Moving Swiftly Like An Avian Without Its Cranium

Does DC seem a little, um, panicked lately? With all the creative team changes, and "this character is on the team, but wait, no we've switched them with this character, because we've decided to do something different with that first character"? I mean, Catwoman was going to be on the Outsiders, but now it looks as though she's gotten sucked into Salvation Run. I think Martian Manhunter and Geo-Force are switching spots on the Outsiders and JLA, though I guess that would just be the natural order reasserting itself. Maybe DC has always intended Bedard to just have these brief stints on all these different titles (I'm pretty sure that's the case on Birds of Prey, and maybe Supergirl, but I'm not so sure about Batman and the Outsiders, or Legion of Superheroes), {Edit, 11:00 a.m.: I forgot that Bedard's also working on Countdown regularly, so they may have decided that an ongoing would be too much on top of that, but then why would Editorial keep giving him the jobs?} but the frequent shifts in creative teams has this air of desperation. That they're changing things, to find some combination that hits it off with the fans.

The way I see it, there are four possibilities here:

1) I'm imagining all this. Possible, as a Marvel fan, that I could be subconsciously projecting disorder at DC where there is none, although I'm actually a little concerned, rather than, you know, happy or anything. Still, me chasing phantoms isn't out of the question.

2) DC is playing a little game with the fans, making these frequent changes to keep the fans talking, and guessing. I wouldn't put this past DC or Marvel, but it doesn't feel that way.

3) They are actually are nervous about the response to some of their recent projects, and they really are trying to shift things around to improve that response.

4) This is just a transition period. They're getting ready for a brand-new, line-wide theme/plan, one that will likely be implemented after this Final Crisis, and until then, things are just a little less orderly. This wouldn't be so bad. I mean, it's fine to have a thread sort of running through your shared universe. I think Marvel does now with the Registration Act/Decimation stuff that sort of ties together most of their books (The stuff in the 616-reality anyway. Oops, I forgot the Marvel honchos don't like "616", do they? Oh well.) I mean, it feels like Marvel has a plan. That doesn't mean it's a good plan mind you, or that they've really got their shit together any more than DC does, but it does lend an air of stability.

I don't know that a theme/thread/plan/whatever is essential in the "shared universe", and if there is one it probably has to change every once in awhile, and there's some upheaval that comes with that change I imagine. It's a little like the theory of catastrophism, I guess. Long periods were everything is cool, stable and all that, interrupted by brief periods of great change, that throws things all akimbo before things settle in again.

I'm not making a lick of sense, am I? Really, I just wanted to know if you thought DC seemed out of sync. All of the blather about "threads" running through the stories, and lack thereof just came up from nowhere.

As an aside, what's the longest current run for any writer on a title right now at DC? I'd imagine Willingham has the longest streak with Fables if you include Vertigo, but if you were only looking at the DC Universe stuff (the capes), it's Johns on Green Lantern, isn't it? And that's only 24 issues (although Winick had been on Green Arrow awhile before it restarted, and Outsiders since it began, correct)? I was just thinking about that compared to Marvel, where DeFalco's been the Spider-Girl writer - regardless of the title - for years, and there's Bendis on Ultimate Spider-Man, and a to a lesser extent, New Avengers, and Ennis on The Punisher, Brubaker on Captain America. Of course, half of those titles are outside the 616, and thus unaffected by the larger Civil Hulk Hooha, so maybe I shouldn't bring those into it. I have no idea what any of that might mean anyway, I don't think it's necessarily related to the rest of the post, but it was something I was wondering about.