Keith Giffen on leaving Generation Lost

Keith Giffen,  the original JLI writer and Generation Lost co-plotter, has spoken to Newsarama about his wish to reign back on his writing duties to make room for more penciling work. That shift has meant that he had to let something go and that unfortunately meant Generation Lost.

Nrama: Well that brings us to the next question, which is the “scheduling” explanation we got from Judd Winick for why you’re not doing Justice League: Generation Lost. Can you tell us what happened with that?

Giffen: It’s basically what Judd said. Look, it came down to what do I want to do more? And the stuff I’m doing now is what I want to do. I couldn’t pencil the projects I have coming up, and I couldn’t do what I’m doing on the Doom Patrol and Outsiders, while doing breakdowns for a book that were going to keep hitting me in this white heat. So it came down to, “OK, if you have to give up something, what do you want to give up?”

I’m not going to give up Doom Patrol. They’ll have to pry that out of my cold, stiff fingers. And I’m having too much fun with Booster Gold. And I’ve been wanting to get back to penciling. I had stuff I wanted to do more, and I really had to make a choice. And seeing as how the JLI was heading in a new direction, I don’t think I was really needed on the JLI book. So it really came down to, OK, it’s a re-envisioned JLI, and characters are going to move in this direction whether I’m here or not. So maybe it’s time to say goodbye.