That's the best DC related news i have heard in a loooooooooong time.
That's the best DC related news i have heard in a loooooooooong time.
err...?
Thank you! My first search resulted in a lot of information about a over 80y old famous Spanish mezzo-soprano lady!
I don't think anyone will move them to read no matter what outside maybe a public beheading. The harasser had been fired and I guess & hope they issued an apology (a real one; not some hollow J Allen Brack nonpology BS). I do not know what Didio had to do with it aside from both him and Barganza being both promoted to their posts in 2010.
.... reading a bit more into all the background some of the best stuff came under Kahns watchful eyes. So: Bring back Kahn; make DC great again!
Wow. You go off the grid for a couple of days and come back to find this has happened. That IS big news.
I wish Dan DiDio the best. I'm not saying he didn't have his faults as Co-Publisher but I appreciated his energy and enthusiasm overall. In a job like that you were always gonna end up in the crosshairs of neurotic fanboys. Who will be the big, bad, bogey man now?
No idea wo could replace him. I've had an air of unease about the future of DC since the takeover and this only exacerbates that. I'll have to give it a year and see how things pan out.
Lower The Pissing Winch!
Restingvoice covered a lot of it.
A creep like Berganza can be fired, but he was there for quite some time, and didn't get fired until the whole matter became public. So while Berganza might be gone, the people who hired him and protected him in various ways are still there. That gives very little confidence for women who might have to report sexual harassment or misconduct to DC in that they will be listened to, or that actions will be taken.
«Speaking generally, it is because of the desire of the tragic poets for the marvellous that so varied and inconsistent an account of Medea has been given out» (Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History [4.56.1])
That's obviously been his MO for years, on the assumption that it's effective at keeping the fanbase engaged I would assume. But could the problem have been that it actually isn't an effective way to run things? Direct Market comics is probably one of the smaller fanbases in existence. Wrestling and your average soap fanbase are orders of magnitude larger. So when you piss off 1-10% of them enough to have them drop it there's a greater chance of that hole getting filled by new fans (although daytime soaps also seem to be dying off). With comics, you're dealing with likely somewhere between 50,000 - 100,000 fans month to month, with a far greater buy in cost than something like a soap opera. People don't have to pay $5 every week to watch Days of Our Lives or the WCW. So when they get pissed off, they might just go away and not get replaced. His business model has been running the same course for the last 20 years, they drive people away, have some event or relaunch that artificially inflates sales for period, and then it shrinks back to even lower than it was before that last event. Rinse and repeat.
Whatever direction they plan on going in, we probably won't know for at least another year or so. Weren't they planning on another Crisis type event this year? Wonder if that's out or will be used to establish whatever the post-Didio status quo will be. In terms of specific characters, it will take a lot to clean some of this stuff up. (Wally, Jon, Dick) Right now the fanbase is divided. Didio played no small role in that. There's a lot of housecleaning to do. My guess is people like Bendis will lose a lot of power if not get outright fired. Johns and Lee? IDK. I doubt Kahn wants to come back. Especially considering the mess she'd have to clean up. She'd be in her 70s now.
Assassinate Putin!
Regardless, the 80s and 90s were probably the best decades to be a DC fan. That's when a majority of the classic runs that are celebrated by fans were being published and when DC's editorial was actually committed to experimentation and diverse representation. We had things like the rise of Vertigo and Milestone as imprints that truly signaled how DC was open to new things and telling new stories.
Woooo, celebrating like it's the end of Return of the Jedi!
Johns getting the big chair?
Pulls: Batman, Detective Comics, SiKtC, Catwoman, Nightwing, Titans, Godzilla, Wonder Woman, Batman & Robin, Brave and the Bold, No/One, Kill your Darlings, and Deviant.
My runs: Batman #230-, and Detective #420-
I would hold off on the celebration until you learn who will replace him.
I never met him, but he always seemed like a happy, nice guy. I would've liked to have had a beer with him one day, I think he'd have good stories to tell. And I get his bias is against "Nightwing" as opposed to "Dick Grayson" (same with Cass and Wally, etc) but that doesn't really excuse things. Sure, in business you've got to use your intuition to inform some of your decisions because accounting and business theory will never paint the whole picture, but there's a big difference between that and purposefully damaging and/or minimizing a product that shows signs of have more revenue potential just because you don't like it. And unless there's data we don't have access to that shows otherwise (which there easily could be) it looks to me like Didio all but sabotaged the characters he has a bias against, even when (perhaps especially when) they looked like they could make a lot more money for DC than they are.
"We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one single tribe."
~ Black Panther.
Uh, well, the point of the comic-book industry is to produce stories that people want to read, so...
Also, you're making it sound as if people here are getting their torches and pitchforks out because they just personally hated Dan Didio. I don't know if any of us have even met Dan Didio, so this is not personal. From what I've heard Dan Didio himself is actually a very nice guy. HOWEVER, a cardinal rule of business is that if you're bad at your job, you shouldn't have that job. Simple as that. All the reports coming through are suggesting that Dan Didio was creating an increasingly hostile work environment at DC and alienating a LOT of creative and editorial talent (ya know, the people you need to write and edit your comic books).
And, honestly, that's not new. We have known for years the stories of Dan clashing with writers and artists over stories he didn't like. Everyone has heard the story of when 52 was being published, during which time Dan would apparently storm up and down the halls at DC telling everyone how much he hated it and made it difficult for Waid, Morrison, Johns, and Rucka to do their jobs. Waid even once told the comic-book press that there's at least one issue near the end of 52 that was written almost entirely by Dan and Keith Giffen because apparently "nobody [on the creative team] could plot it to his satisfaction."
I wish Dan Didio all the success in the world. However, I don't think he's a good fit to head up DC Comics. If anything, you can really argue that DC actually suffered a severe hit to its reputation because of his creative choices.
That's at least somewhat dismissive of the issues women have actually faced in this industry. Anyone remember how the higher-ups at DC (including Dan Didio) engaged in a cover-up of Eddie Berganza's predatory and sexually harassing behavior?? And how, instead of just firing Berganza, they decided it was just better to put in place a policy that no women were allowed to work in the Superman office (Eddie's office)? So, yeah, women have faced at least a few barriers when it came to working at DC in the past.I'll never forget, I think it was SDCC 2011? DCU panel, girl in audience asked when they'll hire more female creators. Morrison responded (paraphrasing), "when will more apply?"
Bring in Christopher Priest as an editor and writer.
Now that you mention it, aside from Naomi, Wonder Comics isn't doing so hot. If Bendis doesn't have major pull, they might not see the need to push it.
In fairness, Disney pushed for a new Avengers cartoon that better matched the movies, but Loeb was the one who seemingly spearheaded the changes that led to the decline in quality across the board for Marvel cartoons.
The general gist I'm getting from the reactions are that a lot of people respected Didio even if they more often then not argued with him.
I think Johns does both.
If this means Marvel level of synergy...I'd rather not.