Various comics notes

So here's an interview with Dan DiDio about DC's upcoming plans for their comic lines (DiDio is DC's VP, editorial). Much discussion about various high-impact mini-series coming out, and the general shift in tone following Identity Crisis. DiDio seems to be aiming to give the world of the DC characters more of a sense of danger, a feeling of more at stake. That's good. On the other hand, the way DC went about it in Identity Crisis was not good. But the sales were high, so that's probably all that matters. At any rate, to me the most interesting thing DiDio says is this:

"Part of my job here, and has been since day one is that I always wanted to rebuild the sense of the periodical. I love the idea of getting the issue, reading it, and not being able to wait for the next one to come out the following month. The idea of waiting for the trade is boring to me. We create comic books that are bought on a monthly basis, and my job, and the job of everyone here is to make people go back into the store the next month or next week, and buy the next issue because they can’t wait for something to come six months or a year down the road."

Given the widely-perceived market realities of mainstream comics these days, that's almost a brave thing to say. Again, whether it ends up being supported by reality is as yet an open question, but explicitly favouring the periodical over the trade is a surprising tack to take. Me, I like it, but I'm one of those increasingly rare people who buy their comics each week and don't care to wait for the collection.

In other news, one of the guys running the Shuster awards posted on the thread I linked to below, confirming that there will be no separate awards for French comics. This seems unusual to me. The Governor General's awards have separate categories for French writing, while the Giller prize explicitly states that it's given to works written in English. Can anybody tell me of another Canadian literary award that puts both French and English writing in the same category?