RIP DC Direct
 

Good riddance.

And before anyone wants to give me grief, yes, I am sorry that (some) people lost their jobs today. But DC Whatever They Called Themselves Today has been putting out overpriced trash for years. They have a goldmine of marketable characters and all they made were endless variations of Batman and Harley Quinn plus any cheap repaint they could get away with.

Hasbro is scaping the bottom of the Z-List barrel to produce Marvel Legends and DC fans can barely put together a Justice League. I stand by my original statement.

People lost their jobs today man. Have some respect.

Awful news. Losing your job is hard. I lost my job slightly before the pandemic. I still have lots of money, but eventually you need to work.

The atmosphere right now is no one is really hiring. There are options like working at a chain retailer, but it's hard to go from working in corporate to something less than that if that makes sense.

Eventually bills must be paid and a man got to do what a man got to do.

I feel for these guys and for anyone fired, it stings, especially for a man.

This is awful news. The first figures in my collection were McFarlane's second series of Tortured Souls and DC Direct's Hush line. Now I have over 1000 DCD and DCC figures. Sad day, for sure.

While you were typing this I edited my comment to reflect that. Because of course someone has to pretend to be morally superior.

That being said, I’ve seen very little respect for the fans coming from the various branches of DC, particularly from the comic book division. Maybe if they showed just a teeny tiny bit we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now.

I don't believe he was coming from that angle. We were all talking via chat about how fucked the whole WB layoff situation was for the workers, aside from how it affects the industry and our toys.

Then that comment popped. So I agree with him, we all need to factor in the real world, non toy angle to all this when we discuss.

And please, everyone pretend this is all COVID-related. How many starts and stops has DC Collectibles had with their lines over the years? How many "course corrections" has DC Films made the last seven years? How many times have DC Comics creators openly insulted paying customers the last four years?

This company has been a disaster on all fronts for a long time. All COVID did was accelerate the process.

Precisely, I mean even if you completely take the fact that people are now out of jobs in the worst time to be so in recent history, it's just a completely massive jerk reaction to be like "finally this thing that I don't buy isn't being made anymore."

Like... you don't win anything for them being shut down. You didn't lose anything by them existing. How selfish do you have to be to have any rejoicing in this situation?

I think I've said enough about the real world. In the real world businesses need to make money. Whoever has been in charge of DC's various branches (movies/TV/toys/comics) have been screwing up royally in that department.

My sympathies go to the blue collar everyday workers who lost their jobs today, but that's where it ends.

I don't buy anymore because, among other reasons, they couldn't figure out what they wanted to sell. And I wasn't the only one.

And actually, I do lose a lot by them not existing. Because they used to make good comics. They used to make good collectibles. The used to have respect for their fans. It's called being a "DC Guy". It used to be fun, now it's sad.

And by the way, I'm not exactly wearing my party hat right now. And apparently some of you aren't getting this so let me be clear: I'm sorry that Joe/Jane DC/WB employee lost their job today, but this is what happens when you can't figure out which way is up and you consistently insult/not listen to your customer base.

So we should assume that all DCD figures up for preorder and not yet released are soon to be cancelled? I still have a few more Bruce Timm Batman animated figures preordered at BBTS along with that DC Essentials black suit Superman I was looking forward to getting. :(

With your added context, I completely agree with you. Commenting on the company and their long term decisions, or current parent company's decisions, fair game. Pre edit, I think Joe's reaction was valid, not coming from any petty angle.

I will leave the chatting about DC overall to you guys. Just keep it civil please.

i feel like all DC direct had to do was look at ebay and quickly see what figures and packs needed to be re release.

such as some figures from the animated series line.

some of their stuff was great, animated bat cycle, batman vs tmnt packs.
some of their stuff was confusing, no standard joints for their CW TV figure lines.

then there's the garbage, such as the poorly made DC animated justice league figures,
and the annoying DC essentials, just make more icons for god sake.

still, any of their figures is better than the mattel DC multiverse crap.

Ugh I desperately wanted more Batman vs TMNT figures... I wanted the mutated rogues gallery soooo bad

The writing was on the wall a long time ago and I'm surprised DC Direct lasted this long. The last figure I bought from DC Direct was back from 2004 and that was it since I felt that their overpriced figures were not worth my money.

It sucks now that many are losing their jobs and that employers are rarely hiring people at this time when everyone is trying to save even a couple of pennies.

Warner Bros. like other corporations have ran their company into the ground recently, jettisoning loyal fans for an agenda.

Disney is in even bigger trouble than Warner as they did some unscrupulous things(from what I have heard), while hurting their cash flow. From corporate guys I know, you ain't see nothing yet. Wait till you see what Disney has planned for their employees.

What you said is very fair. I fully agree. A lot of what happened figure wise was really mismanagement by the bosses, above the DCD division.

I actually think McFarlane will pick up where DCD disappointed. I am HOPING McFarlane tackles BTAS and other animated stuff. McFarlane new wave of figures are outstanding. Series 1 was blah, but the new releases, Azrael, is wowzers.

As awful as it is that so many people are out of the job, and were likely lower level workers with the least responsibility, I have a hard time mustering a tear for DCC/DCD.

I agree with cjflan32, "good riddance" is about right, the company has been a shitshow for years. The BTAS line was the final straw for me. That line should've been easy, yet the first wave of figures fucking disintegrated in hand and they couldn't figure out simple things like how to articulate figures or hide pins for joints. Eventually it became a ratrace of buying the newest update of whatever figure, hoping they wouldn't be shit and forcing yourself to accept the utterly amateur quality and engineering. How many Batmen did they do and still never got the face right? It's like there hasn't been decades of toy design to show them how its done, they can't even make 90 degree elbow and knee bends. What could've been a legendary line that fans were dying for years for turned out into a mess of missed opportunities and shear incompetance.

And that's just the one line I had the most interest in. They were out of touch with the fans and out of touch with the market. I'm honestly surprised they lasted this long given how downright anti-consumer they sometimes seemed.

I am sad to hear this news. Long before Mattel or Macfarlane, Hiya, Storm, spinmaster these were the only company making figures. I still have the parallax figure Hal. I'll miss them.

Sorry to those who lost their job. The only DC Collectible Figure I own is the one they did of Matt Ryan's Constantine. but they did show a lot of stuff than out of the blue that same stuff would be cancelled. (Looking at you Etrigan The Demon that was supposed to be out last year or the year before)

Lets hope Mcfarlane gets over his Batman Boner and starts doing what DC Collectibles failed to do make figures of the many amazing characters in the DC Pantheon.

I agree with CJflan, no big loss from the toy side of things. DC Collectibles/Direct lost my respect when they canned the Icons line and then didn't even have the balls to straight up say they canned it. They played the game of, "The line isn't canceled, we're just trying to something new with Essentials."

Glad I haven't touched a single DCC product since then.

Now for the personal side of things, that sucks for those who lost their jobs, especially at this moment in time. How fucking greedy does AT&T have to be to lay people off in the middle of a fucking pandemic? I never wanted to use their services before, but now I most definitely will. As far as I'm concerned, AT&T deserves to go out of business with this bullshit.

Sorry to everyone who lost their jobs. It must have been a good gig. I bet a lot of those employee could have helped the company if they let them.
Company wise, didn't see it doing much. It was always one of my landing pages. Maybe I bought 4 things. Nothing exciting ever showed up.
Sad thing is, the quality was generally good. Designs on point. Those batman vs tmnt toys feel very nice in hand. But I didn't even finish collecting them because it was too down the middle. Boring or something. A company has to have some innovation going on these days somehow.
More than anything, it probably comes down to DC not doing so hot for so many years now. So many bungles and cheap materials. Bad luck too...man...now the twilight guy is the new batman? Weird choices. The people in charge of DC need to evaluate what is going on and maybe new leadership. This may sound controversial but a guy like Todd McFarlane might do a lot of good things if he ran that company.
I bet there were a lot of people who got laid off that had tremendous creativity and innovative ideas but never were considered.

The only well-made DC Collectibles* figures that come to mind are the Icons (bad scale) and the Bombshells (niche alternate versions of characters). Both have good sculpt, articulation and paint for the most part. Everything else from them had been lacking in one major area or another, or in the case of the animated series figures, lacking in pretty much every department.

Here's to McF doing a better job.

I’m really sad right now.
It’s inhuman, f**k you WB and AT&T

About figures, I have a lot of animated characters and I love it, they are all perfect for me