DC Chief Creative Officer Jim Lee has confirmed that DC Comics will continue to print comics, despite recent rumors. Starting off as a comic book artist, Jim Lee has risen to become one of DC's most prominent creatives. He deals with all creative aspects behind DC and naturally, knows a lot about what's going on behind the scenes.
Not so long ago, rumors were going around online circles that WarnerMedia might stop publishing comics over at DC. This was in part because of the takeover by AT&T. Some think that AT&T values its film and television programs for more than comics, mainly because DC Comics, and comics in general, haven't been performing as well as before. Naturally, AT&T and WarnerMedia probably had discussions about how to make DC Comics more profitable.
According to Jim Lee in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, shelving DC Comics was never in the cards. Lee's statement reads, "Occasionally you will run across that article or tweet and I have to bite my tongue to not jump into the conversations. It’s the furthest thing from the truth. If anything, it’s the exact opposite. The comics that we publish, the core canon we establish in comics, is driving everything that we do across DC in media. We are constantly referring to the characters as we build DC beyond the publishing world." Touching on Lee's comments, some of WarnerMedia's most successful projects are sourced from new material from the comics. A recent example of a newly introduced character to make the leap to other media is Godspeed, who was introduced in The Flash Rebirth in 2016 and who just appeared as the main villain in The Flash Season 7.
Lee makes it abundantly clear that DC Comics is vital to WarnerMedia's future and that there are no plans to discontinue making comics. He also states that having new comics adds "new voices, new characters, new points of view," which are all vital "to keeping the industry healthy and representative of current times." Fans can rejoice and let out a big sigh of relief now that DC Comics' future is secure and will see the continuation of big projects like Infinite Frontier and everything else that it plans to publish. The fact that DC will continue to publish comics was also reinforced by recent statements from Infinite Frontier writer Joshua Williamson and Superman: Son of Kal-El writer Tom Taylor, who have both said that they have been having meetings to plan out the next year in comics.
Despite the almost endless vault of DC Comics stories, Jim Lee is right that if publishing stopped, it would be detrimental to WarnerMedia's plans for future films and television adaptations. "It’s mission one for us to make sure that universe we create and champion is reflective of the fanbase that loves our characters." It's clear that halting comic book publishing would limit the number of new voices and stories that could be told. This would ultimately lessen the value of WarnerMedia's film and TV productions as it would fall behind on the times and potentially lose out on new streams of revenue.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter