DC Hires Former Esports Exec Daniel Cherry as GM, Adjusts Jim Lee's Role

[BohemiaDrinker]

Wasn't that basically Johns' old job?

Yes. It's the function of a CCO, and Lee has had this job on top of "publisher" since Johns stepped down.

If I understood stuff correctly, though, it goes like this:

Lee will deal with content consistency and tone accros media and oversee the publishing operation, being the direct boss of Well and Javins.

Well and Javins, who replaced Harras, will actually be EIC, a position that until now was Harras', but that at least for us on the outside seemed to be still realized by Didio, even after his promotion to publisher.

Daniel Cherry will be the marketing, PR and business dude.

[MRP]

Its only like that though because dc and marvel came into the shops, steamrollered everyone else off the sheĺves and over time replaced a very diverse direct market with 120 superhero books a month between them. Its the pair of them that turned the shops into their private fiefdom and now its only the hardcore genre readers that use them

It went from people having their own publishing companies in their bedrooms to warners and disney to whatever its supposed to be today.... theres nothing there for huge swathes of the population because dc only want to reskin and recycle their "ip" endlessly rather than actually do what a publisher is supposed to do which is publish new works of fiction.

Direct market is a stagnant mess but its only a reflection of the duopoly that owns the shelves. It shrunk to DCs own tiny conception of what it should be

DC and Marvel have been flooding the market with books and squeezing other publishers off the shelves since the 80s. Look up some of the comments by indy creators and publishers in the 80s about how difficult it was to get brought into shops because DC had dozens of Baxter reprint minis on the shelves squeezing them off the racks or Marvel Special Editions Baxter reprints taking shelf space away from indy publishers. Don McGregor often talked about the phenomenon in interviews and in letter columns of books he did, as well as others. The problem was that the the customers were allocating to those types of books rather than the stuff form other publishers even back then. Retailers are going to order what customers are buying and give that stuff shelf space over books that aren't moving. Sure it's a viscous cycle, books that don't get shelf space can't be discovered by new readers, but customers were expressing their preference for super-hero books over other stuff even then. As I've said before, comic fans get the books their buying habits deserve. Marvel and DC were doing that before they became corporate shills, and fans were eating it up even back then. There was just a larger customer base back then to make it viable. The problem was that once they moved away from newsstands they lost their potential growth market through new customer discovery to replace customer attrition, which has always existed. Without the steady influx of new customers, the entropy of customer attrition led to a smaller and smaller customer base. The speculator boom of the 90s created an artificial influx of customers for a short period, but the speculator bust not only shed that group of customer but a lot of the already shrinking customer base, and there was still no steady source new customers coming in to counter that attrition, so the customer base kept shrinking and its focus became even narrower until we get to the point where the existing customer base is too small to be truly viable, which is just about where we are at. The seeds of this however, have been a part of the direct market since the 80s and the practices we saw from Marvel and DC over the past decade are consistent with what they were doing all along, but the success of those practices was predicated on a large existing customer base, which is no longer the case. The problem is that Marvel and DC took way too long to acknowledge and react to the shrinking customer base and change the practices they has been using since the 80s. But the entire situation only happened because customer buying habits reinforced those practices for decades. You can offer a diverse slate of books, but if people are only buying one type of book, you trim those that are not profitable from the slate and don't throw good money after bad trying to support products the market has shown no interest in.

-M

[Bruce Wayne]

Yes. It's the function of a CCO, and Lee has had this job on top of "publisher" since Johns stepped down.

If I understood stuff correctly, though, it goes like this:

Lee will deal with content consistency and tone accros media and oversee the publishing operation, being the direct boss of Well and Javins.

Well and Javins, who replaced Harras, will actually be EIC, a position that until now was Harras', but that at least for us on the outside seemed to be still realized by Didio, even after his promotion to publisher.

Daniel Cherry will be the marketing, PR and business dude.

How are they going to replace all the people that got fired? Some of them may not be well liked but they still did their jobs and made sure the publishing arm ran smoothly and things came out on time. The jobs cuts are going to negatively impact the publishing aspects of the company.

[iron chimp]

DC and Marvel have been flooding the market with books and squeezing other publishers off the shelves since the 80s. Look up some of the comments by indy creators and publishers in the 80s about how difficult it was to get brought into shops because DC had dozens of Baxter reprint minis on the shelves squeezing them off the racks or Marvel Special Editions Baxter reprints taking shelf space away from indy publishers. Don McGregor often talked about the phenomenon in interviews and in letter columns of books he did, as well as others. The problem was that the the customers were allocating to those types of books rather than the stuff form other publishers even back then. Retailers are going to order what customers are buying and give that stuff shelf space over books that aren't moving. Sure it's a viscous cycle, books that don't get shelf space can't be discovered by new readers, but customers were expressing their preference for super-hero books over other stuff even then. As I've said before, comic fans get the books their buying habits deserve. Marvel and DC were doing that before they became corporate shills, and fans were eating it up even back then. There was just a larger customer base back then to make it viable. The problem was that once they moved away from newsstands they lost their potential growth market through new customer discovery to replace customer attrition, which has always existed. Without the steady influx of new customers, the entropy of customer attrition led to a smaller and smaller customer base. The speculator boom of the 90s created an artificial influx of customers for a short period, but the speculator bust not only shed that group of customer but a lot of the already shrinking customer base, and there was still no steady source new customers coming in to counter that attrition, so the customer base kept shrinking and its focus became even narrower until we get to the point where the existing customer base is too small to be truly viable, which is just about where we are at. The seeds of this however, have been a part of the direct market since the 80s and the practices we saw from Marvel and DC over the past decade are consistent with what they were doing all along, but the success of those practices was predicated on a large existing customer base, which is no longer the case. The problem is that Marvel and DC took way too long to acknowledge and react to the shrinking customer base and change the practices they has been using since the 80s. But the entire situation only happened because customer buying habits reinforced those practices for decades. You can offer a diverse slate of books, but if people are only buying one type of book, you trim those that are not profitable from the slate and don't throw good money after bad trying to support products the market has shown no interest in.

-M

As publishers got forced out, readers who had supported those publishers left too. They were replaced by other readers but....

At the same time tho there is no doubt payola was a thing in comics press. This had been outlawed 20 years previously in music but no one was policing comics to stop it and the market became rigged to the detriment of 90% of publishers.

Im never going to blame someone who goes in and buys flash every month and loves it. Nor should the company or anyone else - hes buying what he likes and good for him. Thats what the racks are for - the community to come in and buy what they want.

I am going to blame certain companies for using some very underhand tactics and huge bankrolls vs people self publishing out their bedroom to push them out and replace their books with 120 reskins of the same story every month and then bitch on they cant sell even more of them. They got some balls on them to complain

[Frontier]

Yeah that was what a Chief Creative Officer was for. Lee being that guy now is not ideal at all. He’s never struck me as having a great handle on the characterization of DC characters. Hope he pushes for Kenan to show up elsewhere though, since he was the guy who came to Yang with that original idea.

I admit I'm not sure I see a guy who is known for being an artist doing the job better than a writer as knowledgeable about the DCU as Johns, but I'm happy to be surprised.

[Vakanai]

For us non-gamers, what happened with Activision that has everyone concerned, and how much of that is or isn't this guy's fault?

[Holt]

How are they going to replace all the people that got fired? Some of them may not be well liked but they still did their jobs and made sure the publishing arm ran smoothly and things came out on time. The jobs cuts are going to negatively impact the publishing aspects of the company.

That's debatable. Especially the bolded bit. Yes, books mostly came out on time, but taken as a whole the financial performance of DC's publishing line has not been impressive in a long time. It's not just them; it's Marvel and every other monthly American superhero publisher as well. That's why none of this should be surprising. Of course when they took over, AT&T was gonna look at the numbers DC brought in and demand changes be made.

[BohemiaDrinker]

How are they going to replace all the people that got fired? Some of them may not be well liked but they still did their jobs and made sure the publishing arm ran smoothly and things came out on time. The jobs cuts are going to negatively impact the publishing aspects of the company.

I have no idea. Some jobs lost might just be redundancies, some may be pre-emptive action for a #meetoo scandal just waiting to happen, and maybe some people just didn't fit with the new way of doing things. If I was a betting man, I'd bet in about 50% of the people who got laid off being replaced, and the line shrinking in about 20 to 30%.

But those are guesses at best.

I admit I'm not sure I see a guy who is known for being an artist doing the job better than a writer as knowledgeable about the DCU as Johns, but I'm happy to be surprised.

Nah. Lee, at this point, has forgotten stuff about the business that Johns is yet to learn. He was one of 2 really business oriented among the image guys, and probably the one who figured publishing the best. This is the guy who amassed talent to turn Wildstorm from a 90's relic to a classic making machine in four to five years. The guy who managed to be in bed with Alan Moore and DC at the same time. The guy who managed to kept being generally liked while defending Didio's decisions.

He'll be fine.

[Frontier]

Nah. Lee, at this point, has forgotten stuff about the business that Johns is yet to learn. He was one of 2 really business oriented among the image guys, and probably the one who figured publishing the best. This is the guy who amassed talent to turn Wildstorm from a 90's relic to a classic making machine in four to five years. The guy who managed to be in bed with Alan Moore and DC at the same time. The guy who managed to kept being generally liked while defending Didio's decisions.

He'll be fine.

It sounds like he has good business experience and is well liked but, again, not sure if that will lend well to the role he will supposedly be playing in his new position.

[Steel Inquisitor]

Nah. Lee, at this point, has forgotten stuff about the business that Johns is yet to learn. He was one of 2 really business oriented among the image guys, and probably the one who figured publishing the best. This is the guy who amassed talent to turn Wildstorm from a 90's relic to a classic making machine in four to five years. The guy who managed to be in bed with Alan Moore and DC at the same time. The guy who managed to kept being generally liked while defending Didio's decisions.

It's difficult to judge Jim Lee because I can't tell what it is he's doing at DC as management, it was people like Johns or Didio in the spotlight. Maybe he was doing all the right things but I can't give him credit if I don't know what credit he earned. His management of WildStorm is mixed, as well. WS was great for years under his leadership, however, he also sold WS to DC and didn't let Alan Moore get a warnings or change his contract before his properties were swallowed up, when everyone knows Moore would hate that. I also didn't like how selling WS didn't appear like it had sentimental value it was more like a business deal with no emotional connection. Maybe I'm wrong but how WS was sold to DC left me cold to Jim's leadership.

He'll be fine.

Definitely.

[The_Lurk]

.
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If Cherry can get a property NOT linked to Batman to be a success-he did his job.

No excuse Wonder Woman and Aquaman can't grow because the direct market says they can't.

[HAN9000]

Well since my latest posts were deleted, I guess CBR doesn't want me to criticize DC's new Boss too harshly. So I'll just say it briefly. Anyone interested can google the details about how e-sports division runs in Blizzard:
- failed to push Heroes of the Storm
- controversial decision on Arena World Championship
- made Overwatch a chaotic mess
- applying a double standard on politics

[Hypo]

Bleeding Cool: Daniel Cherry III, DC SVP General Manager – Leaving DC Comics

Sixteen months later, multiple sources have confirmed to me that Daniel Cherry III is off again, to pastures unknown. Some people are saying he was personally headhunted by Kayne West with whom he's worked before, others that he is to be working for Adidas. Nothing is officially announced at this stage.

[Morgoth]

Alright, that was fast.

[Vordan]

Bleeding Cool: Daniel Cherry III, DC SVP General Manager – Leaving DC Comics

Indifferent personally, did he really do anything? Lmao if he’s going to work with Ye, that’s a whole new level of headache.