With Rieber leaving, the series editor Stuart Moore championed Gross to take over scripting duties because "I knew he could do it. He's got a great sense of story and character". Gross initially wrote a short memo detailing where he thought the series should go, hoping that it might influence the editors' choice of writer. Gross was then asked if he could expand his ideas into an actual story, and plotted a six issue story that he thought might be used as a "filler" until a new writer could be found. DC encouraged him to think bigger, until by the time he started writing his first issue he had plotted out a 23 issue-long story for the book. This soon expanded into plots for Gross' entire 25 issue run, despite Gross initially being nervous that his writing efforts would be unfavorably compared to those of Gaiman and Rieber by the series' fans.