It’s been a good week for samples. The other day, I received a copy of BenBella’s Batman Unauthorized: Vigilantes, Jokers, and Heroes in Gotham City. While my essay did not make the final cut, I did fact check the entire manuscript and was flattered to see an acknowledgement for the effort. It’s a fun book edited by Denny O’Neil and worth a read.Also, I received my contributor’s copy to the current issue of Star Trek Magazine where I have an article in their special section on Deep Space Nine.Today, I received a copy of Time Masters, which DC released last week. Of all the oddball projects I edited, this is one I never expected to be collected. Back in the months following Crisis on Infinite Earths, our editorial mandate was to make rules about how the DC Universe was to work and then show them via stories. This way, we’d all know how time travel or magic was to be used.Bob Wayne, then new to DC, approached me about using Rip Hunter to demonstrate time travel and it made perfect sense. He brought along Lewis Shiner as cowriter and they whipped up a proposal that used the rules and told an interesting story and also added some lore to the DCU. I had been working with newcomer Art Thibert as an inker but he expressed interest in pencilling so we signed up him for this. It was a lot of fun making this happen but about fifteen minutes after the first issue went to press, other editors decided that rules were made to be broken so we produced an entertaining miniseries and that was that.Until now. I’m told this was collected because elements from the miniseries will play a part of Booster Gold. Which ones remain a mystery and I look forward to each issue to see what happens. Meantime, the book is a nice collection and still reads well and I remain proud of our combined efforts.