Layoffs at DC?

[Ascended]

There will still be mature stories. I don't think people need to worry about them going away even if the Black Label line is being retired.

Agreed, we'll still get stuff designed for a mature audience, we just seemingly won't have a specific imprint for it.

Now, that said, I agree with Myskin about this; DC's idea of "mature" these days seems to be boobs and swearing. It's not actually mature content, it's just explicit. And compared to the crap they let happen in their main books, it's redundant.

I do hope Last God survives, that book is excellent. But generally speaking, losing Black Label is meaningless.

The problem is that DC was generally the #1 or #2 publisher annually in these rankings by Hibbs. So they were the standard for a long time. Marvel is the company that always did very poorly in their GN sales and never really bothered organizing a lot of their hallmark stories into easily collectible trades like DC has. So for DC's sales to just fall off suddenly when they didn't do anything differently is worrying, especially when the GN market is booming and superheros are as popular as they ever have been.

It's worrying, sure. Clearly they need to get back in the game. Maybe they're not making GN's people want, or maybe they're not being advertised enough, or maybe the competition has changed the way they do things and DC didn't respond properly. But none of that is a death sentence. It's just a sign to do better and put better people in charge. And it looks like they're trying to do that now. Whether they put the right people in the right positions? We'll see. DC has fumbled the ball often enough for me to be quite cynical about their odds of success, but on paper? This should not be that big of a challenge.

DC is producing more GNs than they ever have, but their return on each title is lower than it has been in a decade. So the concern is that the interest for the traditional superhero trades is fading. Where it is becoming more and more difficult for DC to generate a new "hit". In 2019 DC had their fewest titles place in the top 750 titles for the year since Hibbs has been tracking it while their traditional stories are also not selling as well as they used to. So when you see the numbers like this you can understand why DC might be trying to change their approach more.

Absolutely. If DC did as well as you say (I didn't read the Top 750 for any year except 2019) and now they're losing their ranking, then it's definitely time to change their production and business model. But that's not a big deal, every company has to respond to changes in the market and/or their competitors. If DC's lost a lot of the market share then they need to make bigger adjustments than might be normal, but that's still not really a big deal, and shouldn't be a major challenge if the people calling the shots actually deserve their positions.

I've rarely been impressed with DC's marketing but it seems to me the biggest problem is their creative lineup. It's old school creators telling old school stories that only appeal to the limited direct market demographic. Change the creators and let them create for a different audience than us Wednesday Warriors, and your trade sales will go up. Problem solved. We'll have to see what the creative roster looks like when the dust settles but cutting loose the old school creators seems like a step in the right direction to me (even if my heart goes out to everyone who's losing their jobs).

I don't know, Harleen didn't have much swearing, or gore, no nudity, but I still don't know if it could have been done outside of a mature label.

Harleen was an excellent book, and actually fit the Mature label. You don't need to be explicit to be mature, but Harleen's focus on the psychology and character dynamics, and it's lack of action, means it's not something kids are going to enjoy. That was a book made for people who don't need a big car chase in the middle of the story to stay engaged.

[Digifiend]

It's a bit more than playing videogames, I think. More like competition between videogame players, with payment and stuff.

It's still just video gaming, they're just doing it professionally for prize money. No different than television game shows. Nobody calls those sports.

---

https://twitter.com/gerryconway/stat...26593997873152

What happened at ⁦@DCComics yesterday was probably inevitable once ⁦@WarnerMedia became a subsidiary of a tech company uninterested in creating new creative content, and planning only to strip mine existing IP for streaming. It should have been clear when the incoming AT&T management told the management of the highly successful and profitable @HBO that they needed to upend their corporate culture in order to feed the AT&T cable pipeline with continuous streaming content a la Netflix. It should have been clear when AT&T replaced the successful management team at @HBO that AT&T didn’t see value in @HBO’s content— only value in @HBO’s *brand*.

The content currently produced at @DCComicsor @dcuniverse is of no interest to the tech bros of AT&T— only the brand. Publishing comics is a low profit margin business— the value lies in the IP, and only the IP. Expect AT&T to do the absolute minimum necessary to keep the @DCComics brand alive for its IP value. Some of the decisions AT&T will make are probably long overdue for a business model that’s been marginal for decades; this will be brutal and bloody.

This time next year, I predict @Marvel will own about 90% of the new monthly comic market— in which case, retail comic shops are done. @DCComics will probably publish reprints and a handful/dozen of new digital-only monthly series intended for graphic novel release. When the comic book retail market collapses, @Marvel too will have to turn to a digital monthly/print graphic novel format for a reduced number of titles. It’s simple economics. The business has relied too long on a fragile distribution model. COVID-19 and AT&T have broken it.

In the long run, despite the tremendous personal loss of the people affected by this— and my heart breaks for them, it really does; these are good, worthy people who deserve better— this may be for the best, creatively. Storytelling in superhero comics has been in a creative, market-driven straitjacket for decades. Pandering to the tastes of a diminishing comic shop readership, relying on marketing gimmicks like variants, reboots and bi-annual “events” to temporarily boost sales—

It’s all had a cost, creatively. A long time ago, in my naïf youth, I once argued with Marvel’s head of production at the time, Gentleman John Verpoorten, that some production decision he’d made would have a negative effect on the creative value of the book I was working on. At the time Marvel was publishing 40 titles or more a month. John gestured at the wall of covers behind him in his office. “Hell,” he said. “If you want to talk about creative value, from a creative point of view we can justify maybe six of these.”

It was true then, and it’s true now. Maybe a diminished superhero comic book market would be a more creative one.

Guess we’ll see in 2021. Till then...

F**king 2020.

[Batman Begins 2005]

What will happen to DC Collectibles pre-orders? Will they be fulfilled or not? I have two I'm waiting on and I feel for those redundancies. What an all time terrible year.

[Noodle]

I think idea was that DC Ink/Young/Kids was for younger readers, DC was for in continuity stuff and Black Label ended up being everything else that didn't fit one of these imprints.

Didn't stop the older audience from screaming like a child over those young reader books (see: Gotham High)

[Tony]

It's still just video gaming, they're just doing it professionally for prize money. No different than television game shows. Nobody calls those sports.

---

https://twitter.com/gerryconway/stat...26593997873152

Thank you for the link.

[Restingvoice]

Didn't stop the older audience from screaming like a child over those young reader books (see: Gotham High)

I just saw one screaming the other day on twitter about Lois Lane childhood OGN for the young line

It's still just video gaming, they're just doing it professionally for prize money. No different than television game shows. Nobody calls those sports.

---

https://twitter.com/gerryconway/stat...26593997873152

Video game competitions are called e-sports because it requires hand-eye coordination, quick reflex, and quick thinking. Depending on the game, like for example, tactical games where you have to defend your kingdom while destroying your opponent's using hordes of armies/monsters also requires resource management and tactical mind, all in real-time.

So it's kinda like why they call chess sport.

[Vakanai]

Harleen was an excellent book, and actually fit the Mature label. You don't need to be explicit to be mature, but Harleen's focus on the psychology and character dynamics, and it's lack of action, means it's not something kids are going to enjoy. That was a book made for people who don't need a big car chase in the middle of the story to stay engaged.

Yes, and I just want to know if I can still expect future books of that nature from DC without Black Label and the YA/Kids push still.

Didn't stop the older audience from screaming like a child over those young reader books (see: Gotham High)

I saw that in the Batman subforum, book got a lot of hate by people with no intention of reading it. I didn't see the big deal, it's a YA Elseworld, nothing wrong with that.

[Vakanai]

I just saw one screaming the other day on twitter about Lois Lane childhood OGN for the young line

Lois Lane and the Friendship Challenge? What the hell can they be screaming about? Haven't got it yet, ordered it from Amazon yesterday, but it looks adorable and nothing about it looks disrespectful to anything Lois or Superman.

[Restingvoice]

Lois Lane and the Friendship Challenge? What the hell can they be screaming about? Haven't got it yet, ordered it from Amazon yesterday, but it looks adorable and nothing about it looks disrespectful to anything Lois or Superman.

I believe they said "this is why you're falling, DC, nobody buys this ****"

[Vakanai]

I just saw one screaming the other day on twitter about Lois Lane childhood OGN for the young line



Video game competitions are called e-sports because it requires hand-eye coordination, quick reflex, and quick thinking. Depending on the game, like for example, tactical games where you have to defend your kingdom while destroying your opponent's using hordes of armies/monsters also requires resource management and tactical mind, all in real-time.

So it's kinda like why they call chess sport.

No one should call chess a sport
Or golf...

[Vakanai]

I believe they said "this is why you're falling, DC, nobody buys this ****"

...? The hell about such a cute book targeted for a different audience triggered that from them?

[Vakanai]

I believe they said "this is why you're falling, DC, nobody buys this ****"

...? The hell about such a cute book targeted for a different audience triggered that from them?

[iron chimp]

Agreed, we'll still get stuff designed for a mature audience, we just seemingly won't have a specific imprint for it.

Now, that said, I agree with Myskin about this; DC's idea of "mature" these days seems to be boobs and swearing. It's not actually mature content, it's just explicit. And compared to the crap they let happen in their main books, it's redundant.

I do hope Last God survives, that book is excellent. But generally speaking, losing Black Label is meaningless.



It's worrying, sure. Clearly they need to get back in the game. Maybe they're not making GN's people want, or maybe they're not being advertised enough, or maybe the competition has changed the way they do things and DC didn't respond properly. But none of that is a death sentence. It's just a sign to do better and put better people in charge. And it looks like they're trying to do that now. Whether they put the right people in the right positions? We'll see. DC has fumbled the ball often enough for me to be quite cynical about their odds of success, but on paper? This should not be that big of a challenge.



Absolutely. If DC did as well as you say (I didn't read the Top 750 for any year except 2019) and now they're losing their ranking, then it's definitely time to change their production and business model. But that's not a big deal, every company has to respond to changes in the market and/or their competitors. If DC's lost a lot of the market share then they need to make bigger adjustments than might be normal, but that's still not really a big deal, and shouldn't be a major challenge if the people calling the shots actually deserve their positions.

I've rarely been impressed with DC's marketing but it seems to me the biggest problem is their creative lineup. It's old school creators telling old school stories that only appeal to the limited direct market demographic. Change the creators and let them create for a different audience than us Wednesday Warriors, and your trade sales will go up. Problem solved. We'll have to see what the creative roster looks like when the dust settles but cutting loose the old school creators seems like a step in the right direction to me (even if my heart goes out to everyone who's losing their jobs).



Harleen was an excellent book, and actually fit the Mature label. You don't need to be explicit to be mature, but Harleen's focus on the psychology and character dynamics, and it's lack of action, means it's not something kids are going to enjoy. That was a book made for people who don't need a big car chase in the middle of the story to stay engaged.

You need a separate imprint for more mature stuff because a lot of people in regular universe have an expectation of what they will read and what is appropriate (which is entirely fair enough imo). DC doesnt want it either thats why they shifted swampthing, sandman, hellblazer etc out of the main universe and continued the runs in vertigo in the first place and i think readers of those books dont want them in main universe because then the books are left alone.

For anyone saying there was no place for black label, a lot of those books did far better business than the main line.

For anyone saying oh mature just means breasts and penises, that ridiculous reductionism is precisely why the two streams of dc readers need to be separated otherwise people with no interest in the books or have read them just bitch on the whole time in their own mindgarden.

[superduperman]

I believe they said "this is why you're falling, DC, nobody buys this ****"

They do realize THEY aren't the target audience, right?

[Ascended]

Yes, and I just want to know if I can still expect future books of that nature from DC without Black Label and the YA/Kids push still..

I'm sure we will. We don't need an imprint specifically for mature books to have mature books at all.

...? The hell about such a cute book targeted for a different audience triggered that from them?

I'd guess it's the idea that if the company makes product for other demographics, there will be less for them. It's stupid and flawed thinking; there's plenty to go around after all, but logic is a hurdle these people have learned to jump with ease. >shrug<

You need a separate imprint for more mature stuff because a lot of people in regular universe have an expectation of what they will read and what is appropriate (which is entirely fair enough imo). DC doesnt want it either thats why they shifted swampthing, sandman, hellblazer etc out of the main universe and continued the runs in vertigo in the first place and i think readers of those books dont want them in main universe because then the books are left alone.

I agree you want to keep your mature content separate from everything else, but you don't need a full imprint to do that. A imprint is preferable, but not necessary. If Black Label is dumped, there's no reason something like Last God couldn't continue, they'd just have to ensure something on the cover says "this is not a product for kids."

It's no different than movies on blu-ray. Deadpool can sit next to Marvel's Iron Man on the Wal-Mart movie shelf. One of them has a "Mature" label on it, one doesn't. Problem solved. If parents ignore that warning? That's on them.