Paul Levitz reminds me there's a book coming out that I'm looking forward to reading: 75 Years of DC Comics, the Art of Mythmaking. It's a 650 page tome which they figure to weigh in at 15 pounds, meaning that you may have to be from the planet Krypton in order to lift it. It's from the Taschen publishing firm which does so many snazzy volumes and it will contain over 1,500 illustrations, many of them rare to the extreme, plus a 32,000 word text by Paul on the history of the firm he headed for so long.
I've long found the history of that company to be fascinating (ditto Marvel's), especially if you view it not as the history of a company but of various people involved in a continuity of business. The DC run by Jack Liebowitz didn't have a lot to do with the the DC run by Jenette Kahn, Paul and a few others, nor with the transitional periods before and after. It's easy to miss this as an outsider because you look at what you see of the company, which is its output, and you think, "Well, it's always been the outfit publishing Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman." It's also easy to forget that companies don't make decisions. People do…and sometimes, they're people who won't be there in six months. When Paul and Jenette were in charge, they did an awful lot of things (most of them wise, I think) that their predecessors swore the company would never do. Future managements will probably do a lot of things Paul and Jenette would never have done.
I first worked haltingly for DC in 1970, the midst of a volatile period in their office. Commencing around 1968, most of its management changed, many longtime employees and freelancers departed (many, against their wills) and those who remained nearly all wound up doing different things. Because the place seemed so tumultuous, and also because I was based in Los Angeles and the company wasn't, I never figured I had much of a future with DC…and I didn't, compared to many of my friends who began working for them around then. But somehow, without ever once really seeking work there, I've managed to turn up in their books intermittently for forty years…or about nineteen Wonder Woman makeovers.
In those forty years, I've seen 'em come and go, and seen periods when the folks in charge of the business weren't quite certain what business they were in. So I'm really eager to read this book, especially because Paul understands its history. That's why he's been there so long without repeating it.