We sat down with DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz in San Diego recently to catch up on topics of interest.  In this second part of our two-part interview, we talk about DC movies and TV shows, whether DC is keeping CrossGen out of the front of Previews, and whether all the attention that DC parent AOL/Time Warner is getting is affecting things at DC.

DC's movie pipeline seems to have expanded quite a bit, at least from what's been reported in the last few months.  Talk a little bit about what you've got in the pipe.

We don't really do much on that.  The Warner Brothers approach to it is we really start talking about the things once it's green-lit. 

Batman/Superman?

There's lots of stuff.  Obviously, the success of Spider-man is helpful to having more stuff in more active development.  We've got a full plate of stuff in the works.  On the television side, we have more television programming this fall than DC's ever had in any year. 

Including both live action and animation?

Yes, we have five shows on the air this fall: Smallville, Birds of Prey, Mad, Justice League, and Static Shock.  Terrific pipeline behind that as well.  The media side's going great guns.

Do you see the impact of that TV stuff on your comic sales?

You get something out of the animation, where you're able to do the tie-in titles.  You get some benefit out of that.  For the older stuff, I don't think it's a function of somebody watching Smallville and feeling good about is going to turn into a Superman comic customer the next morning.  I think you're breeding a next generation of Superman fans, and at some point we'll capture a proportion of them as they hit the right age or the right point-of-view to like comics.  The distribution issues still prevent us from capturing the benefit of it the way that the Batman TV show did.  Also the fractionated audience--   When Adam West was driving people into the shops, even though ABC was the weakest of the networks those days, thirty per cent of the population was watching Adam West be Batman every Thursday night. 

Or Tuesday (laughter).

Or Tuesday and Thursday, on a good week.  It's very hard to have a show have that kind of impact on the culture today. 

There have been some statements made by Mark Alessi of CrossGen, in Chicago, who said that it was his understanding that there was a deal out there that the Premier comics publishers have the right to veto any new publisher joining in the Premier section of Previews.  Is that true?

Not true with respect to us.  We have no control over who's in the front of the book. 

He's said that he wants to get his market share up to the point where it's at a 5%  level or thereabouts.  He wants to be in the front of the book.  Do you have any feelings about that?

I guess as a sales tool, I think the way the front of the book works is probably a more effective sales tool than the way the back of the book works.  If I were a comic publisher, I would certainly want to do what was necessary to get there.  I don't know how Diamond makes that decision, or what criteria or what negotiating is involved in it.  If I were him, I'd want to be there. 

He also made the statement he wants to be the number one publisher in two years. 

God bless him.

Any reaction to that in terms  of the probability of it occurring?

I think you know that I've held to the attitude for a couple of decades that the business would be healthier if there were four or five roughly similar-sized publishers who were able to compete at the top end of the food chain.  We haven't gotten near that in a while.  I think it would be wonderful if it turned out there was another one up there.  He's certainly working harder at it then anybody has in the last few years.  God bless him. 

There's been a lot of media attention over the last six months to your parent company, AOL/Time Warner.  There have been changes in top management, and other news stories about AOL/Time Warner.  Do any of these events that relate to your parent affect the day-to-day business at DC?

I've been at DC through it being a part of Warner Communications, Time/Warner, AOL/Time Warner.  Each of the changes has some effect on some system or another, some way that you're viewed, but we've managed to keep pretty much a straight course through all of it.  I expect that will continue.