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News: Levitz On DC's New Branding
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LEVITZ ON DC'S NEW BRANDING
posted 05-09-2005 10:01 PM by MattBrady
With today’s announcement of a branding change at DC Comics, it became apparent that the new logo only represented the tip of the iceberg in regards to how DC Comics will be seen from outside, as well as how DC will be seen from inside Warner Brothers.
DC SPECIAL: RETURN OF DONNA TROY #1 (May 2005)
We were able to catch up with DC President and Publisher Paul Levitz for a brief chat about the branding change as he was between meetings today.
(excerpt)
NRAMA: Along with this “bigger picture” and branding going across the entire company, how does what’s going on content-wise in publishing tie into the comprehensive program? For instance, when we spoke with George Perez recently, he mentioned that he was going to be doing some style guides for the DCU, to allow creators to have a more unified approach on the art side of things. Is the branding indicative of a unification or homogenization of the content to make it more uniform across all media within Warner Brothers?
PL: No, I think that’s a wrong, but perhaps reasonable deduction. I think the power of a brand is that it enables you to present a wider range of creativity, because it really says, “This is Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey – this is the whole circus. We’ve got three or four rings going. We’ve got this style over here, we’ve got that style going over there.” You don’t have to reduce yourself to a “house style” under the new branding.I think the secret behind what’s going on with George, and some other things that Dan Didio is doing…it’s not a secret that Dan landed in this world after having spent his career up to this not making comics. He started out reading them, loving them, and has a very long history with them, but he doesn’t have 40 years of craft as a constructor of them, he has 40 years of craft as an appreciator of them. Part of what I think he’s trying to do now that he’s settled into the job a little bit, and has a feel for the pieces of both what he can do himself and what he wants his team to do, is he’s looked around and said, “In order to make great comics, I need to be able to have tools that aren’t part of a conventional editorial team.”
So Dan may have a deal with one freelancer who has some particular ability to develop characters, and has them working to re-think some of our old stuff, and finding new kinds of business models to find ways for them to be able to do that. That can lead to something like Grant’s work on Seven Soldiers, where Grant’s writing the initial material on the characters, but he’s creating, or re-creating some new value in some older properties. It also leads to George, who’s certainly one of the great costume designers of our field, one of the great, kind of “grown up” artists who now has a generation of guys looking to emulate him serving as something of a teacher and guide to others.
George mentioned in your interview that we’d tried to get him to come up to New York to work. We don’t have a depth of guys like Joe Orlando or John Romita who can help work with young artists and help develop them. We have Mark Chiarello here, which we’re very lucky to have, and Marvel has Joe Quesada, but it’s not a deep bench. No disservice meant to either Mark or Joe, but they’ve got a while until they get up to where Joe Orlando or John Romita Sr.’s track record lies.
In short, we’re looking for the right way to use guys to fill in some of these spots, and I think that George will have some very important roles to play. Personally, a someone who goes back with him to when I was selling the fanzine that he had his high school art in, I’m thrilled to have him back on the team for a chunk of years. He’s an incredibly talented creator for the field.
I think you’ll see another couple of unorthodox arrangements like that, either announced or happen.
[ Read more LEVITZ ON DC'S NEW BRANDING ]
