On Monday, WarnerMedia’s widespread redundancies came to the DC Comics offices, with DC Universe, brand maker DC Direct, and the company’s actual comic publisher being all effectively shut down (to the extent that DC Direct is dead and DC Universe is probably dea). But just like Superman after being eliminated by Doomsday or Batman, after being released by Darkseid, DC Comics is alive itself. Talk to you soon and keep up the good content The Hollywood Reporter, Chief Creative Officer Jim Lee (the man who put all that stylish piping on the Justice League’s 52 new suits) discusses the company’s future and offers some certainties that things – though bad – are not entirely apocalyptic . (Apokalypitc?)
For starters, and this may sound less optimistic than Lee had intended, he says that DC Comics “is still in the business of publishing comics” and that no work on that front has been stopped due to the redundancies (no previously green-lighted comics canceled). DC Comics exists to publish comic books, we would say hope it’s still in that business, but at least it sounds like DC will not go the way of, say, Fawcett Comics or Charlton Comics and have all their best characters weakened by a somewhat more successful competitor. That being said, Marvel comes along and does one Watchmen-style deconstruction of the Justice League would be pretty funny.
However, in other news, Jim Lee says that Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley is dealing with Batman book that “has an enormous impact on the rest of the line”, which seems both exciting and unlikely (when was the last time one comic strip had an enormous impact on the rest of the line?), and DC is also re-impressed the Milestone to display “underrepresented heroes and creators”. As for DC Universe, Lee says that the original content will be moved to HBO Max (which has mostly happened before), but that there will “always be a need” for the kind of “community and experience” that DC Universe was built around. He suggests that the service will change in some way, and given the fact that he marks the amount of ‘backlist content’ on the platform (or old comic books), we would think that it will be changed in some more as Marvel Unlimited’s enormous comic joke. Maybe we’ll know more when the DC FanDome comes down next weekend.
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