(this is a long maybe too involved question, so i'm gonna have to break it into 2 parts) PART 1- Do you see a time when company wide events are minimized or set aside for a period in favor of letting books/stories build a momentum of their own? The idea that when they stop selling they'll stop being implemented is fair, but tying all or most of the larger characters and books into the events creates something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, doesn't it?

Maybe, but the why of why they work isn’t as important as the fact that they work. We did do one year, during HEROIC AGE, where we didn’t do a big Event series, and our sales took a hit that year—I forget offhand which DC Event came out that year, but it did business. On the flip side, if we run a book without a lot of connectivity to other things in the MU, we hear readers begin to get antsy with it. There have been questions here concerning this subject as regards CAPTAIN AMERICA and THOR, GOD OF THUNDER, for example.

So we’re pragmatic. If this is what the audience shows that it wants based on how it acts, then that’s what we’ll do more of. We don’t do any one thing exclusively, though—we try to allow for every book to exist in its own world and have its own ethos. But that only works if it works, you know? Otherwise, it’s a good way to wind up with a lot of cancelled titles.