Why DiDio Needs to Go

Before I begin, a brief review: DC Comics in the last week or so has experienced what I will generously call disastrous PR, as comics superstar and DC's Final Crisis headliner Grant Morrison remarked that the only way he could deal with the editorial disorganization of the comics leading up to his book was to completely ignore them, fan-favorite writer Chuck Dixon announced after his firing that "I’ve worked under tyrants, and I can say that I’d prefer to work under a talented, knowledgeable tyrant with a successful plan than a directionless gladhander with a ouija board any day of the week," and finally, the resignation of Senior VP of Business Development John Nee on Friday brought the speculation to a fever pitch.

At the center of the maelstrom is Dan DiDio, Executive Editor of DC Comics, and the subject of Dixon’s excoriation.

DiDio's contract with DC is up in October, fueling speculation that he may be on his way out. In a nutshell, here's why: DC Comics, under Didio, has become a company that is inflexible, disorganized, and myopic, failings that are all the more obvious because they are not shared by DC's primary competitor Marvel Comics, who now regularly hands DC its own ass in sales.

As the mainstream spotlight of movies shines on superhero properties with unprecedented interest, DiDio has focused single-mindedly on an aging population of hardcore fans steeped in impenetrable continuity, to the exclusion of any potential new readers. Even within the notoriously clannish genre of superhero comics, Didio has managed to make DC's books less approachable, less comprehensible, and perhaps most unforgivably, less fun.

Although accessibility and consistency are still issues that plague the superhero genre as a whole, the fact of the matter is that Marvel is doing a much better job of addressing it, while DiDio’s tack has been not only to ignore the problem, but to publicly state that he doesn’t think it matters.

As he said in a recent post-NYCC interview at IGN that I personally like to imagine in the voice of George W. Bush:

"I have an opinion on new readers. I think we have a lot of readers. We have lapsed readers, we have occasional readers, and we have dedicated readers. And I think our goal is to maintain the relationship we have with those folks. Those people are our future, because those are the people that are committed to our characters right now."

Contrast with a 2004 interview at Newsarama, where DiDio seemed much more conscious of the importance of courting new readers, and what might happen if they don't:

"Realistically, what happens if the superhero bubble bursts one day? Where do we stand? We’re standing with nothing... I want to give enough diversity so that we get a wider breadth of people buying comics. Again, what happens if that one group of people buying superheroes disappears? What are we left with?"

I’m not sure what has made him progressively less aware of this reality, unless it's simply his failure to address it. While it's undeniably important to serve your current fans, it's not mutually exclusive with appealing to new ones, and treating it as an either/or situation is a colossally short-sighted mistake for someone in DiDio’s position.

Enter the ill-timed news that the premiere issue of DC mega-event Final Crisis lagged behind the second issue of Marvel’s Secret Invasion by over 40,000 issues, and you've also got Marvel visibly trouncing DC within the insular, fanboy-focused demographic that DiDio says is their whole game.

I mean, come on: If you’re going to orchestrate the biggest sales event of your year -- indeed, the culmination of nearly five years of stories -- around continuity, and then actively fail to make that continuity consistent on even the most obvious narrative levels, you deserve to lose.

And of course, it doesn't help when DiDio unceremoniously drops popular writers like hot rocks and pisses off DC's highest profile creator by throwing his storyline under the bus. But such is the state of the things that the alienation Didio has fostered with creators is merely a sidebar -- exhibit B, or C, or D -- to the story of why DC Comics as a whole could benefit hugely from dropping him with equal haste.

And as Greg Hatcher has observed, even as the chorus of criticism and predictions of doom for Didio grow louder, there's been no attempt by DC to get out ahead of these stories. It’s hard to tell whether this is the result of a hamstrung PR department, or just the eerie silence that precedes another ouster, but it’s been cherry bomb after cherry bomb down the DC pipes, and everyone still seems to be waiting for the big one.

While I admittedly grew up reading primarily Marvel comics, I see nothing good in what's happening right now, particularly since DC-bashing has become a sort of group sport on the internet. More important than brand loyalty is the fact that I care about superhero comics in a real way, and watching one of the two biggest superhero publishers chronically sabotage itself to this degree has become painful, and I’d like it to stop.

There are many smart and creative people at DC Comics, and they have often been poorly used, not just as human beings, but as the working parts of a machine that has been badly run. And usually, if things are going this badly on an institutional level –- or at least, when it becomes this obvious -- somebody’s gotta fall on a sword, and John Nee is not the answer.

For my part, I have no idea if DiDio is really going to fall, but I think he should. Not because of his treatment of creators, or the reported tyranny of his management style, but because he has come to represent the most outmoded, calcified, wrong-headed impulses of the comics industry. If nothing else, his removal could signify a repudiation of the policies and attitudes that lead to his failure, and a potential opportunity to reverse them, something that could be very good for superhero comics indeed.

Back in 2004, DiDio was a new leader who declared his editorial modus operandi by saying, "let’s really concentrate on what makes these characters great, what makes these characters strong, and what we love and remember most about them."

Today, he's an apparent lame duck whose recent comments bordered on resignation: "We have the same characters... There's only so much you can do with them. You've seen it all, you've heard it all."

A fitting epitaph, perhaps, for his reign.