He could've been someday. He had enormous potential. But Dan DiDio literally killed him so we'll never really know.
>be McDuffie
>finally getting respect
>get to do a proper JLA run, coming off the heels of Infinite Crisis
>first issue is a forced tie-in special to Green Arrow/Black Canary wedding, but use it to set up your first arc anyway which only lasts 3 issues until...
>next issue is a forced tie-in to Jurgens' Tangent Comics crossover
>next issue, get moved to backup stories so Alan Burnett can come in and do a forced Salvation Run tie-in arc
>main writer again, but there's another tie-in coming so you have to write a single filler issue since you can't work on your main plot
>next issue is said tie-in, a tie-in to Final Crisis to be exact, which didn't even matter because Morrison ignored all other writers' tie-ins
>finally get to start your main arc
>get call from DiDio saying Milestone characters are being pulled from the grave and merged into the DCU so you have to write about that instead, because you know, you're the black guy what did milestone n shiet
>force it into your arc, get positive reception anyway
>few issues later, another writer comes in to do a Faces of Evil tie-in issue
>very next issue forced to do an Origins & Omens tie-in
>get fired from book for talking about these working conditions openly online
>literally fucking DIE soon after
On the list of comics creators who got assfucked by editorial politics and marketing mandates, McDuffie is the patron saint. 2006-2011 DC was close to unreadable outside of fringe titles, but thankfully readers were just as tired of that shit, which was so convoluted and unreadable that editorial said fuck it and rebooted the whole damn thing. Granted, that led to some brand new problems, but DC has actually been very good since then about not tying EVERY book into EVERY OTHER book. Events are (mostly) self-contained and tie-ins are perfectly readable without the event. Wish I could say the same for Marvel.
