Forbes doesn’t see a future for DC Comics in the wake of the AT&T acquisition of WarnerMedia:
Earlier this month at San Diego Comic-Con, returning attendees noticed a major change on the show’s massive exhibit floor. The booth for DC Comics, which had been a massive standalone pavilion in the center of the publishers’ area in the center of the hall, was gone. America’s oldest and second-largest comic book publisher had retreated to the far back corner of the hall, where it was incorporated into the multi-level WarnerMedia exhibit, in the shadow of banks of giant monitors previewing upcoming shows and cast appearances.
The subtext of this move could not have been clearer. AT&T—now the parent company of WarnerMedia and its divisions, including DC Comics (previously known as DC Entertainment), HBO, Turner, and Warner Bros.—does not seem terribly interested in being in the comic book publishing business….
A generation ago, faced with a similar situation, DC’s then co-President and Publisher Jenette Kahn appealed to Time Warner management that wanted to dramatically cut back on DC’s current publishing in favor of reprints, saying that the company’s new material was the lifeblood of the company, a source of new fans and new IP without which the characters and related merchandise would decline into obscurity. She won that argument and DC, under her stewardship, ended up minting many of the golden coins in which it still trades, including The Dark Knight, Watchmen and Sandman, despite never being a gigantic engine of revenue within the Time Warner corporate umbrella.
Today, DC Comics is in a similar situation. Following a demoralizing mid-decade move from its traditional home in New York to Warner Bros’ headquarters in Burbank, CA, the company has stumbled through various events and line reboots, milking assets like Frank Miller’s once-fresh take on Batman and post-Alan Moore Watchmen for the last dregs of fan appeal and relevance, and relying on high priced milestone thousandth issues of long-running titles like Action Comics and Detective Comics to make up in dollar share what they are losing in unit share of an increasingly crowded comics market.
Recently, DC co-President Dan DiDio publicly fumed that reissues of comics 30 and 40 years old were outselling current stories featuring the same characters, calling that a “failure on us.”
The SJW takeover of DC is precisely why AT&T’s best bet is to shut down the publishing business before the current generation of editors and writers start to harm the valuable brands that were created over decades. The world observably neither needs nor wants new Batman and Superman comics, particularly not those that transform Batman into a black transgirl and Superman into a lesbian Hispanic woman. There isn’t enough money in new comics to be worth the risk of moronic SJWs devaluing the brands that are the only real value of DC’s publishing business.
AT&T’s management will almost certainly do the math and realize this, which is why I expect Arkhaven to see off DC, and probably sooner rather than later, just as it has already witnessed the ugly last gasp and mercy killing of Vertigo.