Newsarama has their bi-monthly feature, Dan DiDio: 20 Answers and 1 Question up on their site. Click the Newsarama link to read the entire article and look below for an excerpt…

In your opinion, what drives a period like this, one of “recharge” in an essence, or as Keith put it, a period of trying to get new characters and concept out in front of readers? Was the original stuff getting stale, or reached a point where it had done all that it could do for now?

DD: Not stale at all, but when you tell the big stories in the event books, you use so much of the existing material at such an accelerated rate because you want the sense of change and adventure to be high concept in order to meet the needs and expectations of the event that it’s fueling. Because of that. We need to re-fill the pot so to speak. We need to come back with new ideas in order to expand what we’ve done, because we’ve had a reader base that’s been around for a long time. When people say to me, “Oh you did the story when Dick Grayson was Batman before,” it’s true that we did that story over fifteen years ago. When you have that loyal of readership and people who remain that loyal to continuity, we want to make sure that we don’t keep on repeating it. Introducing new characters and concepts is one way to tell new stories with familiar faces, and hopefully continue to build the excitement of the DCU.

For me, what’s greatest about Blackest Night and what’s going on in Green Lantern – it’s not just the event itself, but the idea of the multi-colored Corps that Geoff has introduced. Nearly every one of those characters are new characters, and those who existed before this are being seen in a new light – if you’ll pardon the pun. They all expand what people’s ideas of the DC Universe are – it all adds richness to the Green Lantern Corps. It’s more than a Hal Jordan story – it’s something that expands the whole concept of the “universe” of the DC Universe and expands the world of the Green Lanterns much wider than a lot of people thought possible.

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