PRE-SDCC

LegalDispatch 106

Jul 25, 2024

Howdy.

Welcome to the week of San Diego ComicCon. Those familiar with the convention know that it is to comic cons what Manhattan is to cities: Huge, crowded, and completely sui generis. I always look forward to it.

This is the first year I’ve decided to “table” at the con — i.e., maintain a table where I can meet fans and sign and sell stuff. I posted it last week, but in case you missed it, here’s my schedule:

As you can see, Friday is rather packed, which explains why I’m shipping this newsletter out — in abbreviated form — on a Thursday.

Q&A

Tony Tower wrote in with a couple of Arrowverse questions:

(1) Was it hard to get approval to have Brandon Routh (ahem) return as Superman in CRISIS? Or was it as simple as Brandon agreeing and someone making a suit?

I see what you did there. Nice wordplay, Tony. As I recall, getting approval for Brandon to reprise his role as Superman was relatively easy. As was getting Brandon to agree to do so. All it really took was pitching Brandon what we had in mind, creatively.

And, yes, then there was the matter of the suit. The one speed bump we hit was whether we should recreate the suit from Superman Returns or go in a different direction. I rewatched Superman Returns in advance of my conversation with Brandon and found that it held up surprisingly well over the years and is a far, far better movie than most people remember.

However, in that span of time, disturbing allegations arose about the film’s director and I’d be lying if I said that those allegations didn’t give me pause about revising the Returns costume. But when we hit upon the idea of using the suit from Kingdom Come, there wasn’t anything to think about. Kingdom Come is beloved by the other showrunners, writers, and me, so the thought of seeing Brandon in that suit — with his hair “greyed up” thanks to our makeup department — made the decision a fait accomplis.

(2) I recall seeing a promo reel hyping Legends of Tomorrow before it aired (that I can’t find online now, of course), that had bits from the first episode but also included a lot more Green Arrow and Flash than we ended up seeing in the series — including Flash and the Legends fighting robots that never was part of a proper episode, IIRC. Was there a version of the show planned where Oliver and Barry were meant to appear more than they ended up doing, or was this just a bit of salesmanship?

Neither really, as I recall. Oliver and Barry’s presence in what we were calling the “Promo” was really to hammer home the idea that the Arrowverse was growing and expanding. And we also knew that Legends would be set up by that year’s annual Arrow/Flash crossover event.

Interestingly, the elements that appeared in the Promo that were repeated in subsequent episodes (e.g., Rick Hunter talking to the Legends on a rooftop and Sara emerging from the Lazaurs pit) were never repurposed. Rather, they were reshot. (The Rick and Legends scene wasn’t even filmed on the same rooftop.)

For fun — and to satisfy this edition’s “From the Vault” content — here are the first three pages of the Promo I wrote:

Thanks for the questions!

Brandon Galvan asks:

Any chance you'll have early copies of In Any Lifetime at your SDCC booth?

My favorite kind of question!

I’m not planning on having copies of In Any Lifetime at my booth, but advance copies will be available at Mysterious Galaxy Books (Booth 1119), where I’ll be signing tomorrow (Friday, 7/26) from 1 PM to 1:30 PM. Please swing on by!

SHOOTING MY MOUTH OFF

In this week’s installment, I have a small quote about the effect of the 2023 WGA strike on so-called “mini-rooms” in an article taking stock of the landscape nearly one year after the end of the strike. You can read it here.

In addition, the second of my two-part interview with The Showrunner Whisperer podcast just went live. I know we didn’t plan it this way, but it feels like all the particularly juicy nuggets are in this second half.

You can check out the interview here.

IN ANY LIFETIME UPDATE

I’m excited to say that things are moving along swimingly as we rocket towards In Any Lifetime’s official launch one week from today — to wit: Thursday, August 1.

Fortunately — and unfortunately — our New York launch event has officially sold out. But there are still tickets available for the Los Angeles event at the Barnes & Noble at the Grove on Saturday, August 3. You can still buy tickets here.

And check out this sweet banner that Amazon Publishing created to help promote the book:

The best part is that the pitch seems to be working. A couple of weeks ago, I shared that IAL sits atop Amazon’s “Time Travel Science Fiction” and “Time Travel Romance” charts. This is certainly cool and I have zero complaints, but let’s be honest: Those are very specific genres. What I think is even cooler is that IAL is Number 5 on Amazon’s overall science fiction chart — and we haven’t even launched officially yet.

That damn Keanu Reeves, always getting the better of me…

LegalDispatch

PRE-SDCC

LegalDispatch 106

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