By Zack Quaintance — I wasn’t going to write this column. Originally, I was going to write about how DC’s summer event — Dark Nights: Death Metal — was just fine, coming close to transcending self-seriousness to become a winking, grandiose celebration of big and goofy superhero books via this week’s Dark Night: Death Metal #3. But that was before news broke that DC Comics’ corporate owners were essentially laying off the entire leadership of the comics publishing division, save for Marie Javins and Jim Lee.

Yes, lots of talented editors and comics execs lost their jobs yesterday in the context of companywide layoffs at AT&T/WarnerMedia. In the process, the giant mega corporation that presides over DC Comics seemed to verify that it has little interest in (or understanding of) the business of publishing comic book stories. As Heidi MacDonald put it in her vital story for The Beat…

It’s impossible to see this as anything but a huge sign of disinterest in the comics publishing business by AT&T, WarnerMedia and the Global Brands division. While other WB divisions also faced severe layoffs, losing such a huge swath of the executive leadership at DC is a lot more than just more layoffs.

What makes this more concerning for folks who care about comics as an artform, business, or community, is that none of it comes without warning. It’s not simply a matter of a company being hard hit by our economic crisis and having to do some belt-tightening. That’s a part of it, to be sure, but there is also an established lack of interest in comics publishing by high level leadership that has been barely-concealed since the early days of the AT&T, Time Warner merger, dating as far back as two years ago.

There’s a lot of evidence, but the three most significant bits to me are as follows…

DC Comics has steadily reduced its output of monthly titles, with some of it being redirected to bookstore efforts (YA graphic novels, Black Label miniseries) but more of it just disappearing from shelves.
At San Diego Comic-Con 2019, Warner nixed DC’s long-time comics-centric book that occupies arguably the single best piece of real estate on the show floor, opting instead to create a giant fortress in a corner, where it was harder to locate comic books than it was to find replicas of sets from shows like Riverdale and Friends.
A long-rumored linewide relaunch that was to take place this year was scuttled, and its architect — long-time DC Comics co-publisher, Dan DiDio — was let go…before the pandemic had upended any of the industry’s functions.

None of these are decisions made in the interest of comics. They feel, instead, like efforts to hold on to the money being made from the division while cutting as much of the costs as possible. Do more with less decisions, common to other print media industries, thinking specifically of daily newspapers, which is where I worked throughout most of my 20s.

In mid-sized newspapers throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s, new owners often came in with no or little experience in publishing, looking to cut costs and maybe surge revenue from some digital initiative (which often didn’t work). Thing outwardly continued as per normal for a time, with every behind the scenes decision being made in the interest of reducing staff, expenditures, and general investment in the publishing.

What’s happening with DC seems to be different. Indeed, there doesn’t seem to be a desire to sell anything, so valuable are the rights to the world-famous characters involved. Yet, the steady chipping away at costs and resources is the same, almost as if the folks making the decisions are following an established set of best practices (the word best feels wrong) for slowly-ending legacy print publishing operations in a way that preserves remaining revenue streams while negating risk, inherently presuming there is no future in the business.

And while it’s a tacky thing to discuss at a time when so many people in comics have lost well-paying, prestigious jobs…the question then becomes what happens to the future of DC Comics product? There will likely always be a Batman comic book, probably Superman, Wonder Woman, and Justice League too…just like how even the hardest hit newspapers still put out hallowed out main sections. At the same time, much of DC’s focus in this tumultuous year has migrated to the book market and online, which is perhaps where a kernel of hope continues to exist.

DC Comics is putting out new daily superhero stories for roughly $1 a piece across digital platforms. These are slightly-smaller digital comics, featuring its biggest characters in realtively rote superhero adventures that don’t even really bother what the illusion of progress or change, not unlike the publisher’s most successful initative in recent memory, 2016’s Rebirth. In addition, it’s also publishing a series of more experimental digital-first stories, including tie-ins to giant properties like Batman: The Animated Series and DCeased, as well as a star-studded Harley Quinn: Black + White + Red, where A-list creators tell Harley stories that use the titular color pallette.

These are all fairly well-done, and certainly worth the minimal price tag. Which is what ultimately brings me to my take on all of this, or rather a pair of takes, one for the optimist and one for the pessimist. The pessimistic take here is the easy one, noting that DC Comics has permanently shrunk the number of comics folks it employs because its future at some point is no comics at all, just a set of famous characters who sell movies, t-shirts, and lunch boxes, as short-sighted as that may be, lacking the source material that has driven said characters for nearly a century. That’s the doom scenario, as it were, a forestalled demise of these character’s most-experimental stories certain to eventually dilute the quality of related movies and TV shows.

The optimist take, however, is that a smaller and more agile publishing arm with less cost and a dynamic future-forward platform will be able to take more risks (as unlikely as that all seems with the length of short lease the corporate folks give these characters). And these risks will primarily show up online first, eventually making their way to print compilations if they prove popular and successful. It’s not ideal for folks who love the current system of monthly installment storytelling disseminated nationwide by a network of small business retailers (which isn’t that all of us at least a little bit?), but it’s a better fate than the demise of DC Comics as a publishing entity all together, which on a day like today is something that looms over most anyone involved with comics.

Read past editions of the DC DIGRESSION column!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.