Episode 40: Dan DiDio Departs DC

The Transcript

The following is a very lightly edited transcript of this podcast, with one section I removed for focus’ sake. If you want to hear about the time Dan DiDio did a bad job in Philadelphia convention panel, listen to the podcast or read the original Pipeline column from May 24, 2004. In the meantime, here’s the rest of it:

Last Friday, February 21 2020, I tweeted the following:

I stopped keeping up with Marvel and DC comics years ago, but it’s only recently that I’ve given up reading most of the « news » about them, as well. I used to like to know what was going on, anyway, but now I find it all so… tiring.

— Pipeline Comics 🇧🇪 🇫🇷 (Augie De Blieck Jr.) (@pipelinecomics) February 21, 2020

“I stopped keeping up with Marvel and DC Comics years ago. But it’s only recently that I’ve given up reading most of the “news” about them, as well. I used to like to know what was going on anyway but now I find it all so… tiring.”

It’s true. I don’t care anymore about keeping up with the latest generation changing, crisis event having, saving the world will never be the same crossover kind of event that Marvel and DC rely on to keep themselves alive from month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year.

Of course, a couple hours after I tweeted that, DC fired Dan DiDio and all comics news hell broke out.

This is the Pipeline Comics podcast. Hi, I’m Augie De Blieck Jr., and welcome back to the Pipeline Comics podcast, where I, generally speaking, present to you a North American perspective on European comics.

I also occasionally will do the “a whole lot more” and that’s where we’re at here today.

In this very special episode of the podcast, I want to talk a little bit about what went on at DC last week with Dan DiDio’s sudden departure from DC Comics.  

So sudden and so crazy was it that even ComicBook.com deleted a story, I’m sure, about a new filling for Oreo cookies in order to rush a story about comics.

Suddenly, the Big Two comics news sites got really really interesting.

I’m recording this podcast, basically, just so I can get my guesses on the record as to what Dan will do next. I joked at one point that he’ll pop up at Skybound next month, but that was just a joke.

Here’s his real next move. And you have to go back to where Dan DiDio came from. He came from Hollywood to begin with. He has connections there. And then he led DC Comics, the number two publisher in the market for the last, what was it — 15 years or so? It’s a pretty good long run for a publisher these days.

Put those two careers together, and you have the recipe for every new small comics publisher who’s entered the comics publishing market in the last couple of years.

I expect– I predict– I’m guessing right here on the record, although I’ve already mentioned it on Twitter and a couple other places, that Dan DiDio will get funding from somewhere in Hollywood. Enough to pay for a small staff, including I’m sure some loyal soon-to-be-ex DC editors, and some decent name creators who will be able to do the work of their career, because Hollywood will pay them quite nicely for their work.

I mean, how do you think Penthouse Comics got those big names in the 90s? Their page rates were ridiculously good. And those are hard to say no to. Combine those great page rates with the promise of working for old friends who you know, have connections to places that possibly have big money, and you have the makings of a really good small comics publisher.

Now that’s completely on paper. In reality, these things rarely work out so well. But then DiDio’s new company will have, I’m sure a hip new name to go with them, and a unique marketing angle to help sell their books or at least to keep them in the comics news cycle for longer than 24 hours.

It might not be as stupid as say, I don’t know, limiting distribution of their comics to 20 or 50 stores in the Direct Market. It might not be as curious as releasing six issues and a trade all at the same time, but it’ll have something different to sell itself.

The journalists working the beat at The Hollywood Reporter and The New York Times and BuzzFeed and — no, they won’t really care about comics journalism, because we know what an oxymoron that is anymore. We don’t care about the comics news sites. If you’re trying to get your name out there, if you’re trying to get your comic book publisher taken seriously, you know, yeah, you’ll go through the motions and the routines of talking to Newsarama, CBR, etc, etc.

But really, what you want is to be able to say your company appeared in the virtual pages of the New York Times or The Hollywood Reporter, or one of those. Those are the real places to get the news out these days.

Now, having said all that, the company itself will be dead within two years when the IP doesn’t sell quickly enough to Netflix, or Disney doesn’t offer to buy the company outright. Because that’s also the exit plan for the original founders. They will proclaim their love for the world of comics, they will proclaim that they want to make these movies for the sole purpose, of course, of driving people back to comic book stores and to the world of comics…

They want readers, they say, but none of that actually will happen. None of that will they actually do, and eventually that will be the end of them. That story, by the way, worked okay for CrossGen, except it failed miserably. I actually do believe CrossGen wanted to make more comic books, and they wanted to bring people into the world of comics. Unfortunately for them, they were a few years ahead of the curve. And they couldn’t quite get that IP money in play at Hollywood, at a big enough scale, to save the company.

[And every company since has followed that game plan, but few last very long.]

Normally, I’d say a play like this would take a year or two to get going. But DC Comics is a California company now and you know what that means? It means Non-Compete agreements are illegal. DiDio could start his new company tomorrow, once he gets back from wherever he happens to be celebrating his newfound freedom.

We could see this new company that I’m guessing Dan DiDio will be the head of as early as San Diego 2020. I’m sure it doesn’t take that long to get money from Hollywood. It flows pretty freely these days. And the one thing that actually works in the favor of DiDio in this new company, which he may or may not ever be the head of, is that there is a big hunger right now for comic book properties. We see more TVs created every year now than ever before. I mean, “Locke and Key” finally made it to TV screens — after two or three abortive attempts,

The Netflix and the Hulu’s, the upcoming Peacocks, all of these new streaming outlets are looking for properties to own, to exploit, to create series out of because for some reason, they seem to believe that — I’m not sure why — I guess they think everything should be safer for them to not create a property outright. To license one, and to build it up from a pre existing story, comics once again becomes the R&D facility — for, in this case, every streaming service known to man, plus every cable channel, plus those networks that are still alive and running.

That’s my guess of what we’ll see. I mean, it seems to be working well for Axel Alonso and Bill Jemas and for that guy from valiant whose name I forget, because I don’t pay that much attention to valiant because I don’t see how they’re going to be around for long. They keep going. They switch creators every six months on their titles. And they’re still there in the new Previews catalog.

The Hollywood IP money is coming at them fast enough that they can keep the comics publishing going, and good for them. In the meantime, we’ll just let Dan DiDio enjoy some peace and quiet for a few days. I’m sure his phone is buzzing and ringing off the hook as we speak. He knows a lot of people. He’s been in a position of power for a long time. He basically has his choice of where he wants to go next. He can field the offers. And I’m sure they will come, no matter what you think of how he micro-managed DC Comics. 

He lasted there for a really long time. And in the world of Hollywood and IP, again, I say IP, intellectual property — that’s what comics are all about these days — that counts for something.

He’s got connections. He’s got a rolodex, kids. Ask your parents what that is. No, it’s not a Rolex. That’s a watch. I’m talking about a rolodex. It is a spinning circular thing. It has cards and people’s names on it. 

Oh, and one other thing I joked about on Friday as all this news was breaking because I had a whole lot of jokes, I couldn’t help myself. But Marvel always has a way of releasing big news on the same day that DC does, and usually they have a heads up, they know that the news is coming. The world knows that some big news bit is going to drop, whether it’s because of an impending solicitation, or because of news breaking because there’s lots of people involved in these things. It’s tough to keep them all quiet.

Marvel always has the capability of helping to undercut their competitor’s message by releasing some big shocking news of equal or greater value at the same time. If DC was dropping DiDio, what could Marvel possibly reply with its anywhere near that kind of importance? 

And for now, we’ll just leave aside CB Cebulski getting fired because, well, it’s been a few days. It’s been almost a week as I record this, and that has not happened yet. No, I think the only possible thing they could have come up with to counter this is that Bob Iger resigned as CEO of Marvel parent company, Disney all of a sudden on Tuesday, and that wasn’t really terribly surprising. He was supposed to retire awhile back but he extended it because he wanted to be around I guess, for the Disney+ service. 

But no one really saw him suddenly dropping out and saying, “Okay, I’m done. Thanks. Goodbye. I’m leaving, adios,” and have the turnover happened instantaneously. That was a little bit crazy. 

But let’s just go with that being Marvel’s a-few-days-delayed news response to DC getting rid of Dan DiDio. 

[… (I’m skipping over a column I wrote about DiDio 16 years ago. Just to focus this transcript a bit. If you’re curious about the morning DiDio botched a panel in Philadelphia, go listen to the podcast.) ]

So that’s my take on the whole Dan DiDio situation right now. We don’t know an awful lot. 

I mean, we can infer some bits. And I think some of the news that’s come out of some of the rumors probably make sense. Some of them don’t make sense like Marvel is going to buy DC. Again, people with agendas and axes to grind will say silly things sometimes. 

My only question right now is, how’s Jim Lee doing when Jim Lee was technically the co-publisher with Dan to do at the time? I’m not sure what Jim Lee actually does these days. Apparently, he does a lot more work with the action figures and the video games and that kind of thing. 

So maybe he’s safe because he’ll be sort of the comics adjacent fellow. Or will he go down with the Dan DiDio ship now if the rumors are true that DiDio was fired for promoting a bad work environment? 

That’s a completely separate issue from any work that Jim Lee does. Generally he’s probably safe unless they decide to do a complete restructuring where they’re both replaced in the deal with someone else.  They can use that as an excuse to restructure the DC editorial org chart.

Another question being does Jim Lee still want to be publisher? Maybe he just wants to sit back and do some drawing again. I know the fans would like that. He’d probably make a lot less money drawing the comics than he does being co-publisher of DC Comics. But don’t get me into that side of things either.