Paul Jenkins talks about the toxic bullying atmosphere at DC and why he has quit working for the Big Two
"There are not always two sides to every story – not if one side fires a gun and the other side gets hit with a bullet."
This is really brutal. Creators aren't being judged by their work, but rather by how fast they jump when Editorial demands incessant changes.
This is why everything DC is publishing right now is garbage.
The Bullying Of Creators - Paul Jenkins Talks About Leaving DC And Marvel For Boom - Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors
Perhaps if I sent you the actual script that I wrote for Dark Knight #5 to compare against the pile of turd they published? I don’t know. Perhaps if I told you that I refused to rewrite #6 when it was handed in because I had already written the script a few times and then reworked it to fulfill editorial requirements prior to the penciling, only to have a completely different story handed to me? If you read the credits you will see that someone is given credit for “dialogue assists.” That’s actually quite unfair on that creator – I told DC to take my name off the book. It pained me that they did not do so, nor on #7. Issue #8 of that series was begun as a five-part story. It was then pared down to two issues by me when it became clear the relationship was not working. It was actually published as one issue. That’s what the fans paid for: my name, and a reworking of the issue done without my knowledge, where I was alerted to the fact only when the issue hit the stands. What a repulsive mess. Shame on the editors and shame on the publisher.
DC is in the toilet right now. It reminds me of the way Marvel was just before we did Marvel Knights. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions about the similarities and connections. Suffice it to say they have created a culture of dishonesty that affects too many creators. And the worst part of all is that they bully their creators. They tried to bully me, and I told them to go to Hell. The horror stories are many and varied. I have a few of my own, and I have heard way too many of them from various creators who are being beaten into submission with the threat of losing their jobs if they do not play ball. DC seem to have developed a culture where they think “professionalism” is screwing a creator in some fashion, and then pretending to be friendly at a convention. Professionalism is about handing in quality work on time, or about being friendly to fans at conventions, or about working towards a mutually beneficial goal. Professionalism is about dedication to your craft, not about running around the offices like a demented gerbil telling everyone how busy you are – so busy, in fact, that you forget to do any actual work. Here’s what pisses me off about this situation: it does not take a rocket scientist to see that there are a lot of very unhappy creators at DC lately. Well, can you imagine how many more are unhappy that we don’t know about because they feel if they speak out they will be blacklisted? Can you imagine the miserable conditions some of these creators are subjected to? (Disclaimer: not all creators, I am sure. Some are perfectly happy. Just not me.) The point is that DC has begun to act like a bully, to subject people to shitty working conditions as if it is doing them a favor. If I have seen good comics come from the creator/publisher collaboration, why the hell would I allow myself to be subjected to that nonsense at this stage of my career? I have numerous other interests, including film and video game work and my first novel.
