Is DC Comics Back on the Chopping Block?
I had assumed and not without reason that DC had survived the Great Zaslav Purge. DC Comics was peeled down to the bone to include losing their office spaces but they kept churning out their sludge month after month even after they had been ordered to assemble character bibles for their intellectual properties.
Being in comics and told to assemble character bibles is the equivalent of an IT engineer being told, “This is our new hire Rajeesh. I need you to teach him everything about how to do your job.” You know the axe is falling, it’s just a question of when.
DC’s disastrous bungee boss Daniel Cherry deciding he was better off being Kanye West’s brand manager instead of DC Comics’ should have pretty much said it all.
Yet, they are still publishing even if the terrible quality of their work (among a host of other things) has created a situation where comic book shops have been refusing to buy new DC Comics. They are still publishing even if no one wants to buy.
However, Warner Brothers just farmed out a whole bunch of licenses for Thundercats, Powerpuff, and a few other Cartoon Network titles to Dynamite Comics. Now, I know these intellectual properties aren’t anywhere near DC’s core characters but that doesn’t matter because before now, DC Comics published all of Warner Brothers’ IP comics.
Now they are being sent out of the house.
There have recently been rumors that Universal will be buying up the DC Comics franchise. I didn’t think there was anything to it at the time but now I’m wondering. While Universal does own what appears to be a perpetual license of Marvel characters for their theme parks. That license only applies east of the Mississippi River and Universal’s new park is in Texas.
Also, Disney would very much like to negotiate an end to Universal’s use of Marvel’s characters or at least get a date sometime in the future when that deal will finally end. Since Disney is having to pay billions to Universal anyway, they may be trying to get something more than just Hulu out of the deal.
While Universal enjoys poking Disney in the eye, the fact is they don’t actually own those heroes. For that matter, Universal doesn’t have a clear title to much in the way of franchises. The Monster movie characters are all in the public domain. Mario is owned by Nintendo. Universal owns Dreamworks, Veggie Tales and that’s about it.
Zaslav has been getting Warner Brothers ready for a sale but in so doing has created a situation where DC is attractive to a potential buyer as a one-off.
This stuff is all rumor but there are a lot of these rumors all of a sudden.
Shutting down the least desirable part of DC Comics could indeed be part of a deal. Universal has its own DIE projects they are stuck with and doesn’t need to import any more useless mouths to feed. It’s possible if not yet probable
I’ll keep an eye on this.
Developing.
