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DC Comics absolutely won San Diego Comic-Con 2026, and the secret origin of the success makes it even more powerful
DC’s remarkable turnaround started with one simple editorial philosophy: “Yes, and”
FeaturesbyChris Arrant, Editor-in-Chief
Published on Mon Jul 27 2026
Popverse’s coverage of Comic-Con International: San Diego 2026 is brought to you byDark Horse Comics.
On Friday night, DC Comics dominated the Eisner Awards. With Warner Bros. Discovery. accountants’ tallies of 2025 sales now finished/checked/doublechecked, DC Comics is boasting that 2025 was its most financially successful year in its 80+ year history. And they’ve created a new monthly comic book (not a revamp or a relaunch of an existing title) in Absolute Batman that is the best-selling comic book series in arguably the past 40 years. And their long-time rivals, Marvel Comics, are following something DC did 11 years ago and moving to California, and even challenged them to a friendly game of softball.
DC Comics seems to have won the hearts and minds of fans, retailers, and creators if you look at what is happening this weekend at Comic-Con International: San Diego. But, as with any overnight success, it takes years of mistakes, attempts, lessons, failures, and the ability to go from being reactive to being active. And saying, ‘Yes and’. Not as a question, but as the start of a conversation. But like any good superhero comic story, there is a tragic secret origin.
The secret origin of DC Comics’ 2026 success
For DC, this year’s successes come six years after 2020, a year when all of us experienced the COVID-19 pandemic and our lives changed. For DC, it led to a fracturing of the comics distribution model it relied on for the past 20 years and a rush to find a solution that involved enlisting larger comic stores to step up and become comics distributors themselves to fill the gap. While that played out in public, inside DC’s Burbank offices (and the employees who began working from home) went through perhaps the largest layoffs DC has experienced in its 80-year history. Roughly 60% of its institutional executive braintrust were gone as part of two rounds of company-wide layoffs as part of a larger restructering effort of WarnerMedia under then-new owners AT&T, with the company losing a publisher, an editor-in-chief, and more. As part of those changes, DC shuttered its merchandise division, downsized the ambitious DC Universe streaming platform, and had to make a lot of hard choices about current ongoing comics, potential ongoing comics, and even linewide revamps that were killed off in the short term.
Some might call these restructures pruning, but for DC Comics’ staff and creators, it wasn’t pruning shears; it was a blowtorch. But amidst it all emerged a veteran editor who left superhero comics behind at the turn of the 21st century, but had been enlisted in 2015 to temporarily help with DC’s transition of offices and staff from New York City to Burbank, California. Former Marvel Comics editor (and perpetual traveler) Marie Javins went from helping bridge the gap to being the quiet but engaging new nucleus to a new kind of DC. First with the YA and teen out-of-continuity books like bold revamps of the Flintstones and Snagglepuss, to pivotal out-of-continuity fare of DC’s heroes like Harleen, to becoming the Justice League editor just as former ‘New 52’ Batman writer Scott Snyder began embracing larger, bolder storytelling.
“[The current state of DC Comics is] head and shoulders above a lot of the stuff I’ve seen before,” Mark Waid says during an appearance on SKTCHD’s Off Panel. Waid, if you recall, was a DC editor in the ’80s, and has bounced back and forth between Marvel and DC since the ’90s as one of each company’s top writers. “If you’re cynical, it’s easy to look at that and dismiss this as, ‘Oh yeah, but here’s a guy who’s writing on these big books. Of course he’s going to think it’s great.’ No, I’ve always, if nothing else for 40 years, I think people who know me and have read interviews and stuff know that I am honest to a fault. I’ll call out bullshit when I see it. But man, Marie Javins as the editor-in-chief there has put together the right people. And I have never seen the DC editorial staff so in sync as I have now.”
While distrust and suspicion were prevalent immediately after the sea changes of restructuring, the uncertainty during (and after) the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and everything else, in the aftermath, slowly (and not without some pain,) became a decidedly different DC; the stoicism and reservedness that DC had become known for in previous generations was supplanted by something born out of improv comedy: ‘Yes, and.’
From ‘No, but…’ to ‘Yes, and…’ at DC Comics
One of the biggest stars in this new DC era is Katie Kubert. A third-generation comics pro, Kubert knows how the comics industry has been (and knows what it could be). She worked at DC under the previous regime, and also worked Marvel Comics during its past glory days, Kubert, who in her downtime is a fan of fossils and learning how species adapt over time, rejoined DC in 2017 after its move to California and quietly moved up the ranks to lead the informal ‘Guppy’ division (That’s Global Publishing Innovations, in Warner Bros. Discovery corporate speak), and then with Chris Conroy has been the two people behind the people you see writing, drawing, coloring, and lettering the hit Absolute line.
During Saturday’s Absolute Universe panel, Kubert came out dressed as the massive Absolute Batman symbol. That’s not the DC of old (although Dennis O’Neil would’ve smiled at this one).
“DC is just a bunch of people who really care about comics,” says Absolute Batman architect Scott Snyder as Kubert came on stage. “[They’re] trying really hard to make them, and most of editorial are there long hours; none of them expected this success, but it comes with this whole level of pressure, and these guys handle it.”
And the pitch for Absolute DC wasn’t an easy thing. In fact, Snyder recently revealed that in this period of uncertainty, he was simultaneously pitching what became ‘Absolute DC’ to DC at the same time he was pitching a completely different initiative to Marvel Comics. According to Snyder, Marvel told him they “didn’t have room” for Snyder’s vision there, but DC came back and essentially said ‘Yes, and….”
“Nothing is being dictated,” Kubert says of DC’s new editorial ethos. “We’re just all ‘Yes anding’ the hell out of each other.”
After Friday night’s Eisner Awards and 2025 being the best financial year for DC Comics in its entire history, I sit back and look forward to DC Comics “Yes anding” the hell out of that.
Need more? Here’s our picks for the best DC Comics stories of all time.
About Comic-Con International: San Diego
Comic-Con is the premier event for all things comics and related popular art, including movies, television, gaming, interactive multimedia, and so much more! Enjoy cosplay galore and take part in unique programming, exclusive previews, and presentations, not to mention the expansive and diverse Exhibit Hall featuring merchandise and displays representing all fandoms.
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Chris Arrant: Chris Arrant is the Popverse’s Editor-in-Chief. He has written about pop culture for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher’s Weekly, Marvel, Newsarama, CBR, and more. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. (He/him)
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