Just twelve days before the highly anticipated Fandome event scheduled to go live on August 22nd and celebrate all things DC, Warnermedia’s restructuring process has begun, affecting many under the brand including those around DC. Employees within the company were informed of the mass layoffs that stretched from comics to the DCU streaming service.
With Jim Lee set to continue his active role as CCO, the biggest losses suffered at DC comics included senior story editor Brian Cunningham, editor-in-chief Bob Harris, VP of marketing and creative services Jonah Weiland, VP of global publishing initiatives and digital strategy Bobbie Chase, senior VP of publishing strategy and support services Hank Kanalz and executive editor Mark Doyle.
It’s being reported that DC Universe had lost a good majority of its staff, coming just a few days after the social media pages for Titans and Harley Quinn removed the ‘DC Universe’ tagline from their names and a few weeks after it was announced that Stargirl would be leaving the service for the CW network. Ever since it was announced that Doom Patrol would be streaming on HBO Max as well, it was blatantly obvious that the waters were being tested to see if it would be a good fit for the service. It’s currently unknown what the future of Titans and Young Justice will be but HBO Max seems like their best bet with both already in development of their next season. It doesn’t seem likely that Bizarro World would find a home at HBO Max, with Strange Adventures, another Anthology series, already in development at max.
The final fatality of today’s news was that after 22 years DC Direct, manufacturer of the DC collectibles brand will be closing its doors. It’s currently unclear if the brand will be picked up by WB’s consumer products division, but it wouldn’t be a surprise as they’d recently begun releasing merchandise for Wonder Woman 1984.
To see many of these great people and parts of DC wiped away by these uncertain times is unfortunate, as many of them had developed such memorable parts of DC history. I truly hope the best for everyone affected by today’s unfortunate news.
