old characters that offer onramps for fans with varied tastes and sensibilities. The Absolute line is doing for mainstream DC what Vertigo did back in the 90s, just with a new coat of Gen Z paint and much bigger numbers. Meanwhile the legacy books balance respect for history with fresh creator-driven approaches.
Individual voices creating a coherent brand. Williamson credits a lot of that to the culture created by editor-in-chief Marie Javins. “Everyone likes her total leadership,” said Williamson. “She has a lot of trust in us. I think that’s because she was also a creator, a colorist. She has this experience and understands it from that perspective, not just a business perspective.”
Williamson says that under Javins, creators have a lot of freedom to take books in their own direction, almost as if they were creator-owned. “We saw that was working with Absolute, so the next step was to apply it to other characters that don’t always get that kind of love. So you get Demon and Deadman and the Next Level books. Those start with creators, not with top-down editorial.”
Regardless of where the creators are taking the characters, Williamson emphasized these have to be stories that retailers can explain to customers, to create the urgency at the retail level.
“A lot of this comes down to having books that retailers can sell,” he said. “I always tell people that the sign of a good pitch is not that they can pitch it, it’s that the person they pitch it to can pitch it. So you have to work with retailers and make sure retailers have a story they can sell to customers.”
Making every issue worthwhile. The other balance that Williamson notes is capturing readers who like the visual spectacle versus fans who read deeply and immerse themselves in the story world. “That’s one thing Scott is really good at in his work. Every story has to matter. Every issue has to be accessible, but it has to have enough story that it’s worth your money and worth your time.”
Noting how consumption patterns have shifted from “satisfying chunks” of story that periodical comics like DC’s titles excel at, to frequent bursts of snack-sized content delivered straight to your timeline, Williamson says that making readers wait a whole month for the next issue is a bigger ask. It’s up to creators to make it worth the wait.
“When Scott was doing Justice League, he became obsessed with making things ‘anti-decompressed.’ When you have readers that are just trying to get to the end, write almost in a way to slow them down. How do you use all those tricks from Scott McCloud to control the pacing, to keep reader’s attention on the page they’re on but make them want to turn the page?”
Finding a personal spin on each book. Willamson says he is trying to bring that approach to Legion of Super-Heroes, a title that is almost uniquely resistant to transcending its own history. “I was obsessed with Legion for years, and then finally DC offered it to me, and I had to think about it for a while because I wondered if I was the right fit.”
He says he ultimately found the core idea that he wanted to bring to his run: the notion that the Legion was a community, essentially, of superhero fans who themselves had super-powers. “These are kids who love superheroes, just building a community with each other. They come from completely different places.”
“Just think about all this” he said, gesturing broadly toward the teeming show floor of NYCC beneath our perch on top of the DC Booth, where there were nearly as many fans milling around as there are members of the Legion. “Everyone is here right now because they love comic. They may love different things. Maybe some of them only read Image Comics or whatever. But that’s what Legion has always been: people from different places, inspired by superheroes, coming together to do something that’s good.”
Good vibes or master plan? Does it matter? One of the things that impressed me about this conversation is that Williamson was articulating a coherent publishing strategy, not just a creative philosophy. When you combine creator autonomy, an approach to story that balances accessibility without abandoning legacy, and that sees each individual issue as a complete value proposition that can be sold to readers, you have the makings of a very strong approach to the market.
What’s really compelling is that these three elements reinforce one another. Creator freedom produces books with stronger individual identities, that can sink deeper emotional hooks into readers than titles that smack of top-down “grand planning.” That accessibility and distinctiveness reduce artificial barriers to access, like over-reliance on canon and continuity. And creating more satisfying individual issues can help make every purchase feel worthwhile, even for fans who don’t follow every title or remember everything that happened last month.
How much of this comes from Javins, Jim Lee, or the creative brain trust that includes Williamson, Snyder, Tom King and others, is hard to say. How much of it was thought out, versus just coming together with the right combination of voices and instincts?
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter. Fans are voting with their wallets every month that the company is doing something right.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (Bluesky @robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, a two-time Eisner Award nominee, and a proud longtime contributor to Eisner-nominated ICv2.
Source: ICV2
