Eric Wallace on Mr. Terrific’s Uphill Battle

In advance of next week’s release of DC’s recently-cancelled Mr. Terrific in collected edition, ComicBook.com got in touch with Eric Wallace, the comics and TV writer who took on the herculean task of reinventing the character for DC’s New 52 initiative. Wallace shared with us his vision for the book, his hopes for the characters and a philosophy of writing every issue like you might not get another one.We’ll share a bit of it here, and then the full interview will run on Friday when our Panel Discussions podcast returns to its original schedule of appearing regularly every other Friday.I thought Mr. Terrific was one of the ten best DC books to come out of the relaunch, once all was said and done–but it was a smart book with a nonwhite lead who didn’t have “Bat” or “Super” in the name–so it’s incredibly hard to sell  that kind of book in today’s market, isn’t it?Yeah, it is. It’s funny–I used to joke with the creative teams–“Okay, I’m writing this issue! I’m writing it like it’s that last, because I never know! You never know how long this is gonna go!” [Laughs] But what that did, seriously, is it really made us go for it with every issue.One thing I can say, no regrets, we didn’t leave anything behind. Everything we could humanly get into those eight issues is there. Characters, storylines, we managed to get into outer space, or dimensional space, by issue four for a two-parter. We tried to introduce at least two or three solid villains, one of which I never got to bring back, unfortunately.There are two villains that we never got to bring back. There was kind of an uber-arc for the first 12 to 14 issues that kind of dovetailed together and the character of Miles Dalton, who’s in issue one in the red suit–he’s actually a villain named Red Dragon. And he was actually set to return with his entire team of people to get revenge on Mr. Terrific in the next issue–that would have been issue nine–and they were called The Dalton Gang. [Laughs]That’s the only thing I was so looking forward to getting and I was trying to get it into issue eight, but it just wasn’t possible. Especially once the book’s cancellation was announced there were so many business things that needed to be handled in that final issue to set up Worlds’ Finest and all the other Second Wave books for The New 52.