Ross Hutchinson
WTF is back after a heavy dose of Covid and the related apathy that comes along with it, we are back and as much as we would have liked to bring the sunshine with us…it just really isn’t the year of sunshine is it?
Slightly more insight came to light on the changes coming to DC Comics as the company finds itself in a massive reshuffle cutting at least 20% of staff including top editorial staff as Jim Lee made the admission that the bottom 20-25% percent of their publishing line that was either not making money or breaking even was being looked at. This was almost immediately proven true as DC announced a further culling of the line following titles like Teen Titans, Justice League Odyssey and Batman and the Outsiders ending October, DC has added Young Justice, Suicide Squad, Hawkman, and John Constantine: Hellblazer to end in November. The appointment of Marie Javins to the position of editor in chief at DC is perhaps the only real silver lining as Javins is held in very high regard in the industry. Javins along with Michele Wells are the new interim Editors-In-Chief of DC Comics, replacing Bob Harras. Things will continue to unfold in the weeks to come but what is very clear is while DC will continue to be in the business of making comics, the form and method are about to undergo some radical change and it remains to see if it will mean success or failure…
Far less distressing but also a clear sign of the changes that comic publishers are facing was the announcement from Valiant this week regarding its restructuring of it’s New York and Los Angeles offices as the company continues to work remotely and make plans for the future. You can read Valiant’s full statement here.
It’s not ALL doom and gloom though. Several exciting things are happening which include the approaching Marvel X OF SWORDS event. Marvel released the rest of the main covers for this 24 part event on Friday, continuing the hype for the first X-Men centric crossover event of the Dawn Of X it Hickman era. you can check out the newly released covers here:
BOOM! Studios released the much hyped and talked about SEVEN SECRETS and once again a project by writer Tom Taylor, who seems to have the magic touch with everything he writes, seems destined for massive success as it heads to a third printing in record time. I really liked it and so did our series reviewer. you can check out the spoiler-free review here:
And after those bits of more positive news we back to less pleasant topics. While we understand how business works it seems REALLY stupid to be hyping up an online mega-event like DC FANDOME at the same time as announcing job cuts across the board by Warner. In fact, it is in exceptionally poor taste in my opinion to have done so. While it can be argued that this may be in line with the direction DC may point itself in the future, its poor timing and really bad planning and in all honesty has cast a pall over next weekend’s online mega event and quite frankly soured what little enthusiasm I had drummed up heading toward it. So the loser of the week goes out to whoever it was at Warner who pulled the trigger on that decision.
It doesn’t seem fair to pick winner of the week given how many people lost their livelihoods in the industry we love in the last two weeks. I would however like to salute all the hard-working people behind the scenes that work every day to help bring us the medium that we love.
