Again I invoke Stan Lee: "Never give the fans what they think they want." Most of the present upper management (everywhere) would fall on their swords before they would follow that maxim.

Mark Haslett wrote: This takes on the full potential of these commission pieces, showing us things that can happen no where else.

Yeah, I kind of had a revelation at Mid Ohio Con a couple of years ago.  I asked one artist for a commission of a character he's well known for and another artist for a character he'd never done before but seemed to fit his strengths.  Both gave me very nice pieces, but the latter just seemed a little more special to me.

This idea followed from that thought process - not much JB JSA material out there and there would have to be a very odd confluence of events to ever get a JSA vs. Galactus story by anyone...

Kevin Brown wrote: My statement should read then:  Whomever is getting that piece is a damn lucky person!

And broke... 

Thanks, JB!  (Particularly for letting me squeeze in Alan Scott at the last minute.)  I had high hopes but... wow.

Simple -- a huge chunk of what's left of the audience won't buy "stories set in the past".

Displaying a serious disconnect between comics and the rest of the world- Devil in the White City would've never been published and the Pirates of the Caribbean films never would've been made with that mentality in place.

It is, unfortunately, not an attitude born of logic. It is an affectation, such as we often see in "fandom". Seeking to seem a staunch iconoclast whilst dutifully following the herd.

That is the strangest edict I've ever heard.  All-Star Squadron was coming out when I started collecting comics and I snatched up every issue of that I could find.  I love the ideas of the heroes involved in WWII.

So with DC's editorial policy, The Golden Age couldn't be published.  Is this why they won't let you do another round of Generations, JB?

(Couldn't the Spectre (or Dr. Fate) defeat Galactus the same way Dr. Strange did in FF # 243?)  LOVE THE PIECE.

Displaying a serious disconnect between comics and the rest of the world- Devil in the White City would've never been published and the Pirates of the Caribbean films never would've been made with that mentality in place.

Considering "Cuthroat Island" and Roman Polanski's "Pirates" were two of the biggest financial flops of the last 20 years. I was kind of surprised that POTC got made, not to mention what a sucess it was.

John Byrne wrote: Simple -- a huge chunk of what's left of the audience won't buy "stories set in the past".

Darwyn Cooke's The New Frontier did very well, or at least well enough to be collected in an Absolute Edition.  So there's some hope that fans will buy stories set in the past, even if they are only one-shots or heavily hyped mini-series.