Record: Dan DiDio

Now, let’s run a little record about an editor’s errors. What can be said about the mistakes that an editor makes in what he does? It’s what they allowed to happen, to be written and published, that counts. We’ll start first with DiDio, as he does seem to have quite a few very hideous things to shoulder blame for as editor-in-chief of DC Comics, which include:

• The defeatist storyline in Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day, where Donna Troy was killed, even if only temporary, by a Superman robot that was unleashed by a female robot named Indigo (get it? Judd Winick’s story there has a woman to blame for the death of another!). Lilith Clay was also killed in this storyline, and since then, DiDio’s staff has been blatantly sweeping that under the rug.
• Allowing a certain writer (Brad Meltzer) to abuse just about everyone and anyone in the pages of Identity Crisis, simply because he’s a “high profile novelist”, to make it almost entirely pro-masculine in its POV, and some of the most shoddy contempt for DC’s female cast ever.
• Allowing for another writer (Bill Willingham) to write up an equally hostile-to-women story in the Batman x-over War Games, where Stephanie Brown, the Spoiler, was beaten to death, and even to further the insult by implying that nurse Leslie Thompkins killed Stephanie to teach Batman a lesson about the dangers of crimefighting! DiDio also allowed Willingham to write the vicious Day of Vengeance, which featured yet more degradation of Jean Loring for the sake of degradation.
• Allowing for still more atrocious depictions of Dr. Light in the pages of Green Arrow, where the villain blabbers on and on about the “joys of rape”, and Ollie does not even seem to rebut any of it.
• Letting Geoff Johns write up a scene in Infinite Crisis where Phantom Lady is stuck to death with a spear by Deathstroke in a show of “violence porn.” But then, we all know how Johns is a “hot” writer, so no interfering with his work, right?

There are some more examples, but for now, this should do quite well as an example of what bad things an editor of any high rank has allowed to happen on his watch. DiDio is a most dishonest man who’s been unwilling to answer any of the charges of misogyny leveled against the company, and certainly not honestly. For that, he does not deserve to be in his position.