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Not deliberately looking for these things, but I ran across this interview with Bill Willingham from late last year and another podcast interview with him at Wordballoon.
It may be a result of the fact that I "hang out", so to speak, with fangirls more than fanboys, but I have seldom run across anything more intensely loathed than Willingham's run on Robin (ending before the 52 set starts; "...and there was great rejoicing"...). The interesting thing about listening to and reading those interviews is that if he'd been allowed to do the series the way he wanted, to do the stories he wanted ... it's entirely likely that people wouldn't have hated it so much. Might even have liked it. (For example, the how and when of Spoiler's death and Tim's father's death seem to have been handed down from on high; DC needed to kill off someone near to the Batfamily to tie in to Identity Crisis, and it turns out that the Bats are seriously lacking in family members. The only people available to kill off, unless they went for a major character, were Alfred and Jack Drake. And they were not killing off Alfred.) For what it's worth, all the major things that happened in "War Games" also seem to have been handed down from DC editorial, although Willingham doesn't seem quite as annoyed by that as he was by being seriously hamstrung on Robin. (Interestingly and oddly, it seems to have been his idea to make Spoiler into the new Robin; DC editorial had already decided not only that she had to die, but more or less how, as well. He didn't want to kill her off at all. He made her Robin to give her some success before the "doom and horror that was coming her way" -- and, oddly, it seems to have caused a heavy spike in sales, despite people hating the story.)
The conditions he threw at DC before he consented to do "Shadowpact" -- which was his idea, for heaven's sake -- bespeak a man who was seriously, deeply pissed off about prior restrictions.
In any event, hearing that allows me to balance in my head the fact that so many people who have introduced me to so many things really, truly, emphatically HATE Willingham with every iota of their being with the fact that all the non-superhero stuff he's done that I've read, I really like.
(And all that said ... "Space Ghost"? Willingham? Really? ... Huh.)
It may be a result of the fact that I "hang out", so to speak, with fangirls more than fanboys, but I have seldom run across anything more intensely loathed than Willingham's run on Robin (ending before the 52 set starts; "...and there was great rejoicing"...). The interesting thing about listening to and reading those interviews is that if he'd been allowed to do the series the way he wanted, to do the stories he wanted ... it's entirely likely that people wouldn't have hated it so much. Might even have liked it. (For example, the how and when of Spoiler's death and Tim's father's death seem to have been handed down from on high; DC needed to kill off someone near to the Batfamily to tie in to Identity Crisis, and it turns out that the Bats are seriously lacking in family members. The only people available to kill off, unless they went for a major character, were Alfred and Jack Drake. And they were not killing off Alfred.) For what it's worth, all the major things that happened in "War Games" also seem to have been handed down from DC editorial, although Willingham doesn't seem quite as annoyed by that as he was by being seriously hamstrung on Robin. (Interestingly and oddly, it seems to have been his idea to make Spoiler into the new Robin; DC editorial had already decided not only that she had to die, but more or less how, as well. He didn't want to kill her off at all. He made her Robin to give her some success before the "doom and horror that was coming her way" -- and, oddly, it seems to have caused a heavy spike in sales, despite people hating the story.)
The conditions he threw at DC before he consented to do "Shadowpact" -- which was his idea, for heaven's sake -- bespeak a man who was seriously, deeply pissed off about prior restrictions.
In any event, hearing that allows me to balance in my head the fact that so many people who have introduced me to so many things really, truly, emphatically HATE Willingham with every iota of their being with the fact that all the non-superhero stuff he's done that I've read, I really like.
(And all that said ... "Space Ghost"? Willingham? Really? ... Huh.)
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