Latest Action Comics (Spoilers for Nightwing's identity)

[mithen]

Character A is a snarky, dark-haired teen with tactile telekenesis.
Character B is a sweet-tempered, light-haired pre-teen without tactile telekenesis.
Character C is a masked, snarky, dark-haired teenager with tactile telekenesis.

Would you lay odds on Character C being A or B under the mask?

Well, DC sez: "It's Character B! He's been randomly aged, his hair has turned black, and he's developed a snarky temperament and tactile telekenesis! Aren't you surprised?"

Oh DC, "surprised" doesn't even begin to cover my reaction.

Comments

[stinglikeabee.livejournal.com]

*scratches head* My guess is that the last minute change was due to Kon coming back as a Black Lantern, and the fact that Linda is still in hell. But c'mon, at least make it a plausible reveal.

[mithen.livejournal.com]

Do you think maybe someone was planning on it being Kon, and at the last minute told it wasn't? I wouldn't credit such poor planning, except for the whole "We're going to kill Dick--no, no, let's make it Kon!" thing in Infinite Crisis, which always seemed very, very last-minute to me...

[stinglikeabee.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. At last year's Wizard LA convention I sat in a panel with Jimmy Palmiotti, one of the writers of Countdown, who said much of the plot and reveals were mandated by editors and often changed with time. For example, the idea of our Jason being from Earth-2 wasn't picked up again. Who knows, maybe editorial decided Kon would be a better Black Lantern for the upcoming Green Lantern event than as part of the Superman series. Darn! If Wizard LA wasn't postponed this weekend, I would have asked that question to James Robinson who's currently writing SUperman.

[mithen.livejournal.com]

Getting back into comics that's been one of the things that's surprised me the most--how little control writers have over their own stories, in some ways. Like Willingham starting to write Steph and being told, "Oh, by the way, she's going to die in a few months," so deciding to make her Robin kind of out of spite. It would be a real pain to work under those conditions--I assume some people have more freedom, but you'd have to be one of the biggest names to dictate the development to DC rather than vice versa.