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Greg Rucka On Dark Times At DC Comics With Dan DiDio & Geoff Johns – Bleeding Cool News
John Siuntres of the podcast Word Balloon just interviewed Greg Rucka about his work in and outside comic books. That included his return to DC Comics with the Cheetah & Cheshire Rob The Justice League mini-series with Nicola Scott and why he may have been away for so long.
Siuntres mentioned that DC Comics was republishing the 2008 War Of The Supermen comics book event ahead of the Supergirl movie, which saw writers Greg Rucka, James Robinson and Sterling Gates working together. Or not. Greg Rucka says;
“That was me at my absolute lowest at DC. That was in the deep end when everybody was lying to me, using me, betraying me, abusing me. My relationship with James was a bad one. He was writing whatever he wanted. We were not collaborating well. Collaborating with Sterling was great—literally was the best thing about that period. But it was just a repeated kick between the legs.”
He elaborated, talking about DC Comics executives, former Publisher Dan DiDio and former CCO Geoff Johns.
“It was toxic when I was there and remained toxic until Dan DiDio left. It was an abusive, manipulative environment. Geoff Johns was an incredibly manipulative person to me – used me, lied to me, played me off against people. DiDio did the same thing. I was made promises repeatedly, and they were always broken. When I left in 2009, I was mentally ill. I was severely depressed, suicidal. I nearly took my life. And that’s all the direct result of the way I was treated from 2006 through 2009, it was done with malice. The people I’m speaking about are bad actors. I’m not in a place where I will ever defend them again. They did what they did with malice of forethought.”
Greg Rucka returned to DC Comics for Wonder Woman and DC Rebirth in 2016, and again with Brian Bendis’ Wonder Comics in 2019. He recalled;
“When they came to me in 2016, they were on their knees, saying, “We have a Wonder Woman movie coming out, and we’ve forked the character into a cocked hat” … “screwed the pooch.” They said, “We need to get it fixed. We want you to do it. What will it take?” I gave them a list of demands, made them put it in writing, which is how you got me back in 2016. At the end of that first year, they said “well, we’re going to do it again, we want you to keep going”, and I said “this isn’t sustainable. And I told you I could only do it for a year”. So that’s when I walked away. In 2019, I came back because Brian Bendis and Matt Fraction were coming in, and there was an intention we’d work together. And when I came in at that point, I was told, “We don’t need to make guarantees because we’ve proven we’ll do what we said.” Like an idiot, I said, “Okay,” and they proceeded to fork me… So when that ended, I walked away. They came back a couple of times, but I stayed away.”
So what changed?
“June of last year at Heroes Con, an editor whose name escapes me, came by and said, “Cully [Hamner] said I should talk to you. Are you willing to talk?” I said, “I’m always willing to talk.” Word got back that the door was open. So Rob Levin called me and said, “Here’s what we’re doing.” He poured enough poison in my ear about the Cheetah and Cheshire thing to make me go, “Ooh, now I’m intrigued.” We had a serious conversation. I said, “I’ve had bad experiences. I’m not going to do that again, I’m not going to go back to that.” He said, “I know what you’re talking about, and I know what you are describing, and that’s not us now.” When I was there, literally, editorial groups were at war with each other. That’s not on the editors, that’s from the top down, that’s from the COO and that’s from Dan. They didn’t allowing it to happen, they made it happen.”
At the time, Bleeding Cool reported on what we called an intercine rivalry between the coasts of DC Comics, of Dan Didio and Geoff Johns, and how that played out in the New 52 or the treatment of Poison Ivy, with Scott Snyder Island as some kind of Switzerland neutral state. It would eventually lead to Dan Didio being fired in 2020 after then-President Diane Nelson resigning and Geoff Johns was pushed out in 2018. There were also a lot of staff layoffs that followed. But it seems that things have really changed at DC, and for the better. Greg Rucka writes;
“I’m going to be perfectly honest right now, it’s a different company right now. The people there—it’s healthy… Rob made it clear to me, he said “it’s different now. Editorial gets along and we communicate”. And I said, “All right, well, I’ll believe that when I see that, but I’m happy to talk.” And then I got to see it. And Rob is absolutely correct. There are three group editors that I am in communication with, and they talk to each other so much it’s almost a problem, right? It creates an environment where that’s putting out somne of the best stuff DC’s done in the last 10 to 15 years… It’s a positive environment. People are working together, and they’re not working in fear, they’re collaborating… I’ve never written anything that couldn’t benefit from another set of eyes. I want to be able to talk to an editor and be able to say, “This is what I’m thinking. I’m not sure if this works.” And have them say, “Okay, I don’t think it does work, but have you thought about this?” I am working with three separate editors at DC right now. All of them have been terrific. The last time I was able to work with editors who were that good was in 2016 when I was able to pick the editors I was working with. And before that, I got to go back frankly to Denny’s [Dennis Oneill] bat group. And that’s not to say the editors that I worked with, for instance, on Gotham Central, Matt Idleson, Nachie Castro, were bad people or bad editors. They were great at their jobs. But the environment was growing more and more toxic crazy.”
“I’ve really come to a place where I’m like, “Oh, no. I can see I can see what was done.” And I can see now the truth of it. And I can see also some common denominators of things. There are certain things that I have realized about people who I was working for and working with who were very careful about hiding it about themselves… I’ve had a lot of realizations in the last year, and some of them have been like, “Oh, oh, this person was an anti-semite from the start. this person didn’t like me because I was a Jew… I’m not interested in protecting anybody’s legacy anymore. I’m just not. I’m not.”
And as for returning to Gotham Central, the seminal series he wrote with Ed Brubaker, there is a possibility. He writes
“I did it without Ed for 15-20 issues, so I’m not precious about it. An editor mentioned doing a Gotham Central Black Label thing, and I could see it if I had an idea. For Detective Comics #1100, they wanted something Gotham Central-ish. I didn’t have an idea initially, but Jessica Barby, an associate editor, suggested a story about a coroner or medical angle. I’d been watching The Pit and reading The Knife and Gun Club, about Denver’s trauma center. It got me thinking—what’s Gotham like before and after Batman if you’re in a trauma center? I kind of want to do a medical drama set in Gotham now. But when we proposed Gotham Central, they wanted to call it Batman: Gotham Central, which meant Batman had to be in it. That’s not what it’s about—it’s about Batman’s effect. People love Gotham Central, but it never sold well. We’re barely moving copies of Cheetah and Cheshire now, so I don’t see DC approving a six-issue series about Vanity working in Gotham General.”
And as for Marvel Comics?”
“Marvel has never ever liked me. Every time I go to Marvel, it ends badly. They say, “Come here, come here, please, please, please.” And then I inevitably get fired or lied to. Marvel is never going to call me and say, “Please come and play in our yard.” And that’s fine. Marvel’s yard only has a few characters I’m actually interested in. DC’s Yard is where my heart is. I’m not saying no, but I’ve never been the flavor of the month at Marvel. As I am fond of telling people, I am the only guy to take Wolverine out of the top 10. He was he was selling great until Darick Robertson and I took over. And then they were like, why is he not wearing a costume and stabbing people all the time? And I was like, that’s not the story we’re telling. And Marvel is like, “Oh, what have we done?” You know, when is he leaving the book?”
As for that darkest time he mentioned earlier,
“wasn’t really telling people about it. I was in the hole. But yeah, literally December 2012, I had to call a friend to say, “I need you to come here and take this firearm out of my home. Because I am afraid of what I will do with it if I am left alone.”
We are glad to hear that Greg Rucka is in a better place. But Bleeding Cool would like to remind readers that if you or someone you love is in crisis, there are several ways of seeking help. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
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A Black Label Gotham Central? DC ought to make that happen.
He may have felt immensely crappy during it, but Rucka’s New Krypton stories were great stuff.
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DC Cancels ‘Red Hood’ Comic Book Series After Writer Shares Inflammatory Post Following Charlie Kirk Shooting – Hollywood Reporter
Gretchen Felker-Martin was behind the title, which DC said would be pulled: “Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct.”
DC has shelved its Red Hood comic book series following writer Gretchen Felker-Martin sharing posts on Bluesky that joked about the shooting of Charlie Kirk, who was killed by an assassin’s bullet Wednesday.
“Hope the bullet’s okay after touching Charlie Kirk,” read one post. “Thoughts and prayers you Nazi bitch,” read another by Felker-Martin. The writer is trans, while Kirk was known for his anti-trans stance. Felker-Martin’s Bluesky account is now deactivated, but those posts were screenshotted and widely spread before DC canceled the series.
“At DC Comics, we place the highest value on our creators and community and affirm the right to peaceful, individual expression of personal viewpoints. Posts or public comments that can be viewed as promoting hostility or violence are inconsistent with DC’s standards of conduct,” a DC spokesperson said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
While the Kirk posts got attention online over the past 24 hours, insiders stress that it was merely the final straw that broke the camel’s back, rather than the sole reason for Red Hood’s cancellation. Any post viewed as promoting hostility or violence would break the company’s social media policy.
As of Thursday afternoon, law enforcement officials were still searching for the shooter behind Kirk’s death. The violent incident sent ripples through the worlds of politics and media, with Comedy Central pulling an episode of South Park that mocked Kirk.
The first issue of Red Hood arrived in comic-book shops on Wednesday, the day outspoken MAGA activist and conservative media figure Kirk was killed while speaking at Utah Valley University. The comic (intended to be part of an ongoing series, with future issues planned for October and November) centered on Jason Todd, a former Robin who has adopted the antihero persona of Red Hood. “Sweat, blood and powder burns. Broken bones and mind control. A city rotted from the inside out,” said Felker-Martin in a statement in June announcing the book. “Jason’s going through hell on the hunt for an enigmatic telepath, and he’s taking us with him. I’m thrilled to be helming this new run of Red Hood with [artist] Jeff Spokes.”
“Batman writer fired over support for vigilante violence”
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Was reading from a comics retailer online that one issue of Red Hood is suddenly selling like hotcakes. Nothing like the speculator market to make hay in a crisis.
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I tend to agree with Ben. I think Morrison’s take was fine but it has a finite length of interest.
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One Batman concept that isn’t talked about, or not as much as DKR, is Knightfall. That idea of replacing Batman? Morrison did a riff on it, so did Snyder, King perhaps, Zdarsky too.
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I tend to agree with Ben. I think Morrison’s take was fine but it has a finite length of interest.
I think that’s why when Morrison returned to Batman for his long run on the character’s own title he adopted a different approach that highlighted some of his vulnerabilities and explored some of his weirder past adventures. His JLA version is fun as part of a team book but wouldn’t work for a solo run.
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On that article, I don’t dispute that there may have been some overly simplistic grim-and-gritty takes in the wake of Miller, but its interpretation of DKR itself as positioning Batman as a hero of the Reagan era seems very off to me, to the point that I think it fundamentally misreads/misunderstands the story.
It’s not even subtext – in DKR, it’s Superman who is explicitly a tool of Reagan, while Batman is pushing back against the rule of that political regime. The story is in part about Bruce’s political awakening and realising that there is more wrong with the world than crime – and that by doing what he’s been doing in the past, he’s just treating the symptoms of a deeper rot in society.
Also, Miller’s version in DKR isn’t a sociopathic loner as the article suggests, he has Alfred and Gordon as friends and allies, and by the end of the story he’s got Carrie and the Batboys and is working with Ollie (and even Superman) too.
I think it’s true that (like Moore has also said of Watchmen), subsequent creators maybe took the wrong lessons from DKR and thought a nuance-free grim’n’gritty take was the way to go – perhaps because they didn’t understand the complexities of Miller’s story — but by suggesting that that’s all DKR has to offer, the article falls into the same trap.
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One Batman concept that isn’t talked about, or not as much as DKR, is Knightfall. That idea of replacing Batman? Morrison did a riff on it, so did Snyder, King perhaps, Zdarsky too.
I do wonder how much of arcs where a hero is replaced, or “dies” is really editorially, and marketing department driven?
“Hey, we need a sales bump in Q4. Let’s make a 60-year-old Thai food stand operator* the new Batman! Okay, writer monkey, make it happen! And make it KEWL!!!”
I’m sure some writers may come in with the idea of some sort of “substitution” story, but I wouldn’t be surprised if most of those stories are corporately mandated.
* Yeah, I could have gone with the South Park bit, “put a chick in it and make her lame and gay”, but I really wanted to take Batman in a bold, new direction!
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I think usually the “replacement” storyline, when it’s done well, is about examining the main character and who they are (and why they’re the ones who can do what they do) by showing what it looks like when someone else comes in and does things differently.
Two versions in the Spider-Man comics at different ends of the quality spectrum are Kraven’s Last Hunt and the Clone Saga. The Kraven story digs into what it looks like when a ruthless killer tries to “be” Spider-Man better than Peter, and the results aren’t pretty – and Peter has to dig deep within himself to find the strength to confront him. Meanwhile the Clone Saga just degenerated into an endless stupid twisty soap opera where character examination wasn’t at the heart of things.
Interestingly they’re running a similar type of story in Amazing Spider-Man at the moment.
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Yeah, Ultimate Spidey goes in a different direction and has some fun with the idea – it’s not a bad read but was late on in the Bendis/Bagley run, once the book was past its best.
And thankfully, it didn’t stretch on for years (in real-time) like the original clone saga did!
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Grant Morrison did the character no favors with his “Uber Bat” interpretation. He turned Batman into this apex predator of the DCU that could take anyone down.
This JLI page is from the eighties.
I think it’s been this way for a looooong time before Morrison, and for a good reason: The only way Batman as a non-powered hero works at all within those super-powered teams is if he can outmaneuver any and all of them. If he can’t do that, he’ll be dead within a day, with the threats they’re taking on. Morrison went full throttle with that, but it was there before.
That means that Bats has to be different in those books than in his own, of course, but once again that really always was the case. The JLA or JLI Bat could call in his colleagues any time a threat in Gotham gets too bad, and that’d be that. It’d be insanity not to do it, so you have to kind of just go with him being to different Batmans.
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Grant Morrison did the character no favors with his “Uber Bat” interpretation. He turned Batman into this apex predator of the DCU that could take anyone down.
This JLI page is from the eighties.
I think it’s been this way for a looooong time before Morrison, and for a good reason: The only way Batman as a non-powered hero works at all within those super-powered teams is if he can outmaneuver any and all of them. If he can’t do that, he’ll be dead within a day, with the threats they’re taking on. Morrison went full throttle with that, but it was there before.
That means that Bats has to be different in those books than in his own, of course, but once again that really always was the case. The JLA or JLI Bat could call in his colleagues any time a threat in Gotham gets too bad, and that’d be that. It’d be insanity not to do it, so you have to kind of just go with him being to different Batmans.
Eh, that’s not really a good example of the “Uber Bat”. Guy is ultimately just an ordinary person with a magic ring. I still remember the issue of Green Lantern years later where Hal and Guy had a fistfight to determine who would wear the ring. (This led into Guy getting the yellow power ring.)
Yeah, it’s common for characters to be portrayed a bit differently in team books versus their solo titles. It’s one of those things that requires the suspension of disbelief as the solo character calling in the team for everything wouldn’t make for very good comics.
I think one of the dumbest fan bits about Batman is that “if he had time to prepare, he could beat anyone!” Well, idiot, give ANY character prep time and they can take down anyone! Any character could even take down Batman if they have time to prep.
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https://www.comicsbeat.com/batman-1-sells-500000-copies-goes-to-second-printing/
Impressive numbers from DC, they appear to have their mojo back in the last year or so.
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With sales like that I would have guessed Shakespeare/Picasso, but i guess Fraction/Jiménez is also fine.
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The Blind Bags are giving them a big boost, there’s nothing like a bit of pseudo-legal gambling to drive up comics sales at the moment.
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The Blind Bags are giving them a big boost, there’s nothing like a bit of pseudo-legal gambling to drive up comics sales at the moment.
So you buy the book in a sealed package, like baseball or Magic cards?
Yeah exactly.
I’m just surprised they haven’t done one for Daredevil yet.
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Comics do love these gimmicks (video games too), we had high numbers 8 years or so back with geek boxes or whatever they were called at the time.
Saying that I think the doomsayers never quite realise how massive these numbers are compared to other genres or media. EPL football games in the most popular league sport in the world will get less than 500,000 at times. Celebrity ghost written novels sell 10k. 2000ad is now selling around 18% of The Sun newspaper daily distribution.
There are a lot of people who want to read well made comics but we kind of like the underdog status that it can’t be possible. Like the genuinely upsetting injustices of Kirby or S&S or Bill Mantlo are always in the conversation but never that Byrne is under oath in a US court he earned over $10m at Marvel or that Chris Claremont bought a private jet.
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Eh, that’s not really a good example of the “Uber Bat”. Guy is ultimately just an ordinary person with a magic ring. I still remember the issue of Green Lantern years later where Hal and Guy had a fistfight to determine who would wear the ring. (This led into Guy getting the yellow power ring.)
Yup. But the point is in Giffen’s JLA Batman was always the most intimidating guy in the room, no matter the other people’s powers.
Yeah, it’s common for characters to be portrayed a bit differently in team books versus their solo titles. It’s one of those things that requires the suspension of disbelief as the solo character calling in the team for everything wouldn’t make for very good comics.
Yup. And this always goes all the more so for the non-super-powered guys. Green Arrow, Bats, Hawkeye… in their own books, they can be defeated by a couple of drug-dealers and psychopaths, but in the team books, they’ll take on Darkseid and Ultron.
I think one of the dumbest fan bits about Batman is that “if he had time to prepare, he could beat anyone!” Well, idiot, give ANY character prep time and they can take down anyone! Any character could even take down Batman if they have time to prep.
Not Guy Gardner. He’d have a drink and try to have sex with Black Canary.
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His NYCC speech is getting lots of headlines on the AI aspect, but it covers so much more than that.
The full speech is well worth reading:
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New Vertigo lineup:
NYCC 2025: DC Vertigo reveals lineup and ‘A New Beginning’ coming in 2026
I’ll pick up the Condon/Phillips book for sure, maybe the Ram V/Perkins one and possibly the Spurrier/Campbell one. Was never a huge 100 Bullets fan but I’m sure there are lots of people who will be happy to see it back.
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DC start a new line of books called Next Level. Their opening for it?
Rucka back on Batwoman, 17 years on.
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A real promo for DC KO:
NYCC ’25: Sub-Zero from Mortal Kombat to appear in DC KO, along with other characters
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