Keith Giffen must be an interesting guy

If I get riddled with Alzheimer’s in my late age, I’m willing to bet that I will go to my grave knowing what it means when someone says, “BWAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!” when I say “That’s why you pay me the big bucks, sir” it’s an homage to L-Ron and I will forever think of Keith Giffen as the guy who thought up the Justice League Antarctica annual that ended with a group of reformed supervillains run off the continent by mutant penguins.

That said, he’s worked on all sorts of books, not just the silly ones. He’s consistently visually experimental as an artist and flexible as a writer. When I read this quote from Giffen, though, I realized he must be very serious for a funny man.

52 was not the easiest thing in the world to do. But the machine that we built worked. 52 is going to come out on time. It’s going to be 52 issues of a weekly comic book that hit every single week, and I for one am very proud of that achievement. Quoting this interview on Newsarama.com

He should feel very, very proud indeed!

Giffen is referring to D.C. Comics revolutionary book 52. Produced by one creative team, this comic came out every week for 52 weeks, on time. When I started reading comics, they always came out on time, but then big money and Image Comics turned much of the talent into primadonnas and then the industry started farming out the color work and no one lived in the same city anymore, so things became much more complicated and now books are perpetually behind schedule.

Then DC came along and said they were going to run a 52 issue comic book, weekly, for a YEAR, so that it would end on May 2nd (5/2 - get it?). Everyone thought they were crazy, but they are on track to end on time and I’ve been following it since the start (and loving it - I had a dream about it in fact last night, but we’ll not talk any more about that)(I don’t have a copy of issue #11, so feel free to drop one in the mail for me if you have an extra. Love ya.).

Giffen was the guy who took the writers’ scripts and roughed out all the pages for the team of pencillers and inkers who finalized them. It was an essential role, both in terms of making sure the book looked consistent (it did and does), that work got done on time and reconciling the artists’ and writers’ shared vision for the story. Not easy, and it had to be done by one guy for it to work. Keith Giffen was that guy and he’s announced that he’s going to do it again, for another year, on D.C.’s next weekly book, Countdown. Also set to run 52 issues for one year.

We will be there for Countdown, too.

This is all pretty damn impressive and my hat is off to Mr. Giffen. He’s clearly ramped up what must be an already solid self-discipline and come back begging for more.