Since the news of mass layoffs at a senior level leaked to DC Comics, and was then confirmed, there have been questions about what happens next. In what was meant to be an interview about the upcoming DC FanDome event with Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter, DC Publisher, and CCO Jim Lee talk about the cuts to staff and to the comic books.
Borys states that the layoffs count 20% of the staff who are lovers than the 30% who are called elsewhere. But those 20% are heavy weight to the senior staff within the publisher, so the loss of years of experience will be much higher. Which may explain a larger cut to the comic book numbers. Jim Lee states,
That said, we’ll reduce the size of the slate. But it’s about seeing everything and looking to the bottom 20 percent, 25 percent of the line not even breaking or losing money. It’s about more punch for the pound, so to speak, and increase the margins of the books we do.It was about aligning the books to the franchise brand content we have developed and making sure that every book we put out, we put out for a reason. “
DC Comics has a famous high overhead, which pays for its Burbank headquarters built especially for it, so sales points that would be fine with another publisher are not clear when it comes to DC. But without those higher numbers, which take up less space within Warners, those profitability numbers could go up a bit.
But it’s probably also a decision that is separate from the currently announced cancellations of comics, because those decisions were made long before this week’s staff cut. However, it was also the cause of a Crisis event and a major relaunch of some of those titles like 5G as Generation Five comic books that seem to be taken – well, almost.
Also at 20-25%, that’s a smaller cut that DC Comics underwent in 1976, where they dropped 40% of their line – of course, that was a smaller line to cut from.
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