I’ve been a little surprised not to see some discussion about this. It’s been widely reported in the last few days that about 1/3 of DC Comic’s editorial staff has been laid off, including editor-in-chief Bob Harras (mis-spelled as “Harris” in the linked article), VPs Jonah Weiland and Bobbie Chase, senior story editor Brian Cunningham, and others. In addition, most of the people working on the streaming service DC Universe have been let go, and DC Direct, the merchandise and collectibles division, has been closed altogether. The article I link to above is in Hollywood Reporter, but there are many others to be found elsewhere.
What does this mean for DC, and for the comics industry as a whole? It’s been no secret for awhile that, while comic book movies are hugely profitable, the comics themselves often struggled for sales, even before COVID-19 hit. Even a middling successful movie like Shazam grossed more than DC’s entire publishing output for the entire year of 2019.
I’ve seen speculation that this is the first step (or maybe the second step–the firing of co-publisher Dan DiDio back in February being the first) toward shutting down DC as a comic book publisher. The notion being that while the intellectual property itself is profitable (via movies and TV shows), actually publishing comic books about them isn’t, particularly for a company as big as Warner Brothers.
Some of the more alarmist editorials I’ve read suggest that if DC goes down, it basically takes the entire comic book industry with it. The argument goes that comic book shops (essentially the only place to buy physical comic books these days) depend on both Marvel and DC, and won’t be able to survive if they suddenly lose half their product lines. In turn, the death of most of the comic shops will mean that Marvel has no place to sell their stuff, and they die too.
I don’t know if I’m panicking quite that much yet, but this does seem like a pretty serious blow to DC as an ongoing firm. Warner can probably continue to make movies using the established DC characters, and it may not even be necessary for them to keep publishing new stories to generate ideas.
Any thoughts from those more in touch with the industry?
I can only say I would be more worried if Geoff Johns, Greg Berlanti, Gail Simone, or Scott Snyder had been mentioned. Although I don’t know if they are full time employed by DC. In particular, Johns and Berlanti head up the TV shows, those are their top writers. Well, there are more but I haven’t seen them.
I would wonder if this is a shake up to get people to try new things to compete with Marvel? Problem is that, as best as I can tell, DC has never led Marvel for overall sales or popularity. A few titles, Batman and Superman, have done well but not overall.
So, yes, it will be interesting to see what this means.
I know that the majority of comic book writers and artists are treated as independent contractors, so it’s not clear to me who-all is impacted.
I’m really sad about this, but the comics industry has been complaining about plummeting sales for years.
The thing that shocks me, though, is the complete elimination of D.C. Direct. I am surprised that the toys and collectibles are doing so badly that they just ended it.
I’m a subscriber to DC Universe, frankly only because I got a lot of work as an extra on that series and wanted to watch myself work. They recently stopped selling annual subscriptions, which I assumed meant they didn’t want to get stuck refunding a lot of money after the network folds. I’m not surprised to see all the layoffs there, I never though they could compete with the Disney network with their vast library of Disney, Marvel, and Star Wars films.
I never understood why they wouldn’t just create a single Warner outlet. It looks like a lot of this stuff is merging into H.B.O., which makes more sense than a stand-alone D.C. Universe.
I know it’s a different industry now, but a hopeful precedent is that Marvel (Timely/Atlas at the time) pretty much fired everybody except Stan Lee and his secretary just a few short years before the most creative era in the company’s history, if not all of comicdom.
To be fair, DC Universe isn’t just a video streaming service. It’s also their digital comics platform. For the Marvel equivalent, you’d need to subscribe to both Disney+ and Marvel Unlimited. For me, the combination of digital access to comic books, the back catalog of shows and movies, and their original programming made the package worth it. But things don’t look too good for its future right now.
That’s what a lot of people seem to be saying, that they were already moving their streaming product onto HBO Max, so layoffs at DC Universe weren’t too surprising.
Most of the people affected seem to be editorial staff, rather than writers and artists. You probably can’t “lay off” writers and artists anyway, you just stop giving them assignments. I also don’t think it will affect the TV and movie productions that much. Those are where the money is these days, the comic books not so much. It makes me sad, in that I’ve loved comics as long as I can remember. But even I must admit that I haven’t actually been keeping up with reading them for quite some time now.
I don’t know. This kind of restructuring might be good for the comics industry.
I do occasionally still read comics, but I buy comics maybe four times a year. And I stopped regularly buying monthly issues more than 20 years ago, and now almost never.
I really don’t see the point of comics in the form of monthly periodicals. Novels stopped being serialized regularly a hundred-some years ago. I think graphic novels make more sense being published like books instead of periodicals.
That might mean a restructuring of the retail industry, but (1) With Kindle and Covid, that’s happening anyway, and (2) most of the comic book retailers I go to seem to stock more bound volumes than periodical issues.
Maybe that means a much smaller demand for output from comic book publishers. But when it comes to Marvel and D.C. anyway I think they publish too much trash and filler anyway. It might be good for them to have a more discerning editorial process.
Honestly, we don’t even stock individual issues from the big two for sale. Someone wants them we’ll order them every month, sure. But stocking the as a means of bringing people in? No, it’s the trades that people buy.
But really, in my opinion it’s a matter of expectations. There’s still a TON of comics being produced. They just get done by smaller and smaller publishers who are satisfied with smaller sales. DC and Marvel, being corporate behemoths, have higher expectations and would be quick to pull the plug.
But a smaller book by a creator-owned firm? They’d be happy with a small profit and the ability to pay themselves and make comics. If that leads to larger things that’s great.
I think, should DC decide to pull the plug entirely, they’ll be making a short-term decision. Not producing new content can kill them in terms of creating new characters and socializing them with the market. But that’s their call. There’s a lot of small time writers doing their best to come up with the next Fantastic Four or Deadpool.
Heck, my store has two comics we’ll start publishing - trade paperbacks - the beginning of next year. I look for new creators all the time.
Jonathan, that’s great news about publishing (but really, running a store wasn’t enough headaches for you?). And I agree with younger readers just buying the collected trades/graphic novels.
But there are plenty of us old farts still buying “the floppies”, and waiting breathlessly for the next issue to come out… to find out what happens next.
…
Come to think of it, the young’uns buying trades are the same kids who’ll purposely wait until one (or even two) seasons of a show are done so they can binge through the episodes all at once and not have to wait for the next installment.
Oh yeah, I’m old, too. And it’s my third business.
But the sad fact is that there’s just no money in floppy issues of the big two. There’s no way for me to carry them at a profit and even as a loss-leader I’m better off putting money into Magic the Gathering merch.
It’s why I want to rep indie comics. It’s where the real demand - and creativity - is these days.
Yeah, as I understand it, they’ve been “writing for the trades” (that is, writing stories in chunks of, say, six issues to be later conveniently collected into a single trade paperback) for years now. But even that model still relies on the publication of individual monthly issues. Without “floppies,” there won’t be any trades, at least not as currently understood.
I think Acsenray is right that comics will need to reinvent themselves if they are to survive. The publication model may well become individual graphic novels, which have the additional advantage that they are more likely to be carried by traditional book stores. Not that there are many of those around anymore, either!
Oh, and just so everybody knows: several YouTubers have assured me that this is all happening because DC got too “woke” and abandoned their “core audience” in favor of catering to a bunch of SJWs.
THOSE guys are the problem. They complain, they’re pointless and they drive off the people who ACTUALLY tend to buy comics and merch: young women. We sell more stuff to women 15-29 than any amount of men.
In terms of ‘writing to the trades’ and your point in the first paragraph you may be write for the big two - even the bigger indie publishers. But the smaller creators? They’re doing fully contained stories in larger formats. Or putting them online and collecting them later. Look for ‘Strong Female Protagonist’ or ‘Lumberjanes’ or many other indie creators. It’s too expensive for them to go on the floppy route so they simply don’t.
Yes, I probably should have made clear that most or all of what I’ve said is about Marvel and DC. I know very little about the indie comics scene (do they still spell it “comix”?), and even when I was seriously collecting I mostly stuck to the big two. I have no doubt that the smaller publishers are doing the most interesting stuff.
They really are. And a lot of the most cutting edge stuff is on the web.
Seriously, after 80 years what new is there to say about superheroes? We’ve constructed and deconstructed them so many times they have nothing left to give us.
“Young’uns?” I’m over 50, and I have no patience for the “floppies” (first time encountering the term, meaning “monthly periodicals,” I take it?). When I pick up a story, I want it all in my hands to read at my own pace. I have no interest in serialization in which each chapter is issued a month or more apart. I lost my interest in the periodical serial model over half a lifetime ago.
I haven’t been excited about a DC Comics story since before Jim Lee and Dan DiDeo became co-publishers and turned the whole line into 1990s Image Comics. Since then, they have doubled down on unwanted cross-line epics and (apparently) non-canon stuff like Metal and DCeased. It’s hard to make filmmakers excited about adapting anything that’s come out of that company in the last decade. This could be a mercy killing, and DC properties could wind up in the hands of a company that really wants to make memorable comic books.
There’s no way Warner is going to spin off and give up ownership of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. The comic industry has been due for a contraction for a while now. As I said above, I think that the monthly periodical model is way outdated. They’ve been over-producing content for years.
Plus, they still need the comic arm to create new intellectual property and stories to be spun into their other products. D.C. has had a good track record with animated TV series and has done decently with live action TV. This isn’t AT&T shutting down the D.C. brand.