Myself, I am hardly a DiDio fan, but I can definitely think of worse scenarios than his having been kept. I am not sure that I would expect Jim Lee to be any better an Editor than DiDio was/is, for one.
Whether his leave is a good or a bad thing for DC, fans and readers is very much an open question far as I am concerned. What I do think is that the circunstances suggest that it was a fairly sudden decision. That in turn suggests some fairly significant level of conflict with his higher-ups (therefore, people from AT&T and Warner) that one or both sides expected not to be resolvable in an adequate timetable to the satisfaction of all.
So, by that measure, it is an ill omen. It implies that AT&T is now aware enough of and ill disposed enough towards DC Entertainment to want to chance a public perception that it has been badly managed when it could have attempted to build a silver lining or at least announce something that could be spun as a positive resulting change.
Which it, plainly, did not bother to try. We do not even have clear statements on whether Jim Lee will remain, nor on whether the vacancy left by DiDio is meant to be filled back at all. DC and its public have to make do with this uncertainty for the time being, and that can not be a good thing.
The timing and the suddenness make me believe that the reception of the Joker and Birds and Prey movies, and of the 5G event planned for October 2020, all factored into this decision. DC is far more valuable these days for the multimedia products and the intellectual property itself than for any profit that the comics might happen to be making out. That has been true at least since the Jeanette Khan days. I for one can't imagine that AT&T would invest much effort into attempting to change that, and that is assuming that they care at all.
Therefore, I assume that fairly heated decision-making is happening in these very days. Soon we will have some form of announcement on the future of DC Entertainment's editorial roles. And it will probably be fairly unpleasant, if only because AT&T has little reason to care much about DC Entertainment to the level that would enable it to make an informed decision.
And, I say this once again, there are many, many worse scenarios than that of having kept Dan DiDio.
In any case, I expect 5G to be either cancelled or deemphasized drammatically and demoted to some sort of alternate continuity. It is a surprise that it got the go ahead in the first place.
I also expect a lot of retrofitting and scaling back in DC Entertainment, _particularly_ in the comics division. From a financial standpoint they are insignificant except as a convenient farm for potential new lucrative concepts and characters. AT&T will refuse to invest much money in there, and apparently they can't currently be bothered to offer much in the way of planning for announcements either. Expect significant cuts and cancellations, and I would not particularly doubt farming out the actual book publishing for Disney/Marvel either.
There is a very good chance that AT&T will decide not to bother with the comicbooks proper if they can help it, so that they can focus on making the movies work in a predictable and more lucrative way.
Frankly, that would be the smart thing to do. DC has one of the most valuable stables of characters that ever existed, but they have been suffering from repeated half-baked attempts that leave us from the public wondering if the filmmakers were ever briefed about the very characters that they were making movies about. Kevin Snyder, I am looking at your take on Superman. Green Lantern is one of the most succesful franchises in DC and the movie division has been pretending for well over eight years that they do not remember that it had a movie back in mid-2011. Those are amateuristic goofs commited at the expense of Hollywood Blockbuster budgets, and they harm the value of the intellectual properties to boot. AT&T neither should nor is likely to stand for that.
It does not help that DC has actually had better results overall by refusing to make the various continuities converge with each other. There are perhaps a literal half dozen _currently produced_ takes on the Titans, and they diverge enthusiastically from each other to such a degree that no one dreams of attempting to reconcile them. It is not much different with Batman or Superman or even the Flash and Green Lantern. Are people who enjoyed the recent Joker and Birds of Prey movies even _expected_ anymore to have a clue on whether there is any comicbook out there that might suit their tastes anymore? Or to have a chance at actually finding them in order to buy them?
The money and the comics are not even attempting to connect with each other anymore, and that is not at all a new or temporary situation. AT&T could do worse than focus on the movies' troubles and let Marvel take care of their source of intellectual property in the meantime.
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