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The Fourth Rail. Then I checked out the Delphi fora: mine, Brian Wood’s, Matt Fraction’s, Kelly Sue’s, Robert Scott’s retailer forum, and, of course, Warren Ellis’. Day’s not complete without checking in there. But after flitting about at Warren’s for a half-hour or so, and answering var ious and sundry questions involving our publishing plans (this particular day I’m talking about was rife with stuff for me to address as Brian Wood’s Couscous Express had just been published, and it seemed like everyone had a question or two about it), I found myself answering more emails than usual. And since I’d rather have Brian free to work on more brilliant and entertaining comics than answer why Olive says "Mum" in the first act and then "Mom" later on, I was sort of getting wound up. I mean, I know these things are important to somebody, but, jeez. If Peter David can structure a whole Star Trek paperback around why it says "James R. Kirk" instead of "James T. Kirk" on the captain’s headstone in the second pilot episode "Where No Man Has Gone Before," chances are I can explain to you what Brian Wood had in mind, there, right? I mean, really.

But the important thing here, for the purposes of this column, is that I am there to explain this sort of thing to the peoples.

Which brings me to the big break-through epiphany I mentioned up at the top, there.

If I was running DC, or Marvel, or even Image, here’s what I’d do:

I’d transfer responsibilities over to someone in-house… heck, I might even be tempted to create this new position and hire someone to fill the role: the Officer of Internet Communications. I’d empower one person to be the online voice of the company. There’d be no ego conflicts involved, because they’d have one cat who’d be the voice of the company. Someone whose job it is to answer every query, explain every continuity bump, excuse every mis-step and pat every back, electron ically as well as through the mail, the old-fashioned way. This would free up editors to do their jobs, it’d free up creative to work on their books, unimpeded, and it’d assuage the more rabid fans who’d have a specific tar get at which to direct their fawning and their vitriol.

The thing that’s crazy is that I do this very thing with a quarter of my day, every day…

…but if you want to know why Joe Casey is writing the flagship characters of the two major companies, or you want to know if it’s the outer electron of the sulfur atom in the air that Nightcrawler strips off to fuel his stinky teleportation, or not, or if the friggin’ Hulk really is stronger than friggin’

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