Shit is Going Down at DC Comics

Sometimes I am weirdly prescient. You see, my last post a handful of days ago was about a DC comic released at Walmart causing all kinds of controversy due to its depiction of the theoretical brutal murder of Lois Lane. I talked about how this comic was in a big issue of new stuff and reprinted materials that was geared towards general readers. I also mentioned how the Direct Market was in trouble, maybe necessitating comics for more general readers, albeit ones that hopefully didn't shoot Lois Lane in the head on the first page. Well, shit is going down at DC and it has laid-off a number of folk in relatively high-up positions of power.

One of the people unceremoniously let-go is a gentleman named Mark Chiarello, known by friend and industry-folk as, "Chi." Chi was previously heavily involved in a variety of the best-regarded and most critically acclaimed DC projects, such as my beloved, "Wednesday Comics," so his being given the boot especially stings for me, and in the opinions of myself and many others. Also, before you ask, the people let go were by no means disliked, with a lot of love expressed for them by assorted folk, and they all were lacking in any kind of scandal (to my knowledge) so this is in essence a move done by DC to focus on totally revamping marketing. Prestige projects or experimental stuff is less important, and creating a more unified identity seems to be the focal point. It is no secret DC has been struggling with its identity some, from the slow death and eventual rebirth of Vertigo, to the false-start of the, "Black Label," which was essentially sunk by Batman's penis making a cameo.

Mark Chiarello

This shake-up and reorganization happening at DC isn't exactly coming-out of the blue, I distinctly remember back in June of 2018 when a lot of folk suddenly left the company entirely, or set-up special deals with it to no longer have certain positions of power but still be contributors. The comic-book market is in a state of flux, and DC clearly is having its own big shifts and changes too. Whether this will end-up working-out in the company's favor or this is the equivalent of that classic expression regarding rearranging deck-chairs on the Titanic is something I am by no means able to predict. I do think I can say without (intentionally) sounding too pessimistic however that things are probably going to get worse before they get better.