DC Comics: Should We Be Worried?

This might devolve into a gloom and doom scenario before I’m done, I’m afraid. Let’s see where it takes us…

DC had a restructuring on a Thursday, which is odd because big companies like Warner Bros. love pulling this stuff on a Friday.

In the old days, it was hoped the weekend would be a busy time for people, so they wouldn’t notice the bad things on Saturday or Sunday. Whole storm clouds could pass over in those two days without anyone seeing them.

Politicians in Washington D.C. are also good at things like this, leaking bad news before the weekend news cycle slows everything down before starting fresh on Monday.

These days, people are constantly on-line, so that trick doesn’t work. You can’t hide bad news. Every news cycle is 24/7.

To their credit, Warner Bros. didn’t try that. They had a prepared statement ready to go with all the niceties in it, instead.

Only the Beginning

The problem, though, is that this most definitely is not the end.

It sneaks in at the end of the memo that Pam Gifford sent out. It seems so minor at first that it’s the paragraph that didn’t even appear in the ComicBook.com story.

Keep in mind Lifford’s title, “President of Warner Bros. Global Brands and Experiences.” That’s not publishing. That’s not comic books. It’s Big Corporate’s favorite word, “Brand.”

Comics may be part of keeping the brand alive, but the movie brand version of these characters are already 1000x bigger than the comics version, and DC hasn’t even made many successful movies yet.

Here’s the paragraph from that Lifford memo I was talking about:

We recognize there are other groups across DC who are not fully dedicated to supporting the publishing business and, therefore, are not directly addressed in today’s news. As The Global Brands & Experiences structure continues to develop, I look forward to sharing more with you as that evolves.

In other words, this is only the beginning. Also, if the work you do at “DC” (quotes are on purpose) is not directly involved with publishing comic books, then your job is very likely to be absorbed into the larger Warner Bros. infrastructure. Publishing shouldn’t be handling merchandising, licensing, etc. Warner Bros. already has bigger and better groups devoted to that, I’d bet.

That’s why big companies buy small companies. They proclaim “corporate synergies,” but then “eliminate redundancies.”

And, heck, if any of the publishing work can be done cheaper with freelancers instead of staffers, they’ll do that, too.

DC has led a charmed life in the decades since Warner Bros. bought it. It’s been treated as the strange cousin living in a faraway state that is self-sufficient, doesn’t bother you, and can run on its own.

Times change. Paul Levitz leaves. Hollywood takes over the entire industry. It’s a whole new world out there.

In this day and age, where intellectual property is king and an Aquaman movie can see a billion dollars’ worth of tickets, why trust DC with anything beyond the comic books? Is that a risk you’re willing to take, as a president inside a huge multinational company that can do all the same jobs on a bigger scale?

And then, of course, when do you decide that the current DC Publishing isn’t shepherding the brands properly and Warner Bros. already owns some publishing companies, why not let them give it a try? I bet no other division would attempt to publish a comic book with Batman’s penis front and center.

The memo specifically calls out the Direct Market as something Warner Bros. wants to support. I don’t buy it. It’s small stakes to a company like Warner Bros.

I think this restructuring is the start of something bigger.

The Domino Effect

And as DC goes, so Marvel will eventually go, too. If things go that far, then Marvel might have to go that way to survive.

On the other hand, Warner Bros may not want to be the one to fire the first shot and get all the blame for destroying the Direct Market and putting thousands of people out of work. Sometimes, I feel like that’s the only reason Disney and Warner Bros continue to do anything in comic publishing. They’re not losing money, per se, so why bother taking that reputation hit?

Or maybe this is just someone else in Warner Bros. wanting to make action figures and nothing more.

Do you believe that, though?

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