The Red Honeymoon at DC Comics

The Red Honeymoon at DC Comics

The Red Wedding massacre at DC Comics was three months ago and it was pretty brutal.  

A few of the more overly optimistic comics fans thought it was going to be the start of a turnaround, where DC would abandon its pursuit of all things Woke and go back to sensible basics.  Others thought that it was the start of a focus on graphic novels and Young Adult engagement in the hopes of attracting Zoomer’s interest in DC’s characters.

 Then Daniel Cherry III was brought over from Blizzard, and far from promising an end to Wokeness, promised to make things even more Evolved.  However, it turns out he had a different mission

“Daniel Cherry III, newly appointed DC Comics General Manager, is doing exactly what he was brought in to DC by Warner Bros President Pamela Lifford to do, to calculate corporate downsizing, assess minimum requirements, fire the highest paid people, promote the juniors with small raises, imply “you’re lucky to still have a job in this economy” and cut freelance rates and commitments.”

The heads that have been planted on spikes today include:

  • Adam Philips, Director, Marketing Services at DC Comics, after 26 years working at the publisher, after being an editor at Welsh Publishing Group, and an editor of Consumer Electronics Monthly and Video Magazine
  • Stuart Schreck, Sales Manager DC Comics, after 21 years at the publisher, after managing a comic book store in New York.
  • Fletcher Chu-Fong, Events Director at DC Comics, after 18 years at the publisher, after working for both Marvel and Wizard.
  • Sandy Yi – SVP, Global Franchise Management, over 9 years at DC/Warners after working at HBO, Funny Of Die and Comedy Central.
  • Lissette Osterloh, VP Digital Marketing & Events, after over 7 years at DC Comics and over 13 years at Warner Bros Online, Warner Bros Marketing and Warner Bros Television before that
  • Michele R Wells, co-Editor-In-Chief at DC Comics, Vice President and Executive Editor, DC Children’s/Young Adult, after 4 years at the publisher, formerly Executive Editor at Disney, founding chair of the Brooklyn chapter of First Book and an editor at DK Publishing, and acquisition editor at McGraw-Hull and Penguin Random House.
  • Alex Carr, Group Editor at DC Comics (Justice League titles), after 2 years at DC after working for Amazon UK and Amazon’s Jet City Comics line.

There are two names on tonight’s roundup of the usual suspects that stood out to me. Fletcher Chu-Fong and Michele R. Wells.  

Fletch Chu-Fong is or rather was DC comics Events Director, he was the guy that would setup things with shindigs like San Diego Comicon.  His dismissal is something the artists are pretty uncool about because Comicons were where they would make a lot of their secondary income from commissions and private sales. Getting rid Chu-Fong is the equivalent of telling American waitresses that from now on they can’t collect tips, their minimum wage pay is it.

However, Michele R. Wells is the more significant removal.  Because this is basically DC eating its own seed corn. She was brought on board three years ago to build the tweener-to young adult market.  This was comics traditional market until the middle 1980s, when comics began pursuing the Generation-X market…and kept pursuing it, no matter how old we got.  Say what you like about Wells but hiring her was the first attempt by a major comics publisher to future proof their industry since Reagan was in office.  Getting rid of her makes it very clear that Warner Media doesn’t care about DC Comics future.

Because they don’t plan on it having one.

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