Happy Almost-weekend!

Several months ago, DC comics announced that it was reorganizing and becoming DC entertainment. When this announcement was made it was also announced that Paul Levitz, the long-time DC publisher and president would be stepping down from his position. In The months since Levitz’s announcement, speculation has been rampant about who would become the new head honcho at DC, with guesses ranging from well thought out (Dan Didio) to crazy (Joe Quesada), to just plain stupid (Batman). All the guessing ended yesterday when DC announced that they had created an executive team to lead DCE consisting of c0-publishers Jim Lee and Dan DiDio, chief creative officer Geoff Johns, executive vice president of sales, marketing and business development John Rood, and Patrick Caldon as the executive vice president of finance and administration.

While just about every comic-centric blog out there has given their commentary on this announcement, this is a pretty big deal so I would feel remiss if I didn’t throw my musings out to the world for consumption as well. I want to look at each of the five people announced in this new management team, and give my thoughts (good and bad) about the hires.

Jim Lee– Co-Publisher: Lee as Publisher makes perfect sense. He is well respected throughout the comic community by both peers and fans, and having started Image comics and Wildstorm, he obviously has a good deal of business savvy. When Marvel hired Joe Quesada as EIC almost a decade ago, he was able to bring top level talent to Marvel because he was an artist and other artists felt that they would be treated well with “One of their own” in charge. The same should be true of Lee. I expect to see a good deal of top level talent shifting towards DCE over the next few years. The only sad part about Lee getting elevated to publisher is that we will see even less of his work than before. We really weren’t seeing much work out of Lee already, and with his new duties, I think we might have seen the last of Jim Lee’s pencils for quite a while.

Dan DiDio– Co-Publisher: DiDio is another great fit for publisher from a creative standpoint. Under DiDio’s leadership the last few years, DC has become far more coherent, and more easily accessible for new readers. While DiDio’s decisions have been polarizing for fans (Identity and Infinite Crises were hated and loved in equal proportion) there is no doubt that he has a clear idea of where the DC universe is going. He also has longstanding relationships with the current DC talent pool, ensuring that DC will be able to keep most of the guys they already have. I have two concerns about Didio though: 1) I have no idea how he and Lee will mesh with one another. I hope that they can co-exist, but they have very different styles and very different backgrounds. 2) DiDio, as I already mentioned, has had a very polarizing effect on fans. His new position might affect readership in the short term for DC.

Geoff Johns– Chief Creative officer: This is the spot that I think fits Johns perfectly. Over the past four or five years, no one has demonstrated a better grasp on the DC universe as a whole than Johns. Under his hand, I think we will see DC become not only a more coherent place (something he and DiDio have been working towards for years), but also a universe with stories that translate readily to film. Johns admitted yesterday in an interview that he would responsible for getting DC characters into other media platforms, and given his background in film, this seems like something that he is ideally suited for.

John Rood– Executive vice president-sales, marketing and business development and Patrick Caldon– executive vice president-finance and administration: I lump these two together because what they are in charge of is more the nuts and bolts of publishing. I think it was a good idea for DC to bring in executives to handle this element of publishing and let the artists be artistic. Being that both of these guys are coming in from outside of comics, it should be interesting to see what they come up with.

All in all, this was a pretty big day for the comic book landscape, and I’m interested to see how this affects DC moving forward. Will this new executive team usher in an era where DC is the preeminent American comic book publisher, or will this team fall flat due to a “to many cooks in the kitchen” scenario? I have no idea, but I can’t wait to find out. Thanks for stopping in folks, have a great weekend, and if you happen to be in Long Beach tomorrow, drop me a line, Semantink will be representing at the Long Beach Comic Expo.