George Perez’s frustration with Superman and the New 52

News

George Perez stepped down as the writer and artist of Superman six months into the DC restructure, and has recently revealed that it was the stifling of creativity and too much editorial interference that spurred him away from the title. This year’s Superman Celebration featured a Q&A in which the industry legend spoke frankly about his experience on the title and the frustrations he grappled with over his six issues on the project.

    “Unfortunately when you are writing major characters, you sometimes have to make a lot of compromises, and I was made certain promises, and unfortunately not through any fault of Dan DiDio, he was no longer the last word, lot of people making decisions, going against each other, contradicting, again in mid story. The people who love my Superman arc, I thank you. What you read, I don’t know. After I wrote it… I told them here’s my script, if you change it, that’s your prerogative, don’t tell me. Don’t ask me to edit it, don’t ask me to correct it, I don’t want to change something that you’re going to change again if you disagree. No no, Superman is a big character, I was flattered by the responsibility, but I thought this was getting a little tough.”

And just to underline how sloppy the New 52 journey has been on DC’s side of things, Perez revealed he “had no idea” that Grant Morrison was also working on Superman, let alone writing stories that took place five years before Perez’s own scripts. “I had no idea I was doing it five years ahead, which means, my story, I couldn’t do certain things without knowing what he did, and Grant wasn’t telling everybody. So I was kind of stuck. ‘Oh, my gosh, are the Kents alive? What’s his relationship with all of these characters? Who exists?’ And DC couldn’t give me answers. I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re deciding all these things and you mean even you don’t know what’s going on in your own books?’ So I became very frustrated …”

Bleeding Cool has even more choice quotes from the man himself, as well as the video.

 

Matt Graham is a freelance contributor when he's not writing and illustrating for himself and others. A screenwriter and illustrator with experience in nearly every role of comic and film production, he spends most of his time rationalizing why it's not that weird to have a crush on the female teenaged clone of the hairiest, barrel chested man in comics.